Is there any shame in IDDQDing past a part you can't beat?

[hardcore_gamer]

No.

 

I will rarely iddqd my past part a hard section but I will do this as a fuck you to the map author if the difficulty is the result of unfair/stupid design. Like entering an open area and suddenly being surrounded with a million chaingunners or revenants.

[leodoom85]

I can cheat sometimes in Doom using the god mode without regrets. But for other games like Heretic and Hexen...nope thanks...

[slowtorturepukechamber]

I'd say technically it is a HUGE cop out, BUT sometimes I am guilty of this I will admit.

[ReX]

I'll add one more thought. Most of us are not DooM gods, and we aren't equipped to handle ultra-difficult maps. But, once in a while we hear about these fabulous mods (e.g., in terms of innovation, aesthetics, map design, progression, cleverness of traps, etc.) that are also ultra-difficult. Curiosity prompts us to try those mods out, but we quickly discover we're outmatched. IDDQD, thankfully, rides in to the rescue.

 

The scenario I outlined above is no different that when some of us first started playing DooM, and we sucked so hard that we were routinely being slaughtered by tiny coteries of mere imps. Did we not resort to cheats? Twenty-some years may have gone by, but some of us might continue to suck at the whole WASD thing.

 

Please, please, don't take my IDDQD away!

[Doomkid]

If the wad offers multiple difficulty levels and yet a player insists on picking UV and cheating at certain parts, the shame is not only carried by you but your entire family for 3 generations.

 

don't take this post too seriously, wgaf if you cheat in SP

[everennui]

If you feel ashamed, there is shame. I encourage cheaters to feel shame. :D

[Pure Hellspawn]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

If the wad offers multiple difficulty levels and yet a player insists on picking UV and cheating at certain parts, the shame is not only carried by you but your entire family for 3 generations.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

don't take this post too seriously, wgaf if you cheat in SP

 

what about HMP, even?

 

P.S: Rex: see my post. try surviving it, and if you die, use the 'Resurrect' command in GZDoom.

[ReX]

16 minutes ago, Pure Hellspawn said:

P.S: Rex: see my post. try surviving it, and if you die, use the 'Resurrect' command in GZDoom.

Where's the fun in that, eh?

 

But in all seriousness, I shall remember to use 'resurrect' from the console. Thanks for the tip.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Cheats are extremely important while making a mod\map :). They are extremely discouraged while playing the map\mod! It really takes out a lot of immersion and people shoot themselves in the leg without realizing it. (You'd probably get a more fulfilling experience to repeat until you win or lower the difficulty) 

 

P.S. I still noclip if I find myself running 30 minutes in circles and what I played before said event was fun, Otherwise alt+F4.

[Traysandor]

Instead of IDDQDing things, I instead mostly use console commands to help me out once I get stuck

 

give resistancerune (Increases player defense)

give megasphere (200 health and armor)

resurrect (Revives your character... in most cases anyways)

 

Alternatively, you could just 'give health 65535' and you suddenly have a (nearly) infinite pool of health to work with, lol

 

And if all else fails, add the Russian Overkill mod. 'Nuff said.

[Deleted_Account]

Yeah I use IDDQD. Well you know, if it's enough already and I just wanna get some sleep

[Demon of the Well]

If your go-to approach for meeting adversity in this or any other game is to cheat (or to 'fudge the rules' or to 'compensate just a bit for something that's obviously not entirely fair' or 'gift myself a soulsphere because the sun was totally in my eyes I have witnesses' or any other way you prefer to rationalize it), you are periodically robbing yourself of a valuable opportunity to adopt/adapt/improve. In this wide world there are certainly many more important things you could/should be doing with your time than painfully brute-forcing your way through this or that Doom map for something as silly and ephemeral as bragging rights--family, friends, job, personal hygiene, whathaveyou--but if you embrace this habit too comfortably, in the long run you are making a weaker, less resourceful and less imaginative player of yourself than you could potentially be. And, wholly apart from the issue of bragging rights and how you may or may not look to a bunch of strangers on the internet, if you too often resign yourself to copping out and being weaker for the sake of convenience or less short-term stress, you are ultimately depriving yourself of opportunities to grow and to learn to appreciate and engage with the game in a fuller way, which is something that will ultimately impact and stunt your long-term enjoyment of it, and no one else's.

 

Cheat if you must, no one's going to call the authorities or TP your house (too damned expensive these days!). But you might instead consider trying a lower difficulty setting (if only for the span of a single map, if necessary), or returning to the same WAD at a later time with a fresher perspective and new experience or something like that.

[savagegrant]

I think IDDQD can only be justified when you want 100% completion in a poorly-designed map that doesn't have a berserk pack and you're not given enough ammo, even after maximum monster infighting.

[galileo31dos01]

No need to feel ashamed, don't get accustomed though. Do whatever you want, as long as you have fun, it's a game! Like Demon of the Well said, no one is going to point the finger to you, and even if someone does, that's their problem. But, as a personal advice, cheating eats the challenge, if you can't do it now, try again later, if you chose UV when you don't even know how to dodge a homing rocket, then lower the damn difficulty and practice until you feel prepared to upgrade the skill. IDDQD is, an acceptable resource to study a map if it obviously demands foreknowledge, regardless of your gameplay choice. Also in inescapable pits you fell by accident (or not, maybe you heard a monster and you want 100% kills but there is no lift or stairs to get back and that's stupid in my opinion). 

 

I turned god mode in many IoS maps when the arena got too flooded and resources were a problem, or Point Dreadful... 

[silentzorah]

I would rather play on I'm Too Young To Die than cheat.  Use a map editor to figure out some obscure switch puzzle I've been stuck on for an hour, though... That's another story.  I can't be the only one who does that.

[KVELLER]

43 minutes ago, silentzorah said:

Use a map editor to figure out some obscure switch puzzle I've been stuck on for an hour, though... That's another story.  I can't be the only one who does that.

You're not alone. I've done that a couple times as well. I think the first time I did it was to figure out how to enter that room full of pinkies in E2M4. How was I supposed to know about that miserable lindef in the middle of the damn slime river?!

[Maes]

I once had to IDBEHOLDR through a HR (I think) map, not because of the slaughter, but simply because the radsuit  pickups didn't last for shit, and the entire level was a nukage sewer. I honestly didn't understand how someone who wasn't already familiar with the placement of the radsuits could beat it the first time, esp. if going for 100%.

[Aldaraia]

I hate idclipping bad enough but it's generally for overcoming fatal map oversights which we all know too well. Once other cheats are brought onto the table, a new precedent is set that'll just shatter what immersion there is and the accomplishment I feel upon beating a wad.

 

If I'm enjoying a mapset enough, I can put up with numerous deaths in an effort to figure out the right approach to a nasty situation. If I screwed myself over and don't have the resources necessary to survive, I'll just come back later and reload from the beginning while ensuring I don't repeat those same mistakes. For maps that range from unfair to sadistic I might either lower the difficulty or decide it's not worth the time, the latter mainly being from wads made by malignant authors who intentionally aim to frustrate and piss off the players.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Aldaraia : details

[Maes]

The worst offenders of triggering NOCLIP abuse, are maps with inescapable pits that don't even have the courtesy of killing you with a damaging floor. The author even wrote in the textfile "if you fall into an pit you can't exit, consider yourself dead and restart the map". Riiiight....

[Aldaraia]

46 minutes ago, Maes said:

The worst offenders of triggering NOCLIP abuse, are maps with inescapable pits that don't even have the courtesy of killing you with a damaging floor. The author even wrote in the textfile "if you fall into an pit you can't exit, consider yourself dead and restart the map". Riiiight....

I can't imagine this not being a '94 pwad at hand. It might've gained an iota of plausibility if the author elaborated that the player died from starvation, but he probably just couldn't be bothered to refer to the damn sector effect index. 

[geo]

Its your game. Do whatever it takes to enjoy it.

[TootsyBowl]

1 hour ago, Maes said:

The worst offenders of triggering NOCLIP abuse, are maps with inescapable pits that don't even have the courtesy of killing you with a damaging floor. The author even wrote in the textfile "if you fall into an pit you can't exit, consider yourself dead and restart the map". Riiiight....

Death pits with damaging floors only tease you because they imply you're being given time to find a way out. Instakill floors are better. Is there any way to do it without ZDoom scripting? Epic 2 apparently did it with some process involving barrels and voodoo dolls.

[ReX]

1 minute ago, TootsyBowl said:

... some process involving barrels and voodoo dolls.

1. Create a "dummy" sector outside the "playable" area of the map.

2. Place a player voodoo doll in the sector.

3. Surround the sector with barrels.

4. Create one or more sectors above the barrels.

5. Set up one or more linedefs in the slime that will lower/start the barrel sectors crushing.

6. To make the barrel sectors lower/crush instantly, use this trick

 

What I don't get is why the barrels are needed. The instantly crushing sector ought to be enough. Any insights?

[Da Werecat]

Crushers deal damage with time, not with the distance traveled. I can't imagine an instant crusher dealing much damage, if any.

 

I wanted to test it just to be sure, but wasn't able to, even in Boom. Generalized crushers simply don't work, and there are no crushers among the regular actions suitable to produce an insta-moving sector.

 

What am I missing?

 

[Ichor]

17 minutes ago, ReX said:

What I don't get is why the barrels are needed. The instantly crushing sector ought to be enough. Any insights?

You could just do it like in TNT and telefrag yourself.

[Da Werecat]

In any case, it's an awkward hack that only outlines that you can't have decent insta-killing floors in regular Doom.

 

[40oz]

10 hours ago, Demon of the Well said:

And, wholly apart from the issue of bragging rights and how you may or may not look to a bunch of strangers on the internet, if you too often resign yourself to copping out and being weaker for the sake of convenience or less short-term stress, you are ultimately depriving yourself of opportunities to grow and to learn to appreciate and engage with the game in a fuller way, which is something that will ultimately impact and stunt your long-term enjoyment of it, and no one else's.

 

Good post, but I want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Particularly the part where you suggest the player is depriving his/herself from becoming better at Doom by using cheats.

 

If we look at death in Doom completely objectively, its just a reset button for the map that you control by avoiding things that subtract from your health. Now using IDDQD and passively plugging away at monsters while standing there and taking heat with no intention of playing better would certainly fit your model. But lets consider some more likely circumstances that the player might want to use cheat codes; like a very long map with all wimpy sniping hitscan enemies and a few shitty archvile encounters. The player used up all the scarce stimpacks and still only has 15% health for the next encounter. And then a surprise chaingunner squad trap in the dark at the very end saps any chance of survival in the given circumstance.

 

Under these conditions, the punishment for dying is being directed to replay everything that precedes it, but the issue wasn't necessarily that the player needs to retrain himself on all the annoying bullshit before, its that the player had no reason to assume that that unlikely scenario was going to come up and rob him/her of their progress.

 

I personally dont see any significant gains in skill from replaying already played scenarios vs. playing Doom in a constantly changing environment. The best you can do is remind yourself to allocate resources better and play with greater caution now that the bullshit down the line is now known. But that's not really a "skill" that is useful for future playing.

 

Lets also consider that mapping has no rules and can be as humiliatingly unfair as they choose to be. Instant death traps, unavoidable crushers, inescapable lava pits, softlocking doors that inhibit any possibility of moving forward etc. These types of scenarios dont really enable a learned skill when played with or without cheats.

[savagegrant]

I'll admit to NOCLIPing when all that's left to do in a map is to find a remaining secret where the map design doesn't allow you to revisit the area by providing a lift or teleporter, or if the secret is one of those dreaded timed ones where it's sealed off by the time u work out what it was.

[rehelekretep]

i think the question youd have to ask yourself in your scenario is 'why continue playing this map?' - not 'should i cheat or not?'

i think your argument supports saving and loading rather than cheating

 

edit: directed at 40z's post.

[Maes]

50 minutes ago, ReX said:

What I don't get is why the barrels are needed. The instantly crushing sector ought to be enough. Any insights?

It will probably just trap whatever it "crushes" without killing it. Can happen if you try and cheat certain lockout traps.