Why I will no longer tag my secrets, and You Shouldn't Either: An Essay

[baja blast rd.]

23 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Tangentially related, but:

 

If y'all really want to help the 100 percenters have a more consistently enjoyable experience with your maps, cease and desist your use of Sniper Imps. Those Imps (and it really is almost always Imps) perched in high places at distances that make autoaim awkward, and shotgun damage unreliable, so you gotta tap... tap... tap... tap... your chaingun, cause you got no rockets or plasma, and your will to live is fading. The map is otherwise clearable with 100% kills by simply just playing the thing, but nope, there's all these lofty loiterers who (let's be honest) provide approximately zero threat or pressure, just chillin', laughin' at ya from their balconies, and cliff edges, and literal boxes cut into the wall for no reason. Stop it.  

 

Going along with this tangent, sniper repurposing is pretty easy to do. And I wish it was more common with the awkward ones. Here's a setup I'm using in a speedmap: thin tiny pits with teleport linedefs, around these mancubi that are basically impossible to hit.

 

 

At one point the sectors rise so they can cross the teleport linedefs, and they show up in a later fight. There are also monster-block lines around the rock faces so that flying monsters can't wander into the teleporters. 

 

Here's another example (from another speedmap of mine, which I'm emphasizing because this is actually really easy to do) where the arachnotrons that snipe you from way across the map end up lowering later as a close-range fight. 

 

Cliff imp snipers are fine imo, but I think it's easy to be mindful to always have them show up elsewhere, or set up the map so that you always either approach those enemies more closely or  have a good vantage at some point to take them out (speaking of, in one map, I set it up so that you can splash damage a turret vile 6000+ units away if you happened to ignore it earlier).  

 

This is not really intended as casual play completionism either, because I have no problem skipping enemies; I think it's just fun to set stuff up this way. 

[Mr. Alexander]

I was in Decino's chat as he was going through AA Map 31, and it's true that going after every last marked secret in a map full of them, simply out of a cussed dedication to completionism, was not great YouTube. But it was also annoying to see so much "Ugh, THIS map" in the chat, as though the slow dungeon-crawling style were actively unpleasant compared to the usual Ancient Aliens combat playgrounds. It isn't unpleasant, it's just different from all the other maps, and it's giving the composer of all that great music some love by letting him design a big level for the megawad, which is why it's a secret level and not in the main progression. To me, this feels like a player issue, not a mapper issue. You should never expect to max out maps on your first go.

 

In my own play, I've come to feel a little annoyed at my own reliance on DSDA-Doom's advanced HUD, automap completion counts, and the classic ZDoom "secret found!" cue. I think they tend to make me want to max out maps on the first try. I could turn them all off at any time, and will probably do so next time I play. I really like the expectation-setting of seeing a huge or a small number of monsters or secrets at the start of a new level; it's useful to know if an arch-vile has gotten out somewhere and is reviving a killing floor; but the compulsion to make the number go up and make the fraction equal 1 does get kind of irritating and takes me out of the game a little. Failing to find that one niggling little secret has already caused me to boot up SLADE twice in this month's Doomworld Megawad Club, which is going well beyond using IDDT or noticing that one linedef is colored oddly in the automap.

 

To me, all this adds up to a player issue rather than something the mapper ought to militate against by leaving all secrets unmarked, though I can easily understand why a mapper might get frustrated with some players' compulsive completionism, particularly if they're prominent in the community and popularizing their way of playing the game. Thanks for making this post, it's good food for thought.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Mr. Alexander

[RonnieJamesDiner]

11 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

Going along with this tangent

 

I was mostly being facetious, but, I appreciate this response haha. I think repurposing enemies (particularly snipers/turrets) is an awesome idea, and I'd love to see more of it (and use it more, myself).

 

I didn't have much to say on the actual topic (clearly), though I think Skillsaw raises an interesting point about secrets originally being something left "untracked" until you finished the level and saw the results. Perhaps an argument could be made that, having the automap "keeping score" of your secrets lends a greater significance to them than they really deserve, since (generally speaking), Doom is otherwise quite good at only ever feeding the player relevant information. Who knows.     

[Borg]

For a moment, I wondered why you agonized over this seemingly arcane issue, and then I remembered that I don't have a creative bone in my body, so why in the hell would I understand your thought process? 

[No-Man Baugh]

I like how quickly this thread went from mappers talking about ethical level design, to players stating that they will reclaim their brain and return to Delinquent of Doom rules (complimentary, as I'm following this path myself somewhat):

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by No-Man Baugh

[Xaser]

Story time:

 

Several months back, decino was doing a blind playthrough of BTSX E2, and dew and I figured it'd be a good time to dust off a WIP reworking of MAP26's combat and get it all done in time for his stream playthrough. (For those who haven't played BTSX E2, MAP26 is mine, hence me jabbering about it now.)

 

We got it all done -- was a bit of a scramble, but nothing too crazy -- and we sent it off to him just in time for the playthrough. He gave it a go using his usual "UV 100% saveless" rules, and after a few restarts and a pretty long playthrough (about an hour total), he finished the map.

 

His conclusion?

 

"I made an oopsie. I shouldn't have done blind runs for this wad."

 

I basically had two big thoughts afterward:

 

1) Big props to decino for that (no sarcasm). He had a shitty time, but didn't blame the wad at all. Good on ya, mate.

 

2) Damn, we didn't get a single piece of actionable feedback from this playthrough.

 

 

re: #2, that's certainly not the point of decino's streams -- his target audience is his subscribers, not us mappers -- but we approached the whole situation (or at least I did) as a cool opportunity to get an expert player involved to try out the map and see what he thinks. It didn't work.

 

My takeaway isn't any sort of "boo change the format decino" or whatever, but more the realization that sometimes the things that work best for streams & youtube channels don't actually work best for wad creators. Trying to cater specifically to someone else's format or tastes just isn't going to work if it compromises your own vision.

 

Back on topic, in case it wasn't clear, I'm firmly in the "MTrop Camp" I guess: I'm still gonna litter my map with marked secrets, 'cause I enjoy 'em and like having a checklist. If that causes someone to go mad for the sake of completionism, that's out of my hands.

[TheShep]

2 hours ago, EliDoesStuff said:

Damn straight.

 

You will have your lovers, and you will have your haters. Life.

[Gregor]

I disagree. If people wanna find all secrets, they would still manage to do so even if they are all unmarked. I often just look them up on the Doomwiki anyways and save myself the frustration of searching the level meticulously. That is unless i can find them naturally on my first playthrough. And I don't care about the secret count in the intermission screen, i just wanna feel like i cleared the whole map before i exit. And you can't stop me! :)

 

Btw, I personally always liked Grey Dwarf exactly because it was so different from the rest of the set. The secret hunting IS the main attraction here. The music is also really cool and the atmosphere is dense. Good map if not a great one and definitely the better of the two secret maps in AA.

 

Decino has very particular tastes which are very much centered around skill. His whole channel is really just about him showing off how good he is at Doom after all. And while he can be very entertaining, just like MtPain27 he can be quite petty when it comes to thinks that rub him the wrong way. Like, in his recent Nirvana episode of his Doom 2 Nightmare playthrough he was just a plain asshole towards Sandy Petersen which he probably thinks is just him being cool and funny, but he and MtPain are often crossing the line when it comes to criticizing mappers while being themselves very sensitive when it comes to any criticism of their own work. What i'm trying to say is, decino isn't necessarily the wisest man on the planet, or the most reflected, he's just good at playing Doom and quite popular on Youtube, at least as far as Doomtube goes. Other than that, he isn't any kind of authority when it comes to gauging quality.

[Mr. Freeze]

Very interesting thread...definitely have not thought about doing this before but the points made in OP are very solid. 

[Kinsie]

Why I'm Making My Hobby Less Fun For Myself To Satisfy People Who Make Ad Revenue Off The Results Without Giving Me A Goddamn Penny Of It: An Essay

 

TBH, if I watch a stream and see someone failing to find all my intricately placed secrets, my take-away would probably be less that I should Thanos-Snap the concept of secrets out of existence and more that I should make the secrets marginally more obvious.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Kinsie

[Biz!]

secrets are nice and rewarding but the secret count ruins the point of secrets a bit.

[dististik]

5 hours ago, stewboy said:

It's no misunderstood masterpiece,

To each their own, but it's honestly one of my favorite maps in the set. I have a similar desire to explore around every nook and cranny it seems you have, and while initially loading up a map and seeing 10+ secrets gets a disappointed sigh out of me, I can say that map made finding all 13 secrets genuinely fun. It made me feel smart when I solved each tiny puzzle for how to reach each one and I'm fairly proud to say I've never needed a wiki or IDDT to intuit what to do. So, thank you for the neat little gem you added to aaliens (it's midi is also straight up my favorite in the wad but that's besides the point).

 

Humble bragging aside, I see where you're coming from but personally I'm going to decline your proposition because even if just one person out there enjoys making that found secret count go up for the sake of exploring or solving small puzzles in my maps I think it's worth it, especially if it also encourages maxers to maybe see the joy of that from missing secrets in their end screen talley.

 

That said, even if you don't tag all or any of your secrets, I'm still excited to explore everything future maps of yours (or like-minded individuals for that matter) have in store.

[reaction]

After reading this very interesting thread my takeaway is: it's ok to put in unmarked secrets. I wouldn't go so far as to excise special 9 entirely because the goal isn't to please all the people all the time.
 

4 hours ago, skillsaw said:

One last thing: the original release of Doom did not provide in-map percentages for kills and secrets (or items, but [almost] no one cares about item percent). Counters on the automap and/or status bar were added as a quality of life feature to source ports by community developers. Orignally, the player had to complete a map to see how what percentage they found -- in light of that, I really believe they were intended to add replay value, or to show off your mastery of the game, not just to be something you check off a list on your first playthrough.

I think this quote sums things up perfectly (for me anyways)

As a player, I don't bash my head into the wall trying to get 100% secrets for every new map I play. I'll look for any I can find, esp if low on ammo/health, but if I'm at 5/12 secrets when I get into the exit then great, that gives me more stuff to do next time I play the map.

Edited April 4, 2023 by reaction

[Blast_Brothers]

I don't have the conviction to tell other people how to map... but reading this thread gave me a few new ideas, and I'd like to share those.

 

-

 

Some people just want to spend as much time with Doom as possible. Decino played Ancient Aliens for six consecutive hours! Even if his playthrough didn't include backtracking, that still seems like an absurd amount of Doom to play in one sitting. (At least by my own standards.)

 

Whether it's trawling through damaging floor without a radsuit just to find a single health bonus, or spending an ungodly amount of time trying to survive a five-hour-long magnum opus without saving, there are some player behaviors that can only really be justified by one's love for the game itself.

 

 

I can remember being in that position when I finished MAP17 of AUGER;ZENITH. I didn't want to exit the map - mostly because I was having a uniquely good time playing it, and the quality is naturally a little uneven from map to map in a community project. So, I spent a while just mucking around, trying to get the optional yellow key. After a while I was stumped, so I (shamefully) opened the map in Doom Builder.

 

As I pored over those lines, I felt like I was sabotaging my own play experience - after all, if I didn't do this, I could spend more time in this great map! But I had other things to do that day, so I felt my hand was forced. Feeling slightly unclean, I finally got the key and exited the map.

 

Some people probably feel like that for every Doom map, and I kind of envy them for their level of engagement with the material. No matter what you encourage your players to do, either through design choices in the WAD itself, or through meta-actions like posting in this very thread - someone will play your maps in a way that seems, to you, to be excessive. And they're hopefully doing that because they enjoy it.

 

-

 

With that said... sometimes a playstyle can be self-destructive. If a player is looking forward to those triple 100%'s on the end screen (or any other arbitrary goal, really), then it's possible a player will (for lack of a more neutral phrase) force a bad time upon themselves. This is especially bad for the handful of players who feel almost psychologically compelled to 100% maps.

I hid a bunch of pointlessly obscure secrets in my last mapset. Most of these were "secrets for secrets' sake" - I got an idea for how I could hide a powerup in a really cryptic way, so I put it in. After all, I wasn't expecting players to find all of them in one go, so I had no reservations about it. As a player, I'm not usually a big secret hunter - my typical playstyle would've exited those maps with 20% to 40% secrets, and I would've been satisfied with that.

I don't think many people who ended up playing my WAD approached it with the self-imposed goal of UVMax-ing it, but if they had, they probably would've found the WAD extremely frustrating. I think Decino's blind playthrough of Doom 2 in Spain Only (especially maps 15 and 31) captured a permutation of that feeling.

 

 

If someone hates my map because it took them an hour to discover the soulsphere you get for pressing the use key when standing under a miscolored texture on the ceiling... well, it's not really my fault. They did that to themselves, in a way. But as a designer, I'm not personally satisfied with that answer.

Mappers can (but not should not be expected to) anticipate these playstyles and try to alleviate pain points. In the future, I want to be more considerate of the different ways people approach secrets. If I can make the map more friendly to 100%'ers without actually compromising my vision, then I'm going to do that. I should ask myself: Why am I adding this secret? Is it just because I can - or is it actually rewarding to discover? And do its contents meaningfully add to the play experience?

And, I think @baja blast rd. has presented a way to apply that design goal to more than secrets. I'll have to keep that in mind going forward.

 

-

 

I think I'm still going to tag my secrets - not only because secrets are the whole point of this community project I'm making a map for, but also because I enjoy finding the odd secret every once in a while, and knowing that "there's something out there" is enticing even if I'm not planning to find everything. I want players who play like me to feel the same way.

But I feel like I understand secrets and their role in Doom a little better now.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Blast_Brothers

[slugger]

tl;dr: Put in marked and unmarked secrets. Best of both worlds.

 

Decino has a few videos where he runs around after everything's dead, grumbling and failing to find the tucked away secret. That's not your problem. It's the video producer's job to make their video entertaining.

 

My secrets percentage is usually 0%. I like it that way. It's fun knowing there's more to explore.

Here's my concern about going all-unmarked. If we disable the counter, it doesn't make getting 0% more fun; it just makes it inconvenient to see my own progress. I'll go looking for one secret; I won't bother looking for an unknown number of unmarked secrets. Hiding how many secrets you have left will discourage exploration and/or drive explorers insane.

 

Dropping tag 9 makes your progression more ambiguous -- if you find a strange secluded door that skips you past a big part of the level, is that a secret, or just the main path presented in a confusing way? -- and flattens the variety and richness of the secrets themselves. If you get 3/3 marked secrets and 10 years later you find an unmarked secret, it's mind blowing. If you have 3 unmarked secrets and you find a 4th, it's just like, "okay how many more are there". Regular Doom has two grades of secret, one common, one rare and precious. All-unmarked maps have one grade of secret. That's a step down no matter how you slice it.

 

To compromise between making a good map and a good video, give each map 1 well-telegraphed marked secret and an indeterminate number of subtle secrets unmarked and bereft of major items. Then youtubers can say they got their 100% without stumbling around tapping on every nook and cranny, and there's still enough unpredictability to surprise and delight. Plus the youtubers could get an extra video for each map where they show you the REAL secrets!

[RHhe82]

I see the point. My first thought was maybe there should be more unmarked secrets, and tag only some relevant ones (ie. secret exit area, some optional big fight or a secret shortcut etc.) and leave soulsphere closets unmarked. But I don't know. I kinda enjoy having lots of secrets and enjoy trying to find them, even if it has me resort to IDDT or UDB before long. Luckily I'm no streamer.

 

As many have said, the real issue is insisting UV-MAX Blind playthroughs. Decino did it to himself on AA31, and I think he did it when playing D2ISO (edit: now I see Blast_Brothers mentioning this too), souring his experience because of UV-MAX Blind tendencies. I totally get that, I usually want to find 'em all, too, at the cost of enjoyment if necessary, but I wonder if this is something one should un-learn this habit. Easier said than done, though; I once vowed to play modern wads on HMP by default instead of UV. That lasted for about one or two wads.

 

One of which was in fact Ancient Aliens, by the way. A year after my HMP playthrough, just a few weeks ago, I played it on UV, and I believe I had even better and slightly easier time, despite notching up the difficulty. Admittedly I wasn't anticipating Grey Dwarf in excitement, but to my surprise I had better time with it than I thought I would (this applied to MAP23 (Trinary Temple) and MAP24 (Culture Shock) as well. I actually disliked Culture Shock on my 1st time around despite the change of scenery, just like Grey Dwarf was a change of scenery. Loved it the second time around). This leaves me wondering, if a part of the UV-MAX Blind tendencies are rooted in playing PWADs only once? Of course, for a streamer, there usually is just that one time. MtPain27 has a rule of playing the wad twice, and I think that's a sound decision.

 

Back in 1994 I wouldn't mind getting 100% of everything. Finding as many secrets as possible was definitely a goal, but I don't remember spending hours on E1M3 to find out just how the f*ck to obtain that m**her***king  soulsphere. That didn't matter, I'd replay E1 the next day for the 15th time. Nowadays time is a more scarce resource, but so far it seems second playthroughs are just as enjoyable as the first ones, albeit for different reasons, and I believe if one could only get rid of OCD of maxing everything on the first go, marked secrets would improve replayability, as many have already put it: there's more to this, sweet!

Edited April 4, 2023 by RHhe82
remark on D2ISO

[Ludi]

Putting "you shouldn't either" in a thread is bound to spark controversy, and I still disagree with your thesis. I love your music, but MAP31 of AA is my least favorite. I think that marking secrets is important in the same way that the tally in Banjo-Kazooie is. It would be incredibly frustrating to try and 100% a wad without knowing exactly what you still need to do.

 

If I didn't know that a secret still wasn't found, I would probably go in an endless loop around a map until I swear off playing the map that way again. Marking secrets is a feature of the game for a good reason.

[jazzmaster9]

5 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

people judging a map primarily (or exclusively!) by how fun it is to watch a YouTuber play it is an unfortunate form of idiocy, and a growing one -- but one I think you just have to tune out as noise. Another way to put it is that these comments are not about the map. They are about the playthrough and basically saying Decino's playthrough was boring and frustrating. Decino ""fans"" smh not very loyal. :P

According to Decino fans, Doom 2 in Spain is "bad and overrated" because people can't Blind 100% it easily.

 

Though staying on topic. I pretty much made a middle ground with my secrets by making them as easy to find as possible IF you look at the automap and realize they are never tagged as one sided lines.

Edited April 4, 2023 by jazzmaster9

[Ludi]

1 minute ago, jazzmaster9 said:

According to Decino fans, Doom 2 in Spain is "bad and overrated" because people can't 100% it easily.

 

What does this have to do with anything?

[jazzmaster9]

3 minutes ago, Ludi said:

 

What does this have to do with anything?

with the portion of the topic in the thread of 100% players treating something negatively because they had a hard time finding all the secrets blind.

Edited April 4, 2023 by jazzmaster9

[ReaperAA]

10 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

This leaves me wondering, if a part of the UV-MAX Blind tendencies are rooted in playing PWADs only once?

 

I think this is very likely. For similar reasons that people want to play wads on UV. It's the FOMO issue. Because of the sheer quantity of wads out there, I can only play most wads only once in my lifetime and hence, I also somewhat suffer from this issue. But I would seldom go out of my way and use a map editor to find secrets.

 

Likewise, while I play most stuff on UV, if I know that a wad I am going to play is super hard then I am going to play it on HMP, or even HNTR. Like I am planning to play Sunlust pretty soon, but I am sure as hell not going to play its later maps on UV.

[Ludi]

1 minute ago, jazzmaster9 said:

with the portion of the topic in the thread of 100% treating something negatively because they had a hard time finding all the secrets.

 

Fair enough, I misinterpreted what you said, I apologize for that.

[jmac]

The whole mindset of needing to 100% maps/games in general has always been strange to me. If players are spending so long trying to find optional secrets that they're becoming genuinely frustrated, that's a problem with the way the player is approaching the game, not with the design of the map. And in most cases, a map with unmarked secrets sounds like it would be a whole lot more frustrating to the vast majority of people who have that mindset.

 

Making maps with unmarked secrets could make for some interesting adventure gameplay in the right kind of map, but I don't believe anybody should feel obligated to do it.

[Sectorslayer]

I have to agree with most of the comments so far. It’s definitely a playstyle issue.

 

As for the secret tags: They are in the original game design. And correct me if I’m wrong: The end screen stats would show 100% secrets if there is no tagged sectors, right? Gameplay wise, there is always the Computer Area Map item to pickup! Look at all the undiscovered areas! 😅
 

I followed the principal of putting one near the exit in most of my techbases. Putting that one into an unmarked secret from now on. Because deliberately unmarked secrets might be a great idea for exploration heavy maps actually. 🤔

[IncompA]

17 minutes ago, Sectorslayer said:

And correct me if I’m wrong: The end screen stats would show 100% secrets if there is no tagged sectors, right?

Just had to whip up a WAD real quick to test this; in Chocolate Doom, this is untrue.

[IncompA]

1 minute ago, EliDoesStuff said:

Just had to whip up a WAD real quick to test this; in Chocolate Doom, this is untrue.

Also tested more source ports.

In Crispy, 0% all around.

In DSDA and PRBoom+, 100% only for secrets, 0% elsewhere.

In GZDoom, 100% everywhere.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, Sectorslayer said:

The end screen stats would show 100% secrets if there is no tagged sectors, right? 

That is only the case in more modern ports. And that's also why some older wads (cyberdreams comes to mind) have you start in a sector that's tagged secret. To get the 100% at the end. 

[Beginner]

Fuck that noise, mark every reachable sector as secret. Link kinda relevant.

 

[Sectorslayer]

Thanks @EliDoesStuff and @Sneezy McGlassFace for checking! I wasn’t aware that this is a GZDoom thing. Dropped it forPrBoom, Crispy and Chocolate only recently. 👍

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I'll say the end screen tally is a double edged sword. Like a lot of design decisions. It's there specifically to let you know if you missed something and give you incentive to go back and find it all. However, then you're not doing it because you enjoy it, you do it to get 100, 100, 100. I can recommend looking into extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. 

Ports offer you an extended view where your can see the kills, secrets and items at all time, and it changes how you play and how you experience the game. It's subtle but again, like a lot of design decisions, it has significant affect. 

 

I think we can all agree that unmarked secrets are amazing. Finding an entire area filled with goodies behind an innocuous bush is just great. You found something extra that most people probably haven't even thought was there. But I don't know if leaning too heavily the opposite way is a good idea, either. Now nothing is secret.. i don't know.

I love ribbiks' barrel secrets. He knows you only go the extra mile for the 100% and he plays with you. 

 

About secrets you get locked out of, I respect them. The asshole designer in me loves stuff like points of no return. Because most people will not care in the slightest. One press of a button or jump off a little ledge and you can't go back. But what if there's a heath vial there? 99,9% people won't care. That's a little something for those who do.