The DWIronman League dies to: Sunlust

Dead on map 9 at the start since I have little familiarity with that map (doesn't help that my mouse completely hung up and prevented me from turning at a bad moment, happened twice this run :/). Still, happy to get that far and throw in a fair few tricks in there. :^)

sunlust_Ironman_shock.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/s/14vhmco23gz9qnc/dtlust.lmp?dl=1

Cat 2

Think it was map04, it was called 'sol', anyway. If I remember correctly, I snuffed it in the very final fight

I guess we all must start somewhere.

Category 2 (Played through the first 4 maps on HMP)

Died on Map 2 (56 kills)

Map 1 left at 5:23

sunlust_isuck.rar

Decided to do this as I was passing by and did better than expected.

Category 1 (yes, I never played this), MAP04. I think I could've survived it had I not had the worst aiming ever vs an archvile that was about to die. It hurt madly. But that's what adrenaline does to you... and also college deadlines... yeah... dwironman_nov21_naza.zip

I do not quite get why all 32 maps were chosen. The set seems to be rather difficult and especially so in a single sitting, which is the true spirit of Ironman. The challenge of the Ironman run is: as your concentration runs out, you'll begin making uncharacteristic mistakes. If you look at the patterns of megawads chosen, you'll see the likes of Perdition's Gate, Plutonia, Revolution, Scythe and a few others. When you're playing them outside of Ironman, they're rather easy (or you're insanely familiar with them), but in Ironman, you're both running out of free time AND your concentration gets fucked so you do crazy shit. Some exceptions do exist: Unholy Realms (which gets rather brutal and long near the end), 50 Monsters (Cyber Baron: exists, competitors: die) and notably Eviternity, though its multi-episode composition allows you to relax between episodes. Another exception is Hell Revealed that was chosen to be the "ultimate" challenge for the 50th and not many people minded. And even then, in fact, most got past MAP05 on that one, and more than half of the field finished episode 1. Take what you will from that.

Sunlust, even if it has relatively quick maps (evidenced by even the furthest getting competitors reaching their death maps in under an hour), has a problem in that it's just... too difficult. If you die on M4, you only get 20 minutes and that's it for the entire month. What difference is there vs. formerly 1CC sets like Combat Shock 2 and Stardate 20x6? Yes, I know, this might not be slaughter in its truest sense, but it's still not ideal. While it's somewhat fine if your set has less than 10 maps and you know making it to M2 or M3 and dying 20 minutes in is somewhat rewarding (like in Crusades, Nilla Doom, Oscillation and Bloody Rust), it's not fine knowing you still have 28 maps you've not gone to and to which potentially little people will. 

You can look at it this way: around half of the people should make it halfway into a challenge and around 3-4 should survive. You'll see some of the most popular challenges that WEREN'T all-time classics (like BtSX E1, HR, Plutonia) have a structure similar to that (Double Impact, UAC Ultra, Vanguard). Looking at the scores so far, out of the "oldtimers", only Dragonfly (M5), galileo and Wilou (M7) made it past M4. Even if the challenge was fucky, like Plutonia, 14 people made it past MAP09 because of familiarity. That's 30%. Here two people made it past MAP09 which is 7%. Most of these runs are also category 2 as with Plutonia so it's not the product of everyone going in blind and dying very early on (like Bloody Rust, or potentially Hellscape, though that one was a flaw and a huge mistake). See also the Hell Revealed example in the first paragraph. The best result this month so far seems to be the host who trumped literally everyone and got to M28 when the next best result is M10. One could say this is a vanity contest by the host to literally flex on everyone else, but that'd be immature and especially hypocritical from myself.

Alfonzo also used the 1CC rule to prevent a washout like this from happening. I think it could've been used here too. There's still time to implement it, in my opinion. Even if that's a bit buzzkill, just scissoring the set to end with M11 and calling it a Competition of Sunlust E1 is decent enough. There's a challenge and you don't feel beat up about dying so early on like the other 75% of the field.

Also, I'm aware I've had my chance, and whoever reads this and thinks "Why didn't you do it like that when you had the time?" is right. But that doesn't exempt me from criticizing this pick. I've not been the best host, my picks were usually inconsistent and shadow-leaving is the worst thing you can do. However, I love the League, and I've participated in it since February 2017, created leaderboards since June 2017, saw and played many picks - the League taught me how to play Doom with mouse and efficiently, in a way. Writing this post is a large enough testament for my love for the League anyway. My beginning as a host was rocky with two polar opposite picks but near the end, barring my laziness, the picks themselves were decent. My biggest problem was not having played many Doom WADs so I never had a good pool to choose from. One of the reasons why I originally left, and me running this badly also made me quite annoyed and overwhelmed I eventually left the community for almost a year. 

I won't be commenting much on the issue of hosting inconsistency raised by Suitepee because of potential extreme hypocrisy from my side, but I will say that having varied Ironman hosts can lead to choosing sets you're more-than-averagely good at, like Firebox, Dark Resolution 2008, or World Orifice (which are very niche choices) or visibly Sunlust. 

That's it for me. Sorry for this essay, but as I was being here, I felt obliged to drop my two cents. I am aware it could be hypocritical from my side, so I again apologize.

EDIT: I have remembered Khorus' Speedy Shit was also a thing were all but 10 competitors died before MAP06. While that's also a rather bizarre thing that could be comparable (and if it does get compared, it makes sense) to this, there's three points that can be brought up: a) it was among the earliest challenges when the direction the league will take wasn't fully clear, b) it wasn't even originally a challenge but was hastily brought forward after a previous challenge was scrapped due to numerous bugs (remember 10Sectors? anyone?), and c) most of the people playing it went in blind so it was expected, due to the nature of the set, not many will make it far. 

1CC leads to a lot more effort from the hosts though, I can see why people would be reluctant.

I’ve not participated in Ironman in ages, but I usually died early and it never bothered me tbh. If anything, all the better, less of a free time commitment. That said, Criticality was probably pushing it a bit in that regard with a lot of people dying very early.

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

I do not quite get why all 32 maps were chosen. The set seems to be rather difficult and especially so in a single sitting, which is the true spirit of Ironman.

This is a set where the difficulty forces you to take your time. This means you're not trying to speedrun the set like previous ironmans to place first. That's what appeals to me about the ironman competition.

I don't like the idea of segmenting a wad in any capacity, because it robs people the opportunity to actually demonstrate their endurance.

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

You can look at it this way: around half of the people should make it halfway into a challenge and around 3-4 should survive. You'll see some of the most popular challenges that WEREN'T all-time classics (like BtSX E1, HR, Plutonia) have a structure similar to that (Double Impact, UAC Ultra, Vanguard).

Why should an arbitrary amount of people make an arbitrary amount of progress in any one month? It's no secret that the ironman has been on the decline regarding participation, but I think that's just the nature of it going on for as long as it has.

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

The best result this month so far seems to be the host who trumped literally everyone and got to M28 when the next best result is M10. One could say this is a vanity contest by the host to literally flex on everyone else, but that'd be immature and especially hypocritical from myself.

If I wanted to flex on everyone else, I'd have put something along the lines of "Hey I picked Sunlust this month to celebrate the one year anniversary of my incredibly impressive accomplishment, where I single segmented uv-maxed the whole wad." somewhere in the opening post. I'm not that egotistical though :^)

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

Alfonzo also used the 1CC rule to prevent a washout like this from happening. I think it could've been used here too. There's still time to implement it, in my opinion. Even if that's a bit buzzkill, just scissoring the set to end with M11 and calling it a Competition of Sunlust E1 is decent enough. There's a challenge and you don't feel beat up about dying so early on like the other 75% of the field.

If you want to spend the time investment to switch this month to 1cc and update the leaderboard, go for it. I'm personally not a fan of the format, as it detracts from what I enjoy about the idea of ironmanning.

Also keep in mind in my time in the ironman league, the 1cc rule has never been used, so it's not exactly at the front of my mind when thinking about running it. You're also asking me to spend almost 3x the time watching demos for this. Time that not even you were spending running this league.

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

Also, I'm aware I've had my chance, and whoever reads this and thinks "Why didn't you do it like that when you had the time?" is right. But that doesn't exempt me from criticizing this pick.

Saying "ya well I blew it too" doesn't give you justification to say whatever you want. You've got firsthand experience with how much time this takes to run, time that nobody can or wants to dedicate to doing. That's why we're left with a wide variety of people running the show. Unless the league returns to one person consistently hosting it, this is what we're going to be left with; a variety of people with a variety of skill levels picking sets that may not be appropriate for everyone participating.

So can we have 20x7 next month?

First and foremost, thank you for the quick and polite reply @Daerik. I may have worded myself a bit innocuously a few times so pardon for that - also haven't been around so I haven't realized the real issues at hand. In hindsight wasn't the smartest of me to assume having just dropped by after more than 6 months but I still stand by most of my points. I hope you don't mind me replying to your points, however. I'll spoiler them so they don't take too much space in the thread. If you want, we can continue discussing in DMs after this as to not clog the thread up

Good pick, here's my run, cat 2 :^)

On 11/25/2021 at 5:40 AM, David Asaad said:

So can we have 20x7 next month?

Then we can just sit back and watch people get brutally murdered in map02.

Category 2
Demo recorded on DSDA Doom v0.19.0, with complevel 9.

Dead at 33:26 on MAP04, with 17 kills. (Finished MAP03 at 32:31)

A day after recording this demo I went back to MAP04, pistol started and... died at least two dozen more times in the opening of the map. No way in hell would I have made it past this point :p. After surviving the opening section, the rest of the map surprisingly went by without any more deaths, even saveless. Ingenious denial of safe areas in the beginning.

Demo link

map15, cat2 I've only played this wad in multiplayer so I was unfamiliar with a lot of fights, the wad certainly gets a lot more difficult from map11.

sunlust_iron_anc.zip

I am not very familiar with the intricacies of the categories, but I watched a handful of sunlust streams after knowing this existed, so perhaps it's a category 3 run.

It does not last even a single minute, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

ironman.zip

Cat 2 dead on Map 04 - died to some chaingunner trap that I had no idea existed even though I've seen sunlust 1000000 times on Twitch. Last time I actually played it was years ago though.

DWIronman-sunlust-dubz.zip

Ironman_Sunlust_hc.zip

Category 2 - Never played it, but I watched decino's let's-play series and frequently tuned in when Daerik was streaming d2all attempts.

Dead in MAP01 with 20 kills.

sunlustironmannapsalm.zip

My first Ironman!

Category 2 - Played years ago, watched a few people play in stream.

Dead Map03 with 143 kills, silly ending mancs. (Finished Map02 at 17:49)

sunlustironman_finnks13.zip

Fancied giving this a go because I really enjoyed playing Sunlust a year or so ago, and I managed to join the exclusive club of people who fell to Map04.

Category 2 (Played it a while ago, watched some of Daerik's d2all's of it when that was going on), recorded using dsda-doom.
Died on Map04 with 103/108 kills after 30:01. Finished Map03 at 22:51.

medi_ironman_sunlust.zip

Category 2 - Exited Map09 at 66:29. Dead on Map10 198/235 Kills at 75:11

I thought I had a very good shit brother strat for map10 but clearly I didn't. Liked this pick and I think if I had managed to survive that fight I would have gotten further, but I did not :(

Category 2 I guess, played it a long time ago so can't find much in the way of the secrets.

Died at MAP04 to that key card trap with two revenant pillars and some imps blocking the way.

I find playing with PrBoom+ more difficult, melee hitboxes are so tiny compared to ZDoom.

sunlust.zip