DooM II Thought Experiment

[LegendaryEevee]

I though of this while making my walkthroughs of Ultimate Doom.  One thing that consistently makes MegaWADs drag inevitably is their length of 30/30+ Maps. Ultimate DooM and Eviternity did a great job of breaking this up by having episodes such as Knee Deep in the Dead, Inferno, Etc.  On a psychological level could DooM II be even better if it also was broken up into episodes similar to the fandom Wikia break it up as such.

 

Episode One: Resist and Bite!

E1M1: Entryway

E1M2: Underhalls

E1M3: The Gantlet

E1M4: The Focus

E1M5: The Waste Tunnels

E1M6: The Crusher

E1M7: Dead Simple

E1M8: Tricks and Traps

E1M9: The Pit 

E1M10: Refueling Base

E1M11: 'O' of Destruction!

 

Episode 2: Humanity's Requiem 

E2M1: The Factory

E2M2: Downtown

E2M3: The Inmost Dens 

E2M4: Industrial Zone (exit to secret level)

E2M10: Wolfenstein2

E2M11: Grosse2

E2M5 Suburbs 

E2M6: Tenements 

E2M7: The Courtyard

E2M8: The Citadel 

E2M9: Gotcha! 

 

Episode 3: Hell Awaits

E3M1: Nirvana 

E3M2: The Catacombs

E3M3: Barrels o' Fun 

E3M4: The Chasm 

E3M5: Bloodfalls 

E3M6: The Abandoned Mines 

E3M7: Monster Condo 

E3M8: The Spirit World 

E3M9: The Living End 

E3M10: Icon of Sin 

 

Nearly every reviewer I watch review MegaWADs tend to burn out and give lower scores as the WAD goes on which i feel could be unfair (sometimes warrented of maps that could be amazing later in the series if viewed with a fresher set of eyes).

 

Could this be the remedy that helps break these massive level sets into more manageable chunks and keep people's focus and enjoyment on these larger WADs better not just DooM II but even todays MegaWADs?....in my opinion....YES!!!!  Discuss your thoughts below.

Edited May 19, 2024 by LegendaryEevee

[vanilla_d00m]

Yes.. to me it’s a good idea, since I only play the maps with good music in them (The ones in Icarus, reverie, unholy realms) but I did finish all the levels in first two games.  I’m already used to it and doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t have dividers, I’m shure it would be more interesting to people.

[Shepardus]

29 minutes ago, LegendaryEevee said:

the fandom Wikia

The what now? This is in the One True Wiki™ too, you know: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II#Levels

 

More on topic, I don't think it would have any effect on reviewer burnout since they would still play through the whole WAD to review it. Having pistol starts at a couple maps might be nice for pacing, but many people play with pistol starts regardless. If Doom 2 were originally released as episodes, I'm sure today we'd be bemoaning how we can't choose where to divide episodes in vanilla WADs, and the inability to record full-game speedrun demos.

[DiavoJinx]

1 hour ago, LegendaryEevee said:

Nearly every reviewer I watch review MegaWADs tend to burn out and give lower scores as the WAD goes on which i feel could be unfair (sometimes warrented of maps that could be amazing later in the series if viewed with a fresher set of eyes).

This sounds entirely like a modern reviewer's personal problem, and not a problem with the art.

I agree with you that it would be unfair for a reviewer to give a poor review because they tried to consume the product in one sitting to crank out a review fast. This has probably been a problem throughout history where art is judged before giving it enough due time to appreciate (I suspect that also leads to the idea that an artist doesn't become famous until after they're dead).

...This is all compounded exponentially by the modern era of social media & related pop culture; where no one has any patience at all, everything must be instant, and everyone has to be first. [[is there an eye roll emoji? insert one here to express my feelings on that behavior]]

 

So yes, if someone was marketing Doom 2 or a current mega WAD in 2024, it would probably behoove them to split 32 levels into logical chunks to appease the modern pop culture.

The rest of us know that Doom 2 wasn't released in 1994 to be beaten in one session.
(Playing it for the first time Christmas week that year, my first session I ended at Tricks & Traps and continue from there the next day, absolutely loving it all.)

[DiavoJinx]

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

The what now? This is in the One True Wiki™ too, you know: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II#Levels

Plus, everything I have ever heard online is that Fandom Wikia is pure evil and to never give them any clicks/attention... so it's Dead Simple for me to ignore that website. =)

[Amaruψ]

I've played through the Build Engine games and I can say, the episodic structure of the levels there is quite charming. In Doom however, I'm not a big fan. Unlike those games, Doom's combat can become a tad bit too irritating and boring until you get the stronger weapons, due to how much the authors love to throw in tanky enemies in while you're still carrying small firearms in the early levels. The same reason I can't ever get behind pistol starting each map.

 

2 hours ago, LegendaryEevee said:

 

Nearly every reviewer I watch review MegaWADs tend to burn out and give lower scores as the WAD goes on

 

As for this, it's as the kool kidz say, "that's a you problem". Nobody's forcing them to manhandle the entire WAD in one go. Even if you break it down into individual episodes, like @Shepardus mentioned already, you're still going to play through the entire WAD. If that's a problem for the reviewers, then they really should just play 10 levels at a time instead of trying to finish the WAD in one sitting.

[elf-alchemist]

2 hours ago, LegendaryEevee said:

On a psychological level could DooM II be even better if it also was broken up into episodes similar to the fandom Wikia break it up as such.

 

Episode One: Resist and Bite!

Episode 2: Humanity's Requiem

Episode 3: Hell Awaits

 

I actually did something like this many moons ago. When i still used GZDoom and WadSmoosh, I customized the pk3 to have proper Doom II episodes, as well as the Ultimate Doom ones. I think it's a neat idea, and I'm kinda bummed that id stopped using episodes because the weren't gonna do shareware anymore. They make any megawad feels more cohesive, structured, distinct, better. I wouldn't have made my Masterpack project without such a detail.

 

Having something like the following show up at the episode select screen felt good for some reason, I can't quite explain it.

 

Episode 1: Knee-Deep In The Dead
Episode 2: Shores Of Hell
Episode 3: Inferno

Episode 4: Thy Flesh Consumed

Episode 5: Starport
Episode 6: City
Episode 7: Hell
Episode 8: No Rest For The Living

 

[Mr Masker]

3 hours ago, LegendaryEevee said:

 

Nearly every reviewer I watch review MegaWADs tend to burn out and give lower scores as the WAD goes on which i feel could be unfair (sometimes warrented of maps that could be amazing later in the series if viewed with a fresher set of eyes).

I think this is mainly just a consequence of the 32 map Megawad standard. This expectation has faded a bit overtime, thankfully, but still it can pop up.

 

I can imagine it's difficult for any mapper to keep the player totally interested for 32 maps of varying length, unless they're consistently mixing things up, make the maps fairly short, etc.

Edited May 19, 2024 by Mr Masker

[Doomy__Doom]

3 hours ago, LegendaryEevee said:

the remedy that helps break these massive level sets into more manageable chunks

The remedy to that is called "not being obliged to play all levels in a wad consecutively without anything else allowed until you're done".

[elf-alchemist]

25 minutes ago, Doomy__Doom said:

The remedy to that is called "not being obliged to play all levels in a wad consecutively without anything else allowed until you're done".

Unfortunately, humans are humans. And the human brain is a silly, fallible creature. Without an episode list to reinforce that idea on peoples' heads, it falls out of consciousness. That is also one of the reasons why Scythe and Eviternity are so important to the Doom modding community, they emphasized the distinct segments of the game, so it doesn't feel like a single large piece of content. This change was also not helped by the fact that, in the source code of the game, and by consequence in many of it's ports, Hell on Earth is considered a single long ass episode. Game design is all about dealing with players expectations, about using human psychology to make a game more fun, giving them more than they chew at once can be a little demanding on the enjoyment of the game. I'm not saying you are wrong for saying players are dumb for playing too many levels, I'm just saying that the solution isn't in the fallible player not having "megawad FOMO", but in improving the game itself. Playing into the players' minds.

 

But what do I know, anyway. I'm just putting my thoughts out there.

Edited May 19, 2024 by elf-alchemist

[DNSKILL5]

I always found the Doom 2 format works better because you can break things up into sections as you please and not have to focus on keeping with an episodic format.

[Maximum Matt]

 

6 hours ago, Shepardus said:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II#Levels

I like how they kept the tradition of having un-equal episode lengths in Quake

[oneselfSelf]

I find the internal episode names kinda boring so I will personally call the episodes "Base Instinct", "Population: 666", & "Evil Unleashed". Seems good enough to reuse the Doom Bible episode names.