Popular WAD Complaint Thread

I lost interest part way into Valiant. I dunno if I'd burnt myself out on megaWADs, as I also ran out of steam on Unholy Realms and Going Down not long before that. I think the problem with all of them is that they were just full on challenge, with endless escalation and no real breathers or changes of pace. I'm just too casual for modern map sets, perhaps. Maybe I should embrace the lower difficulties at long last.

In Valiant why does every episode consist of only 2-3 maps split into 6 or so? Once you've passed first 2 maps of the episode you've seen it all. Valiant is so repetitive and boring that I couldn't finish it. It shouldn't be a megawad, the amount of maps could be halved and nothing would be lost.

I only played the first couple levels of valiant before I realized it wasn't my cup of tea. The gameplay changes just weren't comfortable or fitting for me. I did however play through all of Valiant Vaccinated Edition which chucks the dehacked patch and changes everything to standard doom weapons and monsters and I liked it a lot.

I have to confess that Phobus and I are on the exact same page, actually. Going Down, Unholy Realms, and Valiant are all examples of megawads that, despite me liking them, I can't bring myself to finish them. I don't think I've ever seen the second half of Going Down and Unholy Realms. I keep dying at a particular part about 15 maps in or so, and I lose interest. Nonetheless, I was marvelled by how thrilling the gameplay was and how nice the maps look. It's just that the maps require a level of skill that I don't have much interest in training myself to reach.

I've read some discord chats where people still talk about BTSX being their favorite megawad. For a couple days I tried to cast aside any impartial judgment I have towards the leader of the project and review it objectively without too much bias. I still can't seem to get myself to like it. All the maps take over a half hour to beat and there are tremendous monster grinds, confusing layouts and more. I'm already feeling nervous about the kinda hate I'm going to get when people read this, and if I'm being honest it makes me angry with myself that I can't decide if I dislike the project itself or do I really dislike my dooming experience when I play it. I can only play one map at a time before I need to take a break. It's just too much work. I'm only up to MAP06 on btsx_e2 and i never want to open the wad up again. I'm not sure what people see in it. Am I an asshole or is this megawad just suck to play?

Going Down is EASY on the lowest settings. mouldy has the difficulty settings down good. You wanna get slaughtered by hordes of enemies? Play on UV, duh. Less of a challenge? HMP. You want a more pedestrian stroll because you obviously suck but want to smack down hordes of monsters? The lower settings got you covered. mouldy actually provides loads of invulnerabilities on those settings, which actually to me make the maps considerably more playable. With those, you can actually steamroll much of Going Down without too much trouble.

As for BTSX, yeah I will agree about the confusing layouts and the long levels, especially E2. Wouldn't care about the hate to be honest, but what I do notice is that obviously it isn't the mappers who aren't really hateful. Skillsaw, Vader, and Mechadon are all great people who can take opinions along with a few others. It's just the discord group that's always being excessively chatty about it while either being non-mappers or just testers, and the same group that agrees ironically whenever someone decides to pull the "I hate BTSX" card. The megawad itself is something I can play all the way through, as long and confusing as it is, because I tend to look up or cheat just to ensure I'm not missing anything. Maybe this makes me an asshole too, but I'd rather be that then priss and say this wad sucks without the context.

I think I got it, it's the testers that make people complain about these wads, not necessarily the mappers. Who else let's the shit fucking slide? I'll have to keep a mental note of which testers to look out for whenever a new set pops up.

I think it was the monster replacements that ultimately made me stop... the level design is great though, and I especially liked the city level in the first half. How did that manc level work again? You kill the manc and the script makes a ton of monsters warp in, or?

Must resist the urge to ARGGHHH
I have a fairly wide taste in Doom wads, so i don't complain about mapsets too often, and WADs mentioned here are freakin masterpieces imo (Valiant does have a fairly forgettable 1st episode, with the MAP02 to MAP05 stretch being soul crushingly dull, and about BTSX e2, uh, i kinda forgot Deathevokation's map heh). But since this is a complaint thread, here's mine: Valkiriforce's maps are a big hit or miss for me. I didn't enjoy Reverie that much, i think i put it on hold after a few maps. His style displayed there just doesn't work for me, it looks like a very flawed imitation of 90s mappping: it sure looks like it, but the layout, sturucters and monster placement just doesn't have the spirit. I do enjoy his other works tho, like his TNT: Revilution maps.

You are fucking welcome, elite one. Alright, let's look at some other ones:

Stardate 20x7 has the worst map Ribbiks ever created in MAP02. It's got an absolutely annoying layout, one which prevents fluidity in motion and is speedrun-unfriendly to the core. Not to mention it's got secrets which I took nearly five fucking hours figuring out how to reach all of them. Just read the wiki page. I STILL do not know how to reach Secret #3 unless it does involve an AVJ (and some of the other maps I swear only have secrets available on that method) and then there's that one secret which if you press some switch ever you permanently close that off. Not to mention my absolute OCD with getting everything, especially involving the key types as well as not being able to kill that imp in the grave (whatever story you can have for this unkillable imp is ultimately bullshit by the way) as well as two health bonuses out of reach. Yes, I take full fucking note of items and monsters that either cannot be reached or if their teleport closets dun fucked up because SOMEONE forgets to flag a teleport destination on all difficulty settings like they were supposed to do all the time.

Unholy Realms is good up until MAP12, with the death exit combined with an annoying action start and a whole lot of things being out of reach. That MANCUBUS near the rocket launcher is the worst. Not to mention that later on, Snakes' mapping style pretty much shows a whole lot of sameness, that when a guest mapper shows himself (particularly skillsaw's MAP27 which is obviously the best map in the final half of the set) I feel a lot better. Also those crushers in MAP13 and MAP23 are impossible to truly avoid.

For valk's Doom Core Trilogy, Reverie is my least favorite. What annoys me most is that I first found it via cacowards page, saying it's "back to the roots Memento Mori/Requiem style" but I found none of that when I played. Yes, it's a vanilla wad, but the concepts and things I found in it didn't really strike me at all as "back to the roots". Well, it is replayable at least, and has a decent soundtrack (same with UR), but Doom Core and Eternally Yours were much more fun on the whole. Thankfully, none of the maps in the trilogy strike me out so hard that I have to mention them like I do specific other maps.

Resurgence and Scythe 2 have too many death exits, and Scythe 2's first one doesn't even work on ITYTD.

I actually cannot play lilith.pk3.

Some of those really big maps are turnoffs because of the hitscan bug. Deus Vult MAP05 being an example.

There's this bug near the end of MAP29 of Interception and I swear I cannot pass this level unless I noclip past that teleport line. One idgames reviewer in response to me said I can jump through the window, but I think he means jump as in ZDoom.

While I wouldn't consider Mano Laikas to be that popular, it's a megawad of entirely the same thing. Weird layouts, hard-to-get secrets, low monster count, but the monsters tend to be big ones and it's not uncommon to find a cyberdemon or arch-vile in places. Unfortunately it's one where you see this aspect once, you'll see it again for the rest of the set. Only real unique map is MAP07 and that's because of its layout (also Smashing Pumpkins midi :3)

Hey Shadowman. I really liked Khorus, but I had to turn the music off because it's fucking grating. My opinion of course.

Speaking of Shadowman, one thing I hated about the Cheogsh series were those railgun octobrain things. Just play Cheogsh 2/Realm of Cheogsh and you will figure out why (no wind up time for attack again and perfect accuracy). Also Cheogsh 1 (which didn't have those enemies) had one part that stumped me when I actually had to shoot the switch across the pentagram, took me forever to figure that out.


Hell Revealed didn't do difficulty settings right. Take a look at MAP18's spiderdemon room and a few other ones. You don't replace a cyberdemon or spiderdemon with an arch-vile on lower settings, that actually makes things worse.

What's up with MAP06 of Hellcore 2.0? Can you even call this a map? The last few maps are also quite a grindfest.

Thickness

As for me, other (mega)wads that I've played and think have serious flaws are, you guessed it, Suspended in Dusk and Hell Revealed II.

HR2 has monumentally dumb maps in its first half. Boxy levels with ridiculous encounters that simply force you to take damage, or just die almost instantly all the other times. Occasionally something decent pops up, but that's incredibly rare, it's just pure, unfun cruelty. The second half is much better but even these maps feel as little more than just "alright". The remade levels from the original HR are however it's strong point, which I honestly prefer over those found in the first megawad, the authors did a very good job with them, they're very faithful to them and improved in almost every possible way, beside also looking better. HR2 also features a solid soundtrack, but unfortunately this and the second half are the only good parts about it, from my POV anyway. It's Hell Revealed in name only, a name it doesn't live up to, and is held in high regard for seemingly no good reason, it's vastly inferior to its predecessor overall.

As about Suspended in Dusk, as I've already said, the few levels it features are beautiful, but the gameplay is mediocre. The fights feel very controlled and there's no real sense of danger to them. To add insult to the injury, some enemies are placed in very questionable places, such as the Cyberdemon in the final level, and the navigation is pretty bad too, it's way too easy to get lost in the levels and run in circles a few times until you eventually manage to find the path. The SSG also has painful firing sounds. It sounds like 2 pieces of metal hitting each other.

I didn't know there's lots of people here who can't deal with opinions just like on Doomworld xdd.

Hm, difficulty spikes remind me of Alien Vendetta, there's 3 levels in that megawad where the difficulty spikes really nastily.

Actually Ancient Aliens isn't all that bad despite the mancubus usage AND the arch-vile usage. Then again I never played that wad past the lowest settings so...I'm guess MAP19 (start of E3) is a map that is berserk-only?

That brings me to another point: last "episode" maps that start out stupidly rough due to a lack of anything except berserk, most commonly used in a MAP21 or something. It's not fun. Come to think of it, a lack of any weapon where it is most likely to really have use is really bad. The Stardate maps could use a BFG in levels other than the last one or the ones involving death exits.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO YET ANOTHER POINT HOLY BEJAYZUZ!

I like to call it the BFG tease, where you get the BFG on a map that has a death exit. Quite a few modern maps are guilty of this, whether Stardate or elsewhere. You can just have the BFG in a hard-to-reach secret instead. It's like some of these mappers hate continuous players, when really they should accommodate both pistol-starters and continuous in ways that will benefit both.