Ultraviolence = HARD

[666shooter]

I, too have fallen into the all-too-common trope of "Well, I've beaten all the IWADs and Scythe 1 and 2, etc. [insert "X.Wad" here], and now I must finally be good enough to play everything on UV", but worse than that, when you can't, starting to feel bad about myself as a fan of Doom and like I'm not "good enough" to enjoy whatever Wad because I can't play it very well at the hardest standard. But that's probably a common phenomenon.

I wanted to ask, since we're on the subject and someone mentioned the "Wild!" Skill earlier- I just started playing Slaughtermax myself, and, on the whole, I think its pretty good and not horribly unbalanced depending on the map and scenario (here's looking at you, corridor chokepoints!), but I am also not above savescumming and very rarely cheating when things get on my nerves after the 10th or 20th death in a row. In other words, I'm no hardcore slaughter speedrunner by any stretch.

My point being- I did not expect to go into this Wad on the UV difficulty; I've played a handful or so of slaughtermaps, I knew what I was in for, I finished Bastion of Chaos and SWTW, I felt ready enough, but I played those on HMP. Ribbicks tells you to start with HMP unless you want to be punished. Slaughtermax (just like Paradise) does not offer you the standard difficulties: in addition to the choice of Wild! you can also go "Casual" or "UV-Max". Now, nobody wants to be "Casual". I play Doom regularly enough I'm no longer just "Casual", and yet... biting the bullet will have you eating rockets all night long unless you really are just that good. But here I felt pressured based on the Wad's difficulty labeling to choose a level of difficulty I normally would've reserved for a second run, if at all.

Is this sort of "misrepresentation" or "goading" on the part of the designer in bad taste, or a bad practice? Does it lead to a sort of shaming or gatekeeping on the part of the players who feel pressured, do you think? Should it be avoided when re-labeling difficulties, or is it ultimately harmless?

 

Edit: Speaking of difficulty changes... I just did a quick run of the first "room" [sector, I suspect] of Map 1 on Slaughtermax on every difficulty. Are there... are there actual differences...? {Not counting damage and ammo capacity}

[Doomkid]

6 hours ago, Maggle said:

I want every person who makes these smug "just lower the difficulty 4head" posts to actually play some hard as fuck map on HNTR or something, put themselves in the mindset of a newbie player who still struggles with dodging Rev rockets and has trouble beating Plutonia (which is a very large portion of this community. idk why people forget this all the time) then ask themselves if that person would be able to beat it.

 

The fact of the matter is a lot of hard doom maps nowadays are designed from the ground up around their hard encounters. Some use monsters effectively as map geometry where they exist mostly to box you in or act as some kind of chokepoint or turret. Most have enemies on elevated ledges or other places where it's inconvenient or outright impossible to kill certain dangerous enemies, so you just kinda have to have really good spatial awareness and dodge as much of it as possible. This is a level of difficulty inherent to the maps they're made for, and can't be mitigated by simply removing some monsters or placing extra stimpacks or whatever. Extra steps would have to be taken with some maps to be more accessible. [...] New players simply can't be hooked in with the kind of maps being released now.

I don't have any strong disagreements with what you've said, and I definitely think more well-thought-out implementation of easier modes as you've lined out is the optimal approach - but, adding more health and reducing the monster count objectively means less skilled players will struggle less/have a greater likelihood of getting some enjoyment out of whatever wad they're playing.

 

An extra megasphere, extra ammo, and less shit flying at you simply is easier than not having those things, it's not a matter of opinion but a simple truth from a numbers standpoint. A player who isn't a "doom iron man" still will have greater chances of survival with more resources and less opposition. I may be misunderstanding, but the position almost seems to be "a map is as hard as it's hardest encounter", but I still don't know if I believe that because if the map leading up to that point gives you far more health and ammo, you're still meeting the hardest challenge in the map with more resources which will make it more manageable even if you can't dodge the hypothetical revenant missiles very well.

 

The idea that the vast majority of modern Doom content is only for "super skilled players" also doesn't seem accurate, just in my opinion. I see a huge Classic Doom playerbase, filled these days with many kids/newcomers alike, and they're doing just fine getting through the modern content. Even if they don't have "elite skills", when mappers toss a few extra soulspheres and extra backpacks their way on easier modes, it still makes it more plausible to beat on the whole, and more accessible to a greater numbers of players due to the required skill level for completing the map being reduced overall - even if a few of the hardest encounters don't end up altered that much. I know you mentioned Plutonia, and this may not be widely agreed upon, but even with it's small monster count I find it's encounters are far meaner than those found even in your average modern wad.

 

Of course, more thoughtful implementation of skill settings is still going to be the better option, but the idea that you should "do it to an extreme or it isn't worth it/makes no meaningful difference" just doesn't seem accurate to me and almost seems more likely to dissuade mappers from bothering to implement basic easier skill settings via extra health because it's too much work - even though the silent majority playing on HMP unknowingly has their playthroughs of these modern wads end up a lot more enjoyable and fair thanks to the extra lazily-plopped soulspheres and such. If the choice is between dumping some extra resources in half-heartedly on easier settings VS doing nothing at all, the better choice of the two is still clearly the former.

 

It's when mappers don't bother with it at all that I get bothered by it, and I fear telling established mappers "this still isn't easy enough!" is just going to make them go "ugh" and not even bother with easier modes at all on their next project, since even just getting them to plop extra health on easy is sometimes - in my view wrongly - viewed as "compromising the intended experience". Maybe that's too cynical though.

 

Quote

In my experience, most mapsets that get released now have very negligible, sometimes barely noticeable, differences between skill levels. This, along with a general lack of diversity with wad difficulty speaks to what is, IMO, a severe accessibility problem in the Doom mapping community that I think needs to be addressed.

I agree completely, and thoughtful adjustments of difficulty are obviously going to be better than thoughtless ones - but at the end of the day, some absent mindedly placed extra soulspheres and plasma ammo is still infinitely preferable to nothing in the way of custom difficulties.

 

4 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

Personally, I think a more efficient approach (especially in more conventional maps) would be to mess a lot less with monster placement and do a lot more with health. Tough, interesting fight? Good. Keep it. Add a megasphere on easy. Two if you must. Still too hard? Then remove a monster or two, not 20+% of them. Changing monsters changes so much about the experience. Changing health has a much better chance of only changing the difficulty, and that is (usually) the entire point.

I really like this approach and I think it goes off the back of what I was saying earlier. Sure, taking on 10 revenants on a cliff face is always going to have some inherent challenge - but if I get there with 200 health/200 armor on HMP but only 50/50 on UV, HMP is still loads easier because I went in with more health, and even if I'm damaged, surely more is lying around for after I scrape my way through that particular encounter.

 

Hopefully nothing I'm saying here is taken the wrong way. I'm really glad to see implementation of easier difficulties being talked about in a serious way. Maybe I just perceived things wrong, but there almost seemed to be a stigma at one point against implementing easier difficulties at all - so the fact that the discussion has changed to "how thoroughly should they be implemented, kind of thoroughly or super thoroughly?" is to me a sign that wad makers in the current era are more open to the idea of ""compromising"" the intended experience on easier settings so that non-iron-doomers may at least have a better chance of enjoying new content, rather than the "if your skill isn't high enough, go away and find something else" approach.

Edited November 5, 2020 by Doomkid

[DOEL]

For me ultra-violence is the "default" difficulty. Though, I enjoy pushing myself past my limits.

[seed]

Honestly, speaking of lazily implemented skill levels versus nothing at all, I can easily sympathize with not implementing at all next time if I was a mapper and people ganged up on me to tell me I could just as well do without them because they're inconsequential. Can't eat the cake and have it too, you know, and stuff like that tends to be pretty discouraging, not to mention a bit entitled, depending on how aggressive the reaction is.

 

Wads are built in passion and spare time, and most mappers make exactly jack shit from hours or days spent working on them. Have some decency and be glad to have them at all than act like a spoiled brat. You may go further and fare worse.

[KeaganDunn]

8 hours ago, ‹rd› said:

I'd rather mappers who have their heart in making leisurely stuff do that and not be pressured to match "community norms" (which I've directly observed happen many times). 

 

 

Can't agree more with that. 

 

I love everybody's arguments and thoughts here. You all have great points.

Just because you beat all the IWADs and/or one hard mapset on UV doesn't mean you have to play everything on that difficulty. This is coming from someone who's done just that. The possibilities are endless with Doom WADs and how easy it is to make your own maps, balancing the game however YOU want! Some people like Ribbiks have balanced their mapsets to make HMP the intended difficulty, and reserve UV for people who want a serious challenge, which I like. (Swim with the Whales on HNTR was really fun while not without its challenges.)

I'm a masochist sometimes, I like pushing myself and trying to accomplish any difficult games or challenges out there, which I have done a lot with the Doom franchise after only six months of playing the games. But I too don't believe in the "UV-or-bust" shit just because the original IWADs are easy on UV in today's standards.

I also agree you shouldn't be missing out on an experience by lowering the difficulty. Something like that would probably be like removing the Spider Mastermind and the Cyberdemon in Doom II's MAP20.

 

So far with the maps I've made, I've done my best to make sure Easy and Medium provided the same intended experience and/or the difficulty I wanted it to be, and also to make sure no props or anything were set to certain difficulties. Your guys' thoughts do help me out a little for future maps.

 

As Dario Casali said at one point, "I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who plays Plutonia on hard skill and complains that it's too hard."

[Mordeth]

 

15 hours ago, Fonze said:

It's not the game that's flawed it's all the people that can't play it or don't enjoy it... the pinnacle of elitism.

 

For me this is a bigger problem. Plenty of wads out there that haven't implemented proper difficulty settings, because their creator does not want to "compromise their vision" by adapting their perfect arena, trap or whatever to lesser-skilled players or to players who just roll their eyes when required to die dozens of times before 'getting it'.

[baja blast rd.]

16 hours ago, 666shooter said:

I, too have fallen into the all-too-common trope of "Well, I've beaten all the IWADs and Scythe 1 and 2, etc. [insert "X.Wad" here], and now I must finally be good enough to play everything on UV", but worse than that, when you can't, starting to feel bad about myself as a fan of Doom and like I'm not "good enough" to enjoy whatever Wad because I can't play it very well at the hardest standard. But that's probably a common phenomenon.

I wanted to ask, since we're on the subject and someone mentioned the "Wild!" Skill earlier- I just started playing Slaughtermax myself, and, on the whole, I think its pretty good and not horribly unbalanced depending on the map and scenario (here's looking at you, corridor chokepoints!), but I am also not above savescumming and very rarely cheating when things get on my nerves after the 10th or 20th death in a row. In other words, I'm no hardcore slaughter speedrunner by any stretch.

My point being- I did not expect to go into this Wad on the UV difficulty; I've played a handful or so of slaughtermaps, I knew what I was in for, I finished Bastion of Chaos and SWTW, I felt ready enough, but I played those on HMP. Ribbicks tells you to start with HMP unless you want to be punished. Slaughtermax (just like Paradise) does not offer you the standard difficulties: in addition to the choice of Wild! you can also go "Casual" or "UV-Max". Now, nobody wants to be "Casual". I play Doom regularly enough I'm no longer just "Casual", and yet... biting the bullet will have you eating rockets all night long unless you really are just that good. But here I felt pressured based on the Wad's difficulty labeling to choose a level of difficulty I normally would've reserved for a second run, if at all.Is this sort of "misrepresentation" or "goading" on the part of the designer in bad taste, or a bad practice? Does it lead to a sort of shaming or gatekeeping on the part of the players who feel pressured, do you think? Should it be avoided when re-labeling difficulties, or is it ultimately harmless?

 

Edit: Speaking of difficulty changes... I just did a quick run of the first "room" [sector, I suspect] of Map 1 on Slaughtermax on every difficulty. Are there... are there actual differences...? {Not counting damage and ammo capacity}

 

A lot of people associate "casual" with its insulting use (e.g. "filthy casual!"). The depth of that association is something I learned myself recently. Someone thought I was being ironic by labeling a playthrough of mine as a "casual max" despite it being, to them, very well played. :P

 

The Slaughtermax crew is using it in the actual dictionary sense of "more relaxed" -- like a casual stroll. (Of course relative to UV.) So this is just a misunderstanding. 

 

About your edit: afaik Slaughtermax implements difficulty settings, but apparently map01's HMP and UV are very similar.  

[Doominator2]

Its only elitist losers who belittle people that play a game on anything but the most brutal difficulty. Some times you just want to have fun and not have to pop some veins for playing on the most brutal difficulty.

[seed]

There's something else that occurred to me while I was daydreaming on the chair - what? Inspiration often hits when you least expect it. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to do or say something because it just so happened to hit me then and there, but don't mind this part, this is just me going on a tangest - because I can, and why not? At any rate:

 

I think something left unsaid so far is the fact that it also depends on who is doing it and their particular skill level. Take a hard wad done by a very good player and them implementing skill levels based on what they personally perceive as easy or easier. The results will be wildly different depending on who ends up playing it, especially if the skill gap between creator and player is huge. The creator will still find it easy, while for the less skilled player it may still be brutal. You can't tell much by playtesting your own maps, which is why it's best to do the balance for other skill levels, especially those who do not play on UV exclusively.

 

But there's a lot of nuance and entirely different philosophies when it comes to balancing, all wildly different depending on the approach. You can pay it lip service and just hastily replace some monsters, weapons, power-ups, and so on, or you can rework entire areas. It also depends on what your ultimately goal is and what you perceive as a "the intended experience" and whether you want the rest of the difficulty settings to stay as close as possible to it, be more relaxed, or plain brutal. If you feel like the rest of the difficulty settings should not stray too far from the hardest/intended experience, then chances are, that HMP will have little variance from UV, for instance, which is likely where this perception of the skill settings being almost inconsequential in some cases may come from.

 

So, yeah, balancing wads is actually no easy task depending on what you want to get out of it, and depending on whether you think it's worth the effort or not, you may or may not do it at all.

[Bridgeburner56]

I will always jump into UV first but that's purely because I enjoy being challenged. But you should always play the way that will bring you the most enjoyment

Interestingly, I used to see difficulty balancing as something I wouldn't do (this is like 10 years ago back when I was dabbling). Not so much because of "compromising artistic vision", more that I just thought everyone played on UV and it wouldn't be worth the effort. I now very much think difficulty balancing is worth doing, especially if you are making hard maps as it widens your player base massively. More people have played Bastion of Chaos on ITYTD/HNTR than on UV/HMP which makes me glad I put all the effort into doing nuanced difficulty balancing, and getting every difficulty setting tested by multiple people prior to release. 

So yeah, balance your maps and make it clear what to expect on each difficulty. People will appreciate it.

[holaareola]

If it's too hard on ITYTD, if it's too easy on UV - you've something to complain about. Otherwise? Ergo difficulty levels, matey.

Edited November 5, 2020 by holaareola

[Dr. Crowley]

Oh well, here we go again. As I understand this is a common problem within any gaming community that managed to survive for at least a couple of years (Dark Souls git-guders included) - for example, I remember reading similar threads from the OpenXCom forums with titles like "Why does everyone here play on Superhuman difficulty?"

[Budoka]

I'm happy enough to consider UV the complete experience in the sense that it generally does have more content. Doesn't mean I get to experience it for free if I don't actually have the skill required to so. I simply accept that I don't, and must either practice until I do, or simply let it go for the time being. Same principle applies to WADs that are inherently hard even on lower difficulties.

[Serum]

On 11/4/2020 at 12:56 AM, Dylan Omen said:

do we really all need to believe we are godtier? 

 

Yes

[Krenium]

On 11/3/2020 at 11:56 PM, Dylan Omen said:

why are there so many people who only test/play maps on the UV skill and then complain about the difficulty, even though the mapper has taken the time to implement lower difficulties?

 

In my case, it was because the Doom 2 IWAD along with a select number of leisurely wads became my standard early on. As you probably know, UV in Doom II is like HNTR or easier in many modern PWADs. I've long since adapated, and have no problem turning the difficulty down in maps that provide them, or simply play another wad if I'm not having a good time with any of the available difficulties in the wad I'm playing.

 

But given my 20-year hiatus away from the game, there was a period of adaptation. It slowly dawned on me that community standards have drifted quite a long way since 1995.

 

Mind you, I never actually complained to anyone about this. It's just something I was feeling and butting up against.

Edited November 15, 2020 by Krenium

[ax34]

I usually make my maps "extra hard" on UV and i suggest to play them on lower difficulty. Though i myself usually try to beat community maps on UV.

[Starduster]

I love skimming through wads like Scythe 2, Sunlust, or Dimensions on ITYTD. It's loads of fun if you just want to blast through demons without any care for your survival (well, this might not apply to dimensions, but whatever). On the other end of the spectrum, playing challenging stuff on Ultra-violence or Nightmare! is my go-to for regular doom. If you're struggling to complete a map on UV to the point where it isn't enjoyable anymore, please, take a step down to ITYTD/HNTR/HMP. There's no reason to fret as you can always try UV another time.

[Not Jabba]

I've noticed as a general trend that mappers are paying more serious attention to difficulty settings recently, and that lower difficulty settings are more likely to be enjoyable in recent releases (if they're handled by skilled mappers). If it matters to you, also note that there are Cacoward judges who don't play on UV by default, and I've seen poorly or well-balanced lower difficulty settings impact voting results. Just food for thought.

 

For my part, I strongly agree with rd -- challenging stuff can be cool and tends to feel more competitive for attention due to the fact that almost everyone seems to be making it, but there's a place for well-made, awesome casual stuff, and it would be nice to see more of that. I've tried to take back the term "casual" and view it as a positive thing, if it's done well. Presumably, if your UV is casual, then you don't need to worry as much about lower settings, and possibly shouldn't even have them, or should handle them in different ways than removing lots of monsters. If your UV is challenging, then it becomes a bigger deal -- you probably can't please everyone, but you can still take a larger potential player base seriously.

 

But I think the best thing any mapper can do is to take a page from @Bridgeburner56's book with how he handled difficulty settings in Bastion of Chaos -- not only to have a clearly defined philosophy and intended audience for each of the three main difficulty settings, but also to communicate those philosophies explicitly to players so that they know what setting to play on.

[Bridgeburner56]

32 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

But I think the best thing any mapper can do is to take a page from @Bridgeburner56's book with how he handled difficulty settings in Bastion of Chaos -- not only to have a clearly defined philosophy and intended audience for each of the three main difficulty settings, but also to communicate those philosophies explicitly to players so that they know what setting to play on. 

Thanks Not Jabba, that means a lot coming from you.

[Phobus]

I'm not a fan of the original argument in this thread, so I'll leave that alone. I do like the argument Not Jabba and <rd> have put forth about "casual" being valid (and good). I'm not a time-rich teenager any more and I appreciate being able to casually play through something in good time. This has influenced my mapping and a lot of my most recent releases are more of a casual experience, with difficulty settings implemented, as a result.

 

I still default to UV (decades of experience have to count for something) and try to stick to maps in the more casual "genre", steering clear of mappers that expect me to take multiple attempts at what they've made to learn it and suss out a solution.

[whybmonotacrab]

 As someone fairly new to Doom mapping - only started with Eviternity last year and have since been making my way through some of the more well known mods - I do have to say the community definitely makes it seem like UV is the only way to play. Sure Doomworld is okay, but watching doom playthroughs of people saying "I'm not that great at doom" but then say "obviously, I'm playing on UV, no saves, from pistol start" and then demolish the level you were stuck on on HMP continuous and say it was pretty easy (cough cough Dean of Doom cough cough) is somewhat disheartening. 

 I just beat my first two WADS on UV difficulty: Lunatic and Vanguard, and honestly, I actually found them easier at that difficulty. Not because of the amount of opposition/resources, but because it taught me how to play them. On lower difficulties, there's no incentive to play the way the mapper wants you too, so I'd just play certain maps like they were Doom 2 maps and not engage with the actual ideas the mapper was playing with. So at a certain point in the WAD I'd inevitably run into a difficulty spike because I hadn't learned anything. The individual encounters were tougher in UV, sure, but when you actually know what the mapper wants you to do it puts you in the headspace of "just one more" when you die rather than "well this is pointless, I'll never be good enough to enjoy this."

[Budoka]

7 hours ago, whybmonotacrab said:

but watching doom playthroughs of people saying "I'm not that great at doom" but then say "obviously, I'm playing on UV, no saves, from pistol start" and then demolish the level you were stuck on on HMP continuous and say it was pretty easy (cough cough Dean of Doom cough cough) is somewhat disheartening. 
[...]
  On lower difficulties, there's no incentive to play the way the mapper wants you too, so I'd just play certain maps like they were Doom 2 maps and not engage with the actual ideas the mapper was playing with.

 

On the first point: It's... a video game, you know? Just a video game. Not a big deal or anything. If you have to pick something in your life which you must be among the best people at, it doesn't have to be this. But if you insist on that being the case, you will have to put in the work such an accomplishment entails, no way around that. Even then, it's not as if most of us will ever approach Zero Master or 4shockblast's level of skill. And that's fine, because again, we're not entitled to successfully become number one, or even an ordinary high-tier player, just because we want to be. Things pretty much never work that way, be it with Doom or anything else you can think of.

 

On the second point, if anything, that tells me that Skillsaw did a surprisingly poor job of implementing lower difficulty levels in a way that would reflect the spirit of his design. I mean, he's an excellent mapper, but we all have weaknesses even in our best trades. Then again, that sounds like a very hard job to do right in the first place, so I wouldn't knock the guy over it.

[whybmonotacrab]

9 minutes ago, Budoka said:

 

On the first point: It's... a video game, you know? Just a video game. Not a big deal or anything. If you have to pick something in your life which you must be among the best people at, it doesn't have to be this. But if you insist on that being the case, you will have to put in the work such an accomplishment entails, no way around that. Even then, it's not as if most of us will ever approach Zero Master or 4shockblast's level of skill. And that's fine, because again, we're not entitled to successfully become number one, or even an ordinary high-tier player, just because we want to be. Things pretty much never work that way, be it with Doom or anything else you can think of.

 

On the second point, if anything, that tells me that Skillsaw did a surprisingly poor job of implementing lower difficulty levels in a way that would reflect the spirit of his design. I mean, he's an excellent mapper, but we all have weaknesses even in our best trades. Then again, that sounds like a very hard job to do right in the first place, so I wouldn't knock the guy over it.

I didn't mean I wanted to be the best at Doom. I play to have fun, not to be good. I just meant that people often downplay how damn hard these wads are and often stroke their ego through false modesty - or they don't realise that having played the same game for over two decades hinders your ability to judge how hard something actually is.

 

 I'm not knocking Skillsaw. He does it well in Valiant. I also didn't mean specifically Vanguard and Lunatic even if my phrasing was poor. I've tried other megawads on UV and HMP as well, I just haven't finished them.

 

P.S. I'm tired and not wording things right, so sorry if it comes off defensive or argumentative. That's not the intention.

[Budoka]

56 minutes ago, whybmonotacrab said:

 I just meant that people often downplay how damn hard these wads are and often stroke their ego through false modesty 

 

 

Well, I don't know about that. In the case of MountPain27 whom you brought up, all he says is that he's not a Doomgod(TM) and won't necessarily be able to tackle every map he reviews on the level of play that's expected by it. And as vexing as that might be to hear for players weaker than he is, I would have to agree with him at the end of the day. Compared to the true Doomgods of this age, he really isn't close to one. Heck, as an example, to give a bit of perspective, I'm no Zero Master myself, in fact I'm far below even decino's level, yet unlike MountPain27, I have in fact beaten Scythe 2.

[Lucky_Edie]

Scythe 2 is very hard, don't feel bad for not being able to beat it.

[seed]

1 hour ago, whybmonotacrab said:

or they don't realise that having played the same game for over two decades hinders your ability to judge how hard something actually is.

 

The opposite is also true. It's entirely possible to play a game, or more, for literal years and not get any better, or see only a marginal improvement but not really.

 

I've been playing Doom for years and I still suck :p .

[Budoka]

1 minute ago, Lucky_Edie said:

Scythe 2 is very hard, don't feel bad for not being able to beat it.

 

True enough in the bigger picture, and it was certainly hard for me. There's a reason why that gradual list of WADs in xvertigox's "skill improvement" thread is as long as it is.

[whybmonotacrab]

3 minutes ago, Budoka said:

 

Well, I don't know about that. In the case of MountPain27 whom you brought up, all he says is that he's not a Doomgod(TM) and won't necessarily be able to tackle every map he reviews on the level of play that's expected by it. And as vexing as that might be to hear for players weaker than he is, I would have to agree with him at the end of the day. Compared to the true Doomgods of this age, he really isn't close to one. Heck, as an example, to give a bit of perspective, I'm no Zero Master myself, in fact I'm far below even decino's level, yet unlike MountPain27, I have in fact beaten Scythe 2.

I've also finished Scythe 2, I just did it on HMP, continuous, and with saves. I couldn't imagine doing some of those later maps from a pistol start though.

 

 You're probably right. I was just trying to give the perspective of someone new to doom's custom content. "UV = The way to play" is an idea I've only really seen challenged on this site. For the most part, lower difficulties seem to at best be seen as a stepping stone to playing UV rather than a legitimate way to play by a lot of people.

[Biodegradable]

2 hours ago, whybmonotacrab said:

lower difficulties seem to at best be seen as a stepping stone to playing UV rather than a legitimate way to play by a lot of people.

 

Not sure who "a lot of people" are in this context. I can assure you that the majority here on DW at least believe all difficulties are valid and you can and should play it however you wish. Doom it your way, baby. ;^)

[seed]

Indeed.

 

There is a vocal minority here who doesn't accept anything below UV as valid, but for us, non-UV players, they are all valid skill settings and we don't see it as a watered down experience.