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SOSU

Level design tropes you dislike

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13 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

unmarked voodoo doll telefragged traps

Something I had to remember for my saveless Epic 2 playthrough. Map 14 is quite lengthy and then has a 4-switch puzzle that instagibs you if you get it wrong.

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Dark maps really annoy me. I don't even like most of the well-executed ones, this is to say nothing about the generic "cockslap spectres in a sewer" maps. I vastly prefer being able to judge what's ahead of me than any kind of challenge having low visibility could add to the experience. One of the things holding me back from liking some of the Doom 2 maps.

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2 hours ago, rdwpa said:

Saving also makes casual play (of most maps) a lot less fun and exciting for many people. 

 

So the choice of being required to use saves at the outset, or risk losing all saveless progress in a legitimately unfair scenario (e.g. unmarked voodoo doll telefragged traps), will make playing such long maps at all a lot less appealing -- at that point, there's no way to really enjoy it casually. Saves = zzz. Saveless = maybe argh. Speaking in general, not elaborating on Litrivin's point.

 

Save in sections then, so you only replay part of the level instead of all of it? Maybe save before grabbing each key or after you kill the, in modern pwads, inevitable teleport party that shows up when you grab it.

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Would prefer not to do even that because only a pretty small % of long easy or moderate difficulty levels have those random lethality spikes, and I'd be trading a significant amount of tension/fun with all the others to make that small % more palatable.

 

 

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That's true to a degree, but in favor of time some medium-to-longer levels, even reasonably balanced and not "hard" ones, are casually more fun with saves, assuming the player exercises their willpower enough to strictly stick to a restriction, such as once every 20 minutes, or 5/10 for that matter on a tough map, decided at least before the first save and stuck to, but once it devolves into save scummimg it's a loss in my book.

 

However, that doesn't account for the question of whether-or-not the start before that first save was a good start. As an example, in suitepee's stream of my jom4 map he saved after both awakening all the monsters up top above the starting point and jumping down back to the start, which made his every load tougher and more tedious (less fun for him, the player) to "clean up," because mosh pit up top and I'll admit the water path might have been a bit too tight and unconventional for the average player. So long story short: saves made his experience worse even though he only saved a minute into the map. Sometimes it's best to just restart a map and it's important for players to always have that as a possibility in-mind; same goes very much so for lowering the difficulty from UV-or-Bust to Reasonable. With that said, I'll accept that a save 20 minutes, or even an hour, into a large map might make the experience worse for the player, but time is also a factor in fun as a concept, and repeating things is far less fun to do when players think of time, so in the end it's relative to the player and their situation to decide, but let's just all agree that save-scummers should be looked down upon from soap boxes on high ;p

 

Perhaps it'd be a nice thing to include on a text file if saves should be used with caution or whatever for future maps. 

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What bothers me is lack of consistency. After recently played through Plutonia and noticed on some levels green goo floors will damage me while on other levels I wasn't damaged by the same looking floor. I understand that consistency can be a bit tougher to pursue on wads that were made by multiple people, however I believe that a certain amount of consistency should be pursued. 

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On 11/29/2017 at 6:03 PM, Nine Inch Heels said:

I would like to know what that is, because either stuff is difficult or it isn't.

do this count...

 

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My least favorite is picking up the RL, only to find loads of doors opening and the player being rushed by demons etc and forcing you to switch weapons quickly, so you don't have to fight a close combat battle with the RL.

 

And I fucking hate archviles, people tend to put them in really annoying places so they are hard to hit as well.  

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This thread gave me an idea -- make a map that's a maze of invisible walkover linedefs that trigger voodoo doll telefrags.  Then add insta-pop close-range arch-viles where the player only has a rocket launcher.

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Uncreative lock-in encounters leave me yawning and either cheating or savescumming past something I don't find enjoyable.  It comes off as an arbitrary obstacle in a video game with no imagination.  (whereas I'm more interested in playing something with some degree of creativity and presentation)

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^The WORST case of that was actually in TNT MAP22, twice, and is the main reason I actually hate that map (I liked the tunnel system).

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On 11/29/2017 at 2:22 PM, 40oz said:

Having played tons of Doom wads and having been a part of this forum for many years, ive realized these types "don't do this" threads have become moot. Here's why:

 

There has certainly been threads like this in the past before many of our best wads existed. People would come to the thread in a fit of rage talking about how people don't know how make good maps. They would say things like "there needs to be a sense of progression! I shouldn't be fighting a goddamn cybie in the start room!!" Then Ancient Aliens comes and cockslaps that rule by putting a Cyberdemon in the first map and it becomes everyones favorite megawad last year.

 

The best kinds of Doom maps are made by people who are completely out of their own way. Their mapping is completely uninhibited by the anxieties associated with both being the best mapper and making a miserable pile of crap. At the same time, they are grounded in passion and devoid of disinterest in the practice. When I'm playing a doom map made by someone who fucking loves Doom the way I do, I can feel it. They wanted the maps they needed to play Doom in the way they love playing Doom. When that's the objective, the design process just flows naturally out of them so they can achieve what they want out of it. Theyre not hindered by any sort of mental barriers. They move in the path of what feels right.

 

I understand this isn't a particularly useful post for what the thread title is requesting, but being conscious of map design do's and don't's has stalled my mapping output in a way that's proven very difficult to get going again. Its a lot of work to get back in that kind of groove and free yourself from any sort of expectations. I've always envied the mappers who have never got in the position that I'm in, and taking these threads with anything but a grain a salt is a laundry chute that takes you there.

I love this post! I've summarized as a meme in case it is too long for some to read.

 

Doom.jpg.05414c787ff5ed00e07bf4480fb76684.jpg

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- The ubiquity of 32-wide switches. A lot of modern arcadey mapsets favor these, but they are detrimental to fast-paced action, because they can be annoying to press while running past at full speed or while jostling around in a room cluttered with monsters or projectiles trying to release the next wave of monsters, i.e. gameplay that is actually "fast-paced".

 

On 12/2/2017 at 1:09 AM, Fonze said:

That's true to a degree, but in favor of time some medium-to-longer levels, even reasonably balanced and not "hard" ones, are casually more fun with saves, assuming the player exercises their willpower enough to strictly stick to a restriction, such as once every 20 minutes, or 5/10 for that matter on a tough map, decided at least before the first save and stuck to, but once it devolves into save scummimg it's a loss in my book.

Was speaking for myself and those similarly inclined -- I'd much rather just one-shot those long ones. Ime, saving even every 20 mins undercuts a ton of tension. It's sometimes a necessity for ultra-long levels in stuff like FDAs, but I'd personally prefer a "leave and come back another day" approach upon a late death

 

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15 hours ago, owl said:

I love this post! I've summarized as a meme in case it is too long for some to read.

 

Doom.jpg.05414c787ff5ed00e07bf4480fb76684.jpg

What's the big deal with a cyberdemon in the first room? 

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2 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

What's the big deal with a cyberdemon in the first room? 

For real, if its balanced for the player, whats the issue? Why

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To be honest, any of these tropes can work well if there is balance. My trope on Barons used too much? Yea, I dislike it, but if balanced out so that maybe they'll end up infighting, or I'm granted a nice o'l strong weapon to face them off, then I feel that is justified 100%

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One thing I dislike is when switches start in the activated texture and change to the deactivated texture when you use them. I have a terrible memory and it just makes it hard to tell which switches I've already used.

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ROFL ok, that's the first pic I've seen that rivals even the famous "visplane crashes god laughs" pic. Excellent stuff

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51 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

ROFL ok, that's the first pic I've seen that rivals even the famous "visplane crashes god laughs" pic. Excellent stuff

Do you have this, or a link to it?  I've never seen it.

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Level(s) that claim to be co-op friendly and then proceed to lock you and your friend out of an area you die in that seals you inside and there's no way to get back in therefore rendering the level impossible to complete.

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13 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

Level(s) that claim to be co-op friendly and then proceed to lock you and your friend out of an area you die in that seals you inside and there's no way to get back in therefore rendering the level impossible to complete.

Ugh that happened to me once :(

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2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

ROFL ok, that's the first pic I've seen that rivals even the famous "visplane crashes god laughs" pic. Excellent stuff

Never saw that.Can you post it here? :)

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