The Doom Confessional Booth

[Novaseer]

I've never legitimately completed either half of Final Doom.

I completed Plutonia with ROK though.

[Fonze]

Wait... freedoom, which is essentially a modern pwad turned into a standalone iwad, is better than maps made 20+ years ago while using editors from 20+ years ago for players 20+ years ago playing on computers from 20+ years ago? What!? Somebody get this guy a big, fat participation ribbon for stating the obvious ;p

 

The iwads set the bar for future mappers to their standards, but we are a community who's not been trapped in a bubble for these 20+ years either; pwads created since then have expanded on that bar and raised it over time, so modern maps should be expectedly better than the vanilla iwads.

 

Also iirc freedoom isn't vanilla compatible, making all of this that much more of a false comparison.

 

Point being that it had better be, lol... or it wouldn't compete with other modern maps. Though even on this note the devs don't consider it to be a finished project and some maps which are... not good, are subject to be changed, evidenced by the fact that it has not left its beta stages yet (version number under 1.0). 

 

Tl:dr freedoom is still being developed in 2018; little comparison should be made between it and commercial iwads released 20+ years ago.

[Spie812]

I have noclip bound to 'n' in Gzdoom and I have no problems with noclipping up elevators or small ledges to save me time.

 

I'd never use it to skip an area I haven't explored yet or one with monsters in it, but if I have the choice between noclipping to the top of this ledge or backtracking to a much longer route up, I'm just going to skip the long walk.

[Solmyr]

Over the years, i tried to continuously play Knee Deep in the Dead in Nightmare! difficulty, not speedrunning just a normal run and... I've never made it past Toxin Refinery.

[Doominator2]

35 minutes ago, Solmyr said:

Over the years, i tried to continuously play Knee Deep in the Dead in Nightmare! difficulty, not speedrunning just a normal run and... I've never made it past Toxin Refinery.

Haha same, no matter how much I think I've memorized every single nook and cranny I still cant get back toxic refinery on Nightmare. 

[Spie812]

56 minutes ago, Solmyr said:

I've never made it past Toxin Refinery.

Toxin Refinery is a very difficult map to do on nightmare because not only is it full of hitscan, but you have to backtrack through the level and by then everything has respawned and you have to fight your way through the gauntlet again.

[Solmyr]

1 minute ago, Spie812 said:

Toxin Refinery is a very difficult map to do on nightmare because not only is it full of hitscan, but you have to backtrack through the level and by then everything has respawned and you have to fight your way through the gauntlet again.

Exactly, backtracking in general is what makes Nightmare runs impossible if you are not speedrunning specially for a level such as Toxin Refinery full of shitscanners and Demons on crack, for me and @Doominator2 everything past Nuclear Plant is off limits.

[Akenore]

I prefer playing Complex Clusterfuck over OG Doom. I love the variety in weapons and enemies. It never gets tiring.

Spoiler

 

^{it usually becomes laptop-punch inducing tho...}

 

 

[OliveTree]

(SSSSSHHH)

 

(I learned about Doom through Chex Quest 3!)

[Mayomancer]

I'm quite the musical elitist, but i try hard not to be a jerk about it

[Dear Hoplite]

On 8/21/2018 at 4:39 PM, Fonze said:

Wait... freedoom, which is essentially a modern pwad turned into a standalone iwad, is better than maps made 20+ years ago while using editors from 20+ years ago for players 20+ years ago playing on computers from 20+ years ago? What!? Somebody get this guy a big, fat participation ribbon for stating the obvious ;p

 

No like, I genuinely think it's better. 

 

It just feels right to me. Where the 1993 Doom felt off for some reason, Freedoom just slid right into my heart. I don't know what it is about it but it holds a charm that D93 doesn't imo

Edited August 24, 2018 by Dear Hoplite

[kb1]

WTF is "93 Doom"? WTF is "D93"?

It's "Doom" and "Doom II".

 

Can I get an "Amen"?

[Guy Montag]

I always play HMP, never UV.

 

I never look for secrets, never wall-hump, usually 0% secrets.

 

It took me over an hour to finish map 22 'Tenements' in Doom2. Finish screen just said 'Time Sucks'

 

I think Plutonia sucked.

[seed]

3 minutes ago, Guy Montag said:

I never look for secrets, never wall-hump, usually 0% secrets.

 

I barely find secrets even when I spam spacebar on walls so I just don't bother with them, too bad at finding them.

 

@Deadwing You sure know how to hide them, I think I finished at least a few levels with 0% secrets :v .

[Solmyr]

17 hours ago, Dear Hoplite said:

>93 Doom

>D93

 

 

OT: When i was a kid i tought the zombieman was a punk rocker because of the green hair, and the sergeant was a metalhead because of it's black armor.

[Deadwing]

3 hours ago, Agent6 said:

 

I barely find secrets even when I spam spacebar on walls so I just don't bother with them, too bad at finding them.

 

@Deadwing You sure know how to hide them, I think I finished at least a few levels with 0% secrets :v .

 

Hmm some of them are easier to find after getting the auto-map >.<

 

But tbh I struggle a lot to find in other wads too (especially when the author hides the auto-map)

[OliveTree]

2 hours ago, Deadwing said:

I struggle a lot to find in other wads too (especially when the author hides the auto-map)

 

Screw the auto map! My personal thing with secrets is usually just on trying to get in the authors head. Like, thats the original appeal of secrets...isnt it? "I saw what you did there and now you and i are shared in this little alcove other players probably dont know about" ?

 

Just look for seemingly pointless details and plop them into the back of your mind. If its not as easy as URGHing all over the walls nearby the pointless detail, it'll probably be something else. The author probably put that pointless detail there for some reason. Get in their head.

[seed]

7 hours ago, Deadwing said:

Hmm some of them are easier to find after getting the auto-map >.<

 

But tbh I struggle a lot to find in other wads too (especially when the author hides the auto-map)

 

The auto-map kills me if the map is pretty big, how the hell do you even use that thing.

 

Which is why everytime I pick up a computer generated map I'm like "Oh sure, would've probably been pretty nice if I knew how to use a map" :v . This could be a good confession for the topic too.

[Phobus]

I refuse to watch any stream that isn't of one of my maps, as I think most streamers are irritating to listen to, have very little insight into mapping and are often not particularly talented players and even worse entertainers. The commentary streams are often disinterested and seemingly quite dumb as well, going by what I've seen, so perhaps the market is there for people who can't handle Doom themselves or are so used to idling away in front of a screen that it doesn't matter what they're watching.

 

Seriously, watching somebody complain that an 11-year-old map doesn't conform to modern standards of "clean" automaps because some dickhead can't remember where he previously saw a switch in a mid-sized (for now) non-linear level was strangely satisfying, because I felt my frustration at their shit play and dumb comments was being vindicated at their inability to tackle a relatively mild map. To then see accusations that I don't test my maps was somewhere between infuriating and laughable. When some chucklefuck is spunking the SSG off at individual imps and zombies, he's going to run out of ammo. That is poor player skill, which a mapper handles by implementing lower difficulties with more generous item placement relative to the enemy placement.

[seed]

Ironically, I'm not a big fan of streamers either, and for the same reasons:

 

1 hour ago, Phobus said:

I think most streamers are irritating to listen to, have very little insight into mapping and are often not particularly talented players and even worse entertainers. The commentary streams are often disinterested and seemingly quite dumb as well, going by what I've seen

 

That's usually why I only watch a few youtubers as well, if they're not brilliant at the game then I expect them to be entertaining at least, but many of them are just irritating. In that case, just don't provide any commentary, it only makes things worse.

 

The bigger irony? I myself fit in that description quite well. I have no insight into mapping since I've only ever touched a map editor once out of curiosity, I'm a bad gamer, and my commentary is boring to listen to, on top of making jokes that are sometimes fun only to me. That's one hell of a way to promote my shit indeed!

[Cruduxy Pegg]

A map having non-linear flow doesn't give it a free pass about shitty navigation and feedback to the player.

[Fonze]

8 hours ago, Phobus said:

When some chucklefuck is spunking the SSG off at individual imps and zombies, he's going to run out of ammo. That is poor player skill, which a mapper handles by implementing lower difficulties with more generous item placement relative to the enemy placement.

 

I've watched a few streamers rage at my maps, call them shit, their designs shit, my decision-making shit, call me a dick, "fuck you Fonze," etc. and while a lot of this type of stuff happened a few deaths in, I've even seen it happen about 10 seconds into somebody playing one of my maps, which then went on for another 20 minutes or more of them attempting to savescum their way through a map who's non-complex strategy they fundamentally didn't understand. I think I know where you are coming from.

 

That said, here is another side of the equation: maybe the map, while fitting your vision, is actually a shit map, or at least isn't more fun than it is tedious, frustrating, etc, or maybe your presentation of what to do was lacking (though to be fair, what made players decide to do x 10 years ago may not grant the same reaction today). Sure some amount of ammo/supplies management should be present, but if that is one of the main ways your map manifests its difficulty then it's gonna get real tedious real fast, (indeed, requiring players to change weapons on individual low-tiers just to save ammo is in-and-of-itself tedious; how much do you limit or prohibit players from playing your maps the way they want to?) and that is going to make people grow impatient, frustrated, try to rush things (like ssg'ing zombies), make mistakes (like run out of ammo or take "stupid"/"undeserved" damage), grow more frustrated, then positive feedback loop til the eventual rage and/or savescumming. And then to not find out until late in the map that adequate ammo wouldn't be given on an encounter-to-encounter basis means that the entire already tedious thing needs to be repeated... are you seeing where fun gets pushed to the side and frustration rears its ugly head?

 

Point being, instead of taking this to "well clearly it's not my fault; it's their fault for suxing at the game," maybe some introspection on why or what in the map caused this to happen would be a more constructive way to approach things. I'm a firm believer in people making maps they personally like, but much like with any product that people share, if you just make it for yourself you dont need to present or convey anything, as you already know about this thing/map, which also means that there is a good chance it won't make sense or fully resonate with others (since that also implies a lack of care put into the all-important presentation side of things) and its points will fall flat, its goals ignored and its encounters cheesed or otherwise bastardized. When you release a product into the wild how much sense it makes to you becomes moot under the larger importance of what everything means to others. Death of the author and all that, but all the more reason to indicate clearly what does what on the product itself, right? Presentation is equally important to functionality.

 

And of course remember that while this is your flavor of balancing, it isn't necessarily anyone else's and there is no way to know what people are walking into when they first load up a map from you and choose their difficulty without being familiar with your works previously.

 

To get back into the point of limiting play styles: from my limited experience, it seems that most efforts to limit players from playing a certain way only increases tedium and lowers the fun they can have. I do believe that some things are important to limit (to some degree), but I also think it's far better to encourage play styles you want people to use over limiting the ones you don't want them to use. Encouraging could manifest itself if the form of making things easier or faster, while limiting  often manifests itself in deaths at best, or slowly, tediously fighting ones way out of a deep hole at worst while (in reality) encouraging savescumming (which can also wind up with players saving themselves into a hole they cannot dig out of, and when is digging ever fun? Well except that one map literally called dig, that was amusing).

 

Tying this into a map of mine that I've seen folks rage at: picture a medium-sized room with bulls coming at you from all directions, with some revs, mancs, a chaingunner, etc raised up on turrets firing down at you. If you don't understand that the main threat, or first priority, is to kill the bulls and fight for space to continue fighting, you are going to have such a rough time I feel bad for you. How did I convey/present this? By killing the player quickly if they do anything but the "right" thing to do, which in a way works because it doesn't let them get far before taking them back to the beginning, and thus each death costs little time, but even still by not providing anything but a RL I limited the ways people can approach or play this map, thus making the experience far more inherently frustrating for some players, which is a shame. Not gonna pretend I have the answer but I believe it is important to consider the player's perspective (or lack thereof, not knowing what your map holds for them) more carefully than just "making a map I like and too bad if player x doesn't enjoy it."

 

I'm not gonna say there is ever an easy answer, but tl;dr most roads in life are 2-way. I do understand well your frustrations with that though hehe ^^

[GarrettChan]

@FonzeI generally agree with what you said about this. However, it seems "encouraging a player to play in a certain way" and "limiting a player not to play in a certain way" are very similar things to me, and it's very difficult to distinguish.

 

Maybe a more well-known example would be better for me to understand. For example, it seems that Plutonia Map15 encourages the player to play fast, but it really punish the player if he/she plays slow. In this case, are those really different? I usually describe this map as not being new player friendly or so. Any opinions from your side? I just want to hear more about these since I'm not a mapper. Thoughts from a mappers would be interesting to read.

[Deadwing]

13 hours ago, Agent6 said:

 

The auto-map kills me if the map is pretty big, how the hell do you even use that thing.

 

Which is why everytime I pick up a computer generated map I'm like "Oh sure, would've probably been pretty nice if I knew how to use a map" :v . This could be a good confession for the topic too.

 

Haha I see. I usually use the auto-map a lot, especially for non-linear maps where some are quite challenging navigation-wise. One of my favorite BTSX maps (so far) was map 15, which using auto-map is required or else the player will feel quite lost!

 

On larger maps I usually zoom in, though, so I know what's actually happening :P

[seed]

18 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Haha I see. I usually use the auto-map a lot, especially for non-linear maps where some are quite challenging navigation-wise. One of my favorite BTSX maps (so far) was map 15, which using auto-map is required or else the player will feel quite lost!

 

On larger maps I usually zoom in, though, so I know what's actually happening :P

 

Well, I don't, I find it more confusing than helpful, or at least in larger, more complex levels where I prefer to do it the old fashioned way instead.

 

I feel like my progression through such levels is pretty random since I can't rely on the auto-map to help me out, so I keep running, and running, and running til I eventually find the way. But that doesn't always work, I've played... certain maps that had such cryptic progression I couldn't finish them without help. Could've literally spent an eternity wandering around and never find the way out. I'll never understand how others can enjoy them.

[Deadwing]

16 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

 

Well, I don't, I find it more confusing than helpful, or at least in larger, more complex levels where I prefer to do it the old fashioned way instead.

 

I feel like my progression through such levels is pretty random since I can't rely on the auto-map to help me out, so I keep running, and running, and running til I eventually find the way. But that doesn't always work, I've played... certain maps that had such cryptic progression I couldn't finish them without help. Could've literally spent an eternity wandering around and never find the way out. I'll never understand how others can enjoy them.

 

Oh yeah, some Urania maps completely destroyed me (both because of the difficult and especially the navigation haha)

I had to look at the Doom Builder to find where I needed to go. Sometimes not even by looking at the auto-map helps, but not always this is a flaw. If the mapper wanted a navigation-heavy mapset (and some people do enjoy it), I think it's fine, but lots of people won't enjoy at all.

 

Also, as long as the map isn't too much detailed, dirty auto-maps > clean auto-maps :P

[seed]

17 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

If the mapper wanted a navigation-heavy mapset (and some people do enjoy it), I think it's fine, but lots of people won't enjoy at all.

 

True. Honestly I don't mind more cryptic levels in a megawad, it only bothers me when there's too many of them and they also go to the extreme, that's just completely unfun for me.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Maps that don't quite work with you palate are best consumed in moderation, imo

[seed]

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Maps that don't quite work with you palate are best consumed in moderation, imo

 

No doubt :v .

[baja blast rd.]

On 8/24/2018 at 1:41 PM, Fonze said:

...

 

Not gonna pretend I have the answer but I believe it is important to consider the player's perspective (or lack thereof, not knowing what your map holds for them) more carefully than just "making a map I like and too bad if player x doesn't enjoy it."  

 

The frequency of 'players' in this post is something I can't relate to. Well, many (most? maybe even all? although I can't be sure) of my design decisions are guided by or filtered through or even conceived with a particular imagined experience in mind. It's just that, on UV at least, and most of the time (exceptions have shown up in certain community projects or other random experiments), the hypothetical players I use as a benchmark, when I do, are 'players of high skill who are pretty experienced with the type of map I'm making'. 

 

And I'm pretty happy with the way that has turned out. And I'll stand by it. Because difficulty settings exist, and OPs and text files point people towards what they might play, and if not that, dying on loop in the first fight will, and if not that ... well, yeah, too bad. 

 

/that

 

Some other either related or not-related thoughts: 

 

On 8/24/2018 at 1:41 PM, Fonze said:

Point being, instead of taking this to "well clearly it's not my fault; it's their fault for suxing at the game," maybe some introspection on why or what in the map caused this to happen would be a more constructive way to approach things. I'm a firm believer in people making maps they personally like, but much like with any product that people share, if you just make it for yourself you dont need to present or convey anything, as you already know about this thing/map, which also means that there is a good chance it won't make sense or fully resonate with others (since that also implies a lack of care put into the all-important presentation side of things) and its points will fall flat, its goals ignored and its encounters cheesed or otherwise bastardized.

I think that presentation and conveyance are design attributes that exist independently of whether anyone but you will actually play the map. I'd still do things like -- completely random example -- use monsters to pull the detached hypothetical consciousness uh, fine, player, in the direction of 'where one should go next' in a massive multi-juncture area where it might otherwise not stand out, or an even more fundamental (and less random) example, design an actual lock-in mechanism for a 'lock-in fight' when I can theoretically just say to myself 'okay I'm not supposed to be able to escape this yet', when I don't have to. Because stuff like that appeals to me independent of its actual real-life practical value. 

 

On 8/24/2018 at 1:41 PM, Fonze said:

Tying this into a map of mine that I've seen folks rage at: picture a medium-sized room with bulls coming at you from all directions, with some revs, mancs, a chaingunner, etc raised up on turrets firing down at you. If you don't understand that the main threat, or first priority, is to kill the bulls and fight for space to continue fighting, you are going to have such a rough time I feel bad for you. How did I convey/present this? By killing the player quickly if they do anything but the "right" thing to do, which in a way works because it doesn't let them get far before taking them back to the beginning, and thus each death costs little time, but even still by not providing anything but a RL I limited the ways people can approach or play this map, thus making the experience far more inherently frustrating for some players, which is a shame. Not gonna pretend I have the answer but I believe it is important to consider the player's perspective (or lack thereof, not knowing what your map holds for them) more carefully than just "making a map I like and too bad if player x doesn't enjoy it."

 

Discussing a similar (well, similar enough) map start, I brought up the idea of introducing options that give sub-par strategies a non-zero chance of luckboxing (still low enough that one would be best advised to find and use a good strategy instead, but high enough that people could feel like they were trying new things while they were dying). After a bit more thought, idk about that. It isn't feasible for all setups, and it's sure not always an efficient use of mapping time ... especially not when difficulty settings also are a thing, *shrug*. Another observation: crossover appeal of 'harsh' maps is much more about very good design of all the stuff that isn't strictly combat, anyway.

 

Also, what's a shame is that people who were frustrated on UV didn't step down to HMP.

 

On 8/24/2018 at 1:41 PM, Fonze said:

Sure some amount of ammo/supplies management should be present, but if that is one of the main ways your map manifests its difficulty then it's gonna get real tedious real fast ...

 

Tangential: 

 

I think it's useful to think in terms of what the ammo balance ends up demanding in terms of concrete actions (like, whether you have to two-shot a cyb, or having x amount of plasma rifle shots for a certain tough fight, etc.). For me at least, probably the least interesting way a stingy ammo balance can manifest itself is indeed having to kill mundane stuff efficiently but with no real threat provided you do. Like, if I'm constantly doing things like firing 2 or 3 SSG shots at a lone caco or manc respectively and then switching to the chaingun to finish off the % of ones that survive, and extra shells don't actually make any fights easier ... why not provide more shells. Or infight opportunities -- infighting is ammo lol. I think that 'good' ammo balance in conventional maps that aren't going for ammo deprivation is often 'more than what you actually need' not because of the possibility of missed shots, but because having the green light to fire a rocket into two former human troopers and other occasional excesses is often a big +.

 

Edited August 26, 2018 by rdwpa