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

[stewboy]

I should probably mention at this point that Decino's stream has directly resulted in £70 of Bandcamp sales last weekend, so I can't complain too much! I'm not really too annoyed at him or anyone else who has that sort of playstyle - I'm hoping I made that clear in my OP (aside from the slightly snarky postscript). It's more that I'm trying to be aware that this is a playstyle that will always exist, and will always draw people towards it, and so maybe untagging secrets would improve the experience for those players without detracting much from the experience for everyone else. At least, that's the theory, and that's what I tried to argue in my OP.

 

One counterargument I didn't directly address in my OP was that untagging secrets might reduce replay value, as people might not know they should replay a level to find things they missed. I'm not convined that this would actually matter very much though. I replayed through Amid Evil not because I missed secrets that I wanted to find, but because I enjoyed the levels so much. But I'm aware that's just my attitude towards it, and I'm not exactly a normal person.

 

I should also mention that I'm not against showing kill counts or time taken. I don't think the same arguments apply there, and I absolutely agree with hbomberguy that speedrunning is an awesome thing, even though I would never have the patience to attempt it myself. But perhaps this is just because I'm biased in favour of exploration over just plain gameplay (which is probably obvious to everyone now). I don't think I've ever felt a sense of failure because I missed one monster, or because I took too long to reach the exit.

I slightly regret taking such an absolute stance in my OP, and perhaps I shouldn't have made the broad claim that everyone else should design their maps this way. But I do still believe that tagging secrets has more potential to harm the experience than help.

There's a lot of posts in this thread to read and I only had a brief amount of time today - I will definitely try and get to responding to more posts tomorrow!

@ReaperAA You asked on the first page of the thread if I was inspired by Marathon - and yes, I'm afraid I was. I played a lot of Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity as a kid and while I did find a lot of the level design to be kind of confusing, I've taken some aesthetic inspiration from it over the years - particularly the stark contrasts in lighting and height between adjacent sectors. I'd like to think I've taken what I liked from those games while cutting down a bit on the confusing layouts. AA map31 definitely arises out of that.

Edited April 4, 2023 by stewboy

[StarTanned]

At the risk of being annoying, the more comments I read in this thread, the more I hope folks remember that mapping is meant to be fun for the mapper too, not a second job. Just the fact that they're even worried about this situation shows their passion, so let's make sure not to kill it!

 

There are going to be flaws and worse moments in every map. It's a tough, time-consuming hobby. Let's not forget that playtesting is just as important to make sure that 100% tasks are fun! The few playtesters we have who worry about things like secrets and 100% tasks are just as amazing as the best mappers. You can join their ranks if you worry about these things too.

 

That way if the map ever hits Decino's stream, it's less likely to benefit from Yakety Sax playing in the background as he wall-humps for 20 minutes. But even so, it will still happen from time to time. As the UV-maxing type I always remind myself that I have to take the lumps to taste the sweetest sugar in life. If a map is awesome enough to want to 100% it, but 100%ing it isn't working out, I've learned to let it go and not sour my overall enjoyment. (And I'm trying to free up more time to help playtest too).

[Horus]

21 minutes ago, stewboy said:

so maybe untagging secrets would improve the experience for those players without detracting much from the experience for everyone else.

Well, I think there’s enough content in this thread to at least cast doubt on this claim. Also, if one does untag all their secrets, it’s inevitable that there will be some players who make comments like ‘that should have been a secret’ / ‘why wasn’t that a secret?’. Point being you’ll never please everyone.

[mouldy]

i think mappers should keep using obscure secrets and let streamers suffer the pain they deserve.

[Nine Inch Heels]

I feel like MTrop and rd have the right idea. I get the frustration, though. I can't claim to have made a great many maps, but some of my stuff, when played on stream for example, has received a wide range of reactions, from streamers and chat alike. Depending on who played a somewhat sadistic map I made, with their respective audience in mind, the range of "feedback" was somewhere between "this is a neat idea" and "this is the most miserable shit ever".

 

When it comes to an audience's impression of something they themselves have not yet played, the streamer's performance is what sets up the bias which their respective audience will entertain. That's just how people function, and this dynamic is absolutely not limited to playing video games, for better or for worse (arguably for worse, though). That being said, I never liked seeing somebody else having a bad time with something I made, but there wasn't anything I could have done about it, other than looking the other way, really. It's impossible to cater to everybody to begin with, and I can't force anyone to not play the stuff I made, either.

 

Easier said than done, but I would recommend not giving too much of a damn about it, because if a map's supposed reception is what's keeping you from enjoying what you do for recreative purposes, then what's waiting for you at the end of that road?

I'm sure there are some discussions to be had about the importance of completionism, the impact of streamers and their verdicts, the merits and pitfalls of self-imposed challenges, who's responsible for what in situations like this and all the other stuff that, frankly, has been discussed up and down before, just with a different coat of paint. At the bottom line, I think the most important question to ask and answer is why you (should/shouldn't) let it get to you in the first place, and whether or not the supposed reason it did get to you is one that happens to be worth "losing sleep over", or anything of the sort.

[ImproversGaming]

My basic thoughts are that you cannot please all of the people. If you remove the tagged secrets you will upset some other subgroup. If you want to release a WAD which maximises the overlap with perspective players desires then I guess it would require some good old demographic digging or some targeted surveys or look for maps that everyone thinks are great and see what they have in common (if they even exist).

I played this map recently and thought it was great. It was scary at first as it was mazey and routing was daunting for me. I got to grips with it and enjoyed exploring and secret hunting, as it was a bit of a change in pace. @stewboy, the map is great and I hope you are proud of it – you should be (the music in that WAD absolutely rocks too!).

As for Decino, it is one perspective and they are entitled to it. However, I thought Decino was really enjoying the hunt for secrets at the end. I did not feel the secrets were an issue, but maybe I missed something. I guess the bottom line is that when you create and distribute something people will have opinions and you cannot please them all. I hope you create maps that are focussed on what you want to create rather than just what you think people want. Though I get that it will be important for many mappers to have positive feedback from players.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Without secrets I wont get the dopamine hit every-time I hear "DSSECRET" play. :(

Also, not knowing how many secrets there are is a bit of an issue since I like to know whether or not I've 100% any map I've played.

[Arsinikk]

I really don't like the idea of blaming "streamers" as the fault of getting 100% secrets. Different Doomers like to play Doom in different ways. Some Doomers like to play without worrying about all kills, items, or secrets. Some Doomers like exploration, and like to find every marked secret and possibly every item. I bet that decino would be the kind of Doom player to wanna find every secret even before he started his YouTube channel, just because that's how he enjoys playing Doom. It is the fault of decino's audience for thinking a map is bad from decino's playthrough of it taking a long time, but that's honestly gonna happen with any big personality with a large audience.

 

What about people like me who also stream Doom every week. I enjoy getting 100% of everything in maps, because I enjoy getting to experience the entirety of a Doom map. One of the reasons I actually shoot for all items, is because sometimes an item can be an unmarked secret in of itself, like in MAP01 of Hell Ground, when you can shoot a certain mirror and gain a secret soulsphere.

 

I absolutely cannot wait to see a bunch of new WADs come out with exactly 0 secrets, and for the joy of finding secrets to be pulled from my hands, so to satisfy some mapper being annoyed with people playing their map "the wrong way". (Extreme sarcasm if you can't tell). How dare people enjoy Doom in different ways.

[msx2plus]

17 minutes ago, Arsinikk said:

I absolutely cannot wait to see a bunch of new WADs come out with exactly 0 secrets, and for the joy of finding secrets to be pulled from my hands, so to satisfy some mapper being annoyed with people playing their map "the wrong way". (Extreme sarcasm if you can't tell). How dare people enjoy Doom in different ways.

 

do you need to be told you found something? or is the joy in the process of discovery? is it not enough to pass through an interesting locale? you were there, you saw it, you explored it, you uncovered cryptic passages and puzzles, and now you're gone from that place, and your experience was special for everything you saw and did not see. i think that's a really remarkable thing.

what is "the entirety" of a doom map? many times there will be things that aren't secrets, items, or monsters that i'm sure the author would appreciate you doing but you wind up not doing. the "entirety" or anything even kind of exploration-based quickly becomes impossible.

 

just food for thought and all that, not saying you're playing wrong or even addressing you directly - your thoughts just seemed like a good jumping-off point.

 

i think it's funny that so many people are saying both "hey, don't let people change how you make maps!" and "don't take my secrets!", hahahaha - you guys are allowed to play how you want, mappers are allowed to map how they want and toying with established customs is just part of the toolbox. stew is offering ideas and reflecting on an experience, not legitimately expecting secrets to be removed en masse.

Edited April 4, 2023 by msx2plus

[Arsinikk]

13 minutes ago, msx2plus said:

do you need to be told you found something? or is the joy in the process of discovery? is it not enough to pass through an interesting locale? you were there, you saw it, you explored it, you uncovered cryptic passages and puzzles, and now you're gone from that place, and your experience was special for everything you saw and did not see. i think that's a really remarkable thing.

Some people enjoy having a checklist. Obviously that is not what everyone likes. I will admit that I do find it disappointing if I end up missing something because it wasn't marked. I always see the automap as like a treasure map, with the secret areas being the treasure.

 

As I was saying before, different people play Doom differently. I'm the kind of player that just likes to play maps once and never replay. I crave new experiences, and replaying maps just doesn't interest me. The sense of mystery and intrigue disappears for me once I've already played a map. Keep in mind, I have no problem with players who love to replay maps. I just think it's a huge mistake to blame other players for not enjoying a map because they won't play it in the way you like.

 

I'm not necessarily saying unmarked secrets are a bad idea. Honestly in my own maps I like to put super secrets that are unmarked that only players that either look in the editor or notice some secret path, will be rewarded.

 

I just think it's a mistake to go extreme in one way or the other. Never having any secrets, even to marking every single secret in a map.

 

I honestly don't like how the title of this thread was worded, since it seems to point to secrets being a bad thing. It's honestly up to the individual player / mapper to decide how they approach secrets. If the title was titled in a more nuanced way, I feel that this discussion would much more positive, instead of being argumentative.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Arsinikk

[Horus]

@Arsinikk Sure, players have their own preferences the same way mappers have theirs, and that’s perfectly valid.

 

It’s totally fine to want to 100% the maps you play. What people are saying is that not every map is designed with that in mind, and aiming for that goal regardless may make the map less fun for both you and your viewers (decino’s playthrough of map 31 of AA may have been an example of that). Whether you decide to pursue that route regardless is ultimately up to you.

[Arsinikk]

15 minutes ago, Horus said:

What people are saying is that not every map is designed with that in mind, and aiming for that goal regardless may make the map less fun for both you and your viewers (decino’s playthrough of map 31 of AA may have been an example of that).

Tbh I think it's pretty naïve to expect certain players to enjoy a map if it doesn't align with their playstyle though. How would players know to approach a map differently unless it's specifically told to them?

 

I think the other problem is that in this specific case with Ancient Aliens MAP31, is that the rest of the mapset did not follow the same kind of secret approach. If you have an entire mapset following the same expectations, you probably wouldn't run into this problem.

[magicsofa]

If you play the Correct Way then you will not be notified for hitting a tagged sector, and you'll only get a mysterious percentage when you exit the level. All the (self inflicted) drama you mentioned is only possible in source ports where you are given more information. Yeah... self inflicted :)

[Horus]

53 minutes ago, Arsinikk said:

Tbh I think it's pretty naïve to expect certain players to enjoy a map if it doesn't align with their playstyle though. How would players know to approach a map differently unless it's specifically told to them?

 

I think the other problem is that in this specific case with Ancient Aliens MAP31, is that the rest of the mapset did not follow the same kind of secret approach. If you have an entire mapset following the same expectations, you probably wouldn't run into this problem.

Well, most people in this thread are saying why should a mapper adjust their default mapping style to fit the preferences of the player. Whereas I think your perspective is why should a player adjust their default playing style to fit the preferences of a mapper. 

The difference is as a player sometimes it is in your own self-interest to adjust your playing style. You may by default be a ‘100% everything’ player, but if a map has a lot of secrets that you aren’t enjoying finding, or the map is structured in such a way then you’re just making it less fun for yourself by pressing ahead regardless.
 

Likewise, you might by default be a ‘UV or bust’ player, but if you get really frustrated playing a map far beyond your skill level, you could have saved yourself the trouble by dropping the difficulty or skipping the map/wad (to add a real example here, someone played one of my maps on UV the whole way and finished it but said it was too hard and that impacted their enjoyment. Whilst someone else saw they were dying a lot early in the map on UV, recognised their frustration and responded by reducing the difficulty to HMP. The latter player had significantly more fun as a result)

Edited April 4, 2023 by Horus

[Codename_Delta]

8 hours ago, MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai said:

Battlefield and modern examples like battle royales or ESPECIALY fighting games, where the devs were listening too much to the pros

Which kind of Battlefield, the good one (from the original to around 5) or the bad one, (2042)

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 hours ago, Arsinikk said:

I really don't like the idea of blaming "streamers" as the fault of getting 100% secrets. Different Doomers like to play Doom in different ways. Some Doomers like to play without worrying about all kills, items, or secrets. Some Doomers like exploration, and like to find every marked secret and possibly every item. I bet that decino would be the kind of Doom player to wanna find every secret even before he started his YouTube channel, just because that's how he enjoys playing Doom. It is the fault of decino's audience for thinking a map is bad from decino's playthrough of it taking a long time, but that's honestly gonna happen with any big personality with a large audience. 

 

I think it's less about blaming anybody for their personal preferences and more about pointing out how somebody was not good at entertaining an audience in that particular instance. That difference matters, because what informed the creation of this thread is that the audience blames the stage (map) instead of the actor (decino) for an underwhelming performance. Decino had all the agency in the world to change things up instead of committing to something that was a chore to watch - or who else was sitting in the driver's seat?

[LadyMistDragon]

6 hours ago, msx2plus said:

. the best secrets reward you with an interesting experience, and i think there's a good argument to be made for not only not telling the player those things exist ahead of time, but making it unceremonious as well.

 

 

 

 

This, of course, assumes that said secrets are interesting experiences. Personally, I liked finding secrets in Stew maps, but I'm not sure that most of them were anything special.

 

Quote

the obligation factor is a huge point and can outright stop people from leaving a map because they "need" to see it all. seeing first playthroughs of things get hurt by the player's "need" to 100% things is rough. i imagine most of us can just ignore things and move on, but some people are just absolutely incapable, and the psychology of it is worth taking into account when designing.

 

 

"....Taking into account...." shouldn't mean entirely pandering to the player's desires. The priority should really be on creating a space interesting enough to bother looking for secrets. If one has trouble making secrets, then it seems a touch nonsensical to say, have a hidden rocket launcher activated by a not-exactly obvious secret switch. On the other hand, it would make sense for someone like you to not tag secrets because of the sorts of artistic maps which you make I think if one wants to take into account player psychology when making 'hidden areas', a better idea might be to make a map layout that's either concise or flows well whilst hiding such areas inside it - and unfortunately, Grey Dwarf largely fails at the former 2.

[Gothic]

No

[faad3e]

i feel like a lot of the issue comes from ppl caring too much about 100%ing a map, just for the sake of 100%ing it, not everyone is particularly into exploration, yet more of them are into 100%ing stuff

 

secrets are okay, the issue is caring too much about them

 

that being said, like mount pain once said, if a map requires you to find a secret in order to beat a mandatory fight, thats no good

 

good writeup stewboy!

[ebrl]

"Doomworld tries to act natural whenever they remember decino exists" challenge (impossible)

[RonnieJamesDiner]

On 4/3/2023 at 3:05 PM, stewboy said:

I've been thinking about this topic for years

 

Well, now I’ve been thinking about this too. WALL OF TEXT TIME.

 

The more I think about it, I feel like this topic shares a lot of ground with the “UV or bust” debate (yeah I’m going there, hear me out).

 

Those UV discussions tend to get a lot of the same responses, in the vein of “if players are willing to ruin their own experience, that’s their problem, just keep making the kind of maps you want to make”. I can see why removing marked secrets as a blanket solution seems tempting, because you’re addressing an issue that bothers you with little-to-no effect on your mapping style, but I think the UV debate offers a counter-argument to your position (or, at least another perspective).

 

The crux of that whole thing seems to be that players will automatically launch into UV out of fear of “missing out on stuff”, on the basis that mappers tend to apply difficulty settings in a descending order from their starting point – they build the map they want to build, with the difficulty they find fun, and then soften the experience for HMP and lower. Listening to mappers discuss their process, I’ve found it quite rare to ever hear of anyone building their “intended experience”, and then increasing the difficulty for UV (though I’m sure it happens). This has nothing to do with a “UV or bust” mindset, it’s just the simple fact that mappers typically don’t create fights that stretch beyond their own ability (for obvious reasons), and will often create fights that hover right around their own threshold for fun/challenge (most people are mapping for themselves, at the end of the day). The only comfortable direction left to go is making the map easier.

 

I think this has far more to do with the “UV or bust” mentality than it being a case of the “cool kids club”. Players are wagering that UV is going to be the map that the author set out to make, and that’s the version they want to play, even if it’s a bad idea to do so. They feel like they’re missing out on “something” if they don’t. Even if the mapper put as much care and thought into every other skill setting, and made that explicitly clear, it can still be difficult to knock that preconception down.

 

This probably applies to secrets, as well. I’d bet money that a good chunk of the players who automatically pick UV for that reason, even if it means sacrificing an enjoyable experience, tend to be the same players who will search high and low for every secret – again, even if it means degrading a good time. Mappers put secrets into their levels intentionally, and it certainly isn’t unreasonable to think that players might feel the need to find every single one of them, or risk “missing out” on something because of that.

 

As far as I’m concerned, removing marked secrets from your maps is tantamount to “removing” Ultra-Violence. I totally get that you’re coming from a place of... “trying to protect players from themselves”, because nobody wants to watch someone having a shitty time in their level, but I think you’re trying to address a problem by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

 

Difficulty settings are there to help players find their own degree of fun, and I’d argue that secrets occupy the same sort of space. That tally of marked secrets on the automap is your primary way of communicating to players who love exploring that “hey, it’s worth the effort to do that thing you love doing”. (Not to mention how much I’m sure it helps speedrunners keep track as they go). If some players confuse that with the levels “intended experience”, out of some preconception of what an “intended experience” might be, that’s completely out of your control. In the exact same way that you have no control over someone automatically choosing UV, believing that it’s the most ""authentic version"" of the map.

 

You’re at odds with a certain approach some players have towards Doom, and I don’t think that alienating other players who appreciate the secret tally is necessarily the best solution – for the same reason that a sweeping difficulty nerf to your level, as a solution to “UV only” players, would make any sense.

 

It sucks watching someone play your map on UV when it’s clearly above their skill level, but it’s just something that you have to put up with as a mapper, because you can’t make that decision for them. And, this applies to any kind of approach a player might have with your map, including secret hunting.

 

That said, I think a mapper does well to understand what kind of experience they want players to have. If I find more joy watching players having fun and staying alive, rather than being constantly challenged, maybe that’s a good indication that I ought to make easier maps. The whole experience of being a mapper will probably be more enjoyable for me. Likewise, if I find joy watching players exploring and discovering secrets, maybe that’s an indication that I ought to make my secrets easier to find.

Edited April 5, 2023 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

 

Well, now I’ve been thinking about this too. WALL OF TEXT TIME.

 

The more I think about it, I feel like this topic shares a lot of ground with the “UV or bust” debate (yeah I’m going there, hear me out).

 

This is a really good comparison, and I think aside from all the other really well-communicated stuff you said, a huge takeaway is that this problem with secrets is in no way unique. In Doom, you get people who only want to play UV. You get people who only want to play FDA-style and make it through a map they don't know with no saves, no matter how long or difficult the map is or how much they hate playing that way. You get people who want to do all sorts of niches like Tyson and Pacifist that sometimes you can accommodate and sometimes you can't. You get people who want you to vaccinate every project so they can play it with a mod instead. Sometimes it's just playstyle, but the worst cases always amount to "I must complete an extra challenge to be a maximum player, but then it's too hard and it sucks."

 

I'm 100% sure that it happens to every game with a modding community. Before Doom, I made maps for Myth II, a platoon tactics game. A few years ago, I came across a playthrough of one of my old mapsets, and the streamer was playing with a self-imposed "no casualties" challenge, which forced them into savescumming through all the maps. I actually had made that mapset after replaying the first Myth game, and I had really loved how the maps forced you to make sacrifices and were often designed in such a way that it was only moderately hard to win, but often impossible to keep all of your units alive (playing practically, without savescumming for RNG and looking for cheese strategies). So I had designed my mapset with that concept as a core tenet. And here was this poor guy beating his head against that wall. They were actually really nice about it and seemed to like playing the set overall, and I'm grateful for that. But just...people will always do this stuff. You can't let it dictate the decisions you make.

 

I'm glad the "no tagged secrets" idea is being fielded at all, and I think it's a useful thing to think about. I can definitely think of projects where it would be a great choice in the context of the entire project design (Hexen being one good model for that, or MyHouse, or Lands of Lore 2, or Sonic the Hedgehog, or many other games). But definitely don't just do it for player preference, let alone player demand. If anything, this thread shows that people are polarized, with passionate opinions on both sides, and you'd just be disgruntling a whole different set of people in exchange for (possibly) appeasing others.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Not Jabba

[TheLippyServer]

6 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Decino had all the agency in the world to change things up instead of committing to something that was a chore to watch - or who else was sitting in the driver's seat?

He had already been playing for over 5 hours, and had people in his chat outright telling him that map 31 was a long one and to save it for a later stream. I love Decino, but that Grey Dwarf stream was 100% his fault.

[Nirvana]

I've had discussions with people about this topic and after seeing fun little secrets get torn apart in the editor day 1 I feel slightly compelled to unmark secrets and put in elaborate mechanisms a la Jump Wad to stop people from figuring out how to get them.

Highly dependent on what type of secret you're going for. I think most completionists just want to get all the soul spheres and what not, while a lot of mappers might consider a secret to be a nice little experience for the player that isn't about checking a box on a list or a number at the end of the map ticking to 100.

 

I think I'll probably be keeping a mix of both 'standard' Doom secrets and unmarked easter eggs that are just fun to find to placate both camps (and to stop myself being annoyed when people pick apart maps and make their own experience terrible).

[Szymanski]

I'll always have one marked secret as a courtesy to UV max runners. I've been moving away from blind secrets (not knowing the reward) recently and I suppose these don't have to be tagged. 

[Xerenogan]

For my 2¢, Secrets add replayability for me. When I finish a map on my way through a wad, I see those missing secrets on the end screen enticing me. They say, "Hey, there's more to this than what you saw".
If I finish a map and the end screen shows me 100% secrets, I assume I got everything and move on as I have no way of knowing otherwise.
 

9 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

You get people who want to do all sorts of niches like Tyson and Pacifist that sometimes you can accommodate and sometimes you can't. You get people who want you to vaccinate every project so they can play it with a mod instead. Sometimes it's just playstyle, but the worst cases always amount to "I must complete an extra challenge to be a maximum player, but then it's too hard and it sucks."

Yep. I'm one of those that gets a strange bug in their bonnet and plays maps with a bunch of self-imposed rules that the map author never considered.
Sometimes it's a lot of fun, and other times the experience is miserable. Either way though, I wouldn't want a map author to go out of their way to accommodate me.
That being said , I am incredibly grateful when an author makes a new version after the fact, for example, a "sterilized" version that allows greater range of gameplay mods to be used.

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Xerenogan
wording

[Not Jabba]

I think another useful question -- and one that I've thought about a lot in the past couple of years -- is: "What do you or don't you want the player to find?" Which ones do you really want them to experience? As the mapper, which ones feel like they're important to you as part of the reason you love the map you made? And for those in particular, don't you kinda want people to find them, either because they're "easier" to find or because the map does a good job of encouraging the search and the steps required to find them?

 

The secrets that feel most important to mappers are probably the ones that feel most important to players too -- the "true endings," the elaborate megasecret sidequests, the maps where a huge fraction of the content is hidden in secrets. Whether you want people to find it easily, or whether you want them to find them all in one go, I think you most likely do want them to find it, and to know it's there (or could be there). In contrast, if a secret is just a little closet with an item in a combat-focused map, and that item is powerful enough to change the balance of the map, maybe you want that one to be a challenge the player has to go out of their way to even look for. And if it's a gag room with a gif with a reference to your favorite movie, maybe it's not part of any "intended" experience at all. 

 

As a player, there are two ways I enjoy secret hunting the most: 1) when there are tons of secrets built into a nonlinear exploration map, and I find most or all of them without a lot of stress, or 2) when the whole map is a deep treasure hunt and clearly broadcast as such, where the secrets (or the intended progression) are really tough to find but the map makes you want to dig in and search for them anyway. For both cases, I've tended to find marked secrets helpful, though that isn't necessarily always going to be true. If I play a map and secrets feel like random things that pop up, rather than an important part of enjoying the map, then I tend not to look for them very hard (though admittedly, that's also when secret hunting is the least fun).

 

I'm again reminded of MyHouse, and how it was so compelling to find the truth of that map that nobody wanted to crack it open in the editor and cheat the experience until all other options were exhausted over the course of many days of exploring. It was too important to us. And that's a case where having almost all of the hidden things be unmarked (it's not even really "secrets," it's just "playing the map") -- but having exactly one marked secret to tell you when you've cracked the full puzzle -- is pretty critical. In other cases -- maybe "find exactly 10 hidden gems to access the secret exit," for instance -- having a count would be really useful. Maybe in that second case, having those specific 10 secrets be marked and any other handy item secrets be unmarked would be helpful, since it doesn't obscure your goal.

 

Here's one more example that's the perfect opposite of the philosophy proposed in this thread -- not to argue against it, but just to show how many different approaches there are. In "Mechanical Embrace," the last map of FCFF (which is 75% secret content, incidentally), there's one marked secret that has literally nothing in it. There's a platforming path that seemingly dead-ends, but strongly suggests you're supposed to get up onto this one final ledge, which you can only reach by rocket jumping. When you get there, you get nothing for your trouble except for the secret tally. It's literally just, "You made it, congrats!" It's designed with maxing strategies in mind, as well -- you have to conduct your run of the map such that you can have the resources available to plant a rocket in your own face to get up to this ledge when you reach it in order to 100% the map. And I think that's really neat in its own way too.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Not Jabba

[Bauul]

One aspect of people wanting to get fully UV-Max a level (which to RJD's point often goes hand-in-hand with the desire to find all the secrets) that I always found interesting is Lost Souls.

 

Lost Souls are objectively killable enemies.  They are undeniably as much "content" as killing any other monsters.  But since Doom 2 when id removed them from the monster count, many 100%-ers now ignore them.  It's interesting to me that people who like to 100% a map talk about wanting to experience all the content, but then will happily leave non-threatening Lost Souls alive because they don't make the numbers go up.

 

In reality, they're a good example of how the level-end stats (including the secret count) are an arbitrary record of completion, not a truly holistic view of the map.  Some enemies count towards the Kill count, but not all of them.  Some pickups count towards the Item count, but not all of them.  Some sectors count towards the Secret count, but not all of them.

 

It makes me wonder how much the stat screen influences how some people approach levels.  If they tracked different things, e.g. health picked up, or % of gibbable enemies gibbed, or map units travelled by the player, would we see the way people play the levels change, even though the ultimate objective (find the exit linedef) remains the same.

[prfunky]

I've always looked at the ending stats screen as a joke, not a measurement of anything really. I really wonder if

Doom's creators saw it the same way.

Kills: 75%

Items: 20%

Secrets: 50%

Time: SUCKS!

Of course, for me the only stat I ever cared about was frags and position in the list of such in deathmatch.

 

[Impboy4]

Might want to reconsider, stewboy...