Any Peeves You Have With Custom Doom Wads?

[A Nobody]

Anything about custom made Doom Megawads that annoy you? I'll start. There's rarely any where jumping and crouching are supported or required. They're mostly vanilla made. Even though there's some made for GZDoom or Zandronum, they are still made with vanilla Doom's limitations in mind. I might as well play with Chocolate Doom if they insist to play these the vanilla way by turning off free look and such. Also the lack of deathmatch and/or co-op support for some.

Edited December 19, 2020 by The Strife Commando : Added Zandronum to the list.

[MxCraven]

I'm not sure if this is the case, or if it's just I haven't found the right WADs, but "Make it hard and have no easy". I'm bad at this game, but I want to play the pretty and incredible maps from $current_year, but so many are incredibly difficult and even whacking it down to ITYTD doesn't change much (one highly rated megawad had the same monster placement across all difficulties and just a few extra healths dotted about, but after getting out the first room with 2 revs, and instantly getting ambushed by an archie, into a room filled with pinkies and imps to press buttons in 4 corners, they didn't do much)

I'm not saying don't keep increasing the difficulty, but accessibility is something I think gets forgotten as games get older (it certainly does in the multiplayer side of Quake-likes)

[spineapple tea]

Misaligned textures will be the death of me. Why is it so hard for you to just look at a texture and hold the arrow keys for a second in Doom Builder. Or just random textures in random places. Door texture for a wall? Why not. Fireblu door that isn't a secret? Makes sense to me.

[galileo31dos01]

My personal peeve with playing custom doom maps is having tiny flies banging on my desktop, or on my keyboard, or doing acrobatics while banging in the air between the screen and my vision, because that's rude and disrespectful and unsettling to me as a person. 

 

To the flies, get a 64x64u room!

[A Nobody]

1 hour ago, N1ck said:

Misaligned textures will be the death of me. Why is it so hard for you to just look at a texture and hold the arrow keys for a second in Doom Builder. Or just random textures in random places. Door texture for a wall? Why not. Fireblu door that isn't a secret? Makes sense to me.

Bugs. That's another thing that bothers me. It's rare that Megawads have bugs, but it's annoying that when I look up a mapset and want to download it so badly, there will be bugs listed in the bugs description such as HOMs.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

 

[wallabra]

For a moment I read "pervs", and was about to say something. Damn. Maybe next time.

 

And well, I do have peeves. One I can think of is the kind of progression where most of the map you're running and jumping on and around ledges, and if you fall you have to take the teleporter back to the first ledge/platform/wienerspike. Like Doom II's MAP29: The Living End, or HOOVER.WAD. I mean, it doesn't detract too much from the level (I really like HOOVER.WAD, and I find MAP29.. .eh, interesting, on its own right I guess), but the part where you fall again and again.. isn't all that fun.

 

Also, when you get stuck in a way that requires noclip to continue, or that make a secret that is kind of worthless but VERY hard to reach and find (I guess because secret hunting is for masochistic people, and 100% speedrunning is kind of masochistic too? So maybe that makes sense! Hm.)

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Gustavo6046

[666shooter]

3 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

For a moment I read "pervs", and was about to say something. Damn. Maybe next time.

 

And well, I do have peeves. One I can think of is the kind of progression where most of the map you're running and jumping on and around ledges, and if you fall you have to take the teleporter back to the first ledge/platform/wienerspike. Like Doom II's MAP29: The Living End, or HOOVER.WAD. I mean, it doesn't detract too much from the level (I really like HOOVER.WAD, and I find MAP29.. .eh, interesting, on its own right I guess), but the part where you fall again and again.. isn't all that fun.

Generally platforming in Doom as part of the "challenge" of the level's navigation is a recipe for frustration and rage.  You aren't supposed to jump in most Doom Wads, but apparently diving headfirst into a pit is usually still an option. Unless its part of a completely optional secret, I don't want to have to run across that series of tiny platforms suspended over lava and miss that gap by a centimeter fifty times until I get it right. Lots of platforming usually equates to lots of savescumming for me. Good platforming? If you're running in the right direction, and it looks like you can bridge the gap, you technically shouldn't be able to fall.

[Lippeth]

Audio soundtracks are a peeve of mine, only because it takes longer to download and takes up more storage space. Maps or mapsets themed with a single color are hard to endure as well, I don't know why. It's cool to have sections of a map all be one color, but without any contrast it wears on my eyes and my enjoyment.

[Snaxalotl]

2 hours ago, N1ck said:

Misaligned textures will be the death of me. Why is it so hard for you to just look at a texture and hold the arrow keys for a second in Doom Builder. Or just random textures in random places. Door texture for a wall? Why not. Fireblu door that isn't a secret? Makes sense to me.

 

There's a handy tool in ultimate doom builder that auto aligns every adjacent texture that's the same to the one you selected, its not bound by default so you need to go into preferences and bind it.

 

Spoiler

 

[Maximum Matt]

Not having enough secret doors for progression.  If it's a logical path to the exit, I feel something is missing from my Maximum Doom experience.  

[Noah Eadie]

This is more so for full conversions than wads, but I'm disappointed when they mention having "new enemy types and weapons" and they're just reskins. Whenever I see a new asset in a doom map, I get excited about the possibilities and what new design space the creator played with and what types of challenges I'll be asked to overcome, but half the time I'm disappointed with stuff like, "oh, this time the imps are just robots this time around, I guess".

[AtticTelephone]

I guess maybe really bad texturing, layout and detailing? Like Habitat. Oh, and dumb enemy placement with no thought into it, like maybe Holy Hell Revealed, but I haven't played it yet, so who knows.

[KeaganDunn]

5 minutes ago, AtticTelephone said:

Oh, and dumb enemy placement with no thought into it, like maybe Holy Hell Revealed, but I haven't played it yet, so who knows.

Don't.

[whybmonotacrab]

Bad Conveyance. If I'm utterly lost because you prioritized detail or vastness over a smooth level layout or guidance you've done poorly.

[AtticTelephone]

7 minutes ago, Dunn & Dunn said:

Don't.

Don't what?

[KeaganDunn]

16 minutes ago, AtticTelephone said:

Don't what?

If you plan on playing Holy Hell Revealed, don't. It's a giant slog from the little I've seen, a remix of an old vanilla slaughtermap but with like 20 cyberdemons added to every room. It's bad, untested, somebody's first map (not kidding), and probably not even beatable non-tool-assisted.

[AtticTelephone]

16 minutes ago, Dunn & Dunn said:

If you plan on playing Holy Hell Revealed, don't. It's a giant slog from the little I've seen, a remix of an old vanilla slaughtermap but with like 20 cyberdemons added to every room. It's bad, untested, somebody's first map (not kidding), and probably not even beatable non-tool-assisted.

Oh, thanks for the information, I'll be sure to avoid it then, at least Sunder maps are more fun.

[Stupid Bunny]

7 hours ago, MxCraven said:

I'm not sure if this is the case, or if it's just I haven't found the right WADs, but "Make it hard and have no easy". I'm bad at this game, but I want to play the pretty and incredible maps from $current_year, but so many are incredibly difficult and even whacking it down to ITYTD doesn't change much (one highly rated megawad had the same monster placement across all difficulties and just a few extra healths dotted about, but after getting out the first room with 2 revs, and instantly getting ambushed by an archie, into a room filled with pinkies and imps to press buttons in 4 corners, they didn't do much)

I'm not saying don't keep increasing the difficulty, but accessibility is something I think gets forgotten as games get older (it certainly does in the multiplayer side of Quake-likes)

Yeah I’d second this one, as someone who used to be guilty of doing the same thing in my maps ;) Like I’m not THAT good at Doom and in any case it would be nice to have different settings for different moods anyway. UV is fun if I want a real nail-biting challenge, but I like HNTR to be there for when I want a more casual play. (I’m not hardcore enough to beat anything on Nightmare)

[SilverMiner]

I hate damaging blood floors and low heath pickup count (blue bottles and stimpacks don't count);

inescapable death pits;

bare linearity;

when you take a key and a huge horde of beefy monsters spawns to ambush you;

when you go into a room and the door closes behind you and you literally have to fight the monsters who live there, to make it out alive.

(This is just a cheap and trolly way to force players to fight monsters)

when ITYTD isn't easy;

impassible lines for vines and railings;

poor health and ammo pickups count;

slaughtermaps;

when a mapper makes three key-accessed areas just to make a map with three keys;

when there's no berserk pack somewhere on the map;

when there's no secrets at all or the loot is dull;

when you have to wait when these bars will lower to move on;

when someone's wad looks like 1994 garbage and doesn't run in vanilla, boom, prboom+, Eternity or Zdoom. But requires latest Gzdoom because of some specific mapinfo, decorate or zscript;

when someone forces you to run the wad in a specific port (like PrBoom+  2.5.1.7) because of some feature like UMAPINFO otherwise it turns into a troll wad. But this wad could be actually embodied for a more popular port like PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4

when in a (g)Zdoom wad there're present both MAPINFO and ZMAPINFO (and one of them turns out actually redundant)

 

 

 

[Diabolución]

The lack of an original soundtrack, especially for entire episode replacements or full megawads.

 

As far as I am concerned, the very minimum is reshuffled Doom / Doom II music. I am not going to listen to the very same old songs in the very same order for the umpteenth time. Neither am I going to compile a replacement for the soundtrack as I have no fucking idea about choosing good music for a level. Heck, I tried to do so and all I can remember is that I downloaded hundreds and hundreds of MIDIs of several sources, played each and every one for few seconds... and still felt undecided. And that is for a single-level WAD...

 

Could / would you imagine, say, Back to Saturn X, Sigil or Eviternity without a bespoke soundtrack?

[Sokoro]

7 hours ago, MxCraven said:

I'm not sure if this is the case, or if it's just I haven't found the right WADs, but "Make it hard and have no easy". I'm bad at this game, but I want to play the pretty and incredible maps from $current_year, but so many are incredibly difficult and even whacking it down to ITYTD doesn't change much (one highly rated megawad had the same monster placement across all difficulties and just a few extra healths dotted about, but after getting out the first room with 2 revs, and instantly getting ambushed by an archie, into a room filled with pinkies and imps to press buttons in 4 corners, they didn't do much)

I'm not saying don't keep increasing the difficulty, but accessibility is something I think gets forgotten as games get older (it certainly does in the multiplayer side of Quake-likes)

If there are some wads that are too hard for you and have no easy difficulty settings, then you could use zdoom and some weapon mods (or make one yourself).

Some have really over-powered weapons, so you can slaughter the monsters while still enjoying the architecture etc.

[Lippeth]

This is a great way to chew through slaughtermaps with greater ease if you value adventure over testing your skill. I'm not much of a slaughter seeker but this lets me enjoy tougher maps at my own pace.

 

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

Use some goddamn landmarks.

[wallabra]

12 hours ago, Lippeth said:

Maps or mapsets themed with a single color are hard to endure as well, I don't know why. It's cool to have sections of a map all be one color, but without any contrast it wears on my eyes and my enjoyment.

 

Wait wait, elaborate on that -- you mean WADs that are themed around a specific colour prominently, like some Ribbiks mapsets (like Sunlust), or just WADs that use this single colour everywhere without contrast at all?

 

[DynamiteKaitorn]

                            

 

 

[Lippeth]

4 hours ago, Gustavo6046 said:

 

Wait wait, elaborate on that -- you mean WADs that are themed around a specific colour prominently, like some Ribbiks mapsets (like Sunlust), or just WADs that use this single colour everywhere without contrast at all? 

 

It's a fine line I suppose, but mapsets like Swim With The Whales and some purple themed one I can't recall the name of are just too much for me to fully enjoy. By contrast I mean less about side-by-side textures and more like the time spent surrounded by a single color. There is one instance in a section of map 13 from Akeldama that's pure green with almost no color contrast, but it works because of the context in the level and overall section of the wad, and it doesn't overstay its welcome so I enjoy the blast of pure green. That wad actually sets off another peeve I have which is silent teleporting in close proximity.

 

I haven't played much of Sunlust, but what I have played is pretty to look at, and even samey looking wads like btsx work because there's just enough contrast here and there and the themed colors are used more sparingly. But sometimes I feel that some maps go overboard with the monocolor theme, and while I respect the artistic vision, it feels like the novelty overpowers the other aspects it may have going for it and it's just harder to get into and fully appreciate.

[SF.]

All Map 30s. 

[TenenteZashu]

thicc doors and plutonia-style archvile placements are my bane

[Stupid Bunny]

Another thing that kind of bugs me is that certain type of schooled detailing that doesn’t actually enhance the architectural composition or layout of a level in any way, but just embellishes the hell out of every available surface in an effort to gussy up what amounts to a flat and boring map. A particular technique I see a lot is just putting 4-8 px trim around everything, which can look nice when done gracefully but often ends up being like “EVERY SECTOR MUST BE INSET” kind of affair. It gets boring fast and makes the player bounce up and down every time he approaches any kind of wall.

 

I’m not sure how I forgot to mention the music thing too, because that’s another thing is I’ve reached a point where hearing Running from Evil on firing up a wad makes me have a small aneurysm and I reflexively go for idmus immediately. I do acknowledge that selecting good map music is an art of its own, but I’ll take anything, literally even dead silence over hearing that MAP01 music, especially when it’s not remotely appropriate to the map. If I’m stalking around some dark catacombs the best thing to complement the grim atmosphere of death and terror is fucking anything but up-tempo rock organs.

 

I used to hate revenants and hate Plutonia for its abundance of them but I’ve come to respect them somewhat as being a versatile enemy and one of the better options for a mid-tier foot soldier when designing maps. (Also Plutonia is the tits so I’ve come round on that one.) I’d still argue though that over-reliance on revenants, especially in horde form, is a mark of lazy combat design. Fighting them ad nauseam gets old like anything else.