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Koff3Katt

Discussion on the current state of classic DM/Duel.

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6 minutes ago, termrork said:

if anyone is interested in that I actually remade a quakelive map (cure) in doom named adeath.wad and let it play with alt DM. I really like it, I even prefer it to usual duels since it is more tactical (like you have to know when soulsphere and blue armor spawns, go for weapons etc.). if you want to try, there is an [SDA] server for ZDaemon running it.

 

Got any screenshots? I'm curious as to how you handle all the verticality, especially around mh and ra.

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On 4/14/2020 at 1:32 AM, Decay said:

It's really useless. And truly nobody here cares about comparisons to other games, so making that comparison is pointless.

 

It's not unwise to do comparisons regardless, just to study what other games did. Seeing where they succeeded and failed is a good lesson for people who want to try and change things. Despite the fact that doom pvp is completely opposed to anything that changes vanilla gameplay, but still.

 

I for one came from playing a long time of Duke Nukem 3D and the weapon balance in that game is quite spectacular to say the least, and the maps especially user made ones are very engaging with many height differences and interesting item placements. You can't get that with vanilla doom. You can try, but will fall short catching popularity due to reasons stated before. (I want my SSG wahhh being primary reason) At this point I think most people agrees that Doom pvp needs some sort of change, but the problem lies either in playerbase refusing to adapt to change or just not being that interested and/or lacking numbers.

On 4/14/2020 at 5:46 AM, Doomkid said:

No, the competitive pool of players all use almost exclusively vanilla guns, and have virtually no interest in FFA other than a once in a blue moon bout. And I get the strict use of vanilla guns, it’s ostensibly a test of who’s best at “vanilla Doom”

I can't imagine that test is still a thing today...

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9 hours ago, xvertigox said:

 

Got any screenshots? I'm curious as to how you handle all the verticality, especially around mh and ra.

sadly no, though it is not an exact recreation. e.g. double floors were not used. but take a look yourself, I attached the wad.

adthb01.zip

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10 hours ago, IvanDobrovski said:

I can't imagine that test is still a thing today...

Most duelers play with like 90% vanilla settings, so even if it's not "warts and all" vanilla, it is still exponentially closer to vanilla than it is to anything newschool.

 

That said, my whole point is that if things that have a crucial impact on the gameplay like PWO, blood brightness, etc can be changed, it's fundamentally inconsistent that other things that have just as crucial an impact, like weapon behavior, are suddenly too taboo to change. If we can change some behavior to be non-vanilla, then why is having an SG that shoots 9 pellets instead of 7 suddenly so inconceivable?

 

My point is, go all-out with the "vanilla competition" or just admit it isn't vanilla and go balls out with the gameplay improvements.

 

I guess it could be argued that blood brightness/PWO/weapon bobbing/etc are QOL improvements moreso than gameplay modifiers, but at the end of the day, they have a notable impact on the outcome of the match - just as slightly modded guns would. Yet, slightly modded guns are usually a "no-go" for competition yet for some reason all these other random non-vanilla NS-as-hell DMflags are A-OK. I've never understood why that is even after 19 years of DMing/Dueling.

 

It's just a total double standard: Some non-vanilla behavior is totally fine, but other non-vanilla behavior crosses some arbitrary line that's different for everyone..

Edited by Doomkid

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13 hours ago, IvanDobrovski said:

 

It's not unwise to do comparisons regardless, just to study what other games did. Seeing where they succeeded and failed is a good lesson for people who want to try and change things. Despite the fact that doom pvp is completely opposed to anything that changes vanilla gameplay, but still.

 

I for one came from playing a long time of Duke Nukem 3D and the weapon balance in that game is quite spectacular to say the least, and the maps especially user made ones are very engaging with many height differences and interesting item placements. You can't get that with vanilla doom. You can try, but will fall short catching popularity due to reasons stated before. (I want my SSG wahhh being primary reason) At this point I think most people agrees that Doom pvp needs some sort of change, but the problem lies either in playerbase refusing to adapt to change or just not being that interested and/or lacking numbers.

I can't imagine that test is still a thing today...

 

The fact that the weapons are imbalanced is part of Doom's strength. It makes the game more interesting. If the weapons are perfectly balanced, then for the most part it doesn't really matter what weapon you have. Just cycle through the weapons randomly because they are all basically the same anyway. A large part of duel is controlling the map. Generally, for maps that don't have all SSG spawns, the strategy is controlling the SSG and/or BFG. And SSG spawn killing is just really fun. This is a big part of why judas23 is the most popular map. Spawning on a non-SSG spawn when your opponent is in a strong SSG position changes the game significantly.  You have to try to get your opponent in a worse position, or trick them into thinking you are going for a specific gun and fake them out and put them in a bad position. An extreme example of this is D5M7 where it's practically all pistol spawns. Here, movement is very important to get away from your opponent as fast as possible to get to an SSG.


On the flip side, this makes DM mapping for Doom significantly harder, especially for duel. It's far too easy to make a map that isn't conducive for interesting duel play. If your map is boring the vanilla doom weapons will amplify it.

 

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I guess it could be argued that blood brightness/PWO/weapon bobbing/etc are QOL improvements moreso than gameplay modifiers, but at the end of the day, they have a notable impact on the outcome of the match - just as slightly modded guns would. Yet, slightly modded guns are usually a "no-go" for competition yet for some reason all these other random non-vanilla NS-as-hell DMflags are A-OK. I've never understood why that is even after 19 years of DMing/Dueling. 

 

You almost stated yourself to how these settings became OK. These modifiers crept in over time. And even then, they were not accepted by everyone with open arms. I remember playing ZDaemon in the early 2000s when POW didn't exist. You either had always-switch or never-switch. Even the never-switch change had some contention with how oldschool maps are played, and arguably break them pretty badly. Judas23 for example, the BFG lift drop forced you to switch putting you a a major disadvantage going for the BFG. Never-switch/PWO flipped this on it's head as you can drop down the BFG lift and blast your opponent with your SSG if they try to cut you off. Then there's the D2M1 hallway CG, and the D5M1 hallway CG and the BFG. Oldschool maps with forced switching added an element of avoiding weapons / changing when you might try to pick up a new weapon. Something that is generally long forgotten about today.

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I'll dissect this post slowly to make sure my POV is clearly understood, and maybe make others realize the situation clearer.

 

3 hours ago, hobomaster22 said:

The fact that the weapons are imbalanced is part of Doom's strength. It makes the game more interesting.

 

No, absolutely not. The weapons being imbalanced is a horrible feature of Doom. You might advocate for perhaps it making the game simpler, but it's then made TOO simple. In no way does it make the game more interesting, and the crowd watching the quakecon tournaments can attest to that. Nobody wants to see both players SSG click clacking all game every game. I would even argue it's what caused the steady decline of Doom PvP.

 

3 hours ago, hobomaster22 said:

If the weapons are perfectly balanced, then for the most part it doesn't really matter what weapon you have. Just cycle through the weapons randomly because they are all basically the same anyway.

 

Completely untrue. If it's all made balanced, it'd make sure all weapons served a unique purpose EQUALLY as each other. The closest relative to Doom that got a near perfect weapon balance is Q3, and everyone knows it set a standard back then that was widely popular for a long time. The very standard is still used in games today (QC and Diabotical for example) and the gameplay is VERY interesting there with MANY options provided to the players to make their moves. It'd definitely not be as simple as just cycling through all weapons randomly. I'll tell you why: 1. Weapon switching is slow AF in Doom. 2. Even if it was made faster, if they were balanced properly, then you would be able to counter each scenario with another way of your choosing. I'd honestly prefer if my rockets weren't slower than me, for one thing.

 

3 hours ago, hobomaster22 said:

A large part of duel is controlling the map. Generally, for maps that don't have all SSG spawns, the strategy is controlling the SSG and/or BFG. And SSG spawn killing is just really fun. This is a big part of why judas23 is the most popular map. Spawning on a non-SSG spawn when your opponent is in a strong SSG position changes the game significantly.  You have to try to get your opponent in a worse position, or trick them into thinking you are going for a specific gun and fake them out and put them in a bad position. An extreme example of this is D5M7 where it's practically all pistol spawns. Here, movement is very important to get away from your opponent as fast as possible to get to an SSG.

 

Remember this part, it'll come in handy now.

 

3 hours ago, hobomaster22 said:

On the flip side, this makes DM mapping for Doom significantly harder, especially for duel. It's far too easy to make a map that isn't conducive for interesting duel play. If your map is boring the vanilla doom weapons will amplify it.

 

Oh yea, I wonder why. It's all because there's NOTHING BESIDES THE SPAWNS TO CONTROL! That's it! There's a reason why once item respawn is turned on the game immediately becomes 100% more interesting because of that one lonely armor pickup the other player had a lucky grab on the first spawn suddenly isn't entirely useless to the other players. There's more involved on all players to contest things in the map including the ammo even! There's a reason judas is very popular, it's just a square with clear view on all spawns, which you can easily shut down if you're good enough anyway.

 

If more people were open to change perhaps Doom PvP would have lived on. Why do you think a large chunk of Doom's popularity is no thanks to its modding capabilities? Because fresh additions to the games keep them alive. They offer a new experience. Many of the player base doesn't even come back for that vanilla Doom and to think that they do is being delusional.

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6 hours ago, IvanDobrovski said:

No, absolutely not. The weapons being imbalanced is a horrible feature of Doom. You might advocate for perhaps it making the game simpler, but it's then made TOO simple. In no way does it make the game more interesting, and the crowd watching the quakecon tournaments can attest to that. Nobody wants to see both players SSG click clacking all game every game. I would even argue it's what caused the steady decline of Doom PvP. 

 

Clearly, this is my opinion. If you don't like the weapon imbalance that is fine, you can go play a different game. I can post on a Q3 forum and bitch that Q3 sucks and how they should change the game to make the weapons less balanced, but that would be incredibly stupid.

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, hobomaster22 said:

On the flip side, this makes DM mapping for Doom significantly harder, especially for duel. It's far too easy to make a map that isn't conducive for interesting duel play. If your map is boring the vanilla doom weapons will amplify it.

 

You almost stated yourself to how these settings became OK. These modifiers crept in over time. And even then, they were not accepted by everyone with open arms. I remember playing ZDaemon in the early 2000s when POW didn't exist. You either had always-switch or never-switch. Even the never-switch change had some contention with how oldschool maps are played, and arguably break them pretty badly. Judas23 for example, the BFG lift drop forced you to switch putting you a a major disadvantage going for the BFG. Never-switch/PWO flipped this on it's head as you can drop down the BFG lift and blast your opponent with your SSG if they try to cut you off. Then there's the D2M1 hallway CG, and the D5M1 hallway CG and the BFG. Oldschool maps with forced switching added an element of avoiding weapons / changing when you might try to pick up a new weapon. Something that is generally long forgotten about today.

Personally I liked forced weapon switching, it was a test of movement, especially in maps like dweller2 map11. PWO is a big thing I've never liked, and is one reason (of many) I don't like custom clients that further fuck around with settings that stretch vanilla/early zdoomisms.

 

I also agree mapping for 1v1 specifically is extremely difficult, to make a good map anyway. It does not take very much to break it balance wise, and then trying to be unique amongst standardized mapping tropes is further difficult and tough to break into the audience who doesn't like learning new things.

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47 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

 

Clearly, this is my opinion. If you don't like the weapon imbalance that is fine, you can go play a different game. I can post on a Q3 forum and bitch that Q3 sucks and how they should change the game to make the weapons less balanced, but that would be incredibly stupid.

You're both wrong. Essentially Doom weapons are pretty balanced (albeit with minor issues) until you bring in the SSG. And you're confusing balance for utility. My work has shown it's possible to make the gap between SSG and all the rest smaller while not sacrificing each weapon's utility. Balance does not mean I can kill you with a pistol with the same ease as an SSG.

 

Anyway, thanks to all the advanced engines out there (more than just GZDoom btw), you don't have to go play a new game. You can make changes to the gameplay as you see fit and share them with others and have a good time.

 

34 minutes ago, Decay said:

I also agree mapping for 1v1 specifically is extremely difficult, to make a good map anyway. It does not take very much to break it balance wise, and then trying to be unique amongst standardized mapping tropes is further difficult and tough to break into the audience who doesn't like learning new things.

Vanilla style mapping for duel is pretty difficult to get right because everyone is so picky and little things add up that can ruin the map (spawns & placements). If it doesn't play in a certain style, players won't touch it. On top of this difficulty in just map creation, you have to put in even more effort to pander and shill your creations to even be played regularly. Even then, your work probably won't even be adopted as part of the 'standard' set of maps.

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Well, Alt DM might work for DUEL alone. In regards to all out DM I can see where it becomes a problem very fast.

(Catching up on the second page, didn't see it.)

Edited by Koff3Katt

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