I can't be the only one here who highly dislikes slaughtermaps

[Xaser]

Silly Ender. Slaughtermaps aren't real.

[Quagsire]

Xaser said:

Silly Ender. Slaughtermaps aren't real.

[FearTheReaper]

Some people dislike slaughtermaps because their base premise in based on belief that randomness of Doom can be strictly and tightly controlled like chess pieces to the milliseconds of action and that every player to win the map should play it strictly the intended way like domino pieces or chain reaction. Both ideas of course are completely invalid and anti-doom at its core because sure, you can do health/ammo balance but trying to apply mass invasion/planned/domino effect/scripted action-like behaviour to Doom is not part of what essence of this game is, neither the player will behave or play exactly the same way as someone's sees fit.

[Spectre01]

Not Jabba said:

Sunlust is full of slaughter fights; Valiant has none at all. Combat Shock 2 is all slaugher, and I hate it;

I don't see how Sunlust is "full of slaughter fights" and Stardate is not when the latter is much closer in style to a Sunder-lite with frequent Cyberdemon infighting simulators. Sunlust doesn't rely on infighting nearly as much and the amount of BFG spam fights is quite low across the megawad.

Valiant map31 is definitely slaughtermap, as is the Final Countdown Lunatic tribute in Rocket Zone 2.

Combat Shock 2 isn't all slaughter either and maps 01, 02 and 07 are way less "slaughter" than anything in Stardate.

[Doomkid]

I like the way Scythe did it: ~4 or 5 totally digestible slaughtermaps after 25 short to normal maps. They work as boss maps but a megawad where each map is a marathon burns me out much faster.

[Quagsire]

Doomkid said:

I like the way Scythe did it: ~4 or 5 totally digestible slaughtermaps after 25 short to normal maps. They work as boss maps but a megawad where each map is a marathon burns me out much faster.

Agreed.

[mrthejoshmon]

I would probably enjoy the shorter slaughtermaps if my toaster could run them at a stable FPS count but it can't so I have to avoid them out of fear of dying in a nuclear blast caused by the meltdown of my ancient "hardware"

[Spectre01]

GLBoom+ gives me the best frame rate in high monster maps where ZDoom ports can struggle.

[Voros]

Sgt Ender said:

Agreed.

In the mean time stick with this.
Its short.
Its crazy hard.
And theres 32 of 'em

[Demonologist]

WH-Wilou84 said:

Stardate 20X6 ... it's not a slaughtermap set.

Not Jabba said:

Stardate 20X6 isn't a slaughter wad

Albertoni said:

it isn't a slaughterwad.

I think I can hear Ribbiks laughing in the distance.
It most certainly is, yet it shows that making the action more strictly controlled by the mapper and toning the encounters down to lesser numbers of tougher foes (as compared to thousands of enemies) can make things even more demanding than silly Sunder with its omnipresent legions.
And Stardate 20X7 is more of a deviation from this style of gameplay, yet it still features quite a number of slaughter-grade scenarios.

Not Jabba said:

I'm definitely more likely to think a slaughtermap is bad than I am with a regular map, just because the potential for frustration is so much higher.

That's your problem, not the map's.

[Not Jabba]

Demonologist said:

That's your problem, not the map's.

Isn't that what I said?

I feel like nobody is reading what anybody else is actually writing here, and I'm not sure why a discussion about a type of gameplay used in a modding community can't be a little more friendly than this discussion is. Yeah, I know, welcome to the internet. G'night, all.

[Benjogami]

Not Jabba said:

I feel like nobody is reading what anybody else is actually writing here, and I'm not sure why a discussion about a type of gameplay used in a modding community can't be a little more friendly than this discussion is. Yeah, I know, welcome to the internet. G'night, all.

It might have something to do with the braindead way that the topic was opened, or the fact that the only people that really seem interested in defining exactly what a slaughter map is are the people that don't really care for them, whatever "they" are, so that they can burn the definition like an effigy and the maps can disappear forever just like sgt ender expressed so eloquently with his meme gif.

[LordShadowZ]

I'm very new to the concept of slaughermaps and I don't really care for them. Though if I were to actually try some of them without cheats, I'd probably loathe them because I suck at Doom and don't have the patience to bash my head against the endless demons. Regardless, quite a few of the ones I've played through have felt tedious and uninteresting.

[Spectre01]

LordShadowZ said:

Regardless, quite a few of the ones I've played through have felt tedious and uninteresting.

Maybe you're just playing the wrong maps. Which ones were they?

[Doomkid]

I have to say, Drown in Blood (dietest18.wad) is a slaughter wad that I've always loved. Playing this in 2005 on ZDaemon servers was a very fun and unique experience, the only thing I'd ever seen even remotely similar before was NUTS, although to me this is clearly far superior. Most severs had 2x speed weapons or unlimited ammo enabled for this wad which helps the balance depending on your skill level. Some even had eweaps but that's a little too OP in my opinion.

ToD and the other dudes who made this had a lasting impact on the community with this release, I'd say it's one of the mapsets that really got the 'slaughter genre' as it were on it's feet back in it's infancy, but the almost puzzle-like nature of some of the challenges makes it stick out in it's own way even today. I also love the bizarre yet beautiful texture usage. Despite not being a die-hard fan of super crowded maps, I revisit this one from time to time and always enjoy it.

[BoJustBo]

FearTheReaper said:

Some people dislike slaughtermaps because their base premise in based on belief that randomness of Doom can be strictly and tightly controlled like chess pieces to the milliseconds of action and that every player to win the map should play it strictly the intended way like domino pieces or chain reaction. Both ideas of course are completely invalid and anti-doom at its core because sure, you can do health/ammo balance but trying to apply mass invasion/planned/domino effect/scripted action-like behaviour to Doom is not part of what essence of this game is, neither the player will behave or play exactly the same way as someone's sees fit.

Yeah, slaughtermaps are like puzzle games, you gotta be exact in the way you play them.
but having that kind of concept in doom requires a square plug for a square hole. While Doom with all its randomness attracts people of all gameplay style "shapes".

I don't like slaughter maps. I wish there would be better indications if a wad included em so I could avoid em. But I don't think they shouldn't exist since clearly a lot of people like em.

Also, some of the replies in this thread are a disgrace.

[LordShadowZ]

rileymartin said:

Maybe you're just playing the wrong maps. Which ones were they?

I can't specifically remember which maps or what WADs they were in. I've only played a small handful of slaughtermaps and with the exception of the ones in Scythe they were long boring grinds. A lot of them had 2k+ monsters and I think that was the biggest problem.

[Soundblock]

Doomkid said:

They work as boss maps but a megawad where each map is a marathon burns me out much faster.

Sgt Ender said:

Agreed.

Me three...

[yakfak]

i don't really like pesto

[cannonball]

yakfak said:

i don't really like pesto

I love the stuff.....

So on topic, I don't understand why slaughtermaps are so generalised into one category or another. In the end like other types of maps there are good and bad maps.
There are many examples of great slaughtermaps and many great authors of the trade. Sunlust being a very recent example but there are many examples.

[rehelekretep]

but cannonball, didnt you hear? Sunlust isnt a slaughterwad! :3

[kb1]

Sgt Ender said:

That isn't the thing. I just prefer gameplay where the maps aren't filled to the brim with cyberdemons and barons everywhere. They've become completely unoriginal.

Maybe you just suck.

[Quagsire]

kb1 said:

Maybe you just suck.

No, I got through most of Holy Hell without any OP weapon mods. Why do people assume others dislike something simply because they "suck" at them? There are hundreds of other possible reasons and they choose to use that assumption?

[Archi]

Sgt Ender said:

No, I got through most of Holy Hell without any OP weapon mods.

Any other slaughter maps that you have played and finished, or are you judging just by one wad?

Spoiler

Which is not even hard, but grindy.

[Quagsire]

Archi said:

Any other slaughter maps that you have played and finished, or are you judging just by one wad?

Spoiler

Which is not even hard, but grindy.

I've played a lot of other slaughtermaps, and how most of them start is you open a door, and suddenly the room is filled with every kind of enemy known possible. I like maps where it progresses in difficulty, not where everything is thrown all at once. Holy Hell does it right.

[Archi]

Name them.

[Quagsire]

Archi said:

Name them.

Chillax is one I can name, then there's the eweps addon that makes it way too easy. Either it's easy or impossible. I've also seen several gameplay videos where people have played these and they all look the same. You go onto a room, and boom- 100 cyberdemons and spider masterminds.

I've also played a lot of them on Zandronum servers but I forgot what they were called.

[Pencil of Doom]

Slaughter maps?
Give me Russian Overkill comrade.

[Archi]

So, out of all good wads you've played the bad ones and only... 2 of them? You're so funny.
Come back when you finish SF2012, Combat Shock 2, Sunder or Stardate 20x6.

[baja blast rd.]

cannonball said:

I love the stuff.....

So on topic, I don't understand why slaughtermaps are so generalised into one category or another. In the end like other types of maps there are good and bad maps.
There are many examples of great slaughtermaps and many great authors of the trade. Sunlust being a very recent example but there are many examples.

I think some people only consider a map to be a slaughtermap if it's long and grindy. Most slaughtermaps are not like Holy Hell, or Okupluk's map, or even like Sunder. Vanguard map05 isn't quite a slaughtermap, but most slaughtermaps are a lot closer to that on the spectrum than to Holy Hell. Your own map from the Doomworld Roulette project is a BFG spam map that might last 10 minutes in casual play.

I think the majority of good challenging maps these days have slaughter-based fights, unless all of the action takes place in small-scale areas. It's basically impossible to create a scenario in a large freely traversible space that a seasoned player considers threatening without using lots of monsters -- unless you want to rely on viles/hitscanners/PEs spam and potentially annoying stuff like that.