Pistol starts vs continuous play: which do you prefer?

[galileo31dos01]

1 hour ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

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Please tell me how to do this.

 

 

So in prboom+ go to Setup > Key bindings >

 

 

and in crispy doom, run the setup executable, Configure Keyboard > Other keys > 

 

 

[CorianderCastor]

Eternity Engine has restartmap and exitlevel commands. exitlevel is a developer command and acts as if you hit an exit switch/walked over an exit line. Yes, that means it can skip death exits.

[Juza]

If the 1st level looks promising and I'm liking it, I'll pistol start the next. If it stops being fun, I'll play continuously.

 

[Pablo_Doom_Guy]

Continuous for life

 

I think that the only doom game i've pistol started is Master Levels , i have a custom marine best friend version that allows me to play the ps3 version of the master levels as a single pwad , so i idclev after beating a level . But for any other pwad's i do a continuous run. 

 

 

[Pechudin]

It really depends, I usually play continuous because I am a filthy casual. All jokes aside, I generally prefer explorative or mapsets that have a 'storyline', and in that case carrying over weapons makes narrative sense (like Hellbound or A.L.T.). For this month's DW Megawad Club (Congestion 1024) however I tried pistol-starting and it really offered me a different perspective. I do not mind restarting those short levels and due to their brevity the difficulty is heavily impacted by continuous play.

[Horus]

Continuous in general as it flows better

 

Will make an exception if I’m recording demos or if the mapset calls for it (such as Congestion 1024, like Pechudin mentioned)

[Gez]

Continuous for me, I grew up with RPGs so it made sense the character would progress and grow stronger just as the challenges likewise get harder to overcome.

[DOEL]

I only pistol start maps that I play repeatedly and use UV-Max speed strategies on. For a standard WAD playthrough I just keep my stuff.

[Capellan]

For me personally, continuous starts.  It's a 26 year old tradition at this point.  But there's no "one true way" to play Doom, so do what moves ya.

[Crusader No Regret]

How about both?

 

In practice, I'm too lazy to commit the save slot most times so I end up pistol starting.  However, once I do commit to using the save slot, it's continuous all the way through the mapset.  I like the buffer at the start of maps and having my "I don't want to deal with this" button (usually carryover BFG) available as an option.

 

if I enjoyed a map enough, I'm all for going back to experience it with pistol start.  Guess I'm usually curious about gameplay flow when starting from scratch, especially when things play out very differently from coming in fully loaded.

[Mortrixs19]

I usually do continuous play without saving during game in most megawads.

 

I do pistol start when I want to improve the SkILLz or when I replay a wad.

[Stocki]

I play continuously if the levels are built that way (becoming progressively harder, better weapons only in the later levels, etc.). But I appreciate it a lot if the single levels are all playable with pistol start. With the levels I'm building right now, I also try to achieve that.

 

[Boaby Kenobi]

My first experience of Doom was in 1995 on PlayStation and that version is not episodic like the PC original so for me I'm used to continuing on with whatever weapons and health/armour I had from the previous level.

 

When I got into PC gaming in the late 90s Doom was one of the first games I got as the computer I had at the time wasn't too good with polygonal-based games so I played loads of classic pixel/voxel games and Doom was one of them. Because I was used to the PS version I was confused at the end of episode 1 on PC as I didn't realise that you died and had to continue on each episode from scratch, in fact, I kept the invisibility sphere and used that last, then went to the portal and tried to kill all enemies but I just kept dying, which is what is supposed to happen, but I didn't realise that then.

 

Some levels in Doom on UV are practically impossible with pistol start, unless you know where all the secrets are.

[Jello]

11 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

Some levels in Doom on UV are practically impossible with pistol start, unless you know where all the secrets are.

But that's kind of the point of having difficulty settings. When I first started playing Doom 2 in 1994 I played on "Hey Not Too Rough" the first time through the game, then "Hurt Me Plenty". By that point I knew where the secrets were, and I knew how the weapons worked and how the enemies behaved, so I went up to "Ultra Violence". All levels in Doom are completely beatable from a pistol start on UV, but I wouldn't tell someone who had never played the games before to do a UV pistol start on all the levels. UV isn't the only difficulty in Doom.

[Boaby Kenobi]

For me, Ultra Violence is the only way to play Doom.

[Lila Feuer]

I wanted to say continuous because that's my preferred mode of play for the sense of adventure but in all honesty it depends. If a series of maps in a PWAD were designed around pistol starts I don't want to unbalance what was set in place by bringing weaponry and topped off health/armor over. I rarely pistol start in an episode/megawad as-is but I sometimes I'll do so for a challenge.

[Nine Inch Heels]

22 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

Some levels in Doom on UV are practically impossible with pistol start, unless you know where all the secrets are

No such map exists in any of the IWADs. Every IWAD map has been beaten from pistol start in both UVspeed and UVmax categories, and plenty of them even in the pacifist category. Saying that there are some "practically impossible maps in Doom from pistol start" is flat out wrong, and easily disproven by taking a look at the new or old DSDA.

Edited December 25, 2019 by Nine Inch Heels

[Boaby Kenobi]

That's easy to say now after Doom has been here for almost 30 years and people have been playing it extensively and figuring out the optimal ways to complete a level but back in the day when Doom was new it wasn't quite as simple as that.

[Nine Inch Heels]

50 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

That's easy to say now after Doom has been here for almost 30 years and people have been playing it extensively and figuring out the optimal ways to complete a level but back in the day when Doom was new it wasn't quite as simple as that.

The first speedruns of this game happened back in the 90s, including single map runs from pistol start. You were already wrong about this in the 90s, and nothing has changed until today.

 

Here's a reference article: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Compet-n

 

Edited December 25, 2019 by Nine Inch Heels

[Fonze]

On 12/24/2019 at 12:41 PM, Boaby Kenobi said:

Some levels in Doom on UV are practically impossible with pistol start, unless you know where all the secrets are.

 

4 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

For me, Ultra Violence is the only way to play Doom.

 

I'm sensing a theme ;p

[BigBoy91]

Pistol start all the way. Feels like I'm cheating when I play continuously now - especially if I find a BFG in an earlier level.

Edited December 25, 2019 by lazy91geek

[seed]

2 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

That's easy to say now after Doom has been here for almost 30 years and people have been playing it extensively and figuring out the optimal ways to complete a level but back in the day when Doom was new it wasn't quite as simple as that.

 

Except it's not.

 

You're completely missing something here - The devs themselves tested their own maps to make sure maxing them out was completely doable and fine from a pistol start, and that's how testing was primarily done in the first place.

 

So much so, in fact, that Sandy actually expressed disappointment in how easy they've made Doom "for casuals", as most people played continuous.

[Boaby Kenobi]

So everyone here was running around levels in Doom in the 90s finding it really easy on UV and pistol starting each time?

[Boaby Kenobi]

24 minutes ago, seed said:

Sandy actually expressed disappointment in how easy they've made Doom "for casuals", as most people played continuous.

Are you saying I'm a "casual" player because I save at the beginning of a new level? That's if I made it to the next level with decent health, if not I go back and try to do the level a bit better.

 

There is no right or wrong way to play Doom. Some people say players who use a mouse to look are wrong, others don't.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

So everyone here was running around levels in Doom in the 90s finding it really easy on UV and pistol starting each time?

Now you're moving goalposts. Your claim was about maps being "practically impossible". I don't know about the rest of the people here, but there's a huge difference between "practically impossible" and "difficult" as far as I'm concerned.

 

And while we're at it, I didn't feel like Classic Doom was particularly difficult on UV when I played it the first time, and using IDCLEV to get to maps I liked, and then pistol starting them, was how I usually played, because I felt it was more interesting than just running in and mowing everything down with whatever higher grade ammo I had left from the previous map.

[seed]

After those last 2 replies of yours, I am done here for today...

 

Missed my point twice in a row.

Edited December 25, 2019 by seed

[Doomkid]

 

5 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

So everyone here was running around levels in Doom in the 90s finding it really easy on UV and pistol starting each time?

After the first time beating the game, sure. It pretty much went down as Jello described, most people played on HMP or HNTR, then the people who really liked it played again on UV, multiple times in some cases.

 

I think most people find the “UV is too tough on pistol start but UV is also the only real difficulty” thing hard to swallow, that’s all. It seems strange to say it’s the only “true” difficulty in one breath (which is silly anyway) directly followed by “but it’s too hard” in the next breath, because neither statement is accurate lol

[Boaby Kenobi]

I play Doom on UV (or Watch Me Die if it's Doom 64) always but I don't pistol start each level, I save the game with whatever I have from the previous level, or I write down the code if it's PSX/N64 Doom. The reason I always play on that difficulty is that there are more enemies to deal with. Not sure if the difficulty level has an effect on item/ammo/health/secrets placement too but I don't think it does.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what some people mean by pistol start.

Pistol starting a level for me means to have died and you're trying again. I don't do that. If I die I load the level again, starting with the weapons, health and armour I had from the previous level. I'm not suggesting people play Doom with pistol-only on UV.

 

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

Pistol starting a level for me means to have died and you're trying again.

Yes, or using IDCLEV and starting any map of one's choosing from scratch, with no weapons or armour from any of the previous maps.

Edited December 25, 2019 by Nine Inch Heels

[Boaby Kenobi]

See, that's not how I play Doom because I was used to the PlayStation version for so long and I played it more like survival horror, simply trying to make it to the end of each level with as much health and armour and ammo I could. If I found secrets then good but I wasn't searching for them too much.

 

I never play individual levels in Doom, unless of course I've saved it and I'm continuing on with my progress, I always start from the beginning and see how far I can make it without dying ever, but not without saving at the start of each new level.