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Quagsire

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

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Combat shock 2 is my only exception for some reason I had a lot of fun with it. Only six maps felt like perfect for that wad.

Slaughter maps suffer from the lack of variable gameplay, I would like to have isolated Slaughter fests in a maps to serve as mean trap for a key or a fake switch that was suppose to open the door next to it.

I love fighting hordes of monsters but not to where it becomes the wad.

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Sgt Ender said:

Why do people assume others dislike something simply because they "suck" at them?

Because when it comes to slaughter/hard maps, that is the reason. Then someone says they don't suck, then they're asked to post a demo, then no demo gets posted. It's the circle of life.

As for bad slaughter/hard maps, those are made by mappers who can't demo their own maps (some of those mappers do make good slaughter/hard maps, though).

Doomkid said:

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.

I'd say it was a product of the times. For me, back then I was all into playing on those zdaemon servers that had infinite ammo on wads like av, plutonia, etc., and then Toke was making coopbuild which was designed for infinite ammo and deaths. On that wad, you were expected to die and it was helpful to sacrifice yourself in order for the other players to maintain fire on the hordes. Then I finally figured out how to map and started making maps I wanted to play too. The design of the maps was also limited by the stability of the servers, so you couldn't make maps too big or use too many monsters or let players rush through the map activating monsters. That style of coop is still my favourite (with regular speed weapons, regular strength monsters, and deaths allowed).

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blueinferno776 said:

Combat shock 2 is my only exception for some reason I had a lot of fun with it. Only six maps felt like perfect for that wad.

Slaughter maps suffer from the lack of variable gameplay, I would like to have isolated Slaughter fests in a maps to serve as mean trap for a key or a fake switch that was suppose to open the door next to it.

I love fighting hordes of monsters but not to where it becomes the wad.

This basically.

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I dunno, sounds like I wanna be the guy fangames. Some people only seem to care about the most difficult "pull your hair out" iterations and I have no problem with that mindset. For myself a slaughtermap needs to have great visuals to interest me in playing them. Half the fun in a slaughtermap is taking in the map before you unleash hell. I'll take a map 29 sunlust any day over a map 28 speed of doom though imo.

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I like how people always complain about the difficulty of slaughtermaps, but never mention that they played them on ITYTD... Combat puzzles is a term that is thrown around a lot, quite frankly I think it's really the perfect word.

Look at a "real" puzzle game(s) like the Portals: I can bang my head against the wall for an hour trying to spread the grey portal gel to a place that will solve the puzzle for me, but it will take a while and require levels of thinking that clearly were not intended. In fact, the real solution is often so simple to pull off that platforming skills aren't even necessary, despite how the game may seem. That's one thing that shocked me about Portal when I played it: no platforming (read: no moderately difficult platforming) required, just shoot your portals and walk on through. Don't have to hit this thing and move yourself to that perfect position in mid-air so you can shoot a portal on that tiny spot and so on, just shoot your shit and walk out. Man, if only my relationships could have been like that.

Tying that into Doom's slaughtermaps, of course real skills will be more necessary in a salughtermap-puzzle than in a straight puzzle game, so the connection is somewhat looser, but that's the whole combat puzzle term: combat is an integral part so you have to have the skill to generally survive. But it's beyond that as there is always (for good maps) a right strategy which makes it "not so hard," or at least not impossible, heh. But it takes many deaths sometimes to figure it out. My belief is a good mapper should be able to design an encounter which requires a player to utilize thinking outside of the box when developing their strategy. If you can run through a map on its toughest setting and live the first time, either you're very good or the map wasn't that hard. Or maybe no real strategy was needed; nothing to figure out. My favorite example is a simple setup of mancs on the sides and PE's in the middle, bonus points of course if the player has only rockets: the player has to kill one manc first and the other(s) kill the PE's in the middle until the player can begin to focus on them. So very counterintuitive, but it makes total sense. The ability to recognize these special situations and come up with a good strategy is the difference between a player who rightfully should be playing on UV with one who plays on UV because it makes them feel special. Authors implement skill settings for a reason and it is totally insane to play on a skill setting which is designed for players with a higher skill.

That all said, like Dime said slaughtermaps (and any tough maps) should be visually appealing/interesting. It is extremely important for the player to enjoy taking in the sights of the level and to want to see what's around the next corner.

I will say though, I think slaughtermaps in particular are an acquired taste; perhaps it's the stigma of NUTS, or the seeming ease of throwing a thousand monsters in a room and calling it a day, but I know when I joined the community I wasn't a huge fan of slaughtermaps with simple visuals and totally homogeneous encounters. It took a bit to grow on me, but now I just don't like maps with noobish (only for lack of a better word; damn my diction) visuals. Massively-monotextured walls TM, a lack of architecture, texturing appearing as wallpaper rather than 3d objects, and the like. Likewise, I wasn't a huge fan of visually simple maps, though after being a part of the community for a little while I can appreciate much more the thought and work that goes into designing simple, clean visuals that are both interesting and textured well. Same goes for those slaughterfests, that's a lot of time, thought, and skill to make.

We often find what we seek in life; you have to look for positives in order to find them. Looking at it as a puzzle to be unraveled is the first step.

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While there's nothing wrong with having different tastes as long as people can just acknowlegde different preferences and get along without expressing relentlessly just how much everything they don't like sucks - there will always be another crowd, in this particular case comprised of either ignorant younglings that have literally flooded these boards as of lately (seemingly attracted by Doom '16) that keep yelling about anything more difficult than "press X to win" or/and the ones clearly disdainful towards the style of gameplay in question that nevertheless try to be smart blathering about things they don't understand and thus only exposing their incompetence, whereas just staying quiet would've been much more of a preferred option. Their arguments are far-fetched and puny, their attempts at analysis are laughable simply because with the lack of thorough understanding and adequate experience it's impossible to argue and analyse without looking ridiculous. I don't really get just why there are always kind souls that have angelic patience and try to explain things, to push into the right direction, time after time after time. It's somewhat amusing (as from the side perspective view it really looks like a doctor patiently and selflessly treating a disabled child) yet at the same time this is a lost cause. There will always be threads like this, claims and complaints like this, as the said crowd, in pursuit of their attention whoring, just doesn't seem to be able to be smarter and/or finally grow up and stop all this nonsense at once. All the proofs will be left unnoticed, and all the attempts to push the misguided souls in the right direction are useless since they don't want to be pushed there, yelling arrogantly in frustration and staying entitled to their opinion noisily seems to be the only thing that matters to them. So in the end - why bother? Just let all this die in obscurity and don't feed the childish egos, if anything - they're too big and fat already.

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It annoys me when a map makes you go from 200/200 to 0 within seconds if you don't know where to go (and often go immediately, not 2 seconds later). When I know them , I might start liking them.

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Pirx said:

It annoys me when a map makes you go from 200/200 to 0 within seconds if you don't know where to go (and often go immediately, not 2 seconds later). When I know them , I might start liking them.


There are many different types of slaughtermaps and not all require pre-knowledge or speedrunning routes to enjoy. Something like Stardate and most of Sunlust can be played "straight" without any cheeky tricks to make the maps significantly easier.

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This is so stupid, that's like saying you think that slow and steady wads are uncreative just because you've played Believer and Doom 2 In Name Only.

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I haven't seen a slaughter wad full of barons and cybers in a while, what wads are people refering to? hr?, it's like 20 years old!, and not even a slaughter wad by today's standards so if hr is boring that's normal wads being boring.

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Ancalagon said:

I haven't seen a slaughter wad full of barons and cybers in a while, what wads are people refering to? hr?, it's like 20 years old!, and not even a slaughter wad by today's standards so if hr is boring that's normal wads being boring.

He basically declared that Chillax is the image of slaughtermaps.

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joe-ilya said:

He basically declared that Chillax is the image of slaughtermaps.

Actually, no. I was using that as an example of bad ones. I don't hate all of them in general really. Just a lot of the bad ones people attempt to make. Chillax has great level design, but it's practically filled to the brim with cyberdemons.

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Sgt Ender said:

Chillax has great level design, but[...]

That's because it's rips of other maps (mostly by phml IIRC), filled to the brim with ludicrous monster loads.

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Sgt Ender said:

Actually, no. I was using that as an example of bad ones. I don't hate all of them in general really. Just a lot of the bad ones people attempt to make. Chillax has great level design, but it's practically filled to the brim with cyberdemons.

It would be worth playing the original versions of the maps used in chillax, a lot of maps were taken from phmlspd.wad.
http://doomedsda.us/wad1179.html

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Sgt Ender said:

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?

Alright, then: My real thoughts:
Your thread sucks. Why did you start this thread? Basically, it is worded like "I, random internet guy, hate Thing X, and so do others." It's not even a question. It's a statement which appears to be fishing for agreement or argument. The only real logical response is "Ok. So what? Thanks for informing me." But, that's not helpful. So, instead, I looked for a possible reason. And, I came up with "Maybe you suck."

Cause I happen to like all those maps, and I know I'm not the only one.

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kb1 said:

Alright, then: My real thoughts:
Your thread sucks. Why did you start this thread? Basically, it is worded like "I, random internet guy, hate Thing X, and so do others." It's not even a question. It's a statement which appears to be fishing for agreement or argument. The only real logical response is "Ok. So what? Thanks for informing me." But, that's not helpful. So, instead, I looked for a possible reason. And, I came up with "Maybe you suck."

Cause I happen to like all those maps, and I know I'm not the only one.

I made this thread to see how many others hate slaughtermaps. Of course a bunch of people would get all defensive about it.

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Sgt Ender said:

I made this thread to see how many others hate slaughtermaps. Of course a bunch of people would get all defensive about it.


You mean this thread that has been made a hundred times? Why not just necrobump an old one, you know, since you're necrobumping a dead horse.

Maybe they ain't getting defensive, maybe you're getting defensive.

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Sgt Ender said:

I made this thread to see how many others hate slaughtermaps. Of course a bunch of people would get all defensive about it.

What sort of response were you hoping for, exactly, from such a pointless topic?

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Fonze said:

You mean this thread that has been made a hundred times? Why not just necrobump an old one, you know, since you're necrobumping a dead horse.

I don't believe there are other threads like this.

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Regards Chillax source maps, I managed (with help of others) to get like a 80% finished list, since there's way more to it than just phmlspd, but the remaining maps don't want to give themselves up easily :P

Spoiler

***CHILLAX SOURCE MAPS***

01 - Phmlspd MAP01 http://doomedsda.us/lmps/1179/phmlspd.zip
02 - Phmlspd MAP02
03 - Phmlspd MAP03
04 - Phmlspd MAP04
05 - Phmlspd MAP05
06 - Phmlspd MAP06
07 - Phmlspd MAP07
08 - Phmlspd MAP08
09 - Phmlspd MAP09
10 - Phmlspd MAP10
11 - Phmlspd MAP11
12 - Phmlspd MAP12
13 - Phmlspd MAP13
14 - Phmlspd MAP14
15 - Macabre MAP01
16 - Macabre MAP04
17 - Macabre MAP32
18 - Macabre MAP05
19 - speed17 MAP05 https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1669762
20 - Infernal Fortress
21 - helcv
22 - Doom 64 MAP19
23 - According to ancalagon this was some single-map techbase wad
24 - KMega1 MAP18
25 - Doom 64 MAP31
26
27
28 - Enlarged sections of Doom 64 MAP13, 17 and 21 all stitched together. I can't find the start area though.
29 - Blood Pentagram
30 - Sort of original map, but see below
31
32
33 - KMega1 MAP12
34 - KMega1 MAP10
35 - KMega1 MAP17
36 - Scary Mike v1.10 https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/sm
37 - Crestfallen
38 - KMega1 MAP11
39
40
41
42 - Doom 64 MAP24
43
44 - jthbeta3 MAP22
45 - jthbeta3 MAP09
46 - Macabre MAP04
47 - Vile Flesh MAP01 + 32

MAP30 is an original map with a layout spelling CHILLAX, but each letter is based on a room from a previous map in the WAD.
Some of these are more obvious than others
C = MAP15, though the flesh tunnels in the south of this map are very dark, so this one isn't very noticeable.
H = MAP05, the start area: Many imps attacking through bars
I = MAP24, no perfect match, but seems to resemble this map the most
L1 = MAP25, the long walkways
L2 = MAP28, huge open area at blue key. Easy to miss as this is a much smaller space, but note the wooden plinths with the impaled corpses
A = MAP21, the easternmost section of this map is very similar, even the shape is very similar
X = MAP29, the same dark grey bricks and orange SHAWN textures from the end of that map are here.

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Sgt Ender said:

I made this thread to see how many others hate slaughtermaps. Of course a bunch of people would get all defensive about it.

Like you've been doing for 3 pages?

And, no, you never asked for anyone's opinion (though people will generally offer it, regardless).

* Here's your OP:

Sgt Ender said:

I can't be the only one here who highly dislikes slaughtermaps. I mean, I don't mind the ones that are smaller but add that spark to get you running and gunning, but then there's the ones like Holy Hell that are all the same basically. You flip a few switches, kill all the enemies in the area, repeat. Occasionally there's the ones with keys and stuff but that's about it to me.


* And here's a paraphrase of your post (for the laymen):
"Surely there's someone like me (on DoomWorld forums) - someone like me who cries when they play games with switches, and monsters. And, occasionally keys. By the way, I get a spark when I'm doing a small amount of running and gunning. (Hmmm... whining to tons of strangers is more fun than HolyHell, maybe I'll do that instead)..."

* And, here's what you really meant:
I played all of Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom on Ultra-Violence. But, when I play HolyHell etc on UV, I get the shit kicked out of me. Therefore, these maps suck, 'cause I can't beat them. Someone hold me.

* Now, some advice:
1. Play on a lower skill level. That's why they're there.

2. Watch demos of the mapset in question, and learn from the best.

3. Set up your controls like the pros. Maybe WASD+mouse. Get good doing SR40 and SR50.

4. Make sure your port is rendering the map at full speed without lag. You may need to reduce resolution, translucency, or other effects.

5. Record your own demos, and study them to learn what techniques work.

6. Stop posting, and spend your time improving your skills.

7. Grow a pair. No one wants to hear broad complaints about vast numbers of maps of a certain genre. Many people have spent many hours learning how to master these maps, and the authors spend sometimes many months perfecting every aspect of a single map, from architecture to monster placement to skill levels. Still, others put a lot of effort in creating demos, videos, writing reviews, etc.

The strength of the community lies in the huge array of diverse wads of every style imaginable (including maps you love, and maps you can't play).

So, why pop in and passive-aggressively dump on a whole genre of maps?

* Conclusion:
Your thread sucks.

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kb1 said:

2. Watch demos of the mapset in question, and learn from the best.

This bit is something that's always impressed me. I played 2 of the No Health maps, and thought they were impossible to complete. But they're not, as the demos that show the player literally breezing through the map like its nothing.

I dislike slaughterfest maps as it really feels like the author was lazy to add nice progression. But I suppose that's another genre of maps, so I can't really say much on the matter. But I've come realize, after watching slaughterfest demos, that it's really another genre to enjoy/dislike.

In this case, I dislike the whole thing. Not my taste.

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Slightly offtopic, but can anyone point me to some super ball-bustingly hard maps that aren't relying on the slaughter type of gameplay? I'm indifferent on map genres - Good and bad come in all forms, but there's something more satisfying (to me) about really struggling in a map with a measly 60 monsters or so as opposed to 600. Any suggestions for that kind of challenge?

(I don't mean that as a slight against slaughter-style mappers either, one thing that can't be denied is that slaughtermaps are often super gorgeous)

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Doomkid said:

Slightly offtopic, but can anyone point me to some super ball-bustingly hard maps that aren't relying on the slaughter type of gameplay? I'm indifferent on map genres - Good and bad come in all forms, but there's something more satisfying (to me) about really struggling in a map with a measly 60 monsters or so as opposed to 600. Any suggestions for that kind of challenge?


The CHORD series of maps by Malcolm Sailor immediately come to mind, they are pretty low on monsters, but offer quite the challenge.

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Jaws In Space said:

they are pretty low on monsters, but offer quite the challenge.

Once again, Swift Death.

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Voros said:

Once again, Swift Death.


I've never been frustrated on a map with 35 monsters until I started playing this.

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