Unpopular Doom Opinions

[Azure_Horror]

49 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

My enduring unpopular opinion is that long maps can be the greatest most fun and spectacular adventures in Doom and that they are also why the game comes handily equipped with a nice save function

Sure, and I am inclined to agree.

 

That said, I have and enduring unpopular opinion of my own:

Short maps can the be Greatest Fun and the most Crisp Doom experiences! Also, such short maps are a reason, why the game offers you an one-button opportunity to restart the map after losing instead of a "Game Over!" screen and a trip to the main menu.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Azure_Horror

[Ravendesk]

3 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

Personally, I'd take mindless BFG spam over mindless (Super-)Shotgun spam any day of the week.

Similarly, I much prefer 15 minutes of running in cricles to 15 minutes of door-camping.

With running around, you at least get to see different parts of the room, you know...

 

Unpopular Opinion:

 

Weekly Slaughter arguments are over-rated!

We can have:

- weekly Tyson map arguments

- weekly Switch-Hunting arguments

- weekly Long maps arguments

- weekly unmarked secrets arguments

- weekly Plutonia-style maps arguments

- weekly Abstract map arguments

- weekly Over-detailed map arguments

Why is it always slaughter?

 

BTW, I volunteer to start a Tyson map complaining thread, or a Long map complaining thread, if there is an interest in those!

 

How about weekly iwad style maps arguments? I'll start.

 

Doom wads that exhibit iwad-esque design are not good gameplay, it sometimes works with clever monster placement as long as you have ample ammo and a strategy but it's almost always lazy and uninspiring and just about any amateur dev could accomplish by simple math and spamming the same imps and shotgunners enemy over and over again in a doom editor. Also, these select wads that are highly praised by Doom enthusiasts for great textures and level design should not be given a pass just because of those positive aspects. Many wads like DTWID, BTSC e1&2, D2ISO, Jenesis, the first episodes of both Scythe's, Alien Vendetta, and both Memento Mori's action just seems mindless. Holding down the shotgun fire and hoping for the best is essentially rolling the dice. Not fun at all.

 

That's such a poor generalization to what I described in detail. You don't even have an argument. It's just shotgunning imps over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until you want to smash your nuts in between your gaming laptop.

 

 

When I first played Map01 "Entryway" of Doom II almost burst into laughter because of how stupid it looked with these 2 zombies it sent after you when you made a sound and imp group that you have to kill when you pick up a shotgun to avoid getting clawed by it. And the level in TNT where your outside of building with a human bbq right next to you and hitscan enemies are positioned in rows in the walls is so bad. 

[Stupid Bunny]

@Azure_Horror That is a good point.

 

I guess the moral of the story is that Doom is structurally able to support a huge variety of mapping and playing styles and this is just another way that it manages that

[Azure_Horror]

9 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

@Azure_Horror That is a good point.

 

I guess the moral of the story is that Doom is structurally able to support a huge variety of mapping and playing styles and this is just another way that it manages that

Pretty much, yes.

 

And you know, what's terrifying?

On a less than pleasant day, this idea does look like an unpopular opinion in Doom community...

Edited March 29, 2023 by Azure_Horror

[yakfak]

doom is for masculine manly corridor shooting power fantasies. like the kind of activities a big tough marine boy would get up to. when the room's big i feel exposed and meaninglessss giggle

[Maribo]

5 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

- weekly Tyson map arguments

I can bitch to you endlessly about Tyson gameplay, but the difference is that I'm not going to insult the mapper for daring to make something that doesn't fit my perfect ideal of a Doom map. There are plenty of reasons why Tyson sucks, including but not limited to:
- Berserk Damage RNG being extremely wide and frustrating (2-3 punch imps are especially irritating)
- Chainsaw being a terrible weapon in general (doesn't 100% pain chance all monsters and is generally unwieldy with how it jerks you around)

- Infamous janky hit detection on Mancubi and Arachnotrons

 

But underneath the annoying bits of this is a unique style of gameplay that requires you to change how you approach Doom. There is little to no safety in range when adhering to a Tyson ruleset, you typically need to save bullets for perched/turret monsters or hitscanners, so you have to get up close and personal with the monsters. You need to know dodge patterns, you need to know how to bait a Revenant into trying to box you, you often need to generate infighting or herd monsters in ways similar to slaughter maps, the list goes on. I guess you could also say some total horseshit like "every tyson map is just mindless imp and pinky punching, you just hold down the fire button until they stop faceplanting into you and then you pull out your pistol and kill a bunch of hitscanners" or whatever, if you want to, but it would still be factually incorrect.

 

The point isn't that bitching about slaughter specifically is the bad part. I really don't care whether or not an individual person hates slaughter, or if you hate platforming, or if you think long maps are incompatible with Doom design, but it's such a joke to repeatedly insist that design that you don't like is somehow inherently inferior and born out of laziness. I don't often play big exploration-based maps because I rarely find that they can keep me engaged on a moment-to-moment level, but you don't see me jumping into this thread (or making a whole new thread) to exclaim that exploration-based maps don't "respect the player" or "just have you walking around looking for hidden switches for an hour". Why bitch about Sunlust, Stardate, SWTW, etc. as a whole and say that they're just BFG spam when you have so much evidence that they're not? You can go on YouTube and see people play these wads any time you want, but I guess people only watch videos of God Machine and Go Fuck Yourself and conclude that all of Sunlust is just like those maps. It's mind-boggling.

[indigotyrian]

On 3/25/2023 at 2:21 PM, CasualScrub said:

As time goes on I'm more and more convinced that Doom 2016 is going to age much better than Eternal. Gameplay that feels closer to the original games, not having to worry about multiple resources to manage, a much simpler and better conveyed story, more consistent artstyle, etc.

 

all the things people like about nu-doom are from 2016, basically nothing from eternal

[mrthejoshmon]

Some of Doom/Doom 2's original map design, especially when a certain someone ^{Sandy Petersen} made them, are lowkey kind of fucking terrible.

 

I haven't mentioned any maps because you already thought of them when you read that.

Edited March 29, 2023 by mrthejoshmon

[IncompA]

5 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Some of Doom/Doom 2's original map design, especially when a certain someone ^{Sandy Petersen} made them, are lowkey kind of fucking terrible.

 

I haven't mentioned any maps because you already thought of them when you read that.

Yeah, I'll be the guy to say it. I'll be the guy to break the silence.

MAP13 is one of, if not the worst commercial DOOM map ever created.

Bite me now.

[yakfak]

mindblowing to hear that someone doesn't like downtown after all this time
you've been so brave here

[taufan99]

46 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Some of Doom/Doom 2's original map design, especially when a certain someone ^{Sandy Petersen} made them, are lowkey kind of fucking terrible.

 

I haven't mentioned any maps because you already thought of them when you read that.

I thought this wasn't unpopular at all? Whatever happened to the consensus of E3M2 being the bane of mappers' existence?

[Mr. Alexander]

5 hours ago, treulosetomate said:

Here we go again. We just had a thread about this topic.

But I congratulate you for at least posting an actually unpopular opinion in this thread. :D

I'm not sure whether "slaughter good" or "slaughter bad" is the more popular position on the site or among the community at large, but I can see they're both passionate groups, and unfortunately for the slaughter dislikers, 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.

 

Anyway, I actually really like the corny 12-bar blues forms that Bobby Prince flogged to death in the original games' soundtracks, and wish more MIDI composers would try blues forms too, instead of avoiding them so as not to sound like the IWADs. I think closer knowledge of old jazz and blues tunes would help composers write better stuff for Doom just as well as closer knowledge of heavy metal or of other video game music.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

47 minutes ago, Mr. Alexander said:

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.

I'm pretty sure the only times demos are brought to question is as a response to somebody stating the problem isn't the difficulty and give examples/hints they haven't actually played the things they complain about. 

If you say a map is bad because it's a bfg spam, when there is no bfg, that is the problem. That's what people get angry about. Calling junkfood mindless bfg spam is fair game. Saying that is what you don't like is also fair game. 

[mrthejoshmon]

55 minutes ago, taufan99 said:

I thought this wasn't unpopular at all? Whatever happened to the consensus of E3M2 being the bane of mappers' existence?

You see, I thought it was the case as well, however it seems that over time people actually have shifted and are now very vocal about how great Sandy maps are, especially The Chasm of all things.

 

And when I say fucking terrible, I don't mean the usual "this map is bad" I mean genuine garbage that where I'd sooner suck shit through a straw then bother to slog through. The Chasm is something so vile to me that I imagine Marquis de Sade would sooner fuck it than I would play it.

[Sonikkumania]

When your health is on medium, Doomguy looks like Santiago from Los Serranos. 

[Doomkid]

6 hours ago, Ravendesk said:

When I first played Map01 "Entryway" of Doom II almost burst into laughter because of how stupid it looked with these 2 zombies it sent after you when you made a sound and imp group that you have to kill when you pick up a shotgun to avoid getting clawed by it.

When I read this line I DID burst into laughter! LOL amazing post.

 

3 hours ago, Maribo said:

I'm not going to insult the mapper for daring to make something that doesn't fit my perfect ideal of a Doom map.

Oh, I will though. Most Tyson mappers are BIG babies and they couldn't even beat up Mike Tyson. Freaking POSERS!!

[Noiser]

14 hours ago, Bernie said:

That's such a poor generalization to what I described in detail. You don't even have an argument.

Neither do you. "Lazy and uninspired" doesn't mean anything at all.

Most "slaughter bad" claims seems to be made of vague words or arguments that are just false, like the spamming BFG myth. So yeah "Hard = Bad" seems pretty accurate to me.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Noiser

[Liberation]

14 hours ago, Bernie said:

Like MtPain27 said, if finding a secret is mandatory to pass a level in a megawad, it sucks.

 

I'm not interested in joining the slaughter debate, but I will pick up on this comment.

 

If I personally make a map that is for an individual project, that has mandatory secrets to pass the level by design.. Then how does that suck?

If I enjoyed making the map and proud of the final result, then there isn't anyone on this planet that can tell me it sucks due to a design decision I have made and I'll give a fuck about their opinion.

I could give a list of mappers whose maps (or mapsets) I don't appreciate (you mentioned a fair few tbh). I could say those maps suck but they don't, I just don't appreciate them and that's the end of the matter really.

[DNSKILL5]

Hitscanners are easy to deal with and are over-exaggerated as being difficult. 
 

RNG is also over-exaggerated as making the game too challenging or unfair. RNG makes up for not being able to shoot specific parts of the enemy bodies to inflict precise damage to, by having it random it makes it feel more realistic that your shots may hit more vital areas and other times not.

[Codename_Delta]

5 hours ago, taufan99 said:

I thought this wasn't unpopular at all? Whatever happened to the consensus of E3M2 being the bane of mappers' existence?

E3M2 is good

[Azure_Horror]

7 hours ago, segfault said:

all the things people like about nu-doom are from 2016, basically nothing from eternal 

 

To be fair, Eternal did improve some of 2016's things. Master tokens are a brilliant idea. Runes are better balanced. Some enemies from 2016 are remade to be more interesting (revs finally got back their homing rockets, for example!). But eternal also included lots of completely new elements on top of that. And those elements proved to be kinda divisive.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Azure_Horror

[prfunky]

On 3/25/2023 at 11:15 PM, orangefire222 said:

DooM tastes good dredged in egg and flour, then deep-fried in oil until golden brown and crispy. Does anyone at all have that opinion? Can you eat intellectual property?

warning: thread derailment in process here...

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

Spoiler

 

 

[Human Being]

Zombiemen are worthless additions to DooM and bring nothing to the roster

Shotgunners are horrible. hitscan is dumb

fireblue > startan > everything

Pinkies are too bright

purists need to get over using mouselook. it's the future now. (I hate freelook)

I can't see those spectre things....

Ammo starvation is stupid. I don't want to think or manage resources while playing

Switches are stoopid - I should be able to use ESP to activate things

Revenants only send me 80 damage missiles or DooM64

Barons can fuckoff

Mappers always give too much ammo, health, and resources in general. fricking mappers. Amazing. How dare you not please every single player with your maps. OUTRAGEOUS!

Archvilles are cool. Period. Everything about them is perfect.

Why are lifts so slow? Why do lifts exist? Just TP me from a to b. EZ.

Mancs are fat and have too high of dps

agua

Chaingunners should be the only enemy in DooM. Then we could play challenging, non-slaughter, exciting, fair & balanced, blind-friendly red-screen gaming.

Also, what kind of a game only allows for straight lines and doesn't allow curves? The nerve of these game devs.

 

I like pizza.

[Egyptian Guardian]

2 hours ago, Liberation said:

 

I'm not interested in joining the slaughter debate, but I will pick up on this comment.

 

If I personally make a map that is for an individual project, that has mandatory secrets to pass the level by design.. Then how does that suck?

If I enjoyed making the map and proud of the final result, then there isn't anyone on this planet that can tell me it sucks due to a design decision I have made and I'll give a fuck about their opinion.

I could give a list of mappers whose maps (or mapsets) I don't appreciate (you mentioned a fair few tbh). I could say those maps suck but they don't, I just don't appreciate them and that's the end of the matter really.

The video where he said it was HR2 when he was playing on UV which I think is the most overrated wads in this forum. And what if the secret is so obscure that most people in the target demographic its tailored to who played couldn't even find it to pass the level?

[Shepardus]

21 minutes ago, Human Being said:

Chaingunners should be the only enemy in DooM. Then we could play challenging, non-slaughter, exciting, fair & balanced, blind-friendly red-screen gaming.

As a fan of Blood, I completely agree.

[Egyptian Guardian]

On 2/13/2023 at 2:16 PM, Geniraul said:

I think 32 levels worked well with the classic wads (Doom II, TNT, Plutonia), since these were the first ones, the beginning of the history.

 

And custom wads could benefit from making the gameplay experience somewhat shorter, say 20 maps like Italo Doom has. Cause one may find it quite fatiguing to play various 32 map megawads over and over again.

 

At the same time, a magnum opus like Doom Zero feels really entertaining to me; when I first played it, I wasn't tired even on the last map, despite the wad having 32 levels.

I'm at map 20 after that long ass map before it in Eviternity and I'm already starting to get bored.

[Klaesick]

I think the community's focus on Ultra-Violence as the main difficulty setting, in tandem with all new-blockbuster wads having a sort of "Social-contract" to be hard is rather dumb.
Ofcourse, I understand WHY this happened (The overall community has had 30 years to get better), and that Hard Mapsets Do have their place, and they should be allowed to exist and created.

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.

It feels less like "People play higher difficulties for fun" and more "People play higher difficulties for glory".
Sorry if this seem overall aggressive or something. I just need to get my thoughts out there.

Again, I'll say that most in this community don't act toxic about it! I'd compare it to a "subconscious" thing where most people just expect things to be hard without thinking about it.
I'm only criticizing because I love this game and it's community, I want to see y'all improve!

[baja blast rd.]

31 minutes ago, Klaesick said:

in tandem with all new-blockbuster wads having a sort of "Social-contract" to be hard

 

Why do you think mappers are not making what they enjoy? 

 

31 minutes ago, Klaesick said:

It feels less like "People play higher difficulties for fun" and more "People play higher difficulties for glory".

 

How do you know what other people are having fun doing? 

[Lucius Wooding]

There's no glory in playing UV unless you actually beat it. 

[7Mahonin]

I take people’s unpopular doom opinions so personally that I respond to any I don’t agree with with my popular doom opinion.