WAD Progression for Skill Improvement

[SF.]

24 minutes ago, VVarp_SpaSm said:

Also been working through Plutonia UV/PS/saveless (just completed Go2It wahoo). As per prog tree suggests, I suppose I will be hitting up Sigil & Moonblood next.

 

That's terrific! Beating Go2it is a special memory for a doomer. Beating Plutonia with pistol start saveless is like losing your Doom virginity.

 

Having beaten Sigil, I consider it as a must play to improve one's skill. It's not as hard as Plutonia imo, but it tests you in other ways. 

[Marvv7]

I came across this thread and a thread where they were ranking wads based on difficulty - isn't ranking for skill progression basically ranking for difficulty? Or are you taking any additional things into consideration other than difficulty for these rankings?

[Zulk RS]

So reading the recent posts, I thought I'd make this post for anyone who wants to/needs to hear it.

 

First of all, congratulations to everyone who beat a challenging map. It takes skill to beat the more challenging maps and megawads and congrats to you for doing it and for getting more skilled/better at Doom

 

That being said, I want to give anyone that might need to hear it this reminder: Being good at doom or improving skill at Doom is good but having fun is more important. I'm saying this because quite a few years back I was trying to improve my skill at Doom so I was trying to do the usual stuff, beating maps on UV (I used to play HMP at the time), trying to beat maps without saves etc. Then I slowly realized that I wasn't actually having fun playing like that. So now I play with saves and without pistol starts. My skills have improved a little bit where I can better deal with combat and I now play on UV instead of HMP but that's not the point.

 

My point is: Unless you want to get into speedrunning or doing UV Max runs, just play however you feel is fun. If you feel like challenging yourself with trying to complete a hard map pistol-start with no saves, then go for it. If you find doing Pistol-start with no saves is fun then please continue. However if you find that playing this way is very frustrating and not fun for you, then there's not no need to do it. Play however you have the most fun. Maybe you just like going into difficult megawads like Stardate 20x6, Italo Doom or dimensions and then just hitting IDDQD and IDFA then blasting your way through it; You can do that. Personally, I have the most fun when I'm playing continuous, with mouse-look and with saves, sometimes savescumming. I know people who don't enjoy that style of play at all, preferring to instead go through a map with no saves and pistol starts. I also know people who enjoy playing for a little bit before turning on cheats. I know people who enjoy playing with mods like Brutal Doom and Complex Doom. At the end of the day, your enjoyment of Doom is what is most important. If you want to improve your skill and challenge yourself, do it and I think it's great you're doing that. If you get frustrated and give up, that's okay too; there's no need force yourself to do it if it becomes just unfun. Just don't feel pressured to play a certain way or be at a certain skill level.

 

tl;dr: It's awesome to get more skilled at Doom but having fun is the most important; don't lose sight of that. Play how you enjoy it. There's no shame in playing with saves or on a lower difficulty or with cheats unless you're doing speedruns or UV-max runs.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Zulk RS

[SilverMiner]

Scythe is harder than Plutonia?

Don't make me laugh, there's always plenty of health and ammo

[SF.]

On the whole? Maybe not. The first 20 maps are Doom II level, easier in some places, a bit harder in others. The last 10 maps absolutely feel harder than Plutonia. No armor means the margin of error is very small. Good luck eating 80 damage revenant rockets or 64 damage baron fireballs. 

[SilverMiner]

26 minutes ago, paturn said:

Good luck eating 80 damage revenant rockets or 64 damage baron fireballs.

Dodge them lol or feed other demons by them. Good luck dodging hitscanners' attacks

[SF.]

I don't know man. Except 25 and 26, every map from 22 to 28 took me a stupid amount of attempts. I didn't have this much trouble with Plutonia, which I only beat few months back, so it's still fresh in my memory

[Pseudonaut]

15 minutes ago, paturn said:

I don't know man. Except 25 and 26, every map from 22 to 28 took me a stupid amount of attempts. I didn't have this much trouble with Plutonia, which I only beat few months back, so it's still fresh in my memory

 

I had a similar experience. Scythe is harder than Plutonia.

[Sotenga]

Yeah, Fire and Ice is harder than like three Go 2 Its jammed together. So many Revenants... the Bonestorm is real in that one. 

 

Neat thread idea, though. I'm not sure what's the hardest megawad I've ever played through... probably Sunlust, though Alien Vendetta is also very memorably painful. I think Dark Dome following right after Demonic Hordes just about broke me. Granted, several megawads make AV look like a cinch nowadays, but I'd still place it mid-high on the list.

[SF.]

So after 30 mins of abusing the shit out of infighting, a couple of close calls with cyberdemons, good RNG and generally playing like a wuss, I managed to beat map 29 of Scythe. Familiarising myself with the layout and figuring out a strategy to get 100% kills without running out of ammo was the hard part. Surprisingly, it took me less than 5 attempts to beat it after learning the map.

 

Now for map 30...not really looking forward to it

[Spectre01]

7 hours ago, paturn said:

Now for map 30...not really looking forward to it

map30 is the type of level that's really unfriendly for playing blind. Would not recommend macho saveless attempts until you're familiar with the map.

[roadworx]

On 2/22/2021 at 8:46 AM, paturn said:

Now for map 30...not really looking forward to it

it's honestly just...not fun. like, at all lol

[SF.]

2 hours ago, roadworx said:

it's honestly just...not fun. like, at all lol

This map has convinced me to never play saveless...

 

I took the 'shortcut' exit after grabbing the yellow key with like 30% kills. Maxing this map is way beyond my skill level at this point. 

[Ant1]

Where would you guys put DTWIDD/D2TWIDD on this list? I didn't see either.

[Andromeda]

15 hours ago, Ant1 said:

Where would you guys put DTWIDD/D2TWIDD on this list? I didn't see either.

The list is not meant to be exaustive, that'd be a Sisyphean task. In any case, they should be roughly as difficult as the main games.

[Ant1]

10 hours ago, Andromeda said:

The list is not meant to be exaustive, that'd be a Sisyphean task. In any case, they should be roughly as difficult as the main games.

Thanks!

[roadworx]

19 hours ago, Andromeda said:

The list is not meant to be exaustive, that'd be a Sisyphean task. In any case, they should be roughly as difficult as the main games.

tbf it would be nice if the list was a tad bigger 

 

which has given me an idea, actually

[deleted.]

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Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[roadworx]

2 hours ago, a.a.i. said:

Not sure if this is the right thread to ask, but I didn't want to make a separate post just for this

 

Any tips to beat Scythe map 30? It looks like an impossible task, harder than all the maps I've ever played put together. I have been playing it all day and I'm not even close to finding out a strategy to beat this map, let alone attempt it saveless. I found a way to clear out the starting room, but it's all downhill from there. I looked up few playhroughs/ speedruns, but they all attempt extremely risky strategies 

 according to doomwiki there's a skip that'll let you beat it with only the yellow key

 

"A trick makes it possible to skip most of the map; out of the three colored barriers that block the way to the Romero's head, only the first, yellow one need be opened. It is possible to both climb the three barriers like stairs by running over the yellow barrier while it's lowering, or to perform an arch-vile jump past the two latter barriers once the yellow one is opened. Therefore two of the keys are unnecessary."

 

i suggest you do this, cuz when i personally beat it the way it was intended...i felt like complete shit lol. i'm not great at the game so it was honestly just an exhausting experience. but!! there's something really good that can come out of doing this skip! use this as an opportunity to learn how to arch-vile jump, it'll come in handy later down the road

[deleted.]

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Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[roadworx]

12 minutes ago, a.a.i. said:

I picked this up from a speedrun I saw. I did exit the map this way but I feel a compulsive urge to do a 100% run,  lol. 

i suggest coming back to it when you're a bit better at the game instead. i myself am planning on returning to it sometime soon now that i suck less and seeing if i have more fun, cuz i honestly just ended up hating it the first time around

Edited April 4, 2021 by roadworx

[deleted.]

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Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[Toastd]

17 minutes ago, a.a.i. said:

Should I even bother playing anything above Scythe if I can't beat Fire and Ice?

 

Absolutely. I've never beaten Scythe MAP30 and I've had a lot of fun playing wads that are well above it on the list. Definitely don't let one exceptionally difficult map in a set discourage you from going beyond it - were it a single-map pwad, I honestly think Fire and Ice would be much higher on the list than Scythe as a whole is.

[Stabbey]

I've been playing "Epic 2" recently, and while I don't know where it fits on the overall list, it certainly ramps up in difficulty over the course of the WAD, particularly with how it uses Arch-Viles and Cyberdemons. You really need to get good at dealing with multiple surprise Arch-Viles, and fighting Cyberdemons in very close quarters. Some of the later maps dip into full on, BFG Spray-and-pray slaughterfests. It also ramps up smoother than Scythe 1, which had a very sharp spike at level 21.

 

This mapset is the one which is really forcing me into learning how to BFG two-shot Cyberdemons.

 

EDIT: I beat it. I had to cheat on Map 24 because I couldn't get out of a room. Apparently I was supposed to know to shoot rockets into specific wall textures to kill hidden keens. I didn't figure out how to beat that gimmick until Map 28 when I heard the keen pain sound. Maps 28 and 29 were really ridiculous, but Map 30 was a piece of cake.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Stabbey

[Spectre01]

Epic 2 is at least as difficult as AV overall, with tighter ammo balance and more encounters with limited space. It's also the type of wad where you need to find the secrets when playing from pistol start, as they can be very rewarding.

[deleted.]

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Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[DoomPlayer00]

1 hour ago, a.a.i. said:

Done and dusted. Never again.

Congrats, man!

[ReaperAA]

I have said it elsewhere and I am going to say it here. I think Alien Vendetta should be placed below wads like Ancient Aliens.

 

While the hardest 4-5 levels of AV exceed AA, AV as a whole is a much easier wad. And Valiant should also be placed below AA.

[GarrettChan]

3 hours ago, a.a.i. said:

Done and dusted. Never again.

 

I think now you would fully understand why I rated Scythe as a 2.8 right? I had the exact feeling and a similar time to beat this map the first time. Congrats on finishing it for sure. I can provide you with a way that I used the Invul to significantly lower the difficulty of the Red Key (?) fight where you are on a narrow platform with lots of Revenants and some AV on the back.

 

If you really wanted to polish your skill, you can try something like Alien Vendetta (2.4), Ancient Aliens (2.0), Eviternity (2.1) and Valiant (2.5* read below). These should be a good step stone for you to have better understanding of the game.

 

* I rated Valiant as a 2.5 way earlier before doing speedrunning, but probably I would lower it to somewhere around 2.0 these days. I rated it high because of the modified monsters that are more aggressive and quicker, but the overall map design is not as cruel as other things around 2.0. Plus, I have finished quite a handful of levels on Nightmare!. Also, this WAD has many custom things in it, so it'll give your quite a big refreshment if you are into that. Though, it screws up my speedrunning memory a lot due to the modified sprites and weapons, so I personally don't like it as much.

[DoomPlayer00]

Where would you put Community Chests in the list?