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Black Void

Deathmatch = groan...

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Ok - now I have no idea whether or not this has been posted before, forgive me if it has and don't flame me. Anyway - down to the point...

I've been really sick and tired lately of opening up the newstuff page and finding huge piles of deathmatch levels - I don't know if anyone wants to back me up on my opinion of doom deathmatching being pretty lame, but if you do, then you'll be agreeing with me. Single player levels to me, just seem like so much more - more objectives, more fun, and easily playable for those nights when you're bored with nothing better to do.

Now given the fact that some deathmatch levels are insanely detailed, I still don't think this makes them any better. I've been down the road of making DMs, I tried it once, and I just laughed. So anybody else sick of all these deathmatch maps? I just wish I could open those .txt files of those cool sounding levels and read, "Single Player..."

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Before I started making single player maps, I made a few deathmatch maps. There's really only so much you can do with deathmatch maps. No monsters, keys, or goals of any kind (except to kill the other guy of course). After a while, they just got too boring and repetitive to make.

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Well, for me, my first time playing Deathmatching against bots, and on the internet was great fun cause I had never done it before. Sure it gets old sometimes with playing the same over and over but I still enjoy it. :D

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Deathmatch has no appeal to me, but maybe making a deathmap map is a good way for mappers to get started. Perhaps sometimes the choice isn't between DM and SP, but between DM and nothing at all.

Some DM maps can be converted to SP with good results. It would be nice to see this done more often. Such conversions require a good feel for gameplay rather than 1337 mapping skills.

Anyway, when /newstuff is short of SP wads, surely there are plenty of good wads you can pull up out of the archives. You haven't played them all, have you? :)

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I agree. Sure, I enjoy deathmatch, but come on, only about 1% of deathmatch maps made ever get played. It does me no good to have a level with no one to play against. Sure, there are bots, but they aren't fun. I prefer good old single player. At least with single player, there is no having to find someone to play against.

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People do dm levels cus its alot less work than sp oriented stuff. They are generally small, you don't have to worry about monster placement - and noone will really complain about gameplay since well, noone is gonna play it to the extent they actually care :) People who make dm levels mostly does it for the fun of mapping, not expecting it to be played, or at least realizing theres like 10.000 dm wads out there already, none of which are being played regulary except from the dwango compilations.

As for Black Void Saying "Doom deathmatching being pretty lame" I think its just a pointer he didn't get into that part of the game much at all :) Theres not alot that beats a good tense game of 50 frags in Doom2 map01 as far as this game goes imho.

And Grazza have a point, its not like anyone played all the sp levels out there already so I don't see why the constant flow of dm levels is a problem/something to be sick of. Theres way too much of both anyway to ever go through. And hey, who knows..someone might actually get it right at some point and make the next dwango5 map01...yeah uh huh. :)

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I released 3 DM wads, and have a fourth that I may or may not finish work on (it's nearly done, but I kind of lost interest in it). I agree that DM gets very monotonous, especially when played with bots (which is how I generally play it because my connection sucks). I think it's like Andy Johnsen said, people make DM wads because it's easy, or just because they have fun making them. As for SP maps, I toy around with SP design from time to time, but it's been a long time since I made a complete SP map (some of my first maps, which sucked far too badly to be released). I don't know yet whether I'll ever make and release an SP wad, I don't think I'm all that good a mapper, and people's standards for a good map seem to go higher all the time.

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Even technically poor maps can sometimes be fun to play (and I don't mean just from a "laughing at them" viewpoint). Release and be damned!

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Grazza said:

Even technically poor maps can sometimes be fun to play


As long as though levels don't get blown to pieces by people that review them and make you look like the dirt off of a construction worker's boot...

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I made a DM wad recently, and I put as much planning (though honestly, not quite as much effort) as I would for a SP map.

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Black Void said:

As long as though levels don't get blown to pieces by people that review them and make you look like the dirt off of a construction worker's boot...

True - maybe that's one reason for the relative lack of SP releases you referred to. :(

Do you have your masterpiece PIK.WAD in mind, by any chance?

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Black Void said:

As long as though levels don't get blown to pieces by people that review them and make you look like the dirt off of a construction worker's boot...


Well, if it's fun to play I won't blow it to pieces...

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Actually some recent dm wads are played regularly on zdaemon. That's only a small fraction of the huge number of dm levels out there though, the market for them seem kind of saturated.

About doom dm being lame I only have this to say: bah!

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When I was playing Deathmatch for the first time (around 1995) it was really cool but it lost its appeal very quickly and I haven't done it ever since (including any other game that followed Doom). But apparently there seem to be lots of people who really seem to enjoy this kind of gameplay. How else could you explain Quake 3?

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Hmm... I definitely prefer Doom SP to DM. I like Doom DM, and used to have some decent 4 player matches with Legacy's splitscreen mode, but if I wanna play DM I will usually go for Q3 duel, because of the more strategic element of level control it provides and the better maps.

Doom DM is still good, but I agree on that it would be better if there wasn't such a bias towards the DM side of things in released Doom content. Then again, like some of you have been saying, SP maps are such a massive amount of work so it's kind of understandable.

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How is that Doom deathmatching lame, as if you just simply suck at it, or you are complaining about the animations are not good enough, or being owned too much by the BFG?

Quit complaining that the deathmatch maps you made don't get played at all or only rarely get played. You do not expect every SP map you made would get played by other people either. Firstly, please think through and ask yourselves, how many of you have actually tried to play DOOM online? Ever participated Zdaemon, which is the most appropriate and popular MP port online(people, give it some supports!)? If you really think your DM maps are that worth to be played, well display with some valuable aspects of the maps to the viewers, re-examine the levels and make improvements to the design.

A good DM map is definitely not easy to be made. You may be able to make a map as simple as map7 which would probably just cost you a few days to design it, but it does not necessarily mean you have created a good DM map. For instance for the developement of Quake 3, it actually took them 3 years to make a complete MP game with only 20 maps(some of the maps were actually eliminated too, they were wasted and released as lostarena.pk3). Out of all the maps, not all of them are very good, part of them are just basicaly decent and simple. To me, they are actually quite like some of the Dwango maps, except that they seem to appear with more eye-candies with the ability of the engine.

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Ok, if we remove the blatant (and flame provocative) DM-bashing from the argument there is still something left:


In my opinion there is a slight assymetry between the production of DM maps and the demand from them.

It cannot be prevented that the demand for SP maps will always be considerately greater than that of DM maps, but still, the DM community might be a wee bit too unwilling to try out new DM creations.

Also new authors should know that while a DM map does usually present a considerably lesser workload than most SP maps the demands of quality is in fact much greater. Also it is slightly less obvious what will make a DM map cool. Though the no-no's are quite obvious.

If a new mapper is trying to break the ice I will definately recommend at least experimenting with SP mapping.

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For a while there, all I did was make DM maps. However, one day I experienced some sort of shift of DM to SP. Now I'm doing SP levels and not looking back. As Grazza has said, it's fun to do DM maps just for the heck of it, to experiment with mapping and have fun. SP is where you really got to give it your all, since more people play that than DM, I do believe.

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Grazza said:

True - maybe that's one reason for the relative lack of SP releases you referred to. :(

Do you have your masterpiece PIK.WAD in mind, by any chance?


Heh, pik will always remain a true classic :-P

It is great to here everyone's views and opinions, it really is a mixed crowd. As for me, I think I'll stick with the SP - I'm even working on a new zdoom hub of about 6 levels, with the most detail I've put into a level - ever.

Maybe I just can't see what the real deathmatcher considers a great DM...

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The main draw of deathmatch is that you're not playing against the completly moronic monster AI doom graces us with. You're playing against other people who can think, figure things out, rather than just know your location and head towards you, hurling fireballs in a haphazard manner when you come into view waiting for you to kill them.

Personally for me plain old ffa dm gets kind of old after a bit (though I still play q3 and skulltag, UT a bit less because it's so goddamn slow) which is why team oriented games are so popular I think. CTF type games (counter-strike, dod, bombing run etc) are a lot of fun because you need to communicate with your team and there's a more ultimate goal aside from your fragcount.

As far as DM maps, well, I've made a couple of those, and speaking personally, they they take less time to make since they're smaller and there's no planning in terms of monster placement, traps, health/ammo balance. However, you do need to allow the player flawless movement (which is never necessary, and sometimes even the oppsite, of sp maps) by making sure there aren't any 'sticky' points when turning corners or running along a wall etc. You also need to account that no matter where a player spawns he'll have a shot at getting to a decent weapon before he gets killed, and it's generally a good idea not to have the bfg or plasma rifle sitting in the open. So while you need to account for different things, I would go as far to say that making a DM map that plays well is just as much, if not more, work than making a sp map that plays well. My 2 cents anyway.

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The thing is most dm maps are made by people who don't sit on experience/knowledge to do really good gameplay. If you look at the classic dm levels (judas23, dwellers, xenos9, danzig) they were created by active dm players, playtested to death and adjusted alot. True, if you do know what your doing and really aim for something thats gonna be playable it takes alot of work as with good sp levels, the testing process might be more of a bitch even. As I mentioned in the previous post tho, alot of dm levels are just an excuse for the author to show off some architecture/enjoy the mapping process, and I don't see anything wrong there.

One thing that is peculiar about doom is that this game got more usermade levels than any other fps (or am I wrong here? not really into the quake scene), but still the varity of dm levels played is minimal compared to new fps games. Doom2 dm is mainly doom2 map01 and dwango5 map01. Players who refined their game over these maps during the years get more fun out of playing the femilliar stuff instead of having to learn new levels. The competive aspect comes before varity I suppose.

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Yeah, there's definitely some unwillingness to try new DM maps in the Doom community. It's the same for many others though, Q3, Q1 and UT servers don't run too many custom maps. HL servers probably run the most I would say. It's a shame though, because personally I don't think too many of the Doom2 maps are too good for DMing and I have played many custom ones which are (IMO) better designed for DM.

I think part of it is that the original maps in games have the stamp of authenticity, being made by a professional company, and I think that the companies and some of the people who put servers up have a kind of instant preconception that "amateur" mappers cannot compete with this.

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ToXiCFLUFF said:

It's a shame though, because personally I don't think too many of the Doom2 maps are too good for DMing and I have played many custom ones which are (IMO) better designed for DM.

'cuz Doom ][ was never designed aiming for DM.

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Black Void, that's a pretty lame excuse to hate deathmatch. It's not anyone's fault but yours that you can't make a DM map that at least two people will play.

I'm sure I've realised by now that you haven't even played DM before. If that is the case, go download ZDaemon now, and then you can go bitch about about how much DM sucks. Someone might actually listen to you or something.

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deathz0r said:

Black Void, that's a pretty lame excuse to hate deathmatch. It's not anyone's fault but yours that you can't make a DM map that at least two people will play.

I'm sure I've realised by now that you haven't even played DM before. If that is the case, go download ZDaemon now, and then you can go bitch about about how much DM sucks. Someone might actually listen to you or something.


I havnt played DM before? Actually, I have - I've been on ZDaemon quite a few times before.

Now stop acting like an asshole - I told you - it was MY opinion in the first place that I didn't enjoy deathmatch and then I was glad to hear BOTH sides of single player lovers and DM lovers. And as for the deathmatch that I made, that has nothing to do with why I dislike DM maps.

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I'm not really playing DM now, so I can't care too much for all the recent DM releases... but why should I complain? No one forces me to play them. I might as well complain about SP releases if I were like that, since there's WAY too many releases for me to play them all.

As for what someone said above about "original maps" and DM, only map01 is very popular for DM, the others are rarely used. The rest is custom maps, usually.

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