Unpopular Doom Opinions

[jazzmaster9]

15 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

The experience of a mapset as a whole is as important as the individual maps in isolation. Think of a novel: it's a story that is divided into chapters, but the chapters are mostly units to aid organization. Mapsets can be thought of in a broadly similar way. (Even grab-bag community projects and anthologies, where every map is only loosely related, are ultimately about the whole experience if you're going to play them start to finish.)  

People naturally get this when they're playing through wads to play them, because they're experiencing mapsets as an unbroken chain without fixating too much on any individual map. But some critical formats (like the map-a-day pace of the DWMC, or placing a megawad's maps individually on tier lists like I noticed today in one Discord server) sometimes cause people to hyperfocus too much on whether single maps, in isolation, are as good and interesting as they can possibly be, rather than thinking about how they tie into the whole. Sometimes a small nondescript pacer map (rather than even a small pacer map with a unique hook or concept) is exactly what a mapset needs most at a particular point. 

 

One way to be better at thinking about the whole in "single map" critical formats is to devote space to both individual-map commentary and "how this meshes and ties into the rest" commentary. And even in a first playthrough, you can comment on how a map relates to what came before. 

Every one complains about megawads being "everyone just makes magnum opuses" then turn around and complain that one map isn't as grand or as creative as this other well known/seasoned mapper's contribution a few maps back. Not everything needs to reinvent the wheel to be good.

Edited January 10 by jazzmaster9

[baja blast rd.]

2 hours ago, treulosetomate said:

Judging by the ratings, this doesn't seem to be an unpopular opinion at all.

 

Well that's not a good way to do it lol.

[Smith Weston]

Me personally, my unpopular DOOM opinion is that I find Duke Nukem to be a more fun game.

[DankMetal]

2 minutes ago, Smith Weston said:

Me personally, my unpopular DOOM opinion is that I find Duke Nukem to be a more fun game.

Why it's always the users with a wario pfp the most based humans on earth?

[Smith Weston]

Just now, DankMetal said:

Why it's always the users with a wario pfp the most based humans on earth?

I'm just keeping the bastards honest, that's all.

[ReaperAA]

10 minutes ago, Smith Weston said:

Me personally, my unpopular DOOM opinion is that I find Duke Nukem to be a more fun game.

 

Finally a real unpopular opinion

Spoiler

One that I agree with...
 

Spoiler

...Until we include the community content :D

 

 

[yakfak]

people praised hazmat hazama and then ignored it. should've been like a cultural reset with major effects on mapping tendencies imo

Edited January 10 by yakfak

[realjohnmadden]

Slaughtermaps are nothing more than a pretty level with 2000 Archviles and BFGs. "lul its a  combat puzzle you need the startegy" my ass, there's no strategy in holding down left click while running over ammo pickups because the level designer couldn't be arsed to make a proper finale and instead drowned the player in Revenants and ammo pickups to deal with said Revenants. If your map takes an hour to UV-max or has more than 250 enemies, you are not making a map, you are making a shooting gallery.

[Shepardus]

18 minutes ago, realjohnmadden said:

If your map takes an hour to UV-max or has more than 250 enemies, you are not making a map, you are making a shooting gallery.

TIL Doom II has only 31 maps because Map 10 has over 250 enemies.

[Budoka]

56 minutes ago, realjohnmadden said:

Slaughtermaps are nothing more than a pretty level with 2000 Archviles and BFGs. "lul its a  combat puzzle you need the startegy" my ass, there's no strategy in holding down left click while running over ammo pickups because the level designer couldn't be arsed to make a proper finale and instead drowned the player in Revenants and ammo pickups to deal with said Revenants. If your map takes an hour to UV-max or has more than 250 enemies, you are not making a map, you are making a shooting gallery.

Killing a puny 250 enemies takes you an entire hour?! Anwyay, the vast majority of slaughtermaps won't let you get away with that basic approach. Relative to the whole, the legitimately mindless one are the exceptions.

[fruity lerlups]

1 hour ago, realjohnmadden said:

Slaughtermaps are nothing more than a pretty level with 2000 Archviles and BFGs. "lul its a  combat puzzle you need the startegy" my ass, there's no strategy in holding down left click while running over ammo pickups because the level designer couldn't be arsed to make a proper finale and instead drowned the player in Revenants and ammo pickups to deal with said Revenants. If your map takes an hour to UV-max or has more than 250 enemies, you are not making a map, you are making a shooting gallery.

post your single segment UV maxes of famous slaughter levels and then we'll consider your opinion, until then it just sounds like cope either because you dont enjoy them or youre not good at them.. or both.q

[yakfak]

aside from the "archviles and bfgs" bit it sounds more like a take-down of prestige mainstream cacoward gaming lol

 

edit: my post looks insane, what I meant was that a lot of the most popular and comparably-accessible wads of recent times feature lots of combat in beautiful arenas whereas a lot of slaughter can have speedmapped or meme-y presentation. and that there's less of a difference between eviternity and abandon than there is between either of those things and doom 1 styled techbase or dungeon mapping

Edited January 10 by yakfak

[Maribo]

re: "This post has lots of likes, it can't possibly be an unpopular opinion" and similar statements
This thread serves little more purpose than to act as a containment thread for low effort Hot Take(tm) discourse, so it's not surprising that the (increasingly rare) well-thought out posts get a mountain of likes (even if they're not actually "unpopular") in comparison to the 1000th expression of "I actually like E3" or "E1 is boring" or "Slaughter is all looks and no gameplay" or "Platforming in Doom is terrible" or "Sandy is actually a good mapper" or "I don't like modern Doom". Most of those regularly expressed "unpopular" opinions aren't unpopular either, as would be evident from a few minutes of research, but it's way more important to pump that post count and insist that Doom That I Don't Like Isn't Actually Doom, or whatever.

 

Anyway, something halfway on-topic: it would be cool to see more mapsets created with the specific intention of being played with gameplay mods. This is really only a thing with Supercharge and there's also a handful of loose Brutal Doom / Project Brutality stuff floating around, but I don't think I've seen people make stuff for like... High Noon Drifter, or specific Final Doomer classes. Maybe these exist and I'm just unaware, though.

[DoomGater]

DOOM can be so boooring: enter map bangbangbangbang exit nextlevel bangbangbangbang exit nextlevel bangbangbangbang exit nextlevel blah blah blah

Where are the chicks???

[MoiraHeart]

1 minute ago, DoomGater said:

Where are the chicks???

Boy do I have a gameplay mod for you

[MoiraHeart]

7 hours ago, Maribo said:

Anyway, something halfway on-topic: it would be cool to see more mapsets created with the specific intention of being played with gameplay mods. This is really only a thing with Supercharge and there's also a handful of loose Brutal Doom / Project Brutality stuff floating around, but I don't think I've seen people make stuff for like... High Noon Drifter, or specific Final Doomer classes. Maybe these exist and I'm just unaware, though.

A caveat of making gameplay mod focused mapset is utilizing the mod's features in a unique way; else there's no reason to make it locked to a specific mod, which I imagine would be especially challenging with Final Doomer as its classes are pretty much side-Doomguys.

I've been meaning to do a La Tailor Girl episode for a while, but I've yet to come with creative ways of presenting its mechanics through mapping.

[roadworx]

11 hours ago, realjohnmadden said:

Slaughtermaps are nothing more than a pretty level with 2000 Archviles and BFGs. "lul its a  combat puzzle you need the startegy" my ass, there's no strategy in holding down left click while running over ammo pickups because the level designer couldn't be arsed to make a proper finale and instead drowned the player in Revenants and ammo pickups to deal with said Revenants. If your map takes an hour to UV-max or has more than 250 enemies, you are not making a map, you are making a shooting gallery.

this is such a stupid take that it genuinely reads like something you'd see in a youtube comments section. good job :)

[Wo0p]

6 minutes ago, roadworx said:

this is such a stupid take that it genuinely reads like something you'd see in a youtube comments section. good job :)

 

So is this.

 

It's a difference of opinion, man. I can relate to the post you refer to, for instance. But I will agree its kinda reductionist. 

[Super Mighty G]

My biggest gripe is that slaughter maps seem get so much of the extravagant level geometry. 

[NoOne]

25 minutes ago, Super Mighty G said:

My biggest gripe is that slaughter maps seem get so much of the extravagant level geometry. 

Hahahahaha

Hahaha

hahahaaa

Mwahahahaha

 

Damn my sides hurt, glad I don't make/play normie maps :D

[fruity lerlups]

1 hour ago, Super Mighty G said:

My biggest gripe is that slaughter maps seem get so much of the extravagant level geometry. 

play then in hmp or itytd or something if you want to suck in the atmosphere without the gameplay, no one is forcing you to play them on UV.

["JL" was too short]

2 hours ago, Super Mighty G said:

My biggest gripe is that slaughter maps seem get so much of the extravagant level geometry. 

This is... not at all true in my experience?  Like yes, the best-loved slaughter maps often look good (I'm assuming that's what you mean by "extravagant", even though technically one can have "extravagant level geometry" that looks like dog vomit) but it's never seemed to me like they take up a disproportionate amount of the good-looking map releases.

[Super Mighty G]

50 minutes ago, fruity lerlups said:

play then in hmp or itytd or something if you want to suck in the atmosphere without the gameplay, no one is forcing you to play them on UV.

I rarely play on UV these days and I'd rather spend time playing mapsets not of that style.

 

8 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

This is... not at all true in my experience?  Like yes, the best-loved slaughter maps often look good (I'm assuming that's what you mean by "extravagant", even though technically one can have "extravagant level geometry" that looks like dog vomit) but it's never seemed to me like they take up a disproportionate amount of the good-looking map releases.

Maybe that is so. My sample size isn't very large so my perception is skewed perhaps. 

[roadworx]

3 hours ago, Wo0p said:

 

So is this.

 

It's a difference of opinion, man. I can relate to the post you refer to, for instance. But I will agree its kinda reductionist. 

a simple difference of opinion would be to say that he doesn't like slaughtermaps for x and y reasons, which would be perfectly fine; there's tons of reasons not to like them, from thinking many of them are too frustrating or sloggy to preferring more traditional doom maps. instead, he's very specifically claiming that they all suck because there's "no strategy" (which is false), shitting on the mappers who make them (which is scummy), and then reducing them down to a "shooting gallery" (which is arrogant). if you're gonna not like slaughtermaps then that's understandable, but at least don't be an asshole about it, y'know?

[Maribo]

^ This is another reason why this thread is just a void to shout into, many of the "opinions" are just misconceptions or preconceived notions, or in some cases might even branch out into outright delusions. People come in primed to frustration-post because whatever they played 10 minutes ago pissed them off to the point where they felt like they should insult the maps or the mapper(s) because something "wasted their time" or "wasn't fair" or "had no strategy" or "isn't Doom" -- just take your pick, you have 43 pages of posts and you won't struggle at all to find even more examples.

 

Perhaps the biggest news flash of the century: genres in Doom are incredibly diverse between each other and within themselves. Even just talking from the slaughter angle, have you considered minimalist micro-slaughter? Kawaii void slaughter? Larger than life glistening cave slaughter?   Fuck your personal space slaughter? Somehow, I doubt it.

[Wo0p]

4 hours ago, roadworx said:

a simple difference of opinion would be to say that he doesn't like slaughtermaps for x and y reasons, which would be perfectly fine; there's tons of reasons not to like them, from thinking many of them are too frustrating or sloggy to preferring more traditional doom maps. instead, he's very specifically claiming that they all suck because there's "no strategy" (which is false), shitting on the mappers who make them (which is scummy), and then reducing them down to a "shooting gallery" (which is arrogant). if you're gonna not like slaughtermaps then that's understandable, but at least don't be an asshole about it, y'know?

 

Absolutely agreed. Don't be an asshole about it. If you had replied with THIS message to the original, I wouldn't have pointed you out.

 

Anger begets more anger and makes the world even dumber and wastes everyone's time. And if I post something similar in the future I hope YOU will point ME out. We ought to remind each other :)

Edited January 11 by Wo0p

[GermanPeter]

On 1/10/2024 at 10:18 AM, Smith Weston said:

Me personally, my unpopular DOOM opinion is that I find Duke Nukem to be a more fun game.

I agree partially. I don't think it's more fun, but it's aged better, same as Blood and presumably Shadow Warrior (gameplay-wise).

I don't think that Doom 1 or 2 are able to stand out against any of them. They have their good moments, but are far too basic.
Doom 64 on the other hand definitely is able to be on the same level as Duke or Blood. Better graphics, better audio, better combat encounters, better wepaons and enemies. The main issue that game has is how cryptic progression is, which drags the experience down. But the rest is really good.

[Ozcar]

On 1/10/2024 at 1:18 AM, Smith Weston said:

Me personally, my unpopular DOOM opinion is that I find Duke Nukem to be a more fun game.

Better soundtrack, level design? I agree
Better combat gameplay? Sorry, but I disagree.

Edited January 11 by Ozcar

[yakfak]

lifts aren't boring

killing all the enemies before you go up the lift is boring!!!!!!!

[Li'l devil]

I think Doom wiki on Fandom is better!