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Doom OG

Feedback trolls

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If I got really bent out of shape about every bad rating or comment towards things I've worked on, I'd be dead

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My not-then-named-Cacoward winning map, Space Station Omega, is only at 4 stars despite being called one of the best 100 WADs of all time. Stop the planet, this is an outrage!

All this BS about registering to vote being the only viable solution should go back to the gated communities and thought police it came from. Because there's an even better solution staring you in the face - viewing votes made anonymously; by registered members; or a combined view. It basically means votes are reset to 0 for a good quantity of the idgames database while still keeping the openness that is required for a community that is bigger than just the Doomworld forums.

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Because not everyone wants people to know that they voted or commented. God some people are just so creepy and stalkerish. OMFG I MUST KNOW WHO COMMENTED ON MY IDGAMES WAD RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE.......

Seriously be happy if anyone takes their time to vote/comment on your wad.

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Haha - planet butthurt.
The option to comment anonymously is a good one.
I personally do no take the time to write "mean" stuff on the comment section of some pwads but some people do and might have a reason.

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I tried it with Zdoom, and as I move around, some of the textures move up and down in sync with the viewbob.

Anyway, I like the anonymity of /idgames comments. Sure it can be abused. Like authors voting their own shit up. But that's really a minor issue.

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insanoflex312 said:

"Jesus christ, this wad sucks. Overuse of hitscanners (especially in open areas, where the only recourse is to pray that the RNG favors you) and ridiculous traps that are literally a binary "do you know about it in advance? If so, run out of it and don't take any damage; if not, you die" make it play like a turd, and the overuse of brown makes it look like one, too."

This is actual criticism. Troll comments would be something like this:(on my wad) "Author here, AND ITS TERRY!!!! NO PATCH IS COMING!! I'LL ***RAPE YOU ALL!!!!"

I'm with you on that. I even think the criticism of SoD there is perfectly viable and valid. Yeah it's not politely worded, but oh well! Clearly the maps annoyed him that much.

I remember a review that started along the lines of "Only a gay man could make this..." for my Christmas map (the review isn't still there, it seems) which actually made me laugh. I'm not sure if it was trolling or just genuine homophobic distaste on the part of the reviewer, but I simply couldn't be offended by such a stupid assertion. You just kind of have to accept that anonymous reviews being a range of crap in with people who are genuinely stating their opinion.

The filter that Grubber suggests is pretty cool, although obviously would work better if the reviews had been tied to user accounts for longer.

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Heh, yeah I've ahad all sorts of reviews like that. Sometimes people has taken offense on something I've said here on DW for instance and go to review my wads to talk about it.

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Regarding dealing with criticism, as long as the reviewer played the WAD and is actually reacting to what they experienced, their comment can still be valuable. Even a comment like "Fuck mouselook; deleted," has a kernel of critique that can be used, even if the mapper chooses to ignore that portion of the audience. Whereas something like "0/5 because Buttman13 made this" is just useless.

I'd like to think most of us are adult enough to parse through which of these are genuine complaints - and if they actually apply to our experience (for instance, I don't mind mouselook, as long as I'm warned to turn it on in advance) when deciding to download something off of idgames.

One thing I would like to see more of is a link to a discussion thread in the description of the WAD. The idgames database comments can be fine for an impression, but they typically don't go into enough detail (not that that's their job).

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GooberMan said:

My not-then-named-Cacoward winning map, Space Station Omega, is only at 4 stars despite being called one of the best 100 WADs of all time. Stop the planet, this is an outrage!

People aren't allowed to complain when their wads have at least 4 stars. :)

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What would help having a username attached (logging in via Doomworld forum to comment is a good idea) and a tiny "X" or warning icon on the comments so one can report the individual if they put down pure trolling or spamming (I once had someone post a domain name as a comment based on the level name for my Shards of Glass map)

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There is a "Report review abuse" at the bottom of the page.

Mr. Chris said:

a tiny "X"

They are there but only admins can use them. :) pic

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The problem with this game is that people have very particular ideas about how it should be played and what constitutes a fun experience. If they are articulate about what they didn't like then you can see whether they are purely subjective opinions and ignore them if necessary. One man's 'unfair' is another man's 'challenging' after all. The only reason to get upset is if you wanted to appeal to everyone and the plain fact is you wont.

As for pure trolling, you can always take comfort from the fact that your wad wasted the time of someone you don't like.

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mouldy said:

The problem with this game is that people have very particular ideas about how it should be played and what constitutes a fun experience. If they are articulate about what they didn't like then you can see whether they are purely subjective opinions and ignore them if necessary. One man's 'unfair' is another man's 'challenging' after all. The only reason to get upset is if you wanted to appeal to everyone and the plain fact is you wont.

As for pure trolling, you can always take comfort from the fact that your wad wasted the time of someone you don't like.


LMAO!

That's true mouldy about preferences. It's kind of strange to see a map rated as "pathetic" when I think it is fun (other people's maps) just because someone didn't like something about it.

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Guest DILDOMASTER666

In case you were still wondering, marysson, the reason people are downvoting your megawad is because it is legitimately very bad and so far from what I've seen every single negative comment is well justified

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Fisk said:

In case you were still wondering, marysson, the reason people are downvoting your megawad is because it is legitimately very bad and so far from what I've seen every single negative comment is well justified


Ok

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I think the /idgames web front-end rating number itself is completely useless and should be done away with. The comments have the potential to be much more useful, both to the author and potential players. But the rating number (and thus average score) is meaninginless since everyone rates things with different criteria, weights and expectations. For instance, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find some trollwads with higher score than this or other "serious" PWADs that the authors have put significant and honest work into. So then this begs the question: why even bother making real maps to begin with, when it's much less work to throw some halfass shit together? At least then you won't feel so bad when some trolls just wanna have fun or some angry player decides to vent. Ultimately the only real, valid reason to map is because you find it fulfilling, because you enjoy it. And in that case, the score is irrelevant! Feedback is important, because it can reveal some bugs, weaknesses or problems (that you may or may not wish to address) but there need not be some number attached to them. This rating mentality that you see everywhere these days (in one form or another, like +1, or up/down voting, etc.) is completely retarded! It encourages an externally-motivated mindset, where your self-worth is determined by others - see John Gatto's lesson 5. The quicker you excise this mental ball & chain that is implanted from an early age, then quicker you can find your way to real fulfillment. And that path may well not be identical to everyone else's. It would be a very boring world if everyone enjoyed the same games, same style DOOM maps, etc. Bottom line: you're making a HUGE mistake if you give this nonsensical score any credence, and if you map for others instead of for how you feel inside. This is pure art, not a job where you have to perform according to some business needs. Let's not have any of that bullshit here. This is a hobby, and a place to have fun and relax.

As far as the PWAD is concerned (Castle Doom), I checked it out because the idea sounded cool (I'm a sucker for medieval style maps). Unlike others, I really liked the "big" architecture and sparse level of detail. It reminded me of Michael Krause maps (runbuddy.wad, moon2000.wad, time2die.wad, etc.) but the gameplay isn't nearly as hectic (I only made it to MAP03 so far though). Didn't notice any big problems, other than HOM around the fireplace on MAP02 (using lastest PrBoom+). I got stuck until I figured out what the red marker stones were for (maybe some kind of medievalized "switch" graphic would have worked better).

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hex11 said:

I think the /idgames web front-end rating number itself is completely useless and should be done away with. The comments have the potential to be much more useful, both to the author and potential players. But the rating number (and thus average score) is meaninginless since everyone rates things with different criteria, weights and expectations. For instance, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find some trollwads with higher score than this or other "serious" PWADs that the authors have put significant and honest work into. So then this begs the question: why even bother making real maps to begin with, when it's much less work to throw some halfass shit together? At least then you won't feel so bad when some trolls just wanna have fun or some angry player decides to vent. Ultimately the only real, valid reason to map is because you find it fulfilling, because you enjoy it. And in that case, the score is irrelevant! Feedback is important, because it can reveal some bugs, weaknesses or problems (that you may or may not wish to address) but there need not be some number attached to them. This rating mentality that you see everywhere these days (in one form or another, like +1, or up/down voting, etc.) is completely retarded! It encourages an externally-motivated mindset, where your self-worth is determined by others - see John Gatto's lesson 5. The quicker you excise this mental ball & chain that is implanted from an early age, then quicker you can find your way to real fulfillment. And that path may well not be identical to everyone else's. It would be a very boring world if everyone enjoyed the same games, same style DOOM maps, etc. Bottom line: you're making a HUGE mistake if you give this nonsensical score any credence, and if you map for others instead of for how you feel inside. This is pure art, not a job where you have to perform according to some business needs. Let's not have any of that bullshit here. This is a hobby, and a place to have fun and relax.

As far as the PWAD is concerned (Castle Doom), I checked it out because the idea sounded cool (I'm a sucker for medieval style maps). Unlike others, I really liked the "big" architecture and sparse level of detail. It reminded me of Michael Krause maps (runbuddy.wad, moon2000.wad, time2die.wad, etc.) but the gameplay isn't nearly as hectic (I only made it to MAP03 so far though). Didn't notice any big problems, other than HOM around the fireplace on MAP02 (using lastest PrBoom+). I got stuck until I figured out what the red marker stones were for (maybe some kind of medievalized "switch" graphic would have worked better).


Thanks hex!

You get where I'm coming from on the work you put into something and then to see it trashed when someone probably only loaded one or two maps up. It's a bit discouraging.

On the plus side, I do understand what people like nowadays, and I know what I did wrong...I just wish I didn't devote 4 months straight before getting feedback. My bad.

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Pretty much what hex said. I even disabled the star pictures with AdBlock to not see the ratings since they are meaningless anyway. And I never write things like "3/5" in my comments because the idea of associating maps (or any works of art at all) with numbers feels stupid.

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Oh,for heaven's sake!Marrysson (sorry if spelled wrong) Don't gripe too much.I gave you a 4 star rating because I enjoyed your wad.Now I won't play it again,simply because of your griping.At least you DO know how to map.I don't.But I'm not complaining about it.Feel free to rag on me because of this post if you want,I don't care.Good luck on your next wad,though.

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i understand how you feel marysson, i have on my hard disk a 29 levels megawad made from my experiments with mapping and acs using, then i discovered doomworld and i started to play other autors maps more. well, i have to say that i have learned more in this 2 months of mapping here than the 8 months i spend on it. your maps isn't that bad, i played it up to map 20, your great error was to build it with an hi-res textures pack that look pretty orrible when used in any other engine different from jdoom or doomsday, and you made some newbie mistakes on gameplay, but thats pretty normal imo, i don't think we are all tormentor667 here right? (oh well, gooberman and kristus excluded :P).

on the other side i liked how every maps finished on the start of the next one, it gave me a good sense of progression.

i see you have the same problem as mine: giantic maps. maybe you should give yourself some size limits (like a 1024x1024 or a 3072x3072 maximum map unit), it helped me a lot regarding detailing my maps a bit more and to be more gameplay wise.

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Cacowad said:

i understand how you feel marysson, i have on my hard disk a 29 levels megawad made from my experiments with mapping and acs using, then i discovered doomworld and i started to play other autors maps more. well, i have to say that i have learned more in this 2 months of mapping here than the 8 months i spend on it. your maps isn't that bad, i played it up to map 20, your great error was to build it with an hi-res textures pack that look pretty orrible when used in any other engine different from jdoom or doomsday, and you made some newbie mistakes on gameplay, but thats pretty normal imo, i don't think we are all tormentor667 here right? (oh well, gooberman and kristus excluded :P).

on the other side i liked how every maps finished on the start of the next one, it gave me a good sense of progression.

i see you have the same problem as mine: giantic maps. maybe you should give yourself some size limits (like a 1024x1024 or a 3072x3072 maximum map unit), it helped me a lot regarding detailing my maps a bit more and to be more gameplay wise.


Very true Cacowad, thanks for playing it.

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An organized group of activists need to wait for a windy day then dump piles of printed papers with that John Taylor Gatto essay and links to videos like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_DJAZ-ByV0
with chainletter-like instructions to virally replicate, all over school premises and let the wind distribute them, because its the only chance the slaves would have to learn anything, not that they'd have any power to do anything about it.

Ratings are even more fun when you get tyrannybay, aka eshit, aka buttbay involved, as now your rating can result in your BAN (from the whole economy essentially.. only a matter of time until a company monopolizes oxygen then has the power to ban you from breathing it) if they go too low! Don't you love when a tiny group have such tremendous control over major economic infrastructure? Don't like 15 people run ALL of craigslist? That might as well be 15 people having their own country, given their level of power. By the way I CAN'T SELL STUFF THERE because "my phone number doesn't pass their verification test". Still the tyranny of craigslist is less malevolent than ebay/amazon. Centralization of power is bad. We need a pirate bay for selling/buying, distributed and immune to law and attacks from the elite. Maybe bitmit or the silk road if bitcoin catches on. Oh yeah, we were talking about idgames. Well I never really browse for wads there and just find them posted on doomworld. Idgames ratings don't result in bans but there's a slight search preference given to high star ratings since stars are one of the search options I think. Just searching with words like "weird" or something could be useful to find weird wads, but then there's a bias toward wads with more text. I don't really have a comment about all this actually, I'm just kinda like... typing stuff.

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See, here is a good (albeit negative) review:

"No amount of hi-res texturing can save this. The levels are simply too big and bland for the most part, and I mean 'big' as in 'oversized sectors'. It's not entirely awful to play, but the sense of scale is just so completely cocked-up that it results in way too much running across vast empty areas. The levels make you feel like a midget, and that's really not a good thing here. The cheap and constant hassle from faraway Hitscanners just becomes mind-numbingly tedious too. 2/5 - BaronOfStuff"

This was CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, which is helpful.

Btw, I've gotten a lot of comments on the scale being too big. Maybe I was misunderstood, but the point was to make you feel small. The "king" of the castle is a cyberdemon, and everything is to his scale. Maybe some people didn't get it, but no worries.

:)

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Hey marysson, i've received your message and checked the changes you've made to CD, and they again proved to me that you simply should gain more experience before starting megawads. Do separate maps and post them on Doomworld forums, in this way you'll receive more useful feedback, and will not be restricted by a theme of a megawad.

The "king" of the castle is a cyberdemon, and everything is to his scale. Maybe some people didn't get it

I've only seen Cyberdemon on a one small map, and that surely was not enough to tell me that all 32 levels are to his scale because his the king. You should make bigger accent on your implications and references, and make them stand out more.

I even disabled the star pictures with AdBlock

Lol, never thought of this.

Because there's an even better solution staring you in the face - viewing votes made anonymously; by registered members; or a combined view.

And when this will be implemented? Is anyone even interested in changing something at /idgames?

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Negative feedback in the /idgames database is something you'll just have to learn to live with, sometimes it's informative, other times it's best ignored or reported. Griping about troll reviews (real or imagined) in a forum thread is potentially counterproductive, if the trolls can read as well as they write.

The main issue I have with Castle Doom is that it obviously hadn't been playtested in all three target ports prior to release. The exaggerated vertical scale in the 6 maps I've played so far adds another layer of difficulty when using a port that lacks mouselook, with no shortage of situations where a player has problems seeing the enemy, let alone shooting them.

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One more thing, if some people think that idgames comment crap is something that should be tolerated, then they also should not be surprised by threads like this one, and expect them to pop up from time to time.

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Guest DILDOMASTER666
Harmata said:

One more thing, if some people think that idgames comment crap is something that should be tolerated, then they also should not be surprised by threads like this one, and expect them to pop up from time to time.


That isn't the surprise. What really surprises me is a few perfectly intelligent individuals suggesting, laughably, that being required to register in any capacity for writing comments on idgames will solve anything, at all, ever. If your wad is decent, expect decent reviews. If it is of poor quality, expect lower-scored reviews.

I don't see how /idgames' anonymous review/rating system is at all a joke, albeit not a perfect system. There is a balance to be kept between usability and security as it relates to information systems, and being required to register or to be logged in is a step away from usability for no reason, or a "solution without a problem" if you will.

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What really gets me about this thread is that he only spent 4 months working on his whole megaWAD and without much (if any) prior experience. He has a concept that people simply can not see (it's called "Castle Doom", not "The Cyberdemon's Castle" or something a bit more indicative). Unless you're speed mapping, have an awful lot of free time or are just damn good, making 32 levels in 4 months probably means the levels had about 8 hours or so each put into them (playtesting and all) and with no experience that's almost definitely going to make a lot of dull and bland maps that.

All of the talk about everything feeling oversized and the maps being bland probably should tell you something, even if individual reviews are upsetting you. What they're telling you is you need to put more time into your mapping if you want to impress people. Making 32 small, highly polished maps over a 4-month period would have been better practice by far. People have spent years (that's right, multiple) only to have their work trashed. Honestly, if you are after positive feedback, try spending one week making a good map. Or a month. Really put the time and effort into making it look nice, play well and actually convey the ideas you have, because so far you've made the classic newbie mistake of thinking you can get a great result first time, despite the fact your grasp of mapping isn't strong enough to present your ideas in a way that other people can see.

Of course, if you were being sensible, you'd be trying to impress yourself first, as this is a hobbyist art form and not worry about what other people say to begin with. You'll still impress yourself more with practice and experience, so the end result is the same.

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