overkill ratio for traps

[terminator]

hi. i'm new to doom mapping. may i know what is the best ratio (rough estimate) before the amount of traps are considered an overkill in a map? for example, if there are 100 health items (health bonus, stimpacks, medikits, soul sphere), should 30 of them be set booby traps (3:10 ratio) and any more would be considered too excessive? what is considered the best ratio, and why? thanks in advance for any input.

Edited June 4, 2021 by terminator

[Pegleg]

9 hours ago, terminator said:

hi. i'm new to doom mapping. may i know what is the best ratio (rough estimate) before the amount of traps are considered an overkill in a map? for example, if there are 100 health items (health bonus, stimpacks, medikits, soul sphere), should 30 of them be set booby traps (3:10 ratio) and any more would be considered too excessive? what is considered the best ratio, and why? thanks in advance for any input.

 

There's no set number or ratio, but you want to avoid having players say to themselves, "Oh look there's a medkit, I'm sure when I pick it up monsters will teleport in!" While Doom players have come to expect traps, if there are so many that players can predict what's coming with your map, then you're doing it too often, and it becomes stale. The same is true if you use the same type of trap every time.

 

Ultimately, the number of traps in a Doom map is subjective, some people will want traps and ambushes used sparingly, while others will be happy to have hundreds in a map. So, do whatever feels right to you. Just make sure the kind of traps and ambushes are varied, and you'll be fine.

[terminator]

5 hours ago, Pegleg said:

There's no set number or ratio, but you want to avoid having players say to themselves, "Oh look there's a medkit, I'm sure when I pick it up monsters will teleport in!" While Doom players have come to expect traps, if there are so many that players can predict what's coming with your map, then you're doing it too often, and it becomes stale. The same is true if you use the same type of trap every time.

 

Ultimately, the number of traps in a Doom map is subjective, some people will want traps and ambushes used sparingly, while others will be happy to have hundreds in a map. So, do whatever feels right to you. Just make sure the kind of traps and ambushes are varied, and you'll be fine.

 

awesome insight. many thanks :)

[Stabbey]

Yeah. Don't be predictable.

 

I recently played the "Epic 2" megawad, and while it was pretty good, one gripe I had was that pretty much ALL enemies outside of teleport traps - every single one - was set to ambush the player. And boy were there ever ambushes. Is there a door way or passage which widens out? There are guaranteed to be enemies waiting on both sides of it, every time. Because it was so predictable, I developed a strategy to check both sides of the door and pick off the enemies in wait. The enemies were not threats, they just were wasting my time and forcing me to move slowly. It was more tiresome.

 

If enemies in ambush was used infrequently, a player will get used to moving safely through a door and will be more likely to be surprised.

 

The same goes for keys, which are required, so are commonly used for traps. Mix it up. Sometimes have a key trigger a trap immediately, sometimes have a big fight before getting the key - but the key itself is safe, sometimes have it seem safe to get a key, but a trap triggers on the way back. If players can't predict what will happen, it makes the traps you do place all the more effective.

 

***

 

There's also no design principle which places traps in a ratio to health items. Each trap is situational, and the player health is an X-factor the mapper has no way to know. Some traps are simple and need no health to survive, others are extremely dangerous and need a lot. There's no formula you can use to say "I have X health, therefore I need Y number of traps".

Edited June 5, 2021 by Stabbey

[terminator]

13 hours ago, Stabbey said:

Yeah. Don't be predictable.

 

I recently played the "Epic 2" megawad, and while it was pretty good, one gripe I had was that pretty much ALL enemies outside of teleport traps - every single one - was set to ambush the player. And boy were there ever ambushes. Is there a door way or passage which widens out? There are guaranteed to be enemies waiting on both sides of it, every time. Because it was so predictable, I developed a strategy to check both sides of the door and pick off the enemies in wait. The enemies were not threats, they just were wasting my time and forcing me to move slowly. It was more tiresome.

 

If enemies in ambush was used infrequently, a player will get used to moving safely through a door and will be more likely to be surprised.

 

The same goes for keys, which are required, so are commonly used for traps. Mix it up. Sometimes have a key trigger a trap immediately, sometimes have a big fight before getting the key - but the key itself is safe, sometimes have it seem safe to get a key, but a trap triggers on the way back. If players can't predict what will happen, it makes the traps you do place all the more effective.

 

***

 

There's also no design principle which places traps in a ratio to health items. Each trap is situational, and the player health is an X-factor the mapper has no way to know. Some traps are simple and need no health to survive, others are extremely dangerous and need a lot. There's no formula you can use to say "I have X health, therefore I need Y number of traps".

 

many thanks for the wisdom, @Stabbey. before this, i thought that when a map is "balanced", there is a rough ratio between total ammo damage in the map and total monsters' hit points from using tools such as [wadwhat] and [wadspy], ratios which depicts the balances for uv, hmp, hntr, iyttd. and i thought perhaps the same could be applied between traps and health, and other items as well for bait. thanks again for clarifying things :)

Edited June 5, 2021 by terminator

[Sammy J]

I mostly play nightmare difficulty & am currently designing my first set of maps for a mini-episode. Playing through each new area after creating it gives a good feel for trap difficulties. For bait traps, I like to weigh up "risk vs reward" factors. My opinion is that any power-up should offer a challenge difficult enough to deplete it, a gamble for better or worse, depending on how you want your level to effect other players experience.

If a trap is meant to keep a player from going a certain direction, by all means crush the player & they'll never trigger the trap again in a re-run. You can design traps to be comical, annoying, punishing, this list goes on.. The best traps are entertaining ones that have a native & narrative feel that matches the level. A trap in a facility might lead to a battle & a new weapon, a trap in hell might lead to 10 Cyberdemons & a megasphere.

 

Ultimately the choice is yours, you might want to do a level that is full of traps & doesn't even have a monster. If you test it & have a lot of fun, other people will enjoy it too.

 

 

[terminator]

51 minutes ago, Sambo J said:

I mostly play nightmare difficulty & am currently designing my first set of maps for a mini-episode. Playing through each new area after creating it gives a good feel for trap difficulties. For bait traps, I like to weigh up "risk vs reward" factors. My opinion is that any power-up should offer a challenge difficult enough to deplete it, a gamble for better or worse, depending on how you want your level to effect other players experience.

If a trap is meant to keep a player from going a certain direction, by all means crush the player & they'll never trigger the trap again in a re-run. You can design traps to be comical, annoying, punishing, this list goes on.. The best traps are entertaining ones that have a native & narrative feel that matches the level. A trap in a facility might lead to a battle & a new weapon, a trap in hell might lead to 10 Cyberdemons & a megasphere.

 

Ultimately the choice is yours, you might want to do a level that is full of traps & doesn't even have a monster. If you test it & have a lot of fun, other people will enjoy it too.

 

 

woah! thank you for the superb ideas, @Sambo J. the traps that i had in mind before were only like the player taking the bait triggers a monster ambush, or the floor drops into a pool of lava and that's it. but for traps to trigger small "side-adventures" within the larger story of the map itself is a new one to me. many thanks :)

[Sammy J]

4 hours ago, terminator said:

woah! thank you for the superb ideas, @Sambo J. the traps that i had in mind before were only like the player taking the bait triggers a monster ambush, or the floor drops into a pool of lava and that's it. but for traps to trigger small "side-adventures" within the larger story of the map itself is a new one to me. many thanks :)

 

If I was about to grab an invisibility, but instantly teleported on top of a chainsaw in a dark room full of pinkies instead; I wouldn't be upset :P You can get pretty creative with traps thanks to invisible map lines. I use them as proximity sensors to automatically open doors in the maps I'm building. Not all doors, just ones that might effect smooth multiplayer. The most important thing is to test all the way through building, fun #1!

[WashingMachineEnthusiasts]

On 6/5/2021 at 3:47 PM, terminator said:

before this, i thought that when a map is "balanced", there is a rough ratio between total ammo damage in the map and total monsters' hit points from using tools such as [wadwhat] and [wadspy], ratios which depicts the balances for uv, hmp, hntr, iyttd.

 

I would be wary of relying on those ratios, because (for example) a 1:1 ratio is still only balanced if the player doesn't miss any shots and uses the right weapon for each encounter. The ratio also doesn't account for things like pain elementals spawning lost souls, or maps where you want the player to utilise barrels, infighting, berserk or the chainsaw.

 

Ultimately, just like with trap design, there's no substitute for getting someone to test your map and record you a demo so you can see their reactions. Preferably more than one person.

[terminator]

23 minutes ago, WashingMachineEnthusiasts said:

I would be wary of relying on those ratios, because (for example) a 1:1 ratio is still only balanced if the player doesn't miss any shots and uses the right weapon for each encounter. The ratio also doesn't account for things like pain elementals spawning lost souls, or maps where you want the player to utilise barrels, infighting, berserk or the chainsaw.

 

Ultimately, just like with trap design, there's no substitute for getting someone to test your map and record you a demo so you can see their reactions. Preferably more than one person.

 

noted. thanks for the tips :)

[MajorRawne]

Been playing lots of different megawads lately and some really overdo the "It's a trap!" thing. I wouldn't use an actual ratio if I were you, as that seems a rather mechanical way of doing it. Surprise the player sometimes by letting them get a key without triggering an avalanche of Revenants. A real bugbear is when you're playing a challenging map and every time you find some health or ammo, you get brutalised by an ambush. It's like, "Thanks but I suffered to get here, I'm on 10% health, you give me a soulsphere and here come four Arch-Viles? What's the point of that?"

 

Never let the risks outweigh the reward, otherwise where's the reward?