All Killer No Filler

So, I have been thinking... There are loads of legendary wads that almost everybody loves, but even them those have at the very least one or two levels that are mostly disliked by the community. But is there any wad where it can be agreed upon that all maps are at least decent?

Oh, and you see, a wad can be great with one single terrible level, while another can be only slightly above average but have no filler. I am not trying to ask a generic" What is the best wad of all time" question, just to clear things up a little.

I see... so basically you're asking if there are any wads that is made up of 100% decent maps even if said maps are not excellent or super great. I don't think there is a fixed answer to this as what is considered a "filler" map would vary from person to person. On top of that, what is the minimum bar for "decent" or "average" will also change depending on who you ask. Like is DTS-T Map02 a decent map? I would say "yes" but I'm sure many would say "no". I personally found all maps in "Empyrion" to be enjoyable and above good. However, I'm sure many people will have problems with any number of these maps. Hell, even Terry wads, as much as the community hates them (myself included), do something right. And because it was created, it must have had some appeal to at least the creator.

tl;dr: This question is highly subjective and has no real answer.

swim with the whales

edit: i don't think there'll ever be a full 30-33 map megawad where every single map is universally beloved, with apologies to stuff I love like epic2, alt, sunlust, dtwid, btsxe2, neis et al. there's plenty of stuff i aint a fan of in things like AV and PL2 despite admiring them

10 minutes ago, Zulk RS said:

I see... so basically you're asking if there are any wads that is made up of 100% decent maps even if said maps are not excellent or super great. I don't think there is a fixed answer to this as what is considered a "filler" map would vary from person to person. On top of that, what is the minimum bar for "decent" or "average" will also change depending on who you ask. Like is DTS-T Map02 a decent map? I would say "yes" but I'm sure many would say "no". I personally found all maps in "Empyrion" to be enjoyable and above good. However, I'm sure many people will have problems with any number of these maps. Hell, even Terry wads, as much as the community hates them (myself included), do something right. And because it was created, it must have had some appeal to at least the creator.

 

tl;dr: This question is highly subjective and has no real answer.

Sorry for not mentioning this in my original post, but of course I am not demanding any objective answers. A level being good or not depends on the person asked, and even in the definition of what "good" even means to them in the first place. I was just curious for the opinions of the community.

Depends how you consider a "filler" map. In bad wads they are either the low effort maps or maps kept in just because they were made rather than because they are good.

Some people consider small maps to be filler but not me. Sunlust, Scythe and Valiant are great examples of how small, high quality maps contribute to the overall megawad flow.

Historically it feels like wads that have set out to be 'all killer no filler' have ended up being slogfests loaded with long maps one after the other, which often makes for a tediously drawn out megawad, in my opinion. This seems to be most common in megawads involving a lot of mappers and people try to basically make THE map that everyone remembers.

The Revenant Problem

Probably doesn't exist because everything is subjective nowadays :O

There's always gonna be one dude who hates X ,ap of X wad, that's just (mein) leben :)

Some people love Warrens, some people think it's the worst secret level.

Some people love Chasm, others agree that chasm is god awful.

TNT has Metal. Plutonia has over half of it's maps.

Master levels and NRFTL also have this problem.

If none of the main IWADs/PWADs can pull off a 100% solid gameplay, the likeliness anyone in the fandom will pull it off is near impossible, especially due to one simple issue.

From who's perspective are we judging from?

17 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

From who's perspective are we judging from?

From majority's. If majority thinks Chasm is awful, then we may consider this as an objective fact. In my opinion.

8 hours ago, DSC said:

There are loads of legendary wads that almost everybody loves, but even them those have at the very least one or two levels that are mostly disliked by the community.

In modern times, 'filler maps' and 'maps that are mostly disliked' tend to be different categories in prestige projects of any repute. Good QC prevents maps from being both. Filler maps at worst are brief, rote, and conceptually fallow. When negative criticism is found, players tend not to dislike them as much as find them forgettable.

Most of the time, black sheep are cut from the same cloth as standouts: ambitious, hardly what you'd call filler. The difference is between success and failure. Sometimes in swinging for the fences, you hit a bystander with the bat.  

4 hours ago, dmslr said:

From majority's. If majority thinks Chasm is awful, then we may consider this as an objective fact. In my opinion.

We may consider it an objective fact that many people dislike the map, but that's the only fact to be found here.

Even 100 subjective opinions that agree do not turn the item the opinions are about into a fact.

maybe tell us which ones you think are inconsistent.

There is not a single bad map in Scythe.wad as far as I'm concerned. The worst I've heard is "it gets hard near the end and is too much to handle", but like Graf said, a lot of people sharing that opinion doesn't somehow transform it into a fact. Even if it did, I personally disagree with that claim, and all you need is one disagreement for the jury to be out.

I also can't think of a map I don't like in the Doom2. Some are a little weird, but bad? I can't bring myself to say that. I'll admit Ultimate Doom has a couple stinkers (like e4m4) so it's not just down to familiarity/loyalty either!

Thus the question is begged, are "breather maps" "filler maps"? Some people might think so, and if the breather map shows little ambition or effort, then it probably is filler. But imagine you've just played back-to-back large maps with 700 monsters apiece arranged in one brutal setpiece after another. Then the next map has only 150 monsters, much milder combat, and an emphasis on exploration and perhaps puzzle-solving. If done well, you might feel relief after the previous 2 grinders, but then again, someone else might hate it because it's too easy and is "just filler". ;)

Defining "filler" is tougher than it sounds (except where it's openly acknowledged "we put this in to make up the numbers" e.g. Requiem).  I'd argue a conscious choice to provide a different experience is not filler, but others might disagree.

For what it's worth, I'd consider a filler map to be something like Alien Vendetta MAP07. It's not bad, in the sense that you hope to get it done with as fast as possible, but it doesn't really have anything memorable in it. It makes you think more "uh, I guess we're done with that?". By contrast, a bad map imo will certainly leave an impression :)

As for the original question, in my subjective opinion, I'd say Valiant and Ancient Aliens have no bad levels (although MAP30 of AA is hardly a proper level). There are a lot of shorter sets that I imagine many people would consider to have no duds, like UAC Ultra or Combat Shock 2 (if you don't instinctively hate slaughter of course :P), but the thing with shorter sets is that they can be as long as they need to be.

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

There is not a single bad map in Scythe.wad as far as I'm concerned.

YOU LIKE RUN FROM IT ?!? YOU MADMAN !!

Megawads that split the maps into stylistic "episodes," like Scythe 2 or more recently Eviternity, I think have less "filler" maps, because then you only have five or six maps to explore a certain theme, so each individual map contributes more to that theme than it otherwise would to a whole megawad. Not to mention this method just makes 32-map megawads more digestible, IMO.