Unpopular Doom Opinions

[fruity lerlups]

40 minutes ago, MoiraHeart said:

Still have to use conveyor trickery in MBF, or am I missing something?

yes and no, iirc you can dehacked icon of sin monster spawner points to do spawn in stuff. For the most part though is conveyor belt stuff really that bad?

[ReaperAA]

7 hours ago, roadworx said:

it's funny that you say that while being a fan of hexen :p

 

Unpopular opinion. Hexen rules! :)

[NeoWorm]

8 hours ago, roadworx said:

it's funny that you say that while being a fan of hexen :p

 

Vanilla HeXen as a whole game is kinda meh, I have no problem admitting it. Too few weapons, too obtuse levels, "one fifth of a puzzle finished somewhere maybe". But hell the game has a style...

[MoiraHeart]

3 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

yes and no, iirc you can dehacked icon of sin monster spawner points to do spawn in stuff. For the most part though is conveyor belt stuff really that bad?

It's not that bad, but it's rather cryptic, especially when coming from most other engines, where triggers work out of the box. I started mapping for UDMF simply because it's easier to adjust after GoldSrc.

[Super Mighty G]

On 12/26/2023 at 6:08 PM, nathanB404 said:

I was being generous lol. I'd say eternal is a solid 7/10 experience. Didn't want the eternal bots to be clutching their pearls and have their doom eternal undies in a twist lol. How anyone like underthec*mbucket could praise eternal to the high heavens is something I don't understand. Eternal is a janky, confused mess. The people outright defending the marauders flawed design are in denial that he just completely sucks. And I hope to never see another demon variant like that ever again in a doom game. I fear ID are going to listen to people like inderthemayo and the other doomtubers who blindly praise this game to death. As it will give ID more insensitive to deviate from the og doom formula of just shooting demons, into this over complicated monstrosity of just shit game design. I've seen this shit happen to cod zombies. And now my doom is becoming this over complicated shooter game that's all over the place with its gameplay and ideas. Doom eternal is NOT doom to me. It's Gen Z brain rot doom. It's not a bad game. Nor a mid one. It's good, but there's things within eternal that just aren't properly fleshed out or are just overall confusing or even outright BAD. I see what ID were going for with eternal, but at the same time this game should've had more time in the oven. Ffs blood punch was broken and buggy for a whole damn year. Let's just pray we NEVER get another Doom game like eternal. I just want to shoot demons and stuff.. 

 

Your opinion of Doom Eternal is all fine and good. I take issue with framing of other people's positive reception of it as wrong think though. These points also act like Doom has been changed or replaced. In case you haven't noticed, the Doom mod scene is stronger than it's ever been and shows no signs of slowing down. 

Edited January 5 by Super Mighty G

[The Doommer]

On 1/4/2024 at 3:51 AM, Kwisior said:

Don't forget health management.

I mean tbf the game is challenging enough to justify the need to have health drop from the enemies.

Tho classic Doom also had a lot of placements for 1+ health items

 

But yeah the exploration giving you more tools/items would have been a solid idea

 

12 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

I remember being able to icebomb, flamebelch and then bloodpunch a crowd of demons 8 times in Doom 2

Bloodpunch was compensation for the normal punch not doing shit in DE

And honestly, I don't see why having more tools to fight demons with is bad in DE

Yeah Doom 1/2 only allowed you to use the chainsaw/punch mix as the one with effectively infinite ammo

But stun-locking enemies with the chainsaw wasn't weak in the classics either (except in the boss fights)

 

12 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

because ammo is the only resource management that matters.

I mean you mentioned ammo management, so that was the response.

I don't remember going low on all ammo in Classic Doom (I and II, Final Doom wasn't designed by id) even on UV

You always had enough ammo to keep going unless you wasted it intentionally.

 

Wolfenstein 3D on the other hand...

13 hours ago, Pechudin said:

Now I'm imagining sigma chad music with a floppy disc for the head and the gigachad guy.

The true final boss of Doom

 

On 1/3/2024 at 3:38 AM, SPACEDETECTIVE said:

They have way too much health and do way too much damage. I'm a terrible cyberdemon duelist so a lot of the time it feels like banging my head against the wall when fighting those big bastards. 

Most maps afaik will give you a BFG to deal with these beforehand

The exception in the classics would be E2M8

Also Cyberdreams, oh god...

[RICHIE B]

I always liked, and still do, Fortress of Mystery.

[Li'l devil]

I've just watched Doomkid's letsplay of Plutonia 3 by SilverMiner, and I think this wad is good in a hilarious way. It's so amateurish yet passionately made. I guess the author was very young when he made this? Because maps made by children are their own kind of art. I remember my very first maps (all of which are lost to time) were filled with all the coolest mapping tricks I could pull off, yet the actual level design was completely terrible and they had various out of place references.

[fruity lerlups]

maybe im a sadist but mappers should design maps with the intention that the player should die on the first time around, and have to retry a certain fight at least once, starting from map02 in a set at least. If I aint dyin', you ain't tryin'

[Li'l devil]

Maybe I'm a sadist, but mappers should design maps with the intention that they player won't be able to beat them.

[MoiraHeart]

I think mappers should design maps

[Super Mighty G]

Doom is a game

[roadworx]

doom

[Gibbitudinous]

I really don't care for wads like Eviternity, Ancient Aliens, or BTSX, which pick a couple specific limitations to stick to and proceed to go absolutely maximalist ham in every other respect, especially in terms of map size and complexity, like they're rebelling against the very concept of restraint despite being inherently tied to it.

 

Gorgeous to look at, a tiresome chore to actually play.

[Budoka]

Play Sunder, you'll definitely love it. (lol)

 

Seriously, though, I think you and I might be the ultimate opposites in terms of PWAD tastes...

Edited January 9 by Budoka

[ClumsyCryptid]

On 1/4/2024 at 10:31 PM, NeoWorm said:

 

Vanilla HeXen as a whole game is kinda meh, I have no problem admitting it. Too few weapons, too obtuse levels, "one fifth of a puzzle finished somewhere maybe". But hell the game has a style...

You have solved 1/96th of the puzzle on the Constable's Gate.

[fruity lerlups]

19 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Maybe I'm a sadist, but mappers should design maps with the intention that they player won't be able to beat them.

you cant deny that Halo Reach's ending is iconic

[Wo0p]

Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal 's graphical fidelty was way too high and an absolute waste of developer time and producer money. Doom Eternal is the greater sinner in this way because of how the gameplay evolved from 2016 to what it is today.

 

I sighed inwardly when the first trailers came out, literally facepalming at the design choice.

[Astar]

On 1/1/2024 at 3:32 AM, tamara mochaccina said:

The Hell Knight is husband material.
Nah, but really, the classic Hell Knight is my favourite Doom enemy.

Now we talkin'.

Because the Barons are my favorite enemies

[roadworx]

3 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

I really don't care for wads like Eviternity, Ancient Aliens, or BTSX, which pick a couple specific limitations to stick to and proceed to go absolutely maximalist ham in every other respect, especially in terms of map size and complexity, like they're rebelling against the very concept of restraint despite being inherently tied to it.

 

Gorgeous to look at, a tiresome chore to actually play.

now that's a proper hot take. a rather bewildering one that's nigh incomprehensible, but still one hell of a hot take.

 

only one of the three wads you mentioned comes even remotely close to fitting that description. yes, btsx does in fact limit itself to vanilla and all of its ridiculous quirks, and then it does in fact pulverize those limitations into a fine powder before snorting them by making gargantuan maps (in e2 anyways) that have all sorts of technical fuckery. pushing vanilla to its breaking point is kinda the whole point of it.

 

the other two wads that you mentioned are the ones that i really scratch my head over - why eviternity and ancient aliens of all wads? i mean, eviternity does have some long maps in there, but there's really only one truly massive map in the main 30 maps. ancient aliens even less so, because the vast majority of maps in that set are of medium length, with only a few longer ones for some variety. i suppose you could say they're complex in architecture and some of their gimmicks, but it's nothing that actively hinders anything. i suppose you could call them "complex", but most of their complexity comes in the form of interesting ways of structuring their maps, like with leave your sol behind. i don't see why unique gimmicks or interesting progression would be a hindrance to anyone's playing experience, though?

 

 

and then there's the claim that these are all, in your words, "rebelling against the very concept of restraint despite being inherently tied to it".

 

in the context of doom, i would say that the only one truly doing that would be btsx. as stated previously, the entire point of it is to limit itself and then push those limits as far as they can be pushed. with ancient aliens and eviternity though...huh?? unless you consider targeting boom-based source ports to be tying yourself to restraint (which, when considering the small little itty bitty fact that they remove limits, would be a bit goofy), then i fail to see how they do that. everything that they do is pretty in line with boom and mbf, they just do it in unique ways that haven't been seen before their release is all.

 

also, why would you be in the doom community if you weren't okay with breaking down limits? we've been doing that for 30 years now lol

Edited January 9 by roadworx

[Ravendesk]

4 minutes ago, roadworx said:

everything that they do is pretty in line with boom and mbf, they just do it in unique ways that haven't been seen before their release is all.

Totally derailing, but what exactly do you mean here?

[Average]

On 1/2/2024 at 10:32 PM, LightningBoltForever said:

 

Interesting, I was actually just in the middle of writing about this very thing for a video lol

Ooh nice.  Keep us (me) informed.  I'm intrigued to hear a different take from the usual "OMG B00by Pr!nz G0d" narrative.

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, Ravendesk said:

Totally derailing, but what exactly do you mean here?

i mean, this can be interesting to discuss and is a nice reprieve from all the terrible opinions in this thread, so i doubt anyone will mind :p

 

what i mean by that is that all the aspects that people typically associate with the wads are composed of elements that have been done a million times before in both boom as well as in some vanilla wads. it's just that they've been arranged in a way that was new at the time. take the ufos from ancient aliens for example: they're an iconic part of the wad that, when ancient aliens first released, blew people's freakin minds (i would know, i was there!! *shakes fist at cloud*). while there was definitely an aspect of "omg how did they do that aaaaAAAA" to it all, i think that a larger part of it was that it was something completely different, something that none of us had ever seen done before in the game. it's creative usage of midtextures, ceilings, and teleporters, something that has been done loads in the past and doesn't push any limits, done in a new way.

 

plus, we had already seen flying ships and gone into them before as well. equinox would be a prime example of that, and that's a vanilla wad. if vanilla can do it, then boom can absolutely do it with not a single limit pushed. now, you absolutely could argue that they helped push the limits of what people thought could be done in the medium...buuut that involves historical context of the time of their release, which i have a strong feeling that @Gibbitudinous is not, in fact, talking about :p

Edited January 9 by roadworx

[Maribo]

23 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Maybe I'm a sadist, but mappers should design maps with the intention that they player won't be able to beat them.

3 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

you cant deny that Halo Reach's ending is iconic

noescape.wad by El Inferno is of interest to both of you, maybe some others as well.

[Grungo]

Episode 1 is boring, me hear all time about how "yo dude episode 1 is the most well crafted doom level set ever, I think it's the most balanced" but the levels feel samey with the limited weapons, textures and enemies" Me prefer episode 2, since it's a mix of hell and techbase

[baja blast rd.]

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. 

[AD_79]

^ I read more or less this exact piece of advice when it was posted elsewhere a little while ago, and it is a huge part of why I'm still trying to map at all in 2024. Thank you. Some people become incredibly critical and harsh when it comes to individual maps, especially ones that don't stand out much on their own, which in turn makes me overly self-conscious and steers me away from creating. Slowly learning to consider the greater whole, as opposed to seeing each new map in isolation and straining to make it the best it can be, has been seriously beneficial.

[treulosetomate]

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

[roadworx]

that's like half the opinions in here

[Antroid]

How about this hot take, to bring the thread back on track. I completely avoid wads that play like doom, but deviate too far from what I personally consider the doom vibe in looks and atmosphere. Total conversions are fine by me, but the same doom gameplay without the familiar doom atmosphere does not appeal to me.