Unpopular Doom Opinions

The light amplification visors are underrated. 

Invis-sphere is the best power-up ever invented... evar... in the history of; Gaming.

2 hours ago, Bernie said:

it sometimes works ... as long as you have ... a strategy

 

just seems mindless.

Holding down the BFG spam and hoping for the best is essentially rolling the dice.

Gameplay mods will affect the gameplay.

If rolling the dice is the best strategy you have then you will suffer.

A large part of the appeal of slaugther maps is finding a strategy that works which usually trivializes the encounter. 

When you start to see those strategies and the options involved you'll have more appreciation for the maps design. 

Or not, slaughter isn't for everyone and it sounds like it's not your thing and you've played plenty of maps. 

Not sure how FCFF fit into your list of BFG spam wads, or stardate 20x6 since it doesn't give you a BFG until the very end of the last map. 

2 hours ago, Lucius Wooding said:

Fixed that for you.

Is this your only argument?

34 minutes ago, Lucky_Edie said:

 

Gameplay mods will affect the gameplay.

If rolling the dice is the best strategy you have then you will suffer.

A large part of the appeal of slaugther maps is finding a strategy that works which usually trivializes the encounter. 

When you start to see those strategies and the options involved you'll have more appreciation for the maps design. 

 

Or not, slaughter isn't for everyone and it sounds like it's not your thing and you've played plenty of maps. 

Not sure how FCFF fit into your list of BFG spam wads, or stardate 20x6 since it doesn't give you a BFG until the very end of the last map. 

It isn't just specifically BFG spam, it's anything where you have to hold the trigger on a rocket launcher or a super shotgun to clear out a cramp narrow area of overly abundant revenants or mancubi that doesn't even take skill, like the dev decided to see how many enemies he could fit in an area as much as possible. Slaughterfest 2012 is definitely the one I have the biggest problem with, as it never seems to amaze me as to how much it tries to overwhelm you even on co-op. Remember playing a lot of that back on zdaemon in like '16 and it just isn't fun. I made a mistake with labeling FCFF, I made a mistake with labeling one of the wads. But I think you know what I'm talking about. Cramp areas where the main goal is to frustrate you and is RNG I strongly dislike. Nice to know I can play beautiful looking wads like Vangaurd and Ancient Aliens that have good enemy placement that is tough but isn't made to overwhelm you.

Like MtPain27 said, if finding a secret is mandatory to pass a level in a megawad, it sucks.

Just now, Bernie said:

It isn't just specifically BFG spam, it's anything where you have to hold the trigger on a rocket launcher or a super shotgun to clear out a cramp narrow area of overly abundant revenants or mancubi that doesn't even take skill, like the dev decided to see how many enemies he could fit in an area as much as possible.

 

Slaughterfest 2012 is definitely the one I have the biggest problem with

The quality in general has improved a lot over the recent years. There's good and bad maps of every genre and the maps where you sit there shooting and doing nothing are BAD. One bad ice cream doesn't mean ice creams are bad. 

This is mancubi spam. There is a strategy. Thoughts? 

This thread is called unpopular doom opinions not obnoxious doom arguments. 

Unpopular Doom Opinion: RNG only matters if you're not good at the videogame

When I play maps I prefer to try to find approaches to fights that are consistent. (By that I mean something that would probably beat it 80%+ of attempts -- but sometimes 50%+ is cool too.) If I play a fight and end up getting through it barely or without having a clue what happened or clearly having benefit from a fluke, and I'm not recording an FDA for others (in which case I don't want to bloat the length too much), I'll reload the save and try to beat it better, unless I'm tired or something. 

This forces you to come up with really nuanced strategies that are pretty fun to find and generally forces you to have good tactics and refine your basic skills. You get better in a hurry doing this. (With "in a hurry" defined by "number of total maps played.") (

The thing is, in most fights (in most maps), you probably have an ambient very low % of beating a fight by just clicking buttons. If mindless circle-strafing wins a fight 5-10% of the time, that isn't a good strategy. The fight counters mindless circle-strafing. It's not a "circle-strafe fight" by definition. If "spraying and praying aimlessly" wins a low %, same deal. And it's not necessarily in the encounter's best interest to prevent that low % that simply doing anything wins (trying to replace it by 0%) -- because that might negatively impact other sources of fun, and because sometimes that isn't possible at all (not every fight can be a platforming fight :P). 

I'll just first say that a "beat it once and move on" approach is fine imo because a lot of people don't have the time and energy and willingness to do otherwise (sometimes I don't either).

But what I have witnessed (?) is that sometimes people pair that with thinking that beating something 1 in however-many attempts proves you're using a viable approach but also that it's an "RNG fight." Which I feel maybe explains the extremely weird contradiction that for example a fight can be a "circle-strafe fight -- just circle-strafe mindlessly to win" (yeah, once in 20 attempts*) and "an RNG fight -- you can get screwed over by RNG a ton." If you're getting screwed over by RNG on a large % of attempts, that almost certainly is not a good strategy and you're definitely not engaging with what makes the wad interesting to play.

*In these figures, I'm not counting attempts spent figuring out what to do. Some tricky/intricate fights will kill you lots as you are working out what to do but then you'll have something that works 80%+. But people who try to spam simplistic approaches often spend no attempts figuring out what to do so the counter can begin on attempt #1. 

Others have made my argument pretty well for me since it's fairly obvious. I didn't think it necessary to write a wall of text rebutting everything but I got called out so here goes:

Saying Ribbiks doesn't know good monster placement is just an absolutely ignorant statement. Who does if not him? Also, claiming Sunlust is RNG based is insulting. Players have been able to beat episodes and even the whole WAD in a single segment demo although it takes supreme skill and grinding to do so on a 4 hour run. However a bad player wouldn't be able to beat most of the maps individually, even if they always had perfect RNG. I've UV Maxed about half the maps from pistol start myself and I can tell you it wasn't a result of grinding good RNG, it was absolutely from practicing and finding good strategies that are repeatable. My skill level isn't high enough to fully clear that WAD's harder and longer levels, but getting my ass kicked as I work out good strategies has been a good mental exercise. Ribbiks stuff is definitely more of a combat puzzle style but there are usually multiple routes to victory and someone without very high skill will be punished if they don't play cleverly. As for spamming the BFG, on the maps I've beaten (of those that actually have a BFG) every single BFG shot matters. Quite the opposite of what you claim. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the craftsmanship in that WAD is the envy of all custom mappers; not just the gameplay but the music, visuals, and addictive challenge. 

Complaining about Swim With the Whales only adds to its mystique. It's a challenge mapset, and the meat of it is a nearly hour long and grueling map. It was never meant to be accessible to the average player and is meant to swat the player into the dirt repeatedly. Your frustration is no doubt gratifying to the mapper on that one and it's on you for playing one of the harder sets out there.

As for Scythe, I'm not hearing any complaints about the first 20 maps (the easy ones). That WAD targeted a wide range of difficulties and experimented with very different styles of challenge in the last 10 maps. Yes there were a couple that got there by spamming tons of monsters, but others were much more subtle and used a restricted arsenal or fiendish placement of fewer monsters to make them hard. Map 26 is basically a typical slaughter map, but it's really intended to be a speedrun map. There are so many cells, megaspheres, and invulns that you just carve your way through. As long as you know the route it's not very difficult and it's quite fun if you don't care about maxing it. But somehow in a WAD that has something for every player you get hung up on one map you didn't like. 

You also praise Skillsaw which is fair enough. I'd just like to point out that, in my opinion, his maps are a lot more forgiving of a meatheaded approach than Ribbiks. In general he gives a bit more space to maneuver (no Ancient Aliens pun intended), and his stuff is usually a touch more blind friendly. I love his maps for a number of reasons but there are certainly moments where he spams monsters or cramps the arena. 

It's ok to hate slaughter maps but honestly it's very tedious to hear the unoriginal complaints made with so little substance behind them. Disliking them is hardly an unpopular opinion to begin with, but you're also lumping in very different styles in your examples and you're just flat out wrong about a number of facts. Your post combined half baked broad brush generalizations, projection of your poor approach onto the mapper, and provocative statements about some of the more respected map sets out there without any appreciation of any redeeming aspect. Hating popular things doesn't make you cool; at best it makes you a Doom Hipster. It seems like you're just worked up over your frustration with those maps rather than having anything novel, nuanced, or thoughtful to say about them. That's why I hit you with the "Hard = Bad" remark. 

Personally, I'd take mindless BFG spam over mindless (Super-)Shotgun spam any day of the week.

Similarly, I much prefer 15 minutes of running in cricles to 15 minutes of door-camping.

With running around, you at least get to see different parts of the room, you know...

Unpopular Opinion:

Weekly Slaughter arguments are over-rated!

We can have:

- weekly Tyson map arguments

- weekly Switch-Hunting arguments

- weekly Long maps arguments

- weekly unmarked secrets arguments

- weekly Plutonia-style maps arguments

- weekly Abstract map arguments

- weekly Over-detailed map arguments

Why is it always slaughter?

BTW, I volunteer to start a Tyson map complaining thread, or a Long map complaining thread, if there is an interest in those!

19 minutes ago, Azure_Horror said:

Personally, I'd take mindless BFG spam over mindless (Super-)Shotgun spam any day of the week.

But why choose one or the other when you can have both in the same wad?

3 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

But why choose one or the other when you can have both in the same wad?

Ouch!

Is this particular map qualifies as a Criminal Negligence of Good Taste? It should, you know...

With all these "slaughter bad, actually" threads, I gotta come clean you guys. I hate hard maps but not why you think. I could beat all of them, in fact, I did beat all of them. I d2alll ribbiks anthology every morning before walking the dog. All the stargates, swimming with whales, all the sundlusts, and warm woods. But it's all just ammo starved mindless bfg spam dice rolls with no strategy involved but once I figured the strats out, it's so easy you guys wouldn't believe. And I have the demos to prove it, just give me a sec the internet is breaking up, oh no the dog ate my router and the hdd got corrupted because I had too many demos on it..

29 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

But why choose one or the other when you can have both in the same wad?

Thomas Neinsteen's One Hour in Hell

When I (Mildly, Voluntarily) Poison Myself And Play The Video's Game And The Telled Vision Goes [failure state] From My Own Fault And Inputs I Accept It And Continue With My Day, Then Continue With My Life.

eventually I will (Mildly, Voluntarily) Poison Myself And Play The Video's Game And The Telled Vision Goes [failure state] From My Own Fault And Inputs I Accept It And Continue With My Day, Then Continue With My Life, again.

6 hours ago, Bernie said:

Doom wads that exhibit slaughter-esque design are not good gameplay, it sometimes works with clever monster placement as long as you have ample ammo and a strategy but it's almost always lazy and uninspiring and just about any amateur dev could accomplish by simple math and spamming the same tough enemy over and over again in a doom editor. Also, these select wads that are highly praised by Doom enthusiasts for great textures and level design should not be given a pass just because of those positive aspects. Many wads like SWTW, Stardate 6 & 7, Sunlust, Sunder, the last episodes of both Scythe's, FCFF, and both Hell Revealed's action just seems mindless. Holding down the BFG spam and hoping for the best is essentially rolling the dice. Not fun at all.

Here we go again. We just had a thread about this topic.

But I congratulate you for at least posting an actually unpopular opinion in this thread. :D

I'm surprised not that much people complain about maps where you're stuck with few ammo and weak weaponry. Maps like the Chord Series look harder to play than many slaughter maps to me, for exemple

I understand extreme slaughter doesn't appeal everyone but how can't you like getting big guns and power-ups?

44 minutes ago, Roofi said:

I'm surprised not that much people complain about maps where you're stuck with few ammo and weak weaponry. Maps like the Chord Series look harder to play than many slaughter maps to me, for exemple

I'll be honest. Maps like these, with massive resource restrictions for high durations (shorter maps with Tyson-ish gameplay are okay) and maps with excessive, but not necessarily threatening "meat" like high number of barons in open spaces wear me down much more quickly that tough fights.

2 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

BTW, I volunteer to start a Tyson map complaining thread, or a Long map complaining thread, if there is an interest in those!

My enduring unpopular opinion is that long maps can be the greatest most fun and spectacular adventures in Doom and that they are also why the game comes handily equipped with a nice save function

1 hour ago, Roofi said:

I'm surprised not that much people complain about maps where you're stuck with few ammo and weak weaponry. Maps like the Chord Series look harder to play than many slaughter maps to me, for exemple

 

I understand extreme slaughter doesn't appeal everyone but how can't you like getting big guns and power-ups?

I personally don’t like resource starvation levels, just as I don’t like Tyson-levels. On the other hand, I do like it when I am allowed to use berserk punch to conserve ammo, so my stance is not very clear-cut, and I guess I’m not the only one — and as such threads on such maps would be welcome (even if just to see how heated the argument would get, or would it just fizzle out when we conclude that some of us enjoy tyson as long as we don’t need to punch mancubi, arachnotrons, SMMs….)

49 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

My enduring unpopular opinion is that long maps can be the greatest most fun and spectacular adventures in Doom and that they are also why the game comes handily equipped with a nice save function

Sure, and I am inclined to agree.

That said, I have and enduring unpopular opinion of my own:

Short maps can the be Greatest Fun and the most Crisp Doom experiences! Also, such short maps are a reason, why the game offers you an one-button opportunity to restart the map after losing instead of a "Game Over!" screen and a trip to the main menu.

3 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

Personally, I'd take mindless BFG spam over mindless (Super-)Shotgun spam any day of the week.

Similarly, I much prefer 15 minutes of running in cricles to 15 minutes of door-camping.

With running around, you at least get to see different parts of the room, you know...

 

Unpopular Opinion:

 

Weekly Slaughter arguments are over-rated!

We can have:

- weekly Tyson map arguments

- weekly Switch-Hunting arguments

- weekly Long maps arguments

- weekly unmarked secrets arguments

- weekly Plutonia-style maps arguments

- weekly Abstract map arguments

- weekly Over-detailed map arguments

Why is it always slaughter?

 

BTW, I volunteer to start a Tyson map complaining thread, or a Long map complaining thread, if there is an interest in those!

How about weekly iwad style maps arguments? I'll start.

Doom wads that exhibit iwad-esque design are not good gameplay, it sometimes works with clever monster placement as long as you have ample ammo and a strategy but it's almost always lazy and uninspiring and just about any amateur dev could accomplish by simple math and spamming the same imps and shotgunners enemy over and over again in a doom editor. Also, these select wads that are highly praised by Doom enthusiasts for great textures and level design should not be given a pass just because of those positive aspects. Many wads like DTWID, BTSC e1&2, D2ISO, Jenesis, the first episodes of both Scythe's, Alien Vendetta, and both Memento Mori's action just seems mindless. Holding down the shotgun fire and hoping for the best is essentially rolling the dice. Not fun at all.

That's such a poor generalization to what I described in detail. You don't even have an argument. It's just shotgunning imps over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until you want to smash your nuts in between your gaming laptop.

When I first played Map01 "Entryway" of Doom II almost burst into laughter because of how stupid it looked with these 2 zombies it sent after you when you made a sound and imp group that you have to kill when you pick up a shotgun to avoid getting clawed by it. And the level in TNT where your outside of building with a human bbq right next to you and hitscan enemies are positioned in rows in the walls is so bad. 

@Azure_Horror That is a good point.

I guess the moral of the story is that Doom is structurally able to support a huge variety of mapping and playing styles and this is just another way that it manages that

9 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

@Azure_Horror That is a good point.

 

I guess the moral of the story is that Doom is structurally able to support a huge variety of mapping and playing styles and this is just another way that it manages that

Pretty much, yes.

And you know, what's terrifying?

On a less than pleasant day, this idea does look like an unpopular opinion in Doom community...

doom is for masculine manly corridor shooting power fantasies. like the kind of activities a big tough marine boy would get up to. when the room's big i feel exposed and meaninglessss giggle

On 3/25/2023 at 2:21 PM, CasualScrub said:

As time goes on I'm more and more convinced that Doom 2016 is going to age much better than Eternal. Gameplay that feels closer to the original games, not having to worry about multiple resources to manage, a much simpler and better conveyed story, more consistent artstyle, etc.

all the things people like about nu-doom are from 2016, basically nothing from eternal