Unpopular Doom Opinions

On 10/30/2023 at 2:38 PM, Amaruψ said:

I recall even on my decent laptop it caused GZDoom to slow down to a crawl at times

It might be GZ as well causing that, I know LZ runs PB just fine, even on my frankly shitty laptop.

4 hours ago, Treehouseminis said:

Maps with, I'm not sure the right vocabulary, with "hard starts" 

"Hot start" is the term that is usually used for this, and yes they can be very contentious. I think they're OK as long as it's not a complete clusterfuck at the start. My biggest problem is that often maps use these as the main way of generating excitement in a level, as you're running around trying to survive attacks from all directions, but once you find a foothold and stabilize, the fun just runs dry.

37 minutes ago, Codename_Delta said:

I quite like Habitat from TNT, I even decided to write a shit ton about my experiences in the map, enjoy.

I think Habitat is OK. I enjoyed the write-up.

edit: I don't know how you're giving it a B- for difficulty though, other than the first AV I thought it was pretty tame, especially if you find most of the secrets before you're mostly done with the map. Anyhow I just played through it for the first time in a bit and it definitely feels like an amateur effort but it was fun anyhow. The automatic doors in the underground tunnel area are kind of dumb though; Christopher Buteau also made Icarus MAP01, I wonder if he first had the idea for the automatic doors I hate so much in that wad?

I actually like the automatic doors in Icarus. I think they're cool, convenient, and that they help with immersion.

22 hours ago, plums said:

 

edit: I don't know how you're giving it a B- for difficulty though

Two words: I suck. (And I'm crap at rating stuff, but I thought I might do it anyway)

22 hours ago, Codename_Delta said:

It might be GZ as well causing that, I know LZ runs PB just fine, even on my frankly shitty laptop.

Tried with all; ZDoom, even the deprecated LZDoom, the slow down seems to happen nonetheless.

21 hours ago, Kwisior said:

I actually like the automatic doors in Icarus. I think they're cool, convenient, and that they help with immersion.

Wait, people disliked the automatic doors? I always assumed, that people appreciated them, since pressing the use key every few seconds gets kind of tedious, so these automatic doors are handy.

2 hours ago, Codename_Delta said:

Two words: I suck. (And I'm crap at rating stuff, but I thought I might do it anyway)

Haha, no worries, I wasn't trying to "git gud" at you or anything. I just thought it was overly high if you consider just how difficult some Doom wads can get. But maybe you're not interested in very hard maps anyhow, which again, is totally fine.

1 hour ago, volleyvalley said:

Wait, people disliked the automatic doors? I always assumed, that people appreciated them, since pressing the use key every few seconds gets kind of tedious, so these automatic doors are handy.

I hate the automatic doors, and I know I'm not the only one, because they go against years of muscle memory and developed instincts of a fundamental Doom action: press use when you get near a door to open it. They would have done that even when the wad was fresh in 1996, much less now for someone who's been playing this game for a decade or more.

Here's what happens to me every single time:

-I walk towards a door

-it opens right before I get there

-I press "use" because it didn't open in time for me to react to it, and in any other wad that's what you automatically do to open a door

-so then I close the door by accident

-I grunt and think "dammit, I forgot, I better remember about these doors next time I come to one"

-I do not remember

If the automatic doors were more clearly marked (special texture that doesn't look like a normal Doom door but not like a normal wall either), or even if the door linedef itself was set to a switch action instead of a door, so you can't manually close it, it would be far less frustrating. As it is, it's just an annoyance that keeps popping up again and again.

perhaps a truly unpopular doom opinion since afaik, no source ports have ever implemented it yet. wish there are special modes for mappers in doom source ports. for example, enter codes in-game to activate:

idmapper: player has unlimited health and armour, and unlimited ammo for weapons picked up. instead of stopping at zero, all counters (health, armor, all ammo) could simply now have negative values. this info is particularly useful for mappers for "balancing" purposes (eg. to gauge the amount of health and ammo needed in a particular map section).

idstat: displays a screen full of stats for every monster type killed/total, and every items used/total, all with number value and percentage. could press [esc] to remove stat screen. note: also could have a dedicated button to show the stat screen instead of having to enter the code in-game.

wishful thinking :P

TNT is better than plutonia.

On 11/1/2023 at 9:41 PM, plums said:

(reply)

Heh, yeah, that does happen to me from time to time. A more recognisable texture on these automatic doors would've definitely been much helpful, than the more regular looking door texture usually used at these spots.

Unholy Cathedral is kinda fun.

Knee-deep in the Dead is honestly kinda boring nowadays, the game picks up for me personally at episode 2.

5 hours ago, IHave10Shells said:

Unholy Cathedral is kinda fun.

It really is, it's just those teleporters make things a bit confusing and I think that ends up ruining some people's enjoyment of it, when really there's a lot of fun combat and exploration.

All opinions in this thread deeply offend me, and I hard disagree with them all.

Actually, I'm okay with most opinions here and I can relate to them. However, what I don't like is when some people try to present things they dislike as being objectively or nearly objectively bad (or good, but in this thread's case, it's mostly bad), I suppose to convince other people that it's the only right opinion, which is something that annoys me in all circumstances (related to art and games anyway).

After my recent playthrough, I have come to the conclusion that Doom 2's maps are perfectly fine until E2, then E2 is filled mostly with clunkers (and I mean CLUNKERS)

E3 is not any better.

Suspiciously, they all seem to made by someone who's name rhymes with Randy...

Tom Hall's contributions to Doom are unfairly overlooked. The game wouldn't be even half as good without his input, even if most of the stuff he suggested got shot down.

7 hours ago, bofu said:

Tom Hall's contributions to Doom are unfairly overlooked. The game wouldn't be even half as good without his input, even if most of the stuff he suggested got shot down.

100% this. he's the reason the game even has any flying enemies

7 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Outside of speedrunning (which most people don't do), hitscanners are much more interesting and skill-rewarding enemies than the hyper-fast-projectile enemies that some gameplay mods try to turn them into. 

 

Naively it seems like a very fast projectile is more skill-based -- you can dodge it after all. But the inability to dodge hitscanners ends up testing many more skills: dipping quickly behind cover, positioning for cover (for example the common "quickly dive into one hitscanner's closet for cover from all the other ones" tactic), using big enemies as opportunistic meatshields against hitscanners, doing things like switching your chaingun fire between tots of different enemies quickly to painstun them, damage tanking in a smart way when you have no choice, exposing yourself to hitscanners to make them infight, reflexively positioning yourself so that a clump of chaingunners lines up to target each other as much as possible ... can keep going. Even shotgunners, which are obnoxious, have tactics associated with them, like the way to deal with no-cover 'take out a shotgunner for a weapon' starts, using cover between SG/SSG reloads, backpedaling when you're going to get hit to make it less likely all the pellets hit you, and more.

 

Or another way of putting it is that hitscanners are less interesting when it comes to the most obvious skill involved, but more interesting in pretty much every other way. 

Speaking of them. I don't know if it's just because I grew up with CoD where every enemy is a soldier, but when it comes to filling up my maps with enemies I always want to just fill them entirely with the zombies. Of course I end up realizing that many people would find that boring, so I randomly add all other enemies into the mix.

So yeah, my unpopular opinion is that I like to use zombies much more than all other enemies.

Using nearly all hitscanners can work. TNT:R map08 is pretty much just hitcannners and some supporting enemies for contrast/texture.

Gothic DM 99 was freaking amazing. SO amazing that the bad framerates are negligible. (also it's 2023 you should have a machine that can run any of those maps easily!)

"Intermission From Doom" works pretty well for Doom's "Refinery", so I never could understand people who say, that this using that particular track in an level is odd, since it's already used for the intermission. In my opinion, this track works better in levels.

It would be great if Doom had some ambient sound for the levels. So that it feels more alive at the levels.

If they'd slathered Gate To Limbo in Startan and put that in the E1M1 slot, people would be calling it the greatest opening level since Super Mario level 1-1 and calling Sandy Petersen a mapping legend up there with Archimedes.  

On 11/12/2023 at 12:31 AM, roadworx said:

100% this. he's the reason the game even has any flying enemies

For real?! I knew about pushwalls in wolf3d and teleporters in Doom (I also recall something about ID wanting to give up on secrets for Doom, but Tom Hall insisting otherwise), but that's new. Flying enemies seem like such an obvious choice for a more vertical game engine!

Tom Hall understood what made Doom fun way more than the other level designers, making Episode 2 the best episode in Doom. Lot's of enemies, lots of secrets, introduced teleporters, made the maps where arguably the "main story" happens (the plot twist of it not being aliens, but demons from hell), sets a far more sinister tone with tracks like "The Demons From Adrian's Pen" and themes of hell overtaking tech bases, and significantly less linear (imo) than other episodes/maps.

It's frequently cited that the team at id Software asked Tom to research military bases, then poo pooed all over what he found, which I remind you was *by their request*, but had they decided to collaborate on ideas and maps, instead of tasking one mapper per episode, the over all narrative theme would have been more cohesive.

5 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

 

For real?! I knew about pushwalls in wolf3d and teleporters in Doom (I also recall something about ID wanting to give up on secrets for Doom, but Tom Hall insisting otherwise), but that's new. Flying enemies seem like such an obvious choice for a more vertical game engine!

yep, he stated it in this interview. according to him, before that it felt more like fighting against a bunch of guys in costumes, lol

Here's a spicy one:

Sunlust isn't that hard. People are just scared of it and therefore don't even want to attempt it. It has like 6 hard maps: 15, 24, 25, 28, 29, and 30, and even those are very manageable with minimal practice.

10 hours ago, Otco said:

Here's a spicy one:

 

Sunlust isn't that hard. People are just scared of it and therefore don't even want to attempt it. It has like 6 hard maps: 15, 24, 25, 28, 29, and 30, and even those are very manageable with minimal practice.

I'm not a bad player, but I once loaded up some later Sunlust maps (some aren't on your list) to gauge the difficulty and got my ass kicked. Figured I should beat Ribbiks' earlier stuff like Spoons, SWTW and Sd20x6 before attempting it.

Also, if decino - who cleared HR2 on UV saveless, had a miserable time with maps 28 and 30, then I think it's understandable to get scared.

24 minutes ago, Kwisior said:

Figured I should beat his earlier stuff like Spoons, SWTW and Sd20x6 before attempting it.

SWTW and SD20x6 are harder than Sunlust. 

Sunlust has two authors. You might have heard people call it a "Ribbiks wad" but those people are being disrespectful and also dumb because Dannebubinga's approach is very important to Sunlust being what it is. (I even think of Sunlust as a bit more of a Dannewad.) 

From Ribbiks' catalog, Crumpets is the "intro wad" from that time. And from Danne's, there is Combat Shock 2, which is forgiving, but still quite hard for a beginner, macroslaughter. But honestly the best intro to Sunlust is Sunlust because it ramps up slowly over its first half.