Why does it seem there is a stigma against playing anything other than Ultra-Violence?

This is something I've never understood. As someone who has to play most WAD's on either HMP or HNTR, I don't get why some people treat UV as the only way you're supposed to play Doom, otherwise you're just a casual who needs to "git gud".

So why is this?

Is there, though?

There is stigma against that? Honestly I didn't notice this, not here anyway, although there does seem to be some hatred for casuals these days in a more general sense.

As for the "only UV" part, my take on this is the following: Usually, UV is the difficulty various megawads are primarily designed for and thus, it could be seen as the "way it's meant to be played." The way the author intended it to be played rather than toning down the difficulty and not experiencing the work to its fullest.

That's the main reason why I usually play stuff on UV (except for slaughterwads at this time), even though the difficult can easily overwhelm me sometimes, but I'm a professional save scummer so that's my solution for this little problem. I neither cheat nor do I give up, I'll just use that method til it's finished.

I wasn't aware there was such a stigma.

I play on UV for most wads, but I'll tone down the difficulty to HMP or HNTR for maps by Ribbiks or Killer5/MrZzul or other wads of the caliber.

I don't think there's a hatred against actual casual players so much as the "casuals" who demand every wad be brought to their "ideal difficulty" settings.

Nice try Ribbiks.

I just play on UV because it's what I've been accustomed to. Before that, I could only handle HMP. Before that, HNTR. Some mappers aren't the best at scaling down for lower difficulties, and that is something to keep in mind, but any WAD worth its salts will be as fun on HMP as it would on UV.

But back to the matter at hand, I don't know what stigma you'd be talking about. Most of the controversy is in users that refuse to play a WAD on anything other than UV and they yell about how bad the WAD is etc etc.... their own mistake for not realizing you can play on HMP

So I see where you're coming from, but just ignore those guys. If anything, you're doing the right thing by sticking to what you feel you can play. :)

Because it is more fun.

Well, pin Eris' answer and close thread because that sums it up as well as it can be; a shiny gold star megasphere for Eris ^^

I guess just from my experience, both on here and on places like Reddit, I've seen it get lauded as the "true Doom experience". I'm not saying most do it, but it's definitely an attitude that I've come across before.

You've seen the way in which difficulty settings are implemented in the IWADs and most PWADs, right? Untick the lower difficulties for the more challenging enemies, resulting in ~60% of the enemy population on ITYTD and HNTR and about ~80% on HMP. The initial enemy placement is often done on UV and then lower difficulties are simply reductions. That's why UV is considered the intended way to play - you're often playing with all of the monsters placed, rather than a fraction.

The biggest problem I have with not playing on UV is that much of the time wads aren't balanced for anything else. Often wad authors will just create their wads for UV and then remove some random monsters for the lower difficulties resulting in their levels feeling underpopulated and boring. So to play safe I just always play on UV.

53 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

 

In my experience these tend to be the same people who actually need to lower the difficulty because they're so insistent that UV is the one true way that as soon as a WAD gets difficult it becomes too much for them and that's obviously the mapper's fault. I'd say those that you could consider the most skilled Doomers are the ones who actively encourage playing on a lower skill, because they are tired of seeing the challenging WADs they enjoy repeatedly being shat on for questionable reasons.

much like me!

Honestly, it DOES NOT HURT AT ALL to lower the difficulty setting, in fact, you should just play a brand-spanking new wad on the lowest possible setting. You don't know what you really are getting into at first, so by selecting the lower setting, you can figure things out. The higher settings are there once you have completed it the first time, and you are looking to challenge yourself more. Basically speaking, don't torture yourself. Play by a Eagles hit song.

I feel like there's more of a stigma that pistol starts and no saving is the only way to play, which I do not agree with.

Continuous play is allowed, saving is a built-in feature. Like, why is that an invalid gameplay style to some people?

1 hour ago, Eris Falling said:

 

In my experience these tend to be the same people who actually need to lower the difficulty because they're so insistent that UV is the one true way that as soon as a WAD gets difficult it becomes too much for them and that's obviously the mapper's fault. I'd say those that you could consider the most skilled Doomers are the ones who actively encourage playing on a lower skill, because they are tired of seeing the challenging WADs they enjoy repeatedly being shat on for questionable reasons.

I agree with basically all of this, but I think I should add a few things to it.

Some people think that, if they haven't seen UV, they didn't get "the full experience", those people in particular would more likely IDDQD through the map on UV rather than dialing down and getting an actual experience of playing a given map. It's the "I might be missing out if I don't go straight UV" type of fallacy that's at work there.

Then you also have the "I beat classic Doom II on UV, therefore I'm gud at Doom" type of people, who are under the impression that Doom doesn't get any harder than the iWADs, and if it does it's "bullshit monster placement" or "unfair encounter design".

There's also the category of folks who think that stuff shouldn't get much harder than iWAD material, as if there was some objectively correct limit of how difficult something may be. Bruised ego is a huge part of what drives these kinds of people in forum discussions. A subcategory of this would be the type of person who thinks that UV must be made such that foreknowledge of the map is not a factor, and the moment they are expected to learn how fights work, and what happens when, they're quick to tell you what a video game or a "good map" should or shouldn't do.

There's also the type of Doomer who doesn't have a particularly broad taste in terms of gameplay genres, when these people are taken out of their comfort zone, they start complaining rather quickly. One good example would be if somebody who never played slaughtermaps suddenly ended up in a modern slaughtermap, got his ass kicked, and then concluded that "UV needs toning down", or that "slaughtermaps are shit". These people will also (sometimes) lie to your face about difficult maps they have beaten when actually they didn't, and they'll also tell you that they have a huge repository of WADs they played eventhough they knew they wouldn't enjoy them, so you'd think you would have to take their ramblings shit more seriously.

29 minutes ago, Nevander said:

Continuous play is allowed, saving is a built-in feature. Like, why is that an invalid gameplay style to some people?

It's a feature that does not work well for all kinds of maps, and it's not a mindset that does work well for all kinds of people. Examples of people brute forcing their ways through maps and fights which are well above their skill-set and skill-level are anything but unheard of, and I remember multiple instances in which it was exactly that type of player who complained about having to use save/load a lot of times during a map, when instead they could have dialed down the difficulty to get a smoother experience.

In my opinion excessive use of save/load to "beat" maps only smokescreens the issue that a given player was in way above their head, and repeating the same sections back to back to back to back until eventually luck kicks in and carries the player through is extremely tedious, for that matter. Considering constant saving and loading a "gameplay style" is ridiculous by the way, because there's very little skill and gameplay involved in saving and loading a gamestate. That said, I'd much prefer if people saved only when they needed to (like when they are in a large map and want/have to take a break for some reason), rather than considering saving and loading a "gameplay feature" or a "resource" that is readily available to remedy a player's obvious shortcomings. What it's ultimately down to is what constitutes "having beaten a map", and in my personal opinion - emphasis on opinion - you didn't beat the map if you had to rely on saves to make it to the exit.

EDIT: Forgot to adress continuous play. It just doesn't work properly with all WADs out there, and even in megawads like BTSX, where people desperately tried to balance the maps around continuous play, they eventually had to give up the design for continuous players due to how continuous causes significant balance issues over time just by virtue of weapon progression alone, and that's usually just one aspect out of many others.

 I don't care whether people play continuously but when people balance maps around continuous play  then it becomes the only viable method of play.  In my experience maps that are balanced around continuous play have significant shortcomings  in their overall thing placement.

The whole concept of playing only individual maps rather than continues play is something I have literally never seen anywhere outside of the online doomworld community. Also, the manual for Doom literally suggests you save often so that you don't need to play each level with just the pistol so there is no truth to the idea that pistol start is somewhat the "correct" way to play.

http://www.classicdoom.com/doominfo.htm

"TIP: Save your game and save it often. When you die, you're back to the beginning of the level, toting that little pistol again. That ain't good, especially after you progress to some of the tougher levels."

40 minutes ago, CasualScrub said:

I guess just from my experience, both on here and on places like Reddit, I've seen it get lauded as the "true Doom experience". I'm not saying most do it, but it's definitely an attitude that I've come across before.

It's also an attitude you'll keep seeing, it's not going away anytime soon, and it happens with virtually all games. Some consider that only the high or max difficulty are a valid way of experiencing something, and everything else is just "watering down" .

1 minute ago, hardcore_gamer said:

The whole concept of playing only individual maps rather than continues play is something I have literally never seen anywhere outside of the online doomworld community. Also, the manual for Doom literally suggests you save often so that you don't need to play each level with just the pistol so there is no truth to the idea that pistol start is somewhat the "correct" way to play.

 

http://www.classicdoom.com/doominfo.htm

 

"TIP: Save your game and save it often. When you die, you're back to the beginning of the level, toting that little pistol again. That ain't good, especially after you progress to some of the tougher levels."

Is this an argument that pistol starters are playing incorrectly?

3 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

The whole concept of playing only individual maps rather than continues play is something I have literally never seen anywhere outside of the online doomworld community. Also, the manual for Doom literally suggests you safe often so that you don't need to play each level with just the pistol so there is no truth to the idea that pistol start is somewhat the "correct" way to play.

True for iWADs perhaps. Not necessarily true for custom maps. There are enough custom WADs which state they were balanced around pistol starting, in which case yes, pistol starting those maps is how the author said those should be played, meaning there is a correct way and a wrong way.

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

True for iWADs perhaps. Not necessarily true for custom maps. There are enough custom WADs which state they were balanced around pistol starting, in which case yes, pistol starting those maps is how the author said those should be played, meaning there is a correct way and a wrong way.

No player should feel like playing continuously is the "wrong" way.

7 minutes ago, kmxexii said:

No player should feel like playing continuously is the "wrong" way.

Besides, playing wads that were designed around pistol starting  continuously doesn't make that much of a difference from my experience anyway. Starts might be a bit tougher but that's about it.

I usually play on HMP, as that is the "medium" difficulty (as far as I can tell), therefore the most "balanced".

26 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

It's also an attitude you'll keep seeing, it's not going away anytime soon, and it happens with virtually all games. Some consider that only the high or max difficulty are a valid way of experiencing something, and everything else is just "watering down" .

It is definitely not limited to Doom maps. Some people complain that a game is bad if they have trouble finishing the game on the highest difficulty. It's pure arrogance.

Anyhow… I usually play new maps on one of the lower difficulties and I prefer continuous play. And saving. I hate replaying large chunks of the same map without a break, so without saving I tend to switch maps or even games.

34 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

playing wads that were designed around pistol starting  continuously doesn't make that much of a difference from my experience anyway. Starts might be a bit tougher but that's about it.

Granted it's your experience and I don't have much of an idea of what you've been playing, but the difference can be astronomical—no exaggeration. Just in the last 24 hours I've played 32in24-14, which touts (I think it's safe to assume) next to no balancing between levels. Try telling TMD that his Very Tyson Christmas isn't completely busted by your bringing in an arsenal from the previous map.

If I have any misgivings it's simply that it's hard to know ahead of playing something for the first time whether the subtleties of continuous play are interesting enough that it should be done over pistol-starting, which is usually what produces the most nuanced experience, albeit sometimes at the cost of time invested and effort exerted. Continuous play, after all, is something that is at best granted respectful consideration by designers as opposed to absolute priority. My first instinct (at least when I'm not streaming casual stuff for the masses) is to trust in the pistol-start method, but I'm always checking to see if any ulterior paths might be worth honoring. BTSX E1 has enough going on what with its secret map01 SSG and later BFG that the continuous method offers something especially different.

All this said, I'd like to see some continuous-only mapsets. Ironman craves them.

34 minutes ago, kmxexii said:

No player should feel like playing continuously is the "wrong" way.

Wrong may have been too strong of a word to use, but there certainly are ways in which maps are intended to be played, and I do not see any issue whatsoever in pointing that out.

I play all WADs on HMP, unless some pristine bullshit occurs that forces me to turn it down (I turned it down to HNTR for Ancient Aliens because of that infernal Cyberdemon)

1 hour ago, kmxexii said:

No player should feel like playing continuously is the "wrong" way.

Sometimes you can't help but notice when a map is nudging you in one direction or the other, or not bothering either way. Or when it's written right there in the text file. In which light, no player should feel like playing the "wrong" way is a problem.

But I'm guessing this is just a rewording of what you are saying here, anyway.