Things that certain mappers do that annoy you

[Chezza]

High difficulty and high pressure megawads. Since so many of us (especially the known mappers) are veterans of Doom, most large projects tend to focus on high monster count levels that really tests your reflexes, stamina and weapon prioritization.

 

Don't get me wrong. These factors are mostly positive and helps prevent the experience from being stale but I get tired of their pacing. Give me smaller and easier gimmicky moments and make me aware when a big fight is going to happen. I don't want to clear a room with 100 monsters only to face another 100 in my very next fight or smaller encounters that are very difficult. And of course the following levels gets worse.

 

Wait am I just whining about Slaughtermaps? But I suppose even megawads like Valiant get tiring.

[Major Arlene]

A few things that have really peeved me over the years:

1. Keys in the goddamn secrets. I don't care how obvious that secret is. If you put a key in a secret, it's garbage. Same with switches. If it's a necessary element to progress in the map, then don't put it in a secret.
2. Doors that are necessary but hidden via weird texturing. 
3. Archviles/big bosses in tight spaces. Things like Barons and Hell Knights in super tight hallways.

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 hours ago, scifista42 said:

Cyberdemon's diameter is 80 map units, so if your stairs are 8 units high, they only need to be (80/(24/8)) ~= 27 map units wide to let him pass with 100% chance to succeed. His speed is 16 map units per one move, so if your stairs are 8 units high, they only need to be ((80-16)/(24/8)) ~= 22 map units wide to let him pass with non-zero chance to succeed.

Spider Mastermind's diameter is 256 map units, so if your stairs are 8 units high, they only need to be (256/(24/8)) ~= 86 map units wide to let her pass with 100% chance to succeed. Her speed is 12 map units per one move, so if your stairs are 8 units high, they only need to be ((256-12)/(24/8)) ~= 82 map units wide to let her pass with non-zero chance to succeed.

 

The above formulas can be applied to any monster type and any stair height (not just 8) to find out the required stair width so that the monster will pass the stairs. Note that the result of every division should always be rounded up, including the (24 / stair height) division - this is what makes 16 unit high stairs inefficient, as the result of (24/16) rounded up is the same as for example (24/12) or (24/20). Generally, the only efficient stair heights are numbers that divide 24 without a remainder, those are 24, 12, 8, 6, 4 and below.

Bloody awesome to know. @YukiRaven remember when both of us had issues with monsters using stairs around a similar time? If only we knew, right? ;-)

[Remilia Scarlet]

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Bloody awesome to know. @YukiRaven remember when both of us had issues with monsters using stairs around a similar time? If only we knew, right? ;-)

haha, I was thinking the same thing.  I guess I should have just made a post about it.  Maybe I'll use this information to fix that problem area in map 02 of SoTNR in the (eventual) v1.1 release.  Or not, 'cause that spectre can sometimes open the door, which leads to a larger fight.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 hour ago, Chezza said:

Wait am I just whining about Slaughtermaps? But I suppose even megawads like Valiant get tiring.

Just to make sure I get this right: Are you saying Valiant is a slaughterwad? Because if you are, you would be horribly wrong, since Valiant contains only one actual slaughtermap (slot 31) which is so easy that even a toddler could beat it after a few attempts.

[leodoom85]

Afaik, Valiant is not a slaughter megawad.....just have fairly hard maps, that's all...

[Jayextee]

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Are you saying Valiant is a slaughterwad? Because if you are, you would be horribly wrong, since Valiant contains only one actual slaughtermap (slot 31)

 

This. So hard. Same when I hear comments on the BTSX series being slaughter. Secret maps aside (and, um, I don't they are either right?) nope. Not even Tough Skin River. Not even Steeple of Knives. Not slaughter.

[leodoom85]

2 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

 

This. So hard. Same when I hear comments on the BTSX series being slaughter. Secret maps aside (and, um, I don't they are either right?) nope. Not even Tough Skin River. Not even Steeple of Knives. Not slaughter.

I'm playing that one now and some maps are quite hard (still need to discover the secret levels yet) but not classifying as slaughter too.... 

[Chezza]

9 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Just to make sure I get this right: Are you saying Valiant is a slaughterwad? Because if you are, you would be horribly wrong, since Valiant contains only one actual slaughtermap (slot 31) which is so easy that even a toddler could beat it after a few attempts.

Nope I know Valiant only has 1 slaughtermap. My primary point is the constant intensity of many Megawads for majority of the maps. Be it high monster counts or small lethal encounters.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Ah, okay. I figured I'd just ask, because it wouldn't have been the first time someone confused Valiant with a slaughterwad, just because there's the occasional pack of imps or so. ;-)

[boris]

9 hours ago, Memfis said:

Would be nice to have a warning system about this stuff in level editors.

Although it's probably very rare, having teleport destinations and keys not show up on certain difficulties can be perfectly valid. For example you might have a situation where two demons come running at the player. On UV you want the first demon to cross a certain line to teleport behind the player, but not on other difficulties. So you set the teleport destination to only be there on UV. Same with keys, you might want keys to be easier to get on lower difficulties.

 

So you can't really make everyone happy. With GZDB's search feature it's pretty easy to check manually, though.

[Optimus]

Almost forgot more..

 

4) Water that burns

5) When there are key colored bars, where pushing at one opens them separately instead all at once.

[leodoom85]

Oh.....I forgot to mention two words.

Death exits.

[galileo31dos01]

I'm also not a fan of maps that have surprise death traps in between placed throughout the map in unconventional spots, like not following the same pace, but forcing you to never know which weapon you should be carrying. And I mean when these traps are not predictable in any way, unless you're carrying the BFG, you'll die in one millisecond, next trap it's just 4 imps, and the next random trap is 3 instapop archviles and a spectre behind you, for example.

[everennui]

Nothing in particular annoys me. If I don't like it, I don't play it. It's a feel thing for me. Anything can be executed well, so I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about map choices.

 

@Optimus said, "5) When there are key colored bars, where pushing at one opens them separately instead all at once."

Yeah. I never got that. I always thought it was kind of funny. Now I find it kind of endearing.

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, everennui said:

Nothing in particular annoys me. If I don't like it, I don't play it. It's a feel thing for me. Anything can be executed well, so I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about map choices.

That is probably the most sensible thing said in this thread thus far. I like it!

[leodoom85]

20 minutes ago, everennui said:

Nothing in particular annoys me. If I don't like it, I don't play it. It's a feel thing for me. Anything can be executed well, so I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about map choices.

Sir, you win this topic.

[Chezza]

1 hour ago, everennui said:

Nothing in particular annoys me. If I don't like it, I don't play it. It's a feel thing for me. Anything can be executed well, so I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about map choices.

 

Well fair enough but to me you're basically saying you do get annoyed by some map designs and won't play them but won't provide us an example.

 

You're right though, anything can work - as long as it works

[everennui]

3 hours ago, Optimus said:

^^Can't get rid of this.
 

I can't really think of any examples. Some things that I might not like one day, might be enjoyable another day. I wanna say that I probably wouldn't be very keen on a maze with Archviles and only a pistol, but I can think of a way that would be fun. Sometimes I wanna beat something that's seemingly impossible.

I guess one thing that annoys me is when a map is waaaay too easy. ...but not everyone has the same skills as me, so I can't really hold it against them.

[geo]

Forgetting armor. Its fine if there's plenty of health, but with a lot of levels there's not.

[Empyre]

In addition to a lot of things already mentioned, I am annoyed by inconsistency in which liquids hurt you, sometimes even within the same map.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Boiling water in the middle of a frozen map? Nothing strange there is a volcano below it! 

[Da Werecat]

14 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

Keys in the goddamn secrets.

Are great.

 

11 hours ago, leodoom85 said:

Death exits.

Maybe ones that blow your eardrums. Scientists of the Doom community long since discovered ways to do it silently, but you can still encounter them from time to time. Kinda like sound tunnels, except they violate your soul instead of simply being quaint.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Even better, Split your wad into episodes if the player is gonna lose their gear every 5-7 maps.

[Era Di Cate]

Deliberately cutting down ammo for weapons to force the player to only use the SSG or plasma rifle or whatever. Yeah, it might be justified as "challenge" and "difficulty", but to me that is just a excuse for the creator to use his fav weapon he knows the best so that he doesn't need to playtest with every other weapon. Also, bias.

 

Also R^aPⁱD^lY F^lA^sHⁱN^{g r}O⁰M^s! Nothing spells seizure simulator better than rapidly switching from 0 to 255 in matter of miliseconds.

 

Also "When in doubt, drop a Archvile" mentality.

[Aldaraia]

Doors requiring keys that are totally absent of any visual indicator showing their necessity. A minor nuisance, but I find it easier to forget about them when I do obtain the right key, which is a pain in large levels. 

 

Hunting to find what a switch exactly did can be tedious. Usually it's me overlooking something in the vicinity, but otherwise I usually don't conclude right off the bat that this button here in a basement would've raised a bridge somewhere completely out of the way. 

[leodoom85]

Good morning.

Anyone here remember the way to open the secret door (that red skull door leading to map 31) in map15 of Community Chest 3 eh?

That one is evil :D

[axdoomer]

When they make maps that don't work with vanilla Doom.  :(

[Gez]

• Maps that are better than what I could make. It's discouraging. 
• Maps that are worse than what I could make. What's the point? 
• Maps that are exactly like how I'd make them. It's like the author is mocking me. 

[Doohnibor]

On 5.8.2017 at 0:52 PM, Voros said:

>player enters room full of demons
>player kills them all
>player leaves room
>player triggers a linedef
>Archvile spawns in the room
>player is fucked.

That is one of the many things I dislike about maps.

HA, I actually sometimes like that! ; )   depending how it's used of course.

ESPECIALLY if there is a quite long delay....    when for example that room full of demons is halfway across the map when you trigger the linedef....    minutes later you return and the Archvile had enough time to resurrect a whole army ; )     

It's one of the things that make DOOM so great IMO ; )