Why do people say plutonia is hard?

[Bigbad75]

I think people remember plutonia being hard because it came out early on in Doom's life. Before the slaughter map genre exploded in popularity.

Back then people where way less skilled at the game and they were less accustomed to fighting trickier enemies like the Archvilles and Chaingunner's that plutonia made such liberal use of.

[TheCaneOfTheTophat]

9 hours ago, xScavengerWolfx said:

Chaingunners are super overrated in Plutonia, Arch-Vile's is where it's at my man

No. Revenants and Pain Elementals. Dario and Milo really liked their pain elementals.

[Killdozer]

Depends how you play it i quess. I'm actually playing plutonia right now, UV with pistol start and trying to single segment every level, and yeah i gotta say it's pretty damn hard

Edited July 24, 2023 by Killdozer

[zokum]

From a relative standpoint it is obvious that Plutonia is a hard game compared to Doom (2). Compared to other FPSes of the time, I would say it is a fairly hard an unforgiving game. The main competition is probably DN, DF and Quake + the other doom engine games.

The main problem I have with Plutonia and TNT is that it was a full-price game that reused a LOT of content from to other full-price games. TNT feels like an average megawad, which is essentially what it is. If you view it as a stand-alone game, it isn't too bad, but I think buying Doom 2 would be a better choice. As a sequel and compared with the other games at the same time, it's sorely lacking. It was a cheap cash-grab-release from id.

Plutonia is the better of the two since it brought something 'new' to the franchise and player base. 32 hard levels with an overall good design, with good continuity. Plutonia doesn't feel like 32 random maps. The traps and difficulty make sense to me as a design choice. If it wasn't a harder map set, it would have been a fairly pointless release.

So I'd say that as a standalone 'game', it's too hard, but as a mission pack sequel to Doom 2 and TNT, it works very well. Had it been released today, it would have been a cheap DLC. I'd say the best thing about Plutonia is the difficulty. They had a clear vision and they delivered just that. It's a very well overall megawad design, unlike TNT, which is all over the place.

[T-Rex]

9 minutes ago, zokum said:

From a relative standpoint it is obvious that Plutonia is a hard game compared to Doom (2). Compared to other FPSes of the time, I would say it is a fairly hard an unforgiving game. The main competition is probably DN, DF and Quake + the other doom engine games.

The main problem I have with Plutonia and TNT is that it was a full-price game that reused a LOT of content from to other full-price games. TNT feels like an average megawad, which is essentially what it is. If you view it as a stand-alone game, it isn't too bad, but I think buying Doom 2 would be a better choice. As a sequel and compared with the other games at the same time, it's sorely lacking. It was a cheap cash-grab-release from id.

Plutonia is the better of the two since it brought something 'new' to the franchise and player base. 32 hard levels with an overall good design, with good continuity. Plutonia doesn't feel like 32 random maps. The traps and difficulty make sense to me as a design choice. If it wasn't a harder map set, it would have been a fairly pointless release.

So I'd say that as a standalone 'game', it's too hard, but as a mission pack sequel to Doom 2 and TNT, it works very well. Had it been released today, it would have been a cheap DLC. I'd say the best thing about Plutonia is the difficulty. They had a clear vision and they delivered just that. It's a very well overall megawad design, unlike TNT, which is all over the place.

This is something that I know many people say when they talk about the two Final Doom campaigns and the different results between them, that Plutonia aged like fine wine while TNT aged like milk.

Edited July 24, 2023 by T-Rex

[zokum]

You could probably make some sort of mathematical equation that computes the value of money for the various Doom games. Doom has a value slightly less than 1 since it reuses/recolors artwork from Wolfenstein 3D. Doom 2 adds a lot of content, but also reuses content from the first game. Overall I suspect Doom 2 adds more content than Doom, giving it a value of more than 1. Final Doom reuses a lot of content from Doom (2) and would probably have a significantly lower value than 1.

My main problem with Final Doom, is that it reuses so much existing artwork, and no price reduction. If FD had cost 10 dollars, it would have been a much better deal than what it was. Plutonia's content is in my opinion of higher quality than Evilution, but that is completely subjective and biased.

I suppose that in a way, you could give a score for every wad out there. How much does it add, compared to the base game, with 1 being about the same as Doom.

[Gougaru]

23 hours ago, Reigada said:

 

some maps in solonet are just pure evil, like Go 2 It with the extra 22 cyberdemons

Ironically that's actually doable compared to impossible missions. Which only 2 people have been able to do so far 

[espilka]

The pseudo-intellectualism on this forum is staggering :D

[EPICALLL]

To someone like me who has been doing nothing but trying (and succeeding) in improving at doom, I'll tell you this. If you're used to it, Plutonia can be an absolute cakewalk, on a first playthrough, I found myself getting the gist of Plutonia's gameplay loop by MAP17, however that's just how it went for me (I played on UV)

[Anarkzie]

It's the hardest of the official Doom wads. You have to put it in context. Doom 1 feels ridiculously easy now but when it came out it was challenging, bear in mind that it popularised fps games, so many people were learning not only how to play Doom, but a completely new genre of computer game. Each new Doom release raised the stakes, this has carried on with unofficial releases so most of us don't realise how much the difficulty has increased over the 30 years of dooming.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Anarkzie

[KickAss]

This iwad is really hard and difficult even at the lower skill levels when you like intense dogfights you'll often get trapped by large amount of enemys. Found out for yourself this game is very hard to beat!

[Zulk RS]

On 7/25/2023 at 2:50 AM, Anarkzie said:

It's the hardest of the official Doom wads. You have to put it in context. Doom 1 feels ridiculously easy now but when it came out it was challenging, bear in mind that it popularised fps games, so many people were learning to not only how to play Doom but a completely new genre of computer game. Each new Doom release raised the stakes, this has carried on with unofficial releases so most of us don't realise how much the difficulty has increased over the 30 years of dooming.

 

I honestly kinda wish there were a bit more wads that felt cohesive. I may be completely wrong in this but a lot of PWADs feel to me like it's just a collection of really cool looking and challenging maps. Like they're good maps but it's just maps. No sense of being story or adventure. It's why I liked Icarus, Ancient Aliens, Solar Struggle and even DTS-T (kinda) so much. Empyrion is also really cool and while it doesn't exactly have a story all the maps in it feel connected to each other.

 

Thinking about this for a few more minutes, I am an idiot. There are still a ton of maps that do feel like an adventure. Really hard but still an adventure. I'm spouting nonsense.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Zulk RS

[Anarkzie]

1 hour ago, Zulk RS said:

 

I honestly kinda wish there were a bit more wads that felt cohesive.

Not sure if you meant to quote me or not but I agree with you. With Dooms limited assets, I understand why it does not happen so much though.

 

Something that really helped Solar Struggle achieve this was Violent Beetle's leadership and more importantly the fact that he had a very solid plan of the level order and locations that all tied in to a rudimentary story. Stuff like starting in a prison, repelling down a tether attaching the floating city to Venus etc. The overall concept definitely impacted the stuff I added to the level I made for it.

 

I think anyone that wants to start a community wad that achieves the same results could do with reading through Solar Struggles development thread ideas on how to structure their project.

[Zulk RS]

37 minutes ago, Anarkzie said:

Not sure if you meant to quote me or not but I agree with you. With Dooms limited assets, I understand why it does not happen so much though. 

 

Yeah I did mean to quote you. I probably should have done a better job highlighting exactly what part of your post I was responding to.

 

On 7/25/2023 at 2:50 AM, Anarkzie said:

Each new Doom release raised the stakes, this has carried on with unofficial releases so most of us don't realise how much the difficulty has increased over the 30 years of dooming.

 

This was the part of your post I was actually responding to. I guess what I really wish was less high difficulty and combat puzzley, arcadey wads and more wads like Solar Struggle and Ancient Aliens and DTS-T.

 

I went back on what I said because I realized I was being an idiot and forgetting a bunch of wads that do fit this criteria.