Why is Plutonia good?

See there, OP has some presumption about DS being hard or whatever it's. I don't know why this happens because it seems so many people are proud of their beating DS or whatnot. Then using this logic saying "If I can beat DS, I can't beat Plutonia, so Plutonia is $h!t rather than 'actually hard'". Nice one there.

Well, I like it

6 hours ago, dmslr said:

Huh?

 

Good fucking god, I take it back. I mean once every few minutes or so, not after every stinking zombieman! Like all good things, it should be used in moderation.. Jeez.

54 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

not after every stinking zombieman!

Oh crap... are you talking about me? I save even after moving for 15 seconds without things...

8 hours ago, dmslr said:

Huh?

<video>

There's zero loads in the video so everything is all okay.

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Good fucking god, I take it back. I mean once every few minutes or so, not after every stinking zombieman! Like all good things, it should be used in moderation.. Jeez.

I, ^sometimes, save right after saving just so I can be safe from forgetting to save in an important moment. Also some maps/mods tend to be rather deadly so frequent saving is warranted, but that's a different issue though.

6 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

See there, OP has some presumption about DS being hard or whatever it's. I don't know why this happens because it seems so many people are proud of their beating DS or whatnot. Then using this logic saying "If I can beat DS, I can't beat Plutonia, so Plutonia is $h!t rather than 'actually hard'". Nice one there.

 A few coments ago I explained this, whereas Souls games feel difficult but (mostly) fair Plutonia kind of hard feels bullshit.

3 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

Well, I like it

Would be nice sir if you developed a little bit more, what do you like about it?

12 hours ago, lwks said:

I've beaten Dark Souls 1, 3 and Sekiro, have at me

But did you do a no hit run of each game?

No but it IS possible (specialy Sekiro), meanwhile good luck dodging all those hitscanners in Plutonia, but I'm actually more interested in hearing what do all y'all like about Plutonia instead of having an discussion.

Plutonia has some traps that are bullshit and require foreknowledge, which is an issue. However, the real reason it's so good is because the quality is consistent. There are a lot of crummy maps in Doom (mostly in E3) and a lot of crummy maps in Doom2 and quite obviously TNT. There aren't a whole lot of maps that are absolutely unbearable in Plutonia.

I think Plutonia is good because it forced me to learn how to play Doom.

Plutonia was what taught me how to dodge Revenants’ homing missiles. Plutonia was what taught me exactly how long I can stay in an Arch-Vile’s line of sight. Plutonia was what taught me how to safely kite a Cyberdemon around a pillar; how to use one Mancubus as a human shield to block the shots of its brothers in a close-quarters rumble; how to make the best use of my rockets by always firing them in salvos and strafing an area. The BFG-9000 had been around all the way through Doom 1 & 2, but it had just been a toy, a fun bonus to play around with. Outside of maybe two or three specific encounters, it was never necessary. But, for the second half of this campaign, it made that gun necessary, and it forced me to actually learn how to use it optimally.

Like tchkb said, these are transferable skills that will enhance your playthrough of every PWAD you try afterward.

@Wagi Thanks, I've heard that Plutonia has consistent quality before, but what I'm interested is in particular maps and sections, what are the ones you thought were fun, share with me.

@head_cannon Well Plutonia certainly raised the difficulty of the Doom maps, that's for sure, but you see I'm more interested in the actual "map theory" stuff you know? What were your greatest moments in the map set?

Believe it or not, Map05 can be Max-ed without taking any damage even you're surrounded by many Chaingunners in a few circumstances;

Believe it or not, Map08 can be Max-ed without taking any damage even there's a very long pain sector walk;

Believe it or not, even Map32 can be Max-ed without taking any damage, but it's done by somebody better than me.

Yeah, no every single map you can dodge everything, but none of these maps are too difficult to beat.

The funny thing is that you like to use that "If I can beat DS, I should be able to beat other games, or they just suck" mindset. You're only damaging the reputation of DS players. You can put this thread in a DS forum and talk crap about Plutonia and nobody will ever care. That you explicitly compare DS and Plutonia (which is not even comparable) and say DS is much fair than Plutonia is just not a way to discuss things. Of course, from you last post, you don't even want to discuss, so what's the point to look at somebody else's comments with your presumption already set to disagree?

The other funny thing is that you're not the first one saying DS is fairer and harder than Doom to me, which is very hard for me to not think that DS players have a strange confidence that they've beaten the hardest game in the world for whatever reason.

Cool, now do it the entire game in a single run. Should be fun.

Also, I'll say it again, when I say I've beaten Dark Souls I'm not putting myself on some kind of pedestal, I struggled very hard with the Souls games, I don't even enjoy the "hard games" genre, what I want to say is that I persevered through it because the experience seemed mostly fair instead of continuous trolling like Plutonia does, this is the point. Now look at this:

This is a well designed map, I've never beaten it and I ain't complaining. I just think there's a difference between challenges that require skill and challenges that require foreknowledge.

10 minutes ago, lwks said:

I persevered through it because the experience seemed mostly fair instead of continuous trolling like Plutonia does

Your lack of experience leads you to wrong conclusions.

53 minutes ago, head_cannon said:

Plutonia was what taught me how to dodge Revenants’ homing missiles. Plutonia was what taught me exactly how long I can stay in an Arch-Vile’s line of sight. Plutonia was what taught me how to safely kite a Cyberdemon around a pillar; how to use one Mancubus as a human shield to block the shots of its brothers in a close-quarters rumble; how to make the best use of my rockets by always firing them in salvos and strafing an area. The BFG-9000 [...]

This is very much to the point. An advancement in the Doom gameplay meta. It can be hard to appreciate that stuff many years later, so thanks for that vivid description. I've tried to pierce the skin of Plutonia a couple of times & never come away very entertained, so I've by and large had the same question as OP about it... 

OP - it seems apparent that this particular wad isn't really your cup of tea. Rather than trying to force a geometry-specific dissection that would point to it's brilliance among those who like it, your time might be better invested in scrutinising a mapset you actually enjoy? :)

About the foreknowledge thing - this wasn't an uncommon gameplay meta in home videogames at the time, though it was never mainstream popular & kinda viewed as non-arcade gameplay, largely criticised by the gaming-press. Some hits relied on it entirely though, including one "Rick Dangerous" from the pre-Doom years, which pretty much required you to die at least once before attempting to progress.

I don't think the Darksouls etc comparison is off either, shows OP's a patient & unrelenting gamer, which I would take it is one of several requirements for finishing Plutonia.
 

22 hours ago, dmslr said:

Huh?

 

This Doom looked like Quake to me.

Haven't actually played Plutonia but I'll chip in anyway.

Dark Souls is challenging, but in a very different way from Doom in the mapsets that I've played. In Dark Souls, when you die it's usually because you made a mistake right in the moment before you're killed. You always have an Estus flask or something similar to be able to heal up after each fight, and all the damage you take is because you fucked up on a dodge or a parry, which are things that are basically purely reaction/reflex based so you can always dodge that one attack, and hypothetically get through the game without taking a hit. Whereas in Doom where sometimes you take damage because of rng, getting hit is pretty much inevitable over the course of a playthrough. You have to take damage, so the point of failure isn't getting hit once and eating shit, but taking 3 too many hits each fight and eventually reaching a point where whether or not you survive is based on luck, in the moment. The feedback in Dark Souls is really immediate most of the time, whereas in Doom you might only realize you've lost 3 fights after the point of no return. 

If you've ever played Fire Emblem or X-Com, think of the RNG elements of Doom in a similar way. If your success or failure is determined entirely by the next roll of the dice, you've kind of already lost. The skill is making sure you never get to that point. 

2 hours ago, lwks said:

Cool, now do it the entire game in a single run. Should be fun.

You're funny. You have resource of health/armor in this game. You are not having 1% health all the time. I'm just raising examples that you can do these without taking damage, but the game gives you enough error room to survive that. Why would you compare a single level no damage run to a D2ALL no damage run? Those single level runs are not even easy to do. It's just a mere example that your first impression of something is not actually the fact.

1 hour ago, Soundblock said:

I don't think the Darksouls etc comparison is off either, shows OP's a patient & unrelenting gamer, which I would take it is one of several requirements for finishing Plutonia.

It's not off obviously. Beating hard games definitely can get you some transfer-able skills, which helps you in other type of games, or even real life. The thing is that how do you look at it. I always say speedrunning Doom helps me better in playing Tetris, which sounds really funny to many. However, I'm not using this as an example to say the other game's BS due to "high skill level" I'm supposed to have.

I think you can kinda sorta see the roots of Half Life in Plutonia's level design in that Milo and Dario's levels really forced you to think about the space you're in and plan a route through it. You have to approach these maps more like a puzzle.

I don't think Plutonia is the nectar of the gods some people make it out to be but a lot of the hate it gets is from people who learned the wrong lessons from it IMO

3 hours ago, lwks said:

Cool, now do it the entire game in a single run. Should be fun.

Has anyone done this for any IWAD or megawad without TAS? I'm not aware of any such cases. This is not a good measure for fairness in Doom. Much better would be whether or not a UV-Max can be done consistently, and I think every Plutonia level meets that criterion.

Some things I like about Plutonia.

- Pression to move. Many setpieces require you to start running and it's difficult to hide.

- In many maps there's a constant sense of danger because from MAP01 it becomes clear that you can always die if you're too sloppy. This is of course not new but in Plutonia the danger is often higher and the strategies/dodging "dances" you need are more elaborate than in Doom 1/2.

- Carefully crafted combat puzzles/setpieces. I for example love the blue door fight near the start in MAP10, when you enter a courtyard with only a shotgun (when pistol starting) and then are assaulted by revenants, mancubi and chaingunners. If you want to go back to the start area, you're greeted by arachnotrons, and if you try to escape forward, you get a classic example of "area denial" with a Baron and an AV as main protagonists. Also it's not too easy to simply circlestrafe, you have to be aware of several different threats at once and try to combat them directly with an elaborate "dance". There are many other examples (another one of my favourites is the HK/baron/chaingunner fight in MAP25).

- This means of course that foreknowledge helps. But I think it's not the main task of a mapper to make a blind playthrough as easy as possible. In Plutonia often it's ideal to save two or three times in the first playthrough, and you'll be fine.

- Gameplay and monster-placement-oriented architecture. Again think of MAP10 and its starting area. Would this make sense in the real world? Not really, but it serves its purpose to create threat.

- Good pistol-startability. The challenge is significantly bigger than in continuous play, but always fair. There are some bullshit moments like the chaingunner im MAP10 however :) But once you know that trap it's very easy.

- Some good hot starts. Examples are MAP20, MAP21 and MAP27.

- Levels tend to become easier when you've mastered the first setpieces, but often you get a nasty surprise. I think the most well-known example is the final room of MAP09 "Abbatoire", but also MAP12 and MAP21 are good. This counters the problem I get in several maps that often the final phase tends to become uninteresting, particularly if you're going to max them (Many Kama Sutra maps are an example of this: the starts are often funny, hot and challenging, but once you're well armed everything becomes mostly very easy, easier than Doom1/2).

Surely many of these things can also be said about other megawads, but I think Plutonia has a good balance here, particularly if you compare it with other mapsets of that time (MM2 is the only one from the era I know that can compete with it).

On 7/21/2020 at 7:02 PM, Doomkid said:

Quick PSA: There is nothing scummy about saving the game and the term “savescumming” is a blight on Doom history.

I've only ever heard it used in regards to games that feature perma-death: roguelikes where a save file is deleted after you load, in other words a session pause, as opposed to a point you can always return to. The negative connotation with the word scum is because the "out of game" workaround is to make backups of save files, which is generally considered cheating as it bypasses the game's logic.

If the term is used for doom or any games featuring persistent load states, then people are using it wrong

On 7/21/2020 at 1:50 PM, GarrettChan said:

Although I give Plutonia 10/10, and it's the only 10/10 right now, I completely admit I'm biased that I like the historical value of Plutonia.

 

The way it sets up difficulty traps and make the player to strategically approach it is why I like it, and I consider it as a difficulty standard for future WADs. Of course, there are things that are not ideal for Plutonia, like there's no music (fortunately we have the community midi pack now!) and almost everything is brown and green, but it's done in 4 months and only 2 men, so I would let those slide and pretend I didn't see it (the evidence of me being biased :P).

One of whom, Dario Cassali, now works at Valve in large part to his level design in Plutonia. Dude worked on the original Half-Life and has been there ever since

9 hours ago, Marn said:

I think you can kinda sorta see the roots of Half Life in Plutonia's level design in that Milo and Dario's levels really forced you to think about the space you're in and plan a route through it. You have to approach these maps more like a puzzle.

 

I don't think Plutonia is the nectar of the gods some people make it out to be but a lot of the hate it gets is from people who learned the wrong lessons from it IMO

Pretty much agreed with this.

Plutonia is definitely not the best thing since sliced bread, but for the time period it came out, it taught many valuable lessons about encounters, good map flow, and strategically approaching the encounters rather than run 'n gunning everything in sight, all valuable lessons that are present in modern wads.

People who are angry at it for its nature and its legacy have probably missed the point and didn't understand too much of Plutonia's design. Or it's simply not their jam, whatever the case may be.

Plutonia has nothing which can be considered as bullshit. Just get better at Doom or play on a lower difficulty.

Thanks erzboesewicht and Soundblock, your coments were very helpful. When playing Scythe Map23 I kinda noticed how the level works more like a puzzle but I never actually thought in depth about this regarding Plutonia's maps, I'll take a look at maps 10, 12 and 21.

On 7/21/2020 at 10:44 PM, lwks said:

This video from Civvie puts things into a better perspective (specially what he says at 16:11), though it still makes me wonder why he likes it so much even if he also complains about the traps and all that, it's almost as if frustration equals fun, very weird.

The difficulty makes it seem fresh every time, at least for me. If you master something to the point where it isn't even challenging it gets boring fast. Beating a frustrating map makes you feel good, it's an achievement. Also, it seems like Doom players like challenging WADs, so it's only natural, that Plutonia is praised.

Not to mention, that it was an inspiration for some amazing community WADs as well.

4 hours ago, seed said:

 

but for the time period it came out, it taught many valuable lessons

Hmm disagree, this would be true if plutonia was widely available during the time period it came out. It took me well into the source-port era (~1999-2000) to find a copy, and I was a well-beyond-average doom addict looking, and in the states, and in an urban area. I imagine final doom was myth and legend for european and asian markets. After the garbage that is Maximum Doom and various store-made wad packs, the average doomer (15 year old kid with enough lawn mower money for 1 game a year) was probably done buying physical media related to the game in 1996 also, even if they DID see final doom on a shelf.

I wonder what the first decrypted-by-telephone version was? Maybe quake2 or quake3 discs had it? Or the first real widespread pirating wave... kazaa or some shit?

I would argue the "other" brother not employed by Valve (Milo) was way more influential "for the time period", as every (addicted) doomer played memento mori and saw their pentiums crumble on mm23, and for quite a lot of years "hard" maps usually meant BFG + wall-of-demons. The Plutonia lesson is not really learned by mappers really until the Scythe era...

Ill keep it brief:

Its everything we liked in Doom 2 but enhanced and much harder which is suiting for us because by then we would have the hang of most mechanics.

Doom 1 and 2 are the training wheels. Plutonia is when they come off.

8 hours ago, Roofi said:

Plutonia has nothing which can be considered as bullshit. Just get better at Doom or play on a lower difficulty.

The problem with cheap traps like that is they invariably kill a first-time player the first time, but then the trap becomes a menial task every other time they play it now that they know it's there. It basically transitions from "Oh that's bullshit" to "Oh that's boring" while at no point ever adding gameplay value to the map.

Compare this to something like E4M2 where the map is challenging to a first-time player without requiring foreknowledge to beat the map. Whenever you play it, even if you're more than good enough to beat it, you still have actual combat going on rather than "I have to remember to pull my rocket launcher out BEFORE I end up in this coverless room with an Arch Vile".