Specific Things in Doom that annoy you

Edward850 said:

If it's stored in the save, what would exiting change?

You're right, if the RNG table is stored in the savegame, nothing.

Speedrunning has inured me to the more common gameplay nuisances, but port performance issues have taken center stage. Massive framerate drops in particular are obnoxious -- occasionally Doom decides to do some combination of 1/2 framerate and audio slightly lagging behind and random slowdowns and speedups, and the game becomes basically unplayable. Doesn't seem to be related to RAM usage either. Also it seems like Windows doesn't like switching resolutions very often in a short period of time, and when I grind short maps, after a hundred or so resets, my taskbar sometimes starts freezing for 15-30 seconds every time I quit, which necessitates manually restarting explorer.exe.

As far as gameplay goes, the usual: infinitely tall monsters, particularly unseeable fliers (wtf); maps tested in ZDoom only but billed for Boom format, so they end up being really uncomfortable with lots of impassable two-sided linedefs railings and stuff in the middle of the playing field, or excessively bumpy floors, etc*. #1 and #2 are probably the RL and BFG jam if you attempt to fire immediately and forced weapon switches upon pickups; these interfere with maxruns too.


*As an aside, I think that people use Sunder as an example of uncompromising and uncomfortable geometry, but what guys like Ribbiks "get" about that is that Sunder creates the impression of a malevolent world that doesn't care if you get caught in awkward geometry or go sliding across a bumpy floor. In a lot of maps, the bad geometry just seems like poor map design, and it's entirely the framing that make the difference between "annoying geometry I'll tolerate" and "was this tested?"

Gez said:

Another thing you can do, if the circumstances in your save allow: switch to fist, punch a wall, then go back to the shotgun and shoot the imp.

That's an interesting workaround, but between doing that in battle every time an imp survives a shell blast, and just finishing him with the pistol, I think I'll just use the pistol.

I think imp vs. single shotgun is subtly a pretty annoying type of combat. In my own maps, I wouldn't place any imps that must be shot one by one at full health with the SG. Cluster kills need to be possible, like at the beginning of "The Courtyard." Short single shotgun maxruns often blow because the entire time comes down to RNG, hoping that as many imps as possible die in one shot. At least with zombiemen and shotgun guys -- which imo should be the staple enemies of a pure single shotgun map, not imps -- it can be really fun to get good line-up shots going.

antares031 said:

When my opponent has latency advantage in deathmatch. At this moment, the best ping I can get from ZDaemon is 170.

Man, I would kill for 170 - I've got kinda shitty net at the moment so I'm averaging about 270 which is my max upper limit for ping. My old ISP was getting me a ping as 'low' as 220 to the US which felt amazing compared to the jitterfest I have now!

On that note, I'd love to have another super laggy DM with ya some time Antares :)

Maes said:

You can still play a decent "Brit10" style game as a BFG spammer/camper and even come on top more often than not. But don't expect to be able to win 1-on-1 vs players of your own skill level when you have a severe ping disadvantage...

Exactly. Spamming BFG is not a difficult work to do. Grabbing BFG against the competitors is still a little bit tricky with high ping, but you can compensate a loss once you grab it and use it correctly. Still, I prefer 1-on-1 dual match with someone who has nearly identical ping with me because that's the best way to play doom multiplayer to me.

Doomkid said:

Man, I would kill for 170 - I've got kinda shitty net at the moment so I'm averaging about 270 which is my max upper limit for ping. My old ISP was getting me a ping as 'low' as 220 to the US which felt amazing compared to the jitterfest I have now! On that note, I'd love to have another super laggy DM with ya some time Antares :)

Yeah, I really want to play multiplayer games with players around the world with low ping. It will be cool if someone develop the new network technology to make my wish come true in the future. Anyway, I hope you get a better ISP soon, so you can play more enjoyable DM games. :)

rdwpa said:

I think imp vs. single shotgun is subtly a pretty annoying type of combat. In my own maps, I wouldn't place any imps that must be shot one by one at full health with the SG. Cluster kills need to be possible, like at the beginning of "The Courtyard." Short single shotgun maxruns often blow because the entire time comes down to RNG, hoping that as many imps as possible die in one shot. At least with zombiemen and shotgun guys -- which imo should be the staple enemies of a pure single shotgun map, not imps -- it can be really fun to get good line-up shots going.

👌💯

Anytime there is a boss battle in a tight space like with a cyberdemon. Example being Necropolis on Hell on Earth starter pack.

Another thing that gets me is also archviles infinitely reviving monsters (Previously mentioned)

For me it would be mainly:

- being forced to pick up green armor, when you have 99-5% of blue armor. It's a such a waste considering how green armor is nearly useless. Still better than nothing but I feel like a peasant when I'm running around with the green one.

- unavoidable heavy wapon dude traps. Especially so if you're playing with fast monsters.

- demons being useless without fast monsters.

- super shotgun feels too powerful. I run around with it most of the time and it's quite annoying. Because 2x ammo equals almost 3x damage, right?

- boxes of shotgun shells and energy cell packs give too much ammo.

- switches that do god knows what "somewhere in the level" without any indication whatsoever. Especially if the level is huge.

- plasma gun sound haters. The weapon should feel powerful, including the sound. I have yet to hear a better, more imposing one.

- people saying plasma becomes useless after you get the BFG. It just doesn't.

- chaingun being useful only for sniping and painlocking monsters. And plasma is better at the latter.



That could be all but I'm sure I would be able to think of some more small things later.

-Whenever I finish killing a really deadly monster and I am low on health, only to be shot in the face by a Former Human. (Probably my fault, but it annoys me nonetheless)

-Getting shoved into a corner by pinky demons or spectres to get beaten up by them (Probably my fault again for not killing them fast enough)

-Having shots blocked off by Pain Elementals shooting lost souls a thousand times, thus making a "proxy" that blocks the pain elemental and making infinite lost souls that soon harass me to no end.

-Picking up large ammo units on accident when I need 1 or 2 bits of those, wasting what I could've needed in that shell box or large plasma cell.

-When I am clearly aiming at something else but another enemy stops me from landing a really good hit on something that is on the verge of ending me due to autoaim.

-Whenever basic enemies like zombies or imps are way too hard to kill with weapons that would normally decimate them completely.

Not sure how many of these are my own fault, but those are some things that happen a lot when I play DooM.

When I use the rocket launcher and a lost soul gets right up in my face just as I fire.

Slowly grind out a cyberdemon, spiderdemon, or some other hit point sponge with inadequate equipment only to find out a bit later that there was a telefrag or crusher setup to get rid of it.

The fact that online guides always say that the chaingun is reliable to stop revenents from getting a shot off, but this is almost never the case for me.

Oh and a couple Brutal DooM things:

1. I hate how pinkies keep coming after you despite getting blown in half. This happens more often than it should and gets very annoying in difficult maps.

2. The way the chainsaw functions in Brutal DooM is so fucking annoying. Doomguy swings it around at nothing while monsters bite chunks out of him. Stop trying to be "cool" and just work like you are supposed to..

An unobvious solution to get a key thats literately a jump up from the player.

These are about level design :-

(1) Level maps that make the letters of the author's name (especially if they contain "M" or "W") or a picture of his dick.

(2) Doors that are essential to progress but so secretly blended with surrounding wall texture that you must go round the entire area found so far clicking on every yard of wall to find them.

(3) Buttons that open a remote door that closes on a timer, and you must hit the button several (or many) times running in different directions to try to find it. Even then there is only just enough time to get through by the skin of your teeth

rdwpa said:

As an aside, I think that people use Sunder as an example of uncompromising and uncomfortable geometry, but what guys like Ribbiks "get" about that is that Sunder creates the impression of a malevolent world that doesn't care if you get caught in awkward geometry or go sliding across a bumpy floor. In a lot of maps, the bad geometry just seems like poor map design, and it's entirely the framing that make the difference between "annoying geometry I'll tolerate" and "was this tested?"

For me, this was part of Sunder's charm. The architecture, although beautiful, was sometimes as equally challenging as the encounters.

When you fire a rocket, and you fail to notice a spectre right in front of you. BAM DEAD

I'm getting annoyed with Doom 4's having to go in and out of the game to get to Snapmap. Luckily I found the command line to just go to the Snapmap section. Its the only annoyance I can think of right now even if its not the original Doom games.

edit: bad

- Killing Barons with Super Shotgun.
- Infinite height blocks by enemies when you NEED to enter a hole.
- Caco pushed in the opposite direction when hit with a rocket or a shotgun in the large areas.
- Forced item/ammo/health pick ups.
- Slaughterfest maps in non-slaughterfest wads.
- Arch-viles resurrecting Barons.
- Levels you can't go back & explore for the missed secrets.
- Switches that do something on the other side of the maps if the maps are too large.
- No Exit signs in pwads.
- Invisibility sphere placed just before a projectile enemies appear (projectiles that you can avoid easily) & making situation harder.

Not getting 100% kills on e1m8.

🏿21 Lost Soul limit.
🏿Monsters sometimes stuck in narrow doorways.
🏿Plasmagun shot sounds. The PSX version of these are perfect in my opinion.
🏿Ghost monsters caused by archviles.
🏿Invisibility sphere caused negative effect when try to strafing from many fireballs.
🏿Icon of Sin.
🏿Maps without "EXIT" sign or without a clue where the exit.
🏿Leaking radiation suits on 20% damage floors.

Eris Falling said:

Effective use of spectres. Oh it's fucking effective alright -_-

Effectiveness of spectres heavy depends from brightness, and texture usage.

Shooting at a demon in front of my face, ammo runs out, demon about to deliver final blow, weapon slowy changes to another weapon and I'm dead.

When someone makes a video demonstration of their level and stops at various places to look at a dumb computer panel or whatever. MOVE!

Gez said:

Slowly grind out a cyberdemon, spiderdemon, or some other hit point sponge with inadequate equipment only to find out a bit later that there was a telefrag or crusher setup to get rid of it.

That right there is one of the more annoying ones. And usually for the first time playing a wad with this, I would never know it.

Other ones I can think of:

-Incredibly obvious-looking secret with a completely non-obvious/completely obtuse way of reaching it
-sniper monsters fire projectiles more frequently than anyone else in the field.
-whenenver I Alt-Tab out of Doom to do something else and I can't click on anything until I use Ctrl-Alt-Del and hit cancel in order to get my mouse back (seriously what causes this)
-low-ceiling crushers with thin room for error
-vital items such as keys and teleport destinations not present on every difficulty setting
-and of course, fucking platforming jumps.

rdwpa said:

Also it seems like Windows doesn't like switching resolutions very often in a short period of time, and when I grind short maps, after a hundred or so resets, my taskbar sometimes starts freezing for 15-30 seconds every time I quit, which necessitates manually restarting explorer.exe.

There's an easy solution that might seem radical at first, but you won't even want to go back after you get used to it. Windowed mode. Speedrun grinds were the reason why I switched to it, but in the end everything is a thousand times more comfortable.

I might consider if I didn't play in 640x480 resolution. :P

I had to use windowed mode at some point because in fullscreen the game would freeze for the first like five seconds, which is of course unacceptable for speedrun. When I decided to return to fullscreen months, if not years later, the graphics suddenly became sooo wonderful. I was totally blown away by the increased immersion factor.

rdwpa said:

I might consider if I didn't play in 640x480 resolution. :P

I think you can use "multiple screen factor" or whatever it's called to have 640x480-like graphics stretched to a bigger window.

- Pickup items with the "deaf" flag set.
- Monsters who won't walk down a 'perfectly designed' set of stairs.
- Lost Souls who bullcharge against a "blocking monsters" linedef, or otherwise bang their heads against the scenery.
- Any flying creature not navigating 3D terrain properly.
- Consuming health/armor bonuses even though you've maxed out the stat.

Single shotgun fights with single (or pairs of) Hell Knights. For some reason i seem to keep coming across maps that think these encounters are a good idea. THEY'RE NOT. THEY'RE BORING.