The Dean of Doom series (companion thread)

People ought to suggest random Russian wads it  from the First Try Demo contest in 2015 for Sawed-Off Wads out of pure spite. If he thinks the epics Mechadon or Xaser weren't involved with were so bad, it's tiresomely predictable how he'd regard anything like that so only do that out of amusement I guess. Although it should be said that MtPain may not necessarily view Eternal Doom so negatively and I think I can understand why (that can discussed when he does that episode), although I fully expect the same or lower grade 

If there's any odd discrepancy in the overall reviewing though, it's his tendency to shat on wads that get less than an A grade. It's something that can be observed by watching enough of his videos, imo. You can disagree with this, but thars how the scripts tend to go

I'm just going to add I'm with Doomkid. I think he was more trying to be playful with the word than attack anyone (or the wad team) and maybe at worst there was some misinterpretation in how it came off.

Dude made my DOOM addiction act up again

Since I haven't played the wad, I probably wouldn't have watched the video if not for this little controversy. Well played.

ego = brainpower+timespent /sectorcount^[thingplacement(pretense^2/totaltags)]

under these conditions it is determined that Slough Of Despair succeeds once again.

I think we can all go to bed now.

Ranking things is fun! Until I disagree with you

For real though I'm getting the vibe that wads by well known author's shouldn't receive criticism, if he said this about maps by less renowned authors then no one would have said anything. Plus there is a huge difference between criticizing a map and the author personally. This whole thing is so overblown.

1 hour ago, skillsaw said:

I'm also not a fan of accusations that someone is an egomaniac on the basis of having played a large Doom level by them. It's a personal attack, and that is the line that was crossed, and why some people are upset. Nothing about the map criticism in the episode is unfair in the least. I seriously thought the line was a badly delivered, throwaway joke, until it was pointed out to me that MtPain doubled down on it in his comment.

Pretty much this. This isn't about "you mad cuz he hates your favorite wad" its the tasteless jab to mappers who, allegedly, are full of themselves.

There is a Key difference in "this map overstayed it welcome and end up being too long for me to enjoy" and "if only these designers weren't so full of themselves they could have made a map i enjoy". one is a fair criticism and one is just a low blow.

AGAIN no one here is stopping people from not liking BTSX E2, it don't know why anyone thinks this is about criticizing BTSX.

People who think that others shouldn't honestly express their opinions on something for a review show because they disagree, demand that people abstain from using words with applicable definitions because they personally object to their use (lest they be subjected to the mob), or take any criticism of their or their friends' work as a personal attack probably SHOULD rein in their egos. They certainly don't come across as exuding humility... or self awareness for that matter. I've only made a single map for release, and have already been referred to as 'sadistic' and 'mean'. If I were anywhere near as inclined to butthurt as the rest of this thread seems to be, I'd have fucking offed myself. Stop the needless pearl clutching and get a damn grip folks.

16 minutes ago, Decay said:

Not true. There are definitely times where mapper egos get in the way and they fuck up maps or make shitty game play because they either don't listen to others' feedback, don't care to, or just generally think they are infallible.

I won't deny there are cases like this. My comment was more pertaining to this mapset in particular.

As someone who tested all these later adventure maps in all 4 difficulties (including UV -solonet), maybe I can add my 2 cents.

Quote

Playing Doom for me today is like having conversations with mappers.

Have to quote this first. I guess "playing" is not, while "testing" is more towards the yes. Usually when I'm testing a map, I would ask the mappers about the intentions of the maps. Yes, obviously everybody has their own preference, me too. Therefore, it's very easy to get hit by maps that you don't like eventually after you play enough maps. Honestly, questioning one's taste or intention of a map is not really a good way to deal with things you don't like.

From a bigger view, it's like people asking "why BtSX like to enforce all vanilla limit?", which is technically a useless question because it's just how the mappers prefer. If you didn't like it, then you don't really have a control here because you're not who is making it. Having a bit of mappers' personalities is completely fine IMO.

The first bit of time getting into my playtesting career, I did like to point out everything I don't like, and everything I think it can be improved (at least from my view), but after a while into this, I would prefer communicating with the mapper(s) to see whether they are aware of this, or they make it like this. If they are completely understand why it's like that, then I guess that's all fine.

Maybe spicy comment, I don't know, but I have no malicious intent. Still, don't read if you don't about me (It's about D2ISO, not only BtSX E2)

5 minutes ago, MattFright said:

 

I didn't have that view of them before but, you have to admit, every other author and lots of their friends creating over two pages of argument over one or two things someone said in a 30 minute video doesn't exactly speak humility. This way of reacting to it is the definition of shooting yourself in the foot (i'm 99% sure nobody would even have paid any attention to those two phrases if it wasn't for all of them bringing up how offended they were by them).

I just find that Mt. Pain has a tendency to have a very weird take on authorship and can get petty with some of his more corrosive takes. Not that they are negative towards the map, but he has some oddly personal opinions on it (the kind some would call “passionate”). I think it was a bigger issue with the jabs at Gene Bird and Pcorf, the difference here is that people on BTSX E2 are actually active.

I watched the episode before I even knew there was any controversy surrounding it, so imagine my surprise checking back here to see it blowing up the way it has. The ego remark struck me as a throwaway line to close a review and I never would have guessed it would get such a passionate reaction out of people. With that being said though, after reading over everyone's thoughts here, I still fail to see it as even half as problematic as it's been made out to be. If the mappers discussed take personal offense to it then it's a different situation entirely, but from my perspective as it stands right now, a single off-handed comment conveyed through a joke about someone having a bit of an ego shouldn't be held up as an example of malice or "stepping over the line" on Dean's part at all. It registered to me as nothing more than a personal observation all his own. I've always appreciated hearing his personal takeaways on the mappers themselves whenever he touches on it, because I like to think the mind and the map are impossible to divorce; sprinkles of personality and charming little quirks unique to the individual unavoidably slipping into a project. That's exactly how I took his assessment in his most recent video. It didn't seem ill-intentioned by any stretch of the imagination to me but an example of him trying to glean a bit of "soul" from whatever mapset he's covering. I'm sure nobody (and Dean least of all) was ever expecting it to become such an incendiary topic but I'd never fault any of the people who felt targeted by his statement for feeling hurt by it. I'd also like to mention how impressed I am at how civil the discourse has been from everything I've seen, it's a very pleasant surprise. I've gotten so jaded to seeing forums like this go up in flames over significantly less so just happy to see you all keep things level-headed.

Admittedly I've been very detached from this community in recent years and even then, my contributions have been sporadic at best. Just felt tossing in my two cents on the whole situation would be useful, if only as an example of how someone who is mostly uninvolved in this place feels about it.
See you next year.

8 minutes ago, Dr. Zin said:

Everyone likes to hear a review rip into a bad map, until the reviewer takes a shot at something they like. Those of you saying Mt.Pain crossed a line calling Tarnsman's map pretentious have some pretty hypocritical piety when he's labelled Magikal a sadist for CC1 Map29's convoluted progression and Huy Pham a megalomaniac for Deus Vult's grandiosity (among others). Yep, we'll all cheer when Mt.Pain dunks on Hell Revealed 2 because the Doom Community has decided it's a "bad" map set, but god forbid he says something negative about BTSX because that megawad was put together by pillars of the community! Also, if Mt. Pain's language offends you then you sure as hell shouldn't watch Tarnsman's Twitch streams, because he can be just as caustic in his criticisms (if not more so). Admittedly, I haven't listened in a while and maybe he's mellowed out, but he certainly loved ripping on maps that were in his mind "subpar." Does this make him a bad person? No, and Mt.Pain isn't either, and their content would be dull, tedious and emotionless trash without injecting a little fun and personal opinions.

 

Now, I'm all for being gentle with new mappers: they need people building them up, not tearing them down. That said, once a mapper's got the basics down they should grow a backbone and be able to handle criticism, even if it isn't handed to them watered down and sugar coated. I have agree with Doomkid, I've personally had some pretty harsh criticism leveled at my maps, I was called out by name in a couple reviews of CC3 as having made some of the worst maps in the wad. Were they right? Similar to what Tarnsman said above, I think some of the criticism was missing the point that I was going for making the maps - on the other hand a lot of it was justified and now I make much better work because of it. If people get offended by reviewers using creative ways to express their views in a *gasp* entertaining manner maybe they should just stick to speed runs without commentary. Or maybe grow out of performative pearl clutching as an attempt to ingratiate themselves with their idols in the community.

This reads like one big strawman. The problem isn't his critique of the maps themselves, hell I find myself agreeing with much of his points, but rather it's that he felt the need to make personal jabs at the authors. It wasn't cool when he did it to Magikal's corpse, it wasn't cool when he did it to Huy Pham, it wasn't cool when he did it to Gene Bird, and it certainly isn't cool now doing it to Tarnsman either.

1 hour ago, MattFright said:

 

I didn't have that view of them before but, you have to admit, every other author and lots of their friends creating over two pages of argument over one or two things someone said in a 30 minute video doesn't exactly speak humility. 

I don't really understand where this is coming from.  the mappers involved in the discourse were very respectful and were simply taken aback by the back handed comment. Ribbiks and Tarns simply told their side so i don't know what humility they were lacking. 

I will never make a 30 minute detailed map ever in my entire life thanks to these arbitrary checklist of "stroking your artistic ego" going around (looks at Abysm 2's overworld map, ooops to late).

3 hours ago, skillsaw said:

...In Yugiboy's initial comment (the YouTube screenshot), though, he isn't pointing out that MtPain criticized the maps unfairly, he's pointing out that MtPain criticized people unfairly. It's a significant distinction.

 

I wasn't a fan of MtPain turning Gene Bird into a meme in the CC2 review, regardless of the quality of his maps and how much or little they were enjoyed, and I'm also not a fan of accusations that someone is an egomaniac on the basis of having played a large Doom level by them. It's a personal attack, and that is the line that was crossed, and why some people are upset. Nothing about the map criticism in the episode is unfair in the least. I seriously thought the line was a badly delivered, throwaway joke, until it was pointed out to me that MtPain doubled down on it in his comment.

I honestly think that criticizing people themselves for their maps is ok and makes solid entertainment. I would say that if you make a magnum opus wannabe with little substance, there's a decent chance that the person themselves has a larger-than-average ego when it comes to mapping. Also Gene Bird being made fun of was not really that funny, but I personally don't care if it was in bad taste or not, I only care if it's entertaining, and for the ego comments on those fellas from BTSX, it was entertaining.

People are going to fucking hate me for saying this shit lol.

I'm confused, were anyone's feelings actually hurt over this? Because it seems like it's not that big a deal.

I might get some backlash for this but it's the internet.

I've played this one and BTSX ep 1 on the unity port. I never finished both of them because to me they dragged on for too long.

Since becoming a mapper and going through them again, I still think there fun in there own right but some of the maps are just so goddamn long and drawn out to play. I'm going to get slapped with a "Just git gud" zoomer lingo for saying that but the fact of the matter is, i agree with Mt. Pain on this one.

I mean everyone has an option and i don't see why we need to start a flame war over "well map (insert map name here) is better then this map from (insert CP mapset here). Can we all accept the fact that this is for entertainment, not a slug fest of why we hate this or that?

I mean to me most of these comments are coming off as "Well your wrong about this map", i don't think he intended the videos or this post to be like that. As Mt. Pain27 said once "At the end of the day, it's about spreading the joy of doom" not "let's dunk on him or other people that don't like what we like". 

Again i might get some back lash for this but i don't care, it's the internet. I'm just another face behind the screen and another person typing this comment out for every one to read.

Well you won't because no one here is debating about his opinion's on the maps quality. I very much agreed with a fair bit of the criticism in the video and nodded with agreement with the Fair B grade. 

I did a very brief scan of the thread since  the video was posted and I still fail to see how this is about him not liking and criticizing a mapset.
The discussion was the very choice words in the end about the team and not his assessment of the maps and the mapset.

I really don't want this thread to get locked again.

1 minute ago, TakenStew22 said:

I really don't want this thread to get locked again.

Not going to lie, the way it's going it might get locked again.

Damn, imagine if this video actually had criticized btsx instead of making a badly worded joke.