Why gameplay mods and mappers don't get along
Jul 20, 2018 8:22:10 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Jul 20, 2018 8:22:10 GMT -5
Look, I get it. You like to spice up the game and make Doom into something a little cooler. And thats cool. Whatever it might be; it can be a new set of weapons, cool effects, a monster randomizer, it can have extremely impressive sprite artwork, sounds, and really clean and well executed coding, and that's fine. It's just not for me. I'm sure there's a lot of good ones. I believe you. They just really don't appeal to someone like me. I really love doom just as it is. Ive been playing it for a long time, and it's exactly the way I like it. That's why I play it just as it is. Doom has its flaws here and there, and because I love the game, I've learned to love them. Even when they don't make any sense. I often find gameplay mods to shake things up in a way that simply doesn't make Doom into a better game.
I could be wrong about that. I haven't played them all. Ive seen my fair share of videos of gameplay mods in action, and maybe they really are more fun to the players than the original Doom. And that's fine. But I can also tell that gameplay mods, by design, are meant to appeal to people who would generally find Doom to be pretty boring and lackluster to begin with, and this is where gameplay mods and level designers collide.
I love making doom maps because I love Doom. Because I love Doom, it shows in the amount of care I take into making my levels great. I know, having played many thousands of Doom maps in my decade plus with the doom community, with all sorts of different principles accounted for in their designs, that making gameplay mods is a fundamentally dangerous path to tread on. The wealth of maps there are for Doom is built on the agreement that Doom is a great game by itself, and we all enjoy the same game for what it is. There's so many maps that existed long before the boom of gameplay mods that are tailored to very specific monster and player behavior. When tampered with, it can throw the level designer's intentions in the can. The popularity of gameplay mods shows that this new wave of Doomers are not very interested at all in how delicate the engineering of a map is, except when it interferes with their enjoyment of the game.
When something goes wrong with a map, I cant imagine a beginning player of gameplay mods can easily disseminate whether the problem lies with the gameplay mod or the map design. In my experience, I often find the player to comment on the level design much sooner than the new weapons and monster randomization mod they're playing it with. This sucks for level designers because sometimes people will make a video and comment on how stupid the map is when its the gameplay mod that is changing something the level designer has no control of. It can make the level designer look like a bad mapper for something that's not the mapper's fault. It becomes much worse when the player's video or stream is being watched by other people who also don't know much about Doom and trust the player's account when he says a certain wad is untested, unbalanced, and sucks horsedicks.
It takes a long time to discuss with each new Doom Marine why mappers and gameplay mod makers don't really get along. Lately it seems like people on both parties just don't have the patience to have this kind of conversation over and over and over again. People flood in and out of the community pretty quickly and it's tough to keep everyone on track and understand the kind of damage players can do to a mapper's reputation, and more importantly, their will to continue mapping when gameplay mods can fundamentally trivialize their work. Sometimes completely breaking the intended experience. Mapping is not easy, and sometimes very time consuming. It takes a long time, and mappers really pour out everything they have in order to make something they feel really captures the spirit of Doom. From the player perspective, its not as easy to notice this when you're flipping the table with the gameboard and all the pieces fly everywhere. It's especially not nearly as easy as it is for those who do have a very deep and intimate relationship with Doom in it's original state.
You can play your gameplay mods if you really want to. If that's what it takes to make you enjoy Doom, then fine. What I need to get across though, is that if you really care for the growth and development of the community, you should want to cooperate with mappers and play their levels as intended. Be careful of what you have to say about the creator's work. The level designers need their players, and most importantly, we need them to care.
I could be wrong about that. I haven't played them all. Ive seen my fair share of videos of gameplay mods in action, and maybe they really are more fun to the players than the original Doom. And that's fine. But I can also tell that gameplay mods, by design, are meant to appeal to people who would generally find Doom to be pretty boring and lackluster to begin with, and this is where gameplay mods and level designers collide.
I love making doom maps because I love Doom. Because I love Doom, it shows in the amount of care I take into making my levels great. I know, having played many thousands of Doom maps in my decade plus with the doom community, with all sorts of different principles accounted for in their designs, that making gameplay mods is a fundamentally dangerous path to tread on. The wealth of maps there are for Doom is built on the agreement that Doom is a great game by itself, and we all enjoy the same game for what it is. There's so many maps that existed long before the boom of gameplay mods that are tailored to very specific monster and player behavior. When tampered with, it can throw the level designer's intentions in the can. The popularity of gameplay mods shows that this new wave of Doomers are not very interested at all in how delicate the engineering of a map is, except when it interferes with their enjoyment of the game.
When something goes wrong with a map, I cant imagine a beginning player of gameplay mods can easily disseminate whether the problem lies with the gameplay mod or the map design. In my experience, I often find the player to comment on the level design much sooner than the new weapons and monster randomization mod they're playing it with. This sucks for level designers because sometimes people will make a video and comment on how stupid the map is when its the gameplay mod that is changing something the level designer has no control of. It can make the level designer look like a bad mapper for something that's not the mapper's fault. It becomes much worse when the player's video or stream is being watched by other people who also don't know much about Doom and trust the player's account when he says a certain wad is untested, unbalanced, and sucks horsedicks.
It takes a long time to discuss with each new Doom Marine why mappers and gameplay mod makers don't really get along. Lately it seems like people on both parties just don't have the patience to have this kind of conversation over and over and over again. People flood in and out of the community pretty quickly and it's tough to keep everyone on track and understand the kind of damage players can do to a mapper's reputation, and more importantly, their will to continue mapping when gameplay mods can fundamentally trivialize their work. Sometimes completely breaking the intended experience. Mapping is not easy, and sometimes very time consuming. It takes a long time, and mappers really pour out everything they have in order to make something they feel really captures the spirit of Doom. From the player perspective, its not as easy to notice this when you're flipping the table with the gameboard and all the pieces fly everywhere. It's especially not nearly as easy as it is for those who do have a very deep and intimate relationship with Doom in it's original state.
You can play your gameplay mods if you really want to. If that's what it takes to make you enjoy Doom, then fine. What I need to get across though, is that if you really care for the growth and development of the community, you should want to cooperate with mappers and play their levels as intended. Be careful of what you have to say about the creator's work. The level designers need their players, and most importantly, we need them to care.
