What Makes A Good Pwad

What is it that makes a good Pwad well from playing all the highly rated ones such as Plutonia 2 and AV i've come to the conclusion that as long as every map spawns 20+ revenants everytime you pick up a weapon, key or open a door then its good. cause thats all they do throughout every map.

it comes to a point where i get excited to find a different type of enemy.




secondary question - is the any good Pwads that aren't all revenants 24/7?

Bozzy said:

i've come to the conclusion that as long as every map spawns 20+ revenants everytime you pick up a weapon, key or open a door then its good.

*applause*

were you mocking me there or agreeing with me?

lol

Play newgothic (in the something gothic thread) and it'll be cyberdemons instead of revs ;)

Revenants make good challenge enemies, as you can fit a ton into the space a manc or arachno takes, and take quite a bit of skill to dodge in small places. They also go down a lot quicker, although bfg tracers seem to have a pretty mediocre hit rate on them. I'd much rather face 5 revenants than 5 chaingunners in perfect position to slaughter me.

after killing 300 revenants in one map i get sick ofem is all and then the next map sure enough.... just as many. it gets boring.

Bozzy said:

were you mocking me there or agreeing with me?

lol

Agreeing. Also your delivery was good.

thx :p, glad someone agrees half way through plutonia 2 all i could feel was rage at the amount of revenants constantly spawns and just gave up with it.

What is it that makes a successfull passive-aggressive thread ? From reading most of the helled ones, I've come to the conclusion that as long as you start rambling with a punctuationless long sentence reducing complex gameplay to "lol random hordes" everytime you get your ass kicked because you're bad at Doom, too lazy to lower the difficulty or just want to hug trees, then it's good, because that's all they do through each topic.

It comes to a point where I get excited to find a different type of complaint.


Secondary question - is there any reason why you can't just play the bazillions of detail-over-gameplay wads out there that a blindfolded monkey could play, instead of complaining about the few ones who actually put some effort into that aspect ?

ok phml that is the dumbest lameass reply i have ever heard instead of addressing the point, you just mock whatever you can cause ur such a retard u cant come up with a proper response.

i have completed it on HMP difficulty (not that good i know) i didnt say it was hard all i asked indirectly was what really makes a good Pwad/why so many revenants and stated that it bored me and wanted something different, but u go back ill let you go back to your sister cause obviously an opinion is too complicated of a thing for you to understand.

Phml said:

...is there any reason why you can't just play the bazillions of detail-over-gameplay wads out there that a blindfolded monkey could play, instead of complaining about the few ones who actually put some effort into that aspect ?

Probably because they have shitloads of Revenants in them, too...

Bozzy said:

is the any good Pwads that aren't all revenants 24/7?

You could have billions of hell knights...or billions of imps...or millions of demons...or a map-wide caco invasion...or a combo of the above with crushers or archies thrown in...even the odd pain elemental...and ofc billions of revenants...or a massive room with some of everything thrown in :P

Sunder - Reinventing the word "difficulty".

The Ultimate DooMer said:

You could have billions of hell knights...or billions of imps...or millions of demons...or a map-wide caco invasion...or a combo of the above with crushers or archies thrown in...even the odd pain elemental...and ofc billions of revenants...or a massive room with some of everything thrown in :P

Sunder - Reinventing the word "difficulty".

or you could have a fair share of all monsters. wouldnt that be a crazy idea?

look all im saying is that it doesnt appeal to me and if we dont have the right to like what we want then whats the point may aswell be robots or sheep.

You can voice your opinion, but that doesn't mean that anyone else has to care.

A lot of principles compose the ideal PWAD:

Gameplay - It has to be balanced. I don't want a WAD where I'm given every weapon in the game and a few arachs to kill, nor do I want a WAD that only gives me an SSG, some shells, and 5000000000 revs, mancs, cyberdemons, archviles, cacos, pain elementals, etc. I'll also welcome surprise ambushes and switch quests.

Graphics - I don't really mind custom graphics just so long as they fit well into the PWAD. Also, I want just enough detail to identify what the level is.

Sound - Don't really care as long as nothing is boring or rapes my ears.

Kagemaru_H said:

Gameplay - It has to be balanced. I don't want a WAD where I'm given every weapon in the game and a few arachs to kill, nor do I want a WAD that only gives me an SSG, some shells, and 5000000000 revs, mancs, cyberdemons, archviles, cacos, pain elementals, etc. I'll also welcome surprise ambushes and switch quests.

Just give me a berserk and I'll make quick work of your 5,000,000,000 Revanants (provided you use a source port that supports that many monsters).

Read some of the older /newstuff chronicle if you want any interesting map without a bajillion revenants and fair amounts of monsters. (not that every map have this...)

GhostlyDeath said:

Just give me a berserk and I'll make quick work of your 5,000,000,000 Revanants (provided you use a source port that supports that many monsters).

I hope your computer can handle nuts.wad at a decent framerate. If not you have no hope against 500000000 revs.

Well, I have to agree on one thing:

There's no other monster than the Revenant that by itself can kill an entire map.

For this reason I've created a small Dehacked patch I can drop in with all WAD that think the Revenant is a general purpose opponent to be used in large hordes. Without homing missiles most of these problems are magically gone! :D

Reverents sort of have a mancubus-like 'spread' attack too, more noticeable in hordes, because some of their missiles home and some don't home, thus spreading in 2 directions.

ok phml that is the dumbest lameass reply i have ever heard instead of addressing the point, you just mock whatever you can cause ur such a retard u cant come up with a proper response.

You mean that is a proper thread ? Wow. I honestly assumed you were just trolling because both the premise and the wording are so unbelievably stupid I didn't think you were serious for a second.

No, actually, I still don't believe you're genuine. You're intelligent enough to be able to type (although in a barely intelligible way) and post on an internet forum, so surely you can do basic operations like addition and you should realise PL2 and AV have far different encounters than hordes of revenants, even if you're not smart enough to understand any kind of enemy can be used in very different ways with architecture, placement and weapon/ammo/health balance.

If you actually phrased your "question" in a non-controversial way, I would have answered I might understand where your flawed perception comes from, as when I was a bit worse at Doom than I am now revenants gave me so much trouble compared to other enemies I felt they were everywhere ; that's my proper response, if there is such a thing to that kind of topic. However, as you were looking for flames, you got flames from me.

Grow up, kid. If you run around insulting everyone in the name of a different opinion, don't go crying because people have a different opinion than yours. I don't care if you're fourteen, I'm not your dad and there's plenty of teenagers who behave maturely on Doomworld.

I was looking for a fairly difficult WAD with not too many revenants, and I found this:

  Trooper                         :      48       42       42  
  Sergeant                        :      37       57       50  
  Heavy Weapon Dude               :     107      129      154  
  Imp                             :     367      404      472  
  Demon                           :      20       19       23  
  Spectre                         :       9       21       26  
  Lost Soul                       :      72       96      119  
  Cacodemon                       :     119      143      187  
  Hell Knight                     :      88      139      132  
  Baron of Hell                   :      28       42       69  
  Arachnotron                     :       5        6        6  
  Pain Elemental                  :       4       13       22  
  Revenant                        :      70      100      140  
  Mancubus                        :      32       44       54  
  Arch-vile                       :      22       27       34  
  Cyberdemon                      :       1        1        1  
  Total                           :    1029     1283     1531  
  Total HP                        :  226430   307620   384490  

Bozzy said:
What is it that makes a good Pwad well from playing all the highly rated ones such as Plutonia 2 and AV i've come to the conclusion that as long as every map spawns 20+ revenants everytime you pick up a weapon, key or open a door then its good. cause thats all they do throughout every map.

it comes to a point where i get excited to find a different type of enemy.

secondary question - is the any good Pwads that aren't all revenants 24/7?

You're over-exaggerating here, man.

Which skill level do you play on ?
Do you really think it's suited to you ?

Revenants are considered medium-class enemies, not something that can "break" levels. Learn how to deal with homing projectiles, or select a lower skill setting. Or go play Doom 3, where there are like 10 next-gen Revenants in the entire game :p

[WH]-Wilou84 said:

You're over-exaggerating here, man.

Which skill level do you play on ?
Do you really think it's suited to you ?

Revenants are considered medium-class enemies, not something that can "break" levels.

They may be medium level but their threat factor is disproportionately high for their overall properties. Yes, they can break a level and as long as people share your opinion on them levels will get broken. You need to master Doom's controls exceptionally well and not allow the slightest of errors when fighting a horde of Revenants.

Graf Zahl said:

They may be medium level

Well, having only 300 HP they'd be considered "weak" enemies ( by Doom II standards ), but as you said their threat factor is high, placing them into middle-tier position I'd say.

Graf Zahl said:

Yes, they can break a level and as long as people share your opinion on them levels will get broken. You need to master Doom's controls exceptionally well and not allow the slightest of errors when fighting a horde of Revenants.

Levels can be broken if map authors screw things up by placing enemies in a wrong way. It can happen, of course, and with any kind of enemy.
But in good levels like that famous AV29 Revenant curve, you have enough space to dodge, and enough ammo to be the one in control.
Granted, it takes some time to master, and it may be hard for novice and casual players. But why do casual players select advanced, unadapted skill settings ?

Graf Zahl said:

You need to master Doom's controls exceptionally well and not allow the slightest of errors

Come on... Small mistakes can be tolerated ( you usually have high health and armor provided in such encounters ), but of course, if a pack of homing missiles manage to catch you, it's over indeed :)
Anyway, really, if you can't deal with Revenant hordes, it's either because the level is badly designed or because you're not skilled enough. In that case, selecting a lower skill level may help ( and that Revenant horde may magically be reduced ). Or you can try again and again, you'll eventually get used to it.
Trying to record demos on AV / HRII / Deus Vult is a very good way to learn how to deal with such traps. At least, it worked for me.

Doom II's Ultra-Violence mode is quite easy by today's standards, but it doesn't mean every wad's UV settings should be as easy.
And if you can't cope with it at all, fortunately there's a lot of other different wads to play with.

Graf Zahl said:

They may be medium level but their threat factor is disproportionately high for their overall properties. Yes, they can break a level and as long as people share your opinion on them levels will get broken. You need to master Doom's controls exceptionally well and not allow the slightest of errors when fighting a horde of Revenants.

I don't know the exact revenant count in this discussion, but I think overused hitscanners are worse.

Bozzy said:

secondary question - is the any good Pwads that aren't all revenants 24/7?

Check out some of the wads for Ultimate Doom.

Some of the Doom 2 wads also suffer from the "likely planned to be Doom 1" syndrome, such as ZPack episode 1 or parts of Suspended in Dusk. I prefer the Doom 2 maps to play like Doom 2, in effect having lots of chaingunners, hell knights, revenants and pain elementals.

I generally find that it's Chaingunners and Shotgunners that annoy me the most, as most maps that I've played that involve Revenant hordes are well made (because most mappers making that style are pretty good at what they're doing) and therefore beatable, usually just needing a bit of trial and error or saving.

As for what makes a good wad? Depends what you're after really. Maybe you like low threat situations that require a bit of intelligence, or maybe you like balls to the wall action where all thinking is put into tactics alone.

And good wads that don't rely on Revenant spamming? They're certainly out there, and the first Scythe comes to mind (barring a few of the later levels), but there are plenty of others.

GreyGhost said: ("is the any good Pwads that aren't all revenants 24/7?")
Check out some of the wads for Ultimate Doom.

A lovely statement. The similar way, 1monster.wad has no revenants at all (except for one map).