Changing around the map order of Episode 4

[Amaruψ]

Well, the level progression in Episode 4 has always perplexed me on how it isn't consistent with its difficulty. How certain early maps are extremely painstaking and then some later are... relatively easy for some reason. If you were to reorganize them in a more progressive order, what would be your level order? Mine would be:

 

1 - Unruly Evil - (its relative simplicity in comparison to the maps that precede it makes it rather silly to be the 4th map of the episode.)

2 - Fear - (this bears no merits to be a secret level whatsoever.) 

3 - Sever the Wicked - (this retains the same slot as the original, because of its simplicity and a minor difficulty spike that it'll have after Fear.)

4 - And Hell Followed - (progression wise, this one fits properly after Sever the Wicked. Again, due to its open nature compared to the other cramped ones.)

5 - They Will Repent - (I initially wanted it as the 6th map, but it's... boring as heck.)

6 - Hell Beneath - (now this feels like a proper map, given that you'll have more weapons to deal with the absurd amount of barons here.)

7 - Against Thee Wickedly - (this is a perfect penultimate map. The Cyberdemon fight before the Mastermind is perfect.)

8 - Unto the Cruel - (This is a boss level, so it'll stay where it is. Although, if I had to make a change, I'll swap Cyberdemon and Mastermind between map 7 and 8.)

9 - Perfect Hatred - (This suits much better as a secret level due to all the weird gimmicks that it has.)

[Xyzzу]

This felt like pretty good progression when I played it:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=57970

[Sesamia]

At a glance, this would be my new order:

 

E4M1 - Unruly Evil
E4M2 - Fear
E4M3 - They Will Repent
E4M4 - Sever the Wicked
E4M5 - And Hell Followed
E4M6 - Perfect Hatred
E4M7 - Against Thee Wickedly
E4M8 - Unto the Cruel

 

E4M9 - Hell Beneath - I really like this map as an episode opener.  I didn't want to just place it at E4M1 and it's not big enough for me to place it further into the episode.  I'm not sure if I would disappointed to find this as a secret level, but I definitely like it more than Fear.

[OniriA]

Nah, it's fine as it is.

[Andromeda]

E4M1: Unruly Evil

E4M2: Hell Beneath (too short to be in a later slot, otherwise I'd swap it with Sever the Wicked)

E4M3: Sever the Wicked

E4M4: They Will Repent

E4M5: Perfect Hatred

E4M6: And Hell Followed

E4M7: Against Thee Wickedly

E4M8: Unto the Cruel

E4M9: Fear (thematically at odds with the rest of the episode, fits fine as a secret level)

[Li'l devil]

I don't know why E4 was needed to be made in the first place. Seems like it was made just for the sake of new content when they decided to resell Doom on disks, and without much thought put into it. I'd remove it altogether.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Li'l devil

[netcurse2000]

E4M1 - Unruly Evil
E4M2 - Fear
E4M3 - They Will Repent
E4M4 - Sever the Wicked
E4M5 - And Hell Followed

E4M6 - Hell Beneath 
E4M7 - Perfect Hatred

E4M8 - Unto the Cruel

 

E4M9 - Against Thee Wickedly

[Maximum Matt]

10 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

I don't know why E4 was needed to be made in the first place. Seems like it was made just for the sake of new content when they decided to resell Doom on disks

There ya go, answered your own question.

 

I'd just put Unruly Evil as the first map and shift every other map forward one slot.  It's a crappy 'intro' style map, and at least it'll allow you to enter Hell Beneath with a rocket launcher.  

[LadyMistDragon]

E4M1: Unruly Evil

E4M2: They Will Repent

E4M3: And Hell Followed

E4M4: Hell Beneath

E4M5: Sever the Wicked

E4M6: Perfect Hatred

E4M7: Against Thee Wickedly

E4M8: Unto the Cruel

E4M9: Fear

[jmac]

Strongly disagree with the idea that Hell Beneath should be moved to a later slot. It's an excellent episode opener. The rest of the episode is what could've used some more fine-tuning. It really does peak with the first two maps, which makes the rest feel like an afterthought.

[Maximum Matt]

47 minutes ago, jmac said:

It's an excellent episode opener.

Hell no, it's evil and should die with fire

[Xaser]

I was a bit skeptical too about Hell Beneath getting moved out of M1 and especially Unruly Evil taking its place instead (like "wtf put the weakest map in the first slot???") -- but I decided to give it a try, and... what the hell, it actually works. ;)

 

Here's where I landed with this after playtesting around a bit, with continuous play in mind:

 

E4M1: Unruly Evil

E4M2: Hell Beneath

E4M3: Sever the Wicked

E4M4: Perfect Hatred

E4M5: They Will Repent

E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly

E4M7: And Hell Followed

E4M8: Unto the Cruel

E4M9: Fear

 

Just 3 swapped-around maps (M1, M2, and M4), with the secret exit moved to M4 along with its map. Minimal changes, maximal impact.

 

In general, I disagree with the notion that an episode's difficulty curve needs to be strictly-increasing across its entire runtime; adding easy maps between harder ones is great for pacing. That said, E4's difficulty as-shipped is heavily front-loaded, so these couple of swaps fix the problem as best you can IMO without actually editing the maps themselves, resulting in a nice easy-hard-easy-hard kind of alternation. Some of the later maps are still a bit too-easy (Unto the Cruel in particular) on continuous, but that just be how it do (again, unless you wanna be bold and edit the maps ;).

 

My thoughts on individual maps:

• Unruly Evil is widely regarded as the least of the M4 maps, but turns out a big chunk of that is it's pretty blink-and-you-miss-it when playing continuous. The map plays much better from pistol start, since suddenly you gotta worry about ammo count (on UV you'll have a hard time if you don't find that secret berserk). Moving it to M1 indeed makes it play much better, and it's a decent moody opener to the set, though those stuck cacos will never not be janky as hell. :P
• Hell Beneath is the one I was worried the most about, since the entire reason it's fun is because it's tough as nails from a pistol start. It totally works as M2 though, since you'd be hard-pressed enough to bring enough ammo from Unruly Evil to upset the balance.
• Sever the Wicked, They Will Repent, and And Hell Followed (and and and and and) are all pretty interchangeable IMO, since they're all pretty breezy breather maps. I ended up keeping these in their respective slots since shuffling them around felt like change for the sake of change. I could maybe see a case for Repent and Sever switching, but Sever works better as-is IMO because:
• Perfect Hatred is still fun as hell in M4, and the rockets & plasma you can stockpile from Sever actually make Hatred a better map on continuous play (!) by reducing the tedium of clearing out some of those barons-in-hallways (Repent gives you a BFG instead which felt a bit too much). This is maybe a little sacrilegious since the map's difficulty was always one of its hallmarks, but it's a very good  map regardless and it doesn't have anything to lose (and all the more to gain) by being a bit easier. And if you wanna play it in "hard mode", there's always pistol-start. ;)
• Against Thee Wickedly stays where it is rather than switching places with And Hell Followed to keep the easy-hard-easy pattern going, but Unto the Cruel isn't particularly difficult either so this honestly could swing either way. I'm kinda ambivalent here, so I just left it as-is. Maybe I'll revise this later and swap 'em anyway if I overthink things too much. ;)
• Unto the Cruel and Fear don't really have any better place to go than where they already sit, so they stay.

As a final note, there are a few maps that seem like they would work better in an earlier slot (Repent in particular) but IMO would cause more harm than good by making other maps play worse (e.g. putting Repent before Hell Beneath would make the former more 'fitting' for its difficulty, but will totally nerf the latter -- it'd lose its mojo, and Hell Beneath is one of the better maps), so I leaned more toward keeping the best maps as good as they could be, rather than trying to make the "bad" maps fit "better". Unruly Evil was the big surprise-exception here, which is what led me to try this out and conclude: yeah, you can totally improve the episode just by reordering the maps. :D

Edited October 28, 2023 by Xaser
Fixed a bunch of clunky wording in the post.

["JL" was too short]

 

15 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

I don't know why E4 was needed to be made in the first place. Seems like it was made just for the sake of new content when they decided to resell Doom on disks, and without much thought put into it. I'd remove it altogether.

 

I want to be sure I'm not misunderstanding you here because it sounds like you're complaining about a re-release having additional content, which is an interesting take.

If it were shovelware drivel then that would be one thing, but I count at least 5-6 levels that I consider decent even in retrospect (E4M1, E4M2, E4M6, E4M7, E4M8; E4M3 is kind of on the edge but I'd give it the benefit of the doubt).  A hit ratio of 55.5% or higher is probably better than Doom 2 had.

To the topic of this thread: There's a decent argument for E4M1 specifically being moved out of the first slot given what a punch in the groin it can be, but aside from that I don't think there's much need to shuffle things around... it's not a bad thing for there to be shorter/simpler levels sprinkled into the later slots in an episode, and conversely for there to be high points that don't come at the very end.  For instance, to the suggestion that Against Thee Wickedly be moved to E4M7, I don't think that would be a disaster or anything but I also think it's fine the way it is: something epic in slot 6, then a relative breather in slot 7, followed by the finale, is a formula that proved to work well in practice.

 

[Cutman 999]

1- unruly evil (almost everyone can agree that this map is the easiest in the episode and it makes no sense how that shit named perfect hatred is placed before this)

2- Hell beneath (I don't like this level, but in continuous you could debloat a lot of its difficulty, take it with a grain of salt)

3- Sever the Wicked (Actually this map makes more sense in the ordering in both it's original placement as well as this new one, in the original it was consistent with perfect hatred in difficulty, in this would help increase the difficulty curve)

4- fear (i almost forgot about this pile of shit, let's have it as a breather here like unruly evil did)

5- and hell followed (the best level in the episode doesn't have any reason to be reserved as a penultimate level, the difficulty is even lenient compared to the rest of the episode)

6- they will repent (Like in fear, just to be filler and a breather, although i don't know what filler since most of the difficult shit would be comes next or has been seen before)

7- against thee wickedly (I hate this fucking map, although makes for a nice penultimate map for it's difficulty and bullshit cybersniper)

8- unto the cruel (self explanatory)

9- perfect hatred (It would be the best shit in the world if this sucker is optional, feels like a shit gimmick map and its leagues above the episode in bullshit factor, that deserves a secret slot, while fear is so bland and forgettable that it doesn't)

[DankMetal]

I'm one of those who thinks hell beneath is a good episode opener, it lets you know that shit's getting real on this episode.

But aside from that, here's what i think should be the map order.

E4m1- Hell beneath

E4m2- Unruly evil, i would obliterate this level out of existence personally, what a waste of a map slot. At least it would serve as a moment of relax after the first level.

E4m3- Fear, as others have said, this level doesn't deserve to be a secret map.

E4m4- Sever the wicked

E4m5- And hell followed

E4m6- They will repent

E4m7- Against thee wickedly

E4m8- Unto the cruel

E4m9- Perfect hatred