Unpopular Doom Opinions

[baja blast rd.]

10 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

We already moved topics at least twice. This all started with a post that more mappers should embrace jumping and modern features, than moved to if DooM is more about vanilla or modded stuff and ended up about how niche what part of DooM community is.

 

None of which really matter, but it showed how much everybody perception of the DooM games is.

 

People outside really think about DooM as something to be modded first, because if they hear about DooM its because some interesting mod has been released. It doesn't matter if they play it or not, that is what they see, and that is usually what brings them to try DooM. And they often prefer it that way.
Vanilla mappacks are dime a dozen and most of them are just boring stuff we seen hundred times before. You may prefer stuff like this, that's all fine, but you have to admit, there is flood of boring megawads that are effectively interchangable. If there is something more substantial, it gets usually lost in the flood.

 

Those are my points and I really think they are right, at least nobody here gave me any reason to think otherwise. And though I don't think that all mappers should start doing maps only for GZDooM and only modding the game, I don't think that expanding your repertoire and trying actually something more advanced without at least the "stupid" limits of vanilla (like infinite height) would just make better content for everybody.

Bolded especially is unsubstantiated and not an accurate description of anything. Someone who pays close attention wouldn't fixate on a "flood of megawads" because the episode-length release is the dominant form these days; "boring" is very subjective; many/most vanilla mappacks are not interchangeable (I would never mistake El Viaje for Tetanus for Deadliest Demolition) and the past several years have exploded with conceptual variety and projects that have interesting hooks to them and that treat Doom as something to be heavily modded, which you can do even without GZDoom. The oldschool very vanilla-flavored wads are just one of a dozen+ different schools of mapping these days, and even within that ecosystem there's new ideas being tried, like the story-based community project Solar Struggle. Usually when people are inspired by existing work, they pick eclectic influences (I've seen work riffing on Ozonia in development, and that's been out for two years) rather than things that have been done a "hundred times." As a mapper myself, I'm actually kind of overwhelmed by how good people have become at "creative concept" and I've been trying to think of how I can keep up with all the lessons from all of that. Would not be the case if people were only doing the same old things over and over. 

 

Your observations about what people are releasing these days read with a lack of resolution and perspective, the way they do when someone has "checked out" of paying attention to anything that's not their particular niche. In fairness, that's common because there's so much to keep track of, but it's still the same old mistake.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

11 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

Vanilla mappacks are dime a dozen and most of them are just boring stuff we seen hundred times before. You may prefer stuff like this, that's all fine, but you have to admit, there is flood of boring megawads that are effectively interchangable. If there is something more substantial, it gets usually lost in the flood.

 

Those are my points and I really think they are right, at least nobody here gave me any reason to think otherwise. And though I don't think that all mappers should start doing maps only for GZDooM and only modding the game, I don't think that expanding your repertoire and trying actually something more advanced without at least the "stupid" limits of vanilla (like infinite height) would just make better content for everybody.

 

9 hours ago, yakfak said:

^ mappers and modders tend to make things that they themselves enjoy. this massive demand for ever more modded content you perceive would probably be filled by now if it was possible or desirable

 

I think these two posts go well together: I agree with @NeoWorm that, even if people don't like to admit it, many vanilla mapsets are so similar in concept and execution that they might as well be interchangable, or even stitched together to create a wad that still feels completely cohesive (note that I'm not as experienced as many people here, and I haven't played much DOOM in general for the past year, so people who are a bigger part of the community, such as @baja blast rd. will probably have a different outlook (I'm not even familiar with the projects you listed) . That doesn't mean that I don't like them or that they shouldn't continue to be made, just to be clear. But I would like to see more new and ambitious things as well.

 

And I also agree with @yakfak in that mappers/modders create content that they enjoy.

 

However, in terms of the "demand for ever more modded content": I think that's on the horizon. I think that many people drawn into the community via massively popular GzDoom projects such as myhouse will inevitably be more likely to gravitate towards the kinds of projects that inspired them to join the community, since those are the kinds of projects that they obviously enjoy. Besides that, GzDoom will continue to get new features, and more people will have access to hardware capable of running GzDoom at a playable framerate. I don't think there will be less vanilla projects, but I think there will eventually be a boom in more ambitious ones.

[bofu]

As far as I'm concerned, Wad authors should have free rein to do whatever wacky, frustrating, or obtuse crap they wanna do in the secret map slots short of Terrywad BS and crashing the engine (and even that last one could be permissible, like that Extreme ROTT level)

[Ozcar]

I prefer 320x200 resolution in gzdoom instead of high definition.

[Maribo]

2 hours ago, Devalaous said:

???

I made a mod for the original Doom using UMAPINFO that turned it into a 36 map Doom-2 style continuous episode, then did the reverse for Doom 2, making it episodic

My mistake, I forgot that it's endgame = true that forces the player back to the menu. This is what happens when you don't touch anything related to Doom for nearly 2 weeks.

[Ravendesk]

2 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I agree with @NeoWorm that, even if people don't like to admit it, many vanilla mapsets are so similar in concept and execution that they might as well be interchangable, or even stitched together to create a wad that still feels completely cohesive (note that I'm not as experienced as many people here, and I haven't played much DOOM in general for the past year, so people who are a bigger part of the community, such as @baja blast rd. will probably have a different outlook (I'm not even familiar with the projects you listed)

I mean, check those listed by rd out as well, but I'm not sure why we are only contrasting stuff that runs in original exe vs gzdoom mods here. Most of boom/mbf stuff that is being released is designed to be played without gameplay mods, mouselook aim or jumping, and even if we just take the stuff released in the last two years, we will find enormous amount of absolutely different wads, with very different gameplay style and tons of creativity in there. Have you ever seen another wad like Sepia before? Like Jumpwad? Like wormwood 5? Like 10x10 and 1x1? Like Mudman? Like Dance on the Water or Poogers? Not only those are unlike each other, they are also unlike anything else you have played. And those are just random ones off the top of my head, I can name so much more if I go through my doom folder. And this is also a question to @NeoWorm - have you played any of those releases I mentioned? And if not, maybe it's you who lives in a bubble and not the rest of the doomworld?

[Csonicgo]

On 7/27/2023 at 3:18 AM, Kwisior said:

Equinox is bad

Congrats on the hottest take in the thread so far.

 

Equinox in its time (2001) was unlike anything else that had come out at that point. Limit Removing was only 3 years old! Some maps like it were attempted but they always fell off as being "a small-medium map sized up" or a giant expanse of nothing. Equinox came swinging out of the gate with huge set pieces surrounding normal-sized maps, which made those maps feel way bigger than they were. BPRD was also a fan of high ceilings (very, very high ceilings) and big arenas clashing with cramped, small tunnels and twisty hallways, which had been a staple in BUILD maps for quite some time.

You can make an argument that people took the wrong ideas from Equinox (SHAWN everywhere paired with solid color all the time, arenas connected by tunnels) but as a mapset from 2001 it's nowhere near "bad" releases of that year.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

7 hours ago, Ravendesk said:

I mean, check those listed by rd out as well, but I'm not sure why we are only contrasting stuff that runs in original exe vs gzdoom mods here. Most of boom/mbf stuff that is being released is designed to be played without gameplay mods, mouselook aim or jumping, and even if we just take the stuff released in the last two years, we will find enormous amount of absolutely different wads, with very different gameplay style and tons of creativity in there. Have you ever seen another wad like Sepia before? Like Jumpwad? Like wormwood 5? Like 10x10 and 1x1? Like Mudman? Like Dance on the Water or Poogers? Not only those are unlike each other, they are also unlike anything else you have played. And those are just random ones off the top of my head, I can name so much more if I go through my doom folder. And this is also a question to @NeoWorm - have you played any of those releases I mentioned? And if not, maybe it's you who lives in a bubble and not the rest of the doomworld?

I'll check them out when I have the opportunity! I was actually referring to vanilla style wads, not actual vanilla. I'm not the best when it comes to discussing this stuff, I enjoy Doom but I haven't had the time to get into it in-depth like I originally intended. I understand all the basic stuff and the terms being discussed here, but I lack experience and skill, and a lot of wads I simply can't play due to the fact that I have to use a controller. When I realized that, it kind of killed my motivation since I knew that I wouldn't be able to experience a good majority of the wads that people talk about. But all I meant is that from my prespective, a lot of the middle-of-the-road-popularity vanilla style maps I've played were pretty similar and many of the maps could be traded between wads and it would still work. I don't mean that as an insult, I enjoyed playing most of those maps.

[Kwisior]

9 hours ago, Csonicgo said:

Congrats on the hottest take in the thread so far.

 

Equinox in its time (2001) was unlike anything else that had come out at that point. Limit Removing was only 3 years old! Some maps like it were attempted but they always fell off as being "a small-medium map sized up" or a giant expanse of nothing. Equinox came swinging out of the gate with huge set pieces surrounding normal-sized maps, which made those maps feel way bigger than they were. BPRD was also a fan of high ceilings (very, very high ceilings) and big arenas clashing with cramped, small tunnels and twisty hallways, which had been a staple in BUILD maps for quite some time.

You can make an argument that people took the wrong ideas from Equinox (SHAWN everywhere paired with solid color all the time, arenas connected by tunnels) but as a mapset from 2001 it's nowhere near "bad" releases of that year.

I get that it was revolutionary and impressive for its time, but I still hold my opinion because of how miserable the whole experience was after making the grave mistake of pistol starting it. In the odd chance that I replay it I'll definitely go with continuous, but I doubt that some of those maps can be salvaged (especially the last one - legit one of the worst experiences I've had in Doom).

[Ravendesk]

2 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I'll check them out when I have the opportunity! I was actually referring to vanilla style wads, not actual vanilla. I'm not the best when it comes to discussing this stuff, I enjoy Doom but I haven't had the time to get into it in-depth like I originally intended. I understand all the basic stuff and the terms being discussed here, but I lack experience and skill, and a lot of wads I simply can't play due to the fact that I have to use a controller. When I realized that, it kind of killed my motivation since I knew that I wouldn't be able to experience a good majority of the wads that people talk about. But all I meant is that from my prespective, a lot of the middle-of-the-road-popularity vanilla style maps I've played were pretty similar and many of the maps could be traded between wads and it would still work. I don't mean that as an insult, I enjoyed playing most of those maps.

Oh, I wasn't inferring that you were attacking vanilla wads, sorry if it looked like that xd The last question was to neoworm.

 

But regarding the controller, I think you shouldn't be too discouraged. It's definitely harder to play challenge wads with a controller than with keyboard+mouse, but it's totally possible (mmjp plays with a controller for example and he maxed some very difficult maps like fw05 - https://youtu.be/1UGyra-LBiY). I think starting with lower difficulties should help a lot for those harder wads and will fully allow you to experience them at your own pace.

Some things I listed are hard (dotw, poogers, 1x1), but the rest is very reasonable especially on lower difficulties. The things rd mentioned all have reasonable difficulty as well I think.

 

[faceplant641]

Mancubian Candidate UVmaxes some tough stuff with a controller too.  https://www.youtube.com/@MancubianCandidate/videos

 

I'm mostly on PC, but I do play the Unity port on my Switch when I'm on the go.  It is certainly harder to play well, doubly so because the Switch thumbsticks are a sick joke told poorly, but after some adjustment period it's fine, and I'm totally cool with keeping things at HMP or lower.

[TuxWare]

GZDoom is the best doom source port

[roadworx]

doom is good

[Li'l devil]

Unpopular Doom opinions are popular

[zokum]

On 1/19/2024 at 5:38 PM, NeoWorm said:

Well... not having jumping in DooM wasn't a design choice but limitation of the time. Same thing for autoaim, infinitely tall actors etc. Just look at Quake which was ID's next game done with the same philosophy and it has none of those "features".

Not quite. Jumping is a clear design choice, Doom 2 has a jump like mechanic with the arch-vile. Jumping makes it much more complex to make maps where you can't get stuck AND have great views. As it is now, the player cannot step up more than 24 units. A wall of 32 is therefor safe to block the player, but allows for seeing over. If you added in jumping, the player might be able to scale up to 40 units. You would then need walls to be 48 units to block well. Then you'd lose a lot of views. Alternatively you could make walls blocking more often, but that often feels clunky and illogical.

The engine does handle actor heights just fine, but they most likely chose to treat actors as infinitely tall to avoid handling a ton of corner cases and game play problems. When you fire a plasma gun or rocket etc, actor height is checked. The engine handles it fine. They chose to model collisions in a simplified manner and instead focus their time on more important parts of the engine. I doubt it would have been much of a performance issue.

[Patrick_Plays_Doom]

sunlust is overrated

 i mean it is a 11/10 but i dont see the reason for it to be so overrated

[Jason Maguire]

On 1/20/2024 at 10:49 AM, Enzo Carozza said:

It's fun to turn thousands of enemies into red paste and it gives you a strong feeling of accomplishment after you beat a particularly hard one.

 

I was being sarcastic - giving an extremely acceptable "unpopular" opinion, because suggesting anything novel is apparently not allowed around here

[Jason Maguire]

On 1/20/2024 at 4:56 PM, treulosetomate said:

If you added jumps and free mouselook by default, you'd take something away from Doom. They're (some of the) aspects that make Doom unique and more interesting to me. Many maps are designed around these limitations, with enemies you can't snipe or shootable switches for secrets that are too high. Same with infinitely high actors. 

 

This is precisely why I said I would like for this to become the norm for mappers i.e. most maps designed with these features in mind. If it were as simple as playing existing and future maps and enabling freelook, then I would just do that. But for the feature to really work optimally, wads need to be designed with this in mind in the first place, as I said. 

 

On 1/27/2024 at 2:02 AM, zokum said:

Not quite. Jumping is a clear design choice, Doom 2 has a jump like mechanic with the arch-vile. Jumping makes it much more complex to make maps where you can't get stuck AND have great views. As it is now, the player cannot step up more than 24 units. A wall of 32 is therefor safe to block the player, but allows for seeing over. If you added in jumping, the player might be able to scale up to 40 units. You would then need walls to be 48 units to block well. Then you'd lose a lot of views. Alternatively you could make walls blocking more often, but that often feels clunky and illogical.

 

This is not a some problem unique to jumping. It exists wherever a platform or ledge exists beside a fence, where you "should" be able to run off and over the fence. But, you're simply blocked. This happens in countless maps and nobody calls it "clunky". 

 

 

On 1/21/2024 at 9:23 AM, Super Mighty G said:

Consider: sprites align like garage when you look up and down

 

I really don't notice that at all. 

 

I usually play most wads with no freelook, and then if I like it I might check it out with freelook (especially if there's a lot of flying enemies that are fun to try and hit without autoaim). I really don't notice a problem since you're very rarely looking straight up or down at an enemy, you're just aiming on a slight angle instead of using autoaim. 

 

 

On 1/19/2024 at 10:10 PM, zokum said:

You can only really complain about not taking into account jumping if the map is for a port that has jumping enabled as default. Aiming rockets make it much easier to aim for the floor and ensure a good hit. It makes the rocket launcher much more powerful. It also ruins the BFG 9000 complexity, making it trivial to ensure you fire the beams very quickly and in an optimal location.
 

 

Can we just all acknowledge that this is perhaps the worst possible argument against freelook? 

 

That removing the extraordinarily frustrating and bug-like "feature" of accidentally blowing yourself up with rockets due to autoaim aiming at the ground would "ruin" the game? 

[TuxWare]

There is nearly no reason to be staying away from UDMF even as a newbie mapper

[june gloom]

I was going to start a thread about this but maybe this is the better place for it:

 

I think Doom's overall aesthetic -- textures, sprites -- is kind of crap. There's no unification to it. It's a wild mishmash of clay models, photographed assets (especially the weapon sprites), stock photography, a few textures converted from Wolf3D. A lot of the textures just don't gel together very well. Some of them -- the photographed ones especially -- stick out like sore thumbs. We all made fun of FIREBLU but TEKWALL is just straight up madness, no cohesion with the other textures. Everything is just bodged together. I love Doom with all my heart, but I think it looks a hundred times better when a new texture set and new sprites come together for a more cohesive, unified look. I always get disappointed when I hear about some promising project and go check it out and it's all vanilla textures and sprites.

[Jason Maguire]

Different unpopular opinion: Very few wads should have as many maps as they do 

 

Most megawads are significantly filler, and I find I don't enjoy most of them until around map 15 onwards 

 

Having more than a few maps without a super shotgun is rarely a good idea unless you're doing a lot of non-conventional maps (e.g. getting only a rocket launcher in a map without a lot of room, infighting combat puzzle maps) 

 

But if the map's "difficulty" comes from weapon restrictions and having to regular shotgun hundreds of low to mid tier enemies (across multiple maps), it's almost certainly going to be very boring and more a test of patience than skill 

 

Ozonia is the first megawad that comes to mind that this describes well (since I just played it) - Very nice, very enjoyable megawad, but very few challenging maps and instead lots of maps with no SSG or SSG being available only towards the end of the map, which makes the maps more of a slog than genuinely challenging. 

 

Don't get me wrong, ammo/weapon restriction is definitely a thing, but it's been done so many times that the novelty has well and truly worn off unless you're doing something creative with it. Meanwhile, giving the SSG allows you to create much more high intensity maps. There's really only so much you can do when you've only got a shotgun. 

 

I think a lot of mappers would be better off releasing wads with a lower number of high quality maps rather than just pumping out levels to reach the arbitrary 30 map total.

 

Fractured worlds, for example, only has 7 non-secret maps, and yet the quality of these maps is almost unparalleled. Not everyone can make a wad like this, but I think taking the time to make fewer but more memorable maps would be a positive development. And the highly challenging nature of these maps means the time spent completing the wad on UV is not necessarily much lower than more a much easier 32 map megawad (assuming that UV is actually made hard and the mappers don't capitulate to whiny babies that refuse to play lower difficulty settings). 

[yakfak]

i kinda agree that megawads don't need to be so TALL

and with umapinfo more mappers can just make "megawads" of any number of maps

but it's funny

I think the SSG is the prime contributor of slog to doom and withholding it is a sign of strength

 

[Jason Maguire]

Following on from my last point, for high quality wads made by skilled, experienced mappers who are capable of making highly challenging maps, I think mappers should consider releasing two versions of their wads: A regular version, and an 'elite' version. 

 

The regular version would have the UV difficulty be around eviternity or something similar that's challenging but not unplayable for absolute doom normies. Then the 'elite' version would contain one or more 'elite' difficulty settings that are designed for doom veterans and made as hard as the mapper would like them to be. 

 

That way, you avoid the issue of whiny babies crying that ultraviolence is "too hard" and expecting to be able to beat any wad on the hardest difficulty setting instead of just using easier skill levels, thereby ruining the wad for people who are actually good at doom. 

 

This might sound like a pain in the ass, but consider the exact type of mapper I have in mind for something like this: Ribbiks. 

 

Ribbiks was so understandably tired of people complaining about his wads being too challenging (instead of using lower difficulty settings) that he literally didn't make ultraviolence available for Magnolia and forced everyone, to start with, to play on a lower difficulty. 

 

This way, normies get their warm fuzzies from beating the wad on ultraviolence, while the rest of us who find most wads to be too easy would get to play super challenging versions of these maps, and since it's a different version of the wad there is less of a feeling of "needing" to be able to beat the wad on elite from the average player. 

 

The way I envision it, this wouldn't be the standard thing for megawds, just for those mappers who make maps that are ideally as hard as possible. And it's not even a matter of making a whole megawad and then doing a bunch of work creating extra difficulty levels. Really, they would start out making a map as hard as they ideally want it to be, call that the 'elite' difficulty, and then make all the lower difficulties easier versions of this (still a lot of work, but it's easier to make a map easier than harder).  

 

And again, for anyone somehow offended by me offering my unpopular opinion in an unpopular opinion thread: I'm not telling anyone what to do, I don't expect anyone to listen to me or implement my ideas, this is just my opinion and it wouldn't belong in this thread if it's something everyone already agreed with. 

[Jason Maguire]

2 minutes ago, yakfak said:

i kinda agree that megawads don't need to be so TALL

and with umapinfo more mappers can just make "megawads" of any number of maps

but it's funny

I think the SSG is the prime contributor of slog to doom and withholding it is a sign of strength

 

 

Fair enough, but I just cannot stand multiple maps of shotgunning imps and pinkies. I literally skip the map if that's what most of the map is like. I find a lot of these maps without the SSG to be hard not because they're genuinely challenging but because I don't have the patience to kill dozens of enemies with such a weak weapon. 

 

With the SSG, it gives you so many more options for combat situations because you can use more enemies or more challenging enemies, especially say archiviles and revenants. With just a regular shotgun, there's very few interesting things you're able to do (other than combat scenarios that don't actually rely on the shotgun itself). SSG facilitates super high intensity maps, real 'hanging on for dear life' fights and ambushes, whereas you simply don't have the necessary firepower with a regular shotgun to facilitate this. 

 

 

[june gloom]

I feel like what shotgun you have access to should dictate the map style. The regular shotty is perfect for slower paced, survival horror type maps... like Doom 1 did. You should be given the SSG for the big arena fights, big swarms, big enemies, like Doom 2, Final Doom and frankly the majority of popular PWADs. Everything tougher than the Caco should be used sparingly if you're only giving players the pump action.

[roadworx]

unpopular opinion:

having this thread here to act as a containment zone neuters what could be a lot of good discussion and makes the rest of the forums extremely boring. all the new or controversial ideas just get thrown into this thread, meaning that the amount of discussion that they can recieve is minimal due to the fact that the thread is constantly moving onto someone else's idea, when having two concurrent threads would be better.

 

you could have a lot of really interesting threads with lots of valuable discussion if people would put their more nuanced takes (i.e. not shit like "gzdoom good all other ports bad") into their own topics, but you never will with a thread like this.

Edited February 1 by roadworx

[bofu]

1 hour ago, june gloom said:

I was going to start a thread about this but maybe this is the better place for it:

 

I think Doom's overall aesthetic -- textures, sprites -- is kind of crap. There's no unification to it. It's a wild mishmash of clay models, photographed assets (especially the weapon sprites), stock photography, a few textures converted from Wolf3D. A lot of the textures just don't gel together very well. Some of them -- the photographed ones especially -- stick out like sore thumbs. We all made fun of FIREBLU but TEKWALL is just straight up madness, no cohesion with the other textures. Everything is just bodged together. I love Doom with all my heart, but I think it looks a hundred times better when a new texture set and new sprites come together for a more cohesive, unified look. I always get disappointed when I hear about some promising project and go check it out and it's all vanilla textures and sprites.

This is pretty short-sighted, no offense. The TEKWALL textures can look good when not used in a tiling manner (such as for exposed circuitry panels, or even just small pieces of trim), and TEKWALL4 integrates seamlessly with SKINTEK1 and SKINTEK2. Not every WAD needs to use OTEX or whatever other texture pack is in vogue, and I personally view it as a fun challenge to make something that looks good and cohesive using primarily stock textures.

[baja blast rd.]

1 hour ago, roadworx said:

unpopular opinion:

having this thread here to act as a containment zone neuters what could be a lot of good discussion and makes the rest of the forums extremely boring. all the new or controversial ideas just get thrown into this thread, meaning that the amount of discussion that they can recieve is minimal due to the fact that the thread is constantly moving onto someone else's idea, when having two concurrent threads would be better.

 

you could have a lot of really interesting threads with lots of valuable discussion if people would put their more nuanced takes (i.e. not shit like "gzdoom good all other ports bad") into their own topics, but you never will with a thread like this.

 

Imo the cause and effect suggested here is way too strong, and it mostly doesn't work that way either. Some version of this thread has been active and running for most of the past decade. The pre-2020 years, which had lots more "good threads," had both the Confessional Booth (which was still in Doom General and used for that type of posting) and a different Unpopular Opinion thread running at the same time. So threads like this don't absorb good discussion. Nearly all posts in this thread are drive-by posts that exist because there's this thread and would not be started as standalone threads. (People like my posts in this thread and despite those being higher-effort, there are exactly zero of them that I would have started as standalone threads.)

 

Pretty much all of the degrading in "good discussion" is a mix of a lot of discussion moving off to Discord servers, and a lot of new forum sign-ups who don't post well. Forums have become more of a hub for sharing wads and surface-level activity. When I want to have conversations about interesting topics, it's mostly in different Discord servers or even private channels, which seems to be true for a lot of people.

 

The issue with this thread is more that it creates (additional) bad posting that would not exist without it and just lets people post badly without consequence.