Can't play slaughtermaps, especially on Nightmare

[dmslr]

I'll be honest, I suck at slaughtermaps, or even slaughter-ish maps. I'm trying to enjoy but can't force myself to appreciate them. Maybe because spamming fire button and endless circle strafing are not my things. But still, I want to get better at slaughtermaps. So, I have two questions:

1) Why do you enjoy them?

2) What are your tips and tactics to handle this amount of monsters?

Also, you can leave a few recommendations on slaughterwads that good for practicing.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

• Slaughterwads are generally a good way to hone/ultilizing your Doom skills, especially in movements and mechanics. There are countless maps out there that spam cybers and low-tier fodders excessively and force you to actually map out your battle plan, for instance.
• Recent slaughterwads have beautiful architecture design, most notably the Sun-series and the recently-released Abandon.

 

• Read Doom Movement Bible if you haven't already.
• Practice, practice, and practice. And watch demos from DSDA.
• Imo, cheats+ITYTD are encouraged - you could go through the map blindly the first time to check for and memorizing monster spawn points and overall map layouts; and then actually going through it. Or you can just fire up Doom Builder.
• This thread I started a long time ago might be helpful to you. It contains many interesting advices.

Also, quite a lot of people recommend Rush as a starting point.

Edited June 16, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Pseudonaut]

Slaughtermaps are not generally expected to be playable on Nightmare. Also, if the map is made well (e.g. it isn't nuts.wad) then there will be a lot more to it than just circle-strafing and BFG-spam, even if those tactics are likely to work in some cases and may be necessary for cleanup once the hard part of a fight is over.

To answer your questions,

1. I'm not very good at them myself, but I enjoy a good challenge and there are some easier slaughtermaps out there that I can play. Killing thousands of enemies and moving around in huge spaces is satisfying to me. As far as recommendations for easier slaughtermaps, Rush is a good choice. I also hear Newgothic Movement 1 is generous with ammo and powerups, but I haven't played most of it yet; map03 is the only one I've beaten without saves. That particular map involves a lot of BFG spam and circle strafing, but I still enjoyed it.

2. If you plan to beat a map without saves, it is helpful to play it with saves first, maybe even practice specific parts using those saves. In combat, depending on the situation, you may want to take full advantage of monster infighting. Or you may want to ignore what seems like an excellent opportunity for infighting and just starting killing shit as quickly as possible because you need space to survive.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Getting better at slaughtermaps has a lot to do with strategic thinking:

 

-What is the immediate threat I need to deal with? How is it positioned? What's the best way to deal with it?

-What is the sustained threat I need to deal with? How is it positioned? What's the best way to deal with it?

-Are there multiple phases in a certain fight? And do I need to find a setup to move from one phase to another safely?

-How do the previous points impact decision making with regards to strategies?

-And ultimately, what is the most reliable strategy to beat a fight, and which manner of movement pattern or infight manipulation does it demand?

 

34 minutes ago, dmslr said:

1) Why do you enjoy them?

If you need somebody else to tell what is enjoyable about slaughtermaps, then you probably shouldn't play them in the first place. You like them or you don't.

 

35 minutes ago, dmslr said:

2) What are your tips and tactics to handle this amount of monsters?

I don't look a 2 dozen revs as "OMG I need to now keep track of 24 monsters at once", I look at a pack of 24 revs as one unit with "magnitude X" and treat it as such.

 

If you play slaughtermaps reactively while trying to keep track of 100+ monsters, stop right there and get your priorities straight. Slaughtermaps are, from a strategical perspective, played proactively. Understand what the win condition is, understand what is between you and the win condition, figure out how to get it sorted out, and then focus primarily on sorting things out, rather than trying to pay attention to more things than your brain could ever hope to handle. It's all about knowing what's where and making decisions ahead of time. Play reactively, and you might get cornered real quick, because you're not following a plan.

 

Also, most slaughtermaps are not suited for NM difficulty. If they are it's usually a "happy accident" (like valiant map 31).

 

Here's a selection of maps to get you started, not that your OP inspires confidence in your perseverence:

 

[666shooter]

Honestly, I cannot understand why people recommend Rush as a good starting point for slaughtermaps. I gave it an honest try after completing various other slaughtermaps in classics such as AV, Scythe, and Deus Vult II, and found its approach to slaughter combat to be rudimentary and poorly laid out, with environments that were too small and cramped to provide the necessary area for avoiding and manipulating the hordes. To be fair, there may be a number of better maps in this set later on, but 3 was atrocious and 4 decided to present a wall of enemies with no means of tactical retreat, and I simply lost patience to keep trying. I hated slaughtermaps when I first began playing them, but after playing some of the better ones (AV's later maps and Valiant's Map 31, which is possibly my favorite slaughtermap thus far), I began to appreciate the style. I just wanted to post this since I constantly see people recommending Rush as an ideal entry point to the genre (maybe because the maps themselves aren't sprawling affairs?), but if you hate that approach to slaughter design like myself, there are a great deal of other maps that fit the genre to try, and you might end up finding something you like.

I would also strongly recommend Going Down, as it has an overall style that resembles the intensity of slaughter on a miniature scale, and several legitimate slaughtermaps around Map 20 and beyond that are very, very well designed and laid out.

[Nine Inch Heels]

4 minutes ago, 666shooter said:

Honestly, I cannot understand why people recommend Rush as a good starting point for slaughtermaps. I gave it an honest try after completing various other slaughtermaps in classics such as AV, Scythe, and Deus Vult II, and found its approach to slaughter combat to be rudimentary and poorly laid out, with environments that were too small and cramped to provide the necessary area for avoiding and manipulating the hordes. To be fair, there may be a number of better maps in this set later on, but 3 was atrocious and 4 decided to present a wall of enemies with no means of tactical retreat, and I simply lost patience to keep trying.

First off: Rush is a good point of entry because the WAD checks all the boxes that belong in the "solid fundamentals category", while not putting players up against +1 hour grinds like for example Sunder would do, especially the more recent maps are very lengthy and hard to digest. Smaller maps mean that the content is more digestible and doesn't feel as overbearing, while also giving newer players a more reasonable goal to work towards with regards to beating a map saveless.

 

So, either you gave it an "honest try", whatever that means in your lingo, or you gave up 4 maps into the set without even looking at the rest of them. Since you opted for the latter, I'd say you're lightyears away from an "honest try".

 

Also I have to laugh at the idea that map 04 gives you no "tactical retreat options", because one look at a demo on youtube shows me that players have all the options they need:

So I dunno what your problem is, but whatever issue it is that you're having with rush04, I fail to see it, and so do quite a few other players who know what they're talking about when it comes to slaughter. And while I'm at it: The kind of "spam" that you see during later maps in megawads like for example alien vendetta has very little to do with the more modern approach to slaughter, which is one of rush's stronger selling points, and valiant31, of all things, is so easy that it can be beaten on NM difficulty without even having to learn much of anything:

 

[Can't play on Nightmare]

Ahh somebody talks about Nightmare.

 

I did reserve my place on the tread.

[Good-Old]

10 minutes ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

Ahh somebody talks about Nightmare.

 

I did reserve my place on the tread.

Come on, you can't force people to talk about NM only in your thread.

Besides, the OP is talking mainly about slaughtermaps and some tips and tricks to tackle them.

[seed]

39 minutes ago, ZeroTheEro said:

In my opinion, go away.

 

at least OP had the intent on improving, not moaning about not being able to progress in NM.

 

Rude honestly, but personally? I gotta agree here.

 

I've been reading through your topics and so far all I've noticed is that you tend to circle jerk/repeat yourself in almost all your posts, complain about this or that, and generally they go absolutely nowhere. If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion, then might as well not post in the first place, no-one likes reading the same points constantly, it's frustrating, and people will start perceiving you as a troll in consequence.

 

As for OP, my advice would be simply to play various slaughter wads and maps, especially those that do implement skill settings (not all do, see Sunder), and see how your experience goes. Does the constant string of deaths bother you? Are you having fun tackling them? Does their general idea of combat appeal to you in some capacity? That's something only you can answer. We can all share our experiences and thoughts, but they won't help you much since it's something that you need to see for yourself and see what clicks, and what doesn't, and of course why that is. Indeed, like NIH put it, if you need others to answer these questions to answer for you, then perhaps slaughter isn't a genre that fulfills your desire for more Doom, or offering what you're looking for. Also yes, NM rarely ever works with slaughter maps, if they do, that's mostly by coincidence rather than by design.

 

I will also add they are mainly an acquired taste. They tend to be quite intimidating at first and you might find them very off-putting, but if they are for you, you'll eventually grow to appreciate them. Back when I originally played slaughter maps I hated them, but now I like them a lot, as I've learned to appreciate their concept and generally have fun finishing them. Are they for me though? Well, no, insofar as they appeal to a different demographic (Doom gods/very skilled players), one that I am not part of, but I still like and play them nonetheless, despite not being their target audience and dying a lot, seemingly endlessly sometimes.

Edited June 16, 2020 by seed

[Tango]

as others have mentioned, nightmare is ludicrous on many wads that aren't slaughter - I think playing nightmare on anything even remotely resembling slaughter is just inviting a bad time, and I very much doubt anyone balances their maps with nightmare in mind whatsoever. so don't feel bad about not being able to beat slaughter maps on NM :D

 

18 hours ago, dmslr said:

1) Why do you enjoy them?

 

I think this is a pretty valid question from someone that currently doesn't enjoy them but is still open to the idea to learning to. I don't really think it's fair (or helpful) to claim that asking this question precludes you from ever enjoying them.

 

for me, what I like most about slaughter maps is the challenge they provide. it's pretty rare for me to be able to beat a slaughter map on the first, or even first few, tries. so I have to go through the process of learning how to beat a particular map, and I really enjoy that. for me it's a very similar kind of enjoyment that I get from playing a competitive multiplayer game, except that my opponent is really the mapper, rather than other players. I'm forced to pay attention and learn from my mistakes, but that also means I can usually tell when I'm getting better at it.

 

here are some of the other (very generalized) things I tend to really enjoy about slaughter maps:

• scale and architecture are usually quite grand and pretty to look at
• difficult or high monster count encounters can often make a map with a much smaller area feel like more of a journey
• encounters are often constructed discretely; this sort of "string of arenas" setup is something I really like
• higher tier weapons are pretty common without trivializing fights

[dmslr]

Good answers. Thank you guys. I thought the Nightmare reference was obvious :)

[Tango]

8 hours ago, dmslr said:

I thought the Nightmare reference was obvious :)

 

well shit, I've been had