is map design of this kind encouraged?

first is a slaughter field, where the player kills a few hundreds of high level monsters(barons, mancubies, revenants etc.).
the player then has to leave and head back to the slaughtered field for several times, to different parts of the map to collect a key or open a switch, each time takes quite a while.
and for each time the player leaves the area, a bunch of arch-viles teleport into the field full of corpses.

I'm sure this has been before dozens of times, it's a generic trap that's in almost every map.

noshutdown said:

a bunch of arch-viles teleport into the field full of corpses.

I hate it when mappers do this. It's a literal "Fuck You!" from the mapper to the player.

But I understand some players want to challenge themselves, so yes it is encouraged and no its not. It's simply about your taste.

IMO, such a design is usually neither fun nor efficient. Letting Archviles into a place full of corpses, while the player is away, has way too unpredictable consequences, and there are few setups in which this is a good thing. Releasing an orchestrated wave of new monsters (possibly with Archviles among them) into the arena upon the player's arrival (as opposed to departure) seems like a better idea to me - at least generally. It may be overdone, but it has less potential to go wrong.

Sounds fun to me :/

Try to keep the general length of the map to take less than 30 minutes to complete on a casual play through.

I'm not a fan of slaughtermaps to begin with, so I may sound biased here, but I don't like when mappers pull that off.

I'd quite like to see some variations on this that use MBF friendly arch-viles. Completing side-quests in the map lets you unlock some friendly arch viles, so the climactic battle when you rejoin the field of battle has the odds stacked more in your favour the more side-quests you've done.

I don't want to fight hundreds of monsters that I've already killed in an area that I've already seen. Show me something new instead, otherwise I will probably feel that you're desperate to prolong the gameplay but can't be arsed to put actual effort into that.

Maybe once in 50 maps such a scenario is fine.

That is what I feel about most vulture vile setups in slaughtermaps. It has been done already so many times. I feel like the best way to approach it is to craft a vile-centric fight involving multiple species that just happens to take place in a corpse-heavy area, instead of sending in a cluster of viles and viles only after a fight.

Putting Arch-Viles into a large pile of corpses is one of the biggest turn-offs a map can do for me.

The earliest example of this can be found in Plutonia's MAP21 which rendered the final part of an otherwise fun map into a chore.

I'd be fine with that...
if you threw in 2 AVs tops, the "horde" was Imps/Zombiemen only and you were given a BFG between the two fights.


Without that, please don't.

It'd be annoying but if there's only like one archvile and few imps people would forgive it; AVs can only revive one monster at a time.

I wonder if someone ever added a custom monster with an AoE revive, cause that sounds like fun -_-

true, i would admit that the point of such design is to piss the play off. but, doesn't that happen now and then already to everyone playing doom? and isn't that the purpose of many maps?

noshutdown said:

i would admit that the point of such design is to piss the play off.

This is discouraged.

noshutdown said:

and for each time the player leaves the area, a bunch of arch-viles teleport into the field full of corpses.

No.

It's better to repopulate the killing field with monsters. Reviving them just makes the player feel he wasted his time and a ton of shells. Starving kids in Africa could have eaten those shells.

noshutdown said:

the point of such design is to piss the play off. [...] isn't that the purpose of many maps?

No?

The problem is then you have Archviles along a huge pile of monsters that are free to hit you through the monsters but you can't do likewise so you're vulnerable to their fire unless you can clear a path to them.

oh well, maybe the amount of monsters in the place should be restrained, probably less than 100. and the field should be confined when the player is away so the viles won't go out of it and walk all over the map.

VGA said:

It's better to repopulate the killing field with monsters. Reviving them just makes the player feel he wasted his time and a ton of shells. Starving kids in Africa could have eaten those shells.

releasing more monsters in the same place seems too simple a way aswell, and not annoying enough... i would rather make the player see his previous hard work ruined by a few viles when hes away, and again, and again... if i am a mapper.

OK wait is this a "I'm trying to think a good idea for a map" thread or is this is a "I just played a map that was fucking retarded and I'm blaming the community for letting this happen" thread?

Edit: nvm slow response,

I need to know where you got the idea that pissing off the player is the mappers goal because I need to get to the bottom of this.

I'm not big on slaughter maps but if they throw hordes of Arch-Viles into a previously cleared area, I'm going to stop playing the map right there. I think it's a dick move and all it does is waste time.

What the hell is up with this negativity? I find the concept pretty cool, because it reuses corpses instead of wasting more. It motivates the player to watch out where he kills the monsters. It makes the map less predictable: you don't know which monsters will be raised; the archvile probably won't manage to cover the whole area anyway!

If it's Boom, you can even transport corpses by scrolling the floor while the player is away. You can lead them all into a chute or teleporter and place them elsewhere, so future archviles can raise them!

I fail to see how is this mapping tactic any different than spawning new waves of the same monsters...

How about if a couple of arch-viles are set loose some distance away, and you have to kill them or hit a switch (close a door, lower a floor to a pit, etc.) before they reach the other dead monsters? This way, you will at least have a fighting chance before they start reviving things.

40oz said:

OK wait is this a "I'm trying to think a good idea for a map" thread or is this is a "I just played a map that was fucking retarded and I'm blaming the community for letting this happen" thread?

I need to know where you got the idea that pissing off the player is the mappers goal because I need to get to the bottom of this.

well, i've played some hard wads and i've come to feel their ways of releasing monsters too boring: when you do something, they either teleport in or uncover from an opened wall. and when you go back to somewhere previously visited, a new pack of monsters are often waiting for you there.
i feel this kind of design is "too simple a way to add a lot of job to the player", so it deserves a more irritating method instead, to make the player see his previous hard work ruined by a few viles when hes away, and again, and again...

Ichor said:

How about if a couple of arch-viles are set loose some distance away, and you have to kill them or hit a switch (close a door, lower a floor to a pit, etc.) before they reach the other dead monsters? This way, you will at least have a fighting chance before they start reviving things.

i guess the only effort can be made is to finish the business on the other side as quick as possible, and come back before the viles can resurrect all corpses.

also, once the player departs, the place should be blocked, to prevent the player from coming back to kill the viles, as well as the viles running away to all over the map.

printz said:

I fail to see how is this mapping tactic any different than spawning new waves of the same monsters...

Right on the money with the entire post, printz, but especially this.



Now, can repopulation in any form be overdone? Yes, but to differentiate based on something like "you only sent in AVs that revived these other monsters rather than sending in the AVs plus the monsters!11!oneoneone" is just ridiculous to me. Also, then the AVs would bring more monsters! Oh noes!

Reviving is one half of the AV, you can't release one anywhere other monsters are without this being a possibility. The only real complaints I'm seeing from reading between the lines here is either people hate AVs/are thinking of the worst scenarios or people think the AV et al should teleport in front of them, where they can be seen easily, rather than allowing them to roam. Both of which are ridiculous complaints. Complain about the larger picture, not an insignificant detail. In these "worst" scenarios, there are often more/bigger problems at play.

I was referring specifically to direct vulture vile setups. Framing is an important part of encounter design, and a lot of vulture vile setups fail at this. It's a relatively common slaughtermap trope for a setpiece that takes place in a topographically simple arena to be followed after a switch trigger by a cluster of vulture viles. All I can think about at this point is how it is literally identical (both strategically and in terms of framing) to every such encounter ever made, and that it is not 2011 anymore and mappers should be capable of throwing even a minor wrinkle into it. Map13 of Sunlust tossed in a couple of pain elementals along with the viles after the big imp/spiderdemon fight, and that was enough.

A mapper should remember that no monster can drastically upset difficulty and item balance like an archvile. They should be used sparingly and strategically. If you go to the trouble to balance gameplay, don't mess it up with haphazard archvile use.

Job said:

A mapper should remember that no monster can drastically upset difficulty and item balance like an archvile. They should be used sparingly and strategically. If you go to the trouble to balance gameplay, don't mess it up with haphazard archvile use.

Depends on the style of map you are designing. I can think of a lot of fair and balanced maps that spam archviles.

rdwpa said:

Depends on the style of map you are designing. I can think of a lot of fair and balanced maps that spam archviles.

in many maps and skilled demos, the player focus on killing archviles very quickly whenever they show up, to minimize the trouble that their can cause. while such move is effective for experienced players, i refuse to grant it as a must-do or the only way to clear a map. that is, the mapper mustn't be thinking "player should kill these archviles quick or he would be in trouble". so i would like to design scenarios when such move isn't possible, and give the archviles some free time to play with corpses.

noshutdown said:

the mapper mustn't be thinking "player should kill these archviles quick or he would be in trouble". so i would like to design scenarios when such move isn't possible, and give the archviles some free time to play with corpses.

The Core problem with that is that AV's really only do 2 things, res, and their explosion. If the Av is resurecting It's going to instantly be putting pressure on the player to berid the AV. The other scenario is where we have the AV puting the player into "check" ie chess sceanarios and player would want to continuesly break line of sight.

Now if your looking to make the arena an Av res party, but specifically the player Has to focus on the enemies rather then the Av, you could do: Have Two arenas (like two circles that interlap) One higher then the other (the first one you fight on) and have you back track through the bottom one. Then set up archviles in the walls so they don't see you but just the monsters. Then you could set up a 1 way teleporter for the walkers to get down and Cacos will just fly. though in this situation I think it would be a good idea to try and signify some way that the AVs are off limits for the time being.