ZDaemon Thursday Night Survival #247 - Hellbound (Part II revisited)

[TeamTNS]

We're returning to Hellbound this week, a 2013 megawad by Z86 featuring some truly jaw-dropping sceneries. The maps are long and the monster counts are high, so we're going to need as many people as we can to join in and fight through these maps with us. See you there!

DMFLAGS: 1174487140 / 806496256 / 0
IWAD: doom2 or freedoom080
PWADs: hellbnd-20130923; hellbnd-coopfix1; hellbnd-zdfix1
Maps: 13-15, 31, 32, 16-20
Lives: 1
Players: 25/100
Item Respawn Time: 60 Seconds
Player Join Limit: 5 Minutes

Date: 5th May 2016

Euro session: 19:00 BST/14:00 EDT at [L@P], Germany (usually lasts 6-8 hours, sometimes much longer)

Get ZDaemon and join in.

[Tristan]

Just for emphasis, join limit is longer this week (5 minutes rather than 3), and we're back on our old server.

[kuchitsu]

Hmm. Did the CONSOLEPLAYER bug ever happen on duck's server?

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Oh, identity swap bug?

Don't know of any recent occurence but I can see in my personal logs that it happened on duck's server in November 2014.

I also remember it happening on a non-TNS server a few times but not sure, now that you mention it, it's possible that maybe it is a bit more likely to occur on L@P server. Maybe it's also connected to high number of players on server or in-game, no idea, really.

EDIT: Also happened on TNS #234 on duck's server.

[Tristan]

Here's the first two hours of the session, covering the first rotation, and the start of the second. The intention was to film the entire session, but it didn't happen ._.
Sound quality is a bit wacky, not sure what's up with that.

Timestamps for each map

Spoiler

FIRST ROTATION - Standard settings

MAP13 / Session start - 0:00:18
MAP14 - 0:12:14
MAP15 - 0:23:00
MAP31 - 0:30:32
MAP32 - 0:42:16
MAP16 - 0:47:24
MAP17 - 0:56:29 (Big fight at end, fun to watch maybe)
MAP18 - 1:06:03
MAP19 - 1:12:29
MAP20 - 1:21:45

Also worth checking out, mrbrown vs hell knights at 1:27:13

SECOND ROTATION - Pain (Double monster damage, fast monsters)

MAP13 - 1:31:20
MAP14 - 1:50:13

I left while MAP14 was in progress. For those of you curious, memfis and zeaz eventually beat the map, taking the best part of an hour.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Session statistics for this week:

First blood:
ErisFalling | couldn't evade a revenant's fireball 8 minutes and 25 seconds after joining
(hello_people disqualified for intentional death: shot by a sergeant 26 seconds after joining)

First blood in subsequent rotas:
2nd rota (-fast and 2x damage): REdemptor | splayed by a Hell Knight 48 seconds after joining
3rd rota (total randomization randomisation): gaspar2010 | died 2 minutes and 52 seconds after joining
             (random damage): agentprotoss | burned by an imp 1 minute and 39 seconds after joining
(As customary, 3rd rota was switched to total randomizsation, however after a few fails on the first map it was decided that with not many players left random damage is probably more suitable for these maps which are large and have high monster counts.)

Peak server population:
35

Overall number of players that connected during the session:
136

Player death counts by obituaries (1st rota/2nd rota/3rd rota - TR on map13/3rd rota - RD):

11 died. (2/4/5/0)
4 mutated. (3/1/0/0)
0 were squished. (0/0/0/0)
5 went boom. (3/2/0/0)
14 should have stood back. (8/3/1/2)
8 were killed by a zombieman. (0/5/0/3)
29 were shot by a sergeant. (3/12/0/14)
22 were perforated by a chaingunner. (0/16/0/6)
0 were slashed by an imp. (0/0/0/0)
14 were burned by an imp. (2/8/0/4)
1 was bit by a demon. (0/1/0/0)
2 were eaten by a spectre. (0/2/0/0)
10 were spooked by a lost soul. (1/7/0/2)
0 got too close to a cacodemon. (0/0/0/0)
15 were smitten by a cacodemon. (3/6/0/6)
4 were punched by a revenant. (2/1/0/1)
26 couldn't evade a revenant's fireball. (6/16/0/4)
7 were squashed by a mancubus. (2/2/0/3)
7 let an arachnotron get them. (2/5/0/0)
2 were gutted by a Hell Knight. (1/0/0/1)
21 were splayed by a Hell Knight. (3/14/0/4)
2 were ripped open by a Baron of Hell. (0/2/0/0)
6 were bruised by a Baron of Hell. (0/5/0/1)
21 were incinerated by an archvile. (6/10/0/5)
4 stood in awe of the spider demon. (0/3/0/1)
44 were splattered by a cyberdemon. (22/12/6/4)
5 met a Nazi. (0/5/0/0)
0 were surprised by the zombie's weaponry. (0/0/0/0)
0 were mauled by a Mauler Demon. (0/0/0/0)
0 were charred by a pain soul. (0/0/0/0)
0 were melted by a pain soul. (0/0/0/0)
0 suffered psychic trauma from an aracnorb's brainwaves. (0/0/0/0)
0 were perforated by an Arachnophyte. (0/0/0/0)
26 couldn't dodge a destructor's rocket. (0/0/26/0)
0 were terminated by the Badass Cyberdemon. (0/0/0/0)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
310 deaths overall. (69/142/38/61)

Session lasted for 9 hours and 58 minutes and ended in the 3rd rota with the last map played being MAP17. Last finished map was MAP16.

top 10(+1) players with most deaths (deaths/joins, death ratio):

Keyboard_Doomer  18/34,  52.94%
Malfunction      13/13, 100.00%, womp womp
DaIcemann76      12/13,  92.31%
ErisFalling      11/13,  84.62%
fred512           9/18,  50.00%
zezoo             8/9,   88.89%
madkp2            8/10,  80.00%
DoomSphere        7/9,   77.78%
sid0rv            7/11,  63.64%
sweersz           7/14,  50.00%
zeaz              7/22,  31.82%


it stopped being funny long time ago, start dying, Bloodite:
BlooditeKrypto    2/20,  10.00%

[DeletedUser]

Eris Falling said:

The intention was to film the entire session, but it didn't happen ._.

Why did you have to leave though? I don't recall a reason and I feel an explanation is deserved considering it's the first time highlights came back but they had to be partially ruined due to this :<

Keyboard_Doomer said:

it stopped being funny long time ago, start dying, Bloodite:
BlooditeKrypto    2/20,  10.00%

Can you start giting gud like other keyboard only Doom Gods such as gggmork and Ryback? I'd love to see you with the lowest death count one day ;D

[Tristan]

Bloodite Krypto said:

Why did you have to leave though? I don't recall a reason and I feel an explanation is deserved considering it's the first time highlights came back but they had to be partially ruined due to this :<

Yeah sorry about that. Some fuckwit was writing abuse to me in german (you can see it early on in map14 pain). I let these sort of things get to me way more than I should so I was just annoyed and pretty put out by it, and I didn't really feel like playing after that. I'll probably just use chat_block next time or tempban him.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Bloodite Krypto said:

I'd love to see you with the lowest death count one day ;D

Hmm, shouldn't be impossible, hopefully. I'll just pick a WAD I know well and ban you, aprosekin, Choft and zeaz for the session. And everyone else who knows the WAD well.

Bloodite Krypto said:

Can you start giting gud like other keyboard only Doom Gods such as gggmork and Ryback?

But what do I do to git gud? Uncover the ancient secret to me! Do I have to grind my way pistol starting all maps on UV -fast starting with Hell Revealed and progressing to harder WADs? Is there a secret Doom camp where I can sign up to git gud? Does it involve sacrificing newborn goats to use their blood to sign a deal with the Devil? Tell me, Bloodite, tell me!

[DeletedUser]

Eris Falling said:

Some fuckwit was writing abuse to me in german (you can see it early on in map14 pain).

Fair enough Eris.

Keyboard_Doomer said:

I'll just pick a WAD I know well and ban you, aprosekin, Choft and zeaz for the session. And everyone else who knows the WAD well.

Don't forget Caleb if he ever returns ;-;

Keyboard_Doomer said:

But what do I do to git gud? Uncover the ancient secret to me! Do I have to grind my way pistol starting all maps on UV -fast starting with Hell Revealed and progressing to harder WADs? Is there a secret Doom camp where I can sign up to git gud? Does it involve sacrificing newborn goats to use their blood to sign a deal with the Devil? Tell me, Bloodite, tell me!

When I started speedrunning around 2003, I started with 2002 A Doom Odyssey since that was and still is my favourite Ultimate Doom megawad. However the goal was to UV-Max each map excluding the secret levels as I don't recall being aware of DSDA or PRBoom+ at the time, so I couldn't compare my performance with other runs and I played with ZDoom as a result.

By coincidence I did Hell Revealed II UV-Max afterwards which was a very useful training tool you could say in becoming more adept at slaughter maps, since it's a speedrun you have to use the most aggressive and methodical strategies your capable of to complete the map as efficiently as possible, so it does force your playstyle to adopt a more rigorous and hardcore approach having to deal with each map from a pistol start.

I also inadverently have countless of hours of HR and HR2 survival coop experience which is without a doubt my most played megawads of all time. I'd say speedrunning wads on UV-Max definitely makes you a better player as it forces you to deal with more reckless and lethal situations due to having to proceed as quickly as possible, but of course you'd have to be a high skill tier player to be able to deal with infamous beasties. You also develop a natural hindsight for various gameplay setups in hard/slaughter maps such as mandatory closet or ambush traps you see in modern goliaths like Speed of Doom and Sunlust, or teleporter ambushes which you can respond to swiftly rather then panic and blunder.

On the other hand playing through pistol starts without saves is a good alternative, for me it really just came down to a point where I had played many slaughter wads offline and online due to being my favourite types of maps and eventually I got a fundamental understanding of the way the game mechanics work, meaning monster behaviour and movement, pre-emptive foresight and knowing where to stand in those instantly unleashed, claustrophobic slaughter fights so you don't immediately get cornered. As a result playing new hardcore wads isn't really a huge struggle for me, some maps my take a few attempts due to not being familiar with the layout or nonsensical dickish traps which require fore-knowledge (assuming this is pistol start without saves of course) such as some Ribbiks and Sunlust maps, but I adapt pretty quickly because of all my years of experience with speedrunning.

For TNS most of the time I haven't played the wad featured at all or for a long time so it comes down to a methodical and strategic gameplay style.

[rhinoduck]

Bloodite Krypto said:

For TNS most of the time I haven't played the wad featured at all or for a long time so it comes down to a methodical and strategic gameplay style.

In other words, meatshields go first? :)

[DeletedUser]

That's Anima's strategy c:

First pro-tip is to never volunteer to go into rooms first if you suspect it's a trap or will turn into a clusterfuck, then if you ever spy me notice I do cautious things like approach corners slowly and sometimes mouse swing to check blindspots or my back, along with never rushing or taking risks in pain rotation unless the map layout forces one into a dangerous situation, then you need good movement and timing.

From this week I narrowly dodged 2 Cybers, first was at the end of 14 in 1st rota as I sidestepped at the last frame, the second was on 32 in pain rota where I randomly checked my back and avoided a Cyb rocket by a split second, made my heart jump in fact lol.

[Karakurt]

Looks promising.

[DeletedUser]

I made some FDAs for Ancient Aliens as a reminder FDA means playing a map blind for the first time but recording the result :D Take a look at my playstyle with regards to methodical strategy and such.

[kuchitsu]

Ye, waiting for other people to explore dangerous areas seems like the number one strategy, but quite frankly to me it seems a little assholish and often just plain boring. I like to put some danger in my playing and sometimes take risks for the sake of the team, otherwise I just don't feel right. No offense to anyone, the only behavior in coop that I really dislike is when someone sees like 5 rocket boxes and picks them up even though he knows that right behind his back there are other players, otherwise people can do whatever they want as long as they're not trolling the others.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Bloodite Krypto said:

From this week I narrowly dodged 2 Cybers, first was at the end of 14 in 1st rota as I sidestepped at the last frame, the second was on 32 in pain rota where I randomly checked my back and avoided a Cyb rocket by a split second, made my heart jump in fact lol.

So it's all luck, no skill, got it. jk :P

Thanks for the write-up and for the demos. It's impressive watching you tackle without dying maps that took me dozens of attempts to survive on blind playing with pistol starts myself. As you can see from the statistics for another week it's going to be a long process but with your help I can embark on the endeavour to git gud :D

I agree with Memfis that while waiting for others to take the risks is highly effective survival technique it can be also considered unfair as well as boring to literally wait for them to trigger a trap so I can cheese it after they die. And that's why I often volunteer myself to be the scapegoat. Baaaaaa!

However, it's one thing to play cautiously when needed and avoid obvious risks and another to play with such well-thought-out movement and strategic thinking taking minimal damage in dangerous situations. There is sure a lot to learn from you.