Unpopular Doom Opinions

[zokum]

On 10/30/2022 at 1:40 AM, EngineerKappa said:

Here are my few: 

• I think a lot of people are unfair to Doom 1 and 2 maps because they have options designed with nearly 30 years of hindsight.

One thing people seem to underestimate are the art assets. For Doom 2 most of the textures and monsters weren't ready until later in development. It's hard to design a map set when you're given new textures now and then and you are under pressure time wise. People that say stuff like this was a bad choice, they should have used that texture instead. Chances are that that texture was made months after the map was made. Going back and retexturing all of the maps is a lot of work. Much more back then than in modern tools. Balancing a map is probably harder when the monsters aren't done. The mechanics of all the new Doom 2 monsters are more complex than the Doom 1. How can you choose a graphic theme that doesn't even exist :)

At least one of McGee's maps were retextured. Map03 used to be a marble based map in the earlier version, and then remonstered and retextured to fit in as the third map. There's still one remaining marble texture on one of the pillars. It is an error-prone process.

Many of the maps were probably bug fixed, had complexity cut and other changes at the end of the development. Going back and retexturing would delay the game, and the rest of the team couldn't really do much useful for the game. I think they mostly deemed it good enough and that was it.

Sandy Petersen was the most prolific mapper in Doom 2, and I think his better maps are probably works made later in the cycle, when more of the textures were done. The early maps were probably designed with the idea to innovate from Doom, both in style and layout, with texturing more as a hindsight. Map19 might be an early work since it relies mostly on Doom textures.

You don't really find anything like episode 1 in Doom 2 (map10 is the obvious exception). Doom 2 would have been a much better game if it was polished a bit more, while the rest of the team started working on the next game. Both Doom 2 and Quake suffer from the horrible way id structured their team.

Map30 was one of the last elements they added to the game. It is a crappy boss map, but it is a lot better than the game ending on map29. If Sandy hadn't pursued that map and idea, he could probably have retextured several other maps. It was still the right decision for the game even if map30 is a bit meh. Given the circumstances, map30 is a great addition to the game.

Another probably unpopular opinion I have is that Romero's maps aren't good due to his talent alone. An important factor was that he made a lot fewer maps than Sandy and some of the others did. In Doom he made 7 of the 27 maps and Sandy made 20 (some were based on Hall's work). I think SP would have stood up to JR in quality if they had shared the load more. Sandy prioritized quantity and dead-lines over quality.

In Quake they have a more equal load of maps and there isn't all that much of a difference in the quality. Sandy's maps look much better than they did in Doom [2].

[EngineerKappa]

On 11/1/2022 at 7:34 AM, zokum said:

-snip-

 

Those are definitely some great points. I feel like I'm just willing to give them more leeway because Doom 1 and 2 were so new at the time, yet they still have a somewhat high level of quality overall? I'd still rather play some of the more mediocre 1/2 maps over most of the games out around the time, so they never bothered me as much.

 

I still do think hindsight is part of it too. It's only natural that people have a better idea of what kinds of Doom they enjoy now, compared to the original games throwing whatever at the wall to see what stuck.

Edited November 2, 2022 by EngineerKappa

[The Almighty Egg]

People shit on the chainsaw because they don't know how to use it effectively.

[Ozcar]

.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Ozcar

[heliumlamb]

general midi transcriptions of recorded music and their inclusion in a wad is another form of "doomcute"

[Kyka]

2 hours ago, heliumlamb said:

general midi transcriptions of recorded music and their inclusion in a wad is another form of "doomcute"

 

You. Take. That. Back. :0

 

 

On topic, the archvile should maybe have had a melee attack, so you can't body block him in doorways. (I am not 100% sold on this idea, but it would be an interesting experiment to see how that changes player interaction with the archie.)

 

Also the hell knight was a crappy recolor, and still is. Even though I acknowledge that it fills a good place in the mid tier monster hierarchy.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Kyka

[heliumlamb]

5 minutes ago, Kyka said:

 

You. Take. That. Back. :0

i mean i think it's cute, is it not cute? it's possible.

[Kyka]

I remember back in the 90's, when it seemed like every shovelware wad of somebody's carport had to be accompanied by their favorite Metallica or Alice in Chains midi. Thank God we had people like James Paddock and Mark Klem and Stuart Rynn to save us from those primitive days.

 

*shudders

 

...those were dark times.

[Devalaous]

2 hours ago, Kyka said:

I remember back in the 90's, when it seemed like every shovelware wad of somebody's carport had to be accompanied by their favorite Metallica or Alice in Chains midi. Thank God we had people like James Paddock and Mark Klem and Stuart Rynn to save us from those primitive days.

 

*shudders

 

...those were dark times.

 

Some of them arent bad, but it generally depends on how well converted they were. Long high pitched shrieks where the vocals should be ruined many of them.

[mrthejoshmon]

1 hour ago, Devalaous said:

 

Some of them arent bad, but it generally depends on how well converted they were. Long high pitched shrieks where the vocals should be ruined many of them.

 

A true classic.

[Devalaous]

Dear god. I feel like song midis like this should just be 'instrumental' xD

[Kyka]

6 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

 

A true classic.

 

We need to bring back post hell just to have this piece of... music playing in post hell again.

 

(j/k let's not bring back post hell, dear God no.)

[Dynamo]

NUKESLAD should've been called SLADNUKE, so that it's listed alongside the other SLAD textures alphabetically.

 

>:(.

[nightdiveistrash]

stronghold (tnt map09) sucks

[Ozcar]

I like platformer section of doom.

[pantheon]

Doom feels better and more precise to play at 35fps than anything higher.

[taufan99]

DOOM 64 isn't "the real DOOM³!". If anything, it's the real DOOM II to me.

[Herr Dethnout]

On 11/2/2022 at 5:17 AM, Eggman07 said:

People shit on the chainsaw because they don't know how to use it effectively.

100% this. The Chainsaw is the best ammo saver you get.

Chainsaw >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Berserk

[Lucius Wooding]

Chainsaw and Berserk are both wack. Explosive barrels and monster infighting are the true best ammo savers.

[Rad_Cacodemon]

Most of Doom 2's levels are actually bad, confusing (before we knew them in and out) and not fun. Doom 1 had much better level design. and thats my unpopular opinion

[Ozcar]

9 minutes ago, Rad_Cacodemon said:

Most of Doom 2's levels are actually bad, confusing (before we knew them in and out) and not fun. Doom 1 had much better level design. and thats my unpopular opinion

Um aktually, Thats a popular opinion.

[I Don't Really Have a Name]

Ok, so I have some, I apologize in advance for my poorly english.

 

Downtown is not that bad of a level and for the most part is not confusing, the positioning and combination of enemies are the real let down of the map, but the structure and flow is okay. I really dislike the argument of "It doesn't look like a city" yeah, most of Doom levels don't remenber anything from real life, most people throw this argument because they don't really want to thing about the level and just for what they feel the first time they played, this very notable in people that played the game on release or go with expectations for the first playthrough, the others just repeats this because is already become automatic in the community. I don't think is a good level but a passable one, far from the hate it gets, specially when Industrial Zone from Romero is not that better and look less than a city then Downtown does.

 

Meaner Romero is the better Romero, and by a mile. His enemy placement and mapping skills in general are much better in Thy Flesh Consumed and Sigil than anything in Knee-Deep in the Dead, and the hell visuals that he can create are stellar compared with the okay tech-bases of E1.

 

More mappers should try to make more Tom Hall inspired maps, the open maps with various paths that he create with the idea of Doom having RPG elements are a loot more interesting than the combat lite that most Romero inspired mappers tend to do, is not bad but people give too much of a automatic pass when a mapper says "Is a Romero inspired tech-base". 

 

Doom 2016 and Eternal have more consistent in quality soundtracks but a lot less personality than the classics by Bobby Prince.

 

More megawads should give more enphase on continuous play rather than pistol starts, adding to that, the episodic format is the better one and helps pacing while playing megawads.

 

Going Down is the best wad of all when it comes to feeling that things are advancing, all the levels feel like a continuation of the other that you just exited and by making the player always begin the level in the elevator the surprises and set-pieces hits way harder than just fiding yourself in a place that maybe have a door to indicate from where you came from. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by I Don't Really Have a Name

[CFWMagic]

On 10/31/2022 at 1:47 AM, Codename_Delta said:

I'm guilty of this myself, I'm trying to move away from using the skeletons so much, simply because there's better demons out there, like cybruisers!

 

With my current DeHackEd knowledge, if I want a demon, I just DeHack it in, if I can be bothered that is, I always get ideas for demons either before I work on a map, or Midway through, but back to the revenants.

 

But of course, I'm learning better designs for fights that don't spam revs, and reducing my average revenant count per map, while this does mean more Hell Knights and similar, when you've got an SSG, it all dies in around 6 shells.

Don't worry about it too much. Those who don't map at all (me) shouldn't be bemoaning in the first place. That said if I do ever get off my high horse, I had a WAD idea in mind. Name it "Underused" and have it's gimmick be focusing on things which are not often done in Doom. I.e.:

- A map without a super shotgun, at all.
- A map without any revenants, at all.
- An icon of sin map which doesn't involve shooting rockets at Romero at some point.

... And that's about where my creativity gives out. Maybe there's a reason tried and true methods are so prevalent ... Overuse might be a bit gharish at times, but ultimately what's tried and true tends to work, while more experimental concepts don't always make up for the awkwardness with the freshness. I guess ... Me point being don't feel too bad about it or don't take it as harsh criticism. I wouldn't be able to do better anyway :p

EDIT: I'm too sober to figure out how quoting works so ... -snip-
 

Quote

On 10/30/2022 at 10:33 AM, Wyrmwood said:

Maybe it's just me but at range the single shotgun seems more effective or at least as effective as the SSG and uses half the ammount of shells. I switch all the time. Also pistol starting I've got to find one first, pretty much guaranteed a shotgun from a Sargeant at least but not every map even has a SSG.

 

 

So do I or more particularly Project Brutality. I'd never use it for a first playthrough but stuff like this is great to get a new experience from your favorite wads after you've beaten them on UV already.

 

 

@Wyrmwood > Nah, you are correct. In fact, the shotgun also has another clever advantage, it's shots not diverging nearly as much vertically means you can reliably use it to snipe things through really tight gaps. So to be completely fair I'm a bit over-dramatic. It's just that stock Doom 2, aside maybe downtown, doesn't really put me in a situation where those shotgun advantages are something I actually want to leverage. I rarely find myself actually staying at range and using shotgun to snipe, it's just much easier to make a few steps forward. Similarly, I don't find myself in situations where I need to sit behind tight cover. Certainly though, in the likes of BTSX, shotgun's medium-range versatility does become very important.

As for project brutality, the one thing that didn't work out for me was performance. I'm not sure if it's script-lag or something else, but it REALLY doesn't like to run above 30 FPS on my copy of GZDoom. Go figure. Also I tend to prefer Brutal's sprite work because of OCD and small inconsistencies in PB (for example, did you notice that doomguy literally BENDS the barrel of the shotgun up when pumping it and aiming down sights in PB? The barell literally snaps up, the marine pumps the shotgun, then snaps the barrel into place).

Though, since I have my own Brutal build, I also .. Well .. Steal content from other mods ... I don't intend to use the result for anyone but myself so ... I do allow myself some leeway. So I did steal a couple sprites from PB (Deagle, G36, FNX), added some from Final Doomer (Katana, which I reworked some of brutal's melee combos to actually function with the Katana), I'm ripping some sprites out of VietDoom and another assortment of mods to get an AKM which doesn't look like ass, too. Best of all worlds, if you're willing to bother.

Now that I think about it, I'm starting to wonder if I didn't spend more time splicing mods together for my own personal build, than actually playing the damn thing ...

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by CFWMagic : Quote fuckery. Why am I so bad at this?

[Budoka]

5 hours ago, I Don't Really Have a Name said:

Meaner Romero is the better Romero, and by a mile. His enemy placement and mapping skills in general are much better in Thy Flesh Consumed and Sigil than anything in Knee-Deep in the Dead, and the hell visuals that he can create are stellar compared with the okay tech-bases of E1.

Truth.

[Lucius Wooding]

I agree to some extent and in a lot of ways it makes sense, since E4 and especially Sigil came after Doom 2 was released. Not only was E1 lacking many of the weapons and monsters, it had a very straightforward and consistent visual theme compared to more abstract hellish levels to come later. Even the texture sets he worked with in shareware were very limited compared to later episodes and especially post Doom 1 stuff. No FIREBLU or lava that I can recall.

 

Not to mention, it was a tutorial for a brand new game so it had to be much more gentle to the player. E4 and Sigil expected the player to be a veteran and know the combat, not to baby a player who was possibly brand new to shooters like KDITD. Romero not only had a better understanding of the gameplay to work with, he also made a bunch more maps and knew what worked in a much more refined way after Doom 2. And yeah, the line between dickish mapping and delightfully mean has moved a great deal in the decades since, so in hindsight his harder maps will stand out as more interesting combat. Obviously SIGIL operates under a completely different set of rules, and it certainly shows that Romero is a talented mapper to this day. The later the maps came out, the further he could push the difficulty since the audience became less mainstream and better at the game in general as time went on.

 

In a way you could make the argument that Romero's later maps were better because he was influenced by Sandy's hell levels. 

[baja blast rd.]

On 11/11/2022 at 12:35 AM, Lucius Wooding said:

Chainsaw and Berserk are both wack. Explosive barrels and monster infighting are the true best ammo savers.

 

Yeah if someone were getting better at the game, the pyramid of ammo conservation is: infighting + semi-pacifism + being capable of leaving monsters alive temporarily instead of clearing room by room. Switching to melee weapons and switching meticulously between SG/SSG/CG has very limited potential gain compared to those, and it carries over badly to harder maps, and focusing on it is often maladaptive (as in makes you play worse because you're focusing on that instead of other important concepts). Fun to do sometimes, but not really useful.

[Thelokk]

On 11/4/2022 at 12:36 PM, Kyka said:

I remember back in the 90's, when it seemed like every shovelware wad of somebody's carport had to be accompanied by their favorite Metallica or Alice in Chains midi. Thank God we had people like James Paddock and Mark Klem and Stuart Rynn to save us from those primitive days.

 

*shudders

 

...those were dark times.

 

While I agree about the rather terrible MIDI conversions of rock songs, I hold the very unpopular opinion - which I think I have actually posted in this very thread a long time ago - that community Doom music is by large too 'musical' for its own good: too elaborate, layered, distracting. It's great to listen to on its own, but in general it doesn't follow the unwritten rules of soundtrack making, and that's why I prefer more unobtrusive vg music for my maps. 

[Scypek2]

35 minutes ago, Thelokk said:

 

While I agree about the rather terrible MIDI conversions of rock songs, I hold the very unpopular opinion - which I think I have actually posted in this very thread a long time ago - that community Doom music is by large too 'musical' for its own good: too elaborate, layered, distracting. It's great to listen to on its own, but in general it doesn't follow the unwritten rules of soundtrack making, and that's why I prefer more unobtrusive vg music for my maps. 

 

This is probably why so many of my favorite modern midis are speedmidis. The author only has time to implement one idea, a couple of melodies, a few layers. And the lower stakes and quick thinking might lead to memorable unusual choices too.

[BedrockCastle]

Extended rant about TNT: Evilution incoming!

 

Spoiler

I hate TNT: Evilution. No, wait - I hate half of it. Half of Evilution is hot garbage, a third of it is just mediocre, and there's a couple good maps here and there.

 

Most of it is complete trash in my opinion, mainly because it's all too damn confusing and labyrinthine! MAP18: Mill, I'm looking at you. Especially that blue room. I DESPISE that section - the fucking shootable marble lion head wasted a full thirty minutes of young me's life. No indication that you're supposed to shoot the goddamn thing whatsoever. At least Mill was aesthetically pleasing for the most part - a majority of Evilution doesn't even get THAT right. I'd legitimately rather play the Master Levels.

 

You know something silly? I actually prefer MAP22: Habitat to most of the other levels in Evilution. Habitat is AWFUL, but I like it a whole lot more than Mill, Administration Center, Baron's Den, and all the other sprawling mazes. The progression is confusing, sure, and that blue key behind the fake wall is unforgivable, but at least Habitat is over pretty quickly if you know what you're doing. Even if you know the exact path through Mill or any of the other maps I listed there, it's still going to take a while.

 

It's like TeamTNT saw the worst parts of Doom 2, and decided they should make their maps as close to that as possible. You know someone fucked up when the average Wolfenstein 3D level has better design than most of the maps in a given WAD. I'm extremely angry at my younger self for not knowing about doomwiki.org when he first played Evilution.

 

One thing I feel a need to acknowledge is that there are multiple maps in Evilution that I really like - Prison, Metal, and Stronghold are three solid hits in a row. Stronghold in particular is a fantastic level, and it's the best level in Evilution by far. Heck is mostly fun. I also quite enjoy the secret maps. There's some real gems in this big pile of shit, so I can't just brush it off entirely.

 

I understand that Evilution was made in the mid 90's, when most fanmade levels were bad, but that kind of falls flat when you realize that Plutonia was released the same year. Plutonia is great and it still holds up to this day. The same cannot be said about Evilution. This WAD doesn't even have a fraction of the difficulty Plutonia has. There are a few mildly tough levels, like Heck, but overall it's just super duper boring. I'd rather play something completely and utterly unfair and be frustrated by that, instead of being so fucking bored to the point that I get genuinely infuriated by it.

 

Rant over.

[Lucius Wooding]

Personally I dislike TNT. But I'll defend it here for a few reasons, not least of those being that I'm bored. 

 

The thing is, most of its flaws are universally agreed upon by much of the community; however the things people like about it besides nostalgia are mostly subjective. Things like the visuals and music and the concepts behind the maps can be interpreted differently based on one's expectations. It's very easy to dismiss that stuff and only take stock of the obvious flaws of progression, balance, and sometimes lack of polish. Criticizing the worst of it has been done to death. Its flaws have become a type of B movie esque charm for some time and sometimes people like to appreciate them in that way. If you actually like the shit parts of TNT then you're a contrarian Doom Hipster, but  there's still some legitimately good reasons to like it on its merits, especially since it was fairly influential. 

 

Personally, I never played Final Doom until a couple years ago so it had no nostalgia effect, but I really enjoyed Plutonia and was very impressed by it even after playing a few more modern megawads first. At the time I was very interested in developing my skills and appreciating more complex combat so Plutonia is very much a prerequisite. When it came time to play TNT I expected it to be great also but honestly most of the maps were annoying or average and I didn't have nearly the motivation to tackle the last third of it. I definitely disliked around 3 quarters of the first 20 maps or so but my expectations were very high since Plutonia, like it or not, is pretty consistent and if you like that style of map there are only a handful of clunkers. If I had played it as just some random WAD without any expectations, I certainly wouldn't judge it harshly as if it were a revered founding father of mapping. 

 

Also just a general note, I think TNT did a much worse job with pistol start balance on most maps than other WADs. A lot of maps are probably a lot better, especially at the start, when you've got a chaingun and possibly some spare armor left over. Ditto for non 100% players. Personally I gravitate towards UV maxing and it's clear to me that TNT doesn't give a damn. I do think playing it like this does make it into a much bumpier ride.