How to play faster?

[Zirtonic]

I've been putting a lot of effort lately to get better at DooM. Sampling a wide variety of WADs has exposed me to all kinds of encounters, set ups, and progressions, and I'm definitely better than I was, say, 3 months ago. My one sore spot however is my (lack of) speed. I am an extremely timid player, constantly double and triple checking every nook and cranny for potential traps or points-of-no-return. My current playstyle is a lot closer to survival horror than it is demonic run'n'gun and I'm looking for ways to remedy it. 

 

It's worth mentioning that I'm sure a lot of this is due to my self-imposed machismo standard, aka UV, pistol starts, and no saves 99% of the time, even for blind runs. I'm trying to get better at allowing myself to save now and then because a lot of my hesitancy is undoubtedly a reaction to the thought of losing 20 minutes of progress, but I'm curious about methods or strategies that I can integrate into my actual play/mechanics that could turn a 20 minute escapade into an 8 minute (comparative) blitz.

 

As an aside, this post is inspired by my recent first play through of Eternal's "Warp of Time," which took me a putrid 53 minutes to complete (100% kills and about half the secrets).

[Nevander]

Playing fast is for speedrunners. I say play at whatever pace you're comfortable with. I play pretty slow myself if I'm not familiar with the WAD. I like to explore everything, get every kill I can, every secret I can find and even items, on UV.

[baja blast rd.]

If you want to get the hang of playing more quickly, you can try easier maps, or maps you have beaten already and don't mind dying in. 

 

But most people, even good players, who are no-saving unfamiliar maps are playing on the slow side (unless they are provoking others' arrogance and contempt and floods of accusations). So taking your time seems standard. 

 

When I try FDAing long maps, I usually slow down quite a bit, often to excessive caution, when there is a lot to lose. To help play faster, you can try to take calculated risks, especially when in good shape. You can understand how much slack a map has so that you can make mistakes (like lose health in battles because there will be lots of health and armor). You can understand "thresholds" -- like when you have 80 health and 0 armor, a singe rev missile can kill you, so you might not fight a lone one in a tight space, but at even 81-0, you're really now a lot safer because you need to mess up far worse (eat 2 attacks) to have a shot at dying.  You can start gambling early in maps more, because you have less to lose and it's often easy to get back to where you were much faster. Also it is surprisingly important to explore efficiently too. Demon of the Well sometimes FDAs maps quickly despite apparently taking his sweet time, because not getting lost for 10 total minutes throughout a long map helps a lot with pace. Similarly, getting better (meaning quicker) at finding secrets helps too.

 

If you care about this, stuff like that might help, although at least reading the OP, it doesn't elicit a reaction of "something is wrong with playing slow."

 

[GarrettChan]

Quote

Playing fast is for speedrunners. I say play at whatever pace you're comfortable with. I play pretty slow myself if I'm not familiar with the WAD. I like to explore everything, get every kill I can, every secret I can find and even items, on UV.

Thanks for this absolutely meaningless reply.

 

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Playing blind and revisiting a map that you've known about are actually very different. I would say playing blind tends to be slower than you would thought because you want to get whatever your can. I assume you mean you want to improve your speed on known maps instead of blind plays.

 

Probably "being slow" is that you take extra time to cooperate strategies into your runs, which is very understandable. It takes quite a bit of experience to quickly route your way through the map in order to get weapons and use those for kills. Mostly when you're doing a casual Max or similar, you probably would think or take a rest between each session unconsciously. You can try to eliminate those first and connect everything together much fluently.

 

I personally suggest you can try do some "lite" speedrun to get the hang of it. "Lite" means you try to push yourself a little bit, but not really going for world records. Then you'll actually have a different feel about "speed". Also, beating yourself will give you some good feeling about improvement. Of course, if you're not the ones who easily get demoralized, you can try to use some routes from the WRs to see how good you can do, or do some not-so-popular PWADs.

[Doom-X-Machina]

Auto-run works a charm...

[BerserkerNoir]

Unless youre trying to speed-run a map, I suggest you to play in a way your current skills let you.
Keep playing, youre going to get better with time.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

You just want someone to recommend some illicit drugs, don't you?

 

Try speedrunning OG Doom/2, then move to Plutonia. Becoming a good speedrunner won't happen overnight, but you'll make progress. Personally I'm slow as piss, so that's the best advice I can give. Learning how to look at the automap without getting confused can help too.

Edited June 6, 2021 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[terminator]

5 hours ago, Zirtonic said:

I'm curious about methods or strategies that I can integrate into my actual play/mechanics that could turn a 20 minute escapade into an 8 minute (comparative) blitz.

 

well, you could learn speedrunning tricks like strafe50, wallrunning, rocket jumping, etc and join speedrunning discord groups for more info like [https://discord.gg/ghWqUYu], as per suggested by @4shockblast.

 

you could also make your own map incorporating your own handicap so you could train specifically for it, thus increasing your gaming efficiency. examples:

• [hello wad] my own map to tackle my own handicap for battling in small spaces with high monster densities.
• [a beginner's nightmare] made by @Jacek Bourne for practicing platforming.
• [15cc-wad], a 15 cyberdemon challenge in 2 minutes made by @Nine Inch Heels for players to practice killing a cyberdemon with a single bfg shot (using the tracers for further damage).
• [2 shot 2] made by @Outrageous Videos for more practice to kill cyberdemons.

hope this small reply helps.

Edited June 6, 2021 by terminator