What map/WAD positively changed your opinion on a style you disliked?

[Kwisior]

Have you ever gained appreciation for a certain style after playing a particular map/WAD? Have you later made a map of that style?

 

For me that map was map26 of Scythe. After getting absolutely blasted by Cyberwar 7734 from Valiant and Floating Arena from Ancient

Aliens (which I now consider to be amazing maps) I thought slaughter was not for me, but that assumption was wrong. I had a very fun time and now I don't mind slaughter maps. However I prefer more "normal" gameplay.

 

[continuum.mid]

I recently commented that I don't like "true slaughtermaps" in another now-locked thread, but after reflection I realized that I'd already really enjoyed a few of them. I love Plutonia's "Go 2 It", I quite enjoyed Struggle's "The Antaropolis" (though not so much the maps before and after), and most recently I had fun with PUSS IX's "Another Glance at the Paradise" (based on Hell Revealed's "Last Look at Eden"). I think I can safely revise my position to "I love high enemy counts, but I prefer run-and-gun action to solving combat puzzles, and I like my difficulty medium."

 

Speaking of puzzles, I thought I might hate Eternal Doom's puzzle maps, but it's beaten my expectations. I have been spending upwards of 40 minutes in most maps, not including reloads, and checking DoomWiki and YouTube playthroughs on the regular, but the puzzles are actually pretty fun to solve, even when I'm told the solution! Special shoutout to the late Jim Flynn, whose Doomcute masterpieces absolutely floored me (though most of No Parking can go to hell), and Chris Couleur for being an underappreciated master of vanilla detailing. (Why didn't he make more WADs?) I still hate Bob Evans' maps, but I think I'm solidly pro-puzzles now.

[dististik]

Micro Slaughter Community Project and Alien Vendetta really helped me realize how fun slaughter could be. Before the former I thought the genre was well outside of my grasp and I'd have to always settle for watching people far better than me to experience these really cool looking maps but then realized what makes the genre tick and how to have fun playing maps that fit it.

[Matthias]

Actually the same case as yours.

 

I was tired of slaughter because it was everywhere at some point and killing thousands of monsters was tedious. But I think it was MAP30 in Scytche that I played one day and it changed my mind about slaughter - I realized it could be actually fun.

[Kwisior]

8 minutes ago, Matthias (LiquidDoom) said:

Actually the same case as yours.

 

I was tired of slaughter because it was everywhere at some point and killing thousands of monsters was tedious. But I think it was MAP30 in Scytche that I played one day and it changed my mind about slaughter - I realized it could be actually fun.

Interesting. I always thought Fire and Ice was the "tedious grind" in an otherwise quick mapset.

[Lonespacemarine]

Map e1m1 and e1m2 of freedoom

I don't know what style freedoom is (probably lovecraftian) I think it is lovecraftian considering the fact alien like monsters 

But yeah both are great levels with great music

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Lonespacemarine : Ok

[continuum.mid]

3 hours ago, Lonespacemarine said:

Map 1 and 2 of freedoom

I don't know what style freedoom is (probably lovecraftian) I think it is lovecraftian considering the fact alien like monsters 

But yeah both are great levels with great music

Phase 2 I assume? I'm not sure Freedoom has a set in stone genre, but it feels closest to sci-fi horror.

 

Aside from the aesthetics though, it pretty much plays like any "90s-style" Doom mapset.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Jade Earth taught be to like long maps. And huge architecture. I always thought a good map is short and punchy, respecting my time. Jade Earth sat me down and said, look you're gonna be stuck down here for a while so you may as well try to appreciate it. 

Playing it made me get a sense of its scale. It's an impossibly massive structure but the individual areas are massive as well, which I didn't realise in maps before then. It's a giant, imposing building. It very deliberately makes you feel small and insignificant. Like a cathedral in real life. Except, instead of fearing the might of a higher power, it's the structure itself that oppresses. Making you feel like a rat, scurrying around in the filth trying to survive this bizarre trip with all odds attacked against you. But it doesn't throw everything at you at once, it trickles you a drip-feed of dudes with more dudes around every corner. It's frustrating, it doesn't really care you've got places to be. It's a journey. Take it or leave it. 

[Lonespacemarine]

2 hours ago, continuum.mid said:

Phase 2 I assume? I'm not sure Freedoom has a set in stone genre, but it feels closest to sci-fi horror.

 

Aside from the aesthetics though, it pretty much plays like any "90s-style" Doom mapset.

My bad 

I mean phase 1. It is more lovecraftian than phase 2 (since phase 2 is in set earth and phase 1 is in Pluto, triton , horizon and Ceres)

 

[D0M0]

Comatose changed my opinion on spectres…

 

Jokes aside, i used to dislike puzzle based maps (the majority of them, not gonna be specific). Gimmicky maps that were presented in the IWADs didn’t give me a good first impression and it often rubbed me the wrong way. Map 23 in Doom II was one map i really didn’t enjoy, as well as a lot of the maps in the master levels. Due to those being my introduction into puzzle based maps, it put me off. 

That was until I played the PWADs. The main example i’ll use in this instance was a wad called Darkest Room. It’s main puzzle (or gimmick) was to use noise blocking linedefs so that you see the majority of the monsters in certain fights before you actually wake them up. The author gives you time to strategise on how to tackle the fight instead of facing it head on. It just made me appreciate the map a bit more than I did, it worked well with the gameplay and due to some of those fights being pretty damn tough, it gives you a break on casual play. After that, I played a lot more maps that used problem solving and I somehow just ended up liking them.

 

Now I tend to use that technique in a lot of maps that I make. You could argue that the puzzle maps I played were a lot older compared to darkest room, and you would be right. Yet I do wish that some of these maps I used to play could have used these gimmicks in a way that it’s more fun to play against.

 

Also just to clarify (correct me if i’m wrong) I can’t really tell the difference between puzzle and gimmick, since surely the gimmick is also the puzzle between you and beating the map. This is kinda really how I see it and it helps me not get too confused about terms, but for all I know, it could be completely wrong.

[brick]

I'll echo Jade Earth for long maps. I always liked, and still prefer, shorter maps, but Jade Earth made me realize there are long maps that I can love. I still prefer either a megawad of short maps or a single-map wad if it's going to be a long one, but it definitely gave me a different appreciation for long excursions and has taught me to get into the right frame of mind for them.

 

On the opposite side, I never particularly cared for speedmaps until I played 3 Heures d'Agonie 2 with the DWMC, but some of them are so well designed, so clever, and really taught me that a quickly-done map does not have to correlate with cutting corners or sacrificing quality. I've since played several other speedmap projects that have confirmed this.

 

I still don't think I like slaughter, but beating most of Micro Slaughter and a large part of Haste without cheating has made me realize there is some fun to be had in these kind of maps even for me. I don't think I'll ever love the genre, or combat challenges in general, but the fact I had as much fun as I did with these 2 wads is a lesson in itself. Beating Punisher.wad completely fair not long ago was a nice ego boost too.

[DNSKILL5]

EPIC 2 rocked my world and at least in some of the levels it is what I’d consider to be vanilla-compatible slaughter. It gave me a deeper appreciation for stuff like Hell Revealed 1 and 2, Plutonia, etc. it’s also what made me interested in trying other WADs like Ancient Aliens given the similar themes. 

 

There was also this invasion WAD that I sadly cannot remember the name of anymore. This was back in the Skulltag era. I remember playing it solo and with friends, but it was by far one of the best invasion WADs I ever came across. Before then, I didn’t care for invasion style WADs because my only exposure to it was the Skulltag invasion maps and those got stale after a while to the point I lost interest. This changed that for me, and truly immersed me into that mode of play and now it is one of my favorite modes when playing with other people. I just wish I knew what the hell it was that I played then because it was amazing. 

[Uni]

I used to dislike Nicolás Monti's maps and style but nowadays I really enjoy and appreciate the creativity and the interconnectivity in his levels. I also think he's one of the very few mappers today that can capture the 90's era of mapping the best way in terms of architecture, music and texture selection. His maps has this nostalgic feel that I only sense whenever I play something from 1994-1995 years. 

[LadyMistDragon]

I wish I could answer this question....but I've always had a broad pallette. Like I don't really go for maps which seem only to exist to fry the average computer, but slaughter wads as a general rule are fun, as long as things don't start to feel ultra-difficult and also entirely in service to the combat. But I like basically any other kind of wad.

 

I guess I may have had some preconceptions about speedmaps at first because of the ridiculous blockiness of 1024 sets but I was proven wrong almost the instant I joined Doomworld and played 180 Minutes Por Vivre, along with the PUSS series and realized that speedmaps didn't all have to be a bunch of silly Scythe clones but actually feature creative and high-octane combat, the likes of which may not always show up in normal maps. Pacing is kind of hard to screw up with them if the mapper's practiced enough.

[Geniraul]

I think this is Sunlust for me. I used to think slaughter maps were unbeatable, and then in 2020 I saw Decino going through the whole slaughter megawad, ahah.

[ReaperAA]

7 hours ago, DNSKILL5 said:

I just wish I knew what the hell it was that I played then because it was amazing. 

 

Could it be Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos by any chance?

[jmac]

I used to be pretty dismissive of slaughter as a whole, until I played through Haste. I'm still awful at playing them, but I'm at least a lot more open to giving slaughter maps a real try.

 

Also, Lost Civilization gave me an appreciation for maps that take a relatively long time to beat. I used to vastly prefer short maps, but now I want to see more sprawling adventure maps.

[DNSKILL5]

16 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Could it be Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos by any chance?

Nah, it was something else. I know it used Skulltag assets in the levels though, but I think it didn’t have other additions to it. I just remember the first level you’re in this room with red glowing things that I think were where the players spawned in, sort of meant to look like teleportation devices I assume. You could see outside it was fairly vegetated environment and as you progressed parts of the outdoor area collapsed revealing more areas. That likely doesn’t narrow anything down lol. I’ll see if any of the friends I played it with might remember what it was called.

[rita remton]

used to dislike...

• slaughter maps... because the amount of monsters were frightening, especially with ridiculously low ammo (did not know about using monster-infighting, etc back then). the map [oceanside] by [@valkiriforce] has a special place in my heart for changing all of that. from vanilla gameplay, the map introduces the slaughtery elements in a gradual manner, at amounts that i could actually cope to play and enjoy.
• speedmaps... played a few bad apples before, thus had a long-standing notion that mappers making maps in very short periods equate to low quality visuals and gameplay. that misconception was only recently dispersed by the map [sacre bleu] by [@MFG38]. downloaded the map due to the nice screenshot. found the gameplay surprisingly enjoyable, with simple yet gorgeous visual aesthetics.

thanks :)