I choose the impossible. I choose: Hurt me plenty.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Yay, a HMP partner! :D

Spoiler

If you wonder, no, it's not sarcasm

 

[Maribo]

On the Dark Souls vs Sekiro comparison:
It's actually somewhat fitting, in the abstract at least. Going from Dark Souls to Sekiro is pretty difficult to adapt to because there are very very small odds that you are playing Dark Souls the same way that you have to play Sekiro. Dark Souls has a lot more freedom in terms of the way you can approach it, ie: sorcery, sword/shield parrying build, 2-handed caveman, etc. You can parry your way through (most) fights, dodge your way through, or poise your way through. Sekiro demands that you play aggressive, and there is no getting around it.

And please, stay with me here: This is somewhat applicable to the difference between traditional-modeled Doom wads and modern challenge and slaughter wads. They can both be very difficult in their own right, but it's more likely that you have freedom of approach in a traditional wad vs a challenge wad. And I know I've said things like "difficult fights often have multiple solutions" in other threads, and that's true, but typically in a challenge or slaughter fight, they are looking for a specific method or strategy and not necessarily an identical execution (although there are definitely some that want a very very tight execution). The same way that Sekiro demands you to play (mostly) aggressively.

[Weird Sandwich]

6 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

I've said in the past I'm not a huge fan of how Doom does difficulty. I do think it lends itself to propagating the "UV=intended", especially with the way you place things in most editors (lends itself to a subtractive mindset, all 3 skills are checked until you change that)

Yes, there are many fantastic mapsets that carefully curate each difficulty, but I personally don't think every map maker should be held to that standard.

Especially when we have tools like dehacked/mods/skill1 and even cheats we can tune our own experience to what we like.

 

Agree with this. As mentioned by others, very few people here would explicitly claim that UV is the default intended experience, but there are a few implicit factors that lead most people to this mindset.

 

One of the major factors is the common process of making maps. When watching mapping streams, it appears that most people build around the UV difficulty first before implementing other difficulties, which contributes to the feeling that it's the "default" mode. There are of course very good reasons to do it this way:

 - As mentioned, the editors start with things being UV checked leading to the subtractive mindset

 - Mappers generally want to make sure they can beat their map at each difficulty, to ensure that it's not impossible at higher difficulties. Building and playtesting at UV first ensures you can beat all of them, without having to waste time on additional playtesting runs. Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable making a map that I can't beat UV, so if it's a map that's meant to be hard in the first place UV becomes the "default" difficulty for me.

 - Balancing at lower difficulties can be trickier than UV. A mapper can finely tune UV to include just enough health and ammo to scrape through the map, since it's expected to be less forgiving. For lower ones though, it's a lot more subjective in how many excess resources you should be giving the player. There are some rules of thumb to follow, but playtesting by less experience players is really required to balance it properly.

 

I think making maps while focusing on HMP first would help alleviate this mindset. Other factors to consider (that have been mentioned earlier) are the names of the difficulty settings themselves, the feeling of "missing out" by having less things in the map in lower settings, and most youtubers and twitch streamers playing exclusively in UV. It's actually quite funny how often streamers and youtubers will complain about how hard a map is, without even considering lowering the difficulty from UV.

 

The same ideas also apply to pistol starts being considered "default" - The nature of the mapping process means its easier to playtest and balance individual maps from pistol starts, without needing to put much thought into continuous play. And this goes double for community projects with multiple different mappers and unplanned progression. Of course it is possible to balance for both, and there are some general guidelines to achieve this, but it takes more careful planning and playtesting across multiple maps to really do it well.

[TasAcri]

I found that playing in UV while using a bit of save scumming is the best of both worlds. I don't miss any content and also don't waste my time doing the whole map all over again every time i die. It's on me to create the correct balance and not save too often. Maybe make my own rules like save every 1/3 or 1/2 of enemies killed depending on the map size.

 

Yeah, i'm too old for competitive gaming, i don't have that much patience anymore and my masculinity isn't hurt since i play videogames in the privacy of my man cave where nobody can witness my cowardly, cheating ways...

[OliveTree]

ive said this before: i playtest my maps on HNTR. In my opinion if your map isn't fun on HNTR, it's not fun at all

[Nine Inch Heels]

On 1/27/2022 at 5:20 PM, Xaser said:

At this point, I'm not even sure where the "UV or bust" mindset even comes from -- certainly not from Doomworld. Every time a thread like this pops up, the overwhelming majority of replies are folks saying "hell naw, play the difficulty you're comfortable at and have fun; it's not a compromise", which is awesome and how it should be.

That reminds of this one idiot from a couple months ago, who said unironically that SunLust was a one-trick-pony (demonstrably false), and when the recommendation to lower the difficulty was made, their response was some passive aggressive "clearly I'm too talentless" type of straw man.

 

What I'm getting at is that in many cases it doesn't necessarily come from anywhere other than "ego", or perhaps a misguided sense of how difficult the most-difficult-but-not-meme-setting ought to be in anything this community has ever produced. Some people just cannot be reasoned with, and unfortunately they do tend to find their way here from time to time, and make a big fuss out of nothing due to a bruised sense of self...

[ZethXM]

15 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

This is also a part of it most definitely: the feeling that the most devilishly spectacular traps are ”diluted” on lower difficulties. Fear of missing out. This is where it is easy to forget that subsequent frustration counters any enjoyment and fun, if the map is beyond one’s skills.

 

You're not exactly wrong, but I want to make clear that what I'm getting at isn't merely the spectrum of possible challenge.  Rather, it's that the implementation of difficulty via monster count or type is often fundamentally transformative to the experience of a room or a map.  So much so that you're often practicing a different sport at that point, depending on the way the mapper modulates difficulty.

 

[msx2plus]

48 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

"ego"

and it certainly doesn't help that we exist in so many shitty systems that push us to constantly compare ourselves to our peers. that seeps into everything, and it becomes something else; no longer about personal growth, but about matching/exceeding others with no care for what you actually want out of what you do. it's easy to get caught up in a spiral that leads to wallowing in self-destructive pity. you really do just have to step outside of it all for a second and ask why you're reacting to things the way you are.

[mrthejoshmon]

I have only fully beaten my favourite megawad of all time, Icarus Alien Vanguard, on Hurt Me Plenty.

 

I have played up to like MAP20 on UV, I get to a point and where I stop enjoying myself because 32 maps of maximum effort is tiresome and I already have an actual job that eats 95% of my time so...

 

No shame in it, don't care, never got the whole "hard or nuthin" mindset some people I know have, they usually hit me with that "You're lazy and just want gratification" and the response to this is "yes", if I wanted to sit down and slog through something I don't wanna do/don't like I'd just do (more) overtime.

 

When I'm making a map, difficultly settings are absolutely essential, I will build the map for UV and remove enemies/add items from/to lower difficulties, I make UV to challenge me specifically then have the lower difficulties be comfortable to play.

 

Unrelated but one idea I want to try is inspired by TimeSplitters 2, where 3 versions of the map are made but Easy is shorter and is quick to do, Medium is longer with a few "objectives" and hard being longer with even more stuff to do. That might be an interesting idea, could be done with teleports and difficultly specific obstacles blocking them off, gives an incentive to play higher difficulties if the map physically changes to it.

Edited January 29, 2022 by mrthejoshmon

[7Mahonin]

14 hours ago, Gregor said:

I get the purpose of this thread. But some posts here actually seem to shame people who prefer to play on UV and grind until they "git gud" instead of dropping to lower difficulties. Just like there's nothing wrong to play on lower difficulty, there's also nothing "insecure" or "elitist" about preferring to grind on UV until you make it. It's a personal choice that everyone has to make for themselves.

 

It's a shame that some people always have the tendency to go from one extreme to the other.  It's either the "git gud or git lost"-kind of attitude or you're an "elitist scumbag", "insecure bitch" if you dare play on UV even though you're not a Doom God. 

How about each to his own and don't shame others either way?

 

That also means, that if a map maker designed the maps around UV and calls that the "intended experience", it's something you should just accept; there's nothing wrong with it. Play it on HMP if it's too hard, you don't have to follow their "directions" but don't say there's something wrong with it just because it wasn't designed for your skill level. That's just as bad as the other extreme.

So far from the start of the thread to your post here, I only saw three post here mention elitism directly, one being my own post, another from roadworx, and lastly from DSC. 
 

DSC simply said he didn’t want to come off as “an old man yells at cloud elitist” with what his post was about, and roadworx said that it’s unlikely to find any elitist here on doomworld.

 

In my post I was not referring to players who prefer UV as a whole, as I myself prefer this difficulty more often than not. I’m referring to players who act like they are a superior species of people just because they can do something someone else can’t in a video game. I imagine roadworx was referring to the same individuals. 
 

So unless I missed a post, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to label any of these posts as the other extreme you’re talking about here. 
 

Edit: I noticed Beginner’s post after writing and their post also mentions elitism and some of the words you put in quotations, but I think they’re right. This isn’t the first time this subject has popped up here and it seems to always be about the same sort of thing over and over, “play how you want” or “elitist bad”, but where they’re wrong is that there are people who act like they are better and try to insult others for their lack of skill, it’s just not here on DW. It shouldn’t be an issue what difficulty someone plays on, and it goes both ways like you’ve said. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by TelicAx7

[Kinsie]

There definitely seems to be a vibe throughout the whole community, not just here but everywhere, that not playing on UV is abnormal at best and "oh, oh... you poor thing" at worst. It's not like it's lorded down on the Lesser Players from On High or anything like that, but if people who play on lower difficulties are ever catered to it's usually either to put HMP at UV tier so the real UV can be even harder, or entirely by accident.

 

---

 

While we're sharing our own attempts at catering to players that aren't True Doom Murderheads in a vaguely condescending fashion, I've been helping out with experiments in more granular difficulty for a thing lately. Works pretty well for this mod, but it's certainly not a cure-all solution that'd apply to everything.