why is plutonia's difficulty so overstated?

[Eric Claus]

1 minute ago, TheUnstableNutcase said:

Civvie even says in the beginning of the video something along the lines of how Plutonia for it's time was insane, but since then people have made countless WADs that are way harder, so if he can mention that, there's no reason why he can't briefly mention how Go 2 It is not that special compared to a lot of stuff out there, without over-exaggerating the level to make it seem like it's the ultimate Slaughter map lol

 

I think he more stated that it was the birth of the slaughtermap, but I am not going to get into it as it really isn't that important at the end of the day as I don't really consider Civvie to be an authority for much related to Doom specifically. Though he was part of the reason I even started playing classic Doom again.

[Jiggahertz]

6 minutes ago, a.a.i. said:

Oh, I wasn't referring to the difficulty of the map (it's pretty easy to complete the map, IMO). Just that there isn't enough ammo to kill all the cyberdemons. Even Ancalagon couldn't get 100% kills in his UV-max run. 
 

 

How do you get that invulnerability screen effect? Is that a mod?

[deleted.]

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Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[Jiggahertz]

2 minutes ago, a.a.i. said:

It's can't be a mod because it was originally recorded as a demo. Must be a feature of the source port (not sure which one) through which the demo was played back and recorded. 

Apparently it's a PrBoom thing, I wonder if there's an alternate way to get something like that

[Edward850]

It's neither, it's actually part of nuts.wad, always has been. You don't normally see it because you likely use ZDoom/GZDoom all the time, which don't fully support modified colourmaps.

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, P41R47 said:

in fact, thats a bad statement.

Plutonia has something peculiar even for it time.

No other mapset play, or can be compare to it.

Not Hell Revealed, not Alien Vendetta, not Scythe.

Plutonia is unique for the reason that no other mapset is as difficult as it at UV.

Those i named are vastly harder than it on UV, and normally, other PWADs are fairly easier or fairly harder than Plutonia.
Even to these days, there is no PWAD that has a difficulty quite similar to Plutonia, they are usually harder or easier

lol that's not true in the slightest

[Muusi]

I say it's a remnant of the times when most people played Doom with just a keyboard and strafing was barely a thing.

[UnknDoomer]

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Nostalgia combined with inexperience combined with subconscious and telepathic influence from people who do find it difficult.

 

It's just like Dark Souls, really. It gained a reputation for being hard because people started bitching about the difficulty online and everyone heard about it.

 

After people got good at Dark Souls/Plutonia, they stopped posting about it online, so the only thing left was their posts about unfairness and getting their ass kicked.

 

People will post something online when something is difficult, but when their skills improve, they rarely go online and say "yep, I was wrong about Plutonia/Dark Souls, I take back everything I said about it's difficulty, please allow me to remove my previous posts".

[Jiggahertz]

1 hour ago, UnknDoomer said:

 

Not everyone does no-save pistol start fast monster 100% kill 100% secret runs

Edited May 3, 2021 by TheUnstableNutcase

[rzh]

It's probably because there's a great jump in difficulty from Doom 2 to Plutonia, and most people play Plutonia before harder community wads.

Like me, I only started playing Doom seriously in 2020 (around when Sigil dropped) and I went Doom>Doom 2>Thy Flesh Consumed>Sigil>Plutonia>Scythe>Scythe 2>Alien Vendetta and so on. It's a nice way to separate the casual player from the more dedicated one, because the combat in Plutonia is almost like a puzzle and it forces you to learn the game's mechanics, which is required for community wads, but Doom 1 and 2 feel like child's play in comparison.

[T-Rex]

As a casual yet skilled Doomer, I can say that the difficulty of Plutonia is not entirely overstated. I mean, while it is easier in comparison to other more insidiously difficult wads like Sunder, Plutonia still stands as the most difficult megawad released by id Software, and before Hell Revealed, Alien Vendetta, and Scythe, there was no other wad that matched or surpassed it in terms of difficulty back at its time, so while I was among the "Plutonia is insanely hard" crowd during the time the DWMC was playing it at the start of the year, I was talking from a nostalgic and retrospective standpoint. As many have stated, Plutonia takes an arcade-like approach in gameplay, and whether the difficulty may have been overstated, it is clearly not a wad for amateur players, and it does give an insight that while id Software got Dario and Milo Casali to make Plutonia, the two brothers have mainly made the wad for themselves and the veterans since it's more of a showcase of "look at the group of monsters we can take on!" That said, when you look back to back at the official classic Doom set, there is a steady difficulty curve in every one of them, from the four episodes of Ultimate Doom, to Doom 2, to TNT. Ultimate Doom's Thy Flesh Consumed is a strange case, however, as its progression is more schizophrenic, with the episode starting off hard, then as it goes, the difficulty drops down, only to go back up again in E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly, and then back to easy for the remainder of the episode. With Plutonia, there is no such learning curve or a natural progression. From Map 01 all the way to Map 30, it's wild and woolly and doesn't let up. Even if you play on the lower difficulty settings, it's still relentless, but once you get a grip on how to handle the opposition and know where to go and what to use, the challenge shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

It's funny how people say the difficulty of Plutonia is so overstated, yet do the same with Hell Revealed and Alien Vendetta, going as far as calling them "slaughterwads." Even MtPain27 ranks them as very high in difficulty, and while I respect his opinion, I do felt that the ranking was hyperbole. True that those two megawads throw more revenants, arch-viles, and cyberdemons than Plutonia, but they're only harder marginally. As someone stated in another thread, the hardest Alien Vendetta levels are more or less as difficult as Plutonia, only that they are much bigger adventures while the majority of Plutonia's maps are small, tough nuggets. The same can be said about Hell Revealed as in all honesty, the harder maps, especially on UV pistol start, are more frustrating than extremely difficult, with a strong emphasis on combat puzzles than run n gun action, which can be tedious if you don't plan your strategy and know how to handle the enemies. Even so, what makes Hell Revealed not any more difficult than Plutonia, least in my opinion, is that many of Hell Revealed's heavier combat scenarios are set in wide open areas with terrain that are designed to give you cover, while in Plutonia, despite having a more transparent monster placement, the layout and architecture in many of the levels are designed to work against you as they're mostly cramped, making the seemingly lighter fights feel more claustrophobic and they really make you think outside the box. For anyone who want a progression in the difficulty scale of Doom with the IWADs and PWADs, I prescribe the following in that order:

 

- Doom (very easy)

- Doom 2 (easy)

- Thy Flesh Consumed (easy)

- Icarus (easy)

- TNT (moderate)

- Requiem (moderate)

- Memento Mori 1 & 2 (moderate)

- Sigil (moderate)

- Scythe (hard)

- Plutonia (hard)

- Hell Revealed (hard)

- Alien Vendetta (hard)

- Kama Sutra (hard)

- Plutonia Revisited (very hard)

- Plutonia 2 (very hard)

- Scythe 2 (very hard)

 

And it gets harder from there on.

Edited May 3, 2021 by T-Rex

[Kyka]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:37 AM, roadworx said:

 and while that may have been the case 25 years ago,

 

Old perceptions die hard I guess. I played Plutonia when it first came out, and I can recall it being difficult to the point of frustration. (I'm looking at you blue key area of Map 02) So why is it not seen as so difficult now? Partly because the skill cap of the average player has improved so so much in the last few decades. Players raised in an environment of forums that will tell you how to be a Doom God, and surrounded by youtube videos where you can get myriad examples of great players to inspire you, are going to be of a much higher caliber than players who had to work it out on their own, with perhaps only a few friends to work it out with them. (I can clearly remember showing a friend that it was possible to strafe. Prior to that, he was dodging fireballs by turning away from them and then moving forward. What a great Doom mentor I was back then!) Shared information has massively impacted how good the average Doomer is now.

 

The other reason why Plutonia was seen as hard? Play it at 320x200, on a CRT monitor, without openGL, and (in some cases,) without sound support. These things will make the game much more pixellated and much darker, much harder to see what is in the distance, much scarier, and will exponentially increase the difficulty of an already reasonably challenging mapset like Plutonia...

 

So grab yourself a time machine kiddies, and #getrekt  :)

[Deadwing]

It has a very specific type of gameplay that the player is forced to be aware of its surroudings.

You'll probably die a lot in map 1 and 2, but after you get used with the wad's language, the whole things become more predictable (which is not a bad thing) while still harder than your usual IWAD.

[P41R47]

5 hours ago, roadworx said:

lol that's not true in the slightest

can you tell some that compares properly to plutonia, in design, difficulty and traps from the same time?

[ReaperAA]

9 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Plutonia is unique for the reason that no other mapset is as difficult as it at UV.

Those i named are vastly harder than it on UV, and normally, other PWADs are fairly easier or fairly harder than Plutonia.

Even to these days, there is no PWAD that has a difficulty quite similar to Plutonia, they are usually harder or easier.

 

Well... doesn't this apply for many wads out there. I can say that there is no wad like Sunlust and other wads are either easier or harder than it.

 

(Also unless we are only talking about the 90's, I will say that Jenesis is very similar to Plutonia in terms of difficulty)

[ArchCrusader]

As someone who's been guilty (and still is, sometimes) of the "this hard thing is not that hard" mental process, I feel like it usually translates to "if I'm at the top of my game I can beat this np" - which, in turn, often translates to "if I'm not at the top of my game I die in half a second". That's typically a good sign that the thing is, in fact, hard.

 

Then again, Demon of the Well said it best:

On 5/2/2021 at 3:32 AM, Demon of the Well said:

If you play the game a lot, as time goes on you'll probably become more aware of the irony that, the more you play, the progressively less relatable (and relevant) your experiences and perceptions of what's 'normal' and what's 'balanced' and things like that become to the majority of other people who also play the game in some capacity. C'est la vie.

 

[roadworx]

3 hours ago, P41R47 said:

can you tell some that compares properly to plutonia, in design, difficulty and traps from the same time?

you said similar in difficulty - not similar in design philosophy and from the 90s :p

 

i'd say jenesis, moonblood, and the chord series if you didn't suddenly change your statement

[SLOTH MARINE (CB)]

11 hours ago, a.a.i. said:

Oh, I wasn't referring to the difficulty of the map (it's pretty easy to complete the map, IMO). Just that there isn't enough ammo to kill all the cyberdemons. Even Ancalagon couldn't get 100% kills in his UV-max run. Perhaps Reelvonic meant UV-max when he said 100% kills.
 

 

da hell, how is this possible

[DemonSlayer21]

19 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

What port? Try prboom-plus, switch to OpenGL video mode if you still have trouble.

On topic, as said by the previous posts above, Plutonia is easy because y'all are freaks.

It's the gaming skill equivalent of "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"

I'm on Gzdoom without any of the enhancements. It was the first one I found and have been using it since. I'd like to try PrBoom, but I'm on a Mac and I can't find instructions on how to compile it.

[Azuris]

On 5/2/2021 at 2:37 AM, roadworx said:

whenever plutonia is brought up, i always notice that a lot of people seem to regard it as some sort of brutally difficult, unfair levelset that's for masochists only. but...it really isn't? i just recently played through it on uv, and while it's absolutely not easy, it's honestly not as bad as it's made out to be other than a few specific areas. i was actually a bit underwhelmed - i'd heard about how it's hard af, and while that may have been the case 25 years ago, it's really not that bad anymore. and i really don't see myself as that great of a player, so it's not like i'm just really good at the game or anything

 

so...why does its seemingly mythical status as being ridiculously hard persist to today?

 

I wouldn't call it hard, it is Trial and Error and with that it is a different playstyle as Doom 1 and 2.

That is not in everyones Taste and so it divides People.

 

[P41R47]

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Well... doesn't this apply for many wads out there. I can say that there is no wad like Sunlust and other wads are either easier or harder than it.

 

(Also unless we are only talking about the 90's, I will say that Jenesis is very similar to Plutonia in terms of difficulty)

not at all, for example, Valiant Ancient Aliens, Eviternity, Scythe 2, all had kinda the same difficulty, not exactly the same map per map, but if you are up to beat one, you certainly can beat the others, too.

And yes, as you said, to this day, there is no mapset that offers a similar experience to Sunlust.

Maybe ESP come near to it, not in design, but at least on difficulty.

 

And maybe its my own opinion, but Jenesis was easier for me. What i use to measure is blind playthrought.

I played Jenesis blind without problem, and to this day, after long no playing Plutonia to the point of not remembering all the traps, i still found it difficult to beat on one take blindly.

Thats why i stated that no other mapset comes to te spot on the progression of difficulty it has.

 

Its like a horizon, certain mapset are hard below it, and certain other are above it, but almost none share the same spot of it.

3 hours ago, roadworx said:

you said similar in difficulty - not similar in design philosophy and from the 90s :p

 

i'd say jenesis, moonblood, and the chord series if you didn't suddenly change your statement

read above.

and no Jenesis and Moonblood are easier; chord serie is slighty above it.

 

I stood to my words, there is no mapset not only on design philosophy, but also on difficulty, that share the same level of The Plutonia Experiment.

 

Plutonia is a breaking point. If you played wads during the 90's, Plutonia was the hardest, and Hell Revealed, Alien Vendetta and Scythe were above it.

Strangely, you can go from Doom 2 to Hell Revealed, then to Alien Vendetta and then to Scythe almost without problem.

But Plutonia still make use of something different.

If i had to use one word it would be "unforgiveness". One step wrong and you are dead.

I'm not a good player at all, but that didn't happened to me with almost any other mapset.

I found that kind of unforgiveness scarcely.

CPD is one that kinda use it, same with ESP.

 

And yet, as i said before, no mapset had a dickish unforgiving difficulty like Plutonia.

Some are harder, some are easier, but none is unforgiving like it.

This mostly applies to the first episode of Plutonia, after that, it lower it unforgiveness almost completely... Or maybe the player just get use to it and knows what to expect next.

It hard to tell for certain.

[GarrettChan]

I like how somebody just posted decino's video without anything to say, as if decino got beaten so badly, so Plutonia is hard or something.

 

If you really wanted to compare, you probably shouldn't compare anything vanilla to anything not vanilla because you have limited amount of choice to do. It has a soft cap for what you can put into a 90s map. Obviously later maps can be harder because limit removing/Boom/MBF allow the mapper to crazier stuff.

[DuckReconMajor]

2 hours ago, DemonSlayer21 said:

I'm on Gzdoom without any of the enhancements. It was the first one I found and have been using it since. I'd like to try PrBoom, but I'm on a Mac and I can't find instructions on how to compile it.

 

Looks like 2.5.1.3 has a compiled .dmg, I believe this version is recent enough to run nuts.wad smoothly

 

https://sourceforge.net/projects/prboom-plus/files/prboom-plus/2.5.1.3/PrBoom-Plus-2.5.1.3.dmg/download

[Zulk RS]

Like others have said, it's probably because it's the hardest IWAD by a long shot. Like the spike in difficulty between TNT (the other half of Final Doom) and Plutionia, is pretty big. Honestly it's not too hard if you have experience playing some of the more widely known PWADs the community has produced, but if you go into it after having played only the IWADs extensively, it is super brutal.

 

Personally, I think Plutionia might be harder than a lot of more casual megawads that the community has produced and are still producing. I might have gotten better at Doom but I personally found Plutonia harder than Ancient Aliens.

 

A personal opinion: I think Plutonia is a bit more restrictive of player's playstyles. Like I have a very careful style of play. I move slowly, take my time, plan out stuff and try to cheese things. During the later maps of Plutonia, I felt like I was being penalized for playing that way. I had played other, harder PWADs at the time and I didn't feel that way when playing the harder pwads.

[ReaperAA]

13 minutes ago, Zulk RS said:

Personally, I think Plutionia might be harder than a lot of more casual megawads that the community has produced and are still producing. I might have gotten better at Doom but I personally found Plutonia harder than Ancient Aliens.

 

Unbelieveable!!!

[Zulk RS]

3 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Unbelieveable!!!

 

That's just my personal experience with the two mapsets. Don't know what to tell you about that.

[ReaperAA]

7 minutes ago, Zulk RS said:

That's just my personal experience with the two mapsets. Don't know what to tell you about that.

 

Different strokes for different folks i guess. I personally found Ancient Aliens really brutal when I played it for the first time around 2-3 years ago.

 

On the other hand for example, I found even Alien Vendetta (which most folks put above AA in terms of difficulty) to be much much easier than AA. Plutonia honestly feels like a cakewalk to me compared to AA. The traps in Ancient Aliens felt very knowledge dependant (much more so than Plutonia).

 

Note that I am comparing Plutonia on UV vs AA on UV. On lower skill levels, things might be different.

[Zulk RS]

6 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Different strokes for different folks i guess. I personally found Ancient Aliens really brutal when I played it for the first time around 2-3 years ago.

 

On the other hand for example, I found even Alien Vendetta (which most folks put above AA in terms of difficulty) to be much much easier than AA. Plutonia honestly feels like a cakewalk to me compared to AA. The traps in Ancient Aliens felt very knowledge dependant (much more so than Plutonia).

 

Could be due to different playstyles. I play continuous with saves. I played both Plutonia and AA that way and found Plutonia harder.

 

EDIT: Also I played both on UV too.

[Jacek Bourne]

This assumption is usually made by people who’ve never seen any pwads. By comparison, plutonia is very difficult when only including the Iwads. It’s just that we happen to know about much more difficult mapsets and once again, by comparison plutonia is nothing.