Come up with the most clever troll design decisions

[Li'l devil]

Imagine you're playing a map and you see a switch. You think it'll trigger something you need to progress and you casually flip it, but all it did was making a secret with valuable pickups inaccessible. A secret you could've found otherwise if you didn't flip it. Or what if this switch made the exit inaccessible? Now you've just made the map unbeatable because you flipped the wrong switch! Even better if it's very early in the map and you only find out about this after you played it for another 30 minutes!

 

Post your ideas of clever trolling in wads. They have to be clever and subtle though! Things like player teleporting into an ambush of 15 chaingunners are too lame and obvious.

 

Now, considering how many maps there are, everything we can think of has probably been done already, so you can post existing examples.

[RataUnderground]

I would say that the only "trolling decisions" worth mentioning are those that are not a serious inconvenience and are taken as simple touches of humor.
Putting a rather cryptic secret and having only a clip inside, for example, or placing a switch in the center of a large arena that doesn't trigger the fight, but works as bait since approaching it triggers a linedef action that teleports monsters. Things like that.

[Shepardus]

Basically anything involving that door type that opens five minutes after the start of the level.

[Captain Toenail]

Replace all the bullet/projectile decals with switch textures.

[Decay]

2 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Imagine you're playing a map and you see a switch. You think it'll trigger something you need to progress and you casually flip it, but all it did was making a secret with valuable pickups inaccessible. A secret you could've found otherwise if you didn't flip it. Or what if this switch made the exit inaccessible? Now you've just made the map unbeatable because you flipped the wrong switch! Even better if it's very early in the map and you only find out about this after you played it for another 30 minutes!

 

Post your ideas of clever trolling in wads. They have to be clever and subtle though! Things like player teleporting into an ambush of 15 chaingunners are too lame and obvious.

 

Now, considering how many maps there are, everything we can think of has probably been done already, so you can post existing examples.

This isn't trolling at all, it's asshole and/or bad design. Sounds like the average jerk who just say "LOL TROLL'D" anytime they got called out for doing something stupid rather than doing something more trollish.

 

2 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

I would say that the only "trolling decisions" worth mentioning are those that are not a serious inconvenience and are taken as simple touches of humor.
Putting a rather cryptic secret and having only a clip inside, for example, or placing a switch in the center of a large arena that doesn't trigger the fight, but works as bait since approaching it triggers a linedef action that teleports monsters. Things like that.

This guy gets it.

[xScavengerWolfx]

Put a bear trap inside a secret room and have air horns blasting and have a text says "you got trolled LUL!" and as a bonus throw in some cringe EDM music while your at it.

 

Edit: I should also mention might as well throw in the NFTs apes, the crypto bros and what ever else can be cringe.

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by xScavengerWolfx

[Mr Masker]

Remove or add 1 or 2 pixels to every Doom texture, in somewhat noticeable places, but don't acknowledge it. Make the Medkit crosses Pink, but the Stimpack crosses Red still. Change the weapon damages, but don't mention it anywhere. Just make the game itself look and play slightly off, without saying anything. Maybe, eventually, someone will be really pissed off by it.

[No-Man Baugh]

Invisible coinblock

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Have the exit right in front of you. Get close. exit closes off. turn around. the actual exit.

[Mr. Alexander]

SoBad's map Subverter has a lot of good joke level design: Stairs that don't rise "right," hordes of arch-viles that don't attack you, a room that would be a difficult platforming fight if the floor weren't fake and perfectly flat, etc. Good punchline, too.

[Fonze]

I think one of the most "trolly" designs I've done wasn't necessarily a troll on purpose, and perhaps could be argued as an inverse troll, but did garner some fun reactions at the time. In map12 of tht I made a small encounter in a room that features a prominent switch on the far wall as the player enters, as well as a slightly less noticeable one to the side behind a very inconveniently placed mancubus. As players approach the middle of the room enemies come out to play, which made them not want to hit the obvious switch. Many players seemed to gravitate towards finishing the encounter and hitting the less noticeable switch, thus ending the lock-in and freeing themselves. Only afterwards out of curiosity would players run over to the obvious switch and flip it. The result: health for the encounter they just finished 😂 Oh yeah and this was a totally optional dead end.

 

Brings up a funny point that the real effects of what we make are so often different to our intentions.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Add a single dead pixel to every texture and sprite in the game, remove the last five seconds of every song so none of them loop correctly, slightly increase or decrease the pitch of every sound effect, misspell every word on the menu by one letter, reverse the positions of the red and green lights on every switch, remove one frame of animation from every weapon, add more hair to Doomguy's arm, decrease the weapon firing speed by 10% for every weapon, swap the health of the Hell Knight with the Baron of Hell, add a single ugly seam to every sky texture, remove the last sentence of every story text intermission, remove the "%" sign from the stats screen, cut the "umf" wallhumping sound in half, change the order of the ammo display on the statusbar, make Doomguy's eyes look to the left and nowhere else, make the map end when pressing on the door to the exit switch instead of on the exit switch itself, replace every UAC logo with USA, reduce walking speed by 20% and increase running speed by 10%, but SR40 decreases speed by 40%, make every secret trigger twice, rocket blast radius alternates between -100% and +100%, plasma rifle uses rocket ammo and rocket pickups give bullets (labeled as plasma cells) blue armor depletes as it should but offers no protection, green armor gives a BFG, BFG requires 400 bullets to fire but only fires one tracer, archviles make imp sounds and hit the player several times at once for a maximum of five damage, barrels explode at a quarter of their normal speed but explosion radius is increased by 300%.

[Jayextee]

I've done some things in my WADs over the years that could be considered trollish; but in my eyes it's really just experimentation, because I personally doubt everything has been tried yet, just most things.

Off the top of my head:
 

• Sinister Intention never giving the player the chaingun, forcing some pistol play
• The Becoming E2M8 put a few noses out of joint with its incredibly punishing suicide walkway surrounding the cyberdemon fight
• apparently Bleedthrough's untagged secrets

I admit, my intent isn't to troll but to provide some hopefully unique experiences in my maps. For better or worse; not every experiment's a banger, and I accept that. It's why they're experiments. It's good to see what works and what doesn't IMO.

[Mr Masker]

21 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Add a single dead pixel to every texture and sprite in the game, remove the last five seconds of every song so none of them loop correctly, slightly increase or decrease the pitch of every sound effect, misspell every word on the menu by one letter, reverse the positions of the red and green lights on every switch, remove one frame of animation from every weapon, add more hair to Doomguy's arm, decrease the weapon firing speed by 10% for every weapon, swap the health of the Hell Knight with the Baron of Hell, add a single ugly seam to every sky texture, remove the last sentence of every story text intermission, remove the "%" sign from the stats screen, cut the "umf" wallhumping sound in half, change the order of the ammo display on the statusbar, make Doomguy's eyes look to the left and nowhere else, make the map end when pressing on the door to the exit switch instead of on the exit switch itself, replace every UAC logo with USA, reduce walking speed by 20% and increase running speed by 10%, but SR40 decreases speed by 40%, make every secret trigger twice, rocket blast radius alternates between -100% and +100%, plasma rifle uses rocket ammo and rocket pickups give bullets (labeled as plasma cells) blue armor depletes as it should but offers no protection, green armor gives a BFG, BFG requires 400 bullets to fire but only fires one tracer, archviles make imp sounds and hit the player several times at once for a maximum of five damage, barrels explode at a quarter of their normal speed but explosion radius is increased by 300%.

Now THIS is what I'm talking about!

[Logamuffin]

5 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

I would say that the only "trolling decisions" worth mentioning are those that are not a serious inconvenience and are taken as simple touches of humor.

Nandayanen from JPCP...

 

Ok, to give a serious answer for a second, I hosted a community project with nothing but troll and joke maps and most of the stuff was just bad design but "it's ok because it's supposed to be a joke". I think that's what a lot of troll design boils down to honestly. At least we had fun...

[Pechudin]

I like the "pressing use on door opens up everything BUT the door".

[Stabbey]

I kinda made a map based around the idea of trolling the player:

 

 

Tricks and trolls include - and don't read this unless you want to be spoiled for the map:

 

Spoiler

• A "jumping puzzle" across thin platforms to reach a switch. ...Except it's a shoot-switch you could hit from the start the whole time.
  
• A dark maze which has silent teleporters releasing spectres once the player is partway through.
  
• A hallway which is made of false walls and sound-blocking lines so that the player won't alert the monsters until attacking the one at the end.
  
• The entire buildup of the Blue Key Palace.
  
• The secret vault.
  
• An invulnerability before a dozen Arch-viles and approaching it teleports the player in front of them.
  
• The "empty" wing.
  
• Multiple instances of seemingly normal walls suddenly lowering.
  
• Arch-Viles placed in mean and surprising locations.
  
• A "good" exit and a "bad" exit, depending on whether you found the secrets.

 

 

5 hours ago, Shepardus said:

Basically anything involving that door type that opens five minutes after the start of the level.

 

I also did a map based around that which wasn't trolling, the player was caught in the room (actually a very tall crusher) and couldn't get out for five minutes.

[lunchlunch]

I think 99% of the time, trolls don't belong in DOOM. In Kaizo Super Mario World ROM hacks it can be hilarious but that's only because those levels only take 30-60 seconds to complete. The setback for getting trolled is a matter of seconds. The average DOOM map is between 7-10 minutes, and even with frequent saves, your setback is much longer.

The other thing is that in kaizo, there's only so many things happening onscreen at one time so it's immediately clear when you've been trolled and what the troll is. In DOOM it's often not clear that you've been trolled, the cause and effect is not as clearcut, it takes more trial and error to see exactly what went wrong and why. Then by the time you realize it was an intentional troll, not a mapping error, not a puzzle you misunderstood, not a fight you had any chance of beating, the "troll" has lost any chance of being humorous and is just an annoyance, if not a reason to abandon the wad entirely.

[NoWits]

Comfy Doom deserves a mention.

[Monocled]

Increasing the time it takes to switch weapons, Reducing the damage and making the attack speed have a random chance to be like 20-50% slower after an attack so you can't time your shots, Make any autofire weapons just randomly stop firing. Making the HUD like 20% bigger

[Caffeine Freak]

Swap the Imp wakeup sound and the lift/platform stop sounds with each other.

[EPICALLL]

9 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Imagine you're playing a map and you see a switch. You think it'll trigger something you need to progress and you casually flip it, but all it did was making a secret with valuable pickups inaccessible. A secret you could've found otherwise if you didn't flip it. Or what if this switch made the exit inaccessible? Now you've just made the map unbeatable because you flipped the wrong switch! Even better if it's very early in the map and you only find out about this after you played it for another 30 minutes!

 

Post your ideas of clever trolling in wads. They have to be clever and subtle though! Things like player teleporting into an ambush of 15 chaingunners are too lame and obvious.

 

Now, considering how many maps there are, everything we can think of has probably been done already, so you can post existing examples.

We all know the ultimate troll would be advertising a 32-map megawad with screenshots as proof, only for it to just be mock ii again.

[bobstremglav]

I don't want to sound self promoting, but...

 

Project AUQIPONING has bunch of troll moments

E1M1 has room labeled "EXIT" nearby your start place. When you open it with secret switch you realise that exit not functioning, so button inside it is useless

E1M9 has small secret step which isn't reachable from below, but you can grab invulnerability on it from below. Step is tagged as secret, and to land on it you have to reach exit... then jump off, wasting time for just single secret

E1M4 has hard section with catwalk under crusher. There single bottle on secret-tagged platform behind blue-keyed pillars nearby catwalk. Blue key is also secret, it's placed nearby start of level, and you can reveal it only after reaching exit. So to get this single bottle and single secret you have to basically run level twice

[MFG38]

MSCP MAP31.

 

'Nuff said.

[Captain POLAND]

In roughly ascending level of trollishness:

 

- Color the key doors wrong (blue key door is colored yellow, yellow key door colored red, red key door colored blue, etc.)

 

- Hide keys mandatory for progression in secret areas

 

- After clearing a room of monsters, have a trigger halfway across the level that teleports in archviles to that room to resurrect them all without any hint it happened until you get back there

 

- Create timed secrets that require SR50, wallrunning, or some other advanced trick to reach before they close

 

- Create timed secrets that only open once, so if you miss them, they're gone forever

 

- Same as above, except instead of a secret, it's a door mandatory for progression

 

- Put a bunch of switches in a room, one of which opens the exit and the others which instantly kill you, and use a script to randomize which switch does what each time

 

- Create a teleporter maze you need to get through to finish the level, except each teleporter has a 50% chance of sending you to a room with no exit, with a mocking message on the walls

 

- Make it so the only way to progress is to use a rocket-assisted void glide, in a room with a 20 damaging floor and tons of crushers

 

- Do all of the above, and if the player actually manages to reach the exit anyway, reward them with a Terry Trap that messes with their Doom settings.

 

[RjY]

17 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Imagine you're playing a map and you see a switch. You think it'll trigger something you need to progress and you casually flip it, but all it did was making a secret with valuable pickups inaccessible.

 

I see you have also played Use3d's Community Chest maps. :)

Anyway, as ever I recommend the inimitable darkwave17.

Also does anyone recall a map with a switch that does nothing but make the switch itself serenely float up the wall?

[Li'l devil]

49 minutes ago, RjY said:

I see you have also played Use3d's Community Chest maps. :)

I haven't actually, but that got me interested, heh

[Yumheart]

18 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Imagine you're playing a map and you see a switch. You think it'll trigger something you need to progress and you casually flip it, but all it did was making a secret with valuable pickups inaccessible. A secret you could've found otherwise if you didn't flip it. Or what if this switch made the exit inaccessible? Now you've just made the map unbeatable because you flipped the wrong switch! Even better if it's very early in the map and you only find out about this after you played it for another 30 minutes!

Stardate 20x7 does something along those lines in map02. There's a switch that you can hit pretty early on that locks you out of a soulsphere secret later on. That's probably not great design, but it fits in with the map's esoteric vibe and being a little cruel to the player for no reason sometimes is a thing that makes this game memorable imo :p

[fruity lerlups]

just say youre in this tough fight, its on an island surrounded by damaging floor, there are 4 cyberdemons, revenants, etc. just your typical end of slaughter map kinda thing. Off in the distance you see an invulnerability in the damaging floor, you run to it thinking "ohh yeah baby time to waste these suckers". You grit your teeth and straferun onto it, taking damage in the hopes of reaching that invulnerability and finishing this, you reach the invulnerability, but you are teleported to the start of the map, with absolutely no way of getting back to the fight before it runs out. You just wasted stack for an invulnerability you couldnt even use.

 

Also if you wanted to at least make this worth the players time; make it so you need to do this to get 100% kills, it spawns some archvilles in the starting area who quickly get to work repopulating the starting area, so you have to use the stupid invulnerability, and waste stack and even more ammo, making you even worse off for the last fight.

[fruity lerlups]

1 hour ago, Captain POLAND said:

In roughly ascending level of trollishness:

 

- Color the key doors wrong (blue key door is colored yellow, yellow key door colored red, red key door colored blue, etc.)

 

- Hide keys mandatory for progression in secret areas

 

- After clearing a room of monsters, have a trigger halfway across the level that teleports in archviles to that room to resurrect them all without any hint it happened until you get back there

 

- Create timed secrets that require SR50, wallrunning, or some other advanced trick to reach before they close

 

- Create timed secrets that only open once, so if you miss them, they're gone forever

 

- Same as above, except instead of a secret, it's a door mandatory for progression

 

- Put a bunch of switches in a room, one of which opens the exit and the others which instantly kill you, and use a script to randomize which switch does what each time

 

- Create a teleporter maze you need to get through to finish the level, except each teleporter has a 50% chance of sending you to a room with no exit, with a mocking message on the walls

 

- Make it so the only way to progress is to use a rocket-assisted void glide, in a room with a 20 damaging floor and tons of crushers

 

- Do all of the above, and if the player actually manages to reach the exit anyway, reward them with a Terry Trap that messes with their Doom settings.

 

one /slight/ problem with the archville one is a lot of people play on DSDA now and would see the kill counter ticking back.. but that would still be hilarious because people would go "omg what now" and panic to find the arcvhilles.