Why do so many people dislike Doom II?

Buckshot said:

DOOM, and everything leading upto it's release, and even thereafter, was a "once in a millennia" cultural phenomena. It was everything that everyone wanted it to be, and so much more. I think even the folks who thought they knew what id was going to release still had a dropped jaw upon launch day. It just changed everything so much, and it came at the perfect point time, a collaboration and effort of the perfect group of people. It was just perfection, plain and simple, that went above and beyond anyone's expectations.

Well said. Awesome summary. I agree the first Doom game felt the most inspired. Doom II and Final Doom are still great of course, but nothing will ever match the magic of the original. That is subjective I know, and those who played Doom II first might actually feel the opposite.

Doom II as in the wad? or the whole game it'self? The wad was kinda meh to me, mapping and encounters were more fun in doom 1, I'm not incredibly fond of sandy or American's maps. other then that people who are younger and don't have an appreciation for 2.5D. Doom II is amazing for the modding community.

Doom II as a game is great, Doom II as an IWAD is just OK. Doom as a game is good if superseded by Doom II's additions, Doom as an IWAD however is mostly excellent.

Face23785 said:

E3M8 is one of my least favorite levels as well, and definitely my least favorite episode finale. The Knee Deep in the Dead novel I thought did an incredible job of making that boss battle sound exciting. Taking their description of it and turning it into a pwad might make a cool map from any reasonably competent mapper.

Doesn't help that the boss itself is underwhelming. At least, with the Cyberdemon, there's a threat because its rockets can kill you incredibly fast. With the Spider Mastermind, it's a cakewalk if you have a BFG and saved up 40-80 cells. Don't even really have to dodge, it won't kill you fast enough for you to tear through it if you're healthy and have armor.

MetroidJunkie said:

With the Spider Mastermind, it's a cakewalk if you have a BFG and saved up 40-80 cells. Don't even really have to dodge, it won't kill you fast enough for you to tear through it if you're healthy and have armor.

I dunno. When I started E3M8 (on UV) I had about 80 health, plenty of megaarmor and enough cells for Bfg, but the fight still was difficult. It took me more than 5 attempts to kill it, and on my previous attempts, after I managed to hit it with bfg once, it still managed shred me in about half a second, before I could hit it again. And if you start this map with say 25 health.. good luck. Also good luck if you pistol start.

Upd: it's just that if you don't save enough health in E3M7, then you'll have problems in E3M8, and it's kinda hard to save health in E3M7 with all those damaging floors.

ChekaAgent said:

Upd: it's just that if you don't save enough health in E3M7, then you'll have problems in E3M8, and it's kinda hard to save health in E3M7 with all those damaging floors.

It's not overly hard if you have a good idea of where to go since they're a little generous with the radiation suits.

joe-ilya said:

I find ultimate doom to be less memorable, all levels look the same, all layouts are just mazes filled with random monsters and doors with health.
Doom 2 is more structured with concepts and architecture and memorable themes.

It's easier for me list all the doom2 levels and list their look than it is about ultimate doom.

I badly want to post that serious clap gif right now. Doom 1 has some fantastic maps, but there is a lot of "walking down the hall" going on through the whole campaign.

Also, someone was talking about Sandy's fashion sense earlier? How the hell is that even relevant?

Doomkid said:

Also, someone was talking about Sandy's fashion sense earlier? How the hell is that even relevant?

Because it pertains to his sense of esthetics or lack thereof?

Maybe your standards are just lower, but personally, I don't just want my levels to play nice, I want them to look and feel nice too. There really are some jarring texture and architecture choices in Sandy's maps. I'm not talking about the hell/tech juxtaposition here, because I'm okay with that, but things like rooms that are taller than the open sky courtyard next to it (E2M7), FWATER as a ceiling texture, SW1DIRT on a BROWNGRN wall, generally using a coloring book of all kinds of mismatching textures without proper transitions.

janvknn said:

3. Some new enemies are annoying

Case #1: Pain elementals. Does anyone even like them? I wonder what the thought process was when they created it. So we have the Lost Soul, easily the most annoying Doom I enemy, let's create a big blob that's hard to kill that spawns an infinite number of them?

Case #2: Chaingunners. They are just unfair. They deliver way too much damage for a hitscan enemy and are too hard to kill. A single shotgun blast, even perfectly placed at close range doesn't reliably kill them, so again, you have to resort to the SSG.

And then you have those incredibly annoying chaingunner traps where a closet opens up behind you and before you even have time to react, chaingunners start to tear you apart. I guess id thought we weren't using the savegame function enough.

Equally annoying is the "chaingunner on a far away ledge picking you apart" trick (I'm looking at you, MAP15). Bleh!

If you're a level designer and you use one of those tricks, rest assured that I'm not going to reload a savegame. I'm going to quit, delete your wad and then overwrite the disk sector where it was ten times with a random combination of zeroes and ones.

Case #3: Arachnotrons. Their continuous plasma stream moves too quick to dodge and is too punishing. I think the issue here is that with regards to threat they are too "binary". They are either completely unfair, or, if you can dodge behind cover, no threat at all.

I think that an enemy should be threatening, but taking some damage doesn't have to be the end of the world, requiring a load from savegame. If you get hit by a baron, it hurts, but it doesn't grind you up like the arachnotron. You can take it like a man and soldier on.

Case #4: The Mancubus. This enemy just doesn't work for me. It's ugly, slow, and once you learn to do the little Mancubus dance, you can easily dodge their fireballs. Hell, you can even stun it with a chaingun.

That leaves the Revenant, which I do like gameplay wise, but it's a bit of an ugly tall mf. The Archvile is a pretty neat trick too, if used correctly (and sparingly!). It's very threatening, but it's not completely unfair. The Hell Knight works too, but again, too easy to kill with the SSG.

tl;dr I think the overall lesson here is that taking a good thing and cranking it up to 11 doesn't always produce a better result.

I know this has already been hit, but I can't resist.

1. Lost souls annoying as in what? You have to kill them, and your ego gets hurt when you are damaged by some other monsters already and a lowly lost soul kills you? When they designed the PE, they were probably thinking how much it would annoy easily annoyed people like you.

2. Hard to kill? Didn't you just get done complaining about how overpowered the SSG is? Make up your mind, do you want the game to be easy or hard? Maybe they added the SSG because they knew people would whine about how much unfair some of the new monsters were.

3. Actually I've been able to dodge from one side of the plasma stream to the other without taking a hit, although that is pretty tricky. But even a novice can make that move and only take one or two hits. What's so "end of the world" about that? It does 5-40 damage per hit. Your Baron example, 8-64 damage for ranged attack and 10-80 damage for melee.

4. Mancubus can be very threatening in groups, because dodging all of their attacks can require pretty crazy movements and could end up being near impossible depending on the angles and the terrain. But I know, I know, a single one is too easy and a group is too hard.

Just turn the difficulty down and use the regular shotgun if it's too much for you. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't really consider himself to be that good of a player.

Face23785 said:

1. Lost souls annoying as in what?

As in they're just not fun to fight.

Face23785 said:

2. Hard to kill? Didn't you just get done complaining about how overpowered the SSG is? Make up your mind, do you want the game to be easy or hard? Maybe they added the SSG because they knew people would whine about how much unfair some of the new monsters were.

Hard to kill with anything but the SSG. Comprehensive reading is not your forte, is it?

Face23785 said:

What's so "end of the world" about that? It does 5-40 damage per hit. Your Baron example, 8-64 damage for ranged attack and 10-80 damage for melee.

The frequency of plasma bullets is much higher than Baron fireballs, so you're likely to get hit by 2-3-4 bullets at a time.

Face23785 said:

Just turn the difficulty down and use the regular shotgun if it's too much for you. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't really consider himself to be that good of a player.

If you got your head out of your ass, you'd realize I'm not talking about difficulty but about balance. They are related, but different things.

janvknn said:

Because it pertains to his sense of esthetics or lack thereof?

I don't think someone's fashion sense would have a direct influence on the level of detail they put into their maps. Maybe I'm not reading into the fine details enough.

Anyway, if my standards being "so low" means I get to enjoy maps where entertaining encounters were clearly the focus above uptight levels of texture consistency, then so be it. You'll notice I never said I dislike detailed maps, I simply find the combat scenarios and environments to explore more interesting and memorable in D2 than in D1. If you think shotgunning barons in 128 unit halls is more entertaining, so be it.

Doomkid said:

I don't think someone's fashion sense would have a direct influence on the level of detail they put into their maps. Maybe I'm not reading into the fine details enough.

It's not so much about level of detail, but attention to detail and caring about esthetics. I don't think it's a big stretch to think that someone who thinks it's perfectly ok to wear white socks and sandals would also think that it's perfectly ok to put a startan texture right next to a skin texture on the same wall.

I personally do care about such things. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing sandals, and I would be embarassed to release a level as badly textured as some of Sandy's.

Doomkid said:

I simply find the combat scenarios and environments to explore more interesting and memorable in D2 than in D1. If you think shotgunning barons in 128 unit halls is more entertaining, so be it.

Actually, you're more or less illustrating one of my other arguments.

In D2 it feels more like you are battling the game dynamics than that you are a space marine on a lost moon base.

For me this is important, for you, apparently less so.

Oh, as for those baron fights: you realize that you have a plasma gun and rocket launcher too, right? ;)

janvknn said:

As in they're just not fun to fight.


Hard to kill with anything but the SSG. Comprehensive reading is not your forte, is it?

The frequency of plasma bullets is much higher than Baron fireballs, so you're likely to get hit by 2-3-4 bullets at a time.

If you got your head out of your ass, you'd realize I'm not talking about difficulty but about balance. They are related, but different things.

Hard to kill as in it might take you 2 shots with the SG? Or you might have to hold down fire on the chaingun or plasma gun for a whole second? Comprehensive gaming must not be your forte.

And as I said, you can actually cross through the arachnatron's plasma stream without taking a hit, or taking 1-2 hits at most. The only way you're going to take a stream like you're talking is if you try to run down a narrow hallway at one, or you just suck. So maybe you should take your own advice about head placement, look up what strafe is, and take your ball and go home. You can try to sound all nuanced, but you're complaining that monsters that are easily dealt with are hard.

ChekaAgent said:

Also good luck if you pistol start [E3M8].

Funny you mention that, I just did this yesterday. It was harder than I remember, but I was still able to pull it off on the first try. There's a baron and a cacodemon that can be used as distractions, and there's cover in the center of the level. It can be done without too much difficulty.

Yeah I must suck, that's the only possible explanation. It's impossible to accept that I just have different preferences than you.

Doom II has the bigger and more ambitious level design with increased monster/weapon variety while Doom I has better texturing, level theming and music. It also has the episode system and detailed "stats" screen showing your progression through each base (the map.)

Take your pick, and defend it for over four pages of text. Then defend it for the rest of your life :)

If your "preference" was that you think the chaingunner is ugly and clashes with the look of the other monsters, ok I don't agree but to each their own, but when you say it's too hard to kill with anything but the SSG and say the arachnatron's attack is too quick to dodge, sorry I'm gonna call bullshit on those.

Face23785 said:

Funny you mention that, I just did this yesterday. It was harder than I remember, but I was still able to pull it off on the first try. There's a baron and a cacodemon that can be used as distractions, and there's cover in the center of the level. It can be done without too much difficulty.

That's a good point, the building in the center makes the perfect cover point and it's not hard to weave in and out when it starts firing. Even with just the Plasma Rifle they give you in that very level, it's very doable.

Face23785 said:

If your "preference" was that you think the chaingunner is ugly and clashes with the look of the other monsters, ok I don't agree but to each their own, but when you say it's too hard to kill with anything but the SSG and say the arachnatron's attack is too quick to dodge, sorry I'm gonna call bullshit on those.

Besides, the Arachnatron seems pretty easy to get into a pained state and I don't get why it has to qualify with "without the SSG", considering how easy it is to find that gun all throughout the game, starting on the second level, long before you actually fight any Arachnatrons. Does he just dislike using the gun because it's Doom II exclusive? Honestly, it's my favorite gun in either game due to how powerful it is and the abundance of shells.

... Aaand now any respect I had for jan for his maps is gone; yay! Well bub, you might as well get to shitting out those "objectively better than Sandy maps" cause my breath is bated in anticipation.

Btw, I find the regular shotty to work wonders in dealing with the OP arachnotron's. Watch in utter dismay as their OP stream is interrupted 90% of the time. Like lets all forget about pain chances and how they work. But I don't want to shoot em, they look so nice. Why cant we all just be friends?

As a side note, is it ironic that despite never seeing a picture of Sandy he looks exactly as I thought he would? Maybe my imagination is just blurry >.<

janvknn said:

Yeah I must suck, that's the only possible explanation.

That's what it sounds like to me, but it's ok, it's just a video game.

Ultimate Doom > Doom II

Better maps, and use of textures. I prefer the episodic division of the levels over Doom II's 32-level straight run-through. Also fighting the Spider Mastermind at the end of E3M8, is more of a cathartic game play experience, than killing the Icon of Sin/Romero Head.

Ultimate Doom has a better soundtrack too.

Fonze said:

... Aaand now any respect I had for jan for his maps is gone; yay! Well bub, you might as well get to shitting out those "objectively better than Sandy maps" cause my breath is bated in anticipation.

Wait what, are we feeling butthurt because I dislike something that you like? Sorry for having an opinion I guess, it's not like the topic starter asked for that or anything right?

Also, I don't map to gain your or anyone else's respect. I map because I enjoy the creative process of building my own little world. Hopefully some other people can enjoy the fruits of that process too, but that's up to them.

I have no interest at all in building pure Sandy style maps, because I'd have to emulate all the flaws too (like godawful texturing) and they would not get through my quality filter. I could find these examples in all of 2 minutes of walking through E2M6 and E2M7, and I wish I could say they were an exception, but they're not. They're the norm for Sandy maps.

This doesn't mean that I dislike everything in Sandy's levels. Most of the time the gameplay and atmosphere are okay, and I even use Sandy-ish elements in my own maps. I also respect the time constraint he was under when making the Doom I maps. That said, as for my general opinion on his style, I refuse to call it out any other way than I see it and that is severely flawed. If that offends your fanboy sensibilities, that problem lies only with you, "bub".

Oh come now, don't mistake my sarcasm as being butthurt. What you said was ignorant and shows a lack of tact. Everyone and their mother could do something better than it was done before because hindsight is 20/20, is it not? But even taking that out of the equation, we do this as a hobby, not as a job; there is a different level of pressure we face 22 years later. We also do not have to deal with deadlines like Id did; you (general, not you specifically) wanna spend 3 years making a map when you already have 10 years playing/mapping for that engine/game? That's okay, but Id didn't have that luxury.

Don't get me wrong here, I enjoy playing maps from you, but if you open your mouth and ignorance flows peoples' heads will turn and they might look at you funny.

I don't hold Sandy's maps above any other maps; they're all Doom and Doom 2 to me.

I dont expect you to map for anyone else. Map for yourself; it's your hobby. Do what makes you happy. My opinion means nothing so don't get all defensive when I say I think you're full of shit ;D

Fonze said:

Oh come now, don't mistake my sarcasm as being butthurt.

You know that thing about sarcasm over the internet?

Fonze said:

we do this as a hobby, not as a job; there is a different level of pressure we face 22 years later. We also do not have to deal with deadlines like Id did; you (general, not you specifically) wanna spend 3 years making a map when you already have 10 years playing/mapping for that engine/game? That's okay, but Id didn't have that luxury.

Fair point, but counterpoint: there is enough content in both iwads that is well above Sandy's quality (Romero's E1 is an obvious example), so it is possible. OP was asking what people disliked in Doom II, and Sandy's solo levels are a big factor in that for me, so I singled that out. I may not have pointed it out in the most PC way, but well, I generally don't do PC.

janvknn said:

You know that thing about sarcasm over the internet?

Good point

Fair point, but counterpoint: there is enough content in both iwads that is well above Sandy's quality (Romero's E1 is an obvious example), so it is possible. OP was asking what people disliked in Doom II, and Sandy's solo levels are a big factor in that for me, so I singled that out. I may not have pointed it out in the most PC way, but well, I generally don't do PC.

Hah, well me either for the most part. Fair enough counterpoint, though, but I guess that gets into the argument of abstract level designs and at this point it's simply different strokes. I don't know that I'd say that sandy's levels were of a lower quality, though.

janvknn said:

FWATER as a ceiling texture

I don't think this is bad texturing. Just to point out: Inferno was made to portray unreal scenarios, beyond any sort of human comprehension. With that in mind, I think it worked really well.

Utilizing the HOM effect along with an FWATER ceiling at the end of Bloodfalls was pretty neat. Unrelated, though, since Shawn Green designed that one.

Noiser said:

I don't think this is bad texturing. Just to point out: Inferno was made to portray unreal scenarios, beyond any sort of human comprehension. With that in mind, I think it worked really well.

How about NUKAGE as a ceiling texture in E1M8 then?

MetroidJunkie said:

Utilizing the HOM effect along with an FWATER ceiling at the end of Bloodfalls was pretty neat. Unrelated, though, since Shawn Green designed that one.

Can't believe I never noticed that...

Of course, it's MAP25, and I rarely get that deep into DOOM2.WAD because of aforementioned reasons.

janvknn said:

You know that thing about sarcasm over the internet?

loud clapping

Jon said:

The Factory. Chasm. Urgh. Although I love lots of his other work (Quake E4 for example)

I won't have a word said against The Factory, young Dowland. The silent, pixelated threat of arachnotrons from a distance? Great fun.

You can keep Chasm though.