Most Hated Design Tropes in Wads?

[Acid-Seltzer]

Doing some research for a personal project. Not trying to be a hater here so not gonna ask about specific maps or authors but I'm curious; what sort of stuff do you run into in wads that just like pisses you off/bores you/makes you feel like you've wasted your time? If you're a more magnanimous person who doesn't get like that can you imagine something that would make you?

Edited May 25 by Acid-Seltzer

[Xaser]

Don't try and use folks' lists of dislikes as a guideline for making your maps -- these sorts of threads tend to collect a lot of very bizarre complaints, and you'll never please everyone anyway unless you literally make Nothing... and even then, that might be disappointing to someone anyway. :P

 

[Astar]

Long, huge empty corridors.

 

Huge empty streets are even worse because I'm afraid of empty open spaces.

[Shepardus]

The kind of WAD that bores me is one that does nothing unusual and plays things safe for fear of triggering someone's pet peeve.

[yakfak]

PICNIC TABLES! i hate them

[Jayextee]

People really hate secret areas so maybe you should, like, never use the sector special to tag yours. :3 

[Deadwing]

That varies a lot from person to person, tbh. A lot of people played my stuff, ended hating it and that's completely fine. More important is to find the intricacies of what you enjoy about Doom and translate it in your mapping. It's not just overall rules, such as mapping slaughter x classic or linear x non-liner, but the flow of gameplay, setups that make you enjoy more the game, preference of weapons, themes, etc. IMO with mapping and playing experience these things get easier to discover.

 

Still, answering your question, usually I'm not a fan of SSG, especially if you are dealing with higher tier enemies (HK's, Arachnotrons, Cacos, etc). I think Doom's gameplay is much more fun using chaingun for low tier, rockets and plasma for everything and BFG for the big battles. However, opposing this rule, to me it's still interesting to have the player to be underpowered against foes as long you aren't expected to kill everything. Many older wads imo suffer from this (stalements against bulky enemies + SSG as the main weapon), but overally most people enjoys a lot SSG, so it's definitely not something wrong.

Edited May 20 by Deadwing

[Daytime Waitress]

As others have already said, make what you want - put in less of what you dislike - and people will gravitate towards it.

 

45 minutes ago, yakfak said:

PICNIC TABLES! i hate them

 

lmao I can see Clippy doing an entire megawad based on outdoor furniture just out of spite now.

[Sonikkumania]

Misaligned textures, lol.

[Jayextee]

Just now, Sonikkumania said:

Misaligned textures, lol.

Oh dear. ;)

[pcorf]

Forced ambushes where you are trapped in a room and the bars take forever to lower.

[Lila Feuer]

Boring combat; on UV. The first Eviternity is a looker at times for sure but it rarely has engaging or interesting fights on UV. It does get harder near the end, but the combat in its sequel was miles ahead of anything the first wad did.

[Devalaous]

Pop-up monsters top the list. Really breaks the immersion and reminds you your exploring a videogame world. Sure, modern standards of '50+ sweaty chaingunners all awkwardly stuffed in a tiny dark room closet, bursting open because you looked at a key' is also immersion breaking, but things instantly popping out of floors to jumpscare you? Whats worse is that Dr Sleep *loved* popup monsters and instant-open doors, so his otherwise great works have that against them

[Amaruψ]

1 hour ago, Astar said:

because I'm afraid of empty open spaces.

 

Silent Hill Doom coming right up.

[Astar]

10 minutes ago, Amaruψ said:

 

Silent Hill Doom coming right up.

Noooo please don't D:

[Doom-X-Machina]

My personal approach for my projects is I make the kind of maps that I would like to play myself... and if other people enjoy them too, that's awesome. Primarily, map building is an enjoyable hobby for myself first and foremost and I don't tailor anything that I do please or satisfy a general consensus or "unspoken set of rules" that a wider community deems appropriate. It's simply impossible to please everyone.

Things I do in maps that seem to annoy people lol...

• Inescapable death pits.
  Some maps contextually need them and can factor into gameplay strategy as another obstacle in a firefight. If you have a narrow stretch to traverse against a barrage of fire and your strafe area is limited by something else that can kill you, you have to factor that in.
   
• Platforming.
  Not to the ridiculous extremes of Doom Eternal but I do like some more modern FPS elements like jump and crouch. Having to squeeze down into a vent, or jump into a crate, to another crate to get into a high vent etc. some basic platforming can really add some fresh varity to the map design.
   
• Not prioritising secrets.
  I'm not much of a secret hunter myself so I don't tend to prioritise secrets in map design until the very end and even then, it's usually a case of "oh I better put in at least one so people don't cry about it". They do make it in, but they're always an after-thought to overall design.

Just do you mate. Build whatever feels good for you. If people are on the bandwagon and jammin' to your shit, awesome. If people aren't, that's awesome too. As far as I'm concerned, there are NO rules.

[Acid-Seltzer]

2 hours ago, Xaser said:

Don't try and use folks' lists of dislikes as a guideline for making your maps -- these sorts of threads tend to collect a lot of very bizarre complaints, and you'll never please everyone anyway unless you literally make Nothing... and even then, that might be disappointing to someone anyway. :P

 

Oh! Don't worry, I won't. Like, to be clear I'm not looking at this as a set of guidelines for what not to do. I don't really want to give the game away with regards to what I'm working on so I won't say more than that but yeah, not interested in making this thing pleasing lol

[GreenAnime]

personally
* hitscanner hell arenas
* no space cyberdemon fights
* platforming
* 6+ arcvhile spam

[Egregor]

-64 wide hallways as the main progression path (as short secret or non-combat paths they are okay).

-Mazes, especially those 2D pencil mazes. They are a frustrating, non-interesting, time wasting obstacle.

-a combination 64 wide maze is the worst! I will straight up skip a level if it has one of these in it, or noclip past it.

[Grain of Salt]

I wonder if there's, like, a food forum out there where threads about least favorite ingredients always get a ton of comments that are like "I hate garlic", "I hate chocolate", "I hate salt".

[Jayextee]

Mayonnaise. Can't stand the stuff. And yet, you try to buy a premade sandwich from a convenience store that's not doused in the stuff; and isn't the dullest shit like "just cheese, hope you like only cheese" and "nothing exists in your miserable life except this thin slice of ham, clumsily doubled-over so it doesn't spill out of the sandwich".

[NuMetalManiak]

Overdoing it in general. Though everyone is different, someone's "overdoing it" is not "overdoing it" to someone else. But majority rules in many cases.

[Stabbey]

6 hours ago, Acid-Seltzer said:

Oh! Don't worry, I won't. Like, to be clear I'm not looking at this as a set of guidelines for what not to do. I don't really want to give the game away with regards to what I'm working on so I won't say more than that but yeah, not interested in making this thing pleasing lol

 

You're not looking for most hated design elements as guidelines for what NOT to do. I can read between the lines. So, in other words, you're looking at this attempting to make a map which will be deliberately annoying and obnoxious? That's actually quite easy to do, but it probably won't make you and by extension your maps popular.

[worldoffood]

Was going to give some actual advice, but if you're just making a troll map I won't bother. There are already a million of those out there. Each more annoying than the last. No thanks lol

[Acid-Seltzer]

4 hours ago, worldoffood said:

Was going to give some actual advice, but if you're just making a troll map I won't bother. There are already a million of those out there. Each more annoying than the last. No thanks lol

There are? Do you know of any notable ones? I'd love to see what they're doing.

[Grain of Salt]

53 minutes ago, Acid-Seltzer said:

There are? Do you know of any notable ones? I'd love to see what they're doing.

 

 

This map is really inventive and cool despite its offputting-to-some approach

[Acid-Seltzer]

24 minutes ago, Grain of Salt said:

 

 

This map is really inventive and cool despite its offputting-to-some approach

Ooo, I love how bad the vibes are, looks like a nightmare to play.

 

I probably should have just made a thread asking about jokewads.

[Grain of Salt]

It's a shame the annotations on that video are gone (forever?) now. They basically provided constant explanations of the overall route and for what was happening in each room, including a bunch of stuff that isn't obvious just from viewing, like invisible impassable lines, trap linedefs that are being skipped, etc.

 

8 hours ago, Acid-Seltzer said:

I probably should have just made a thread asking about jokewads.

 

I feel like it can be quite hard to find joke/weird maps that are as high effort as this, and not just kinda shitposting, tbh.

[Lizardcommando]

ZDoom style Stealth Monsters.

[plums]

2 hours ago, Grain of Salt said:

I feel like it can be quite hard to find joke/weird maps that are as high effort as this, and not just kinda shitposting, tbh.

 

@j4rio himself made this, which is basically unplayable for anyone who isn't j4rio

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/142519-my-first-map-please-be-nice-to-me-_/

(I'm sure you know about this GoS but OP might not.)

 

Also I would count several TimeOfDeath maps as being weird+impenetrable enough to be close enough to count, even though they're not jokewads at all.