Why are slaughter maps looked down upon?

[Zanieon]

The Slaughterwad type is really a overlooked type of wad, and probably after Plutonia "Go 2 It", many mappers generalized it as "throw everything the game have at once in the player to see how he reacts". I don't see it that way, despite we have many wads that does that and only that which ascended in fame like Coopbuild, Chillax and Drown In Blood, the fame of those wads ended by damaging the scene of slaughterwads, making people think those maps are more to play with cheats or overpowered gameplay mods like Russian Overkill than vanilla gameplay (Coopbuild itself was a perfect marriage for supergun2 and was so much hosted in ZDaemon servers as Complex Doom is in Zandronum now).

But in the other hand, there's Hell Revealed 2 that probably was the first of its kind that managed to make a great execution of this which later was followed by Sunder, Speed of Doom, Dark Tartarus, Invasion UAC, Zones of Fear, etc...

[nxGangrel]

On 9/19/2017 at 3:15 PM, Benjogami said:

Slaughtermaps are too hard.

They're not hard enough.

[Cynical]

I'm seriously curious as to what these "circlestrafe and hold down the BFG trigger" slaughtermaps you guys are playing are, since I've almost never seen that outside of a couple of early 2000s examples and a few Darkwave maps.  The "amphitheater of enemies rendered ineffective because Z-axis differential reduces their line of control to a point of control" is a far more pervasive design anti-pattern in the genre.

[42PercentHealth]

3 minutes ago, Zanieon said:

The Slaughterwad type is really a overlooked type of wad, and probably after Plutonia "Go 2 It", many mappers generalized it as "throw everything the game have at once in the player to see how he reacts". I don't see it that way, despite we have many wads that does that and only that which ascended in fame like Coopbuild, Chillax and Drown In Blood, the fame of those wads ended by damaging the scene of slaughterwads, making people think those maps are more to play with cheats or overpowered gameplay mods like Russian Overkill than vanilla gameplay (Coopbuild itself was a perfect marriage for supergun2 and was so much hosted in ZDaemon servers as Complex Doom is in Zandronum now).

But in the other hand, there's Hell Revealed 2 that probably was the first of its kind that managed to make a great execution of this which later was followed by Sunder, Speed of Doom, Dark Tartarus, Invasion UAC, Zones of Fear, etc...

I don't think it's an overlooked type, given the number of people here who enjoy them. They seem to have a small-but-devoted following.

 

Other than that, you are spot-on. The good ones tend to get lumped together with the better-known bad ones and cast aside.

[baja blast rd.]

7 minutes ago, nxGangGirl said:

They're not hard enough.

Could you give some recommendations of maps that are hard enough. 

[Ichor]

4 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Could you give some recommendations of maps that are hard enough. 

Try those same maps with this.

[nxGangrel]

3 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Could you give some recommendations of maps that are hard enough. 

Probably the most recent wad I've played that was difficult for me was Ancient Aliens for several of the later maps on UV. Especially because my game started slowing down. Some of the last maps of scythe 2 were a pain in the ass as well on UV. Can't think of many other examples.

[Cynical]

AA?  Scythe 2?  That's barely scratching the surface...

 

Go play Combat Shock 2, Plutonium Winds, and Stardate 20x7.  And, if you really want to be humbled, Skepland.

[geo]

4 hours ago, Flareblood_V2 said:

Wow I just discovered a surprisingly good song thanks to you. Thanks!

Don't thank me... thank Doomworld and its fine crew!

[Shadow Hog]

I respect what they're going for, but I'm not really one for difficult maps all that often, and slaughtermaps frequently hew that direction. I'm certainly fine with them existing for the people whose niche it fits, however!

 

I think my annoyance is more playing a mapset full of relatively normal maps and then getting thrown into a slaughter-ish map - it's a rather huge difficulty spike when that happens. That's usually more common in community mapsets that didn't fine-tune the difficulty curve to build up to that sort of intensity, really.

 

Then again, I remember suggesting Ancient Aliens was a slaughter mapset around when that came out, and understandably getting flak for that suggestion when the average monster count is closer to your average not-"Go 2 It" Plutonia level (a couple hundred) than actual slaughtermaps (several hundred, frequently thousands). It just made intelligent use of what monsters were used where and when, achieving an intense level of crossfire and area-denial at any given moment despite its low monster count - something there doesn't really seem to be a term for in the community, or at least, none that I know of. Slaughtermaps inherently have that same crossfire/area-denial situation by virtue of having so many monsters at once on all sides of the player, but again, AA was nowhere near that level of monsters at a given time, so...

[nxGangrel]

7 minutes ago, Cynical said:

AA?  Scythe 2?  That's barely scratching the surface...

 

Go play Combat Shock 2, Plutonium Winds, and Stardate 20x7.  And, if you really want to be humbled, Skepland.

I don't think I've heard of any of them

[Archi]

4 minutes ago, nxGangGirl said:

I don't think I've heard of any of them

What slaughter maps was you playing then if they are too easy for you?

[Chezza]

Simply put, slaughtermaps are an acquired taste. Some like the taste of rotten fish and some rotten fish taste better than others.

[Scotty]

Slaughtermaps are misrepresented because people who don't play them make incorrect generalisations about their gameplay and subsequently go around pushing these inaccuracies whenever the topic arises.

[anotak]

 

10 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

What's not acceptable is the insults from both sides -

 

so do you feel that people who insult others should apologize, or otherwise change their behavior?

[Quagsire]

Oh but when I criticize slaughtermaps for the same reason I get the attention of administrators?

[Cynical]

38 minutes ago, Shadow Hog said:

It just made intelligent use of what monsters were used where and when, achieving an intense level of crossfire and area-denial at any given moment despite its low monster count - something there doesn't really seem to be a term for in the community, or at least, none that I know of. Slaughtermaps inherently have that same crossfire/area-denial situation by virtue of having so many monsters at once on all sides of the player, but again, AA was nowhere near that level of monsters at a given time, so...

@Demon of the Well coined the term "Zone of Influence" to refer to these kinds of maps.

[MajorRawne]

1 hour ago, Cynical said:

I'm seriously curious as to what these "circlestrafe and hold down the BFG trigger" slaughtermaps you guys are playing are, since I've almost never seen that outside of a couple of early 2000s examples and a few Darkwave maps.  The "amphitheater of enemies rendered ineffective because Z-axis differential reduces their line of control to a point of control" is a far more pervasive design anti-pattern in the genre.

You never played any Slaughterfest maps? I would like to know any slaughtermaps that don't give you a BFG and near-unlimited plasma cells. That would be really interesting to see.

[Scotty]

6 minutes ago, MajorRawne said:

You never played any Slaughterfest maps? I would like to know any slaughtermaps that don't give you a BFG and near-unlimited plasma cells. That would be really interesting to see.

 

The first 6 maps of Sunder have no BFG.

[Rosh Fragger]

Cuz they're not everyone's cup of tea.

[Cynical]

8 minutes ago, Scotty said:

 

The first 6 maps of Sunder have no BFG.

Map 13 doesn't either IIRC.  Most of them don't give you the BFG until late in the map, at a big "climax point".

 

The "Ballroom" level from Stardate 20x7 also makes you work for the BFG IIRC (I haven't played it since the beta version, though, so I don't know if that changed).

 

New Gothic Movement 2 map 02 doesn't give you the BFG until about half-way through, and for most routes, rationing cells will be really important.

 

16 minutes ago, MajorRawne said:

You never played any Slaughterfest maps? I would like to know any slaughtermaps that don't give you a BFG and near-unlimited plasma cells. That would be really interesting to see.

Just giving the player a BFG doesn't mean that circle strafing will solve all of their "don't get burned to a crisp/ripped to shreds/blown up" problems.

[Breezeep]

1 hour ago, AbsorbedHatch said:

Oh but when I criticize slaughtermaps for the same reason I get the attention of administrators?

Look at your title, and you'll see why.

[MajorRawne]

Sunder is a total work of art. It seems like the spiritual successor to the Hell Revealed wads. I had a quick look on Youtube at slaughterwads and to be honest there are so many "run around with the BFG while getting monsters to infight" that it's pointless listing them. There are maps over an hour long where the only weapon used for at least 45 minutes is the BFG.

 

Has there ever been a map where you don't just run up to a Spider Mastermind and one-shot it with a BFG?

[Cynical]

8 minutes ago, MajorRawne said:

Sunder is a total work of art. It seems like the spiritual successor to the Hell Revealed wads. I had a quick look on Youtube at slaughterwads and to be honest there are so many "run around with the BFG while getting monsters to infight" that it's pointless listing them. There are maps over an hour long where the only weapon used for at least 45 minutes is the BFG.

 

Has there ever been a map where you don't just run up to a Spider Mastermind and one-shot it with a BFG?

Nearly all of them when played in the correct source ports?  One-shotting masterminds is a ZDoom-ism; it's very rare in more accurate ports because of blockmap black magic...

[Vorpal]

10 minutes ago, MajorRawne said:

Has there ever been a map where you don't just run up to a Spider Mastermind and one-shot it with a BFG?

 

The only really good implementation of the Mastermind that I've ever seen

[[McD] James]

Some of you are in need of a serious time out right now. Other people liking or disliking a niche map style shouldn't evoke such inimical responses. I'm disappointed.

[galileo31dos01]

35 minutes ago, Cynical said:

One-shotting masterminds is a ZDoom-ism; it's very rare in more accurate ports because of blockmap black magic...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one-shotting a cyber a rare possible ZDoom-ism? 

[Cipher]

I take it all back. Every style of Doom levels sucks:

 

Dungeon-crawler: Walk endlessly through boring hallways looking for switches until the map lets you win

 

Knockabout arcade: Memorize a bunch of chaingunner and Revenant locations through trial-and-error until you win

 

Slaughtermap: Circle-strafe and cause infighting until you win

 

Boring game.

[loveless]

4 minutes ago, Cipher said:

I take it all back. Every style of Doom levels sucks:

 

Dungeon-crawler: Walk endlessly through boring hallways looking for switches until the map lets you win

 

Knockabout arcade: Memorize a bunch of chaingunner and Revenant locations through trial-and-error until you win

 

Slaughtermap: Circle-strafe and cause infighting until you win

 

Boring game.

See why I like jrpg's?  Stories with depth, detailed worlds, and great music.  What do we get in Doom? A guy that looks left to right sometimes, badly tiled brick walls, and d_runnin.

[Cynical]

9 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one-shotting a cyber a rare possible ZDoom-ism? 

Yes, but that's for a different reason (RNG differences between ZDoom and Vanilla).