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Unpopular Doom Opinions


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50 minutes ago, Klaesick said:

My problem is with the overall General attitude of the community. Treating Ultra-Violence like it's the Intended difficulty of Doom (This is done intentionally Sometimes, but I see it far more unintentionally implies well). I see this so much I can probably make a TV-Tropes page about it.

Now that's an unpopular opinion.

 

The only people that do that are usually content creators like Gggmanlives that like to pretend they are hardcore Doom fans. The rest of the community left that facade years ago and there's been multiple threads and discussions about playing Doom the way you want. There's no ''Doom the way it was meant to be played'' philosophy or dogma. The many resources, tools, mods and source ports have ensured that anyone can play however they want. Vanilla purist, hardcore enthusiast, mod lovers, modern fans, and the in-between.

 

There's no TV trope to be made here, only misdirected concepts towards a general populace that has long gone past its ''UV only'' ethos.

 

50 minutes ago, Klaesick said:

I'm only criticizing because I love this game and it's community, I want to see y'all improve!

I'm pretty sure that most doomers have improved greatly in their 30 years of existence heh.

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Registered Doom’s credit screen background looks better than the Ultimate Doom’s brick background. 

Edited by DNSKILL5

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10 hours ago, Mr. Alexander said:

[...] they often argue in ways that let the slaughter fans beat them on the specific merits of the argument, because the fans necessarily become much more familiar with the particulars of the stuff they like than the people who dislike it do.

 

Not that I'd be likely to record and post my demos struggling through various levels I hated just to establish that I had the right to hate those particular levels, either. If I did, I'd hope the experience would make me more specific about my dislikes rather than more general, but it would still be an obnoxious slog just to establish a baseline level of credibility for a bunch of random people on an Internet forum with whom, at the end of it all, I would still probably disagree. [...]

The deal with this is that it's not even "particulars" that are being argued about. If you genuinely give something a chance instead of watching a couple of videos on YouTube or IDKFA + IDDQDing (or just outright quitting and not playing anymore maps) your way through a WAD the moment it starts annoying you, gets too difficult for you, or reaches your arbitrary definition of "slaughter", I'd figure you should at least be able to remember something about the WAD(s) specifically that irritated you. Do you just mind-wipe yourself of the caco cloud that frustrated you so much, or something? How can WADs that give you frugal BFGs and limited cells possibly meet the definition of "mindless BFG spam"? Why does it always default to the same sweeping statements? I have never asked for any kind of demo, video, or any kind of proof of skill or whatever, I have only asked for people to:

1) stop categorizing a wide spectrum of Doom gameplay as shit like "mindless BFG Spam", because actual BFG Spam WADs exist and they play nothing like what the ones people regularly cite as BFG Spam play like.

2) drop the bizarro world "criticisms" directed at the mapper themself. But I guess if we stop insulting the mappers' intelligence or design sensibilities, we'll just get more posts that opt to go the "It's just a spam of enemies over and over and over and over and over and over and over over[...]" route.

 

I am speaking with a general "you" in this post, not directly towards you Mr. Alexander, just to be clear.

Edited by Maribo

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1 hour ago, Maribo said:

I have never asked for any kind of demo, video, or any kind of proof of skill or whatever,

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to impute this demand to you or to anyone else in the thread, rather I meant to assume a hypothetical in which I was a maximally helpful anti-slaughter guy going the absolute extra mile to show that I knew what I was talking about and was not speaking from ignorance. All I meant from that bit was that this would be a huge pain in the neck to do for someone who seriously disliked this style of play and level design, even if they didn't record successful demos, and I don't think I'd do it in their place. But the bit about the "baseline level of credibility" went a bit too far, since the baseline level of credibility is established, not by posting a demo, which no one - at least not in this thread - asked for, but by not making demonstrably untrue statements about well known mapsets.

I guess it would be cool if everyone posted demos more often, not to win arguments or show off, but to enhance the discussion. It's a really small format and it's cool that we have it as Doom players. But that's not so much "a disliked opinion," which is what "unpopular opinion" threads are usually fishing for, as "something that isn't done as much now as it used to be."

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I don't care for Doom 64, which is odd because I love the PS1 version of Doom.

Also, I think both parts of Final Doom are superior to Doom 64 and I like both TNT and Plutonia equally.

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2 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

And that's not even getting into the fact that revenant corridor dodging is a tactic, and it's not just "hope that you get low damage rolls or few homers"; it's a delicate balance of guiding missiles into the wall and standing in places so that the non-seekers and the seekers don't collaborate to form an unbeatable wall. I'm okay at it. I need to practice a bit more. :P I usually don't get killed by missiles here since the fight is pretty forgiving in terms of health.

 

You are much better than me at corridor rev dodging. If you don't mind, can you do Ancient Aliens Map09 Blue Key fight. I have UV-max'ed the map before, but I am not able to consistently beat that particular fight (about 66-ish% survival rate for me). I am sure you would be easily able to handle it but still. I usually make sure to save the secret megaarmor and also I have noticed to have a better survival rate if lure the SMM and then run past her to engage the blue key fight (since she infights with some of the revs)

Edited by ReaperAA

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I actually wanted to analyze this area somewhere for a while, so sure. 

 

First, my favorite thing about this area is the mastermind. I always thought it was kind of weird in a gameplay sense, because it's the traditional mastermind that you can SSG corner camp. But at some point I realized you can actually weaponize that mastermind in plenty of cool ways, including in the BK fight! 
 

In this recording, it was way too weak because I let the archviles team on it for a while as I was cleaning up something else. But with more health, as you mentioned it pretty much neutralizes all of the revenants. 

 

 

 

The way to handle these setups is to try to hang out in spots where dodging in a simple way (usually moving forwards and towards a wall) will guide the homing missiles right into a wall. 

 

So in this case that's close to one wall, but not too close, because you need space to weave around a missile. If you do that, you can move forward and up (purple) and the homing revenant missile (red) will automatically veer into a wall. The key is to juke revenant missiles late, because if you try to avoid them too soon they will easily track you as you move. (This drawing is probably not very accurate since I know the distances by in-game feel not by map units.) In this arena a back lane should also work because the little alcove will eat projectiles (instead of having them loop back around at you). Sometimes it is not clear whether a missiles is homing or not, in which case you should treat it like a homing one. 

 

lLRqX1l.png

 

This one is a minimal movement encounter because if you move a lot you will spread missiles everywhere. You mostly try to chill in one spot and gather a lot of missiles then shake them all off at once. Sometimes you do "double loops" if a homing missile is followed right after by another. If you get a lot of projectiles you switch from one lane to another, which in this case includes the back row of the arena. 

 

My goal during the fight is to maintain one of those positions. It's a classic case of using the right approach doing a lot of the lifting. Because even if you don't maintain positions or dodge perfectly, this general approach of using walls to catch homing missiles ends up making everything much easier. 

 

Also bonus cacojiggle at the end. 

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16 hours ago, prfunky said:

warning: thread derailment in process here...

you're a Morphine fan, aren't you?

  Hide contents

 

 

Hah. No, had never heard of them before, the lyrical similarity to my post was just a fun coincidence. I think I'm a fan now, though!

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I've never cared for Pistol starting. I'd rather do the whole adventure with my arsenal, so for me personally trying to Pistol start a megawad is just a needless challenge I don't get enjoyment out of.

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I agree, although I do feel all maps in a multilevel set should be passable on pistol starts but that doesn’t mean it has to be the optimal solution or at all easy. It just ensures anyone can complete the map regardless of their save habits (or lack thereof). 
 

Anyways, my opinion to add to the shit pile:

 

The pistol in Doom is by far the worst weapon in the game for me. The pistol itself certainly looks sleek and elegant seeing as it’s a Beretta M9 after all, but it shoots far too slow to be of any use. I think if it shot just slightly faster between shots like about the same speed as the SMG in Wolf 3D it would’ve been far better of a weapon to use throughout the game. I get that they were going for it being the last resort weapon, but since it is tied in with the chaingun in damage and ammo it is only a last resort when you actually have nothing else but the pistol and melee available to you. 
 

Also, seeing that the pistol and chaingun share ammo, which would be 9mm, that means the chaingun in Doom is like a futuristic submachine gun and less of a light machine gun.

Edited by Fiber Wire

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20 hours ago, Mr. Alexander said:

[snip]

It's okay. Admittedly I got a bit frustrated writing that post, because between this and the most recent slaughter thread, I've been starting to feel like a broken record. :^)


I really like it when people post demos or other footage specific to what they're talking about. rd is easily the most consistent person who does this, it feels like every kind of analysis or otherwise insightful post she writes also includes a clipped video to illustrate exactly what she's talking about in the text of the post, and it pairs together very well. The reason I don't do this is because I find it a bit annoying to record + clip and potentially re-encode footage from OBS, especially for longer examples... and posting a -dsdademo format demo isn't the best, since you can't just load up a pre-established save and show the example that way. DSDA-Doom does actually support starting a demo mid-way through gameplay via console commands now, though, so... maybe I should start doing that.

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Not sure if this opinion is exactly unpopular, but I'm not a fan of hidden lines on the Automap if you're able to see the lines in-game (in my maps, the only time I mark a Line as hidden is if it's a room off the map containing monsters that will soon teleport into the map, that way they're not revealed on a Computer Area Map). The best example of this is E2M8, the walls surrounding the map are hidden on the Automap, and it just looks weird on the Automap, and the other example is the starting area of E3M1.

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On 3/30/2023 at 12:14 PM, DNSKILL5 said:

Registered Doom’s credit screen background looks better than the Ultimate Doom’s brick background. 

 

I placed that in some of my Unity port wad conversions, specifically for the really old mapsets that predated TFC, alongside the original Doom titlepic. Its neat seeing it again.

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I don't get why people hate D_STALKS so much. Imo it's a chill midi that doesn't "destroy the dark oppresive grisly atmosphere of Doom 2" cause it was never a very serious game to begin with. There are also much worse midis in the OST.

Edited by Kwisior
Minor mistakes

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On 3/28/2023 at 11:20 PM, Master Medi said:

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

Oh really? Well what do you call 3:13-4:43 then?

Spoiler

 

 

Putting you in a tiny room with barely any space to outmaneuver 2 highly deadly monster closets is the epitome of annoying. For anyone who isn't seasoned with old FPS, this is the of playing a Super Meat Boy level. 

On 3/28/2023 at 10:10 PM, Maribo said:

They don't need to give an argument when the post they're replying to makes it crystal clear that they've never actually played any of the wads that they're listing as "Holding down the BFG spam and hoping for the best is essentially rolling the dice". Including FCFF in a list of "action" wads is basically trolling, but maybe you're trolling too and I'm just taking 2 layers of bait. I suppose it is an appropriate post to make in a thread titled "Unpopular Doom Opinions", but most people who post in this thread don't seem to be able to differentiate between fact and opinion most of the time. What else can you do when you give people a raw stats pages of exactly how much ammo is in the maps/wads they're talking about, and they still call it a BFG Spam Map? It's literal delusion.

 

Anti-slaughter rhetoric is tiresome. Anti-platforming rhetoric is tiresome. Anti-death pit rhetoric is tiresome. Anti-"whatever I don't like" rhetoric is tiresome. I'd really rather see a passionate defense of what people like in Doom than another boring post about how any mapper who doesn't do what you like is bad at design, lazy, incapable of making anything worth playing, etc, but I don't think anyone who writes off entire styles of gameplay wholesale is interested in making a passionate defense of what they enjoy. It's much easier to make a low effort ragepost.

 

If you watch that timestamp I provided in the fight he literally admitted to holding down the plasma rifle pretty much the entire time. And it isn't just those 2 maps in Sunlust, Map 28 Maelstorm is also no slouch at providing you the cheapest unbalanced traps(Most notably the Archviles on the pillars in a cramp corridor while a plethora of Barons spawn right behind you making the space of not getting hit almost nonexistent) and imp spam that encases you and chips your health away in seconds. And Map 25 is the definition of slaughter and annoying. It seems like you people only are giving the latter levels a pass because of how good it looks. Just look at the gameplay videos and explain how that is good gameplay with being overwhelmed with these crampt monster closets that are made to piss a normal gamer the f$#k off? I mean just look at the Cacocloud it spawns at you in the 4th fight? How is that fun? It's too easy to die in that.

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Ill prefer play with crosshair, tbh moving guns make hard to aim.

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1 hour ago, Bernie said:

Oh really? Well what do you call 3:13-4:43 then?

  Reveal hidden contents


Putting you in a tiny room with barely any space to outmaneuver 2 highly deadly monster closets is the epitome of annoying. For anyone who isn't seasoned with old FPS, this is the of playing a Super Meat Boy level. 

 

That was a first playthrough without foreknowledge, and he got into that area when that fight is the hardest (you can easily route to have cell weapons already), and he still kept a cool head and comfortably survived it. 

 

1 hour ago, Bernie said:

If you watch that timestamp I provided in the fight he literally admitted to holding down the plasma rifle pretty much the entire time.

 

M1 with RL/PR happens in normal maps all the time. There are spots in KDitD where you hold down the shotgun pretty much the entire time. Has nothing to do with slaughter. The BFG is by far in a league of its own with dps. Big difference from the original "BFG spam" phrasing.

 

Also the fight in the video is definitely not a M1 fight considering he had to gather the revenants out of the way of the plasma rifle (and could have held back on the aggression at some points in exchange for more safety). 

1 hour ago, Bernie said:

If you watch that timestamp I provided in the fight he literally admitted to holding down the plasma rifle pretty much the entire time. And it isn't just those 2 maps in Sunlust, Map 28 Maelstorm is also no slouch at providing you the cheapest unbalanced traps(Most notably the Archviles on the pillars in a cramp corridor while a plethora of Barons spawn right behind you making the space of not getting hit almost nonexistent) and imp spam that encases you and chips your health away in seconds.

 

The comma-shaped area fight gives you two soulspheres and at that point you have BFG (because you need the YK for both that area and the BFG right before it), so it is survivable on first attempts. The imp-mob fight also has the imps backfacing you, and no unexpected tricks, so you have all the time to think of an approach.

 

1 hour ago, Bernie said:

And Map 25 is the definition of slaughter and annoying. It seems like you people only are giving the latter levels a pass because of how good it looks. 


It seems like you're projecting your own tastes (that you think the visuals are nice but the gameplay isn't). Imo Sunlust maps are cool-looking but I'd give it an 8/10 or 8.5/10 for pure visuals (and higher for atmosphere and control of tone/vibe, which is imo what Sunlust is best at aesthetically). Which is good but not enough to remotely gain a pass based on looks.

 

1 hour ago, Bernie said:

Just look at the gameplay videos and explain how that is good gameplay with being overwhelmed with these crampt monster closets that are made to piss a normal gamer the f$#k off? I mean just look at the Cacocloud it spawns at you in the 4th fight? How is that fun? It's too easy to die in that.

 

Late Sunlust on UV is not really meant for the "normal gamer." They can of course start playing it, but ideally they'll have engaged with it for what it is (and not seen it as mindless BFG spam, an attitude that will prevent them from learning anything and improving their skills) -- and if they do that and reach the late portions, they won't be a normal player anymore. All things considered, it's a really good set at teaching you how to play. For example sl25's big cacohorde fight has a chiller precedent in sl22 that can show you how rockets can be used to manipulate cacoswarms.

 

The cacocloud fight is forgiving. It gives you a mega (no matter how you got here) and a heap of rockets. You even have the BFG but don't really need to use it. :^)

 

 

 

The relevant tactics are min-moving, and using rockets to disperse / poke a hole in cacoswarms, and the cybie has very limited line of sight of the space so it is easy to hide from it.

 

But anyway, I'm glad you engaged with specifics.

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1 hour ago, baja blast rd. said:

 

That was a first playthrough without foreknowledge, and he got into that area when that fight is the hardest (you can easily route to have cell weapons already), and he still kept a cool head and comfortably survived it. 

 

 

M1 with RL/PR happens in normal maps all the time. There are spots in KDitD where you hold down the shotgun pretty much the entire time. Has nothing to do with slaughter. The BFG is by far in a league of its own with dps. Big difference from the original "BFG spam" phrasing.

 

Also the fight in the video is definitely not a M1 fight considering he had to gather the revenants out of the way of the plasma rifle (and could have held back on the aggression at some points in exchange for more safety). 

 

The comma-shaped area fight gives you two soulspheres and at that point you have BFG (because you need the YK for both that area and the BFG right before it), so it is survivable on first attempts. The imp-mob fight also has the imps backfacing you, and no unexpected tricks, so you have all the time to think of an approach.

 


It seems like you're projecting your own tastes (that you think the visuals are nice but the gameplay isn't). Imo Sunlust maps are cool-looking but I'd give it an 8/10 or 8.5/10 for pure visuals (and higher for atmosphere and control of tone/vibe, which is imo what Sunlust is best at aesthetically). Which is good but not enough to remotely gain a pass based on looks.

 

 

Late Sunlust on UV is not really meant for the "normal gamer." They can of course start playing it, but ideally they'll have engaged with it for what it is (and not seen it as mindless BFG spam, an attitude that will prevent them from learning anything and improving their skills) -- and if they do that and reach the late portions, they won't be a normal player anymore. All things considered, it's a really good set at teaching you how to play. For example sl25's big cacohorde fight has a chiller precedent in sl22 that can show you how rockets can be used to manipulate cacoswarms.

 

The cacocloud fight is forgiving. It gives you a mega (no matter how you got here) and a heap of rockets. You even have the BFG but don't really need to use it. :^)

 

 

 

The relevant tactics are min-moving, and using rockets to disperse / poke a hole in cacoswarms, and the cybie has very limited line of sight of the space so it is easy to hide from it.

 

But anyway, I'm glad you engaged with specifics.

Maybe I'm being a little too nitpicky just because I'm nowhere near as good as veteran players on here, but the style of design I aforementioned has always rubbed me the wrong way every time I played co-op on zdaemon back in High School (2015-2017). I can appreciate it for what the devs were trying to accomplish, but unless I'm playing on the lowest difficulty I find it way too easy to die. I prefer skillsaw's wads a lot more if I want a challenge. His traps and enemy placement is a lot more forgiving and plus the level design is top-notch. Even when it's challenging there's generally an easy to moderate strategy to combat a tough encounter. I get that a lot of people get tired of the difficulty they face in vanilla doom as being "too easy", as it is for me as well, but I notice how mappers combat this is having these extremely crampt traps and fitting as much enemies as possible without breaking the gameplay, and by pairing it with perfectly fine mapping and great visuals it comes off as almost pretentious in a sense. Which is a real shame. Speaking of green maps that look amazing, I only played the first 2 maps of DV 2 and plan on finishing it because those visuals are great, but I heard it's really really hard

download (4).jpg

Edited by Bernie
Wanted to add a topic on hard wads on top of speaking of slaughter-esque style.

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18 hours ago, Ozcar said:

Ill prefer play with crosshair, tbh moving guns make hard to aim.

I also do this, I don't trust the weapon sprites enough to aim with them.

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1 hour ago, Codename_Delta said:

I also do this, I don't trust the weapon sprites enough to aim with them.

It would better if they made moving weapons up and down just like quake, because aleast in quake, its still on center while you moving weapons.

Edited by Ozcar

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On 3/30/2023 at 5:37 PM, peach freak said:

Not sure if this opinion is exactly unpopular, but I'm not a fan of hidden lines on the Automap if you're able to see the lines in-game (in my maps, the only time I mark a Line as hidden is if it's a room off the map containing monsters that will soon teleport into the map, that way they're not revealed on a Computer Area Map). The best example of this is E2M8, the walls surrounding the map are hidden on the Automap, and it just looks weird on the Automap, and the other example is the starting area of E3M1.

 

I think this is definitely a case of personal opinion, and it seems to go one of two ways.  Is the automap:

 

a) a tool for aiding navigation by showing you a simplified overview of the level

b) a visual representation of the entire map, essentially a different perspective of what you can already see

 

Some mappers are firmly in camp a) and will hide every single line that isn't specifically related to core navigation, while others are very much in camp b) and want the automap to represent the level's detail in its entirety.

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1 hour ago, Ozcar said:

It would better if they made moving weapons up and down just like quake, because aleast in quake, its still on center while you moving weapons.

It sure is more practical but looks goofy as hell, haha. Thrusting the gun forward with every step

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Just look at the corner of the screen, then move your eyes halfway across. That's what I do.

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Better - tilt your head and cross your eyes to look at both corners of the screen at the same time, then uncross them.

Edited by Klear

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2 hours ago, Bauul said:

I think this is definitely a case of personal opinion, and it seems to go one of two ways.  Is the automap:

 

a) a tool for aiding navigation by showing you a simplified overview of the level

b) a visual representation of the entire map, essentially a different perspective of what you can already see

 

Funny enough, I just don't want to waste players' time by showing them out of bounds areas and make them think they're worth struggling to get to.

 

Of course sometimes I also want to retain some secrecy. Mostly stuff that a computer area map might not realistically have programmed into it (super high-security areas, fresh tunnels, etc). I understand why it would be a pet peeve, but I don't go out of my way to make those kinds of secrets an unrewarding chore, so I hope it's a fair trade-off.

 

That said I went for the "simplified" option in my first map, because a pet peeve of mine is having to zoom in to make sense of the rat's nest of linedefs that an over-detailed map can leave you to sift through. I figure if players really want every last pointless visual detail they can just use iddt or open the map in a level editor, so I decided it would be more of a courtesy to give them a to-the-point view.

Edited by StarTanned

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I don’t care for smooth weapon animations. They look unnatural. The choppier frames of the original game feel more realistic and are less distracting to the eye. 

Edited by Fiber Wire

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15 hours ago, Klear said:

Better - tilt your head and cross your eyes to look at both corners of the screen at the same time, then uncross them.

Like this?

Näyttökuva (103).png

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