Pencil of Doom Posted December 27, 2016 Overrated:Alien Vedetta, never gets boring right? Underrated:Community is Falling, DWForums jokewads, hilarious and fun to play, they should be played more. Fucking Hexen, don't get fooled by the name, it's a good wad and Hell 2 Pay. And Foreverhood, very interesting and mysterious. Surprising:Zion aka Doom 2016 for old Doom, H-Doom(i am amazed by how much effort went into it, interesting mod) and AEons of Death(one crazy clusterfuck that's chaotic but fun). Disappointing:Memento Mori II(good music though) and Eternal Doom. 0 Share this post Link to post
Memfis Posted December 27, 2016 What was disappointing about Memento Mori 2? 0 Share this post Link to post
T-Rex Posted December 27, 2016 Paul977 said:Yeah I also kinda bashed some levels when we played it on the DWMC mainly because I wasn't good enough to deal with them properly. After I improved I returned on it on uv pistol starts and beated almost all the hard levels (missing map 23 and 26) and I enjoyed playing them; I also think there some unique concept maps like 13, 23, 26 that we don't see nowadays (and the author was like 15 years old :O ?). So this HR as overrated is me more like "I can't beat in on UV so it's overrated" :) To be honest, I think the guys over at DWMC were being unfair with HR, especially joe-ilya and Suitepee. I mean, granted, some may be put off by the Wolfenstein-esque design in many of the early levels, but I feel they're judging by the standards of the expected Doom level design of today. People are forgetting that it's a wad from 1997, and its development dates back to 1996. At that time, there were no standards of how Doom levels should be. Still, that doesn't excuse trashier maps like some in TNT or even the kind of maps made back in 1994. Thankfully, HR is leagues above those kind of maps in terms of level design, so I don't get why people are still complaining about it. As for the difficulty, yes its slightly tougher than Plutonia, but fortunately, it's not all chaingunner/revenant spamming in the entire pack. There's at least a learning curve early on before it gets brutal near the halfway mark to the end, whereas Plutonia's difficulty is over the top (by IWAD standards) from start to finish and never lets up. Not that I'm saying Plutonia is bad because of that, it's a good wad on its own, but I feel it's overpraised by the community, when it has its share of flaws that is often ignored (Map11: Hunted is the worst map in Plutonia, IMO). I find Plutonia and HR on UV quite unbearable, but at least the lower difficulties help make them a less aggravating experience. If anyone can beat those two in UV, I commend them greatly, because not everyone can do it. The Casali Brothers and Yonatan have even stated that UV on their respected megawads catered to the veterans who mastered Doom 2 and wanted something much more challenging. Seriously, it is best to just stick with the lower difficulties if UV is too much, and if they're still too difficult in the lower difficulties, practice more with Doom 2, TNT, etc. until you feel you're ready. All the complaints towards HR just translates to "It's the megawad's fault I can't beat this on UV!" Yes, Yonatan was 15 when he started HR with Haggay, and then 16 before its completion, so what he designed was something I'd never expected from someone his age, and those three maps you mentioned were among one of the very best. J.B.R said:Overrated:Alien Vedetta, never gets boring right? What's so boring about Alien Vendetta? True that many of the maps are very long, but the level design is top-notch quality and visually appealing. 0 Share this post Link to post
Deadwing Posted December 27, 2016 IMO, visually it is okay with some beautiful levels. Level Design wise it doesn't offer much: most levels are long and linear and there's way too much chokepoints and grinding. 0 Share this post Link to post
kmxexii Posted December 27, 2016 kmxexii said:From the scant few WADs I've played... Overrated: The Lost Episodes of Doom. I get that people love Chris Klie's maps but between him and his partner I rarely saw anything that approached say the works from Doomworld's top 10 of '94 (but I admit that Klie made more interesting levels than Carter). That said, I haven't played any of Klie's WADs beyond that collection, and look forward to playing his Master Levels when I get around to it. Most Underrated: Alpha 1 Trilogy by Rob Schweiner. I never heard of this WAD before finding it in one of jive's collections. It's a Doom 2 minisode with large levels. Gameplay is tough without being bullshit but the real beauty is the third map, Origin. It's a magnificent adventure with some great detailing and a memorable climax. Most disappointing: I wanted to say Lost Episodes again but after playing the Xmas Doom '94 minisode I'll choose that one instead. The monster replacements are cute but the gameplay and level architecture is clearly wanting; I guess I expected more from a '94 Doom II WAD. Then again I played it after mulling over some of H2H-Xmas, which has so far featured some fine gameplay if you can look past the hordes of Revenants. Most Surprising: The Wraith Corp commercial WADs. After playing Lost Episodes I was pretty skeptical of unlicensed commercial Doom WADs, but Mustaine and the rest really warmed my petrified heart. There are some great ideas and nice custom graphics in Perdition's Gate (mostly just great ideas in Hell to Pay). I wish they'd get some official status so they stopped lurking in the dark corners of Doom's History. Most Metal: D_RUNNIN. 'Nuff said. Lol, I had barely played 30 PWADs when I wrote this NaturalTvventy said:Thanks Xas :) We should colab on a project some time! ooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo 1 Share this post Link to post
baja blast rd. Posted December 27, 2016 DMGUYDZ64 said:Ancient Aliens (I get it, this mod is beautiful and all, But it felt like a slaughterfest successor Almost nothing in AA is comparable to SF2011/SF2012. AA's slaughter gameplay shows up in map28 and map29 and only in isolated patches elsewhere (map15 isn't a slaughtermap). Same goes for Valiant; there's only map31 and almost none elsewhere. It's worth bearing in mind that "lots of monsters" != "slaughter" or even the silly term "slaughtery" -- a false equivalence a lot of people seem to make. The higher monster density in AA is best described as "bloody." AA also had difficulty settings implemented. 0 Share this post Link to post
Dgemie Posted December 27, 2016 Another thread appeared on the first page not long after I came up with some thoughts appropriate for it. Well, let's go. I think that "overrated/underrated WADs" threads have one problem: little-known WADs that are constantly called "hidden gems" often deserve being called overrated more than underrated, and vice versa (like with Hell Revealed). And I think that the underrated part of little-known WADs (and even some maps in megawads) is that pretty much no one appreciates them from the point of the niches that they belong in. Like, most do call Misri Halek an adventure map and Daedalus an exploration-oriented megawad, but it seems that I am the only one who thinks that maps consisting of plain hallways with plain rows of weak monsters are an actual genre or that Project Space and Escape to Corvus are somewhat surreal and desolate adventures. 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted December 27, 2016 rdwpa said:It's worth bearing in mind that "lots of monsters" != "slaughter" or even the silly term "slaughtery" -- a false equivalence a lot of people seem to make. My silly head is confused. If lots of monsters != slaughter, then slaughter = ? 0 Share this post Link to post
Memfis Posted December 27, 2016 I think I want to see a Doom Wiki article about Slaughter now. 1 Share this post Link to post
baja blast rd. Posted December 27, 2016 dew said:My silly head is confused. If lots of monsters != slaughter, then slaughter = ? Slaughter gameplay is a subset of that which uses a lot of monsters; they aren't interchangeable, imo. Something like Hellbound map24 is a good example of a map that is very bloody -- centered around an open plan outdoor fight with a cast of a couple hundred or so monsters, packed quite densely at times -- but it isn't slaughter gameplay by any stretch. BTSX ;) has many similar freeform offerings, although generally on a smaller scale, for obvious reasons. Hell, even something like KDitD gets gratuitously bloody in places. 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted December 27, 2016 I'm more interested in a definition of slaughter so I can distinguish it myself rather than having an authority looking over every map in existence, puffing from their pipe of wisdom and then issuing the seal of approval to some. edit: Honestly, good luck with staking out the territory in a meaningful manner. It would be good to have a proper definition. I myself incline to separate "slaughter" and "challenge" as two axes of a 2D plane, heh. 0 Share this post Link to post
Firedust Posted December 27, 2016 Underrated: Nicolas Monti wads, love Eviltech, Favillesco, Mano Laikas and Erkatanne. Also Good morning phobos by sincity and Urania by riderr3 Overrated: Sunlust (actually found other Ribbiks and Danne wads to be far superior to this) 0 Share this post Link to post
baja blast rd. Posted December 27, 2016 dew said:I'm more interested in a definition of slaughter so I can distinguish it myself rather than having an authority looking over every map in existence, puffing from their pipe of wisdom and then issuing the seal of approval to some. edit: Honestly, good luck with staking out the territory in a meaningful manner. It would be good to have a proper definition. I myself incline to separate "slaughter" and "challenge" as two axes of a 2D plane, heh. There are a variety of genres, and some are quite dissimilar from one another. (I actually hate maps like AV map32 and HR map24.) I think this post is a good starting point: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1289545. Ribbiks makes a good point here: On a side note the word itself seems to get used more often as a descriptor of gameplay style (e.g. how monsters are presented to player) than an explicit indicator of enemy magnitude/density Like, there are some setups with a relatively low number of monsters that are intimately associated with the slaughter genre (those monsters tend to be cybers and viles, sure, but okay :D). I think "slaughter" describes an ethos more than anything, associated with, but not necessarily fully inclusive of, maps with high monster counts. I agree with the point made in your edit. Something like Archi's Rush has many slaughtermaps that aren't hard. Or skillsaw's Vanguard. (Of course people who save abuse and still play cautiously anyway might find these boring, because they are mostly about facilitating reckless play and DPS maximization.) 0 Share this post Link to post
Fonze Posted December 27, 2016 dew said:I myself incline to separate "slaughter" and "challenge" as two axes of a 2D plane, heh. These two are not mutually exclusive concepts and therefore cannot be placed as opposites on a 2D plane. Slaughter deals with monster density. If I gave you nuts.wad with every monster made into a zombieman it would still be a slaughter. Slaughter deals more with crowd control than any other genre, even if the crowd control required is simple to pull off. But a key facet of slaughter gameplay is the way in which the hordes of mobs inhibit player movement of an area due to their sheer density. Still, doesn't mean that it'll be easy or tough to clear up, just means that there's a lot of shit to clear. "Challenge" deals with how tough something is to pull off. You can make a non-slaughter encounter challenging, just as you can make a slaughter encounter challenging. Once again, these concepts are not mutually exclusive and should not be treated as opposites. I suppose it could be an ethos, as rdwpa said with the small-scale, tough mob encounters, but I think that's more along the lines of the "challenge" ethos than "slaughter," which only further proves that they are totally different concepts; not mutually exclusive or mutually inclusive. 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted December 27, 2016 Fonze said:These two are not mutually exclusive concepts and therefore cannot be placed as opposites on a 2D plane. This misses my point (and the very concept of axes) by so much that you made me dust off my fabled photoshopping skills. 1 Share this post Link to post
Fonze Posted December 27, 2016 ! Oops... Haha yeah I read that wrong; you're correct. 0 Share this post Link to post
Magnusblitz Posted December 28, 2016 dew said:This misses my point (and the very concept of axes) by so much that you made me dust off my fabled photoshopping skills. The point remains though that a lot of people will disagree with your assertion that "slaughter" should only mean "high monster count in a map". CC3's MAP12 "Black Rain" has 800+ monsters in it, but spread over a humongous level so each encounter doesn't have many enemies. Whereas "slaughter" to my mind (and I think most others') means a lot of enemies thrown at the player in one encounter. So while slaughtermaps will likely have high monster counts, high monster counts doesn't automatically equal slaughter. 0 Share this post Link to post
kmxexii Posted December 28, 2016 Magnusblitz said:The point remains though that a lot of people will disagree with your assertion that "slaughter" should only mean "high monster count in a map". CC3's MAP12 "Black Rain" has 800+ monsters in it, but spread over a humongous level so each encounter doesn't have many enemies. Whereas "slaughter" to my mind (and I think most others') means a lot of enemies thrown at the player in one encounter. So while slaughtermaps will likely have high monster counts, high monster counts doesn't automatically equal slaughter. i think dew is cognizant of the difference between a huge amount of monsters scattered piecemeal and monster density per encounter 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted December 28, 2016 kmx is right (and look how sophisticated he is while being right!), you obviously need lots of monsters at once for good ol' slaughter. Valiant map15 or Going Down as a whole would get a fairly high slaughter index while still struggling to land in the same quadrant as Sunlust because of the difficulty. And I'm pretty sure all the Black Rains, Jade Earths, Vela Pax or Vracks could find their rightful spot on my graph just fine. Damn, if you feel adventurous, you could add a third axis to capture how adventure-like the maps are! 0 Share this post Link to post
Spectre01 Posted December 28, 2016 Slaughter isn't all about monster count as you can make a 200 dude slaughtermap or an 800 critter adventure map (BTSX E2 25 was it?). Someone made a good point before that a big part of slaughter gameplay depends on which weapons you're mostly using. The average map will most likely have you using bullets and shells quit a bit while a slaughtermap will largely focus on rocket and cell weapons and provide adequate ammo for them. Also depends on the monsters being used. Look at Tricks and Traps. There are a few rooms with something like 50 Imps/Demons in them. Now if those were upgraded to Revenants and Mancubi then those could easily fall into the realm of slaughter. Which is why Go 2 It qualifies, as it avoids using low-tier junk monsters in favour of high-tier enemies which are packed in an otherwise average-sized map. 1 Share this post Link to post
sesq Posted December 28, 2016 rileymartin said:Slaughter isn't all about monster count as you can make a 200 dude slaughtermap or an 800 critter adventure map (BTSX E2 25 was it?). Someone made a good point before that a big part of slaughter gameplay depends on which weapons you're mostly using. The average map will most likely have you using bullets and shells quit a bit while a slaughtermap will largely focus on rocket and cell weapons and provide adequate ammo for them. Also depends on the monsters being used. Look at Tricks and Traps. There are a few rooms with something like 50 Imps/Demons in them. Now if those were upgraded to Revenants and Mancubi then those could easily fall into the realm of slaughter. Which is why Go 2 It qualifies, as it avoids using low-tier junk monsters in favour of high-tier enemies which are packed in an otherwise average-sized map. I don't think the weapons you use are a determiner of what counts for a slaughter map or not. It seems like more of a consequence. I know if I'm in a room with a buttload of zombies, i'm more likely to use a chaingun. 0 Share this post Link to post
Killer5 Posted December 28, 2016 I tend to think of slaughter as more encounter based rather than map based. If a map has a majority of encounters which I deem slaughter encounters then I consider that map a slaughter map. But I think the definition of a slaughter encounter is subjective. So here are some examples as well as my baseline for slaughter encounters in general: For me a map or a wad isn't slaughter until it is something very over the top. If I think 'oh this map reminds me of something along the lines of the final three encounters of Map 07 of Sunder' then it is a slaughter map in my mind. I do not consider wads like Stardate 20x6 slaughter. I would say it is a difficult wad with some slaughter encounters within it. I think the bfg fight in Map 07 is slaughter. I don't think the RL fight in Map 03 is slaughter. I don't consider anything in Swim With The Whales Maps 02 and 03 slaughter (I havent played Map 31). They are all tightly balanced tough encounters. Even the finale of swtw03 is simply just a difficult encounter in my mind. Sunder Map 13's finale (the closest thing to swtw03 finale I can think of) is also not slaughter in my mind. It is a difficult encounter which requires smart positioning. Another example is rdwpa's Ovum. I don't think any fight in this map is slaughter. The caco swarm used in the rsk fight (I think it was rsk =x) is used to pressure the player but is not over the top. The other monster packs used in this fight in Ovum are used to create more pressure and imo also do not make the encounter a slaughter encounter. An example of an over the top slaughter-style caco swarm encounter is the finale of SF2012 Map 23 imo. Anyways yeah.. imo just make up your own definition of what slaughter is. I think it is a very subjective topic regarding when an encounter becomes slaughter rather than what is considered to be a high pressure difficult encounter. Sorry for derailing this topic further! 0 Share this post Link to post
Lane Powell Posted December 28, 2016 Paul977 said:Yeah I also kinda bashed some levels when we played it on the DWMC mainly because I wasn't good enough to deal with them properly. After I improved I returned on it on uv pistol starts and beated almost all the hard levels (missing map 23 and 26) and I enjoyed playing them; I also think there some unique concept maps like 13, 23, 26 that we don't see nowadays (and the author was like 15 years old :O ?). So this HR as overrated is more like "I can't beat it in on UV so it's overrated" :) T-Rex said:To be honest, I think the guys over at DWMC were being unfair with HR, especially joe-ilya and Suitepee. I mean, granted, some may be put off by the Wolfenstein-esque design in many of the early levels, but I feel they're judging by the standards of the expected Doom level design of today. People are forgetting that it's a wad from 1997, and its development dates back to 1996. At that time, there were no standards of how Doom levels should be. Still, that doesn't excuse trashier maps like some in TNT or even the kind of maps made back in 1994. Thankfully, HR is leagues above those kind of maps in terms of level design, so I don't get why people are still complaining about it. As for the difficulty, yes its slightly tougher than Plutonia, but fortunately, it's not all chaingunner/revenant spamming in the entire pack. There's at least a learning curve early on before it gets brutal near the halfway mark to the end, whereas Plutonia's difficulty is over the top (by IWAD standards) from start to finish and never lets up. Not that I'm saying Plutonia is bad because of that, it's a good wad on its own, but I feel it's overpraised by the community, when it has its share of flaws that is often ignored (Map11: Hunted is the worst map in Plutonia, IMO). I find Plutonia and HR on UV quite unbearable, but at least the lower difficulties help make them a less aggravating experience. If anyone can beat those two in UV, I commend them greatly, because not everyone can do it. The Casali Brothers and Yonatan have even stated that UV on their respected megawads catered to the veterans who mastered Doom 2 and wanted something much more challenging. Seriously, it is best to just stick with the lower difficulties if UV is too much, and if they're still too difficult in the lower difficulties, practice more with Doom 2, TNT, etc. until you feel you're ready. All the complaints towards HR just translates to "It's the megawad's fault I can't beat this on UV!" Yes, Yonatan was 15 when he started HR with Haggay, and then 16 before its completion, so what he designed was something I'd never expected from someone his age, and those three maps you mentioned were among one of the very best. What's so boring about Alien Vendetta? True that many of the maps are very long, but the level design is top-notch quality and visually appealing. I'm not great at Doom and I usually play hard WADs on HMP or lower. That said I love figuring out how to take on the crazy situations they put me in even if they do kick my ass around a lot even at that level. Draft-Excluder and Stardate 20X6 being examples of ones I've recently enjoyed. The HR maps I've played felt much more like a tedious grind with too much opportunity for herding high-level monsters through choke points or circle-stafing, or just symmetrical gameplay situations. That said I jumped around in the WAD rather than playing straight through, I'll check out the maps you mentioned. [edited to include both quotes] 0 Share this post Link to post
j4rio Posted December 28, 2016 1000 monsters = slaughter. Anything less = casual. There you have it. 1 Share this post Link to post
Xaser Posted December 28, 2016 Most Disappointing: this thread becoming another "what even IS slaughter?" discussion. There's nothing interesting at this table. :< 3 Share this post Link to post
vdgg Posted December 28, 2016 Overrated: Most of "100 WADs of all time" entries from 1998. Especially Ola Bjorling maps were bland (texturing and SSG/Baron-type gameplay) and Earth was really, really poor and boring to play. Erkattäññe (apparently there is something brilliant about it, something which I don't grasp). Underrated: Invade 2 - The best map from 1994, as epic as it can be. Inf-lutz - My theory is it didn't get into 100 WADs only in order not to favour Lutz' works too much (everything else by Lutz got there). Highly artistic. Ins(e)rtion - short and far from perfect, but maps are not worse than these from Requiem. Some custom texture would help maybe? Almost forgotten WAD now. End2 - While End1 got some recognition, End2 is arguably better IMO. All maps are above average (at least) and the usage of UD bestiary is brilliant. D2x386 by purist - inspired by cyc-384 (indirectly by 1024 series) and Doom II, but much more neat than Cycloid's WAD, even if unfinished. Completely forgotten. T_nostalgia by Travers Dunne - got positive reviews but somehow got forgotten. Skepland - MAP02 and MAP03 are deserted island type of maps. Can't Run From Evil - Perfection Awakening - Layout and detail - perfection. Disappointing: Armadosia after a few maps got obnoxious with huge maps full of randomness. Surprising: Sheer Poison for me as I was not familiar with this mapper's works 1 Share this post Link to post
roadworx Posted December 28, 2016 judging by your custom title, i'm guessing that mm2 is an exception? edit: i suck at reading and should be put back in first grade 0 Share this post Link to post