How do you feel about e3m8/e4m8/map30(doom2) now? If it was bad, how would you have made it?

[Cruduxy Pegg]

All the MM needed was more hp, faster attack start and less pain chance. Not getting killed in one second because it is balanced around having shit weapons and no ammo (and even then the baron is enough to distract it for enough time to get ammo or even solo it with stunlock).

[Deadwing]

Map 30 was trash, it is still trash.

 

About the SMM, my problem with her is that if you don't have cover nor BFG -> death, if you do -> super easy fight. If you have only a BFG, you can do the one shot thing lol. Or, as a mapper, you can try the mess up with the covers so the player needs to be aware when it's safe to hide or not. Still, raising her HP wouldn't do much, IMO. Actually it would be worse, because now you wouldn't be able to face-BFG her and she would melt you lol

 

The Cyberdemon, on other hand, is much more interesting because the way rockets behave in Doom: They move fairly slow and have huge splash damage, so the player needs to be aware of the surroudings to know if it's safe or not. He also is fairly small and moves fast enough, which makes it a more versatile monster. Cyberdemons also have high enough pain chance, so his 3 rockets move can turn into 5 or even more lol You can simply circle-strafe him, but good maps won't allow you to do that (easily). If the player has BFG, the trick is to be successful with the 2-shots, while rocket vs rocket is as fun because of splash damage (you can't stay too close to him, so you also will need to be careful when shooting). SS is more safe than rockets, and therefore less fun to deal with, IMO.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Deadwing

[galileo31dos01]

20 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Cyberdemons also have high enough pain chance, so his 3 rockets move can turn into 5 or even more lol

 

I think you mean that his attack reactions are fast, giving the player the feeling that he's shooting a single volley of 6 rockets sometimes, when in reality is two volleys with almost 0 seconds of wait in between them. Or, I misinterpreted the sentence :S  

 

[GeorgeCostanza94]

E3M8 was never really considered the climax for me, since I started out on Ultimate Doom. E4M8 was pretty cool to me back in the day. Fighting through hordes of monsters to get to the spidermastermind felt much more like a proper climax to me, and somewhat still is, but could still be better. Map 30 was always just garbage to me. A face in the wall that is conveniently in front of a random elevator, and your main disadvantage is the stupid fact that you can't aim your rocket launcher slightly downwards. Who in their right minds thought that was a good idea? They already made several other new monsters for the sequel, why not one for the final boss? Why did it have to be a wall texture?

[Nine Inch Heels]

19 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

 

I think you mean that his attack reactions are fast, giving the player the feeling that he's shooting a single volley of 6 rockets sometimes, when in reality is two volleys with almost 0 seconds of wait in between them. Or, I misinterpreted the sentence :S  

 

when the cybie shoots a volley and you interrupt with a pain chance, it is "extremely likely" that he'll launch a new volley right after. If you "chain" enough pain states on a single cybie it can almost behave as if it was on -fast.

[printz]

15 hours ago, Pure Hellspawn said:

The Icon Of Sin however, is still used as a boss exclusively, if at all.

Sadly that's because in vanilla Doom it's not safe to place demon spawners in levels other than MAP30, because they can only telefrag in MAP30. This means that it's very easy for newly spawned monsters to be stuck on top of old ones, disabling the game.

 

Despite my indifference towards original MAP30, I really like the Doom 2 final boss. Hearing it in an unexpected place is always scary because (even with the bug mentioned) it still spells doom. Also, custom MAP30 level challenges can be customized a lot.

[galileo31dos01]

52 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

when the cybie shoots a volley and you interrupt with a pain chance, it is "extremely likely" that he'll launch a new volley right after. If you "chain" enough pain states on a single cybie it can almost behave as if it was on -fast.

 

Yeah I know that, but I thought Deadwing was talking about those times were "favorable" RNG makes the cyberdemon shoot another volley immediately after the previous one, regardless of you attacking him or not, in which case it looks like he's on -fast. 

[baja blast rd.]

2 hours ago, Deadwing said:

About the SMM, my problem with her is that if you don't have cover nor BFG -> death, if you do -> super easy fight. If you have only a BFG, you can do the one shot thing lol. Or, as a mapper, you can try the mess up with the covers so the player needs to be aware when it's safe to hide or not. Still, raising her HP wouldn't do much, IMO. Actually it would be worse, because now you wouldn't be able to face-BFG her and she would melt you lol

 

One change that makes the MM better as a "normal enemy" is removing its splash immunity, a la Valiant. By default, only the BFG (or a telefrag or crusher) is a fast kill, and cleaning up a reasonably healthy mastermind with the SSG, RL, or PR is usually boring. That restricts the types of maps and situations a mastermind can be commonly used in. Without splash immunity, a full-health mastermind dies in 16-17 rockets on average (it's not 14 because of how the blockmap works), which is fast enough to avoid tedium, allowing for casual mastermind fights in maps with rocket launchers.  

[bonnie]

3 hours ago, Pyrolex said:

I probably would've put some medikits into the start of E3M8. I always have a less-than-ideal amount of health after struggling through E3M7 and there's almost no health pickups in E3M8.

That's because it's not designed to be played continuous. The original doom games were almost entirely designed around pistol starts, which is also partially why the BFG ruins e3m8.

[NaZa]

1 hour ago, printz said:

Sadly that's because in vanilla Doom it's not safe to place demon spawners in levels other than MAP30, because they can only telefrag in MAP30. This means that it's very easy for newly spawned monsters to be stuck on top of old ones, disabling the game.

 

Despite my indifference towards original MAP30, I really like the Doom 2 final boss. Hearing it in an unexpected place is always scary because (even with the bug mentioned) it still spells doom. Also, custom MAP30 level challenges can be customized a lot.

Back when I played Requiem on ITYTD (yeah, those were the times), I got really scared by the sudden Icon of Sin in a Casali map, I think it was MAP23? I really got scared and ran away... I don't think I've ever finished the WAD, I just never got past that map. Icons of Sin out of place and not used as a MAP30 boss can be quite a thing.

[_bruce_]

As already said - the MasterMind is a bit underwhelming. More health and slightly faster movement would have made it more threatening - has to be tested though.

 

E3M8...

should have had a bit more parts before the final arena like E1M8 had... I would have had the player fight and explore a bit then fall down a shaft only to have him plunged into the vast open space with the mastermind rising out of the floor + custom sound effects.

 

E4M8...

ok as I didn't expect much. Left a rather solid impression but nothing to write home about.

 

Map30...

should have been closer theme-wise to "TheLivingEnd".

The problem was that, at the time, computers were too slow to make the huge boss room concept a bit more interesting. I remember a friend of mine from back in the day complaining that Map30 would demolish his DX33... so having any more geometry displayed would have even disgruntled the DX2/66 owners which were sparse to begin with.

In concept good... interesting music, style, different way to kill the boss, new "enemy"(cubes + cheesy-funny Romero gimmick), custom sound- and death effect.

What would have been neat, and EASY to do for Carmack, would have been a kind of 2D effect running over the screen every time the boss got hit... maybe some warp effect based on the silhouette of the boss' face to make it stand out... as you hit it you unmask it. 

But, to be honest, back when I first saw it in '95 I was pretty freaked out and fascinated by it.

 

[Rocketman]

E3M8 was decent.

E4M8 never got around to.

MAP30 was pain, misery, stress, anxiety attacks, and rage fits.

[galileo31dos01]

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

One change that makes the MM better as a "normal enemy" is removing its splash immunity, a la Valiant. By default, only the BFG (or a telefrag or crusher) is a fast kill, and cleaning up a reasonably healthy mastermind with the SSG, RL, or PR is usually boring. That restricts the types of maps and situations a mastermind can be commonly used in. Without splash immunity, a full-health mastermind dies in 16-17 rockets on average (it's not 14 because of how the blockmap works), which is fast enough to avoid tedium, allowing for casual mastermind fights in maps with rocket launchers.  

 

But the lack of splash immunity is a severe disadvantage for that monster, you could trigger multiple states of pain, probably enough to prevent it ever retreating, and it'll die in seconds, worse if there are rocket-based enemies around her (a male cyberdemon always winning?, hell no!). A much better choice, in my personal opinion and experience, is simply reducing the radius to, say 82, and it can wander more freely, hardly ever get stuck, besides reducing pain chance. Even more, replace the hitscan for a super fast projectile like the snakes from Harmony, although I'd do that just to put more spiders together in a same room. Anyway, that's just me, we all have different perspectives of each monster, I guess what's tedium for others is attractive for me, and vice versa, Skillsaw made a fairly good job on balancing the spidey fights in Valiant, not to be "displeasing" from my POV.

[Deadwing]

5 hours ago, rdwpa said:

 

One change that makes the MM better as a "normal enemy" is removing its splash immunity, a la Valiant. By default, only the BFG (or a telefrag or crusher) is a fast kill, and cleaning up a reasonably healthy mastermind with the SSG, RL, or PR is usually boring. That restricts the types of maps and situations a mastermind can be commonly used in. Without splash immunity, a full-health mastermind dies in 16-17 rockets on average (it's not 14 because of how the blockmap works), which is fast enough to avoid tedium, allowing for casual mastermind fights in maps with rocket launchers.  

 

Oh, that's interesting. Well, the MM might lose a bit the boss role but that helps creating new and interestimg setups D:

[DharmaForOne]

The spider boss is too easy for a few reasons:

 

The relatively high pain chance means you can just spam it with plasma rifle and not have to worry much about getting hit. When I came back to Doom recently, this is the strategy I used and it made for a super underwhelming fight.

 

Another issue is the spider's chaingun weapon. It does tons of damage, but fans out and becomes less efficient at far range. That means the BFG is easy to win with at a distance.

 

Finally, because of these issues, it's a much weaker opponent than a cyberdemon, but has fewer hitpoints.

 

 

Changing all three of these would probably make the encounter too hard. So I would change just one. Reduce the interrupt chance; give it a plasma weapon like Arachnotron or reduce the spread of its shots, or give it 2x, 3x or even 4x the hitpoints it currently has. You want it to be an epic fight. Imagine emptying all the ammo in your inventory to take down a 12,000 hit point final boss.

[Doomkid]

My 2c:

 

E2M8 was excellent. Learning to circle strafe the cyberdemon was a fun and rewarding challenge, the music and map were just right. Quality stuff.

 

E3M8 was a letdown. I killed it in two BFG shots my first proper play through and was like damn, really? That's all? It managed to take my health a little but not at all enough to compete with the BFG. No one played from pistol start intentionally back then so it was all around a "meh" boss.

 

E4M8 is pretty lame to be honest. I accidentally beat it well before everything was dead my first proper attempt. Lame.

 

MAP30 finally changed stuff up, for the better Imo. Absolutely eerie music gave a sinister first impression. Seeing each and every gun handed to you right from the start was both badass and total worry (what could possibly require all this to beat?!). Teleport and a giant wall is yelling demonically at you. Total WTF moment - holy shit, how do I beat this? Wait, what the hell, monsters are spawning? Shit, shit!! The pressure was on. Finally piecing it all together and pumping rockets into that prick was so satisfying. Still a fun challenge to this day and a far more creative approach taken than just "really big imp with lots O hp". The map should have looked cooler, but that aside totally fun and rewarding.

[Nine Inch Heels]

10 hours ago, bonnie said:

That's because it's not designed to be played continuous. The original doom games were almost entirely designed around pistol starts, which is also partially why the BFG ruins e3m8.

To my understanding, the iWADs whave been designed with continuous play in mind. The reason they put weapons in every map was to make it such that it was possible to test the maps on a one-by-one basis as opposed to having to start a playthrough from scratch each time a new map was added to the WAD. That is also the reason these debates over continuous play vs pistol start have occurred several times over the years. If id didn't want to encourage continuous play for Doom, they wouldn't have made it such that weapons, health and ammo carry over from one map to another in the first place, and instead reset all these values in the same way they reset the keys players have obtained.

 

For the record, I am all for pistol starting all the maps in pWADs, unless the author states that continuous play is required, and I'm all for sticking to pistol starts when the author states that the maps have been designed to be played from pistol start, but those were not concerns that id had back as far as I am aware. Dying in a map and then starting over with just a pistol was meant to be a sort of "punishment" since the game provided both "infinite lives" as well as the option to save at any point in time.

[_bruce_]

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

My 2c:

 

E2M8 was excellent. Learning to circle strafe the cyberdemon was a fun and rewarding challenge, the music and map were just right. Quality stuff.

 

E3M8 was a letdown. I killed it in two BFG shots my first proper play through and was like damn, really? That's all? It managed to take my health a little but not at all enough to compete with the BFG. No one played from pistol start intentionally back then so it was all around a "meh" boss.

 

E4M8 is pretty lame to be honest. I accidentally beat it well before everything was dead my first proper attempt. Lame.

 

MAP30 finally changed stuff up, for the better Imo. Absolutely eerie music gave a sinister first impression. Seeing each and every gun handed to you right from the start was both badass and total worry (what could possibly require all this to beat?!). Teleport and a giant wall is yelling demonically at you. Total WTF moment - holy shit, how do I beat this? Wait, what the hell, monsters are spawning? Shit, shit!! The pressure was on. Finally piecing it all together and pumping rockets into that prick was so satisfying. Still a fun challenge to this day and a far more creative approach taken than just "really big imp with lots O hp". The map should have looked cooler, but that aside totally fun and rewarding.

 

 

Agree - the only sin with the Icon Of Sin was that there wasn't enough "foreplay" like in E1M8.

[Deleted_Account]

I would say that E4M8 feels like a proper map, it's just a letdown because you have to fight the Spider Mastermind again. They should added a new monster of some sort.

[SaladBadger]

with regards to the pistol starting in the iwad stuff, while it doesn't exactly change the past Sandy Petersen has mentioned in one interview that he regretted the decision to ship with continuous play after testing all the maps with pistol starting, and I can definitely agree with that. It would have been nice if they did anything to deal with the relatively annoying trait of continuous players being at a huge advantage and getting a much easier experience.

 

I do worry that if they tweaked the spider to deal better with the BFG it'd make an already niche monster even more niche, short of doing something like reducing or disabling tracer damage. the BFG honestly feels like an anomaly in Doom 1, its a extremely great weapon that I love but it just doesn't feel like Doom 1 throws anything at you that even warrants it ever. I'm wondering if they were designing it as a "panic button" or something

[Pure Hellspawn]

On 3/15/2018 at 5:38 AM, _bruce_ said:

 

 

Agree - the only sin with the Icon Of Sin was that there wasn't enough "foreplay" like in E1M8.

 

Or E4M8. But given the right defences, it can be a genuinely difficulty boss. 

[Misty]

I kinda dislike Doom II map30 these days, you just shoot wall in the right moment and angle with rockect launcher and level ends. That's it. Doom otherwise, has build up to their bosses. I still remember being scared of barons of hell at e1m8 and that black pit with damaging flat. Or spooky scary cyberdemon at e2m8, he looked so mean and challenging. E3m8 was kinda meh, so lazy compared with first two episode endings, just shoot until it dies. When I reached e4m8, I was thinking "what, another spider?!ok then" and ran to building and teased mastermind to death. Honestly, lots of things could be done better, but with player provided content these days I don't complain anymore. 

[Optimus]

I do like when final boss level have a little progression, like E1M8 and I also like E4M8 as a level and that it takes some action before meeting the boss. I think E2M8 and E3M8 are ok too because at least they have some strategic layout for hiding. I am thinking how in some modern games the boss levels are an afterthought like the last thing done (and maybe that's true for some of the Doom levels, they are too simplistic sectors). But I think for example, Doom 4 bosses. From what I remember you were fighting the Cybie or the Spider in a bland Circular area. E2M8 is more sophisticated as a boss arena than any of that.

 

Also, still not like Doom2 boss, that trying to synchronize your shorts, I'd prefer a real boss.