Why do people say plutonia is hard?

[BUYXRAYS]

Recently, I started playing The Plutonia Experiment on Hurt Me Plenty.

I was hoping for a difficult challenge. And although it is, many people said that it was terribly difficult.

Why do people say that? For me, it isn't that bad.

[Li'l devil]

It's hard because it's difficult.

 

Edit: also I feel like 80% of people here play on UV by default instead of HMP.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Li'l devil

[Shepardus]

It was hard for the time, and hard compared to the other IWADs. It also has a different difficulty curve from the other IWADs, in that a lot of the difficulty is front-loaded in the first third of the game, which affects its perception even though it doesn't get too much harder from there. But yes, by modern standards Plutonia isn't very high up the difficulty scale.

[Azuris]

17 minutes ago, BUYXRAYS said:

Recently, I started playing The Plutonia Experiment on Hurt Me Plenty.

I was hoping for a difficult challenge. And although it is, many people said that it was terribly difficult.

Why do people say that? For me, it isn't that bad.

 

It is more how Plutonia is designed, it is more about finding out the exact Way to solve a trapped Situation rather than exploring and shooting.

 

[xScavengerWolfx]

I found the quote i was looking for from Dario. This is the quote he said while giving an interview with some one on the 5 years of doom.

 

The qoute goes as follows:

 

Interviewer:

A lot of people found Plutonia much too hard for them (Archviles in the first level, etc) and so stuck to Evilution.  What's your reaction to that?

 

Dario:

Plutonia was always meant for people who had finished Doom2 on hard and were looking for a new challenge. I always played through the level I had made on hard, and if I could beat it too easily, I made it harder, so it was a challenge for me. I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who plays Plutonia on hard skill and complains it's too hard. I had a lot of mail from people who had never even tried the easy skill setting because they "only play on hard". However, if someone does play Plutonia on easy and still finds it too hard, play Evilution through, and you should be ready to play Plutonia...

 

I still respect this man and i use this quote for some of my maps. If it's too easy, make it harder.

Edited July 20, 2023 by xScavengerWolfx

[TheCaneOfTheTophat]

Compared to Doom 2, it's quite a decent hike up in difficulty. Also, I think Civvie has something to do with the whole "Plutonia is insanely difficult" thing.

[Matthias]

[FecalMystAche]

It’s hard but a lot of people just parrot what they hear from people like Civvie. It isn’t the hardest thing ever but is it harder than Doom 2? Sure it is. 

Edited July 20, 2023 by FecalMystAche

[Zulk RS]

1 hour ago, BUYXRAYS said:

Recently, I started playing The Plutonia Experiment on Hurt Me Plenty.

I was hoping for a difficult challenge. And although it is, many people said that it was terribly difficult.

Why do people say that? For me, it isn't that bad.

 

Because it is the hardest of the official Doom games (that use the Doom 2 Engine) by a wide margin.

 

Also I have noticed that how hard something feels to you may vary based on your play style. For example, I found Plutonia to be harder than Ancient Aliens primarily because the type of fast-paced gameplay that Plutonia encouraged wasn't how I personally play Doom so it felt much harder to me. Perhaps the way you like to play Doom made Plutonia seem easy to you? 

 

Another possible reason for thinking Plutonia is not that bad is hype. Like it has this reputation of being super hard (which I get why) but no matter how hard something is if it gets hyped up as some insane challenge, more often than not, it would seem not that bad.

[head_cannon]

Here's some musings on that question from 2021: discussions on its style & tone (plus its place in history) and how The Plutonia Experiment got its (overblown) infamous reputation.

 

 

[Lucius Wooding]

It's by far the hardest of the IWADs and has a different style of combat than the rest for sure. You really can't compare it to modern stuff because it's been so influential and the expectations for player skill have gone up over time. However the mappers really understood monster placement and combat a lot better than most at the time. 

 

Maps like 32 and many of the mid/late game maps are certainly a nice challenge on UV. It's not really a challenge mapset anymore these days though, more of a rite of passage after beating Doom 1/2. Still very much worth playing in my opinion, but not much of a feather in one's cap compared to hard mapsets today.

[baja blast rd.]

This point from the other thread is worth reiterating lol:

 

On 5/14/2021 at 6:49 AM, Dragonfly said:

Plutonia's been considered very hard for a long time. Way before youtube even existed, let alone civvie's channel.

[hybridial]

I'd say at least part of it some of Plutonia's most harsh moments are in the early maps. Not a lot of the latter 20 maps are as hard as many of the first 10, that was what I thought when I played it through anyway, and it just feels like a lot of the early stuff is getting kicked in the face before it relents. 

 

I think it does have an easier Icon of Sin map than Doom 2 but that's probably because it's much better designed. 

 

 

[Matthias]

Plutonia is difficult when you look at the family of the all official iWads... 

 

..but the community pWads like Hell Revealed and Sunlust is a different story.

[FecalMystAche]

46 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

This point from the other thread is worth reiterating lol:

 

I don’t think anyone was arguing against that point, though most younger people new to forums and classic doom in general aren’t going to know about thread discussions that possibly predate their birth, but they’re more likely to hear about it from someone they follow on the internet. 

Edited July 20, 2023 by FecalMystAche

[BerserkerNoir]

Well, Hurt me Plenty isnt exactly hard.
Obviously for modern doom standards is not, UV is where the real challenge is.
 

[NoWits]

3 hours ago, BUYXRAYS said:

Hurt Me Plenty

Try it on UV then come back here.

Edited July 20, 2023 by NoWits

[Shepardus]

7 minutes ago, BerserkerNoir said:

Well, Hurt me Plenty isnt exactly hard.
Obviously for modern doom standards is not, UV is where the real challenge is.
 

 

4 minutes ago, NoWits said:

Try it on UV then come back here.

I think the difference between HMP and UV is less significant in Plutonia than it is in Doom 1 and 2 (and Go 2 It has no skill level adjustments at all). This may contribute to Plutonia's reputation because it's more of a jump in difficulty if you play on HMP first.

[DNSKILL5]

Plutonia was always intended on being designed around the idea that the player already completed Doom 2 (and probably Ultimate Doom, though more so Doom 2), and the spike in difficulty is to challenge the more seasoned players.
 

Do people exaggerate the difficulty a bit? Probably about as much as people exaggerate how terrible they find TNT to be. This is the internet after all. Even the slightest inconvenience can be made out to be the end of the world as we know it. 
 

Honestly, I wonder how someone who’s first exposure to Doom was Plutonia or TNT feels about them compared to those of us, myself included, who played them after we had already completed Doom and/or Doom 2. I assume this is a rare occurrence, but there’s likely at least someone who went through such an experience. 

Edited July 20, 2023 by CAM-7EA

[aloysiusfreeman]

Funny enough I just started Plutonia for the first time last night. As much as I love Doom my interest to the modding side of things has only begun a few months ago so I'm behind on the historical side of things. 

 

Anyways, having no knowledge really of Plutonia, my ass was pretty chapped when I saw the archvile right away

[LadyMistDragon]

It's hard if the IWADs are all you have played...but naturally, a majority of the custom content released since that time is more difficult in a number of ways. It's not without some unique challenge regardless, but that's not something which get talked about by commentators that are basically just "oooh, hard!".

[G19Doom]

It’s mostly people who suck at combatting hitscanners that find it to be brutally difficult tbh. 

[Mr. Alexander]

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

I think the difference between HMP and UV is less significant in Plutonia than it is in Doom 1 and 2 (and Go 2 It has no skill level adjustments at all). This may contribute to Plutonia's reputation because it's more of a jump in difficulty if you play on HMP first.

To this point, I recently recorded a demo of Ghost Town on HMP for a friend of mine to show him how to beat it from a pistol start, and was shocked at how little difference there was between HMP and UV. It's nearly the same map with only a few monsters subtracted and a Hell Knight swapped in for a Baron of Hell, nowhere near the kind of thorough rebalancing you get in Sunlust, nor the brute proportional subtraction you get in Doom and Doom 2. Ghost Town could be an outlier in this regard, but I also found that Congo wasn't all that different on HMP either.

 

People say Plutonia is difficult because it tries to kill you much more quickly and in much less sporting ways than Doom and Doom 2 do. It's overrated in this respect compared to wads beloved of the challenge-map sickos and speedrunners, but those people are a niche within the community, and for a more casual audience, Plutonia can be a real kick in the teeth, without the visual splendor of something like Ancient Aliens to ice the pain.

[Shepardus]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Alexander said:

To this point, I recently recorded a demo of Ghost Town on HMP for a friend of mine to show him how to beat it from a pistol start, and was shocked at how little difference there was between HMP and UV. It's nearly the same map with only a few monsters subtracted and a Hell Knight swapped in for a Baron of Hell, nowhere near the kind of thorough rebalancing you get in Sunlust, nor the brute proportional subtraction you get in Doom and Doom 2. Ghost Town could be an outlier in this regard, but I also found that Congo wasn't all that different on HMP either.

I checked the stats for Aztec on the Doom Wiki since that was where my first playthrough of Plutonia stalled, and that map is exactly the same on HMP and UV, and even HNTR only has one fewer arch-vile and one more hell knight.

[Murdoch]

8 hours ago, BUYXRAYS said:

Recently, I started playing The Plutonia Experiment on Hurt Me Plenty.

I was hoping for a difficult challenge. And although it is, many people said that it was terribly difficult.

Why do people say that? For me, it isn't that bad.

 

That you have to ask this question baffles me. You do realise people are different right? They have different likes, dislikes, and different levels of skill at different things.  Maybe they approach the game differently, and so this makes Plutonia more difficult for them.

[Paf]

plutonia is hard because it's hard

Edited July 21, 2023 by Paf

[Yousuf Anik]

26 minutes ago, Paf said:

plutonia is hard because it's hard

Plutonia is hard because it's Plutonia afterall!

[No-Man Baugh]

After you start playing Sunder, alot starts to feel trivial
 

10 hours ago, BUYXRAYS said:

Sunder is genuine hell to play. It made my blood BOIL

[jazzmaster9]

9 hours ago, TheCaneOfTheTophat said:

I think Civvie has something to do with the whole "Plutonia is insanely difficult" thing.

Except this was already a thing way before even YouTube. But yes lets blame wellknownFunny UTub man.

[Tangra]

People say Plutona is hard, because out of the official releases it's the hardest one by a distance. And it's not just "hard for its time", it's hard now, and it will be just as hard 30 years from now. Just because there are hundreds of harder wads that came since, doesn't make Plutonia any less hard than it was 27 years ago.