Is FreeDM's MAPINFO required?

[Voros]

Apparently FreeDM has a MAPINFO lump.

Inside the lump, is nothing more than empty intermission texts(with MAP30's info added, but isn't it already inside the IWAD? To end the game at MAP30?). Whats the point of that? The dehacked lump adds some text, but it's only a few lines.

I feel that it is just plain unnecessary to keep in the IWAD. Do you feel the same?

[Gez]

Voros said:

Whats the point of that?

// MAPINFO lump for FreeDM. This doesn't do much, except strip out
// most of the normal Doom II story for ZDoom-based ports.

// After finishing MAP30, loop back to MAP01 and start again.

I think the question you should ask is, "what harm does it do?"

[Voros]

Voros said:

I feel that it is just plain unnecessary to keep in the IWAD. Do you feel the same?

[Arctangent]

I mean, I'm pretty sure that's a pretty adequate answer.

[Gez]

Okay, I'm going to explain stuff. You see, deathmatch is not played like single player. Notably, there's no story. Nobody cares about being told that them getting 10 frags somehow allowed humanity to escape the demons who had taken over the starport. So getting rid of the story screens is a good thing for deathmatch player.

Another difference is that deathmatch maps are played in rotation. Game over is when the players quit, not when MAP30 is finished. Having MAP30 looping back to MAP01 is a good thing for deathmatch players.

Therefore, this MAPINFO lump accomplish good things for deathmatch players. Is something that is good to deathmatch players unnecessary in a deathmatch-only IWAD?