The death of reviews

Because here we are talking subjective not objective. the style of wad can be linearly transposed to how much the person likes that style.

slightly tangential reply (or is it?): that's why i stoped caring about "reviews" and "recommendations", and usually simply grab That Another Random Wad i spotted in "new wads". and playing it with my Zan mod. yes, Zan is waaay overpowered. so what. she is deadly; she blows through most wads without any problems; she can get down a cybbie in 15 seconds with her Paingun, and poor thing rarely has a chance to respond. definitely not the "intended gameplay". and i can't care less. it is FUN.

i mean, maybe just play new wads with some overpowered weapon mod (decorate, or dehacked), and if you liked what you've seen, play it again "for real". you can't change the way people writing about wads, so may approach it from a slightly different side? yes, it is a hack, but it may work. i think.

Many people on the community like maps that look great on screenshots and are more arena/slaughter map oriented.
I will look at things I haven't played from the 90s early 2000s, there is more fun there, and some maps that don't try to be very detailed (although some doom cute is fun) but the sense of space and right use of textures,shadows and architecture, also an adventurous design, where things are not arenas but real places you have to explore or even abstract weird things, but not symmetric but with some design of a 3d space that is memorable.
I look at old review sites like onemandoom.blogspot.com/ for example and I find a lot of hidden gems I haven't played before. Or old WADs I have forgotten and want to replay.

Or one can make maps based on your classic inspirations. I am very inspired to make new maps the more I play oldschool stuff.

p.s. But yeah, I find myself overwhelmed by some of the modern WADs released, while I agree they are very polished, they are also following things by the book in the design, so there is not much unique things about them to keep me, rather than polished arena style areas with too many monsters that make me hit the save button a lot.

The major source of my frustration is that i find too many comments about doom wads to be inauthentic.

While some accurate comments slip through, most comments are more in the interest of being supportive without being an accurate take of someone who actually played the wad to completion, (or more likely, to the point where it was too difficult to proceed further.)

The most supportive comments are usually first in the topics opening, and usually come hours, minutes, even after the thread is made. Some wads have so much content it takes multiple days to complete, and when its very difficult i have to take breaks because its getting frustrating and unenjoyable. Its impossible to prove, but i dont believe the people who made these comments even played the wad. I'd like to stand over their shoulder and watch and listen to them shout with glee about how amazing this experience is while they are playing it. I am absolutely sure the reaction would not be the same.

If there were visible timestamps of the likes on doomworld, the only ones that mean anything on a big projects' release page are the ones that come maybe a week after it was posted, because the time before that doesnt realistically account for going to your PC, downloading the wad, loading it up, and starting to play it after youre done playing whatever you were playing last, and then playing it sufficiently enough to comment on it. The content of these comments suggest as such when theyre so unspecific.

Save scumming, using cheats, or gameplay modifiers isnt fun even when it works. It feels disrespectful. Many wads come with their own dehacked patches or port specific gameplay modifications like new weapons or monsters that are not friendly with other mods. If it was meant to this accessible to advance further in the wad, then it wouldnt be released in this state. It also doesn't mesh well aesthetically and sometimes its not clear from the players perspective when things break. I highly doubt any mapper would suggest players modify the gameplay in their maps with mods if they arent including it with the package themselves.

I really don't mind that ultra difficult/challenge wads exist. I like difficult wads sometimes. Sometimes they are exactly what I feel like playing. What I dont like is that people will comment favorably on these wads. Either to throw mappers their empty, meaningless, support, or worse, say they like the super difficult wad as a flex.

Im not convinced the general public of active doom players (not forum snobs, i mean players) are insatiably hungry for more brutally difficult wads to play. Theres already too many of them, and they take a long time to play, much less complete, and much less to speedrun. The upward trajectory of difficult wads in the sphere of whats popular and recommended is ruining the game.

tbh, that's something i was never able to understand. i mean, wad authors making wads for other people to have fun. does it really matter how exactly i will have fun? ok, the author may put a lot of efforts balancing the wad for "normal play". great, those efforts are *not* wasted: i expect that balance even when playing with mods, and i appreciate it. i believe that the only disrespectful thing here is when somebody's demanding from map author to "fix" their maps for some mod.

@pintolinh0 I dont know how to respond to most of what youre saying about me because you are adding a lot of context to my posts where there is none. It would be cool to have a debate over this but a lot of what you are saying that i am saying simply is not true.

i dont have a preferred person or source for doom wad reviews and would like to have one (or two, or three) The reason being that in order to find stuff to play, i rely on screenshots, what gets more recommendations from doom community randos, and to read the comments in thread topics in doomworld wads and mods.

In my experience this is not working for me anymore because most people dont say what they mean. Often theyre just sold on the eye candy in the screenshots, or just voicing support for mappers they like.

Even when people do play the wads and upload longplay videos, their written words say the map is beautiful and they liked it and maybe found a texture misalignment here or a softlock there, etc. Though when I skim through, Ill see them getting frustrated and their expressions don't match what the supportive comments they wrote or the qualifiers they'll say when they talk about the wad. Perhaps in hopes of getting reciprocated support when they make maps themselves?

If this community had more dedicated reviewers (with their own styles and preferences) there would be more of a checks and balances system between mappers and players/reviewers, because, as i see it, mappers are outnumbering players and are far too protected. I presume this is from the backing of doom community spectators. e.g. People who participate in the easily digestible content like the community talk, watching live streams, liking screenshots, watching videos of speedruns and doom's source code and development history. But not players actively playing the game. Because from a playing perspective a lot of modern doom content that these spectators consider to be humbling is just unplayable garbage, and mappers really need to hear that.

If wads were more playable, people posting their legit thoughts on their experience playing the wad would come more organically. Writing thoughtful commentary on a wad is a chore. Some people will settle for calling maps evil or brutal but usually this is because the content is so dense with maps, large maps with tons of monsters and requires a lot of time to play and is really just disrespectful of the players time.

lastly, lets talk about the topic you want to talk about in the thread that it is about?