The Doom Confessional Booth

[scifista42]

@Kotzugi: I think that, when R1ck said "vanilla", he actually meant "playing without using any gameplay mod", not "playing wads compatible with the vanilla Doom executable" or "actually using the vanilla Doom executable to play wads".

@R1ck: The word "vanilla" in this community typically refers to the vanilla Doom executable (or wads compatible with it), not to playing Doom without gameplay mods.

[Kotzugi]

10 hours ago, scifista42 said:

@Kotzugi: I think that, when R1ck said "vanilla", he actually meant "playing without using any gameplay mod", not "playing wads compatible with the vanilla Doom executable" or "actually using the vanilla Doom executable to play wads".

@R1ck: The word "vanilla" in this community typically refers to the vanilla Doom executable (or wads compatible with it), not to playing Doom without gameplay mods.

Thanks, I think that's kinda what I meant as well, but I expressed myself badly. In other words: There are plenty of great WADs out there that offer an amazing experience just on their own without using any mods that change the playing experience significantly such as BD.

[Woolie Wool]

I actively take pleasure in cheesing fights and escaping traps in custom Doom maps. Why fight harder when you can fight smarter?

 

I also still get killed by cyberdemons all the goddamn time because I have a hard time seeing their rockets coming compared to the fireballs of other monsters.

[scifista42]

^ It might had been fair if rockets, as the most damaging projectiles in the game, had a flashing red/yellow outline to make them easy to spot, as opposed to being harder to spot than other projectiles due to being brown and non-animated.

[yakfak]

if Urania had ambient midis and replaced the chaingunners with nazis I would probably say it was a five star set

[galileo31dos01]

- Everytime I hear a Cyberdemon or a Spider Mastermind in the beginning of a map I don't know where they are, I get scared. 

- Sometimes when enemies instantly teleport or pop up in a trap, I don't shoot anything and try to get the fuck out of there. It doesn't work most times...

- When there are two bosses of each kind infighting, I always cheer for the lady... the SMM.

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, galileo31dos01 said:

- When there are two bosses of each kind infighting, I always cheer for the lady... the SMM.

<3

 

2 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

- Sometimes when enemies instantly teleport or pop up in a trap, I don't shoot anything and try to get the fuck out of there. It doesn't work most times...

Solution: Develop a killer instinct: Shoot first, watch infighting later, shoot some more during and right after. And if you're not too busy otherwise: Might as well shoot while you're at it. Also, when in doubt: Shoot it. ;-)

[DoctorGenesis]

Wait the Spider Mastermind is female? Never knew that.

[galileo31dos01]

28 minutes ago, DoctorGenesis said:

Wait the Spider Mastermind is female? Never knew that.

Not sure, but I just like to call her as a female, I believe someone has to be female in the game. 

[DoctorGenesis]

11 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Not sure, but I just like to call her as a female, I believe someone has to be female in the game. 

Oh, ok. Makes sense cause I always thought of Arachnotrons being the 'Mastermind's babies.

[scifista42]

Quote

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Spiderdemon:

The Doom II game booklet humorously presents the spiderdemon as the mother of the arachnotrons: You guess the Arachnotrons had to come from somewhere. Hi, mom. She doesn't have a plasma gun, so thank heaven for small favors. Instead, she has a super-chaingun. Crap.

 

[Lila Feuer]

When the super-chaingun turns out to be an automatic shotgun.

[42PercentHealth]

On 5/21/2017 at 0:43 AM, Nine Inch Heels said:

Solution: Develop a killer instinct: Shoot first, watch infighting later, shoot some more during and right after. And if you're not too busy otherwise: Might as well shoot while you're at it. Also, when in doubt: Shoot it. ;-)

This works fine if there's plenty of ammo, but shooting can prevent monster infighting from happening in the first place. Sometimes it's better to let the monsters work out their disagreements before getting involved. ;-)

[baja blast rd.]

Gradually getting better at deathmatch. From a map with a BFG where I didn't know where it was. Basically all SSG work. :D 

 

 

And before this one. 

 

The 'specialists' still are significantly better though, especially in duels. Need to learn more strategy to hang with them. 

[galileo31dos01]

On 2017-5-22 at 10:25 AM, 42PercentHealth said:

This works fine if there's plenty of ammo, but shooting can prevent monster infighting from happening in the first place. Sometimes it's better to let the monsters work out their disagreements before getting involved. ;-)

The thing is, when you don't know the map, because it's your first time there, the possibilities are countless, even more if the wad doesn't have a single style of monster placement. Monsters can appear one by one in the same spot, or they can be teleported in different spots so you cannot really work out your "killer instinct" properly. I wrote that post right after playing a few Scythe 2 maps where, if you also played that wad, you'll know that a lot of monster placement isn't very predictable, because there is a lot of variety in terms of "traps". 

[Nine Inch Heels]

13 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

The thing is, when you don't know the map, because it's your first time there, the possibilities are countless, even more if the wad doesn't have a single style of monster placement. Monsters can appear one by one in the same spot, or they can be teleported in different spots so you cannot really work out your "killer instinct" properly.

A lot of this comes down to situational awareness, and probably a reasonable amount of practice or experience. There really is no be-all-end-all advice for everything, but in general you can be certain that, unless you unleash a BFG blast on a single Baron, the odds usually are that a misfired shot won't cost you the entire attempt. Situational awareness really goes a long way, this holds true especially if you're a lot less trigger happy than yours truly, because situational awareness also builds confidence and allows for enough patience to properly evaluate the situation in a relatively short amount of time. Of course, when it comes to deliberate killing attempts like you see in SOD, there is no such thing as a good advice, because these situations are best solved with knowledge ahead of time.

[GarrettChan]

55 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

The thing is, when you don't know the map, because it's your first time there, the possibilities are countless, even more if the wad doesn't have a single style of monster placement. Monsters can appear one by one in the same spot, or they can be teleported in different spots so you cannot really work out your "killer instinct" properly. I wrote that post right after playing a few Scythe 2 maps where, if you also played that wad, you'll know that a lot of monster placement isn't very predictable, because there is a lot of variety in terms of "traps". 

 

I guess that's somewhat joking. In my opinion, Doom is like a puzzle game. Every time a trap takes place, you can't always figure out the correct answer at the first time. There are so many different situations, such as ammo situation, to consider. If you're playing a map blind, the best you can think is that here may be a trap or something, or if the design style is consistent, you may understand a little bit more before activation of the trap.

[baja blast rd.]

One useful tip: 90%+ of the time, you should have the CG/PR out when you aren't in the middle of a fight and an encounter could suddenly happen (for example picking up a key, walking through spooky hallways, etc.). The CG is a 'weaker' weapon than the SSG, but in setups where the SSG's extra DPS makes it better, you'll usually have time to switch, whereas in the converse you'll often get shredded. I've basically sleepwalked through certain 'mean' traps that people sometimes complain about by just defaulting to having the chaingun out, almost always, whenever riding up a lift into unknown territory, or falling of a drop-off, etc. In maps with 'pointilist' hitscanner placement, even the single barrel SG can be better as a ready weapon than the SSG. You usually don't ever want the RL as a ready weapon unless the map geometry is basically indicating that you need RL spam. The BFG's viability as a ready weapon is ammo/situation dependent. Tight hallways + cell ammo being important = bad, for one example. Map geometry or monster usage that telegraphs the need for BFG spam is also helpful. 

 

[galileo31dos01]

I need more practice, that is true. My list of "to download someday" wads is two times longer than my list of "completed" ones, so yeah, I have a long way to go. What happened with Scythe 2, for example, is that my usual reaction (run in circles, dodge projectiles, never shoot so enemies infight, start to shoot when things get rough) went totally wrong with several kind of traps that I'm not used to, yet. Probably one of the reasons is because I'm accustomed to save ammo, since I'm playing a new wad and I don't know when or where ammo management is going to be a problem. Even if carrying the BFG and 600 cells, I still feel like "better save it for later, who knows". Continuous player issues hehe 

 

@rdwpa I do carry the CG/PR/BFG when I'm not in the middle of a fight or when I predict a (obvious) trap. Still I get anxious when a LOT of silent enemies teleport/pop up deliberately in tight spaces. It's just a matter of practice and gaining experience, and learning to control my reactions.

 

I can show you a demo or something of how I get on with a "new" map with this kind of situations, if you want...

Edited May 24, 2017 by galileo31dos01

[Nine Inch Heels]

25 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

What happened with Scythe 2, for example, is that my usual reaction (run in circles, dodge projectiles, never shoot so enemies infight, start to shoot when things get rough) went totally wrong with several kind of traps that I'm not used to, yet.

I don't know which traps tripped you up and which ones didn't, not to mention that I think scythe II is overrated (which I'm probably going to get some flak for, but whatevs), so my knowledge of the set is quite limited. But generally speaking, some traps are intended to push you up against a wall by depriving you of any real estate to move around in. Traps in which more monsters appear than the area you're in could contain in and off itself are common place in many wads which employ monstercounts from several hundreds to thousands of things, and they also make an appearance in sets like SOD, for that matter.

 

What rdwpa said still holds true in these cases. Having a rapid fire weapon up can spare you a fair bit of pain under these circumstances, since it may take a bit of the oomph away when things start boiling. What you should be looking for in regards to these traps is in how many spots (roughly) things teleport in, and how quickly this happens. When you get the feeling you may get tripped up, pull out the BFG and carve out some space when given a chance. It may or may not work depending on how tolerant the trap in question is towards error, but might as well try while you're at it.

 

What also helps in these cases is a certain degree of knowledge in regards to how things behave, especially how things move is important to keep in mind. A bit of expertise in this matter will quickly allow you to manipulate enemy movement in a way that is advantageous for you, by conserving a bit of space for you to squeeze past a pack on occasion.

 

When playing continuous you can be pretty confident that you will have surplus ammo in most -if not all- cases to begin with. If you aren't hesitant to backtrack to restock your cells eventually, you should make use of this surplus when the need arises.

[galileo31dos01]

Well, maps 25 and 27 to be specific, there are these traps where, even if I know that after doing what I have to do (grab a key, flip a switch, walk on this linedef) a trap is released, the enemies instantly teleport in many different spots, and more and more keep teleporting, so moving around is crucial but the space is so tight that there is no choice but to use a powerful weapon (aka BFG), but as they keep teleporting, it gets really hard to move and use the weapon properly, and damage is inevitable. Usually in the same megawad the enemies teleport in the same spot or a wall is raised so they can be free, but in map 25 the style is like "unique" and it just doesn't admit a single error. All I'm saying is, I'm not used to that specific style of trap and it's ok, I need more practice and patience. 

 

What I sure don't approve is the Cyberdemon in map 27 right after the blue armor, but that's another story. 

[Decay]

2 hours ago, rdwpa said:

The 'specialists' still are significantly better though, especially in duels. Need to learn more strategy to hang with them. 

popular misconception

 

all you really need to do is grind the same map over and over because literally that's all mp doom players do everyday of their lives for the past 15 years or more depending on what map you play. Just knowing the strategy isn't enough against someone who plays the same thing day in and out, being able to aim better is what will get you farther than a lot of the people left these days. Being quick on your feet, quick with the trigger, and locking down spawns will win your duels. For classics, D5M7 is your friend for practice!

[Remilia Scarlet]

I hate picking up blur spheres because they make projectiles too unpredictable and I end up running into them more.

[GarrettChan]

2 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

I hate picking up blur spheres because they make projectiles too unpredictable and I end up running into them more.

Talking about Scythe Map27? ;)

As an extention, I usually don't like things that change enemies' behavior in other games.

[Lila Feuer]

11 hours ago, YukiRaven said:

I hate picking up blur spheres because they make projectiles too unpredictable and I end up running into them more.

If anything it turns you into the anti-Doomguy, aka a sitting duck instead of being mobile so you don't risk running into projectiles. It's only good for hitscanners anyway.

[souio]

- I still get killed because I'll focus on enemies in front of me and forget that enemies can appear on my left and right

 

- I actually prefer corridor type areas to wide open rooms.. probably because of the above lol

 

- I have the worst observational skills and usually rely on walkthroughs to find secrets that aren't discolored walls (and I'll still not even notice those 80-90% of the time)

 

- When I get a berserk pack I get too punch-crazy and forget I have other weapons so I'll try to punch out every imp, caco and revenant I see and usually pay for it

 

- I usually go hunting for other health packs before I pick up a soul sphere

[42PercentHealth]

2 minutes ago, souio said:

I usually go hunting for other health packs before I pick up a soul sphere

This is a confession? I thought this was how to play the game... :-P

[GarrettChan]

6 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

This is a confession? I thought this was how to play the game... :-P

I think badasses just pickup soulspheres like candies?

[Bauul]

I always though GZDoom stood for OpenGL ZDoom.

 

But I suddenly realized it could also stand for "Graf Zahl Doom"

 

And now I don't know if I've been wrong all these years.

[Dragonfly]

Despite it being my favourite port, it has been kinda devalued by one of my friends pronouncing it as 'Jizzydoom'. Heh.