Unpopular Doom Opinions

20 minutes ago, Jason Maguire said:

 

You understand what "unpopular opinions" means, right? You want me to come in here and talk about archviles being too hard or slaughtermpas being boring or some other anodyne take? 

 

And you understand what a forum is, right? People can and should respond to posts and debate them. I take issue with people telling mappers what they should and shouldn't do. Maybe that isn't what you intended, but that's how it came across.

As for the "adding complexity = improving gameplay" argument, i think we just disagree on fundamental level, and there isn't much point in arguing over who is right in something so subjective. 

5 minutes ago, jmac said:

And you understand what a forum is, right? People can and should respond to posts and debate them. I take issue with people telling mappers what they should and shouldn't do. Maybe that isn't what you intended, but that's how it came across.

Any opinion of how maps should or shouldn't be made (i.e. most opinions in this thread) is "telling mappers what they should or shouldn't do" implicitly or explicitly. When I say they "should" do this, I think the average native english speaker would have interpreted this as "I think this change would make things better". I'll dumb down my language moving forward if that helps. 

And debating the idea would be explaining why this would a positive or negative change to doom, not crying that somebody would have an opinion you don't like. 

Guys, what's the deal with all these slaughtermaps????

You literally just hold down the fire button on the BFG and run around in circles????

This isn't what the original doom game was like! Why are slaughtermaps even a thing when they're different than other maps????

18 minutes ago, DankMetal said:

The mother demon is actually a good bossfight, she's better than all of  doom 1 and 2's bosses (maybe except for the cyberdemon), and i'm tired of pretending it's not.

The only reason for people to think that she's another lackluster final boss is because they already have the upgraded unmaker when they get to map 28 after looking for guides in youtube. Take in consideration that this game came out in the nineties, when it was hard to pay for an Internet service, and that the game sold out poorly. You had to guess were the secret exit was AND solve a riddle to get the demon keys on said secret levels.

Good luck trying to kill hundreds of high tier enemies, and then a boss who basically has the archvile and the revenant's attacks, without the upgraded unmaker.

She sucks because she depends on a gimmick like that to battle. I didn't get the power ups and it sucked balls. 

1 hour ago, Jason Maguire said:

Guys, what's the deal with all these slaughtermaps????

 

You literally just hold down the fire button on the BFG and run around in circles????

 

This isn't what the original doom game was like! Why are slaughtermaps even a thing when they're different than other maps????

Congratulations on missing the point completely.

1 hour ago, Jason Maguire said:

Guys, what's the deal with all these slaughtermaps????

It's fun to turn thousands of enemies into red paste and it gives you a strong feeling of accomplishment after you beat a particularly hard one.

1 hour ago, Jason Maguire said:

If you enjoy shotgunning imps at eye-level in a hallway for the 500th wad in a row, good for you, but I think there are possibilities for far more creative types of combat. 

It is true that mouselook (or to be more precise, actual vertical aim) can enable more combat scenarios, but at the same time, ability to vertically aim yourself removes certain existing combat scenarios (typical example would be slaughter fights involving elevated sniper enemies behind a large mass of monsters walking below).

However, even without mouselook or vertical aim nobody forces you to shotgun imps at eye-level (not even Eviternity III), there are tons of wads with creative combat that are designed to be played with no mouselook and there are also tons of wads with a completely unique gameplay that also expect you to play without mouselook, including even platforming maps (and no, no jumping either). Idk how many different vanilla/Boom/MBF wads have you played, but I would expect that not so many, as you seem to severely underestimate the variety and creativity that were achieved in those mapping formats. I really suggest trying to discover more for yourself, we got way past shotgunning imps stage by now.

Jumping feels off in GZDoom because it is literally just the Archvile effect which also feels off. I can't be bothered to dig through previous posts in this thread but someone mentioned that in later games such as Quake, the physics around jumping are a bit more natural. Not perfect, but pretty good. That Archvile hop always felt goofy even in 1994.

Mouselook also works a lot better with hardware rendering. Doom's software renderer only works correctly if the view port can only rotate by yawing, not rolling or pitching (to use flight sim terms).

15 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

Mappers should embrace mouselook as the future of doom and design their maps accordingly

Uhm... no. :-)

16 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

Mappers should embrace mouselook as the future of doom and design their maps accordingly

Let's go in reverse and make Wolfenstein 3D levels instead! /s

Honestly, looking up and down and jumping should not be introduced into [more] games with sprite-based enemies. Build engine games are quite enough, even in them seeing sprites at an angle, as well as jumping on sprites, is incredibly cursed, it's only passable because we are used to them. Doom is pristine in its simplicity, and mouselook and jumping spoil it.

I like being able to look up and down but mainly as an occasional thing when I want to see what's below a ledge etc. I think being able to play Doom without needing vertical mouselook is a strength. I do like being able to jump though, never thought it felt that weird, maybe because Hexen did it and I played that a lot when it came out, which preceded Quake's qtest by a few months. I kinda wish there were maps that required jumping outside ones for ZDoom, most ports let you jump these days.

HDoom is actually good.

@Csonicgo should post more, she's fun

It's probably because after 100s or even 1000s of hours in doom vanilla, limit removing etc, but playing doom with hardware rendering and mouse look gives me motion sickness sometimes.  Only fps that does that to me.  It just feels wrong on my brain, so no.  Doom with mouselook and jumping will never be the new norm I don't think.  

If you added jumps and free mouselook by default, you'd take something away from Doom. They're (some of the) aspects that make Doom unique and more interesting to me. Many maps are designed around these limitations, with enemies you can't snipe or shootable switches for secrets that are too high. Same with infinitely high actors. Adding jumps and mouselook would make Doom more like any other FPS game. Besides, the GZDoom WADs I've played that tell you to bind a jump key don't really do much with it other than "make a tiny jump over here to get this secret".

Also, if Doom had had jumps from the beginning, the entire weird Doom platforming subgenre wouldn't exist.

^{Disclaimer: I don't believe, this is an unpopular opinion.}

8 hours ago, Jason Maguire said:

 

Any opinion of how maps should or shouldn't be made (i.e. most opinions in this thread) is "telling mappers what they should or shouldn't do" implicitly or explicitly. When I say they "should" do this, I think the average native english speaker would have interpreted this as "I think this change would make things better". I'll dumb down my language moving forward if that helps. 

 

And debating the idea would be explaining why this would a positive or negative change to doom, not crying that somebody would have an opinion you don't like. 

I read it as "I would like it if mappers did this, but no pressure guys" and was genuinly surprised at all the backlash you've faced o_o

Is "should" an offensive word? I didn't think so, but then I'm not a native English speaker.

Calm down, everyone. Roll a fat one and chill. It's just a game. And these are all just opinions, not divine irrefutable orders.

i really like flickering in doom, be it blinking rooms, noisy textures, sprite overflow... x3 and i like when the enemies are dehacked to flash during their about-to-fire state, especially while cyberdemon

but I am toning it down in the stuff I'm experimenting with for the sake of other people's eyes

Vanilla compatibility is very niche. This forum is skewed because this is the place where all the fans of Vanilla limitations concentrate. Nobody outside of here does really care and mostly prefer freelook, jumping no autoaim etc. And are just confused with infinitely tall enemies which is trash and nobody can convince me otherwise (and DooM is only game that does that, even Heretic Strife and Hexen got rid of that as fast as they could).

Somebody mentioned that there are really nice combat scenarios based on no freeaim, problem is, they are buried in thousands of thousands vanilla cl9 32 level packs where most levels are just boring stuff we played thousand of times and are more enjoyable being played with freelook, no autoaim and some gameplay mod on top. That is really no reason to religiously admire DooM limitations as the only true way to play DooM, because that concept is really tired. DooM nowadays is about modding  - trying new stuff, pushing the limit and expanding what DooM can be. Sticking to vanilla is just burden and Even DSDA doom with it's enhanced Dehacked is something that agrees, it just likes to pretend it still "vanilla".

Regarding above, I take any "should" to mean what it is - that is, a statement of opinion, not a mandate. It's not the same thing as slaughtermap arguments where people proclaim that slaughtermap creators are too stupid to do anything other than spam 500 revenants in a box. (On a side note, I think "smart" design is overrated in discussions like that, but I digress.)

I play with freelook in GZDoom fairly often, and while the sprites do look bad if you view them from a steep enough angle, frankly I rarely find myself looking at such angles in normal gameplay, and at shallow angles I don't notice anything off. I did feel for a while that freelook is disorienting and makes maps look weird, but I think I just got used to it. I think reducing movement bobbing also helps (movebob 0.02 or 0.03 in GZDoom). It's nice having mouselook as an option and I'm always open to mappers playing around with it, but I also like that Doom isn't a very aiming-focused game. Maybe that's on me for disabling autoaim whenever I play with freelook.

I don't like the way jumping feels, though, not in Hexen (not a big deal for that game), nor in GZDoom (which I guess is based on Hexen), nor in Jumpwad. I don't think it's inherent to all FPS games or even just sprite-based ones since I like the way Blood feels. With Hexen and GZDoom I don't like the delay between jumps and the lack of sound when jumping, and with Jumpwad I don't like the lack of air control and climbing up ledges (can't blame the WAD for that since it's clearly a limitation of how it's implemented). I'm curious how The Golden Souls fares, as that seems like it would have an emphasis on jumping around. I was actually playing the first level of the first one just the other day and was thinking of playing through the rest.

Infinite height gets a bad rap because we tend to remember the times when it blocks us (either blocked from running over a ledge by a monster below, or blocked from running under a monster, of which I find the former more aggravating). But it also helps cacodemon clusters spread out into nice-looking swarms since they can't stack on top of each other, and also makes them easier to shoot with rockets since enemies below, and even other cacodemons, will stop them from moving and being impossible to hit. I also really dislike running on top of enemies like they're a bunch of crates, so I think disabling infinite height tends to be a poor fit for maps with large swarms of enemies (i.e. slaughtermaps) where that becomes noticeable.

58 minutes ago, yakfak said:

i really like flickering in doom, be it blinking rooms, noisy textures, sprite overflow... x3 and i like when the enemies are dehacked to flash during their about-to-fire state, especially while cyberdemon

but I am toning it down in the stuff I'm experimenting with for the sake of other people's eyes

I really feel like there ought to be a mod or accessibility setting in source ports for stuff like that. I get that it's a real concern for people, but it's a shame if mappers feel like they have to limit themselves. Similar tradeoff came up for Eviternity 2 MAP06 recently. Might be tough to programmatically detect and tone down general cases like Boom lighting effects and Dehacked stuff, but at least the standard Doom flickering sector types should be doable.