Do you wish modern megawads were shorter?

Besides the anomaly that was Eternal Doom, I feel that most megawad lengths have trended upwards, as now you could finish most video game campaigns in the time it takes to get through a megawad. It definitely could just be looking at things selectively (Alien Vendetta was pretty long too, right? Were the community chests of equal length?) but do you wish modern megawads were shorter? Or do you enjoy your wads big, beefy, and jam-packed with sectors?

Hard to say. My fave megawad is BTSX E1, which has a lot of big maps, but in general, I would prefer small to medium-size maps for a megawad, to make it less intimidating to tackle. In the end, it depends on how good the maps are. If the quality is consistently high, as in BTSX E1, a waterfall of big maps is fine.

I'm not sure I agree that megawads have trended longer (Eternal Doom is an anomaly, yes, but Alien Vendetta is an excellent example of a very long conventional megawad). I do like big megawads if they make good use of their size and runtime. Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and JPCP get away with having a lot of variety in the styles, settings, and sizes of their maps, which keeps them interesting over a long duration (though none of them are particularly huge), while CC4 notoriously induces fatigue by having every map feel similar in size and general gameplay style for long stretches. On the other hand, something like BTSX gets away with being relatively samey because it feels like such a cohesive journey.

NEIS is one of the most gigantic and tiring megawads, but worth the marathon feel because it has so many interesting maps. It's also very good at creating a sense that the psychological fatigue of playing it all is an intended part of the experience -- the whole thing gets noticeably crazier as you go, getting more surreal and brutal and, in the process, making you feel like reality or sanity is gradually breaking down. To stand out as a unique and exceptional play experience or deliver a game world that feels especially well realized, a megawad may well need the extra space and time. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with cutting some fluff and giving people a big and beefy 20-map set, for instance, instead of 32 (see Lost Civilization).

Doesn't matter for me. I always look to megawads for the "long, epic journey" kind of thing, like watching a tv series, plus i often take my time so i wouldn't notice "modern megawads" are longer than the oldies anyway. There are way too many cool shorter episodes and single levels to wish for shorter megawads.

i can go long or short.. but i like long wads ...however the person making the longer ones probably went nuts doing it by taking years

So my take is this, I love longer megawads if they are interesting in the levels themselves. I want varying architecture, decorations, traps, places, and see that you spent your times making this thing in a great and fantastic ways. I want interactivity, light switch hunting, the works. Hell if we are going modern ports, possibly a story in the level, dialogue and maybe a couple of new monsters and weapons. This doesn't mean I won't play a 1994 megawad either or a megawad from someone that is just starting out. That's just a preference. As long as it is interesting, and not just slaughtering things room after room without any feeling or reason. now would I also be down with a megawad with like 1000 maps that all lasted 10-30 minutes per map? You bet your Sweet ass I would!

Ideally I'd like a variety of map lengths, but "all short" is better than "all long", for my tastes.

NIH basically hit the nail on the head.

One thing I'll add is, I find a megawad does itself a huge favor (in my books) if it keeps it's opening (5-8 maps) short and sweet. I don't mind massive, grindy, exploratory levels when they're sort of "buried" deep into the megawad, and I've had time to settle into the wads overall tone, style, tricks, etc.

No.

It's all about how the maps play for me. If you become bored after playing 10 maps, then the mapper(s) didn't do a good job. And I call bullshit on the whole "I become fatigued" argument. Nobody is forcing you to beat it in one sitting. You are more than welcome to take your time. If over 90% of maps are of high quality and varied enough (Struggle, Ancient Aliens, Valiant), then there should be no reason for anyone to ever complain about lengthy playtime.

31 minutes ago, AD_79 said:

It's okay to throw in a five minute map every now and then, mappers should be encouraged to do so! 

Agreed 100%. 

I don't hate megawads that have a good number of odysseys -- after all, Lost Civilization was probably my favorite mapset of last year. But I also crave great maps that are small or even tiny. 

Also, @Nine Inch Heels I think Sunder is a bit of an anomalous example - I doubt we will see a similar mapset ever getting released. At this rate, even if you've practiced every map fairly well and start playing each one from pistol start, the bloody thing will still take you days to beat - and there aren't any megawads like that from what I know.

Surprised you didn't like that Eviternity map. The layout is a tad confusing at first, but other than the dodgy start, I found it to be a well-designed map, encounter-wise and visually. Not sure about you wanting to play a different map by a different author on the same day from the same megawad argument. What about one-man megawads then? :D

Out of curiosity, what do you think about Counterattack and Avactor?

Back when I was playing quite a lot of Doom, the megawads that left me the most impressed tended to be shorter. It's definitely a case by case thing, but megawads that (a) were full of really long levels start to finish, (b) were a full 32 levels, and (c) were meant to be played as a cohesive experience (unlike compilation-type wads like CC or, say, TimeOfDeath's ESP) often just felt like a chore to finish by the end, no matter how good.

edit: Another thing I've posted about in the past is that 30+ maps in one go is just way too much for any sense of progression. Playing from pistol start is nice but not always what I want to do. Having megawads that break things up into episodes with death exits or whatever is usually something I like.

Yes I wish them shorter. I'm not motivated to grind 30 long and/or difficult maps otherwise they start to feel like the second half of Doom 2.

Actually I appreciate Doom 2 more at times for its quicker gimmick maps changes the pace.

I vote for shorter episodes with larger maps.

For an entire megawad with larger maps to hold my attention, the maps have to be exceptional. The only ones of that kind recently were BTSX 1+2. Eviternity, Valiant and Ancient Aliens do not count because they are broken up into smaller episodes that can be played separately and feel less grindy as a result.

I've said this before, I don't think single maps in a megawad should be more than 30 minutes in length, at least not in quick succession. I like to feel like I'm progressing to an end. When maps are such epic adventures you put them off because you don't always have the time to spend 3 hours on one map, only to get to the next map that is even longer. You start feeling like the megawad will never be done. And it starts to feel silly when you realize you can knock out the entirety of Doom 2 in an afternoon. It's not to say these huge maps are bad, but it starts to wear on you. That's why I think megawads like Scythe are so highly regarded. 

54 minutes ago, Capellan said:

Ideally I'd like a variety of map lengths, but "all short" is better than "all long", for my tastes.

This pretty much.

Yes.  32 maps of similar style is too much, unless the maps are Demonfear/Scythe/Unholy Realms short.

Man this thread makes me itching for another 2048 megawad (I always found the 1024 ones a bit too limiting and claustrophilic).

Feels like I'm not going to be saying anything that hasn't already been said (NIH basically said what I would've said), but here I go anyway.

I love huge single maps. I'd go for Infraworld: Hatehammer as my favourite last year for the sheer beauty and technical Boom sexiness that it had to offer. It took me probably 2 to 3 hours to beat that map, exploring and being casual about it. Very much in the same vein the upcoming Mapwich 2 map that me and Kaito have almost finished is around the same, 2 to 3 hours playtime. We've done our best to keep switching it up, not to do the same fight over and over again, and the result does look very promising. But it's an arduous task to play the entire thing nonetheless, and especially for people who are working full time and have families they can't neglect, a lot of these 3 hour odysseys might be left unplayed. I also have a gut feeling^TM that people who don't play these kinds of maps through at once and divide the play into multiple segments might end up not finishing the map at all. Not necessarily due to dislike, but sometimes it's just hard to get back to something you've begun a long time ago, and doing it again from the start feels like a huge chore. More importantly, if you start playing a long map and you don't like it at all, there is no respite in the thought that "well there'll be other levels coming up, maybe this one is just not for me".

It's maybe not a good thing to put boundaries on art based on the availability and preferences of the audience, but I do feel like very little artistically important would be lost if one aimed to do multiple short maps where originally there would've been one long one. I mean, if you have a 40 minute map with, say, 12 distinct "scenarios", whether they be setpiece fights or just clearable areas, switch hunts what have you, why not break it down into two or three smaller maps with the same things? For continuous play this is not an issue, and for pistol starts you can just reimburse the player with the guns that they should have at that point. Sure, if you're doing colossal architecture and interconnected layouts, sometimes it might feel like you loose a sense of grandeur by breaking it up into smaller pieces. But here I think is a place for reflection; is it sensible to be doing a megawad based on colossal, multi-hour odysseys, or would you be better off leaving that for singular releases and do small to mid-range maps for a megawad? Yes, Sunder, we know. But I'm sure we all understand that I'm not talking about practices that everyone needs to adhere to every time they start designing maps. What I'm saying is what everyone else did, that there is certain allure to sets of shorter maps that give you a satisfying sense of progression and you don't have to feel like every time you start a new map it's going to be yet another 30 minute romp. It also feeds into that "one more map" mentality, which is a low-key measure of just how engaging a mapset is.

I'm currently replaying BTSX-E1, and I've noticed that pretty much consistently when I'm playing, at the 12-14 minute mark I flip open the automap to see how long I've been playing. So I get the feeling that this time window is when I'm starting to subconsciously wonder "how long is this map anyway?" And it's not because I wouldn't like some of the maps (I could play BTSX all day long) but it's rather some internal preference for the duration of the experience. And if I ever get a megawad project on the way, I think that my medium length would be calibrated at around that 12-14 minute mark, with shorter maps clocking closer to 6-9 minutes and longer maps anything from 20 to 30 minutes. And like NIH said earlier, you tune in differently for multiple maps, and the kind of mental reset is crucial for the experience to be enjoyable. I also agree with @AD_79, there is nothing quite like walking outside in Get Out Of My Stations II, sitting on the crate and staring into the distance after beating Tricyclic Looper. 

 

If the total length is 32 maps, I prefer indeed shorter maps. Some monsterless (or almost that) in the middle of the set really helps to pace things up too, which was one my favorite things from BTSX.

That was also one of the reasons why I decided to close exomoon in 21 (I guess) levels, but by that time it was already too large (larger than Moonblood, which is already too big even considering the small size of the maps)

Never thought I'd say this, but actually yes, I wish they were shorter.

Granted, I would NOT like the longer wads to stop getting released, but I have noticed a trend where maps tend to get longer and longer, and more complex. By the time you finish a megawad these days you could just as well finish the campaign of a game or two. I like both, but I wish length and complexity would get dialed down. Even a 5 minute map is good to throw every now and then as long as it doesn't look and play like a low-effort level.

Well, that kinda takes the 'mega' out of 'megawad', dunnit?

yes.

Well basically it all depends on the gameplay ...if you have good maps then why not ... if things are getting samey and boring then cut it down or introduce new elements to keep things interesting but if it is not a 32 maps WAD then it is not really a mega wad it is just a map set.  If it is a 9 level set or more then we can consider it an episode. No shame in having good map sets or episodes but when downloading a mega WAD I am thinking of an extended experience that I am going to enjoy...not a quick fix or something in between. 

Personally, I find megawads having long maps quite fun. But there is a distinction between making a map tedious, and making it long as well as fun to explore; giving the player a desire to progress further and let the map reveal itself. The creative aspect needs to be there, otherwise the long and stretched out maps can very easily give out an expression of repetitiveness, which can make a map pretty boring after a while. Megawads such as Eviternity, Struggle, Resurgence are a great example of how you can make the maps somewhat longer and still have most of the areas/rooms look and feel different from one another. So in the end, it all boils down to how the map is played out. A map doesn't necessarily have to be big for it to be fun after all. Some authors are able to create masterpieces by limiting themselves to not go beyond a certain map size, while others can make their maps seem almost open-world like, with no value-addition whatsoever.

I think variety is key, but with a skew shorter, if only for the practical reason of how hard it is to sustain creativity, focus and self-consistency across a larger canvas without being exceptionally talented.  It's so much easier to start without filler, when you've got that core idea that sparked the whole thing off, than it is to end without it.  Film seems to me to be going through this a lot at the moment; I don't sense the same ruthlessness is cutting out the parts that cannot support their own weight.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I usually prefer shorter length (around 2-3 hours), anything longer is a bit too much for me. For example, Memento Mori II has the perfect length for me, but Alien Vendetta is a tad too long. In terms of the levels, I don't really have a preference. I like short and lengthy maps, if it drags too much then it becomes an issue. Thankfully I haven't encountered it yet. :)

I buy more into the philosophy of "most maps small or medium", with the rare big one thrown in. Take Ancient Aliens for example : I compared all the current UV-Max records, and only three go over 10 minutes (one goes over 20). The rest are, obviously, sub-10. This is just subjective, but I feel that's a perfect balance between gameplay and length.

Compare AA to Doom 2 In Name Only, where about a third of the current UV-Max records are over 10 minutes, with several over 20 (and for those interested, one nearly 35 minutes!). That to me is way too many large (or long) maps, especially for the average player who won't be going as fast as they can on a casual run. 

As usual, just my opinion. I happen to think the rare lengthy level adds spice to a mapset. Just not in large doses.