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lwks

Why is Plutonia good?

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Unpopular opinion here, Plutonia kindda sucks, from the overuse of hitscanners to the most retarded traps I think the whole thing just encorages savescuming, which is bad because reasons. Now, recently someone on the ZDoom discord server recomended me to play Plutonia 2 and PRCP, reluctantly I played a little of both and I think I started to get a little of the appeal of these "hard" wads, but I still think it fucking sucks mostly. I've also heard that people complain about these same goddamn things too, which is weird to me since Plutonia is so beloved by the community. This video from Civvie puts things into a better perspective (specially what he says at 16:11), though it still makes me wonder why he likes it so much even if he also complains about the traps and all that, it's almost as if frustration equals fun, very weird.

 

Which brings me to the title of the thread, why is Plutonia good? I really have a hard time understanding how a WAD that overuses unavoidable instanteneous damage (I'd say even worse that TNT) and that's full of traps that resemble early forms of trolling (which makes it ahead of its time in a certain way) can be venered so highly by the community.

One of the reasons I want to understand this is because I want to make better maps, so understanding what people like might help me...or not, we'll see...

Inb4 "duh he's noob and hates difficult games" I've beaten Dark Souls 1, 3 and Sekiro, have at me.

 

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm more interested in hearing good things about Plutonia (i.e. what do you guys like about it, its best moments, etc...) than to have an actual discussion about hitscanners and traps, I just want to know how to make good maps

Edited by lwks : Clarification

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Although I give Plutonia 10/10, and it's the only 10/10 right now, I completely admit I'm biased that I like the historical value of Plutonia.

 

The way it sets up difficulty traps and make the player to strategically approach it is why I like it, and I consider it as a difficulty standard for future WADs. Of course, there are things that are not ideal for Plutonia, like there's no music (fortunately we have the community midi pack now!) and almost everything is brown and green, but it's done in 4 months and only 2 men, so I would let those slide and pretend I didn't see it (the evidence of me being biased :P).

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What historical value are you refering to? The almighty MAP32?

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4 minutes ago, lwks said:

What historical value are you refering to? The almighty MAP32?

I edited my previous post because I accidentally clicked the submit button.

 

Later WAD sets up traps in a similar way, so I wouldn't say Plutonia is the worse in this case, but TBH, I totally understand people don't like Plutonia because of these things. Even seasoned player can be killed by some of the scummy traps for sure if they're doing a blind playthrough.

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Understandable @Jayextee , I've just recently stoped savescuming (habit that I got from playing Doom WADS with excessive ammounts of traps) and started Pistol starting throught Plutonia 2, PRCP and Alien Vendetta, the arcady nature of the game does surface and it's way more engaging than starting every single map with 200 Health, Armor and full ammo capacity, the metagame on the powerups such as Soulsphere and Megasphere where you refrain from picking them up in situations where they would be useful in order to save them for the next level can hurt the game experience, not to mention the savescuming that I used to do.

 

Though retarded traps are still bullshit and having to sit through a loading screen that's as long as the position of the particular encounter you're strungling with relative to the lenght of the level is, not to say infuriating, tedious, I'm looking at you PRCP MAP04!

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Plutonia has some traps that you're quite unlikely to survive the first time you encounter them, but for me, once I was familiar enough with the maps, I found it a lot more fun than most of Doom 2. It gets better with foreknowledge. And learning the maps is part of the fun anyway.

 

21 minutes ago, lwks said:

Inb4 "duh he's noob and hates difficult games" I've beaten Dark Souls 1, 3 and Sekiro, have at me.

 

Of those, I've only played the first Dark souls (plus Demon's Souls and Bloodborne). While I did enjoy them, I don't think it's a great comparison to hard Doom maps because Doom is so much faster and has a higher skill ceiling. The main reason Dark Souls is perceived as difficult is because it punishes you harshly for your mistakes (especially while you're still getting used to the controls), but these mistakes are usually easy to avoid in terms of raw mechanical skill, particularly with foreknowledge. It also has some traps that you're quite unlikely to survive the first time you encounter them (sound familiar?). For these reasons, a second playthrough of a Souls game always goes much more smoothly in my experience.

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19 minutes ago, Pseudonaut said:

Plutonia has some traps that you're quite unlikely to survive the first time you encounter them, but for me, once I was familiar enough with the maps, I found it a lot more fun than most of Doom 2. It gets better with foreknowledge. And learning the maps is part of the fun anyway.

This is the point, I think that it's a bad thing when a map requires foreknowledge in order for you to survive through it in a practical way. Earlier this month I was playing throught TNT and I got into a trap where a door opened behind me with a single Chaingunner and an Archvile, I think I must have died in less than a second and a half, and it's is fucking infuriating and it only gets worse when you take into consideration that modern traps have WAY more monsters and hitscanners than that, making everything very rng heavy, as I said in the last comment "...having to sit through a loading screen that's as long as the position of the particular encounter you're strungling with relative to the lenght of the level is, not to say infuriating, tedious..."

 

Quote

I don't think it's a great comparison to hard Doom maps because Doom is so much faster and has a higher skill ceiling.

Yes, I do know these games are very different, though I wouldn't go as far as to say one is harder than the other, this is material for an entire discussion on itself wich is way beyond the scope of the thread, what I was trying to say is that I'm not unfamiliar with challenging gameplay.

 

Quote

but these mistakes are usually easy to avoid in terms of raw mechanical skill, particularly with foreknowledge

I'd say practice rather than foreknowledge, and I do aknowledge that DS has it's "bullshit trap" moments, but while some of them can be avoided by paying atention to your surroundings I would also say that they aren't as frequent as Doom traps.

Edited by lwks

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OK... my mind was all over the place, so I'll have one more input just to express myself completely.

 

The map I like most in Plutonia is surprisingly Map15. There are a lot to say about Map15 IMO.

 

Map15 forces the player to go fast because you have no actual way to kill those Chaingunners unless you progress the level to a certain point. This is a very bold design, and there's no other level like this in any other IWADs, if I remember correctly. Of course, bold designs can easily backfire on the rating since players are not used to this kind of pace in one map. I think most of the time, the first impression of this map would be this map sucks (including me back in the day). Then this thing actually divide players into 2 groups. One group who doesn't mind skipping something and come back later, and another group who really wants to kill everything before making any progression. Occasionally there are comments saying other maps don't have enough resource to deal with, let's say 5 Arch-viles at the beginning, but the intention of the map is to skip it and come back later.

 

Also, like @Jayextee said, Map32 also has its value at the time, and it's also an out of place design for sure (back in those days), just like Map31. In 90s standard, it's hard to imagine that one map contains multiple Cyberdemons. I do think they are proud of themselves about these maps because they didn't even setup a normal exit for Map31 for you to escape this nightmare.

 

@Pseudonaut For some reason, there are quite a lot of people around me saying that Dark Souls things to me so much that I decide not to play Dark Souls (the other reason is that I don't have enough time), so I agree with what you said. The time you explain there are quite a bit of skill depth in Doom, these people will just counter me by saying Doom looks dumb and not interesting, which is sort of annoying since technically they know nothing about Doom itself... (of course I'm talking about Classic Doom).

 

For people who are big fans of Civvie, I suggest you don't read this part. (Modified according to the correction provided by Jayextee, which is definitely a correction to my confusion about words.)

Spoiler

If I have the skill level of Civvie, I wouldn't call myself a good player in Doom. Even with my current skill level, I would only call myself an OK player. Don't get me wrong, I do watch his videos, and he does provide good entertainment value as a decent player. However, the thing about these Doom levels, I personally rate the difficulty of Plutonia 1/5 because IMO, it's the origins of later WADs. However, if you look at only IWADs, Plutonia is the end of the WADs. Judging from the different assessment like these, people would find Plutonia very easy or extremely hard. The point here is that it's almost a must to complain about Plutonia since his skill level, and he said something like "getting all the anime girl if you can beat this with UV pistol start" in the Plutonia videos is funny, which is needed for the entertainment, but on the other hand, it's not hard at all.

 

↓ That makes sense as I did confuse these 2 concepts together quite a bit, so it's kind of an impression thing that everything think a pro is a good skill level set, just like saying "let the pro handles the problem" or something like that.

Edited by GarrettChan

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For what it's worth, 'pro' is short for 'professional' and means that you're being paid to do your thing as a vocation. I wouldn't treat it necessarily as a qualifier of skill level, although that can be a factor in whether or not one becomes a professional. Just a mild caveat there.

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Does anyone know where I can find playthrough .lmps recorded by Casali brothers themselves? I watched them aaaages ago. I remember them being quite slow (they approached their own fights as puzzles). Not sure if all maps were included, I only have a vague memory of "Aztec" which was insanely hard to me back then ;) Now I have a desire to see how they handled MAP15

 

 

Edit, never mind, it is right there on Doomworld, see 2 posts below

Edited by vdgg

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1 minute ago, vdgg said:

Does anyone know where I can find playthrough .lmps recorded by Casali brothers themselves? I watched them aaaages ago. I remember them being quite slow (they approached their own fights as puzzles). Not sure if all maps were included, I only have a vague memory of "Aztec" which was insanely hard to me back then ;) Now I have a desire to see how they handled MAP15

Oh frigging hell, there's something like this? I would love to watch them playing Map15, 31 & 32.

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Arguably one of the most historically important demos has 5 downloads...

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This is interesting, just downloaded it and I'll definitely see some replays...as soon as I figure out how the hell do I play .lmp replays

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  • Appealing level-design that stood the test of time.
  • Custom new textures that looks great even to this day.
  • Interesting themes like jungle, hell and the devil hive.
  • Clever usage of monsters, utilizing minimal enemy count to maximum effectiveness.
  • Simple and straightforward challenge-style gameplay without the weird progression quirks like in TNT.

Plutonia is great and it more than deserves its legendary status. The Casalis did an awesome job even though a lot of the design choices were based on Doom and Doom 2 design, not that it's a bad thing but you can sometimes see the direct influence of a certain map or room.

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7 minutes ago, lwks said:

This is interesting, just downloaded it and I'll definitely see some replays...as soon as I figure out how the hell do I play .lmp replays

 

I usually just click and drag the .lmp file into the executable file. It won't work if you're using GZDoom, though.

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Things near-guaranteed to kill you without foreknowledge (which comes into play at 2nd attempt, or further attempts if the 1st wasn't enough to hint you at possible strategies to survive them) is a natural consequence of difficulty creep past a certain point. If you consider having to redo everything one extra time after the mandatory failed attempt necessary to learn what a fight's going to throw at you an unacceptable time expenditure, then I guess difficult stuff just isn't for you and that's the end of the topic. Necessary foreknowledge and mandatory retries is not a bad game design, unless they are the sole element necessary to complete something afterwards, eschewing the need for skill and effort on player's part. Think the old as dirt adventure game example of three unmarked doors, two of which instantly kill you and the third just lets you through, and that's the end of them.

Plutonia is highly acclaimed (by the half of Doom community that doesn't mind dying) because once you have the foreknowledge, its gameplay strikes a balanced combination of fast, fun and skill-demanding while keeping moderation in all three, which very few 90s maps could boast.

Also consider that, while this may seem alien to you right now, if you do grit your teeth and put in effort to learn the maps and then how to dismantle them and then practice them a lot, you will not just learn how to deal with the particular traps employed in Plutonia, but also a wide range of fights that many other fanmade mapsets employ. You will gain some extend of ability to quickly react to new encounters, read their structure and recognize their similarity to Plutonia's stock patterns and know how to react accordingly, which will immediately increase your chance from 0% to some nonzero number, how high exactly depending both on your general gaming prowess and your overall dooming know-how.

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Quick PSA: There is nothing scummy about saving the game and the term “savescumming” is a blight on Doom history.
 

Here’s a really recent ramble from me in response to a bunch of people saying Plutonia is easier than E1M1 on ITYTD (okay maybe not that exaggerated but still)

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2155066
 

It’s tough and I don’t like how it approaches traps. It’s definitely not bad, but it is an acquired taste.

 

52 minutes ago, dmslr said:

Arguably one of the most historically important demos has 5 downloads...

Just so this will make a little more sense, I’m pretty sure downloads have only been tracked since about 2015. It would be cool if there was a note on the downloads section which said that, I’m sure it’s confused or mislead others at times - Some old chart-topper wads from the olden times are massively underrepresented by those numbers.

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2 hours ago, lwks said:

I've beaten Dark Souls 1, 3 and Sekiro, have at me.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Doom or Plutonia, honestly.  It's a completely different type of game that requires a totally different set of skills.

 

Actually, you know, after about 10 seconds of thought...I do see the correlation between Plutonia and Souls.  Both games use bullshit traps that are a pain the first time you encounter them but become much easier on subsequent runs.  Got it!  What do I win?

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25 minutes ago, vdgg said:

OK, found it. It is just Dario

 

 

I just watched him standing still and dying on MAP15, I think the replay broke for me somehow, I'm using ChocolateDoom 2.2.1, also it seems like he was playing with mouse + keyboard, interesting, since I've been playing Plutonia with arrows.

 

7 minutes ago, Uni said:
  • Clever usage of monsters, utilizing minimal enemy count to maximum effectiveness.

"Laughs in MAP32"
But the Clever part is an interesting point that I'll be aware off next time I play through it

 

8 minutes ago, tchkb said:

Things near-guaranteed to kill you without foreknowledge (which comes into play at 2nd attempt, or further attempts if the 1st wasn't enough to hint you at possible strategies to survive them) is a natural consequence of difficulty creep past a certain point. If you consider having to redo everything one extra time after the mandatory failed attempt necessary to learn what a fight's going to throw at you an unacceptable time expenditure, then I guess difficult stuff just isn't for you and that's the end of the topic.

@tchkb Plutonia doesn't only feel hard, Plutonia feels bullshit, that's the point. I've faced bosses in Sekiro and Dark Souls where I succeded in the first atempt and others that took me multiple atempts, whereas dying in these games generaly happen after a series of mistakes, like choosing to heal at the wrong time after unsucessful atempts at dodging/blocking, terry traps can bring the player's health to 0 in a fraction of a second, like earlier this month when a Chaingunner and a Archvile killed me in one second more or less, and this is a light trap to today's standards. (And yes, in the cases where it happens in Sekiro/Dark Souls it's bullshit too, I don't think anything should have the potential to intakill the player)

 

I've also seen a guy killing Sekiro's final boss in the third or so atempt after having struggled HARD throughout the whole game, and when I mean struggling HARD I mean "uninstall the game once or twice" kinda hard. The thing with terry traps in Plutonia and alikes is that they're cheap, in Sekiro/Dark Souls when you die to an enemy you often feel that you're getting a better grasp and understanding of the game, be it your moveset or mechanics of the enemies in question, sometimes you think "perhaps I shoudn't have used my Gourd at the wrong time".

 

When you die in a terry trap you don't get a better understanding of any mechanics or anything, you died because you lacked the foreknowledge that X enemies spawned on Y place and that you should have Z weapon equiped to react to that particular terry trap for that specific map of that specific wad.

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11 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Quick PSA: There is nothing scummy about saving the game and the term “savescumming” is a blight on Doom history.

I will continue to call it this for the humor of it.  I play with saves, and just find the term to be funny.

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@lwks

They were recorded with Doom2 1.9, not Doom2 1.9f. I guess chocolate doom should work with something like

chocolate-doom -iwad doom2.wad -file plutonia.wad -playdemo plut15uv

i.e. setting Doom2 as IWAD and Plutonia as PWAD

 

 

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30 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

There is nothing scummy about saving the game and the term “savescumming” is a blight on Doom history.

Huh?

 

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Pretty much everything that @Uni said.

It has pleasing visuals, high replay value due to shorter than usual levels, good challenge, unique style, unique traps and combat situations, fast-paced levels (more so than of any official iwad), interesting layouts and remakes.

TNT lacks most of those factors.

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Thanks @vdgg but I had already managed to work it out.

As for the clip of the guy playing BTSX savescuming like hell, well that was a little bit more than what I used to do lol but yeah I savescumed a lot.

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34 minutes ago, guitardz said:

I'm not sure what this has to do with Doom or Plutonia, honestly.  It's a completely different type of game that requires a totally different set of skills.


Yeah, OP's Dark Souls is someone else's Plutonia. Plutonia to me isn't that hard anymore, whereas I died a lot shortly after leaving the starting area in Dark Souls. If I took the time to learn how things work however I'm sure I could eventually find it easier to play, ditto with a hard Doom WAD.

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2 hours ago, lwks said:

"Laughs in MAP32"

 

Yes, even though MAP32 has a relatively high number of monsters(I would argue that it's not that high), MAP32 is certainly a gimmick map and quite honestly is such a fun map to go through. I still find the gameplay of the map to be quite strong and unique, especially for the era.

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