Unpopular Doom Opinions

Jumping feels off in GZDoom because it is literally just the Archvile effect which also feels off. I can't be bothered to dig through previous posts in this thread but someone mentioned that in later games such as Quake, the physics around jumping are a bit more natural. Not perfect, but pretty good. That Archvile hop always felt goofy even in 1994.

Mouselook also works a lot better with hardware rendering. Doom's software renderer only works correctly if the view port can only rotate by yawing, not rolling or pitching (to use flight sim terms).

15 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

Mappers should embrace mouselook as the future of doom and design their maps accordingly

Uhm... no. :-)

16 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

Mappers should embrace mouselook as the future of doom and design their maps accordingly

Let's go in reverse and make Wolfenstein 3D levels instead! /s

Honestly, looking up and down and jumping should not be introduced into [more] games with sprite-based enemies. Build engine games are quite enough, even in them seeing sprites at an angle, as well as jumping on sprites, is incredibly cursed, it's only passable because we are used to them. Doom is pristine in its simplicity, and mouselook and jumping spoil it.

I like being able to look up and down but mainly as an occasional thing when I want to see what's below a ledge etc. I think being able to play Doom without needing vertical mouselook is a strength. I do like being able to jump though, never thought it felt that weird, maybe because Hexen did it and I played that a lot when it came out, which preceded Quake's qtest by a few months. I kinda wish there were maps that required jumping outside ones for ZDoom, most ports let you jump these days.

HDoom is actually good.

@Csonicgo should post more, she's fun

It's probably because after 100s or even 1000s of hours in doom vanilla, limit removing etc, but playing doom with hardware rendering and mouse look gives me motion sickness sometimes.  Only fps that does that to me.  It just feels wrong on my brain, so no.  Doom with mouselook and jumping will never be the new norm I don't think.  

If you added jumps and free mouselook by default, you'd take something away from Doom. They're (some of the) aspects that make Doom unique and more interesting to me. Many maps are designed around these limitations, with enemies you can't snipe or shootable switches for secrets that are too high. Same with infinitely high actors. Adding jumps and mouselook would make Doom more like any other FPS game. Besides, the GZDoom WADs I've played that tell you to bind a jump key don't really do much with it other than "make a tiny jump over here to get this secret".

Also, if Doom had had jumps from the beginning, the entire weird Doom platforming subgenre wouldn't exist.

^{Disclaimer: I don't believe, this is an unpopular opinion.}

11 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

 

Any opinion of how maps should or shouldn't be made (i.e. most opinions in this thread) is "telling mappers what they should or shouldn't do" implicitly or explicitly. When I say they "should" do this, I think the average native english speaker would have interpreted this as "I think this change would make things better". I'll dumb down my language moving forward if that helps. 

 

And debating the idea would be explaining why this would a positive or negative change to doom, not crying that somebody would have an opinion you don't like. 

I read it as "I would like it if mappers did this" and was genuinely surprised at all the backlash you've faced o_o

Is "should" an offensive word? I didn't think so, but then I'm not a native English speaker.

Calm down, everyone. Let's roll a fat one and chill. It's just a game. And these are all just opinions, not divine irrefutable orders.

i really like flickering in doom, be it blinking rooms, noisy textures, sprite overflow... x3 and i like when the enemies are dehacked to flash during their about-to-fire state, especially while cyberdemon

but I am toning it down in the stuff I'm experimenting with for the sake of other people's eyes

Vanilla compatibility is very niche. This forum is skewed because this is the place where all the fans of Vanilla limitations concentrate. Nobody outside of here does really care and mostly prefer freelook, jumping no autoaim etc. And are just confused with infinitely tall enemies which is trash and nobody can convince me otherwise (and DooM is only game that does that, even Heretic Strife and Hexen got rid of that as fast as they could).

Somebody mentioned that there are really nice combat scenarios based on no freeaim, problem is, they are buried in thousands of thousands vanilla cl9 32 level packs where most levels are just boring stuff we played thousand of times and are more enjoyable being played with freelook, no autoaim and some gameplay mod on top. That is really no reason to religiously admire DooM limitations as the only true way to play DooM, because that concept is really tired. DooM nowadays is about modding  - trying new stuff, pushing the limit and expanding what DooM can be. Sticking to vanilla is just burden and Even DSDA doom with it's enhanced Dehacked is something that agrees, it just likes to pretend it still "vanilla".

Regarding above, I take any "should" to mean what it is - that is, a statement of opinion, not a mandate. It's not the same thing as slaughtermap arguments where people proclaim that slaughtermap creators are too stupid to do anything other than spam 500 revenants in a box. (On a side note, I think "smart" design is overrated in discussions like that, but I digress.)

I play with freelook in GZDoom fairly often, and while the sprites do look bad if you view them from a steep enough angle, frankly I rarely find myself looking at such angles in normal gameplay, and at shallow angles I don't notice anything off. I did feel for a while that freelook is disorienting and makes maps look weird, but I think I just got used to it. I think reducing movement bobbing also helps (movebob 0.02 or 0.03 in GZDoom). It's nice having mouselook as an option and I'm always open to mappers playing around with it, but I also like that Doom isn't a very aiming-focused game. Maybe that's on me for disabling autoaim whenever I play with freelook.

I don't like the way jumping feels, though, not in Hexen (not a big deal for that game), nor in GZDoom (which I guess is based on Hexen), nor in Jumpwad. I don't think it's inherent to all FPS games or even just sprite-based ones since I like the way Blood feels. With Hexen and GZDoom I don't like the delay between jumps and the lack of sound when jumping, and with Jumpwad I don't like the lack of air control and climbing up ledges (can't blame the WAD for that since it's clearly a limitation of how it's implemented). I'm curious how The Golden Souls fares, as that seems like it would have an emphasis on jumping around. I was actually playing the first level of the first one just the other day and was thinking of playing through the rest.

Infinite height gets a bad rap because we tend to remember the times when it blocks us (either blocked from running over a ledge by a monster below, or blocked from running under a monster, of which I find the former more aggravating). But it also helps cacodemon clusters spread out into nice-looking swarms since they can't stack on top of each other, and also makes them easier to shoot with rockets since enemies below, and even other cacodemons, will stop them from moving and being impossible to hit. I also really dislike running on top of enemies like they're a bunch of crates, so I think disabling infinite height tends to be a poor fit for maps with large swarms of enemies (i.e. slaughtermaps) where that becomes noticeable.

58 minutes ago, yakfak said:

i really like flickering in doom, be it blinking rooms, noisy textures, sprite overflow... x3 and i like when the enemies are dehacked to flash during their about-to-fire state, especially while cyberdemon

but I am toning it down in the stuff I'm experimenting with for the sake of other people's eyes

I really feel like there ought to be a mod or accessibility setting in source ports for stuff like that. I get that it's a real concern for people, but it's a shame if mappers feel like they have to limit themselves. Similar tradeoff came up for Eviternity 2 MAP06 recently. Might be tough to programmatically detect and tone down general cases like Boom lighting effects and Dehacked stuff, but at least the standard Doom flickering sector types should be doable.

10 hours ago, Ravendesk said:

(not even Eviternity III)

?????

Assuming you meant to mention Eternal Doom. Anyway, I concur with the majority here and @jmac in particular. Adding more mechanics to a game just for the sake of doing it doesn't automatically result in better quality gameplay, in fact it can frequently turn out to do the opposite.

6 minutes ago, Budoka said:

?????

Haven't played the hottest new sequel this year?

I hate how the hardware renderers work. I understand its a compromise that needs to be made in order to have good performance on more complex maps, but there is no solution to the sprites that looks good. I always enable x/y billboarding which seems like the best compromise but theres still weirdness with tall/large sprites.

Give me y shearing or give me death

On 1/19/2024 at 12:41 AM, Jason Maguire said:

Mappers should embrace mouselook as the future of doom and design their maps accordingly, even if this means breaking with tradition and pissing off people who refuse to look up and down. Having to manually aim your rockets at cacos 50 feet away from/above you brings a whole new dimension to the gameplay.

 

Jumping (and to a lesser extent, crouching) are great, as long as the map is designed such jumping/crouching don't break the map. They should also become standard parts of doom design. I've played a number of wads that either by choice or neglect allowed jumping and crouching and it added some fun aspects to the gameplay, like a number of situations in which i was completely cornered but on a slight elevation such that I could jump on top of a crowd of monsters and escape. The point isn't that making it easier is better - if the player has more options for surviving a fight, then the fight can be designed to be harder accordingly. 

 

 

Consider: sprites align like garage when you look up and down

15 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

Vanilla compatibility is very niche.

This is an weird argument imo, because Classic Doom already is niche by itself. I mean, it's an old ass game that the majority of people will not even touch regardless of port. So idk, I think this animosity regarding "vanilla or gzdoom" is totally irrelevant.

15 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

DooM nowadays is about modding  - trying new stuff, pushing the limit and expanding what DooM can be. Sticking to vanilla is just burden and Even DSDA doom with it's enhanced Dehacked is something that agrees, it just likes to pretend it still "vanilla".

See, this kind of attitude is the core issue - trying to dictate "what Doom is" and what people should do. No, Doom is not necessarily about "new stuff". Doom is whatever we want it to be, plain and simple. And that includes playing it the original way if we want to.

SNES Doom is a fantastic console port. It plays relatively on the same performance level as 386 setups, and while 486 setups blew it out of the water, they weren't free from lag either. Even more, a SNES cost significantly less than a PC. If the 1992 SNES price cut and smaller Model 2 are anything to go by, you could get a decent version of Doom (at the time) on the cheap. Quake was still a year away so Pentiums weren't in demand yet, outside of a few enthusiasts. 

7 hours ago, Noiser said:

This is an weird argument imo, because Classic Doom already is niche by itself. I mean, it's an old ass game that the majority of people will not even touch regardless of port. So idk, I think this animosity regarding "vanilla or gzdoom" is totally irrelevant.

See, this kind of attitude is the core issue - trying to dictate "what Doom is" and what people should do. No, Doom is not necessarily about "new stuff". Doom is whatever we want it to be, plain and simple. And that includes playing it the original way if we want to.

DooM, even classic one is not niche at all. Everybody knows this game. And I guarantee that any "normie" who wants to try DooM either after years of not playing it or for the first time will go for the modded, fresh looking version and definitely not for Vanilla experience. The Unity port may be something close to Vanilla that is nowadays probably the easiest way to play DooM for somebody outside the community, but even those people if they stick around they are going to go for mods and new experiences rather than hundreth vanilla like megawad. I am not dictating anything, this is what people outside of the relatively small circle of people here on Doomworld do. You can do whatever you want, but that doesn't change that the main reason for DooM popularity is not regurgitating vanilla experience ad absurdum.

1 hour ago, NeoWorm said:

DooM, even classic one is not niche at all. Everybody knows this game.

Knowing the game and playing it are different things. If you think Classic Doom is that popular, well that says more about your bubble than anything else.
 

1 hour ago, NeoWorm said:

The Unity port may be something close to Vanilla that is nowadays probably the easiest way to play DooM for somebody outside the community, but even those people if they stick around they are going to go for mods and new experiences

For people who never touched Doom before, playing it already is a new experience. Most people will not even bother to go beyond that, but those who will can do it in an infinite amount of ways. Again, this topic doesn't add anything of value to the community - it's just you trying to validate your bias as the "correct way" of playing or modding an old game from 1993. I'm not interested in that at all.

44 minutes ago, Noiser said:

Knowing the game and playing it are different things. If you think Classic Doom is that popular, well that says more about your bubble than anything else.
 

For people who never touched Doom before, playing it already is a new experience. Most people will not even bother to go beyond that, but those who will can do it in an infinite amount of ways. Again, this topic doesn't add anything of value to the community - it's just you trying to validate your bias as the "correct way" of playing or modding an old game from 1993. I'm not interested in that at all.

Do you even realize how many people tried original DooM only because they saw Brutal DooM somewhere? People around here quite hate on Brutal DooM, but that is what original DooM is for anybody who doesn't have account on DooMworld.

On 1/20/2024 at 8:59 AM, NeoWorm said:

Nobody outside of here does really care and mostly prefer freelook, jumping no autoaim etc

4 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

And I guarantee that any "normie" who wants to try DooM either after years of not playing it or for the first time will go for the modded, fresh looking version and definitely not for Vanilla experience.

2 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

People around here quite hate on Brutal DooM, but that is what original DooM is for anybody who doesn't have account on DooMworld.

Do you have any data to back that up?

1 hour ago, Ravendesk said:

Do you have any data to back that up?

no, because they're wrong lol

most people who play the game but aren't super into it like we are (or lack the technical skills to set up gzdoom) will likely be using the unity port, which tries to stay close to vanilla, lacks freelook and jumping, and can't run brutal doom.

8 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

Do you even realize how many people tried original DooM only because they saw Brutal DooM somewhere? People around here quite hate on Brutal DooM, but that is what original DooM is for anybody who doesn't have account on DooMworld.

This is what classic Doom is for anybody who doesn't have an account on Doomworld.

• https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/doom-1993-switch/
• https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/doom-1993/9PLZPHBNHTMF
• https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP1003-CUSA15594_00-DOOM199300000000
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/DOOM_1993/

For this crowd, Doom mods are the sorts of things you can easily download and play on these ports.  Think Sigil and BTSX, not Brutal Doom.

I know this may be unpopular, but this is the unpopular opinion thread, so...

I like Hell Maps better than Techbase Maps. The latter feel cold and sterile, are often cramped and have few open rooms, and, in a game about fighting demons, don't fit the enemies you fight very well outside of "corrupted techbase" maps like most of the original E2.

In contrast, I personally think that most Hell Maps look beautiful and Doom's monsters feel right at home in them.

I can anecdotally confirm that most people I talk to about Doom are playing with the Unity port and only play the same vanilla WADs officially sanctioned by Bethesda. They don't even have the patience to install and setup any other source port.

people who recommend scythe as a beginner wad should be put into a catapult and be shot straight into a brick wall

I use hardware renderer because i prefer a 120 fov above all else.

4 hours ago, roadworx said:

people who recommend scythe as a beginner wad should be put into a catapult and be shot straight into a brick wall

 
Why’s that?