Things that certain mappers do that annoy you

I just had one today that made me open this thread: Having to deal with Cyberdemon in very small room/indoors. Cybies would do great in bigger arenas. Unless there is a trick to telefrag or squish, which I usually miss. I am ok with Spiderboss though because I can safely strafeshoot behind a corner (in face, Spiderboss would be used better in open areas where you need to find cover).

I will add some more.

2) Throwing tons of revenants at you. All the time. There are specific mappers that prefer their revenants (and of course heavy machine gunners but at least those are easy to kill and more fun) and when there is a trap that opens, it's almost certainly a bunch of revenants if not archvile. I guess it's because most other monsters are much easier (you can dance around a bunch of Barons given enough space).

3) Slaughtermaps :P

^ I agree, although slaughtermaps are good sometimes, especially in co-op. 

Designing their maps primarily with Brutal Doom in mind.

In most cases I dislike it when they put a tough monster in the exit room, especially an arch-vile. I like the ritual of opening the exit door, shooting without even looking and killing whatever was inside in one shot. Empty room or a room with medikits is nice too. But revenants, hell knights, etc do not belong there unless you're trying to prevent the player from escaping some fight too easily.

Revenants and slaughtermaps. Who would have guessed. 

Anyway, the common stuff: 

- Testing in radically different conditions than in the advertised format, so a Boom-format map ends up being hamstrung (or outright broken) by issues such as infinite height problems or excessively bumpy floors.

- Inconveniently placed pickups, such as individual rockets in cubbies. I get to use this image again.

- Automatic weapon switch trolls. In particular, if you are making a map where the shotgun or chaingun isn't really important, yet shotgunners and chaingunners are encountered in the heat of hectic battles, those weapons should be first picked up safely out of battle, like right near the spawn spot.

- Not making it clear how to test their map. 'Whoops forgot to mention this plays on map34 with the TNT iwad.'

- Maps that restrict rockets/cells to enforce 'challenge' but are relatively easy and just end up being grindy or dull because of it.

- Maps that are more ascetic wrt basic pleasures than doom.wad. Doing fun things like rocketing clusters of monsters is basically out of the question, perhaps because the mapper thinks along the lines of, '10 monsters at once? No, I don't make slaughtermaps!' The combination of weapons, monster placement, and layout design leads to very dry gameplay, stuff like fighting mancs with the single shotgun while door-camping or chaingun-tapping lots of scattered cliff imps.

- Monsters that are inconvenient to kill efficiently in maxruns: e.g. cliff imps that can wander out of sight, revenants that wander very freely along high ledges and stuff. Maps that break easily with aggressive routes, because they rely on things like non-looping conveyors to warp in monsters that won't appear if their destination is blocked.

I liked the readme that said "Tested with: all ports". Of course it didn't specify with which ports it actually worked...

>player enters room full of demons
>player kills them all
>player leaves room
>player triggers a linedef
>Archvile spawns in the room
>player is fucked.

That is one of the many things I dislike about maps.

55 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

- Inconveniently placed pickups, such as individual rockets in cubbies. I get to use this image again.

I cant excuse individual rockets, i usually use it for shell boxes. I use this method sometimes in a coop friendly map so players aren't likely to stumble all over all the ammo pickups while trying to dodge fireballs. Else they will stumble over ammo pickups they dont need which can be problematic when some players are trying to ration out the ammunition for all players.

One thing that drives me crazy is a boom map that uses mostly vanilla doom linedef specials until very late in the map. If the port wasn't clearly noted, ill assume its vanilla/limit removing. Then ill come across a random switch texture or door that doesn't do anything that was designed to do a generalized action, then spend another 20 minutes wondering if i already pressed that switch before and search around for anything in the map that has changed. Massive waste of time. Please use a generalized action door in the start room so I know I'm playing the map wrong right at the start.

Archviles in the exit are nasty too.

Anti-slaughtermap brigades, especially when these people are mappers, are really limiting themselves from doing things that are simply fun. You don't like massive swarms of revenants? How about a swarm of revenants + lots of health items? How about revenants + plasmagun and lots of cells? What about a massive swarm of revenants you can lead into a crusher? There's a lot of lost potential when youre designing a map with conditions on what not to do. Just make anything and tweak it until its fun.

Swarms are often bad for the atmosphere. Hordes of monsters can look kinda comical or arcadey at least, and usually anti-slaughter mappers don't want that feeling at all. They want something more believable with a strong mood, and to them doomguy fighting small groups of enemies looks much less exaggerated.

If you suddenly have to change compatibility, you may try the TNTCOMP cheat. It helped me in some "oh it's for Boom" cases.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

- Automatic weapon switch trolls. In particular, if you are making a map where the shotgun or chaingun isn't really important, yet shotgunners and chaingunners are encountered in the heat of hectic battles, those weapons should be first picked up safely out of battle, like right near the spawn spot.

I agree in that context however i have no issue sticking Pain Elementals in a player's face upon a rocket launcher pickup and letting them figure out how to deal with that mess, heh.

My own main personal annoyance is being expected to take down nobles with the regular SG, it happens a lot and it is so fucking boring. Also it is laughable when people drag out the "90's style" excuse for clearly lazy mapping efforts.

20 minutes ago, 40oz said:

There's a lot of lost potential when youre designing a map with conditions on what not to do. Just make anything and tweak it until its fun.

Truth right here. And I'm not the hugest fan of slaughtermaps myself (read: I kinda like 'em, just not an awful lot) but damn am I really tired of it as a one-word argument and condemnation of anything that might throw more than a handful of monsters at you simultaneously.

Secrets that are too hard to find or enter, like when you hit a switch and are just able to hear door opening somewhere.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

Revenants and slaughtermaps. Who would have guessed. 

Quote

Zalewa said:

How to make your speedmap feel like a real map? Create a small room and fill it with revenants. Pointless.

Heh

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

- Automatic weapon switch trolls. In particular, if you are making a map where the shotgun or chaingun isn't really important, yet shotgunners and chaingunners are encountered in the heat of hectic battles, those weapons should be first picked up safely out of battle, like right near the spawn spot.

I didn't think about it when I actually mapped it, but did later on as I tried beating your time (which never happened, heh) I was actually kinda wanting to change this in the map I just made, (the ledge cg's) but after your 59 sec run I refuse to edit anything ;D Way2go; you enabled this!

I'm heavily ambivalent on inconvenient pickups, depending on the logic behind their inconvenience. For example, forced pickups just mean to me that the mapper simply wanted x supply at or above y level. Item vomit a la Sandy, breezeep, and others can be potentially annoying if said items are mandatory, but by the same token if they are not or only some are really needed, then I don't mind it as much. Time vs ease of play to some degree there. That said, it is very important to consider the speedrunners wrt the items really required to beat the level, so if all those rockets were mandatory, I'd classify that as one of those situations where arbitrary aesthetic decisions ruin good gameplay. Might not be a big deal in most cases, but when repetition is involved the tedium adds up.

Agreed 100% with general consensus here on using swarms; there is nothing wrong with using them. Hell, a fair-sized swarm of tightly packed revs vs player with rl goes down faster than a small handful of mancs and provides greater pressure. I dont think swarms hurt the atmosphere at all, but as 40 said their use merely frees the mapper to make more varied encounters.

9 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I agree in that context however i have no issue sticking Pain Elementals in a player's face upon a rocket launcher pickup and letting them figure out how to deal with that mess, heh.

++   ^^

More of my related ramblings here:

-When a mapper removes large chunks of the automap, especially when a Computer Area Map is present.

-Withholding basic armour when the player is fighting Chaingunners and mid-tiers.

-Secret weapons that end up being mandatory to enjoy a map. Like that Plasma Rifle in the AV 20-something castle map. Bonus douche points if the player maxes out on cells/rockets without having the weapon.

2 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Designing their maps primarily with Brutal Doom in mind.

Haha I haven't made a single map without BD in mind. But maybe you never played a great one. I know I haven't. Sgt Marks is the best I can find.

Floor suddenly lowering and then you are surrounded by chaingunners. almost everything else takes more time to ruin a run.

I play on a macbook without a proper mouse so the tight cyber battle in valiant was impossible for sure. 

3 hours ago, Optimus said:

3) Slaughtermaps :P

Shitty slaughtermaps.

anyways

-direct denial of resources, pertaining to hitscanner weapons usually when playing on a pistol start. I'm itching for a chaingun, and the only chaingunners I see in a map will be on perches I can't reach.

-the rectangular teleport closet. Oh god, the rectangular teleport closet. This thing is used to give full-scale teleport ambushes with many monsters, but it often has one big flaw in construction. It's a rectangle, with one line close to the edge that functions as a teleporter, but several WADs I've played only have monsters teleporting by just one direction of the linedef, so any that passes the line often get stuck there. Where's the problem? Two things, both pertaining to max runs. One is when the monster just goes back and forth in the area past the teleport line (I waited five minutes for a mancubus to teleport in Scythe 2 MAP23, not joking), and another when there are only two monsters left, one past the line and one on the line itself, except the latter can't teleport due to the other guy. They too, go back and forth a lot. There are a number of easy fixes for this.

-lack of proper spider mastermind usage

-missing teleport destination things and keys on certain difficulty settings (anyone who has seen me talk about this while playing sets on ITYTD would know).

51 minutes ago, Lore said:

Secrets that are too hard to find or enter, like when you hit a switch and are just able to hear door opening somewhere.

and especially when the rewards are not worth it.

22 minutes ago, NuMetalManiak said:

-missing teleport destination things and keys on certain difficulty settings (anyone who has seen me talk about this while playing sets on ITYTD would know).

Would be nice to have a warning system about this stuff in level editors.

(1) Having to use the pistol for a whole map.

(2) Excessive use of monsters on pedestals.

(3) Immortal chaingunners.

(4) Lazy texturing masquerading as 'old school'.

(5) Over reliance on Revenants.

(6) Death by a thousand cuts.

(7) Replacing vanilla assets with inferior versions of them.

(8) Arbitary death traps in long maps.

(9) Spending longer than 10 minutes searching for the door a key opens.

(10) Midi tracks from hell.

- Monster pop-up, right in front of your face. The score gets lower if the monster is stronger.

- Monsters behind the fake wall. Remember the arch-viles from the MAP31 of Plutonia?

- Inescapable hazardous pit, especially around the jumping puzzle. Instant 0/10 stuff.

4 minutes ago, antares031 said:

- Inescapable hazardous pit, especially around the jumping puzzle. Instant 0/10 stuff.

I second that. Inescapable pits in general are a huge turn off for me. Bonus point if these are placed right at the end of a level in which you spent the last 30 minutes going arround the map and you fall in by mistake. Extra bonus point if there is absolutely no warning at all :( 

1. start up the wad

2. open the first door

3. room full of hell knights, imps, mancubis, anarchatrons no shotgun guys in sight

What am I even supposed to do ? Shoot them all with my pistol ? Run past them ? when I do run past them it gets worse, more and more enemies, no pick ups expect a puny little shotgun. I WANT PROGRESSION.

Forcing you to go through toxic waste / lava

If the map is too big and full of slaughter-style combat without any quad damage or tome of power style custom item

Actually I think this thread is more to me what certain forumites do that annoy me. Some of the complaints here are beyond petty.

When a mapper claims he/she had their map "tested in UV" but come to find out theres not enough ammo to kill all monsters <_<

How about stairs you can't see from above.

http://i.imgur.com/CHZxvfV.png - I wonder if I should jump down or not. After all, there might be no way back.

http://i.imgur.com/IMySXNV.png - oh nevermind, I just used stairs without even knowing.

3 minutes ago, Philnemba said:

When a mapper claims he/she had their map "tested in UV" but come to find out theres not enough ammo to kill all monsters <_<

Fortunately, that situation is fixable.

I think all of the situations above are fixable at some degree. After all, all maps are not perfect, only can be improved.

Don't you all think so?