What are some common mistakes that just completely spoil a map?

[Ashurion Neonix]

Whether it's an inescapable area or a hidden item cache that should really be considered a secret, what are your most despised mistakes or tropes that absolutely p*** you off.

For me, it's missing textures. Nothing is more annoying than seeing a HOM in an accessible area.

[Arrowhead]

Insufficient radsuits for VERY nukage heavy areas...

[Kore]

unavoidable hazards, especially when you're low on health

[Grazza]

Invalid tags do the trick rather well.

[Devalaous]

A surprise icon of sin fight in a non-map 30,especially when it's at the end of a long map

[DRM-MAN]

Artificial difficulty, just putting revenants, mancubi, and chaingunners doesn't make it hard, it's just bad monster progression.

[baja blast rd.]

If you lumped every single type of mistake out there into one mistake -- call it The Mistake -- the combined frequency still wouldn't register it as a "common" mistake that "completely spoils maps." There are not enough completely spoiled maps to support that possibility unless you subsist on idgames shovelware and Maximum Doom. Weirdly hyperbolic thread premise here. 

 

The chief offenders are basically just Terrywads and cases of "doesn't work in advertised source port." 

 

3 hours ago, Ashurion Neonix said:

Nothing is more annoying than seeing a HOM in an accessible area.

 

*glances at OP* 

Edited January 29, 2021 by rd.

[PeterMoro]

Unavoidable item / health pickups. I hate that. 

 

Also, having to fight more that imps / former humans with a pistol at the start of a level. That sucks.

[Xaser]

A quick aside: if you're a new or relatively new mapper, or otherwise "in the market" for ideas on how to improve your maps, you are best off ignoring this thread (and others like it) in its entirety. You're never gonna please absolutely everyone out there, and "pet peeves" spam threads like these tend to collect a lot of strange or extremely-niche opinions that are best tossed into the bin. You'll drive yourself absolutely mad trying to use this as a checklist of "what not to do"; don't try it! Find your voice through constructive means.

[Pseudonaut]

If a map annoys no one, it's probably just boring.

[Stupid Bunny]

28 minutes ago, Xaser said:

A quick aside: if you're a new or relatively new mapper, or otherwise "in the market" for ideas on how to improve your maps, you are best off ignoring this thread (and others like it) in its entirety. You're never gonna please absolutely everyone out there, and "pet peeves" spam threads like these tend to collect a lot of strange or extremely-niche opinions that are best tossed into the bin. You'll drive yourself absolutely mad trying to use this as a checklist of "what not to do"; don't try it! Find your voice through constructive means.

 

This is actually a really good point, and I think one of the challenges of being a mapper is recognizing what are legitimate failings in a map, versus what are things simply not to someone's liking.  Some people absolutely cannot stand really long maps; for others there is nothing more exultant than to play and beat an epically large map.  Many people despise slaughtermaps; and yet they still keep coming, because a lot of other people can't get enough of them.  Hell, look at the endless three-decade argument about whether Sandy Petersen's maps are total ugly shit or whether they're actually varied and exciting works of creative genius that beat out Romero's polished but more samey ones.  There are limits to this logic, of course: if literally everyone who plays your map complains that your vision of fighting 600 barons with nothing but a pistol is tedious and uninteresting, then it's probably time to think about what actually makes a map fun.  But you still gotta be ready to take any and all notes given you with a grain of salt, resist the urge to pander to every single suggestion anybody gives you and stay true to your creative vision.

 

All that said, I'll usually ragequit any map where I can get 90% of the way through its sprawling expanse, only to get stuck in an inescapable death pit with 32-high walls that I barely even noticed, let alone would've guessed is impossible to get out of.  That shit just isn't fair imo.

[Grain of Salt]

Really annoys me when a map doesn't have any viles, damaging floors, slaughter gameplay, forced pickups, inescapeable pits or misaligned textures

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Here's a short list of several things that can sour my thoughts about a map:

1 - Not enough health, armour and/or ammo, even for HMP difficulty. (HMP was rarely brutal in regular DooM/DooM II).

2 - Radiation Shielding Suits being ignored altogether despite me needing to run across slime pits several times to finish a map.

3 - Regular shotgun vs Hell Knights.

4 - People thinking Revenants, Barons and Archviles are mid-tier (Archie is quite literally borderline boss tier) and spam them without warning.

5 - People being rather stingy with higher tier weapons. I know rocket launcher, plasma rifle and BFG are strong but they're all handy in their own ways to make a map less tedious to complete. (and it helps with my crippling plasma rifle addiction... >w>)

6 - Pointless switch hunting. I don't wanna have to go around 10 minutes worth of map because I accidentally missed a switch that might as well reveal a secret when it's that weirdly placed.

7 - Lack of good landmarking in level designs. One thing I'm trying to force myself to do is start landmarking my maps so people go "Oh! the red key! I remember seeing a red door in the tan room with the blue water pool!" or "A-ha! A switch! That might open up the door in the central silver room!".

[Dubbag]

Too much focus on visual detail instead of actual game play. You can have the nicest looking most fancy map ever and if it plays like shit then it's all for nothing.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Dubbagdarrel

[Kore]

I really hate when "details" get in the way of movement. Bumping into metal supports when fighting monsters in close quarters is maddening.

[Egg Boy]

1 hour ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

4 - People thinking Revenants, Barons and Archviles are mid-tier (Archie is quite literally borderline boss tier) and spam them without warning.

you're right, revenants are actually low tier and can be taken out with 4 shotgun shots!

[Murdoch]

Forgetting that you as the mapper know where everything is, so you are going to find it easy, and adjusting the difficulty accordingly.

[Stupid Bunny]

12 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

you're right, revenants are actually low tier and can be taken out with 4 shotgun shots!

 

I feel like revenants occupy this weird tier of their own where they're pretty easy to kill, with their fairly low HP (although still twice the pinky's) and high pain chance, but also have a really nasty and powerful attack that can make them quite deadly in a lot of situations.  This is why slaughtermaps like to spam them, they're easy enough to kill while also forcing you to keep moving and not let down your guard.  

[Martin Howe]

8 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Here's a short list of several things that can sour my thoughts about a map:

...

This basically (quote snipped for brevity)

 

6 hours ago, StupidBunny said:

I feel like revenants occupy this weird tier of their own where they're pretty easy to kill, with their fairly low HP (although still twice the pinky's) and high pain chance, but also have a really nasty and powerful attack that can make them quite deadly in a lot of situations.  This is why slaughtermaps like to spam them, they're easy enough to kill while also forcing you to keep moving and not let down your guard.  

Which is why I do not like them, I much prefer stealth and ambush against monsters

 

These are personal preferences; however for breaking immersion in reality there's nothing like hitscanners on tall pillars and ledges where you think 'how the heck did they get there' and you cannot pick up their ammo when you've killed them (unless the mod supports some form of flying). Revenats for this too, but just because they're annoying, at least they don't leave goodies you now can't pick up.

[MFG38]

Really obtuse secrets - especially ones that are mandatory for progress.

 

*glares at Memento Mori MAP04*

[baja blast rd.]

11 hours ago, StupidBunny said:

I feel like revenants occupy this weird tier of their own where they're pretty easy to kill, with their fairly low HP (although still twice the pinky's) and high pain chance, but also have a really nasty and powerful attack that can make them quite deadly in a lot of situations.  This is why slaughtermaps like to spam them, they're easy enough to kill while also forcing you to keep moving and not let down your guard.  

 

The main reasons they are used so often in slaughtermaps specifically are: 

 

1) small hitbox;

2) when the player is forced to move in a pathed fashion, e.g. a figure-eight, the revenant essentially has two separate, collaborating attacks -- a homing missile that keeps the player moving, and a straight-line projectile that intercepts the player's movement across that path.

 

Speed synergy with archviles is also a minor factor. 

Edited January 30, 2021 by rd.

[dew]

When there is a map, but there is not a berserk.

[Archanhell]

A friend told me about this certain problem that a few WADs he played, including FreeDoom, had - and that is using arrow indicators to tell you where you have to go in a map, and even more when that arrow is not even useful because it leads to an area you can not access to yet.

This is basically bad game/map design and shows off many issues from the one who made that map.

 

 

[Permanent]

Repeat cramped spaces. Doomguy runs at a fast pace so giving him no space to run just ruins the map.

[Ichor]

No exit.

[dzareg]

I dislike very long maps, unless is has lots of action

 

[Argent Agent]

Maps with inescapable pits (good thing for rocket jumping in ZDoom).

Maps that softlock easily (more frequent in multiplayer than they should be).

Excessive Zombieman/Imp usage.

 

Maps with traps that are easily broken/defeated by abusing doors/lifts/geometry.

 

Maps with traps that the player can just run away from.

[NuMetalManiak]

I guess I'll point out forced arena fights again, the ones that lock you in and have you fight waves of enemies. In theory these work fine as long as the horde you fight takes the right amount of time to defeat before you're able to move on. But some of those triggers take longer and the waiting game spoils things. You then are left guessing if there's another wave or if or if something else could happen. It's why I prefer more open-ended slaughter.

[Kokoro Hane]

Unless done for comedic reasons, definitely misaligned textures, specifically door textures. It's understandable when mapping you may accidentally miss a few things you need to align, but when it's very obvious and everywhere, then that's a bit of a problem haha. 

[Grain of Salt]

On 1/30/2021 at 3:44 PM, dew said:

When there is a map, but there is not a berserk.

 

"Withholding the berserk is deliberate" - alternate universe dew