What is the worst monster placement you have ever seen in a WAD?

The Ultimate DooMer said:

It helps, but it's not the complete solution...as there might not be enough ammo in the map to kill everything. (plus you won't have any armour or extra health that you might bring in from the previous map)

What you're basically saying is that making pistol start in most maps of KDiZD impossible can be excused because even if some pistol start work were put in, the map might still difficult or impossible to fully complete because of even worse gameplay decisions.

I have personally never seen the big deal regarding pistol starts. Doesn't everybody just play the levels in a correct order anyways? I don't think I have ever even once played any of the original Doom and Doom 2 levels without playing them in the correct order.

Then either you A) Only use a ZDoom derivative (with the default autosave settings) B) Have never died in a doom map, or C) Never continue a map after you've died in it. Because except for (G)ZDoom, where autosave is enabled at the start of every map, if you die in a map you start again in that map with just your pistol.

hardcore_gamer said:
Doesn't everybody just play the levels in a correct order anyways?

Sometimes I do, but even then the pistol start is important because it allows one to continue playing from the level one has reached without relying on save games. The idea is that if you die, you may continue from that level but you lose all your acquired goodies and are pushed back to the beginning of the level. This is the natural and automatic behavior of the game, after all. Unless I'm just messing around, testing or practicing something, I use save games only to save a game for later and not to resume after I die. If I really "need" save games that much to play a WAD, I'm probably playing on the wrong difficulty setting or the even wrong WAD altogether, if it can be said I am really playing.

In DOOM each level can be loaded separately, as if it were by itself a little game within the game. The -warp function is an integral and well known feature of the game, so each level needs to be balanced in that sense or the game is partially broken. It is thus really important in speed running, which is kind of synonymous to "game play" in the end, as far as the game is concerned.

Since idclev is cheating pistol starts are never needed in any wad. Ever.

Levels that immediately have to facing numerous hitscanners and minimal or no cover from the level start (Especially if it's MAP01/E1M1)

Catoptromancy said:

Since idclev is cheating pistol starts are never needed in any wad. Ever.

What's your point exactly in linking to that thread?

TheMionicDonut said:

this.

Pretty much. He knew just how to place mobs to eff you over. Not cool.

hardcore_gamer said:

I have personally never seen the big deal regarding pistol starts.

I designed all my levels with pistol start in mind simply because it made testing maps easier.
There was never anything deep and meaningful behind it. The fact that some people prefer it that way was more of a bonus really.

myk said:

Sometimes I do, but even then the pistol start is important because it allows one to continue playing from the level one has reached without relying on save games. The idea is that if you die, you may continue from that level but you lose all your acquired goodies and are pushed back to the beginning of the level. This is the natural and automatic behavior of the game, after all. Unless I'm just messing around, testing or practicing something, I use save games only to save a game for later and not to resume after I die. If I really "need" save games that much to play a WAD, I'm probably playing on the wrong difficulty setting or the even wrong WAD altogether, if it can be said I am really playing.

In DOOM each level can be loaded separately, as if it were by itself a little game within the game. The -warp function is an integral and well known feature of the game, so each level needs to be balanced in that sense or the game is partially broken. It is thus really important in speed running, which is kind of synonymous to "game play" in the end, as far as the game is concerned.

While I respect your style of play, I don't really think its fair to expect the level designers to design each and every level to be playable from a pistol start because you are to lazy to save your game.

Yea, restarting each level with just a pistol is the game's default behavior but that doesn't mean Id expected people to play the game like that. In fact the manual literally suggests that you are in fact expected to save your game to prevent you from having to start all over again with just a pistol

Doom manual said:

TIP: Save your game and save it often. When you die, you're back to the beginning of the
level, toting that little pistol again. That ain't good, especially after you progress to some of the
tougher levels.

hardcore_gamer said:

While I respect your style of play, I don't really think its fair to expect the level designers to design each and every level to be playable from a pistol start because you are to lazy to save your game.

i think what myk and others are implying is that players are... tougher than back in the day and they can survive the challenge of pistol starts. what more, it's not just the speedrunning psychos these days. survival style gameplay thrives on skulltag and skulltag both and pistol restarts are present constantly. of course online, the naughty uncooperative wads just get owned by double/respawning ammo, but it sucks to realize you have to change server settings a few maps in because it's impossible to continue.

on the other hand, in single player you simply can't beat the level from the pistol start if it doesn't provide enough ammo to kill the opposition and relies on multilevel stacking. this is surely a designer choice and the story-driven wads for zdoom would make no sense with pistol starts, but i don't think anyone is trying to warp in massmouth.

bah, the point is moot anyways, given zdoom's strained approach to demo recording, which is the possibly the primary reason for pistol starts. if the designer feels his wad should be played continuously, offline, in single player and strictly with saves, it's his choice. people take many other things out of doom, so why not doom gameplay. :)

myk said:

In DOOM each level can be loaded separately, as if it were by itself a little game within the game.

hardcore_gamer said:

Yea, restarting each level with just a pistol is the game's default behavior but that doesn't mean Id expected people to play the game like that.

Actually, even Doom3 got this functionality taken into consideration. Just like Doom, every map is made to work from Pistol start.

"Hardcore" gamer: If Id hadn't intended that, then you wouldn't have been given all the weapons at the start of Icon of Sin.
Wolfenstein 3d had extra lives to use in case you died. But by using them, you lost all your stash you carried over from the last map.
Just because they give you a friendly reminder, doesn't mean that they haven't accounted for playing maps from pistol start.

What I don't like about Final Doom is that they use the same design in every single level! Almost! Except in "Hunted" (Level 11)

In every level it's just bunchs of enemies on more enemies on more... no bosses. No big castles. But more like a waste of time if you look at Doom 2! Doom II has much more unique levels!

That's my opinion! Oh of course I still can't beat up with final doom lol!

kristus said:

Actually, even Doom3 got this functionality taken into consideration. Just like Doom, every map is made to work from Pistol start.

"Hardcore" gamer: If Id hadn't intended that, then you wouldn't have been given all the weapons at the start of Icon of Sin.
Wolfenstein 3d had extra lives to use in case you died. But by using them, you lost all your stash you carried over from the last map.
Just because they give you a friendly reminder, doesn't mean that they haven't accounted for playing maps from pistol start.

If they didn't intend for the maps to be played from a pistol start, they probably wouldn't have implemented having to pistol start after you die.

FanTazTiCxD said:

In every level it's just bunchs of enemies on more enemies on more...

Why do you even play Doom if that bothers you, considering it's what the game is all about... :P

40oz said:

If they didn't intend for the maps to be played from a pistol start, they probably wouldn't have implemented having to pistol start after you die.

Yes, that too.

Apparently Romero stated that ID did near all their play testing of Doom1 from pistol starts and lamented that in hindsight there wasn't enough balancing done to take into account players bringing equipment from previous levels.

Siggi said:
I designed all my levels with pistol start in mind simply because it made testing maps easier.

Indeed. How do you measure the overall balance of a whole episode or megawad? By not splitting the progression into units, requiring saves to test, you might easily lose track of how hard certain spots are or lose touch with how much each bit of ammo, health or opposition counts. Just like a short speed run can be optimized more than a long run, a smaller level area can be scrutinized more than an extensive one. If you test the game balance per level, you can be sure each level has decent game play and then rearrange or make up for differences between the levels.

hardcore_gamer said:
While I respect your style of play, I don't really think its fair to expect the level designers to design each and every level to be playable from a pistol start because you are to lazy to save your game.

You can word things like that to shield your ego, but, on the contrary, it's saving that is lazy. Too lazy to be able to survive through a level in one go or to replay it again without an accumulated stash. I used to save like you do now before I was inspired by speed runners and deathmatchers to look more at the challenge instead of just treading through level sets. See the reply to Siggi above, also, for why level designers would want to test each level separately before they make any final adjustments to place them in an episode.

In fact the manual literally suggests that you are in fact expected to save your game to prevent you from having to start all over again with just a pistol

The manual is for people who are new to DOOM, and possibly at gaming in general. The designers would rather encourage these to at least play with saves, just like you encourage a child to ride a tricycle before handing him a bicycle, rather than possibly scare these more vulnerable players away. They don't teach you how to to play the game in a more advanced manner, since it's not really their business and most players will get the idea by themselves from the very structure of the game, its mechanics. Even though, of course, Romero's three pistol start intro demos do help show how good the game's challenging action can be.

dew said:
this is surely a designer choice and the story-driven wads for zdoom would make no sense with pistol starts, but i don't think anyone is trying to warp in massmouth.

Yeah, my post was mainly about the more classic stuff, such as the id games and most Doom or Boom levels, mainly because of what softcore_gamer (I had to do this, sorry :p) said about "not getting" pistol starts and playing the stock game only as if it were a progression.

Graf Zahl said:

Why do you even play Doom if that bothers you, considering it's what the game is all about... :P

LOL :P I was just talking about Final Doom! Not DOOM 2 or Ultimate doom ☺

myk said:

You can word things like that to shield your ego, but, on the contrary, it's saving that is lazy. Too lazy to be able to survive through a level in one go or to replay it again without an accumulated stash.

Well said myk :)

Something of this nature about saving as opposed to dying and playing the map again with a pistol as a minor form of the game's punishment for my reckless playing style where as saving is like leaving a checkpoint to take a shortcut to and play as reckless as you want was right on the tip of my tongue.

Lazy != not wanting to waste time by constantly replaying the same bits you've already completed.

40oz said:

If they didn't intend for the maps to be played from a pistol start, they probably wouldn't have implemented having to pistol start after you die.

And likewise, if they didn't intend for the maps to be played with saves and reload, they probably wouldn't have implemented having a save and reload menu in the game... (It's not like the concept of a game that automatically save in a single slot when you quit, and offers you the choice only between resuming your game and starting a new one when you run it again, did not exist at the time. Some RPGs like the old Dungeon Hack (1993) even had a feature that automatically deleted your save if your character died, so that it was a "real death". So the concepts existed. But Id went and made a game with several save slots, and Quick Save/Quick Load keys.

So... Basically, neither type of play (retry from a pistol start or reload a save) should be considered illegitimate or wrong. What was The One True Way as intended by the original developers? Both!

LOL DOOM IS SRS BSNS.

Unfortunately some ZDoom and Hexen wads such as Hexen.wad are in some kind of hellhole here, because they're NOT supposed to be played from a raw start (you're gonna use that mace a lot if you begin from Heresiarch's Seminary, and tough luck crafting the artifact weapon), but save games are unreliable because they quickly lose compatibility. It seems that no one has ever bothered standardizing the save file format the way they've done with UDMF.

I think episodes can be balanced by never letting the player exit with a hefty amount of ammo. That would nerf the bonus effect however. So rather just playtest it a lot...

Gez said:

So... Basically, neither type of play (retry from a pistol start or reload a save) should be considered illegitimate or wrong. What was The One True Way as intended by the original developers? Both!

No, but if I made an expansion that did away with the saves. I am sure to receive a ton of complaints for doing so.

I placed auto-saves in mine.

printz said:

It seems that no one has ever bothered standardizing the save file format the way they've done with UDMF.

That's a lot harder. ZDoom tries to keep compatibility as long as possible and the last 500+ revisions' savegames can all still be loaded.

However, if you introduce something into the engine that requires additional information that cannot be retrieved from the savegame or you add changes that just make it impossible to convert old savegames no format magic is going to help you. If the data you need isn't there or is obsolete the savegame is worthless, regardless of the way how you store it.

printz said:

Hexen wads such as Hexen.wad

Heh.

When cross-level scripting enters the picture, pistol starts (or their equivalent) leave the scene altogether. In plenty of hubs you can get stuck if you reset the level like for a fresh start, because then stuff you had done in a different level of the same hub isn't done anymore... Even "pistol starting" the entire hub wouldn't solve the issue altogether, because for example you can't access the Desolate Garden level in Hexen (Hub 4) if you did not activate something in the Sacred Grove (Hub 2).

Strife is an even better example of game completely fucked by pistol start, given its reliance on inventory tokens to control game state. If you reset your inventory, you break it completely.

kristus said:

No, but if I made an expansion that did away with the saves. I am sure to receive a ton of complaints for doing so.

It's relatively trivial to conceive an expansion in which a pistol-start gameplay is made impractical by nature. Hexen is a good example, for the above-mentioned reasons. I'm not sure how one would go creating an expansion where save games are impractical. Maybe short levels with plenty of weapons right at the start and non-stop action that never leave you enough time to make your fingers wander away from the movement keys?

Making hexen "pistol start" would have been as easy as making each hub able from pistol start. The levels in a hub is really just one big level strung together by teleporters.

printz said:

Unfortunately some ZDoom and Hexen wads such as Hexen.wad are in some kind of hellhole here, because they're NOT supposed to be played from a raw start (you're gonna use that mace a lot if you begin from Heresiarch's Seminary, and tough luck crafting the artifact weapon), but save games are unreliable because they quickly lose compatibility. It seems that no one has ever bothered standardizing the save file format the way they've done with UDMF.

Eh? ZDoom saves may not be compatabile between different versions of the port, but most other port's save games are compatible between port versions.