Least favourite mechanic?

[Widosm]

Could be a base game mechanic, a specific gimmick from a specific wad, anything.

[Pechudin]

Timing rockets into the Icon of Sin's hole. Bonus points if the method is extra convoluted, like D2TWID's MAP30.

[AwesomeGuy05]

My Least favorite mechanic is when a part of a wall opens and a bunch of enemies pour out -_-

[yakfak]

when a level explains itself to you without letting you explore it first, linearly channeling the player. there's a bunch of beautiful interesting maps out there which would be twice as good if the keys were placed in dark corners instead of on the immediately obvious pedestals imo, or even if you started with all the keys and the weapons were rearranged instead

[RHhe82]

2 hours ago, Pechudin said:

Timing rockets into the Icon of Sin's hole. Bonus points if the method is extra convoluted, like D2TWID's MAP30.

I second this one. Icon of Sin makes Dis seem like a decent finale.

 

Additionally I was thinking of narrow ledges of Chasm, but I think my second vote goes for perpetually raising platforms as in E2M3 or that one master level (Catwalk perhaps?).

 

And speaking of Master levels and narrow ledges, I really hate the invisible narrow bridges you can’t know is there. (And this is different than the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sort of invisible bridges as seen in Plutonia Experiment.

[HavoX]

2 hours ago, AwesomeGuy05 said:

My Least favorite mechanic is when a part of a wall opens and a bunch of enemies pour out -_-

"Don't hate the mechanic, hate the encounter"

 

Thinking ahead is the key to success!

[Sergeant G]

I third for timing rockets into the Icon of Sin, back in the day, when I finally deduced how it was supposed to work, I was outraged. We weren't talking about "trolling" back then, but for a moment there, I felt that I'd come all this way for an unbeatable finale. Hard is one thing, obtuse is another.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Sergeant G

[ChestedArmor]

Dark places are meh.

Either you memories the locaction of the demons

or you bottleneck them at the entrance.

Both of them are no fun.

[ICID]

Probably that Doom II secret that becomes inaccessible if you don't reach it in 30 seconds (and any other map that uses that mechanic.)

[msx2plus]

3 hours ago, yakfak said:

when a level explains itself to you without letting you explore it first, linearly channeling the player. there's a bunch of beautiful interesting maps out there which would be twice as good if the keys were placed in dark corners instead of on the immediately obvious pedestals imo, or even if you started with all the keys and the weapons were rearranged instead

i've primarily authored more linear maps that are peppered with interesting little combat situations and this is probably the hardest part of moving to non-linear map design - finding the right balance between letting the player get lost and guiding the player is so tricky! an idea i've been letting seep into stuff lately has been "well what if the player can just leave, what if they deem this unimportant".

 

[edit] for me it's probably the *1,8 damage variable, i love randomness but the spread is so wide that it makes some granularity totally impossible to account for. i really like planning maps where the player should be tanking some hits here and there and surviving on low HP and this means some methods of doing that are out of the question, lest the player just die. in my current project i've narrowed the ranges significantly but i'll have to do a lot of mental reconfiguring to work with the standard damage set again lol

Edited September 1, 2021 by msx2plus

[Toad]

My least favorite mechanic is that revenants alternate homing and non homing projectiles unpredictably, sometimes it feels unfair when I get hit by a projectile that is homing while I thought it was non homing and vice versa... oh and ofcourse the damage from the balls can be ridiculous. 

[Jacek Bourne]

Icon of Sin. I’d rather just be given Slaughtermap or some other type of finale because they are always far better than the icon.

[pcorf]

A forced ambush where you get closed into a room and must wait forever for the bars to lower even after killing all the monsters in that room.

[DavidN]

Jeff at Superior Auto Parts down the road from me. He’s rubbish

[Doomkid]

The worst mechanic in Doom is automatic weapon switching in multiplayer. Thankfully this mostly isn't an issue since the advent of source ports. Same goes with monsters having "infinite height" that blocks the player from below (I know that term is misleading but whatever).

 

Man, the IOS hate, I should be numb to it by now but I just can't get over it, lol. Do you guys seriously prefer "hold down the fire button at a wall of meat" fights to something that actually requires some timing and planning?

 

The Doom 1 bosses are literally just "a big fat imp" followed by "a big fat chaingunner". I mean they are cool enemies, don't get me wrong.. I just feel like the IOS battle is a stroke of misunderstood genius tragically housed in an ugly/visually uninspiring arena.

 

I guess what people really want is something better than any of the existing Classic Doom boss fights, because I refuse to believe that everyone is satisfied with the Doom 1 bosses. I beat them without cheats when I was 7 years old for Pete's sake..

[Not Jabba]

15 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I guess what people really want is something better than any of the existing Classic Doom boss fights, because I refuse to believe that everyone is satisfied with the Doom 1 bosses. I beat them without cheats when I was 7 years old for Pete's sake..

 

I have to admit, I've never enjoyed IoS fights either -- and yeah, the Doom 1 boss fights are mainly cool as flavor ("oh I'm fighting a big unique monster, that's badass"). The D1 bosses work better in D2, where they're minibosses that can appear at any time and have cool arena gimmicks associated with many of them. But I personally like flavor bosses better than bosses with gameplay tropes I don't enjoy, so I suppose I would pick them over the IoS.

The great bosses are the ones with multiple attacks and cool mechanics, so that they add flavor but they also make you think a bit. Heretic and Hexen have a few of these, but they're not super well balanced as individual boss encounters (The Maulotaur is a phenomenal miniboss though, with the area-denial ground crawler attack and the charge attack combined). Vader's Terminator from Thunderpeak is still the best Doom-engine boss, imo.

[RHhe82]

8 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Man, the IOS hate, I should be numb to it by now but I just can't get over it, lol. Do you guys seriously prefer "hold down the fire button at a wall of meat" fights to something that actually requires some timing and planning?

 

The Doom 1 bosses are literally just "a big fat imp" followed by "a big fat chaingunner". I mean they are cool enemies, don't get me wrong.. I just feel like the IOS battle is a stroke of misunderstood genius tragically housed in an ugly/visually uninspiring arena.

 

I guess what people really want is something better than any of the existing Classic Doom boss fights, because I refuse to believe that everyone is satisfied with the Doom 1 bosses. I beat them without cheats when I was 7 years old for Pete's sake..

 

I think I even prefer big fat imps and big fat chaingunners. Naturally I have nothing against timing and planning, I just don't find original IOS that clever. Raise the platform, call the lift, hope no one knocks you off it and hope you hit fire just at the right, quite precise moment. Repeat at least once, possibly more in case you fudge up.

[Doomkid]

2 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

I just don't find original IOS that clever. Raise the platform, call the lift, hope no one knocks you off it and hope you hit fire just at the right, quite precise moment. Repeat at least once, possibly more in case you fudge up.

You're right - the IOS isn't exactly a riveting experience to write home about, so I don't fault anyone for disliking it (what I said is mostly the result of years of built up salt from seeing the IOS hated on constantly).

 

I just liked that the game finally expected something different of me right at the end, compared to the whole game leading up to that point. I like it when a boss encounter wants me to learn something new, it makes it more memorable for me or something.

 

4 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

The great bosses are the ones with multiple attacks and cool mechanics, so that they add flavor but they also make you think a bit.

Yeah, I have to agree with this as well. Even just in the realm of wads alone, I've seen some custom enemies that make for great "final encounters" compared to the stock Doom and Doom2 bosses.

[The BMFG]

like alot of other people in this thread have said. the icon of sin timed shoot rockets into his brain thing is really frustrating at times

[TeK (⌐■_■)]

36 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

 

 

Man, the IOS hate, I should be numb to it by now but I just can't get over it, lol. Do you guys seriously prefer "hold down the fire button at a wall of meat" fights to something that actually requires some timing and planning?

 

 

 

But "hold down the fire button at a wall of meat" fights absolutely can and do often require planning. Timing maybe not so much that I can think of, but I highly doubt there's many doom players who beat fire and ice from scythe without some amount of planning, I sure as hell can't.

 

I have yet to play an ios fight that even comes close to the amount of fun that playing fire and ice provides, or haunting dreams from scythe 2. I would go so far to say I honestly doubt there's many people who do enjoy ios fights over something like what map 30 of scythe and scythe 2 do. 

[Not Jabba]

I will say though, people have done some interesting IoS variants that avoid the timed rocket mechanic altogether. There's a great one in Dungeon Synths, and one in Revilution. Probably a few others, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

[slugger]

2 hours ago, Toad said:

My least favorite mechanic is that revenants alternate homing and non homing projectiles unpredictably, sometimes it feels unfair when I get hit by a projectile that is homing while I thought it was non homing and vice versa... oh and ofcourse the damage from the balls can be ridiculous. 

I used to feel the same way, and it made me really wary of fighting revenants, but there's actually a very subtle tell - the presence of a smoke trail indicates it's homing. The unsmoky ones will always fly straight. It completely changes things when you can glance at the projectiles and know whether they'll follow you into your hidey-holes.

[Nikku4211]

I don't like the timed rocket mechanic in Doom 2 MAP30. I know it's the final boss, but how precise this timed rocket mechanic has to be is really too tight for my tastes.

 

Besides, all the other enemies are fustrating enough.

 

Aside from that iOS hate, I also don't like how melee makes you turn around in Doom.

Sure, autoaim is useful for projectiles and hitscans, but when an enemy is so close to you, they're already a big enough target for your fists. It ruins the chainsaw for me, and also affects fists to a lesser extent due to how fists work compared to chainsaws in the original unmodified Doom EXE.

 

As much as I still prefer vanilla Doom and its minimalist source ports, solid things having infinite height collision with other solid things, especially flying solid things, are annoying. It really ruins maps with lots of verticality.

 

At least one good thing comes about from this: If you're lucky, you can hit a rocket at a wall high up above an enemy (and way below a flying enemy if autoaim fails you) and the enemy will still be damaged by the explosion since explosions have infinite height as well, even if the projectiles themselves don't.

 

1 minute ago, slugger said:

the presence of a smoke trail indicates it's homing. The unsmoky ones will always fly straight. It completely changes things when you can glance at the projectiles and know whether they'll follow you into your hidey-holes.

As someone who likes playing Doom in its original 320x200@35 video mode, by the time I notice a smoke trail, it's probably already too close for me to think enough about how to dodge it.

 

Yes, thinking takes more time for me than for anyone else.

[Toad]

15 minutes ago, slugger said:

I used to feel the same way, and it made me really wary of fighting revenants, but there's actually a very subtle tell - the presence of a smoke trail indicates it's homing. The unsmoky ones will always fly straight. It completely changes things when you can glance at the projectiles and know whether they'll follow you into your hidey-holes.

 

Oh wow thank you! I didn't know that!

[thiccyosh]

Tiny ledges you need to navigate (looking at you Chasm and probably Vasperas) and fake walls that serve no purpose other than to annoy you.

[Albertoni]

The tiny chance for 20% damage floors to leak through a radsuit. I've died way too many times to that little quirk.

[msx2plus]

15 minutes ago, Nikku4211 said:

As much as I still prefer vanilla Doom and its minimalist source ports, solid things having infinite height collision with other solid things, especially flying solid things, are annoying. It really ruins maps with lots of verticality.

this one's always a bummer. i tolerate it and do like how some maps use flying enemies to completely muck up your movement, but there have been way too many situations where some off-screen turd is getting in the way and i have no way of dealing with it.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

In terms of level design:

Having literally no idea where the bloody hell I'm meant to go, especially in larger maps. Too much detail can sometimes be a bad thing.

 

In terms of mechanics:

A R C H V I L E S .

[Pechudin]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

Man, the IOS hate, I should be numb to it by now but I just can't get over it, lol. Do you guys seriously prefer "hold down the fire button at a wall of meat" fights to something that actually requires some timing and planning?

 

Mind you, I'm not enthralled by E2M8 or E3M8 bosses either, my main gripe with IoS is my hate of "working against the clock" maps. This goes for missions in RTS games as well, when the game gives you a time limit.

[MemeMind]

37 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

In terms of level design:

Having literally no idea where the bloody hell I'm meant to go, especially in larger maps. Too much detail can sometimes be a bad thing.

 

In terms of mechanics:

A R C H V I L E S .

Why all the hate for Archviles?