On being sucky at Doom

So I was playing this one map on UV despite me knowing that particular map would probably be too hard for me. But the lower difficulties didn't seem to function properly, the map is rendered uncompleteable by an oversight. That's beside the point, the point is I had to do it on UV, or I wouldn't do it at all. Slim chance is better than no chance at all.

Now, there is a difficult fight almost right at the start of the map. Tackling it head on, it was just a cluster*beep* of enemies and me surviving for a few seconds only. That's alright, that's what I expected to happen. I thought there'd be a strategy to find with which pros can survive the fight consistently. So, I watched this one Youtuber play the same map, and tried observing what they do on that fight. Right: plasma the pain elementals first, stand there, wait for archies, grab megasphere soon. I tried using the same strategy.

This is the feeling of not being good at Doom: I feel I'm doing what I'm supposed, but it still becomes a cluster*beep*, it truly feels as if enemies charge me more aggressively than they did for the Youtuber, I feel frustration crawling in fast. Ten attempts in, and I only survive a little bit longer than on my first attempts. Archviles don't seem to infight whereas Youtuber gets miraculous interventions in the form of revenant missiles hitting archviles, distracting them. I decide to quit before I get upset, and give up. The map is too hard, which was evident before any attempts, HNTR would have (in this case) been challenging enough.

I actually wanted only to vent my frustration here, but to have an excuse for such an attention- and consolation-seeking thread, I might just elaborate on the feeling of not being good enough for difficult wads. Sometimes hard maps present themselves in ways where you can easily see why you're having issues: the enemy placement is diabolical, there is resource starvation and you don't know how to (consistently) two-shot cybers. Many times one just might find enemy projectile patterns hard to dodge.

But in some extreme cases the whole mess starts to feel as if the odds are simply stacked against you. Suddenly damage rolls feel like they're always the high ones, or as if the enemies are just more hell-bent on killing you, unlike in that video you see where a doomtuber calmly and methodically takes care of the arena you don't see a chance of surviving. When the screen turns red and you're left a desolate, hopeless feeling, you find it hard to even fathom such a mental state where player can prevail and not be catching their breath in awe that they survived such a pressure cooker.

It's disheartening. I actually don't consider myself a bad player despite the harsh word I lay on myself here; something like "advanced casual player" that can survive most wads on UV, Sunlusts on HMP and designed-to-challenge-you wads on HNTR and meme-difficult wads on ITYTD. Or at least I thought so.

I've been playing Doom most of my life; it's almost the only game I play.  I'm terrible at it.  I don't really care that I suck at Doom tbh although it's kind of inconvenient for UV-playtesting my own work and having no idea how to balance it

If a strategy doesn't work for you, find one that works for you. Doom is just about mechanics as it is about approaching a fight. Does not work in every map, but works most of the time, especially if you suck anyway half as worse than I do... and I usually play on HMP, so, there's that.

37 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I've been playing Doom most of my life; it's almost the only game I play.  I'm terrible at it.  I don't really care that I suck at Doom tbh although it's kind of inconvenient for UV-playtesting my own work and having no idea how to balance it

Being a pro doomer is not my life goal, either. I'm trying to put into words and analyze the feeling, when you feel like you should be able to handle something, and yet you don't. You do what others, but the others succeed whereas you don't; you're struck with a feeling of unfairness, that the games hates you personally and doesn't want to let you get away with a fight.

Of course this is silly; There is something you don't realize the pro is doing differently. As an adult I know, rationally, I surely haven't hit my own personal skill ceiling. The feeling of suckiness stems from the fact that it's hard to see how you could be better, and you still get beat up.

11 minutes ago, tumedaskihutaja_37685 said:

If a strategy doesn't work for you, find one that works for you. Doom is just about mechanics as it is about approaching a fight. Does not work in every map, but works most of the time, especially if you suck anyway half as worse than I do... and I usually play on HMP, so, there's that.

I know, I have played Doom for a long time, too, albeit with some pauses. In many wads, many fights, I see options. In this particular fight the only options I see is to either die in 5 seconds or 10-15 seconds.

I often get a similar feeling where I've been struggling on maps that are a breeze to more experienced players. Here are some things that may or may not be helpful.

In terms of not understanding how to be better, I think one of the things that I think is sometimes underlooked is managing or "herding" monster movement. The most obvious example of this that I learned pretty quickly is blocking Archviles from especially disadvantageous areas (areas where they can snipe you better or revive important monsters). It's kind of a vague concept that I don't really think can be explained in a reasonable way. I feel like it's something you just have to figure out with experience.

There are also the various quirks related to rng and infighting which are well documented by Decino, if you haven't watched those for some reason

And if it's worth anything, I highly recommend playing maps saveless. I will usually play the map once with saves to just gain an understanding of the map and practice before attempting saveless. Before I started playing like this my skill level was pretty stagnant, but this seemed to really work well for me.

Not long ago I had a little bit of an accident resulting in an injury in my left hand, I'm doing ok now, but I'm still in the process of regaining some dexterity (playing Doom has been very helpful at that and certainly more fun than just typing some words on the keyboard).

Because of this, I decided to try some WADS on ITYTD (normally I play on HMP or very rarely on UV) and man, I understand the frustration of actually using the skill settings just to find out that some map you are playing is unbeatable on lower difficulties due to an oversight (like some keys only flagged to appear on UV). I remember getting stuck in several maps looking around for a key, then quitting and IDDT-checking the map in UV and sure enough, the key was there.

Those experiences made me realize that if no one involved detected any problems with the map, that means that both playtesters and mappers neglect the lower difficulties because almost no one in the community uses them, why? because the average player here is crazy good compared to me (even before my injury).

That can be discouraging, for sure, but my advice is to never compare yourself to other players, we all learn and adapt at different rates. If a WAD is too hard at the moment, maybe try other stuff and then come back to it once you have improved as a player. Pressuring yourself into playing something beyond your skill level is a recipe for losing your passion for the game.

1 hour ago, RHhe82 said:

Now, there is a difficult fight almost right at the start of the map. Tackling it head on, it was just a cluster*beep* of enemies and me surviving for a few seconds only. That's alright, that's what I expected to happen. I thought there'd be a strategy to find with which pros can survive the fight consistently. So, I watched this one Youtuber play the same map, and tried observing what they do on that fight.

If you'd like some actual advice with this one scenario, post both the video you watched and a recording/demo of your own gameplay.

25 minutes ago, Firebert said:

And if it's worth anything, I highly recommend playing maps saveless. I will usually play the map once with saves to just gain an understanding of the map and practice before attempting saveless. Before I started playing like this my skill level was pretty stagnant, but this seemed to really work well for me.

Saveless isn't the end all of getting good. There's some merit to using it as a way to build consistency over longer periods of gameplay but it just as easily can make someone defer to safe easy strats/cheesing encounters outright. I think a better avenue to improve is only using saves before difficult segments and then repeating those segments until it feels like you have a solid understanding of it.

Sometimes it's really annoying when you have the worst luck with damage rolls, for me typically a hell noble or revenant projectile (especially if the rev missile persists and makes the perfect course for your position despite having thought flanking it) or just a chaingun guy who seems to suck away your life like a blood slurpee in a couple seconds, an archvile sniping you when you thought you were clear of it, wasting a soul or megasphere to something really stupid, botching the BFG at close range, the list goes on. But that having been said and also having an admittedly pretty negative attitude on a lot of things in life because I have anger issues I have not found my limit in Doom yet, even though I thought I might have a couple of times. Some WADs just suck, like HR2 imo, and sometimes you have bad days, sometimes you gotta put it down and return to it later. If push comes to absolute shove and no amount of savegame grace will afford me to get through it without the nauseating thought of running to GZDoom to use some OP weapon mod I'll shrug and consider lowering the damn difficulty level if they're supported. But I have to actually like the map(s) and the gameplay it provides for me to consider sticking with it in the first place. Not everything is going to be designed with your sensibilities or your skill set in mind.

2 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

So, I watched this one Youtuber play the same map, and tried observing what they do on that fight. Right: plasma the pain elementals first, stand there, wait for archies, grab megasphere soon. I tried using the same strategy.

 

This is the feeling of not being good at Doom: I feel I'm doing what I'm supposed, but it still becomes a cluster*beep*, it truly feels as if enemies charge me more aggressively than they did for the Youtuber, I feel frustration crawling in fast. Ten attempts in, and I only survive a little bit longer than on my first attempts. Archviles don't seem to infight whereas Youtuber gets miraculous interventions in the form of revenant missiles hitting archviles, distracting them.

 

 

But in some extreme cases the whole mess starts to feel as if the odds are simply stacked against you. Suddenly damage rolls feel like they're always the high ones, or as if the enemies are just more hell-bent on killing you, unlike in that video you see where a doomtuber calmly and methodically takes care of the arena you don't see a chance of surviving. 

Don't forget that these pro-Doomtubers who want to showcase walkthroughs of very difficult maps, typically only upload their best runs. You're not going to see them fail too often, because blind playthroughs is not the point of their content. They would grind a difficult map until they get that near perfect godly run that looks effortless and miraculous, but only they know how much effort it has cost them to record. And that doesn't mean they're not very good players, but it creates this assumption in some viewers, that these youtubers can pick up some crazy difficult wad at any time, and beat it right away UV blind, single pass, no saves, pistol start and so on. 

29 minutes ago, Daerik said:

 

If you'd like some actual advice with this one scenario, post both the video you watched and a recording/demo of your own gameplay.

 

 

Saveless isn't the end all of getting good. There's some merit to using it as a way to build consistency over longer periods of gameplay but it just as easily can make someone defer to safe easy strats/cheesing encounters outright. I think a better avenue to improve is only using saves before difficult segments and then repeating those segments until it feels like you have a solid understanding of it.

I want to agree on the saveless part. The point of my original point was not that I wanna be an actual pro, but to articulate my immediate sense of failure and analyze it a bit. In any case I feel my way of upping the ante in Doom for me is precisely trying to survive fights, not maps; I'm at that point in life that I feel little urge to replay 1 hour long map because of some surprise pistol zombie at the exit room getting a surprise shot at me on low health.

But on the first part. I honestly didn't mean my post as a plea for help, but since you offer; why not. I recorded three of my attempts just now. They're a bit boring, because I play the way to the first actual fight real safe. The map in question is Stardate 20x7's MAP06 (The Other Side), and the first fight with something like half of the map's enemy count. The youtuber referred to is, of course, Decino: https://youtu.be/RL48gzeUr9E?si=4qLv6yiXSTJSiFRT&t=74

sucky_demos_sd20x7_cl9_map06_rhhe82.zip

29 minutes ago, Tangra said:

 

Don't forget that these pro-Doomtubers who want to showcase walkthroughs of very difficult maps, typically only upload their best runs.

That's true, and I realize that. But I do get the sense that most of the time they can get very consistent, especially in "fine-tuned" wads such as the one I am having trouble with, and it's the perceived unreachableness of this consistency that frustrates me, and which I associate with being in over my head. Although I'm wondering if I'm just using far too many words for something simple. The goal seems hopeless, either get better or remain that way. After all, it's not that long ago since I thought I could never reach exit in Scythe's Fire & Ice on UV, and yet I have done that twice since then.

Idk if this’ll help, but I got better at Doom by playing a lot of Deathmatch. It helped me improve my movement control and gave new perspectives on the weapons I hadn’t considered before and I feel it helped improved my SP skills because of this.

35 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

 

That's true, and I realize that. But I do get the sense that most of the time they can get very consistent, especially in "fine-tuned" wads such as the one I am having trouble with, and it's the perceived unreachableness of this consistency that frustrates me, and which I associate with being in over my head. Although I'm wondering if I'm just using far too many words for something simple. The goal seems hopeless, either get better or remain that way. After all, it's not that long ago since I thought I could never reach exit in Scythe's Fire & Ice on UV, and yet I have done that twice since then.

Just for the record, decino died quite a bit during his practice runs on Stardate maps.

1 hour ago, RHhe82 said:

 

I want to agree on the saveless part. The point of my original point was not that I wanna be an actual pro, but to articulate my immediate sense of failure and analyze it a bit. In any case I feel my way of upping the ante in Doom for me is precisely trying to survive fights, not maps; I'm at that point in life that I feel little urge to replay 1 hour long map because of some surprise pistol zombie at the exit room getting a surprise shot at me on low health.

 

But on the first part. I honestly didn't mean my post as a plea for help, but since you offer; why not. I recorded three of my attempts just now. They're a bit boring, because I play the way to the first actual fight real safe. The map in question is Stardate 20x7's MAP06 (The Other Side), and the first fight with something like half of the map's enemy count. The youtuber referred to is, of course, Decino: https://youtu.be/RL48gzeUr9E?si=4qLv6yiXSTJSiFRT&t=74

 

sucky_demos_sd20x7_cl9_map06_rhhe82.zip

 

A pretty notorious fight for how rough it can be. I gave it a few attempts first then watched both Decino's run through it and your attempts.

As a whole I get the feeling you're trying to too rigidly stick to the strategy you're copying from Decino. You also struggle a bit with vile management.

On the first demo, you run straight back into the wall where the Vile that's targeting you from behind the megasphere has LoS. You could easily dodge this by just continuing to stay along the left wall.

On the second attempt, you charge both viles as they start targeting you and I feel there may be enough time to backpedal to the corner as soon as you see them both start attacking. You also steal aggro from one of the viles mid attack by spamming plasma (fyi if you're not aware but Viles are always aggressive to the last thing that damages them, and will even switch targets mid attack, so if you see one attacking and it's not facing you, just let it finish attacking before you start shooting). After you make it to the corner after getting the SSG, you can see one of the two stuck viles start targeting you, but you pop back out before it's had enough time to finish attacking and die to it.

On the third demo, getting zapped sort of throws you off entirely and you're slow to kill most of the threats before you get overwhelmed.

Try and be a bit more fluid with a strategy, once you're at the SSG you should be mostly set to freeform it from there, you don't necessarily have to continue sticking to a route.

More importantly though, try and dedicate more of your mental stack to tracking Viles, where they are, where they're attacking, where they have LoS to you, and try and play around them accordingly. Rewatch your own three attempts and pay attention to when you're getting zapped each time, use third person camera and rewinds to really understand what's happening, because they seem to be the biggest contributor to your deaths.

Something to keep in mind is that YT playthroughs with real-time commentary can be a bad medium for transmitting strategy. You'd want something like an 2D overlay of the map the narrator can draw on, the narrator going over counterfactuals and different attempts, and post-commentary. Talking about the one attempt going on in-real time puts some real restrictions in place, so it's possible to watch a video thinking you understand the strategy being used but be very wrong about that. 

Decino's commentary focuses mostly on target prioritization, which is unhelpful to dwell on here, but that's more down to the limitations of the format. Talking about the strategic concepts behind his movement, his decision-making, and maybe a few other concepts would not be really possible in the format -- even though those would be so much more important. As one example, if you notice, later on after he gets low on health, Decino is doing a lot of mid-speed (meaning not a full run speed, but more like tap-tap-tap with the keys) half-loops from one spot to another, stopping at the endpoints of those loops to orient before sometimes doing it again. That's a generic movement pattern that helps him stay alive a lot more easily. But he doesn't talk about that at all, because it might require a 2D overlay or something or not to make sense for for most viewers because it might require introducing other concepts, idk. Doesn't seem very viewer-friendly. Another example before that it he's good at knowing when to charge down a vile and when to take cover from it. Sometimes two viles will have way too much HP or you'll notice a potential obstacle and you have to play more conservatively; sometimes they'll be nearer to death or you'll have a reliable 'distractor' and you can decide that rushing them is a worthwhile risk. Daerik also covered some other cool concepts. And as mentioned, his is more of an 'improv' fight, but that is left out of the video since it's only one attempt, which might be misleading if it makes it look like there's a narrow, deterministic strategy you have to follow.

It's not even an especially good attempt tbh. Some of those revenant missiles that got him into a fragile state were reactable/dodgeable by a player of that caliber. But he's doing a lot right he doesn't talk about in the video to make the encounter softer. The three demo attempts feel like what someone would play like if they were overfocused on the concepts being talked about in the video, rather than the concepts that are really important.

6 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

So I was playing this one map on UV despite me knowing that particular map would probably be too hard for me. But the lower difficulties didn't seem to function properly, the map is rendered uncompleteable by an oversight. That's beside the point, the point is I had to do it on UV, or I wouldn't do it at all. Slim chance is better than no chance at all.

 

Now, there is a difficult fight almost right at the start of the map. Tackling it head on, it was just a cluster*beep* of enemies and me surviving for a few seconds only. That's alright, that's what I expected to happen. I thought there'd be a strategy to find with which pros can survive the fight consistently. So, I watched this one Youtuber play the same map, and tried observing what they do on that fight. Right: plasma the pain elementals first, stand there, wait for archies, grab megasphere soon. I tried using the same strategy.

 

This is the feeling of not being good at Doom: I feel I'm doing what I'm supposed, but it still becomes a cluster*beep*, it truly feels as if enemies charge me more aggressively than they did for the Youtuber, I feel frustration crawling in fast. Ten attempts in, and I only survive a little bit longer than on my first attempts. Archviles don't seem to infight whereas Youtuber gets miraculous interventions in the form of revenant missiles hitting archviles, distracting them. I decide to quit before I get upset, and give up. The map is too hard, which was evident before any attempts, HNTR would have (in this case) been challenging enough.

 

I actually wanted only to vent my frustration here, but to have an excuse for such an attention- and consolation-seeking thread, I might just elaborate on the feeling of not being good enough for difficult wads. Sometimes hard maps present themselves in ways where you can easily see why you're having issues: the enemy placement is diabolical, there is resource starvation and you don't know how to (consistently) two-shot cybers. Many times one just might find enemy projectile patterns hard to dodge.

 

But in some extreme cases the whole mess starts to feel as if the odds are simply stacked against you. Suddenly damage rolls feel like they're always the high ones, or as if the enemies are just more hell-bent on killing you, unlike in that video you see where a doomtuber calmly and methodically takes care of the arena you don't see a chance of surviving. When the screen turns red and you're left a desolate, hopeless feeling, you find it hard to even fathom such a mental state where player can prevail and not be catching their breath in awe that they survived such a pressure cooker.

 

It's disheartening. I actually don't consider myself a bad player despite the harsh word I lay on myself here; something like "advanced casual player" that can survive most wads on UV, Sunlusts on HMP and designed-to-challenge-you wads on HNTR and meme-difficult wads on ITYTD. Or at least I thought so.

While I don't blame authors for not implementing difficulty modes well (its a lot of work) I do think its on them if difficulties lower than UV don't work and not on the player.

Also, I have a controversial opinion: Most ideas on how to play doom "right" (no saves, UV, 100% kills, 100% secrets) only make sense when you consider the perspective of a speedrunner. A highly specific way of playing the game has become the default because the people that still play doom years after release were already speedrunners or other types of doom god. Being "not good" at Doom is being good at Doom to the majority of non Doom freaks

17 minutes ago, DeafPixel said:

Also, I have a controversial opinion: Most ideas on how to play doom "right" (no saves, UV, 100% kills, 100% secrets) only make sense when you consider the perspective of a speedrunner.

No speedrunners or very good players would say there's a "right" way to play Doom. For example nearly all speedrunners do lots of play with saves, or rewind, or IDDQD to prep runs and for casual play. There's an even more diverse range of playstyles in speedrunning than casual play (speed categories with shooting, pacifist, max-like categories, weird stuff like stroller and tank), so you definitely wouldn't hear this mythological "speedrunner" prescribing a single playstyle lol. 

So these "ideas on how to play Doom right" or more just strawmen / bad assumptions that people create in their head and then get mad at or self-conscious about. That happens a lot. It's valuable to recognize that no actual good players think that way; it's a mindset way more likely to be propagated by YT comment trolls and other people who don't know what they're talking about. 

3 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

 

No speedrunners or very good players would say there's a "right" way to play Doom. For example nearly all speedrunners do lots of play with saves, or rewind, or IDDQD to prep runs and for casual play.

 

So these "ideas on how to play Doom right" or more just strawmen / bad assumptions that people making posts like this create in their head and then get mad at or self-conscious about. That happens a lot. It's valuable to recognize that no actual good players think that way; it's a mindset way more likely to be propagated by YT comment trolls and other people who don't know what they're talking about. 

Fair enough

Have been playing this fight. I decided not to grab the row of cells early. Here's the cleanest I've been able to get an attempt. I don't mean in the sense of damage (the unforced rev missile when everything was completely in the clear stopped that :P) but in the sense of being safe the whole time.  

Some tactics I've been trying to use are: 

- Get one vile out ASAP to kill it quickly.

Scheduled "target prioritization is bad" interlude: "Prioritizing PEs" is not really what you're trying to do here, and you'll favor taking out some imps if you need to do that to get the viles out faster. I know I'm a broken record about this, but target prioritization is a weak concept honestly, because it leads people to ask "What do I kill first?" instead of "What exactly do I want to accomplish and how?" The second question is a super set of the first anyway, so anytime you need to simply choose what to kill and in what order, you'll still be able to do that without expressing it as target prioritization. Even though I want to kill one vile early, I would not describe what I'm doing as prioritizing one vile; the part that really matters is not simply killing it, but that it comes out ASAP -- and I'm trying to set that up (that's the 'how'). if I were just trying to prioritize one vile and that's how I expressed it, I would be indifferent between that approach and not being as urgent to try to get the vile freed, but that would be a lot worse and it might as well be an entirely different strategy for that part. The issue with target prioritization in harder wads is that while it's sometimes in the same neighborhood of what it's correct to do, it often misses all the crucial nuances, and then people don't realize what they're doing wrong because they think they're doing what they're supposed to ("picking the right priority"). Reminder that target prioritization is just a ploy by Big Archvile and Big PE to sell merch. :P

- Try to use revenant missiles and anything else to help do damage to the viles -- that helps a lot. 

- After you take out the first two viles, there will be two other viles roaming about. I hope to lure them to the switch side so that I can grab the row of plasma cells on the other side more easily. This phase requires a lot of improv though because those viles can do anything. You have to be able to read the situation and make determinations like, "Okay the viles are here and we won't have a cover spot soon, so let's flee" or "This vile is weak so let's just hose it down." There's a lot of improvisational decision making. Making good reads on the fly is the key skill. 

- It helps to know that you can loiter in front of the two turret viles for long enough to pick up lots of cells without getting "zapped"; those viles look more threatening than they are. 

- I try to soften up PEs where I can but I've found that you don't have to be too urgent about this in casual play because the lost souls will slowly deal chip damage to each other and you should have enough bullets to help take out the remaining horde of them even if they got out of control. 

Despite having strategic components, this seems to be even more of a Git Gud fight. Sometimes the only way to really do a fight well is to improve at all the little skills that it requires, and trying to work out better strategies will hit a wall. I've run into spots where I could try to find an elaborate strategy, or just become really good at some weird skill like point-blanking a cyb without setup (meaning reactively dodging if it fires), and it made more sense to do the second. That's what I mean by a Git Gud fight. Here the skill is reacting to and reading the complex vile behavior. 

This fight is brutal though, so I would not feel bad about being unable to do it. The variability makes it harder than pretty much every Sunlust fight, some of which might be initially more opaque but tend to be easier to soften up with the right approach. 

I totally feel you on a lot of maps. As I have gotten better at playing I have had a lot more fun on most maps. I usually play on HMP on everything, especially since these days HMP is equivalent to Vanilla UV in difficulty. Unfortunately every fight does not have a set strategy and just has to be figured out as you go, and especially dependent on which weapons you have available to you. If there there is a Decino video on a specific map then it is usually well worth watching on how he handles the puzzle you might be running into. If not, then adopt Plutonia tactics of getting really good at judging the rocket explosion radius so you can just blow dudes up fast and at semi close range. 

This discussion was inspiring (thanks especially @Daerik & @baja blast rd., but others too) enough for me to give it a go before gettnig off to work. A couple of attempts, and managed to get rid of first couple PEs and AVs in pretty good health. Used a midfight save right there. After that the fight becomes a bit easier. I died a few times, mostly due to lost souls blocking my way without me realizing they were there, or stupidly catching revenant missile, and one time panicking in front of the stationary archvile pair. I used one more midfight save, but in hindsight that was unnecessary (although I don't wanna be late from work, there was this time pressure at play here :P), I think I could have made it using only that first mf-save. I did run out of ammo, though, it's good I remembered the two shell boxes lying downstairs near the revenant pillars.

So, not a perfect run, but will do for me for the moment; I had been playing this wad on HMP for the first two maps and the rest on HNTR, so I'm very happy to be able to make it at least somehow on UV, doesn't have to be clean, and I think this sort of small success already lifts up my spirit and makes me believe on my chances that I might be able to do it more cleanly one day. One day...

5 hours ago, DeafPixel said:

While I don't blame authors for not implementing difficulty modes well (its a lot of work) I do think its on them if difficulties lower than UV don't work and not on the player.

Also, I have a controversial opinion: Most ideas on how to play doom "right" (no saves, UV, 100% kills, 100% secrets) only make sense when you consider the perspective of a speedrunner. A highly specific way of playing the game has become the default because the people that still play doom years after release were already speedrunners or other types of doom god. Being "not good" at Doom is being good at Doom to the majority of non Doom freaks

This. I hate how 100 % single segment deathless pistol start has somehow become the "norm".

The original Doom manual tells you to save and save often because otherwise you go back to the start with just a pistol.

Pistol start is meant to be a penalty for neglecting saving not a recommended way of playing.

I save all the time and keep my weapons from level to level and do not feel like I'm playing the game "wrong".

Also for the OP failing over and over at a tough encounter (that's likely meant to be a pain in the ass) does not make you "sucky".

Mapsets like Sunder, Magnolia, Stardate are meant to be very difficult, there is more nuance to skill than being "pro" or "sucky".

Also due to Doom's rng there's always luck involved too to some extent, like you said feeling like all revenant missiles were homing and did high damage rolls, they probably were.

Btw you can try to turn the rng in your favour a bit by saving and loading, the revenant missiles are dictated by the tick number the game loads at, whether it's even or odd.

Can't recall which way it went but due to that and how doom's rng table works there's a 75 % chance revs will fire homing missiles 75 % of the time and vice versa if the tick goes the other way.

Decino has a video explaining it too if you wanna know more.

So if you see more homing missiles it's likely not placebo but actually happening and it can easily make or break an encounter if you slip up even a little.

I totally understand where you are coming from, oh boy do I feel frustrated too at times but that's just my cue to either drop difficulty or switch to a different wad.

Play content that challenges you to get better sure but at the point you feel like there's 10 things going wrong at the same time you can't really learn from it.

4 hours ago, Finnisher said:

This. I hate how 100 % single segment deathless pistol start has somehow become the "norm".

It is not the norm because most players are not the handful of Doomtubers who do that. 

1 hour ago, baja blast rd. said:

 

It is not the norm because most players are not the handful of Doomtubers who do that. 

Yeah true but said Doomtubers sure push it like it were, directly or indirectly.

EDIT: just to be clear I'm not discrediting the effort it takes to achieve "flawless" runs. Just that it's not the "only" way to play Doom.

.

11 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

 

No speedrunners or very good players would say there's a "right" way to play Doom.

This is very true, my play style is not very aggressive unless I'm thrust right into an inescapable situation, if I can I much prefer to relocate to a safer spot and use choke points where possible, in fact I use cover to my advantage and stall tactics against large formations of foes if the map allows me to do so. In some cases this can be considered cheesing or camping but if it enables your survival then by all means go for it. Otherwise your reflexes better be sharp and your target prioritization paramount, I often rely on infighting to make things easier for me as well.

And I'll just say also to OP if killing all the enemies means potentially being low or running out of ammo for the next map if you play continuous like I do then maybe it's a good idea to just leave some stragglers behind, especially if they can't get to you. I usually like getting all kills but sometimes it's not realistic, especially if the last monster is a cyberdemon that isn't in your way, fuck him lol just leave.

E: I further emphasize cover because RetroAhoy's excellent video on Doom at one point mentions that hiding behind cover will do you no good in Doom. This is a lie, even in the IWADs.

yeah screw the 100 % if it means you're being worse off after, for real

1 hour ago, ebrl said:

edit: nvm, someone already covered everything I said

I read the original post… I’ll just say in my defense that I was already going to bed when I made the demos, and had already been frustrated by previous attempts :P

(And furthermore, I never had any illusions about me not missing anything from observed playthrough - I most certainly did).

Edit: To be fair, my first and fresh attempts were just as bad :(

1 hour ago, RHhe82 said:

I read the original post… I’ll just say in my defense that I was already going to bed when I made the demos, and had already been frustrated by previous attempts :P

 

(And furthermore, I never had any illusions about me not missing anything from observed playthrough - I most certainly did).

 

Edit: To be fair, my first and fresh attempts were just as bad :(

The points they made about arch viles are good but if you want to play another mapset that is by the same mapper, still definitely challenging, but more manageable, play Sunlust.

It's a really great wad too! PS: Hurt Me Plenty and save often... just saying, lols

(and it gets positively brutal towards the end but the difficulty is really well paced imo).