Is the Doom Wiki useful to you?

[durian]

40oz said:

Repetitive Gameplay
Repetitive gameplay is a term used to describe an experience with a level that involves the player repeating nearly identical actions over and over. This mitigates the level of difficulty or brainpower required to perform these actions, often resulting in an experience that holds the players' attention less and less as the actions repeat further. A level that is described to have repetitive gameplay may benefit as a practice level for beginners, but be less desirable to more seasoned players. Repetitive gameplay actions can be as immense as fighting a wide arrangement of monsters with one type of weapon (which can occur over the course of an entire megawad), or as subtle as having to open many doors. A repetitive gameplay experience often comes from a level that makes gratuitous application of one particular obstacle to overcome. An example in many cases, is a level that is heavily dependent on the player using a weapon as well-rounded as the Super Shotgun to defeat his enemies. A reason a player may describe such a level as repetitive is because the level stages monster combat to be in close quarters where the super shotgun is most effective, as opposed to arranging monsters in groups on tall towers or in distant windows, where a rocket launcher or chaingun may be a preferred weapon of choice to kill them. The player having to apply many or all of his resources on the level will most often result in a more varied gameplay experience, such as having to utilize all of his/her weapons. Overcoming physical obstacles such as a puzzle or an environmental hazard, useful application of Doom's many powerups, or using elements of gameplay progression may also help reduce feelings of repetitive gameplay.
Hows that sound?

Okay, some hairsplitting...

Is 'repetitive gameplay' being used to pick out an objective feature of map - a property that it is has in itself, in virtue of structure (and so, in this respect, like the property of being composed of certain number of sectors, or that of containing a certain number of monsters, or a certain shape 2D, etc) - or is it being used to pick out a subjective, response dependent, feature - a property that a map has in virtue of the way that players experience it (and so, in this respect, like the property of being exciting/dull, or easy/difficult)?

It seems to me that the term could be used to pick out properties of both sorts, and from your characterisation it's not entirely clear to me which you're trying capture.

If it's an objective property - like number of sectors/monsters - then it seems less apt to also imply that the term is perjorative (as you seem to being doing here) since that would imply that more repetitive maps compare less favorably, in terms of player experience, with more varied maps, but this is surely a matter of the players' personal taste - they may really really enjoy SSGing everything at close quarters, and so the fact that a map heavily promotes this kind of gameplay - and so, is repetitive in this respect - will be, for them, be a good thing. So, if repetitive gameplay is an objective feature that we can isolate independently of player's experiences, it seems inappropriate to automatically take it for a pejorative term, since whether players enjoy maps with that feature will depend on what's being repeated, and on their personal tastes.

If, on the other hand, it's a subjective property, that a map has insofar as a player experiences it in a certain way - presumably, experiencing it to be boringly repetitive, for some reason - then, since the relevant experiences are of a negative sort, it seems fine to use the term pejoratively, so long as it's understood that it's being used to characterise a player's negative reaction to the map - e.g., 'I found the gameplay boringly repetitive' - rather than an objective feature that the map has, independently of the person playing it. As such, saying of a map that is/is not, repetitive in this sense, will partly reflect one's own tastes and biases, and so - if you want your entry to unbiased - you'll have to take care that your characterisation does not do the same (it seems to be skating little close at the moment).

Notably, a map might have repetitive gameplay in the first, (neutral) objective sense, whilst lacking it in the second (pejorative) subjective sense, if a player happens to find such maps fun and exciting. Also, a map might lack it in the first sense - since it forces the player to mobilise a variety of different weapons/tactics - whilst still be repetitive in the second sense, since the player finds it tiresome to be repeatedly changing their tactics.

[EvilNed]

40oz said:

- List of articles and a promise to add them-

I'm with you here. I don't think this is a bad idea at all. I really like it, in fact. Best of luck.

[Gez]

Could have been a good idea to register so as not to make all these pages as an IP address...

They need to be in a category, what do you suggest? "Gameplay concepts"?

[Tristan]

Gameplay concepts or Gameplay elements should work fine.
I'll scan over them for missing blue-links and other things.

[40oz]

durian said:

Okay, some hairsplitting...

Tell me about it! that's kinda... I'm not even sure how to comprehend it. I want to say it's the first one but I think it's leaning towards the second one, really.

[durian]

Heh, sorry :) - that kind of stuff would perhaps be better placed in a 'Metaphysics of DOOM' entry, but I don't think anyone wants to read about that.

But yeah

40oz said:

I want to say it's the first one but I think it's leaning towards the second one, really.

That was kind of my impression. Nailing this kind of thing down is very tricky.

[Xeriphas1994]

Just stumbled across this thread.  40oz, if that's you creating those new wiki articles, wow and yay, and yay and wow.  Considering HOW MUCH TIME this community spends making/using/discussing maps, descriptions and (contemporary) tutorials have been sorely needed.