What do you consider Slaughter-map'ish?

[Kute]

I've seen people lament the popularity of slaughter elements in most modern wads, but I have trouble with this discussion because I'm not sure what constitutes slaughter mapping in the modern era.

 

Obviously something like Sunder. You can't make something that difficult without a ton of mobs.

 

But where is the bare minimum for slaughteresque mapping to you? Like there's nothing in Doom 2 that would fit the bill eh? What about Valiant or Eviternity?

 

A pack of 15 revenants doesn't constitute a slaughter encounter? Or does it?

 

I wouldn't mind an example of where a map starts leaning into slaughter territory, if anyone has a good one

 

I think at this stage of the game, there's really only a few ways to make things honestly difficult.

 

1) close-quarters traps and chaingunner traps - stressful as hell

 

2) big packs without a large space to freely run

 

3) archviles or a cyberdemon or two mixed in with a couple dozen mobs, again without alot of free space to run around

 

IMO anything less than that, and things will be a bit easy

[Jacek Bourne]

There is no actual definition of “slaughtermap” or “slaughter” as a genre. However, maps with large amounts of enemies or a high monsters to space ratio tend to be labeled as slaughtermaps. A map doesn’t need the BFG to be a slaughtermap. That’s pretty much how I would define it however everyone seems to have a different description or definition.

 

Regarding difficulty, it really depends on how enemies are used, the amount of enemies, the weapons and ammo, and the amount of space you have relative to the space taken up by monsters.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Jacek Bourne

[Captain POLAND]

If you're in a fairly wide room, and it's still hard to find a gap to run through the monsters, then it's slaughter IMO.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Hard to fully pin-point since you can have a very large map with tons of enemies but 99% of them aren't alerted right away and most traps only containing say 3-5 enemies, I wouldn't call a slaughtermap. You can also have a very small map with a ton of enemies all at once and could be considered a slaughtermap (or slaughter-lite, which I think is a mini version of a Slaughtermap).

 

I think one main rule for Slaughtermaps is just killing a ton of enemies in big clusters, whilst bobbing and weaving between attacks and covers.

[Nefelibeta]

Maps with a monster count of 400-600 shouldn't be qualified as slaughter maps in my opinion, but there are still some ultra short maps with a rather high bodycount(like flotsam map12, a classic example) 

The word "slaughtery" is very subjective anyway.

[BaileyTW]

If a map makes me think "oh, that's a lotta monsters on the screen" then it nears slaughter map-ish. Not necessarily a gauge of difficulty though difficulty can easily scale with amount of monsters on screen. For example I consider Doom 2's map 16, Suburbs, slaughter-lite, but not Map 10, Refueling Base, even if it does have the highest amount of monsters among the iwads.

[Bauul]

58 minutes ago, Nefelibeta said:

Maps with a monster count of 400-600 shouldn't be qualified as slaughter maps in my opinion, but there are still some ultra short maps with a rather high bodycount(like flotsam map12, a classic example) 

The word "slaughtery" is very subjective anyway.

 

There are a decent proportion of maps in projects like Haste and the Microslaughter Community Project that have fewer than 400 enemies and absolutely would be classed as slaughter.

 

It's not just about monster count, it's as much about handling groups of enemies, spacing, prioritization and understanding how to manipulate the AI en masse. 

[Nefelibeta]

2 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

There are a decent proportion of maps in projects like Haste and the Microslaughter Community Project that have fewer than 400 enemies and absolutely would be classed as slaughter.

 

It's not just about monster count, it's as much about handling groups of enemies, spacing, prioritization and understanding how to manipulate the AI en masse. 

And that's why I mention Flotsam map12, because it only contains like 500 monsters and I still consider it slaughter.

[MoreMending]

I think a map with big rooms that aren't fully packed to the brim with enemies would be considered slaughter map-ish

[sincity2100]

Maps like Map18 from Doom 2 , Eviternity Map06 and BTSX Map32.. I consider them a lighter versions of Slaughter Maps..

[Bridgeburner56]

When Cyberdemons stop being enemies to be killed and start becoming infinite rocket launchers to be used to your advantage, it's a slaughter map.

[Marisa the Magician]

When you spend more time getting hordes of enemies to infight than actually shooting (especially because there isn't enough ammo), that MIGHT be slaughter.

When there is a solid mass of enemies that you must kite around and mow down bit by bit or risk them occupying all the space in the room, that MIGHT be slaughter.

When you have a BFG and there is an entire corridor of neatly grid-aligned doors with health blocking the way, that MIGHT be slaughter.

When a map gives you more ammo than you could ever carry and then sends in several hundred enemies your way, that MIGHT be slaughter.

When you are being chased by a miniature sun composed of countless Revenant missiles that slow down the framerate, that MIGHT be slaughter.

 

Then again, I do agree that it's somewhat subjective and there's no clear fine line separating "hard map" from "slaughter map" most of the time. Personally, I would go with defining slaughter as "killing enemies en masse", which covers most of everything, really.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Marisa Kirisame
Typo

[Roofi]

When cybers are just slightly bigger imps.

[Mr Masker]

There sure has been a lot of self questioning of doom terms recently... 

 

I'd say that a slaughter map is a map in which there's not just a ton of enemies, but there's also alot of placements to enforce a certain strategy or strategies to beat it.

 

Clever and thought out placement is the difference between a slaughter map, and an early mappers, "super IMPOSSIBLE doom map (can you beat it?)"