Do you plan routes on easier difficulties?

[Barondante]

Okay, firstly I am aware there's no true correct way to play except to have fun, but... of course there is.

 

That aside. I'm taking a look at Ploutonia, and it's occurred to me I would have a much easier time on Ultra-violence w pistol start

if I knew where all the weapons are. It's quite tempting, as is it to look up a walkthrough. So my question is how often do you do either 

of these things? I can think of many levels that I have done completely 100 per cent without some form of help and its rewarding if they

are tough maps, like some on TNT for instance. But others have a line where I drop difficulty to at least see where Im going.

Thing is once you do this you do lose a small part of the achievement and experience of just pushing through in 

completely darkness. I suppose you can also only have that experience once.

 

I'm not saying this is bad or good, but I'm wondering what others do. I wonder if a lot of the youtube vids by players doing pistol start on UV

started the levels off that way or worked their way up. 

 

Just curious really.  

[QuaketallicA]

Never. Why would you ever want to know all the things beforehand, that just takes out all of the fun of exploration. I also don't see the appeal of pistol-starting every map, especially on brutal maps like Plutonia Experiment. Sure if you die, maybe let it pistol start to keep things interesting, but every single time? There's no reason to conserve ammo if you lose it all at the end of the map.

 

Bottom line, if it's too hard that you need to memorize item locations and map layouts, then pick a lower difficulty and have fun discovering the map on that, then once you're familiar from a previous playthrough come back on higher difficulty. Isn't that what you'd do in just about any singleplayer FPS ever?

[Shepardus]

I usually play with -nomonsters if I want to get a feel for where things are. Of course that doesn't help with learning the enemies, but I just play normally for that.

[Mr. Alexander]

2 hours ago, Barondante said:

I'm not saying this is bad or good, but I'm wondering what others do. I wonder if a lot of the youtube vids by players doing pistol start on UV

started the levels off that way or worked their way up. 

It depends on the player, and it depends on what they felt like doing at the time they put up the video, but "working your way up" can take several different forms. Sometimes they play blind a few times on-camera before going off-camera to practice the map and learn it better, coming back with the full run elsewhere in the video. Decino is a good example of this, but note that when he plays huge slaughter maps, he tends to save before and after major encounters, making no pretense to total mastery of Sunder, Profane Promiseland, Okuplok, etc.

 

Sometimes they don't play "on camera" at all and play with a save before and after major encounters, stitching together the footage later because "clean play" isn't the point of the video, as in the case of Dean of Doom, which is all about reviewing wads, not showing off high-level skills. A lot of speedrunners and slaughter masters play in one go, but practice extensively over many saves to figure out consistent strategies for each individual battle, and then make hundreds of attempts to grind out a good saveless run.

 

I'm pretty new to the game as a serious hobby, but my understanding is that going up from a lower difficulty to a higher one was a well established norm back in the early days. The obvious argument against it is that learning a map on HNTR can show you the geography of the level without necessarily telling you much about the distribution of monsters and items on higher difficulties, and so you would be better served using saves to figure out what the UV version truly expects of you. But that's why -nomonsters can be so useful!

 

Personally, I tend to mix 'n' match like a normal person, but I do tend to start out on UV and rarely drop down unless it's something truly punishing. Sometimes I play FDA-style and try to get levels done in one go. Sometimes I tear my hair out and look up secrets on doomwiki.org or watch demos and videos by better players, which does feel unsatisfying, but that's life. Usually I just go encounter-by-encounter, saving as I go, and sometimes I make a point to replay battles I win to see if I can get it consistent. It's often less a matter of "working out the best route" and more of exploring the level and trying new approaches every time my first or second instinct gets me killed, going a different direction rather than banging my head against the same encounter over and over.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Mr. Alexander

[Lucius Wooding]

I think that, generally, completing saveless blind runs has become an unrealistic standard. In part due to popular players creating content (and blind runs do make very entertaining content), people have often taken on that playstyle as their own. However, it's very unlikely to survive blind runs unless you're playing something well below your skill ceiling; the popular streamers and youtubers tend to be very very skilled and well versed at Doom. They also often curate their selection of maps to fit their ability and have a wider pool to select from in general due to their skill. Plus many of them have the wisdom to move things along if they get stuck; Decino is a good example. One of the things he does best is not to get excessively bogged down doing things truly blind. He'll practice the harder maps, fast forward or cheat for secret hunting when stumped or when he requires iddt or noclip, and take some useful spoilers from chat relating to things such as points of no return to keep his videos streamlined. Plus, a tremendous amount of maps have broken or missable secrets that completely ruin his goals. Nobody would say he's not a "legit" player, but he certainly doesn't play by a single set of rules all the time; he tries to make the experience as consistently enjoyable for the viewer as possible. 

 

But most of us don't have viewers so I don't understand why we can't do the same for our own enjoyment. Since I go for saveless practiced runs, I may know what's to come but I have to deal with being punished for my mistakes. I find it a lot more compelling than the other way around and I spend far less time humping walls usually. 

 

Personally I want to improve more than I want some ephemeral feeling of discovery (which I still get vicariously through watching others play blind by the way). That means I generally spend more time playing maps that kick my ass than ones I can blunder through and miss secrets and still survive. If you're playing something that's a challenge, then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of existing runs, knowledge, and strategies to try and conquer it. Same as people do in the speedrunning community as an example although they optimize speed first. I do watch a decent amount of Doom content without guilt of being spoiled, and have played and beaten a number of maps as a result that I'd never have done on my own. It's helped me improve as a player, and there's no threat of running out of maps to play blind if I fancy that experience. 

 

Also, I value the ability to discuss a map's design, strategies, and share advice with people. I generally don't like playing games competitively, I prefer when the community values sharing achievements and helping others improve. 

 

 

As for difficulty settings, planning routes on easier difficulties is a waste of time IMO if you just plan to play it on UV anyway; even if you beat it you're leaving the work half done. It will only keep the progression intact (although rarely keys and other points of interest can sometimes vary), and a large part of why I plan routes is to get a grasp of ammo usage and which fights are going to be a problem for a saveless attempt. Obviously four revenants on UV will require some more attention and punish wastefulness more than two imps on HNTR. Not to mention that ammo scarce maps often make the order you do things very pivotal. 

 

The thing is, outside of perhaps the IWADs, most wads do a completely arbitrary difficulty curve for each skill level. It's far from a foolproof way of calibrating your experience, and playing blind comes with lots of problems if you're not playing something that you could consistently beat. And lots of maps rely on lack of resources or hurtfloors (for example) for their difficulty, rather than monster placement. Those sorts of things will kill a blind player far more annoyingly than simply beefing up the monster count and may still be a menace on HNTR. 

 

If difficulty settings were absolute, then someone who could beat all of Doom 2 on HNTR should be able to pick up the aptly named Sunlust Map 29 on HNTR and reasonably beat it. That's clearly not the case. They'd invariably die to the first Cyberdemon before hitting the first switch, no matter what setting they chose. So the idea that a less skilled player could expect a good experience playing blind just because they dropped the difficulty a bit ignores the high overall level of entry for that WAD as well as many others. From what I've seen from the vast majority of popular megawads, none of the difficulties are easy enough for a player who is legitimately new to Doom unless you assume the use of saves and a fair bit of struggle in many cases. HNTR in Doom 1 and 2 is ridiculously easy but most WADs seem to make their HNTR as hard as the IWAD's UV at a minimum; often closer to their own UV than anything in commercial Doom. (Additionally some custom levels are absolutely huge compared to IWADs which IMO is a major hurdle for saveless players that isn't always acknowledged)

 

 

2 hours ago, Barondante said:

That aside. I'm taking a look at Plutonia, and it's occurred to me I would have a much easier time on Ultra-violence w pistol start

if I knew where all the weapons are. It's quite tempting, as is it to look up a walkthrough.

My views on Plutonia:

Spoiler

In Plutonia usually the maps are somewhat short, but once you survive the starting areas and get geared up, you can take your time clearing the rest. For a player that isn't accomplished beyond beating the IWADs, you'll die often enough for your liking whether you play blind or not. 5 deaths at every start might desensitize you which could be a good thing in the long run. Personally I'd recommend trying the maps blind for a bit and seeing if you can get anywhere, but if you get stuck don't torture yourself. I'm not going to struggle for hours in a hitscan filled level just because I didn't know about some crucial megasphere behind a fake wall.

 

Using runs and information from better players has always been the best way to get yourself on par and learn how to approach these sorts of maps. Nothing in Doom 2 or TNT really prepares you even though I think almost anyone can manage Plutonia with the right plan and some practice. By the time you get through the early maps, I think you'll probably pick up steam since they set the tone and the majority of the second half isn't much worse, although often the later maps can get lengthy.

 

Plutonia is a bit of a rite of passage for learning harder maps, but knowing your way around will help you enjoy other WADs since it's so influential. I also favor pistol starting that WAD even for first time players, since it really makes the most of the punchy style and makes finding weapons and progression feel more rewarding. Being able to BFG stuff at the beginning of maps really kills the vibe and defangs a lot of fights.

 

 

[dististik]

If it's my first playthrough I don't route at all. I'll play through the map like normal, give a good college try at finding every secret and getting every kill, saving as I feel necessary (sometimes even in the middle of fights me oh my) and leave when I'm done with the map. If I decide that was fun and I want to demo it I'll go back in with however I feel like would be helpful to route the map and then play saveless (well, I guess that's a given with a demo) with a full plan in hand.

 

In my most honest of opinions, playing saveless blind is just incredibly unfun (or at the very least too punishing for me) and going in with a full plan on a not insignificant number of maps kills some of the joy of experiencing it for the first time myself regardless of whether I'm doing it saveless or not. That all said, the best thing about Doom is you can play it however you want. If you don't get anything out of doing a playthrough with saves where you don't know where anything is that's your prerogative. It is worth mentioning though that the nature of Doom's difficulty settings aren't comparable to that of modern shooters and while I believe for the most part in Plutonia it's a pretty straightforward downscaling of fights there's no promise in other WADs that what you see is that you get. A secret one difficulty might have a supercharge and on a higher difficulty just have a health bonus. That room full of imps could turn into a room full of revenants. That super shotgun might be missing altogether and you get nothing when you check there on higher difficulties. With that in mind, it may be best to just practice levels on the difficulty you intend on playing them on an overwhelming majority of the time.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I value the first experience with a map far, far more than any subsequent runs. Honestly, I rarely play a map more than once. Except for Underhalls. 

Looking at the map in the editor or a guide to have an easier time on UV pistol-start is something I don't understand. Why not playing hmp and/or continuous? It's one thing if you have an audience that expects it, or are recording a demo, obviously. But if you're playing for fun? 

 

I have to admit that I have some internalised continuous-play-phobia I'm coping with. It's not easy, your know. The prevalence of pistol starts warped my mind into thinking that carrying weapons and ammo into a new map is a cardinal sin of sorts. I'm twisted like a corkscrew. A pretzel. A real piece of work. If you see me doing uv max pistol start saveless, call for help. 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[D0M0]

I feel like my reply doesn't necessarily answer the question, but that's mainly because there hasn't been very many cases where i've played on lower difficulties than Ultra Violence. When it comes to runs, I have always played on Ultra Violence, so I feel as if changing the difficulty will change the dynamic of the fights. However, I can share my plan since that does partially answer the question this thread is asking:

 

How I would usually go about planning, is that i would just play through the map casually about 2 or 3 times depending on how hard it is or how long the map is.

I'd then find what sections are the most difficult for me in terms of fights and movement, and so I would practice at those specific parts for a couple minutes (not doing it until I get consistent) just so I can find a proper strategy on making it a lot easier. I'd then take all the parts i've separated and put them together in a neat route/strategy to beating the map. And then I would proceed to run the map. 

 

I used to try and beat maps until I was consistent, but I had heard that it doesn't really help that much and they were completely right about it. You can't necessarily control a fight in a recorded run like you can in a casual run.

[Barondante]

6 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

 I have to admit that I have some internalised continuous-play-phobia I'm coping with. It's not easy, your know. The prevalence of pistol starts warped my mind into thinking that carrying weapons and ammo into a new map is a cardinal sin of sorts. I'm twisted like a corkscrew. A pretzel. A real piece of work. If you see me doing uv max pistol start saveless, call for help. 

 

I'm the same I wake up in a cold sweat just thinking about seeing no option for pistol start in GZDOOM and being unaware of how to skip levels. Thinking I guess I'll just play continuous but the constantly feeling of shame, it's indescribable. I am calling the doctor.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Barondante

[Barondante]

12 hours ago, Lucius Wooding said:

 

 

If difficulty settings were absolute, then someone who could beat all of Doom 2 on HNTR should be able to pick up the aptly named Sunlust Map 29 on HNTR and reasonably beat it. That's clearly not the case. They'd invariably die to the first Cyberdemon before hitting the first switch, no matter what setting they chose. So the idea that a less skilled player could expect a good experience playing blind just because they dropped the difficulty a bit ignores the high overall level of entry for that WAD as well as many others. From what I've seen from the vast majority of popular megawads, none of the difficulties are easy enough for a player who is legitimately new to Doom unless you assume the use of saves and a fair bit of struggle in many cases. HNTR in Doom 1 and 2 is ridiculously easy but most WADs seem to make their HNTR as hard as the IWAD's UV at a minimum; often closer to their own UV than anything in commercial Doom. (Additionally some custom levels are absolutely huge compared to IWADs which IMO is a major hurdle for saveless players that isn't always acknowledged)

 

 

My views on Plutonia:

  Hide contents

 

 

 

Thanks for the detailed response and the tips for Plutonia, I'm looking forward to tackling it.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Barondante

[QuaketallicA]

I'll also like to add that PLUTONIA EXPERIMENT specifically is a mapset definitely designed with saving in mind. You might make it through the first few maps with no saves if you don't pistol start and you already know what you're doing because they're familiar. But beyond that, I wouldn't dream of playing that wad without saves. You could but it would just be infuriating if you're doing a full run. Unless your goal is just to make a challenge out of beating one particular map, and again you have some idea of what that map looks like ahead of time, just don't. 

 

There's just so many surprise trap encounters that will come out of seemingly nowhere, but they do give you ample opportunity to save at the right moments. It's just not worth it to play Plutonia without saves even if you remember the maps.