I hate streamers

Is... Is that an encounter with more than 10 enemies?!?

AAAAAAH, I'M GOING INSAAAANE!!! DBP AM BECOME SLAUGHTER, DESTROYER OF M-MUH FUN!!!

Hey, if you aren't good enough to UVMAX a map from Memento Mori 2, or you can't finish a blind playthrough of e3m2 on HMP, playing maps with Russisan Overkill on livestream in front of tens of people, while blaming your lack of skill on the mapper every time, is a legitimate way to maintain an audience. Especially when your audience consists of DE fans from r/doom who will just take your word for things since they've never played Doom before. In order to be an ultra-popular Doom streamer, you either need to be an incredibly knowledgeable Good of Doom, or an incredibly unfunny idiot with no skill at anything other than throwing a tantrum.

Preach brother. I barely watched any mapping streams and don't remember anything remarkably cringe about them, mostly searched for mapping advices on youtube or DW forums. I'll admit I prefer more linear maps and I'm not a very good player either... At times I do the same mistakes those retarded streamers do (like running in circles when the map literally shows the way to progress right in your face or missing an obvious secret), but I rarely blame the maps for it, let alone do it on a stream in front of an audience. The guy who recorded that stream insulted mappers in his retarded 'DBPs are too slaughter-y now' tirade and I took that personally.

I take it you weren't insulting him or anything, just tried to help him get through the map and his first reaction was 'WHY WON'T THESE FUCKING PEOPLE LET ME ENJOY BEING A RETARD THINGS!!1'?

Also wanna add that, despite the popularity of Doom speedrunning, this isn't necessarily an indication that the Doom mapping community is alive and well. Something I came to terms with recently is that doom maps that are speedrunned a lot are not necessarily indications that the map is good. In speedrunning, the map doesn't need to be good. The reward is being the one with the fastest time. It's a competitive exercise that can be just as rewarding for the runner if the map is terrible.

There's a Doom Radio interview with TheGreenHerring from years ago. He's not active anymore, but at the time he was known for having many speedruns for old 1994 maps. I'm paraphrasing here, but he was inspired to do this from a new amateur speedrunner who was spamming up the doomworld speedrunning subforum by posting mediocre speedruns of old 1994 maps that no one played. This was annoying for him and fellow speedrunners to see so many boring maps being tablefilled with boring demos. So TGH begrudgingly went and UV-Maxed as many junk maps as he could so that there would be a standard for these old maps. Today, this is very normalized. He didn't do it because it was fun for him to play, regardless of how the gameplay appears to viewers.

Another example is you can browse youtube for speedruns of absolutely horrible games like desert bus. If a game exists, and it sucks, there's a very low barrier of entry for speedrunners, so you can bet that there is someone who is going to suffer through it just to be the one who is on the top of the leaderboard for it.

Just something to keep in mind when appealing to speedrunners in your map designs.

Those are facts, as well. It's OK to create art that not everyone will enjoy. is well articulated. It's perfectly fine to be in acceptance that there are particular players you did not design your maps for, but the subject of the thread and the comments that followed do not indicate acceptance from what I'm reading.

this is indeed true… but only in the case where the player is cooperating. if the player really wanted to have fun genuinely trying to play your map because they like the game for what it was, then you're right.

yet there are completely different classes of players too. it's actually one class from our POV, but well… those players don't care about the game, don't care about maps, most of the time they don't even like the game. but they have audience to "entertain" (because that's their income). they're not doing it for fun, they're pretending to be dumb for money (or genuinely dumb, it doesn't matter). you will never, ever make such "players" happy, because their goal is to shit on the game.

and that last class of players is exactly what outrages us here.

If it helps, I'll attempt to restate the OP as the questions that are not being asked, and then answer them.



Q: Why does my player think they don't have ammo when I put the ammo in there, and it is clearly in their inventory?

A: I understand how this can be perceived as a nonproblem, since the player is addressing an issue of not having ammo when they actually do. The player has ammo, but has no recollection actually picking it up. How can this be? The problem is more about player awareness.

Fighting monsters requires a lot of movement, strafing, and other big gestures. When there is also ammunition included in these same places, the player will often not realize they are collecting ammo pickups and might be surprised later at how much they have. By distinctly separating locations of combat from locations of health/ammo recovery, this can help the player be more aware of their current status within the map which will help them feel prepared for what lies ahead.

In the same way that gameplay can be unfair if monsters jump out at you, unprovoked, you can also be made to pick up ammo without being given the autonomy to decide if you want it or not. This can sometimes come from stacked ammo items, where ammo appears to be a single pickup, but its actually multiple pickups in one. This can also come from items littered in hallways, doorframes, in front of switches, and other spaces designed for traversal where they are often picked up inadvertently.

Are you familiar with weapon shrines? In some deathmatch maps, such as in the gothic deathmatches series, you'll often find that parts of the level are designed around weapon locations, in such a way that the weapons are suspended on pedestals, decorated with ornamentary detailing, and lighting. This makes the weapons more eye-catching and attractive to the player when the players are supposed to be fixated on fragging opponents. This also helps make the weapon locations more memorable so they can return to them when they respawn. An analagous approach with ammunition can be made with ammunition stockpiles. In Wolfenstein 3D, sometimes you can find dedicated storage rooms loaded with a minigun and ammo pickups. This can set up the expectation that there is a big battle ahead. The acquisition of ammunition is also a reward for the player's curiosity. But most importantly, the action of going forward to collect the items inside the storage room is a chosen action.

If you intend to focus on challenging or large scale gameplay encounters, Big ammunition caches such as the one shown below are a pleasant visual for the acquisition of ammo items. Most players will see this and have little concern for ammo as they advance forward in the map. On the other hand, when you dot ammo around rooms like trash to be collected like a scavenger, it doesn't make the experience of collecting the ammo feel important or memorable, even if it correctly facilitates the requirement that there should be enough to kill the monsters with.



Another example is in Circle of Caina MAP07, you can hear from biz's commentary that when presented with a huge ammo stockpile and no consequences, this sets up expectations that there will be a big challenge ahead because the map is making a concerted effort to prepare him for it, so not having enough ammo is probably of little concern at this point.





Q: Why do players say that DBP is a slaughter when we're not designing it that way?

A: This is a legitimate concern. Many custom Doom wads are much harder than the base game, and for those who don't regularly practice playing Doom by keeping up with the upward trajectory of difficult doom maps, playing Doom can feel downright antagonistic. I personally find introducing new people to the world of custom Doom maps to be dreadful, because the community expectation is that you should survive all of Doom 2, Final Doom, and most of the classic megawad benchmarks in order to play the current wave of Doom competently. This puts all new players at a multi-hundred hour experience gap between themselves and playing the new stuff that comes out. I can attest that this is unintentional, but it is definitely gatekeeping.

Many designers of "tough but fair" maps are undeservedly deified on doom forums as mapping experts, an inspiration to mappers everywhere as a status to be attained. The quiet voices of the Doom community don't see the constant tests of player skill to be a worthwhile gameplay experience. The bloat of difficult/slaughter maps keeps much of the Doom community in the voyeuristic spectator category; people who exist to provide commentary, watching streams, and UV-MAX videos instead of actively playing the game. From what I've seen, a lot of amateur players see DBP as a beacon of hope that playing new Doom maps can simply be an experience worth having that doesn't expect you to pay hours in save/die/reload tolls just to get through. It's a crime not to lean into that.

When I hear people saying that DBP has gotten slaughtery and spammy, I take this as an indication that there are mappers who aren't treating DBP much like a team effort. I've expressed many times, directly and indirectly, that design is king. The evidence is right in front of them when testers post DNF demos, and then treat the dissatisfying feedback like its an adversarial relationship. You should want players to be having fun. You're not shortchanging yourself as a designer when you make maps that are not very hard for you to beat. That's normal and should be expected. It just needs to play well.

btw, my maps (i never released anything, they're ugly and not worth playing at all) are using most tricks in the book to deliberately piss off the player. except for softlocks and huge switch hunts. inescapable pits? hell yeah. health placed in front of key/progression switch? sure. high-tier monsters popping out of thin air right after you fought a hard battle and starving on resources? of course. completely unfair traps which cannot be avoided unless you already know that the trap is there? be my guest. to piss people even more, most of the time you can't have 100% completion too.

maybe one day i will create a wad titled "that's how you DON'T map!" ;-)

Watching a streamer shit on you or your map for dumb reasons is fun, because it might feel awkward or induce anxiety in you at first, but then you quickly realize they are just stupid and you get to enjoy the rest of the stream maniacally laughing at them.

T_T

Probably should've put a spare megasphere in that fight, but I was thinking there was more than enough health given to the player so they'd think it's better to save it for emergencies.

Especially if there are no walls.

Anyhow, I never watch live streams. I bet there have to be good, polite streamers somewhere, but I wouldn't watch their streams either. I prefer to enjoy the finalized material at my own leisure.

idk man. streamers are generally subhuman trash, youtubers as well though some of them are alright, but at least i don't have to spend hours watching them, might as well play the game myself at that point. dbps+streamers i imagine to be a deadly combo, maps that are deliberately designed behind the current difficulty curve (allegedly) + people playing the games as entertainment for intellectual defectives as opposed to engaging with the game/maps proper

i started playing dewm somewhat seriously only a couple years ago, some mapsets i struggled with back then i don't really find difficult anymore but my appreciation for them hasn't wavered for kicking my ass less. "modern difficulty" in general shouldn't be a huge demotivator unless you're a game journalist or something (yeah you have to play hundreds of hours to git gud enough to play them on uv, hmp/hntr still exist, either way that's true for any game that has any kind of hardcore fanbase). for some of us things being somewhat difficult/less accessible is one of the main reasons for avoiding modern gaming in general. the average map today isn't markedly more difficult than the average map 5 years ago, and not much more difficult than plutonia either way, slaughtersh1t/challenge maps are still a relative minority. if anything i wish dbps were harder on uv since their design principles are different enough from current day doomworld-core, and therefore less boring, with more difficulty they could be even less boring. i can imagine larping a total asshole if i ever get my hands on doom builder, but only as much as i'm a masochist as a player (which is not all that much, relatively speaking). though the doom community is still churning out some shit any sane human being would find borderline unplayable, as far as i'm concerned that simply means it's in good health