Nine Inch Heels

I've got an idea for that issue in particular, and some adjustments to E3M6 on HMP won't be too difficult to do. Only problem is I'll not get around to doing much of anything until the weekend, but I should be able to take care of most points on the list, if not all of them.

Basically what Xaser pointed out already, I will add, however, that there's a bit more to it. Time was, that people posted bad reviews/feedback if some WAD or pk3 didn't run properly with either project brutality or brutal doom. So it's not a PB exclusive problem. There have been a few people who made themselves particularly infamous for giving poor ratings if anything didn't run in their favourite niche source port, too, btw - those folks aren't talked about much, if at all, because their numbers pale in comparison to those who ran BD or PB. Here's the thing, if you got lot of people using "thing A" there will always be some entitled and vocal headcases amongst them, who will then complain that "thing A" doesn't work as expected when used with "something.WAD". With no rudimentary idea as to how anything doom works, blaming the mapper is anything but an unnatural course of action (thus far, "thing A" has always worked fine, so it must be the mapper's fault, right?). Now you tell that vocal person that their supposedly 100% justified criticism is anything but, and vocal person yells into the internet, on some other wavelength, that people from "notyoursitehere" hate gameplay mods. And now you know why this question, as well as similar ones, just aren't gonna disappear for good in the foreseeable future...

Alright, fine, I'll think about it.

"Tell me how you play, so I can make a map that fits like a glove" isn't a solution either, and I am quite possibly the worst "target" for such a suggestion. You do something wrong - you get hit. You're not willing to adjust your play - you'll get hit in the future - universal truth for virtually every map ever put in a .WAD file, to say the least. You can keep arguing this all you want, I'm not gonna budge on HMP and UV cybers in E3M8, when it's as simple as waiting for when the cyb starts shooting, so you will know when and where the rockets will go, and while you're waiting, you might as well line yourself up for the switch. There is nothing "specific" about it. It's literally just waiting for a window of opportunity, and I'm not going to map around a mere lack of patience on the player's side. It's just not going happen for those 2 difficulty settings. If getting a clean hit on the switch without being blasted to death right away was subject to RNG, I would actually be able to wrap my head around this discussion, but it's not. The only thing that's subject to RNG is when the cyb will start firing rockets, from there on out, it's as deterministic as it gets. Making the switch easier to punch is up for debate. Additional health or even blue armours are up for debate as far as HMP and lower go, but the cybs are non-negotiable on HMP and UV, because even if you happened to mess up the switch-press, you could just keep playing the map and try again the following cycle. There is enough time for that, even though time is a limited resource for one reason or another. The timer on UV predates any possibility to even get 2 shots in on the SMM, and back when the map was significantly harder, you could still afford to miss a couple shots, or opportunities to shoot, for that matter. As for painting myself into a corner: If I wanted to just solve it all immediately, I could just plop down an impassable fence in order to force players on the path that clearly beats rolling the dice. Problem solved, player's situational awareness and willingness to do some tactical thinking severely disrespected, however.

Overtly prickly is probably one of the most charming ways to spell sadistic. :P The maps are mean-spirited, and I knew, long before the RC would be released, that there was gonna be some talking going on about them. What baffles me is how the E3M8 cybs keep coming back as a talking point - I'd been expecting way more blast for the platforming in E3M6, tbh - I'm fine with adjusting lower difficulty settings to make the maps more forgiving (fewer monsters here, more power-ups there, etc) - I am not even against the idea of tweaking UV a little bit more - but the E3M8 cybs are gonna stay for UV and HMP respectively, because they create a problem that almost hands out the solution to itself on a silver platter. If it was HNTR we're talking about, then I would be open to the idea, because I think asking greener players to remember that they came down a short hallway that may now contain cybie-rockets, might just be enough "stress" already, and I could genuinely fathom a poor soul walking down that short hallway backwards, just to know when and where that other, distant cyb is shooting (which would be a pretty smart move, actually).

A couple things here... E3M6 has different platforming sections for different difficulty settings, UV is somewhat tight while HMP is basically built around the idea that pure keyboarders should have a fair shake at it - if there is any willingness to invest some practice-time. And to address the point Mouldy made about the difference in monsters - I adjusted difficulties by way of monster count, extra goodies, or more forthcoming timers. E3M8 for example has different timers for when new sets of monsters get to warp into the map, also based on difficulty settings. Having said all that... I'm not going to budge on that. Doing a 3/4 "lap" around the cyb guarding the switch, at a measured pace until it starts shooting (instead of bum-rushing the switch and getting a rocket up the ass) is not only consistent, it also makes lining oneself up for easy access to the switch trivial for all but the greenest of doomers.

I have no idea whatsoever how that happened. Easy enough to fix, though. That's how that was meant to be done originally, but a number of playtesters pointed out that I might be pushing it a bit too far - so, you get a lift instead. But hey, nothing's stopping you from trying the "original" method. I'm not 100% sure if the timers still allow for enough legroom if you do, but I believe I wasn't dreadfully tight with those anyway.

I knew my maps would ruffle some feathers, but to get the pistol start question out the way, both of these maps, as well as all other maps in the WAD that I played prior to the release candidate, are doable from pistol start. Dis isn't a puzzle, it's a race against the clock. Unless you're proficient at doing invuln-supported rocket jumps, you won't even be able to max the map, you merely get to survive it.

Well then. Let's see what manner of insights the sacrifices playtesters will provide.

That's precisely the problem. We've all been there before, we see "stuff somebody else did", no matter what it is, we sit with it for however long it takes until we're ready to pass a verdict, which we then transmit shortly after. Now we've judged somebody else's efforts. If we did indeed write something off as "low-effort", because all we perceived was the "final product", while we have no means to tell how hard the creator in question actually tried, then we've made an unqualified (and possibly unjustified) judgment call. Just recently a colleague of mine tried cooking a somewhat complex dish he had seen on the internet. He showed me the war zone that was his kitchen first, and then he showed me what looked like the most unremarkable vegetable stew you could possibly imagine. Had I seen those two images in reverse order, I would have asked him why he devastated his kitchen in order to cook some canned soup, if the conversation even went that far. Long story short, I am by no means exempt from making these unjustified "snap-calls", it happened to me more than once, for that matter... That being said, this image of a kitchen that would take hours to clean followed by a plain-looking meal certainly gets a point across.

The only thing that I would consider "objectively bad" is when a map does not behave as intended, as in it's "mechanically unsound". If what you want to make is a "low effort" my-first-map, go ahead and do that, advertise it as such instead of pretending it's something it clearly is not, and that's all there is to it. If it works as intended and advertised, then someone else is gonna get to spend a few minutes on it, and they won't be disappointed at the very least. Mission accomplished. If what you want to make is a "magnum opus" high-detail challenge map, go ahead and do that, but don't be surprised if eyebrows raise because scripts of some sort misfire half the time, monsters don't teleport into the map properly, or worse, because the map soft-locks. Mission not accomplished. By the way, "effort made" is quite possibly one of the worst possible metrics to go by (even though it is a metric people like to employ surprisingly often). Chances are nobody is watching while you bash your head against the editor as you're still learning the ropes - nobody is gonna see you sweat bullets while you're trying to figure out how to get a door to work properly from both sides, because you might just tell yourself that asking for help publicly is gonna be too embarrassing in an environment where more maps than you can feasibly play are being produced seemingly all the time. A map you might have been working weeks on while you're still learning to walk the editor walk could be something somebody else can lay down in the editor over the course of a single weekend, if not hours. This is why seeing new mappers and their threads get the first few bits and pieces of activity irks me at times... When people say that something basic is low effort (by virtue of it being basic in all respects), or worse yet, possibly "not worth posting" while someone has been working on that (supposedly) basic stuff for a considerable chunk of their limited spare-time... Then that's a problem, and it does happen every so often, unfortunately...

The thing is, anybody's time spent within any given community is what they make of it. If you are content with just cruising along, playing a few maps here and there, and perhaps sharing a few thoughts on them, then that's what you should be doing, because then you're doing it right in your individual situation. If you enjoy creating MIDIs, then that's what you should be doing. If playtesting is your thing, you ought to be doing that, etc... The person saying otherwise does not seem to understand that everything that's happening here is happening on a 100% voluntary basis, no matter what it is, and that no amount of work anybody puts into anything means they get to expect that others put as much time into anything, too. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, for anyone, to get involved with anything they don't enjoy being a part of. For instance, since I've been around, I've hosted a small community project, and I learned quickly that it's not something I am particularly good at - not because I can't do it at all, but because I'm not getting much of anything out of it while it is a pretty time-consuming endeavour, to say the least. I did learn, however, that I'm not too shabby at contributing to community projects, so that's what I ended up doing for the most part, aside of playtesting stuff for folks whose maps I enjoyed for one reason or another, and writing up a somewhat comprehensive guide on teleport closets. One may argue all that was altruistic, but it wasn't. I did that stuff, because I had fun doing it. Point being, if you don't like what you're doing on these forums, because it makes you feel bad for one reason or another, just don't do it. That's not to say that grievances should never be spoken of, mind, but finding your comfort-zone in a community, while staying away from what bothers you, is your personal responsibility entirely. It may take some time to get where you are most comfortable, but crying foul because nobody's rolling out the red carpet - which is what that certain "someone" has been doing - isn't how you get there.

In other words, if your map is too difficult for someone, or if they happen to have more important things to attend to, such as, you know, living life... Then what? Are you owed an apology because this community isn't in orbit around your projects at all times? Wakey wakey? Toughen up, or get out. I made a couple maps over the years, virtually all of which would qualify as "difficult if not borderline impossible" depending on who you ask. There have been negative comments regarding the cruelty of my maps more than once, and not just a few of said comments were nothing more than thinly veiled pie-sling-attempts made by frustrated players - who believed themselves to be an authority on the subject of how difficult maps may or may not be in order to be suitable for "the public". I "outlived" enough tirades of armchair game-designers by now to know that the only cure is not to give a shit what people think if what you created clearly isn't meant for them to begin with. Break out your wet-wipes, do some growing up, and learn to deal with failure and adversity - turns out both these things are fairly common in life, such as it is.

And where's the arch vile who complained about your lack of decorum?