How secret should secret exits be?

[Bauul]

Whether or not one takes the secret exit on Map 15 is one of the few moments of genuine choice a player is afforded when progressing through a vanilla Doom 2 megawad.  Do you run the risk of taking on maps that might be gimmicky or hit-or-miss, or power through the "intended" route?

 

As such, to me it always felt that hiding a secret exit in a really hard to reach secret only sought to undermine this one fleeting moment of player choice.  If a player is unable to find the secret exit and is thus forced to take the normal one even if they didn't want to, this robs them of that agency.  Having two exits on Map 15 is essentially a branching path, letting the player choose their route forwards, so one could argue that hiding one of those paths away too well can spoil that choice.

 

I'm not saying secret exits shouldn't be in secrets at all - in fact placing one in a secret is one of the most reliable ways to communicate to the player which is the regular exit and which is the secret one, due to Doom's general lack of options for signposting. But the question is how much of a secret should it be?

 

On my 1K3 Lines map, I deliberately made the secret exit pretty easy to spot, as the last thing I wanted was to deny players to chance to play other contributor's maps just because I made my secret exit too hard.  On the DWMC playthrough, this seems to have split opinion: some people like having it easily available (if you just remember to look for it), while others were disappointed it was too easy to find.

 

I'd be curious to know what people's thoughts are.

[thiccyosh]

Whenever I read "Secret exit" I always think back on how the 2D Mario games did it. Especially in the ghost house levels.

 

It should be hidden (who would've thought that), however it should be a secret where you have to look twice to catch the hint, you know? Make the player think outside the box without making it unnecessarily complicated. To put that into an Doom map example: 

 

You have an usually unreachable platform and some thin pillars to run across to that platform. The player can easily find a way to get across to that platform if he chooses to take the effort of finding that secret exit / a way to the secret exit.

 

While yes this example would be very easy to find for that player, that method is better than to idclev31 out of frustration if you ask me. And in case a nosy player finds it by accident and isn't really going to map 31, there are enough ways to signal that the player stands in front of a secret exit, even if it is making an all red texture with "SECRET EXIT" written all over it. You can reward the player for finding that secret exit or make the player find a certain key to open the exit up, both at the same time work too. The key variant also eliminates the whole "find the secret exit to skip a whole map / whole parts of the map" flaw that some maps have. That is if you place the key after the sections you want the player to play and show!

 

In the case of Doom 2's Map 15, the player gets rewarded with one invuln, but the secret exit is kinda randomly placed and skips the wooden fort part with those stupid lifts and the caged Baron. Not to mention you can stumble into the exit without any warning and be in Map 31.

 

Map31 however rewards the player in the secret exit with a supercharge and shows you that this a secret exit. And the best part, you don't skip any parts of the map!

 

There you go. My thoughts. Do whatever you want with em'.

[Bridgeburner56]

Personally my favourite take on this is a relatively easy, but long sequential section of secrets. Doom 1 episode 1 does this perfectly imo. The multi step element to E1M3 is just mmmm love it. Each piece in isolation is fairly straight forward but you have to keep working at it to finally get to the actual exit switch. One of my fondest memories playing Doom was cracking that for the first time when I was a kid. 

At the end of the day it depends on the wad and mapper. I expect a secret exit in say a Ribbiks' map set to be pretty damn tricky. Whereas something like 1K3, I'd expect it to be pretty straight forward. 

Like most things, at the end of the day it comes down to managing the player's expectations. If they are expecting estoteric madness, then they'll have their eyes peeled for the subtlest of clues and wall hump every surface and are less likely to get upset at super obscure paths.  

As a side note a special fuck you! to @Insane_Gazebo for the Sunder secret map exit. You know what you did >:(
 

Spoiler

Said with all the love

 

[smeghammer]

I think a secret exit should be 'harder' to find/get to, but the resulting secret level should be correspondingly rewarding.

 

Making it non-obvious is counter productive 'cos if there is no indication that there IS a secret exit (particularly for GZ etc, where the secret exit can be on any level) then the player will never know and will say 'WTF?' when the level stats come up. Maybe make it visible from somewhere, but inaccessible?

 

So to answer the OP - probably should be proportional to the reward you get on reaching the secret level...

[DannyMan]

They should be visually hidden, like it's concealed by surrounding textures.

[Biodegradable]

In my personal experience, I usually don't bother with secret map exits because I've found them too difficult to find most of the time and I don't want to spend all day running around, wall-humping and such. 9 times out of 10, if I HAVE managed to find one, it's because I bumbled into it by complete accident. Naturally, because of my ingrained habit to not even bother, I didn't notice @Bauul's effort to make the secret exit more obvious in his 1KL3 map, which makes me feel bad. Sorry, mate. :^P

[whybmonotacrab]

I like how Valiant did it. You know there's a secret exit and where it is, but the map gives you a puzzle to solve to open the door. Whether that's a switch or key hunt or something similar. It's rewarding and feels like a best of both worlds approach.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The act of finding a secret map should comprise of several steps including shooting at least 12 secret switches, pressing 32 buttons in the correct sequence, and finding clues behind no less than 8 invisible walls. The secret map itself should be a large STARTAN box with at least 800 monsters, or a small room congratulating players for finding it.

[BoxY]

It's not truly hidden unless you have to check the editor to figure it out how it works, but then even when you do you still can't understand it. Then it's truly worthy of a secret exit. But more seriously I almost never try to find secret exits regardless of how easy they are, I prefer to play the wad with normal exits then idclev to the secret maps after I'm done because it can break the pace of my casual play if the secret maps are huge, very difficult, etc. So I guess in my personal case they can be arbitrarily hidden or obvious and it wouldn't change the way I play.

[galileo31dos01]

I really don't care myself, because I'll always look for it as long as there is one confirmed. Make it as secretly as you want, blend it with the context of your map or mapset - yeah I suppose it's not as easy in community projects, particularly where there're no strings attached in terms of concepts, so that's when the "community" part is important: if needed, exchanging your ideas with the people involved and coming to an agreement should go well.

 

If I were to make a map with a secret exit someday... actually silly me I just remembered I did make one lmao, anyways I'd consider the context first and foremost, then take into account that I'll want it hinted as early as possible in some way the player at the very least is intrigued (though that's out of one's control), and like -most- all my secrets, the reward will be big and fat. 

[El Inferno]

I prefer secret exit to be hardest secret to find, as it's should be the main secret of the whole mapset. The sunder map 15 secret is the perfect example of this (it's the only secret in the whole wad, at least for now) and I love it even though I couldn't find it during my playthrough. I see no problem at all in idcleving to secret maps instead or using cheats / builder to find secret exit. I should mention that I primarily play boom/vanilla mapsets so it's always clear when the map has one. From my experience with Skulltiverse map15, people generally enjoyed searching for a well-hidden secret exit.

[OniriA]

I make them in such a way that they are always able to be easily seen by:

 

Spoiler

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by OniriA

[Paf]

As secret as you want.

[OniriA]

Will you show me your hidden secrets?

[PeterMoro]

I agree with Sandy Peterson in that secrets should have some kind of hint. Same goes with secret exits. I think secret exits should be just a little more difficult than a regular secret.

Perhaps a good mechanic would to be to make the second "secret" exit visable but the means of arriving there not obvious. Maybe a well hidden switch or something.

[Ichor]

 

I know how secret exits should not be like: a simple door that opens only when you're about to leave the map, with no real way of knowing that it opened. Heretic is notorious for this.

[Astronomical]

Secret exits should be accessible that I don't need to look up a guide for.  However I am oblivious so maybe not that. 

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I lean towards El Inferno's point of view, personally. I just remember growing up not having a clue that map15 of Doom 2 had a secret exit, until finally one day someone walked me through how to find it step by step, and my mind was blown. I loved that. Since then, it made sense to me that the secret levels of a megawad ought to be the hardest secrets to find - you're quite literally finding bonus maps to play! If I'm going to make a Megasphere secret a lot more challenging to find than a simple ammo cache secret, you're darn right I'm going to make entire bonus maps extra extra challenging to find, haha.

 

That said, it gets tricky with community projects because (like you mentioned), it feels a little mean to hide a contributors hard work behind a difficult secret that many people aren't likely to crack. So, in the case of community projects, I totally get the leniency. 

[Maximum Matt]

1 hour ago, OniriA said:

I make them in such a way that they are always able to be easily seen by:

 

  Hide contents

 

I like your train of thought 😁

[Maribo]

For community projects: Having a very visible secret exit is cool. Or even just giving the player a choice at the end (with each exit marked, of course) is pretty fine with me. That said, I did miss the one in 1k Lines 3, so.... I could also just be a bad secret exit detector.

For general wads: Your wad, do whatever you want. :)
My personal favorite secret exits: The ones that require you to do something like archvile jump onto a ledge to reach it, or do a semi-precise jump off of a ledge or something. Hell, I would probably be fine with it if a secret exit asked me to do a (preferably easy) glide.

[Mayomancer]

I think it's important that it has a visual queue that tells the player there's *something* there, so they investigate further to find out how to access the area. Now how difficult it is to find that out i don't really mind

[Kinsie]

Depends on how wild the secret level is.

[pcorf]

Make them hard to find but still provide several hints.

[Murdoch]

Secret enough to be secret, but not so secret that it could only be reached through the power of either foreknowledge, sheer dumb luck, or vast quantities of unseemly wallhumping.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Murdoch

[CBM]

on the other hand, wallhumping is a time honored tradition

[Horus]

To be honest, with UMAPINFO, I’d like to see more Boom+ sets not using Map 15 as the secret exit level.
 

When I first found the secret exit to E1M3, I had no idea that that was actually the secret exit level, I just found it through exploration, so finding the secret level was  a genuine surprise and felt very rewarding. I’d like to recreate that feeling somehow.

[Nine Inch Heels]

9 hours ago, Bauul said:

On my 1K3 Lines map, I deliberately made the secret exit pretty easy to spot, as the last thing I wanted was to deny players to chance to play other contributor's maps just because I made my secret exit too hard.  On the DWMC playthrough, this seems to have split opinion: some people like having it easily available (if you just remember to look for it), while others were disappointed it was too easy to find.

The obvious answer is that there's no "correct way" to do it - correct as in pleases everybody...

 

But in order to contribute a talking point that I don't see being raised particularly often - why not make it a not-too-secret secret exit in that it's not too difficult to spot, but make it a difficult to reach type of exit instead..? It should go without saying that even such a middle ground type of solution won't please everybody, but at least it's somewhat forthcoming to people who aren't dedicated secret sniffers, while it still provides some sense of "pride and accomplishment" for those who feel like reaching a secret needs to involve some manner of difficulty...

 

Since you brought up this phenomenon of "hit or miss" type of secret maps, gimmicky ones, why not introduce for example such a gimmick in the map prior, on the way to the secret exit..? That way the player can't even argue that they haven't been warned, in case they happen to hate said supposed gimmick, and you actually raise the degree of agency the player has not just by giving them a choice, but by actually providing some information that allows your players to make an informed decision...

Edited December 16, 2021 by Nine Inch Heels

[JustCallMeKaito]

Anything that isn't blind Keen hunting CBT or just getting lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. You're hiding a secret exit, not a corpse.

[ReaperAA]

6 hours ago, whybmonotacrab said:

I like how Valiant did it. You know there's a secret exit and where it is, but the map gives you a puzzle to solve to open the door. Whether that's a switch or key hunt or something similar. It's rewarding and feels like a best of both worlds approach.

 

^This. I think this is the best compromise. Make players know where the secret exit is, but make them solve a puzzle to get to it.

[borogk]

I appreciate secrets levels for what they were originally intended to be - extra content, a reward for exploration. 
 

It can be very satisfying to find them on your own. Beating all the levels and then later finding out you missed some content gives you “wait there’s more?” epiphany and may trigger another playthrough!
 

I think there’s enough value in secrets being secrets. 
 

If secret exits are in the plain sight - you might as well make regular ones unavailable to guarantee the player will visit them. An example is Struggle by antares, where “secret maps” are just a part of regular progression and a way to squeeze 2 more levels into vanilla Doom 2 format. And it’s a completely valid way of doing things if you reeeeally want them to play everything.

 

Regarding branching paths and player agency - let’s imagine the secret is as accessible as the regular exit. The choice is not between playing A or playing B. It’s between playing A or just skipping it. Might as well put an optional fast track with no obstacles in case the player doesn’t feel like playing :)

This kind of design works well in roguelikes, where the choice is meaningful - do you risk going into optional dangerous area for goodies, or do you think your chances are better simply going straight ahead? The choice can be vary each playthrough. 
 

In Doom this choice has less meaning. Sure, player may opt out of extra challenge and get on with the WAD. But if you are a kind of player who picks and chooses their levels - you’d just idclev. I know plenty of people who experience wads as a collection of individual maps and they would just go around mapmaker’s design anyway.

 

In conclusion, for a casual / blind playthrough I’d prefer one of two options:

1. Secret exits should be hidden

2. If they are not hidden - regular exists should not be available

 

That’s my humble take :)