Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Flareblood_V2

Why are slaughter maps looked down upon?

Recommended Posts

26 minutes ago, Steve D said:

Me and puzzlemaps do not get along. ;D

The best slaughtermaps secretly are puzzlemaps.  Except they use monsters and items instead of switches and sectors.

Share this post


Link to post

One thing about slaughtermaps is they seem to be hard to cheese with savescumming. Since savescumming is such a reliable tool to overcome even a blatantly unfair situation, it becomes deeply ingrained in a mediocre player's way of thinking, so when that stops working, there's no way to alleviate the butthurt anymore. An inevitable conclusion: this wad must be so ridiculously hard that it's just wrong.

Share this post


Link to post

I don't see any problems with slaughtermaps, in fact, when you're past all the "normal stuff" there isn't much you can grab to keep yourself challenged, unless you want to grind the maps you've already played ad nauseam to speed/max them the fastest way possible. From what I have gathered so far, the people who have the hardest time beating them are those who crap on slaughtermaps for being the most retarded shit on earth, when there's actually a good chance that said person wasn't smart about the situation(s) in a slaughtermap to begin with. The arguments of mindnumbing circle strafing aren't even worth any efforts wrt to debunking them, and the supposed "stupidity" that is slaughter clearly falls back on either playing a poorly made map, or playing a good map poorly. The claim that slaughter doesn't require strategy is along the very same lines, just because a player couldn't figure out the strategies it doesn't mean there aren't any involved/intended.

 

The argument of tedium is far fetched at best, because clearly there are "normal" maps with less than 400 monsters which can take up to 10 or so minutes to beat when played at a normal pace, whereas in a slaughter map you can plow through thousands of things in the same time, if not less. If nothing else, just nuking the everliving fuck out of a horde revenants is more satisfying than camping down a handful of chaingunners just by virtue of having nuked all the things. There's a reason some people are more excitied about fireworks than they are about a single burning candle.

 

Sure there's cleanup that needs to be done for the purpose of getting a UVmax, but nobody's forcing people to max a map to begin with. Ideally, a mapper provides ample ammo and firepower to make the cleanup go by quickly enough so that it won't matter all that much. I remember at least one map I didn't want to max, simply because of how annoying the cleanup was in my opinion (stuff scattered on ledges everywhere and really inconvenient ammo distribution across the map). But it's not the genre that's to take any blame here. The mapper had an idea I wasn't fond of, so I had fun with the map by simply doing most of the stuff, and giving jack shit about the remaining dozen things.

Share this post


Link to post

 

6 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

One thing about slaughtermaps is they seem to be hard to cheese with savescumming. Since savescumming is such a reliable tool to overcome even a blatantly unfair situation, it becomes deeply ingrained in a mediocre player's way of thinking, so when that stops working, there's no way to alleviate the butthurt anymore. An inevitable conclusion: this wad must be so ridiculously hard that it's just wrong.

Depends.  "Separate arenas" types of slaughtermaps are very easy to savescum through (just save between fights).  It only gets harder when a slaughtermap has an extended running opening battle for a foothold (New Gothic 2 map 2, Sunder maps 6, 8, and 13, Resurgence maps 20 and 26, etc).

Share this post


Link to post
6 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

 The arguments of mindnumbing circle strafing aren't even worth any efforts wrt to debunking them, and the supposed "stupidity" that is slaughter clearly falls back on either playing a poorly made map, or playing a good map poorly. The claim that slaughter doesn't require strategy is along the very same lines, just because a player couldn't figure out the strategies it doesn't mean there aren't any involved/intended.

To be fair, there are a lot of well-regarded/received slaughtermaps that have scenarios that are easily defeated through very simple and tedious movement patterns.  I swear, if I see one more "projectile monsters on a set of raised rafters around the player" setup...

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Master O said:

 

Toilet of the Gods?  Is that seriously its name? 

It's actually called 神々のトイレ。

Share this post


Link to post

I personally do not like playing slaughtermaps. That's really all of it.

 

What's not acceptable is the insults from both sides - just as saying that slaughtermaps suck is not the correct response, so is the reply of some slaughtermap fans who accuse others who do not agree of lacking skill. Matters of taste are hard to debate, in that regard slaughtermaps are easily comparable to more extreme genres of music, like Death Metal, for example.

Share this post


Link to post
12 hours ago, rdwpa said:

I don't like non-slaughter maps (for the most part) because they're just the same fight repeated over and over. Often it's knights in 32-wide corridors and imps on Mt. Everest that you have to blow peas with a straw at. If not, a revenant with an archvile that want to be your friends. Or a chaingunner hiding in a closet. Of course there is a single shotgun, a googleplex shellboxes but no rocket ammo.

 

It's not the challenge I'm looking for. It doesn't mean they don't make excellent stress release for other players.

 


I don't get it. How is it a challenge to circle-strafe around a million imps and hellknights until they all die from in-fighting? If anything, slaughtermaps are too easy because they rely on the monsters in-fighting mechanic for the most part.

Share this post


Link to post

That's the Beauty of Doom: it can go from one extreme to the other, and still be Doom. One moment you might be facing 2000 monsters and effortlessly kill them all in 5 minutes, and the other you might be scrounging for health and ammo in a cramped corridor, only to be torn a new one by a lone imp ambushing you, or dripping cold sweat as you hear the heavy breathing of ONE lone Zombieman and hope that you bag him before he bags you.

 

In both cases, you must master the mechanics that enable you to survive these situations.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, Agentbromsnor said:


I don't get it. How is it a challenge to circle-strafe around a million imps and hellknights until they all die from in-fighting? If anything, slaughtermaps are too easy because they rely on the monsters in-fighting mechanic for the most part.

thats a simplistic reduction. lots of slaughter maps focus on maximising infighting, some focus on making it difficult to achieve any infighting - theres a decent mix in all good slaughter maps/sets.

Share this post


Link to post
57 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

What's not acceptable is the insults from both sides - just as saying that slaughtermaps suck is not the correct response, so is the reply of some slaughtermap fans who accuse others who do not agree of lacking skill.

How is lacking skill an insult? One must have a pretty fragile ego to be insulted by something like that. For the most part, it's just stating the obvious - a significant amount of people vocal about their distaste for slaughtermaps have a very basic understanding of the genre, if not the game itself.

Share this post


Link to post
15 hours ago, Flareblood_V2 said:

I've noticed a lot that many people seem to HATE slaughter maps. Why? I mean, just look at this quote by a guest: "I cannot even begin to express how much I loathe these idiot slaughter fests. How old are the authors? 12? Sick to bloody death of downloading garbage like this and having hopes of an enjoyable game pissed all over. Mark crap like this for what it is - idiot overkill crap."

wbv5QuB.png

Really that quote says more about what a terrible idea allowing anonymous reviews was than about slaughter WADs.  Find any WAD that managed to get a modicum of general attention and I guarantee you there'll be at least one bash "review", whatever style it might be.  The review system isn't worth paying attention to, much less getting too upset over.

 

I don't play nearly as many WADs as a lot of people on these boards probably do, but I get the impression that there's an issue of terminology between what detractors think "slaughter map" means and what the fans of it think "slaughter map" means.  People who don't like them generally seem to dismiss the whole idea as being a "1,000 monsters in a box" ordeal to which NUTS.WAD would become the logical conclusion; when I checked out Sunder I didn't find it to meet that sort of expectation at all, I didn't get far admittedly, but had sort of a Ninja Gaiden like satisfaction of "at first you may die and die and die but each time you try to get a little better and go a little farther".  Some of the tougher levels in Alien Vendetta gave me that sort of feeling too, so I guess that's what I associate with the style.  There are plenty of people who will slam Ninja Gaiden as being "fake difficulty" or whatever too, so eh.  Comes back to my feeling that for WADs or games in general you should just ignore reviews and play what you think sounds interesting.

Share this post


Link to post

People hate tightly balanced normal maps even more than slaughter maps. Stupid author why didn't you place a million extra shell box so I can use the ssg all day!

 

Both map types get bombarded with stupid shit like "fake\artificial" difficulty. If a map is hard it is hard, who invented that stupid term?!

Share this post


Link to post

Sometimes hard things are designed in such a way that no amount of skill would make them interesting to overcome. The aforementioned term is for such occasions.

Share this post


Link to post

I do enjoy when a map has a slaughter-ish moment. Not anything like what rdwpa shared above. But that moment when you are unsure if your resources will dwindle before the the battle can be won and you may have to break away.

 

Love that.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I didn't get far admittedly, but had sort of a Ninja Gaiden like satisfaction of "at first you may die and die and die but each time you try to get a little better and go a little farther".  Some of the tougher levels in Alien Vendetta gave me that sort of feeling too, so I guess that's what I associate with the style.  There are plenty of people who will slam Ninja Gaiden as being "fake difficulty" or whatever too, so eh.  Comes back to my feeling that for WADs or games in general you should just ignore reviews and play what you think sounds interesting.

I wasn't going to post here, but I'm so behind this Ninja Gaiden sentiment as the reasons playing hard games are fun (difficult Doom maps and NES Ninja Gaiden included) that I had to pop in.

 

I don't have much experience with slaughter maps, and my time with Plutonia map 32, which was okay but grew kind of dull by the time I finished it, indicates that I might just not be a fan of their play style. But I don't know -- it could be something I come back to after I'm better at the game. As said above, hard is hard.

 

I do think it shows the flexibility and strength of Doom's mechanics that slaughter maps, dungeon-crawlers, and punchy "knockabout" arcade-style levels are all completely viable styles with room for skilled design. 

 

I can see the appeal of well-designed slaughter maps simply for an extreme level of (well-crafted) challenge alone, even if the kind of gameplay they call for (in terms of BFG and rocket-launcher-enabled wrangling) isn't something that immediately calls out to me.

 

If I can make a comparison to another game with an active level-design/modding community, slaughter maps seem like the Kaizo Mario levels of Doom. It's a viable style that takes a lot of game familiarty to craft well, the levels offer challenge to experts and do draw from the core mechanics/gameplay, but at the same time they require a kind of hyper-specific playstyle not everyone will enjoy and that falls slightly away from the game's "normal" level design. Different strokes for different players, but I've never once questioned the fact that slaughter maps can be thoughtfully crafted or require intelligent play.

Edited by Cipher

Share this post


Link to post

It's funny that when you make one kind of assrape wads, you're the community superstar and everyone names their children after you, but when you make the other kind, you're suddenly declared a persona non grata and banned from pretty much everywhere

 

Just sayin' :]

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
18 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Sometimes hard things are designed in such a way that no amount of skill would make them interesting to overcome. The aforementioned term is for such occasions.

Yea, except some people like to use it against anything beyond their skill level. This excludes rpgs because grinding is probably part of the equation. (Although someone beating a challenge with garbage gear takes skill).

Share this post


Link to post
56 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

How is lacking skill an insult?

 

It is an insult if you blanketly accuse others of lacking skill just because they say they do not like some styles of gameplay. It's an assumption you make based on the expression of a personal preference and that's just rude behavior.

 

I might just as well say that lovers of slaughtermaps are insensitive people who revel in mass killings, that's just as nonsensical but along the same lines.

 

Share this post


Link to post

Slaughtermaps are looked down upon by people who prefer more tradtional levels. I like traditional levels too, but I dont hate slaughter maps, dont enjoy playing them but I can erspect them for what they are. Lets face facts, for a lot of people doom is just too easy these days, you get people like Stru or Dragonfly or Rdwpa going through the vanilia levels and for the most part not even the most challenging levels in plutonia will stop them. Slaughter maps are a whole different beast, they require you to play different from the vanilia doom, plan your attacks out and take on hordes of hell, which is what people feel doom should have been about. it was about a demonic invasion, yet there were very few enemies for an invasion.

 

Ultimately, there are those who love slaughter maps, and those who prefer the more tradtional style of maps where exploration is key. Then you get people who think outside the box, like skulldash and sonic doom. Its all about what the person likes.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, rehelekretep said:

thats a simplistic reduction. lots of slaughter maps focus on maximising infighting, some focus on making it difficult to achieve any infighting - theres a decent mix in all good slaughter maps/sets.

Sure, but you have to concede that the core mechanic of a slaughter-map is monster in-fighting.

Theoretically speaking: as long as you keep moving and keep a lookout for hitscanners it's not that difficult. I never got the "git gud" argument for slaughter-maps, because almost every slaughter-map I played has removed pretty much every aspect that makes a conventional Doom map challenging (and fun, for that matter).

Share this post


Link to post
12 hours ago, geo said:

But I thought you weren't supposed to mix liquids with computers.

It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
8 minutes ago, Agentbromsnor said:

Sure, but you have to concede that the core mechanic of a slaughter-map is monster in-fighting.

Theoretically speaking: as long as you keep moving and keep a lookout for hitscanners it's not that difficult. I never got the "git gud" argument for slaughter-maps, because almost every slaughter-map I played has removed pretty much every aspect that makes a conventional Doom map challenging (and fun, for that matter).

a core mechanic of Doom as a game is infighting. ive played lots of maps that are not slaughter where infighting is the only thing that will let you survive, and lots of slaughter maps where the infighting is completely coincidental.

 

replying to your second point, a lot of the danger of some slaughter maps is positioning. if youre content to try and provoke infighting and and run aroun avoiding hitscanners and projectiles youre likely to get outflanked and blocked and then die in a good slaughter map.

Share this post


Link to post

Like others said, I am not a huge fan of slaughtermaps.

I know that if I devote enough of my time and powers, while playing methodically, I will have greater chances at beating a slaughtermap, but I can't find motivation in doing so. I prefer opening a normal map or megawad any day. It is just that I have more fun this way and nothing can change that.

 

That being said, in many slaughtermaps I see greatness. I am in awe when I stand in a palace, with details everywhere, fast music playing on the background and tons of monsters to face everywhere. And there is no feeling like beating a slaughtermap. That satisfaction can't be described.

 

But why do people hate them? Because they can be hard for the average player. If you are not used to their gameplay, you will fail miserably a lot of times. And what is easier? To accept that you are not well prepared for their gameplay and improve yourself, or to whine about how unfair they are compared to normal maps? Probably the latter is easier.

 

Finally, there are tons of misconceptions about what a slaughtermap is and if that problem was solved, I think a large portion of the people online would stop whining, but that's just a hypothesis, because annoyed players could still find things to talk about.

Share this post


Link to post
22 minutes ago, Agentbromsnor said:

Sure, but you have to concede that the core mechanic of a slaughter-map is monster in-fighting.

Theoretically speaking: as long as you keep moving and keep a lookout for hitscanners it's not that difficult. I never got the "git gud" argument for slaughter-maps, because almost every slaughter-map I played has removed pretty much every aspect that makes a conventional Doom map challenging (and fun, for that matter).

I'm ... not sure this is true.

 

I've seen several Sunlust videos that display very slaughter-ish maps where the key doesn't largely seem to be infighting, but navigating clusters of enemies to get to targets like Arch-Viles, positioning groups for certain weapons, etc. If anything infighting was one of the smallest parts.

Edited by Cipher

Share this post


Link to post
7 minutes ago, ShotgunDemolition said:

Like others said, I am not a huge fan of slaughtermaps.

I know that if I devote enough of my time and powers, while playing methodically, I will have greater chances at beating a slaughtermap, but I can't find motivation in doing so. I prefer opening a normal map or megawad any day. It is just that I have more fun this way and nothing can change that.

 

That being said, in many slaughtermaps I see greatness. I am in awe when I stand in a palace, with details everywhere, fast music playing on the background and tons of monsters to face everywhere. And there is no feeling like beating a slaughtermap. That satisfaction can't be described.

 

But why do people hate them? Because they can be hard for the average player. If you are not used to their gameplay, you will fail miserably a lot of times. And what is easier? To accept that you are not well prepared for their gameplay and improve yourself, or to whine about how unfair they are compared to normal maps? Probably the latter is easier.

 

Finally, there are tons of misconceptions about what a slaughtermap is and if that problem was solved, I think a large portion of the people online would stop whining, but that's just a hypothesis, because annoyed players could still find things to talk about.

Let me guess: you're one of those Dark Souls fans who is quick to denounce anyone who dislikes the game as "someone with no skills". There's this thing called opinion, you know.

As an example: Just because a bowl of soup is hot, that doesn't make it tasty by default. That's pretty much a good analogy for slaughter-maps in general: a big bowl of spices without any of the essential ingredients that makes it a good recipe.

I dislike slaughter-maps because they simplify Doom to a boring and predictable landscape of monsters. Slaughter-maps are very much one of the reasons why people outside of the community think of classic Doom as "just a mindless shooting-game".

Share this post


Link to post

Unpopular opinion here, but I love slaughtermaps. Some of the best architecture and design I've ever seen in Doom come from slaughterwads like New Gothic, Sunder, etc. Slaughtermaps are usually very grand and intricate, and almost become a game of survival over anything else. Playing these in a limited-lives survival server online requiring teamwork from other folks is a whole different experience. As long as there aren't any children in the server who just try to rambo everything and hit all the switches, die, and then just leave, it's a really fun experience.

 

Anyone who remembers the Chillax servers on Skulltag/Zandro knows what I'm talking about.

Share this post


Link to post
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×