swiftdeath vs italo

[noshutdown]

which do you like better? i feel that italo is way harder, but its mostly due to heavy numbers of slaughtering, while swiftdeath is a good sample of making levels hard by design without placing hundreds of monsters. for me, the latter is something more like art.

[Grain of Salt]

Nah.

 

Italo has much more purpose in the monster placement imo, despite the numbers.

[Nine Inch Heels]

20 minutes ago, noshutdown said:

i feel that italo is way harder, but its mostly due to heavy numbers of slaughtering, while swiftdeath is a good sample of making levels hard by design without placing hundreds of monsters. for me, the latter is something more like art

 

Exacting monster placement as much of an art as is using sizeable amounts of monsters in ways that don't end up being lame circle strafe fests right away. Those are both different "disciplines". Both Danne and Ribbiks are able to pull off either of these disciplines with amazing results, for the record.

 

Which WAD is "better" is subject to the eye of the beholder, and you're not gonna get an objective truth out of this thread to begin with. If you were looking to figure out which of the mappers are the most competent ones, my money is on danne and ribbiks, no second thoughts.

[Memfis]

Swift Death looks much nicer, doesn't feel like a joke, is more accessible for normal humans, and has a thrilling survival feel.

 

Italo Doom has better music, more variety in encounters, less maps where everything after the first fight is filler, and is not so luck based.

[baja blast rd.]

Swift Death: A fun set of engaging bitesized maps. I wouldn't say it's a good example of 'making wads hard without adding 100s of monsters' because it's not that 'hard'. :P

 

Italo Doom: A humorous set of tongue-in-cheek design and mostly moderate challenges. Encounters are well crafted and creative despite the apparent silliness. 

[Spectre01]

I found Italo a lot more fun due to more BFG/RL-based gameplay and a higher requirement for mechanical execution.

 

Swift Death, on the other hand, feels more like a Congestion-style wad with a high degree of foreknowledge. i.e. Watching a demo of how to beat an SD map will help you more than watching an Italo max.

 

Also, I'm not a fan of instant gangbang starts in general.

[noshutdown]

5 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

I found Italo a lot more fun due to more BFG/RL-based gameplay and a higher requirement for mechanical execution.

 

Swift Death, on the other hand, feels more like a Congestion-style wad with a high degree of foreknowledge. i.e. Watching a demo of how to beat an SD map will help you more than watching an Italo max.

 

Also, I'm not a fan of instant gangbang starts in general.

 

well this is simply against my taste.

assume you are facing tens or even hundreds of heavy monsters here and there with nowhere to run, the only thing you can do is slaughter them with bfg/rl as quickly as possible, or you would be cornered and dead right? but that's not what i want, i want the map to give the player variable solutions, rather than making "just kill everyone quick and you are safe" the only thing to do.

and to do this, the map should not give the player too many cells and rockets. for example, all cells on the map can only kill 1/3 of the monsters even if the player makes best use of the bfg, and so for the rockets. and the supplies are scattered here and there, so the player must keep running for them to survive, but not to wipe out a place quickly.

this doesn't mean the map would be a park stroll, there is no safe place and the player is still constantly threatened, just not so instant-death under attack of tens of monsters.

Edited March 23, 2018 by noshutdown

[baja blast rd.]

Everyone likes different things. 

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, noshutdown said:

i want the map to give the player variable solutions, rather than making "just kill everyone quick and you are safe" the only thing to do.

It turns out that this is what most of the good slaughtermaps usually do, unless you're in a setpiece that forces you into the one and only literal "solution". There are strategies involved like herding or crowdshaping, infight manipulation and lots more. Usually you have a good bit of leeway in terms of if how much you wanna instigate infighting, how much you wanna do yourself, how many monsters you want to kill right away before doing something else, etc....

 

What maps with higher monstercounts do different than swift death is that they require more consistency in execution for longer times (instead of requiring you to get this one thing right once to avoid getting shredded), if they're done well, and obviously they are potentially more lethal by virtue of stuff that flies around, but that still doesn't mean that one error equals certain death.

 

Besides, many slaughtermaps work the way they do because of their (often intentionally inconvenient) item placement, it's not like you just get ammunition stuffed into your every orifice all the time. That is a common prejudice, but it's wrong. Many maps make you dash for health and higher grade ammunition quite a bit, and italo-doom is not so different in that regard, for that matter.

 

10 minutes ago, noshutdown said:

well this is simply against my taste

Yeah, since you are not really looking for arguments of any sort, but rather want to stick to taste, I'm not actually sure why you are discussing this. It's your taste, so what? ;-)

[Kaido]

Italo.