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

[OliveTree]

Doom 3 doesn't have any kind of prompt to tell the player they've found a secret either. I've been surprised a lot on repeat playthroughs of Doom 3 by just how jam-packed it is with secret pickups, siderooms and corners, partially because I literally don't know how many there are in total (the game won't tell me).

 

edit: submitted too soon :P

 

To the Completionist counter-argument: I find most completionists only care about exploring all routes that are

a) acknowledged in some way by the game

and/or

b) especially noteworthy

 

If you didn't tag your secrets, I'm not sure completionists would fill in the gap by scouring every corner until they were 100 percent certain they had found every unmarked secret. Rather I think they'd explore to their heart's content, 100% items and kills permitting. Which is theoretically a more enjoyable experience for completionists and casuals alike

Edited April 6, 2023 by OliveTree

[indigotyrian]

Something I thought of, while we're talking about the extended hud on DSDA-Doom: How do we feel about kill/secret/item counters when they're tucked into the map screen? I'm personally alright with them though I'm also not the kind of person who goes out of their way to hunt down every secret and kill unless I originally set out to do so.

[LadyMistDragon]

26 minutes ago, segfault said:

Something I thought of, while we're talking about the extended hud on DSDA-Doom: How do we feel about kill/secret/item counters when they're tucked into the map screen? I'm personally alright with them though I'm also not the kind of person who goes out of their way to hunt down every secret and kill unless I originally set out to do so.

That's actually how I tend to play! Part of that is just not having the extended HUD on by default, but honestly, it seems like something more designed for speedrunners.

[Steve D]

4 hours ago, Cybernight Zero said:

I tend to like shorter maps and 3 or 4 secrets, but that's my preference. TNT Revilution has way more levels with a ridiculous amount of secrets so not sure what the fuss was with your map.

 

Ah, TNT: Revilution. I'm one of the guilty parties, though of my maps, Blood Factory had only 4 secrets, while Abandoned Port had 6, and one of them was the abandoned port itself! ;D

 

I did that because I'm forever enraptured by Toxin Refinery. Dat Soulsphere secret! Dat Rocket Launcher secret! The first time I played KDiTD, in a tale often told, I just wanted some boot camp because I kept dying in Map03 of Doom 2. I looked upon KDiTD as basically a hunk of crap easy enough for me to beat, but along the way, there were things I enjoyed. After a time, I played it again, and Fava Beans as well. Now the love affair began, all the way back in late 1996. Since then, I've put special effort into what I call "traditional maps" when it comes to secrets. I love teasing secrets, like the Soulsphere in Toxin Refinery. It's just fun for me. Like @Biodegradable said, "Doom it your way, baby." Hell fuckin' yeah! While I still live and breath, there is not the slightest chance that I will stop making traditional maps with crazy secret areas. I especially like making gigantic secret areas with big intense fights for the goodies. Bonus gameplay, IMO. Some players might be happier without that bonus, because it makes the map longer. Fair enough. But like @Not Jabba said, I do want players to find them, so I try to avoid making them too obtuse. But I don't want the coolest ones, especially the chained secrets I so adore, to be too easy. I'm always hoping that secret-hunters like me will be delighted by the simple act of unlocking the secret chain, the way I felt so often in KDiTD and several other mapsets. 

 

I may have done myself a disservice by hiding the abandoned port in TNTR too effectively. Players who found it enjoyed the map much more than those who didn't, and I confess it wasn't teased all that well. I've also never seen a video of E1M5 from Shotgun Symphony where a player found the secret BFG, although I'm sure many have. All you need is a working knowledge of the 2-sided switch secret from E1M7 of Fava Beans and you'll figure it out, probably on first sight. ;)

 

So for me, it's tagged secrets forever. Everyone else, "Doom it your way, baby." :)

[RHhe82]

2 hours ago, segfault said:

Something I thought of, while we're talking about the extended hud on DSDA-Doom: How do we feel about kill/secret/item counters when they're tucked into the map screen? I'm personally alright with them though I'm also not the kind of person who goes out of their way to hunt down every secret and kill unless I originally set out to do so.

This thread and Decino’s video had me thinking about this. First and foremost I love the extended HUD. It looks good, and without it, I would probably worry about missing out anyway.

 

Still, I wonder… It is silly that someone who doesn’t stream, who doesn’t post stats for all the world to see, who plays completely in private, would worry about maxing, or maxing everything blindly. Perhaps it would be more exciting and less metaplay if player wasn’t aware of missing stats, or would become aware of them only at the end or second playthroughs. I wouldn’t want to jump the bandwagon the instant an authority figure says something (at least I still don’t care about maxing items too and insisting on nightmare or fast monsters :P) but maybe it’s worth a try. Stats on automap, though… I tried playing one map without hud, and found myself having hard time not peeking the stats on automap screen D:

Edited April 6, 2023 by RHhe82
Fixed a typo

[trem0lo]

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

No idea which forum this belonged in, I just put it here by default.

….

Just wanted to reply and say that I really enjoyed Grey Dwarf. I spent a good while hunting down all the secrets—it was a nice change of pace to the combat-oriented skillsaw maps. You clearly had a vision about what the level was supposed to be… It was artistically risky and liked it. From one musician to another, keep taking risks and creating what you believe in. 

Edited April 6, 2023 by trem0lo

[deathz0r]

I will never compromise my vision for a map. If I want to continue to make absolutely fucked-up secrets that can't be easily deciphered in UDB, then so be it. I have little to no interest in catering for people who expect 100% secrets on a blind playthrough - mouldy is right, that mentality (along with the UV-only mentality that I still see pop up from some streamers on Twitch, who then have the audacity to complain about the maps being too hard and "limiting accessibility to the elite" when mappers have made a conscious effort to add difficulty settings) deserves to be rightfully mocked.

 

The "professional mapper" mentality of needing to cater for a wide audience in some hope of recognition does nothing but stifle creativity in mapping, and removing secrets altogether has to be one of the most absurdly stupid things I've read in a while. If your concern is that people have immediate access to knowing how many secrets are in a map, is that the fault of the mapper or the source port for enabling it in the first place, when the feature never existed in vanilla?

 

EDIT: Just watched decino's video and I couldn't agree more with his takes - I don't really think much about when I use the extended HUD and if I can't find secrets within a reasonable time, I'll just move on and finish the map but I do make an effort to go for 100% kills. I have also just noticed during my recent playthroughs with using the FastDoom source port that I've been caring even less about secret hunting and will usually only come across ones I can easily see or hear. The point about viles spawning in (which I'm usually quick to notice and react to) also makes a stronger argument for disabling the extended HUD in blind playthroughs of future WADs.

Edited April 6, 2023 by deathz0r

[Azure_Horror]

My 2 cents

 

Re: Gray Dwarf

1) My feelings about the map.

It is far from my favorite map. But! I am really glad it is there in the Ancient Aliens. Visuals and themes of the megaWAD just beg for a long, slow-paced, exploration-heavy map on board of the alien vessel and/or alien space station. Gray Dwarf delivers exactly that.

The WAD would feel less complete without the map.

 

2) Unmarked secrets approach for Gray Dwarf

For me personally, unmarked secrets on exploration-focused make my completionist anxiety worse! If all secrets of the map are unmarked - than every non-obvious corner of the map is essentially made equal. Instead of feeling anxious about an arbitrary number, I start feeling anxious about every. single. ledge! For Gray Dwarf in particular, in means all the sniper platforms, especially the ones with ammo, and also those Berserk Pack and Supercharge teased near the start.

 

Re: Unmarked secrets.

- If you want to use only unmarked secrets, because it is cool - go for it!

- But if you think that this will stop players from ruining their own fun? No, it won't! We, the stubborn players, will just find some other stupid obsession to make our playthroughs miserable :D

Edited April 6, 2023 by Azure_Horror

[Chalibluefin]

5 hours ago, Steve D said:

 

Ah, TNT: Revilution. I'm one of the guilty parties, though of my maps, Blood Factory had only 4 secrets, while Abandoned Port had 6, and one of them was the abandoned port itself! ;D

 

 

Tbh I never really had a big issue with secret hunting in TNTR. As someone who has played MULTIPLE times and had many opportunities to find all the secrets, I never had a feeling of "this map is dragging from these damn secrets." The secrets from Abandon Port made it more enjoyable.

If any levels drag it was probably just the wall that was RedRum. 

If there was an offender for secret hunting that I dreaded it was usually RedRum or the Temple Scavenger Scamper in Map22. 

 

I'm the local TNTR simp so I end up having alot to say whenever it's brought up.

[ipecacodemon]

5 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

It is silly that someone who doesn’t stream, who doesn’t post stats for all the world to see, who plays completely in private, would worry about maxing, or maxing everything blindly.

 

I am honestly shocked by so many remarks in this thread, made seemingly completely unaware of trends in the broader gaming community that have been around since the arcade days when home internet wasn't a thing! Completionism in some form or another has always existed and will always exist, whether its score attack or time attack or getting all the collectibles or unlocking all the costumes and characters or whatever. I'm even more perplexed to read someone else saying exploration is just a fad? Like mate have you heard of the game Myst? That was literally one of the best selling games of its day almost 30 years ago! Granted, internet availability and especially the achievement system popularised by Xbox Live probably exacerbated some of the pressures and unhealthy tendencies of those kinds of mindsets and playstyles, but it's always gonna be there in some form no matter what. I've known a lot of people for whom getting 100% achievements is their "default" way of playing through a game and for whom this inevitably leads to frustration at times; most of them have never touched Doom or any other FPS with an end of level stats screen!

 

I also find it a little silly to level real blame at the Extended HUD of all things, as if completionists wouldn't just be tabbing constantly to the automap instead since most source ports do put info there and have done so for a very long time (I may be speaking from experience also :P).

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by ipecacodemon

[Horus]

3 minutes ago, ipecacodemon said:

I also find it a little silly to level real blame at the Extended HUD of all things, as if completionists wouldn't just be tabbing constantly to the automap instead since most source ports do put info there and have done so for a very long time (I may be speaking from experience also :P).

 

 

True but you can also switch off the automap stats too (for example there’s an option in dsda doom to tag automap stats on and off)

Edited April 6, 2023 by Horus

[ipecacodemon]

Just now, Horus said:

True but you can also switch off the automap stats too

 

From my experience I sincerely believe people who would go to the effort of doing this are far more of a minority than 100%ers.

[Horus]

6 minutes ago, ipecacodemon said:

 

From my experience I sincerely believe people who would go to the effort of doing this are far more of a minority than 100%ers.

 

I don't doubt that, and I agree just turning off Extended HUD is a bit of a halfway house, I guess I just wanted to address that if you want a true blind experience going into each map, you can do so with one extra option to toggle the automap stats.

[Kinsie]

Kind of weird that everyone's pointing at stats counters on HUDs and automaps when everyone knows it's that damn rock and roll music that's ruining everything. Makes the kids shake their hips and ruins their impulse control.

[DarkQuill]

You can't cater to everyone. Make the map you want to make. Would not recommend catering to the "I want to 100% everything on my first run" crowd, because that is an extra layer of challenge they are adding themselves. It's like not including a Berserk in a map and Tyson players getting the shits because they have to play slower. Or a sniper enemy that doesn't get telefragged/crushed and can't infight with anything. It's people ignoring the "extra" part in "extra challenge". People will be quick to blame the map, because the immediate thought of "It's my fault for not being more perceptive" is self-sabotage and just awful in general. Obviously that doesn't excuse immediate opinions/accusations against the maps/makers, but understand it's most usually a form of frustration that is said as a reactionary thing and not as an intentional putdown.

 

IMO, having secrets announced is a good thing because the player knows they've done something correctly that awards their exploration and inquisitiveness. They're told "this BFG on a pillar is the result of you doing something that was out of the way, good job" and not "there's a BFG here cause I want you to have it". Players can totally turn off the item/secret/monster counts and even the Secret Found announcements in (I would guess most) source ports if they want that early 90s Doom "lmao is this one stimpack in a corner tagged a secret or not?" aesthetic. It's also a good clue-in for secrets that are linked to other secrets via some weird method. I think there was a few instances of Sunlust where a single Armor Bonus was in a secret area, and doing multiple of those to get to a larger secret is the payoff. Without that notification, there'd be no clue what makes the larger area open, or that there was any significance to the Armor Bonuses.

 

I left a comment on that Ancient Aliens vid saying that I'd replayed through it about 2 weeks ago and had a much worse experience with Map31 the second time. I've since edited it to be less harsh, because in the end the fault lies with myself. Playing with mods that further reward/incentivize the player for getting all secrets/kills can amplify the satisfaction/frustration of 100% Completing a map, and perhaps subconsciously thinking "I NEED all the secrets" made me enjoy it less. I know for a fact I loved it the first time around.

 

But in the end it's your opinion, your design choice. I can't even make an elevated platform in DoomBuilder so what do I know about making maps. But I really do think the secret announcement is a good change, and a good way to remind the player to be more perceptive and engage in frivolous snoopery.

[leveste]

Here's my two cents as a newbie mapper and casual completionist. While expecting to get 100% on a first playthough is dumb, that doesn't mean there aren't a few simple ways to make maps a bit more accessible/less frustrating.

 

1. Computer Area Map. I went through all the pages in this thread with a quick Ctrl+F and only saw it mentioned once. It's such a simple item, but I feel like it gets overlooked a lot. I recently played BTSX map 15 for the first time and the CAP at the start was a big reason for why I was able to find all the secrets myself(including the secret exit). Someone in decino's comments also mentioned putting a CAP near the exit for anyone who wants to go back and do some exploring, which feels like a good compromise.
2. Not hiding secrets on the automap. Follow-up from the above, there were maps in BTSX where secret areas wouldn't show on the automap even with the CAP, which I find to be a weird design choice.
3. Eliminate points of no return. It's very easy to put a teleporter near the exit to take you back up. Even Doom Eternal allowed you to teleport around the map to keep exploring after you finished all the mandatory encounters.
4. Not requiring advanced/speedrun tech like SR50, archville jumps, etc.(unless that's the point of the map, but that's a whole other topic).

Now, since I'm a newbie, I'm still experimenting to find what my mapping style should be, but the points above are just some basics of level design that I try to keep in mind while working on my own maps.

[RHhe82]

1 hour ago, ipecacodemon said:

 

I am honestly shocked by so many remarks in this thread, made seemingly completely unaware of trends in the broader gaming community that have been around since the arcade days when home internet wasn't a thing! Completionism in some form or another has always existed and will always exist, whether its score attack or time attack or getting all the collectibles or unlocking all the costumes and characters or whatever. I'm even more perplexed to read someone else saying exploration is just a fad? Like mate have you heard of the game Myst? That was literally one of the best selling games of its day almost 30 years ago! Granted, internet availability and especially the achievement system popularised by Xbox Live probably exacerbated some of the pressures and unhealthy tendencies of those kinds of mindsets and playstyles, but it's always gonna be there in some form no matter what. I've known a lot of people for whom getting 100% achievements is their "default" way of playing through a game and for whom this inevitably leads to frustration at times; most of them have never touched Doom or any other FPS with an end of level stats screen!

 

I also find it a little silly to level real blame at the Extended HUD of all things, as if completionists wouldn't just be tabbing constantly to the automap instead since most source ports do put info there and have done so for a very long time (I may be speaking from experience also :P).

 

 

 

I'm not sure if I read you wrong or vice-versa, or if I express myself poorly, but I have nothing against exploration and completionism. I mostly UV-MAX Doom, I used to be an Xbox achievement hunter (until I burned out on it), I used to play a lot of TIE Fighter someone mentioned earlier in this thread just to get those extra medals and score. I'm no stranger to such things.

 

Xbox Achievement hunting is a good example to demonstrate it might still be useful to at least question one's own priorities: on the Xbox I would occasionally really grow to hate a game just to get some achievements. Sometimes it'd be fun to play something like Dark Souls for two and a half times just to get some miracle magic you'd never use (and the repeat the journey for the remastered edition). Sometimes it's fun but grindy, like travelling to Sagittarius A* and back in Elite: Dangerous. And sometimes it's really painful, like 100%:ing some Lego game, at which point it's long since lost its charm. Or trying to get all the flags in Assassin's Creed or whatever.

 

Even in the arcade days you'd do exploration, but a lot of stuff weren't on first playthroughs. Back then you'd play the same games over and over again, and thus exploration and discovery happened naturally instead of on some first demo attempt.

 

In any case, I think I'll be trying to live without HUD and automap stats on first playthroughs as an experiment. Based on one map experience as of now, I'm still hard-pressed to be very thorough anyway. I'm merely trying to question if it's such a loss if some window-dressing imp was left somewhere, because I can always replay the map if I liked it enough.

[smeghammer]

1 hour ago, ipecacodemon said:

the game Myst

Now there's a blast from the past! Really beautiful game IIRC. I never finished t though.

 

My tuppence worth - Agree with all the comments about mapping for YOU, and not any perceived 'need' of players. However, AFAIAC,  secrets should be marked - how do you know they ARE secrets if they aren't? - and should not be required to complete the map.

 

I completely get the weird self-imposed pressure to UV-max and it's actually really hard to switch my brain into thinking about NOT doing so. I automatically hit the UV skill, and feel like I failed if I don't find everything at this skill level. However, I realise I miss out on many beautiful maps/mapsets because of this - particularly the harder ones with fantastic architecture (AA, dead.wire etc).

 

I've played several maps that deliberately disable the automap (don't recall names ATM) and if they catch my imagination, finishing but then knowing here is more to find definitely prompts a replay, whereas - for me anyway - if there is no indication of further content (the secret count missed) then that incentive to replay just isn't there. This of course holds true if the map is visible as well, though the temptation to use idbeholda is quite strong...

 

There's definitely a deep-seated psychological thing that pushes me to find the secrets, BUT, I also think that the incentive to (re)play is greater if I know that there is more to find.

 

 

[Insaneprophet]

Ive been actively following this thread for the last few days and quite oddly find myself both agreeing and disageeing with almost everything that has been stated so far. So as not to rehash anything already said I will be keeping my thoughts and opinions to myself BUT I am also in the middle of playing a level that I think would greatly help every other player and mapper of the game Doom reassess and consolidate their own view point on this very subject. If you havnt already tried it, no matter who you are, I highly advise everyone go find and play a map named "Nothing To See Here ..." by Clippy then come back here and tell everyone what you think about marked/unmarked secrets and blind run 100%ing. Thank you and have a good day. 😃

Edited April 6, 2023 by Insaneprophet

[yakfak]

secret count is like review scores, wait til the end
finding yr route around a peculiar level is more exciting to me than finding its supply cupboards

seeing that I got zero out of six secrets at the end of an unexciting map just makes me say, "but i still won", but i'll revisit a map until I max it by accident if it's good. feel like this is just the other axis of obsession =P most people who are into blind play shit prefer volume, i prefer variation !!!

Edited April 6, 2023 by yakfak
thinking about how i organized this comment like one of those youtube bot posts which just takes other people's posts and combines them

[Optimus]

I used to not bother with secrets much, but now when I replay WADs even in my boring youtube channel, I'll be roaming around several minutes after I found the exit, even IDDT and IDCLIP to reduce the time taken, my videos are much longer. But I also want to find all the secrets not from a completionist perspective, but because I know I might have missed some nice looking side areas to a unique easter egg room I shouldn't have missed (I just love these). I don't usually care about items or enemies, but there are cases where I am at the end of the level, found all secrets, but for some reason enemies or items are still not there. I have to doublecheck now, because in few cases, item/enemies are not complete, because I really did miss an area. Sometimes it's an area accessed from a secret that I've missed, other times a regular room I didn't open the door to explore. So I am missing interesting rooms I wanted to explore. So, even if one removed secret tags, I would still want to be sure I didn't miss everything and actually it would make it harder to know if I missed things.

 

Also reason I don't like when a map closes your path behind you and you can never return. Then I have to IDCLIP and buy buy immersion for anyone watching my playthroughs (I know they are boring anyways).

 

That makes me curious about good secret design and if there could be extra helpers/hints when you reach the end to lead you to the missing secrets. From always giving an automap (but some people like to hide those linedefs even with automap on) to some extra hints maybe or alert if you are nearby secret (but then there are secrets where the trigger to open it is in the other side of the map).

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, leveste said:

While expecting to get 100% on a first playthough is dumb, that doesn't mean there aren't a few simple ways to make maps a bit more accessible/less frustrating.

Warning, incoming tangent:

 

The beauty of mapping is that sometimes "frustrating" is not necessarily a bad thing. 

As an example I'd point to mucus flow. Widely appreciated map but playing it feels like an exercise in futility. Especially without the zerk secret. If you aim for killing everything, the secret berserk is a must. Mtpain said that any map that any map with mandatory secret is bullshit, yet he loves the mucus flow. I guess it's only mandatory for 100% kills but still. And the secret with such vitally important item also has the runny nose joke, and is behind a random wall texture. The creator clearly did not expect anybody to find it on their first playthrough. Finding it kinda ruins the vibe and gives you actual means to fight, which seems to be against the map's theme. You don't feel as powerless with it. You still are but not like completely naked. 

All that to say, there are secrets that are meant to be found and help players on their first go-around. And there are secrets that are meant to stay as hidden as possible, unless you open the map in an editor which I personally am not a fan of people doing. 

If a mapper decides to make points of no return, and have really obscure secrets, I think that's 100% within their right to do. Yes, people are free to complain but that should not make the mapper change a deliberate design they feel is right. 

"How was I supposed to find this?!" Maybe you weren't..

[MFG38]

19 hours ago, Tristan said:

hefty monster count (probably 500+), [...] when people see that monster count some will immediately start crying about slaughtermaps

 

Completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but it's slightly hilarious to me that a monster count as "low" as 500 has a chance to get the "slaughter" label in this day and age when some of the biggest slaughtermaps have 4-or-5-digit monster counts. I guess it just goes to show that seeing those numbers right off the bat goes a long way towards building a negative preconception of the map.

 

id had the right idea back in the day - hide the numbers except for the intermission screen.

Edited April 6, 2023 by MFG38

[Tristan]

Well, a not insignificant number of people complained that Eviternity becomes too slaughtery in its last chapter (fwiw I don't agree, and I'm not big on slaughter), 3 out of those 5 maps have less than 500 monsters. MAP27 doesn't even have 300. It's a completely meaningless stat considering you could just have an encounter with 5000 zombiemen, but I can't shake the idea that once you go above 300-400 monsters, people will start rolling their eyes before even playing a second of the map because of some baseless assumption that's been made from what the extended HUD shows.

 

Maybe I'm wrong about this though, I'd like to be!

Edited April 6, 2023 by Tristan

[leveste]

6 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Warning, incoming tangent:

 

The beauty of mapping is that sometimes "frustrating" is not necessarily a bad thing. 

As an example I'd point to mucus flow. Widely appreciated map but playing it feels like an exercise in futility. Especially without the zerk secret. If you aim for killing everything, the secret berserk is a must. Mtpain said that any map that any map with mandatory secret is bullshit, yet he loves the mucus flow. I guess it's only mandatory for 100% kills but still. And the secret with such vitally important item also has the runny nose joke, and is behind a random wall texture. The creator clearly did not expect anybody to find it on their first playthrough. Finding it kinda ruins the vibe and gives you actual means to fight, which seems to be against the map's theme. You don't feel as powerless with it. You still are but not like completely naked. 

All that to say, there are secrets that are meant to be found and help players on their first go-around. And there are secrets that are meant to stay as hidden as possible, unless you open the map in an editor which I personally am not a fan of people doing. 

If a mapper decides to make points of no return, and have really obscure secrets, I think that's 100% within their right to do. Yes, people are free to complain but that should not make the mapper change a deliberate design they feel is right. 

"How was I supposed to find this?!" Maybe you weren't..

 

I would argue that the Mucus Flow example fits with the side comment I made in point 4(about when stuff like this is intended).

 

As for points of no return, it is in the mapper's right to include it, but locking the player(especially the more exploration oriented) out of the rest of the map, especially if there's some more stuff they could find(like secrets or bonus fights or even just a random easter egg), feels like weak game design to me.

 

Edit: Forgot to mention it above, but Mucus Flow is also what I would call a point of no return done right. The end where the area gets flooded fits with the theme of the map. My main problem is when a point of no return doesn't really contribute anything to the map other than potentially lock the player out of content, which feels cheap

Edited April 6, 2023 by leveste
Additional info

[Gifty]

On 4/4/2023 at 2:47 AM, Helm said:

What this discussion highlights the most is the FOMO/Gotta play 'em all and 100% 'em all aspect of the psychology of the average video game player that also happens to be a wad enjoyer. There is an extra wrinkle, it's not just the identity of the doom player playing wads but also that of the doom content consumer intermixing. Especially vis a vis a hyperconnected social media reality around a game that otherwise is out of the market. The only currencies getting spent here are social currencies, and this is a discussion of how some of this social economy generates consumer trends that are not aligned with how people actually play doom in their privacy for fun for decades. Frictions ensue as people try to figure out if their self-confidence needs to be shook because they save/load or because they didn't find secret, after all all these important youtube/stream people are teaching us how the game is best approached, like chess analysts do for the game of chess online, fighting game commentators teach us the values and morals of the fighting game community on stream, etc 

But doom is ancient, and privately people play it in wildly divergent ways, to the point of fetishism or perversion (I say this with 100% love in my heart :)  ) so of course people are sensing falsehoods and projecting on top of this nascent main stream.

My data point is I remember when doom didn't tell me all my stats and that I stumbled through Doom 2 terrified as a little 10 yr old often with godmode/idkfa on and just marveled that it could even exist. I thought it was a game about survival. Being good at doom being a necessity to get a deeper experience didn't even occur to me until I saw stuff like Sunder. And even then, early on it didn't even occur to me that people play these huge monstrosities in a vanilla manner, actually. And I think in the early zdoom era people *weren't* mapping, or playing said maps with a purist mindset. I understood this material as community material, sandbox building blocks to combine as you desire -- decades later many Doom enthusiasts still mostly play the meta of gameplay mod + appropriate mapset.

It would be many years after the game came out that I understood people play vanilla competitively and have all along and that speedrunning is a thing for videogames and it kind of started with Doom etc etc. All this is osmosis in the culture now, but I experienced these things step by step and they changed my relationship with the game as well. Coming on to this old game with all that knowledge front-stacked would create expectations that the Doom experience is clear, simple, delineated across categories and that everyone kind of has arrived to same strategies of play, like say, the game of pacman or tetris.

However Doom is a fully immersed 3d experience and movement in that game explodes into chaos immediately. Your motor control in a 3d space explodes all potentialities, *nobody* plays Doom exactly the same. But speedrunners by virtue of optimization can appear as if they play the game the same way from an untrained point of view.

I think there is a subset of the playerbase that sees playing/making doom as an creative endeavor foremost, but there is another that plays to challenge their skills and see the sights. That part of the playerbase is ancient, nothing to do with UV Max trends on youtube. However there is a more recent audience that heavily trades in this kind of wad content tourism that *also* has the skills and mind to 100% everything, and because it's a younger audience with an internet-grown brain, they encourage this hyperconsumption on all levels, and this leads to an impoverished view of the less tangible / hierarchical / archived aspects of the doom experience.

A person sitting to map something may be thinking in the innocent part of their hearts 'I'm gonna make such a great level that people are going to, even if just for a moment get totally immersed in this space as if it's the only doom space they've ever been in' and then they get instead 'this map sucks it has so many secrets I can't 100% it on my first blind run, I HAVE MAPS TO PLAY, MAN'. It's a clash of mentality about what value signifiers something as difficult to pin down as a 'map set for a 30 year old retro game that nonetheless changed the world' can hold. These signifiers are not inherent. We only observe them from a vantage point informed by multiple oral histories. A younger player / doom social content enjoyer will inadvertently broaden their vantage point by spending more time with the game and in the community.

 

Sorry to quote such a long post in here but this is one of the smartest replies I can remember seeing on DW

 

The OP is fascinating and raises a lot of worthy questions even if I don't agree with 100% of its conclusions. While I applaud the firm "make art for yourself and not for others" presence in the replies (I wish we had more of that attitude in culture in general) I do feel like OP touches on an underlying conflict between a mapper's dual roles as A) an author and B) a technical designer with final cut on the player experience. While I think blind UVmaxing is stupid and symptomatic of a content tourism culture, as a designer it feels a little wrong for me to just throw up my hands and go, "well, they didn't play it right." The entire role of the designer is to anticipate and account for possible player experiences even (or especially) if they differ from one's own. I do think tiny, seemingly surface-level decisions like secret tagging or in-game stat counts have a huge effect on the psychology of the player (in the same way that seeing the waveform of a song beforehand fundamentally changes how you're going to hear it), and it's sort of the responsibility of any good designer to consider these things when they pick up their mapping or modding tool--even if their ultimate conclusion is, "oh well, some folks just aren't going to like this, and that's fine."

 

To parsphrase some designer, "players are almost never wrong in the way they feel, and almost always wrong about why."

Edited April 6, 2023 by Gifty

[JohnR60]

I really think that the idea of playing to look for 100% is more a way of playing for the player than what the creator really thinks when making the level.

There are players who like to self-challenge, for example the pacifist playthrough, no deaths run, and everything else it mostly a autochallenge the players decide to do more than the problem with a secret that is marked on the map, I think they should continue to be marked that we consider secret and yes, you can also add prizes without marking as secret due to exploration, this I think happened in a Classic Doom map where there was a hidden backpack and it was not marked as secret or necessary.

 

Decino's video is a clear demonstration of what he thinks as a player and feels when proposing this type of challenge of wanting to achieve 100% in the levels and he is correct because it is what it generates in one mentally when he sets a challenge and also sometimes the fact of looking for a secret for 1 hour loses the fun.

 

As a new player in the Doom Community at least i can say that all it depends to what the player wants to do, more than what the map has to offer. In my case I play Wads or Maps to enjoy them and experience what they can offer and finishing them, sometimes if the map makes me feels that i can achieve 100% i do it, but sometimes i dont feel it or it is not fun then i decide that i only want to complete the map and say what i think or feel about playing the map. But in the end is more a decision of myself and i only want to have fun while playing Doom maps.

 

In short i think that the theme of secrets needs to continue and well every map creator is free to do what he wants with their maps, if their have a lot of secrets or less or none and the maps that are being made month after month are really impressive in their own ways because every creator has his own ways of making maps.

If they want to put secrets or not in the maps in the end, is more a decision of what the map creator wants.

 

 

[Amiga Angel]

an interesting ideer for sure... I suggest a middle ground for advanced ports... have maybe 4 secrets that are tagged as secrets and then have a set of ekstra secret secrets that arent marked but are still handled by ACS scripting complete with a secret is found messages and all

[Cellular Lamp]

If maps do have unmarked secrets it shouldn't be more than 3 unmarked secrets.

Also I think extended hud could be nice (altho I don't play with it) because if a player is struggling but they know a secret is on a map maybe they find it and it helps em beat the level. (But you shouldn't require secrets to beat it)

 

More confusing mind boggling maps please!

it does suck that not everyone who watches youtubers ends up playing the maps themselves but that's just how it is sometimes. Stuff is more popular to watch then play due to work, school, etc. Watching people play your maps is a wonderful experience at least and it's sad if they miss stuff. I think the practice runs are pretty good because he gets to show all of the intricacies. 

 

As maps get bigger it gets harder to find everything in the level, which is a double edged sword because player might want to replay it with other mods (not in the same sitting) or never play it again because its too big. The big mappacks always look really beautiful but if you're trying out mods you're probably gonna just use a small mappack. Giving your map replayability is excellent and I wish more maps had branching paths or routes.

 

TDLR: Decino is being too hard on himself in the video and secrets being marked/unmarked should be up to the mapper.

[rivethead_]

My personal stance on the matter is that classic misaligned texture secrets should be tagged as secrets while secrets that require a lot more effort to access shouldn't be. Probably a lukewarm take, but IMO it rewards more casual players by making them feel satisfied that they found a secret hiding in plain sight, and it rewards more dedicated players with better rewards for uncovering more hidden secrets.