Preferred WAD difficulty style?

Throughout its 28-year existence, Doom has seen a massive amount of custom maps made, from the crude 94-styled wads to the highly polished map packs released today, and so too came a wide variety in terms of difficulty.

What level of difficulty (not in-game skill level but rather style of mapping) do you prefer to play and why? Comfy, simplistic maps close to the PWADs' style? Brutal slaughtermaps? Maps that are exploration-heavy but have less of a focus on combat?

1 hour ago, DoctorNuriel said:

Throughout its 28-year existence, Doom has seen a massive amount of custom maps made, from the crude 94-styled wads to the highly polished map packs released today, and so too came a wide variety in terms of difficulty.

 

What level of difficulty (not in-game skill level but rather style of mapping) do you prefer to play and why? Comfy, simplistic maps close to the PWADs' style? Brutal slaughtermaps? Maps that are exploration-heavy but have less of a focus on combat?

I prefer map's with medium difficulty and not too many monsters. I like mostly sumplistic and maybe with a little bit of puzzle elements.

I don’t know. Hard to say. I seem to enjoy plutonia-like modern maps with some micro-slaughtery elements. That challenge the player but are not obtuse or very puzzling in the sense that you need to know exactly what to do lest you run out of ammo, health and sanity.

I love slaughter maps with tons of enemies, but I am not fond of excessive platforming, switch hunting, or too many puzzles.

The Plutonia style

Plutonish, low enemy count (except in setpieces) and short maps

rock hard

Generally scaling upwards the later the map is. I expect level 27 to be much harder than level 5 for example. That is not always the case, but I prefer when it is done that way, otherwise it feels like regression.

It depends how I feel. I like mowing down huge numbers of trash enemies, but enjoy getting challenged by a couple of well-placed enemies as well. On the other hand, I love atmospheric wads with a higher focus on exploration and detailing as well.

Really depends what I am craving at the moment.

2 hours ago, Captain POLAND said:

I love slaughter maps with tons of enemies, but I am not fond of excessive platforming, switch hunting, or too many puzzles.

Yes, especially on Nightmare.

Classic style.

I like joyfully easy maps or insanely negative stuff with the chainsaw. hard linear maps turn me off, like... there's no way through this level besides entering the obvious arena where yr gonna have to strafe and think and be accurate and timely with your weapon switches, then I'm out, I play Doom as a casual game and don't want it to stress me out

1 hour ago, rehelekretep said:

rock hard

ROCK HARD ABS

Extreme difficulty in the following categories:

Fights (with many or few enemies. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s difficult and well designed)

Platforming (When I’m in the mood)

Navigation (When I’m in the mood)

I like a map that can be really hard without an insanely high monster density (I don't say "count" because this principle can apply to very large maps as well as small ones.)  I like for the puzzle of beating a map to come from finding the right approach to a combat situation, where the trick is in movement and precision and keeping constant attention to what's happening around you, where the traps are unexpected the first time, unavoidable or uncheesable on future playthroughs, but never quite pass into unfair or pure-RNG territory.  On a good map like this, I'll have room to maneuver, and have to choose to either carve out safe niches in a hostile space or else charge through without killing everything in order to find more kit or herd free-roaming monsters a bit.  Turret enemies are essential in this kind of map design, as is giving them adequate lines of sight to get at the player from a distance while also giving the player just enough cover to avoid becoming a complete chicken shoot.  Free-roaming monsters should be just enough to force the player to keep moving and possibly pen the player in.

What I don't like is a map that's hard because it only allows one or two approaches, where all others are near-certain death; where the entire map is a Mumbai-traffic clusterfuck of revenants and archviles and shit where you can't get anywhere at all without holding down the BFG trigger; or where the challenge comes down to pure luck, and your only successful runs are the ones where the chaingunner bullets happen to miss you just enough times to let you slip by.

The line between "barely enough health to survive a competent run" and "barely enough health to survive a really lucky run" can also be fine, but is essential to observe: I like the feeling of beating a map with barely any free health left around, but a map absolutely needs enough to account for the RNG plus one or two accidents that might happen.  Otherwise the map runs the risk of forcing constant restarting or savescumming.

I'm not really into ammo starvation, unless it's a map properly designed for berserk or (my favorite) chainsaw action in which case guns can be treated as a luxury.  There should be enough ammo for the right weapons to kill everything in the map without it becoming a slog, still with a decent amount of ammo left over or on the ground.  For instance, if I am playing a map with a whole lot of mancubi or other heavy hitters, it's not enough if there's only enough ammo to kill them all with the chaingun; I'll want a beefier gun and plenty of ammo to power it.  Again, the challenge of slaughtering all those mancs should come from how they're placed and not how much time they can waste while I kill them.  No map, whether tiny or epic, should contrive to slow itself down this way.

These are the principles I try to build my own maps by.  It's hard though because the line between a fun tactical challenge and a cruel nasty RNG fest can be as narrow as a couple misplaced hitscanners or the removal of a couple medikits.

Plutonia style!

Shorter maps. 30 minute slaughterfests are all fun and games, but my personal preference is shorter, 5-10 minute coffee breaks. IWAD style map lengths, I guess?

Crucify me but I don't actually like to play doom too much. I do love map making, however. That's what I'm here for. I'm one of the people who can spend days in Minecraft creative mode. Eureka (my favourite doom map editor) is a billion times better creative tool. And doom allows for some cool architecture if you put your mind to it. I'm still at the beginning of my mapping journey but I enjoy it thoroughly. 

So when I play a wad, it's on HMP or even HNTR. 

Not here for a challenge. 

Slaughtermaps with little ammo so infights are essential.

Just Right-Tough (shamelessly ripped off from GameFAQs)

Lots of enemies so there's lots of infighting possibilities, but also enough ammo to get by. I don't really like super puzzle-y hunting maps with more switches then demons.

I have found that the sweet difficulty spot for me is when I sense that I am in control, but only barely so. For example, I may save, but I don't feel I have to in order to have a chance. I may die zero times or a dozen times (in the map or a single fight), but if I survive, I was fairly close to death and if I died, I was close to surviving.

I'm not sure I have a preference as to how the above is accomplished; I just prefer that it is accomplished. I think that sense of "this wad is right at / slightly above my skill level" can occur in BFG slaughterfests, nuanced setpieces, incidental mayhem, environmental opposition, you name it. So in the end, if I'm honest, I think the difficulty of a wad being a positive or negative is very much a matter of luck. If one of the difficulty levels happens to be at that sweet spot, that wad gets high marks in that category. However, my enjoyment of a wad is based on many other things, like flow, visuals, variety, and even "objective" quality of the encounter design.

I prefer my difficulty to come from few resources and smart monster placement rather than massive hordes of enemies. A horde of enemies is something that should be used sparingly since it ruins the intimidation factor if every map features them. 

Large, sprawling, atmospheric maps punctuated by brutal, chaotic encounters. The less fair it is, the better, I love being forced to scramble. I also really enjoy resource deprivation. Having infinite BFG rounds takes the steam out of any fight, I'd prefer being forced to choose between saving myself now, or saving it for something that might be worse.

That said, the pistol is terrible, and any resource deprivation should at least give a variety of options, even if they aren't clear or extensive. If all I have is Bullet ammo, I better have a chaingun available. 

I started playing Doom this year, so this is just a perspective from a complete newcomer.

A healthy balance of slaughterhouse fights in wide areas (infighting involved) and trekking through somewhat linear paths with less enemies is what I enjoy. With this being said, I find myself getting exhausted with WADS that have a handful of maps with 700+ enemies or so. 

"Breather" maps in between large/intensive maps are also great, like small maps where it's a lot more exploration-focused, or maps that just focus purely on fights that are so destructive and mindless, you can "turn off your brain".

I also play on HMP; I die way too many times on UV, so I ditched that difficulty lol.

The "Plutonium" style. Especially with high monster count and multiple keys, Plutonia Map32 is an example, it doesn't take any prisoners.

I like playing maps of any kind of difficulty

Kinda hard. Not slaughter-esque, a little higher than Doom 1 and Doom 2 difficulty. Think NEIS.

Well-made slaughter maps or any map that assumes you will die the first time. Some of my favorite moments are replaying the same Sunder map/fight multiple times having to figure out the best strategy. Of course if the map is just 100 Cyberdemons in a 512 square room, that ain't fun.

10 hours ago, pcorf said:

 

Yes, especially on Nightmare.

I rarely play on Nightmare. I like being able to actually empty a level of enemies.