why is plutonia's difficulty so overstated?

[roadworx]

whenever plutonia is brought up, i always notice that a lot of people seem to regard it as some sort of brutally difficult, unfair levelset that's for masochists only. but...it really isn't? i just recently played through it on uv, and while it's absolutely not easy, it's honestly not as bad as it's made out to be other than a few specific areas. i was actually a bit underwhelmed - i'd heard about how it's hard af, and while that may have been the case 25 years ago, it's really not that bad anymore. and i really don't see myself as that great of a player, so it's not like i'm just really good at the game or anything

 

so...why does its seemingly mythical status as being ridiculously hard persist to today?

[1Destro3456]

I guess because it's the hardest iwad 

[roadworx]

2 minutes ago, Reelvonic said:

because people like civvie tell children stuff like the diffuculty will fucking gangbang your sanity or something and they just repeat it because a youtuber said it

this has been a thing long before civvie was even doing videos tho

[BaileyTW]

My guess is that it's very widely known compared to other levelset, and known for being harder than Doom 2, and when anything is known for anything it's going to be overstated.

Also more recently probably because of the civvie video. Like the most known video on it so its opinions are going to be repeated

[continuum.mid]

It was hard in 1996, and it's still the hardest of the IWADs, because it was meant for experienced players while the others cater to casual players.

[out_of_service]

It’s because of all the angry bones.

[I Drink Lava]

It's hard for casuals and first-time players, but easy by the modern Doom community's standards. It's like comparing Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels with any ROM hacks or Mario Maker levels.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Because the massive use of chaingunners, arch-viles and revenants raises the difficulty pretty much instantly, but makes it very predictable. Sometimes the maps are very unfair. IMO TNT is better because of that.

 

I mean sure, Plutonia is cool, the level design is terrific, but the BS difficulty just makes it very meh (at least IMO)

Spoiler

I mean, of course, there are lower skills that make the wad a lot less difficult, but for me it's still a meh.

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Lol 6

[VoanHead]

I lurk around a lot here in these forums, I remember there was a thread way back before that talked about how Plutonia's gameplay was like. It was ultimately decided that it felt like it was Doom at its most arcadey-ish: short, punchy maps that can feel a bit cheap sometimes in the placement of enemies, but good fun nonetheless. I can understand why people think it's "brutally hard", if you don't anticipate the traps and have some sort of foreknowledge at least, you might get creamed. At the very least, I feel like Plutonia takes you out of comfort zone and forces you to be more bold.

[Demon of the Well]

If you play the game a lot, as time goes on you'll probably become more aware of the irony that, the more you play, the progressively less relatable (and relevant) your experiences and perceptions of what's 'normal' and what's 'balanced' and things like that become to the majority of other people who also play the game in some capacity. C'est la vie.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Demon of the Well

[jazzmaster9]

54 minutes ago, Reelvonic said:

 civvie tell children stuff like the diffuculty will fucking gangbang your sanity or something

I don't see anything inaccurate about this.

 

As someone who has tried to finish Plutonia a few times, it really is THAT difficult especially Map 11 onwards.

Edited May 2, 2021 by jazzmaster9

[Catpho]

What dotw said. I also think it's better for people to go in thinking they just crushed a supossedly "difficult" wad, than being wrecked by something "easy".

[Shepardus]

It was quite challenging for its time, and it still is the most difficult of the IWADs. Additionally, Plutonia has a wonky difficulty curve; some of the hardest maps are in the first episode, but it doesn't get much harder from there. So if you're a new player just coming from Doom and Doom II, you're in for a rude awakening. Unless you already tried getting 100% kills on E4M1, in which case you should already be used to getting sodomized by demons.

[D4NUK1]

It's because Doomers says it's hard, that's the answer 

[Doomdude89]

I still rather play TNT than Plutonia

[Hawk of The Crystals]

If you're not playing plutonia like a cover shooter, you're doing it wrong, if you're still using garbage tank controls, it's gonna be hard.

In all seriousness, if you're an EpIc GaMeR, or even a 'doomer', you won't really have any issues with it besides some bullshitty deaths.

 

[BoxY]

It's because it's usually one of the first things new people play after they finish Ultimate Doom/Doom 2.

[DemonSlayer21]

1 hour ago, Reelvonic said:

civvie was just an example.

 

from someone who has beaten nuts on vannila with all kills

its not that hard

Bruh, I looked that up and downloaded. I can't even do anything because of the lag.

[Hawk of The Crystals]

6 minutes ago, DemonSlayer21 said:

Bruh, I looked that up and downloaded. I can't even do anything because of the lag.

You gotta give doom as much juicy cpu as possible if you wanna play nuts, and that means having a chonky cpu, basically like saints row 2 on pc.

[LadyMistDragon]

Its reputation proceeds it....I feel like while people that are outside the Doom community might have heard of Alien Vendetta and Back to Saturn X and such, in addition to seeing screenshots of Doom maps with hundreds of monsters on the screen, they don't necessarily know those WADs are a large or moderate jump in difficulty from Plutonia. They just don't have the full picture.

 

 

 

[P41R47]

As it been said, Plutonia is meant for experience players, still, even experience player suffered the unfair traps of some of the first maps.
After that, one kinda get that the whole mapset could be that way, and so it kinda become predictable, but still, some traps are unfair and nasty.

Also, as the maps are short, and pretty much if you are caught on a trap it means instant death, The Plutonia Experiment is somwhat like Doom: The Arcade Edition, where you progress by trying and failing, memorizing the areas that had traps or where difficult until you finaly complete it.
Thats why speedrunners and experience players love it, as they really like to try and repeat until they master it.

But for the average doom player, that kind of gameplay is kinda boring, and needing to repeat a map and gaining foreknowledge of whats gonna come, its not really fun.

 

Aside from that, its just the hardes IWAD, and just a little bit more beautiful in design to the original Doom 2.

Even when its a rip-off fest.

[omx32x]

because its the hardest iwad simple as that its probaly going to be a massive jump on difficult for a casual player that just wants to play all doom games just like how tag1 was a big surprise to people who though they were good at doom eternal

casuals arent going to play stuff like sunlust or no chance so the hardest thing classic doom related for the is plutonia that while not as hard as some pwads its still really hard for someone coming from doom 2 or tnt

[head_cannon]

Like others have said, it's mostly down to its history as an official expansion pack. The precision required to solve each of Plutonia's combat puzzles is entirely ordinary nowadays, but the mapset is much more demanding than id software's levels were, and that escalation makes it noteworthy for those who are working their way through the IWADs. I ended up really enjoying that increased focus on the nitty-gritty details of what the player & monsters are capable of (it taught me a lot about the fundamentals), but not everyone is willing to fail & try again so many times until it clicks. Plus, there's a lot of traps & setups which are pretty much guaranteed to be lethal the first time around. Plutonia expects you to get killed, then work backwards from there to figure out how not to get killed, and that's a different experience than how the base Doom 1 & 2 campaigns worked.

[Mayomancer]

I guess that's because being an official release gets a lot more people playing that rather than any other megawads that might be harder, and combined with it being really old by now created some sort of stigma over time

[Lucky_Edie]

Plutonia is hard, just not as hard as some people say. Certainly a spike for first time players after finishing doom2.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Lucky_Edie

[roadworx]

2 hours ago, BoxY said:

It's because it's usually one of the first things new people play after they finish Ultimate Doom/Doom 2.

 

1 hour ago, omalefico32x said:

because its the hardest iwad simple as that its probaly going to be a massive jump on difficult for a casual player that just wants to play all doom games just like how tag1 was a big surprise to people who though they were good at doom eternal

casuals arent going to play stuff like sunlust or no chance so the hardest thing classic doom related for the is plutonia that while not as hard as some pwads its still really hard for someone coming from doom 2 or tnt

 

1 hour ago, Mayomancer said:

I guess that's because being an official release gets a lot more people playing that rather than any other megawads that might be harder, and combined with it being really old by now created some sort of stigma over time

i'm assuming this is probably why. it's definitely far harder than any other official release (and it definitely is still hard, even if it's not the hardest thing ever), so it makes sense as to why it'd be notorious

[Asphalt]

4 hours ago, roadworx said:

whenever plutonia is brought up, i always notice that a lot of people seem to regard it as some sort of brutally difficult, unfair levelset that's for masochists only. but...it really isn't? i just recently played through it on uv, and while it's absolutely not easy, it's honestly not as bad as it's made out to be other than a few specific areas. i was actually a bit underwhelmed - i'd heard about how it's hard af, and while that may have been the case 25 years ago, it's really not that bad anymore. and i really don't see myself as that great of a player, so it's not like i'm just really good at the game or anything

 

so...why does its seemingly mythical status as being ridiculously hard persist to today?

 

Because Arch-Viles since level 1. XD

[Fairen]

Because insisting it's super-hard and masterfully-designed makes people feel like they're Hardcore for beating it.

 

Plutonia is the Dark Souls of Doom, and for once calling anything "the Dark Souls of [x]" is actually fitting.

[Omniarch]

I really like the arcade comparisons made by @P41R47 and @VoanHead, its a very succinct way of explaining Plutonia's design priorities.

 

I have a confession to make: I was once one of those 'Plutonia hard' types (shame on me!). That attitude persisted until I actually bothered to play further than the first three maps.

 

What I discovered is that, while most of the first dozen-and-a-half levels are pretty tough on first try, they actually tend to become pretty trivial once proper routing is established, doubly so since most maps, like the set itself, have a sort of inverted difficulty curve, starting with a boom and ending with a sigh.

 

I think the verticality and high player exposure present in many of Plutonia's maps add to the intimidation factor, since both tend to create a feeling of unease that is in part irrational. For example, when I first played MAP15: The Twilight, I feared the depths, and tried to play the level cautiously and slowly. This is the wrong approach.

 

After playing through it a few more times, I began to appreciate the ubiquitous pits as kind spaces, ready and willing to shelter me from the withering hail of bullets if only for a moment, in the process overcoming my instinctive fear of the 'below'.

 

Safety is also often found in rapid and precise movement, rather than behind cover, which is always a difficult pill to swallow for newer Doomers. Sure, reckless aggression will get you shredded in seconds, but excessive caution will yield only a slow, frustrating death by attrition.

 

In short, extensive map-knowledge and quick thinking/general game knowledge are required to master Plutonia, and the former has become a somewhat rarer requirement in more popular sets, with the latter being prioritized to improve first-time experiences. That's my observation, anyway.

[Biodegradable]

Admittedly, I still haven't played it because of its reputation as a ball-buster. Mind you, given I've been enduring a Baptism by Fire this past year playing nothing but community-made WADs, some of which are arguably harder, so I regret not playing Plutonia a couple months ago with the DWmegaWAD Club when it came around. It remains the only IWAD I haven't played yet and I should get around to it one of these days.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Biodegradable