Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Curratum]

Cacowards are here already.

Spoiler

Eviternity actually sucks, by the way

I wouldn't go so far as to say it outright "sucks" but it has quite a few maps that were a chore / a bore. Dragonfly is definitely overrated as a mapper. Over the years I have played and collected maps by people who will never get a cacoward because they simply made stuff long ago, who are far superior to him in terms of layouts and use of space. In fact, I may post a few hidden gems here, later on.

 

[Sjukob]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it outright sucks

I don't like Eviternity at all. I tried getting into several times, but it just added more to my dissapointment.

Here are my problems with that wad:

1. Overuse of damaging floors combined with confusing level design. Have fun running around when your supply of protection suits runs out;
2. Lack of difficulty and engaging situations outside of, frankly bullshit, arenas;
3. New monsters mostly suck. Cyberbaron is the most retarded of them all. A lot of health + incredible offense. I've seen people say that he is supposed to shoot rockets and then switch to chaingun, so you have to hide to make him shoot rockets again. But it doesn't work, he will just keep shooting you with his chaingun. This turns him into overpowered chaingunner that is more annoying to take down than cyberdemon, thanks to peekaboo shit you have to do;
4. Some maps are overly detailed and lag or are just unplayable;
5. Some maps are way too long, which sums up nicely with previous points.

I couldn't get further 20th map. Eviternity is not fun to play for me. I say it should've not received a cacoward, for me it's in the same category as hellbound - cool visuals, but gameplay is ass.

I've recently played through ancient aliens for the first time and everything about it is so much better than eviternity. The gameplay, the new monsters, the visuals and the music.

I want to write a long post about my experience with certain wads and mods, but can't find the time to do it.

 

[Curratum]

There is the usual amount of bullshit in the cacowards. They gave an award to Shotgun Symphony, mostly because some guy worked on it for 22 years, even though it's just an Episode 1 replacement.

Meanwhile, Jimmy's "Deathless" got just a sidebar mention as a "coffee break mapset", and it's a 3-episode replacement made over 9 days, that looks and plays better than Shotgun Symphony.

Doomworld never changes.

 

[Luzur]

Hocus Pocus Doom wad

 

[Luzur]

 

[Luzur]

 

[Sjukob]

Alright, I finaly have the time and will to write something about Doom.

Demonastery

For some reason I've never really bothered with single level wads, I guess I felt like they aren't offering enough for me. Well, that might have been the case until I tried playing Demonastery. There's nothing mindblowing about this map, it's just a very enjoyable experience from start to finish. The main feature, of course, is the monastery you go through - it's made of flesh of bones, which you can see right from the begging, but it adds up nicely as you go farther and get to see more obscure stuff. As for difficulty, I say it's fair. The author doesn't try to screw you over with ambushes or ridiculous encounters and gives you plenty of ammo, there aren't that many health items though, so your mistakes will cost you, the hardest part of the map is it's end - arena battle. I highly recommend you to check it out, it's a fine wad and you are likely to finish it in under 20 minutes. Also the soundtrack is pretty cool. I'll repost my screenshots from screenshot thread. Played with Eriguns, I find that they fit the wad really well.

Spoiler

The soundtrack


Doom 404

Frankly, there isn't anything to this wad besides it's gameplay. It's main theme are computers and software (hence the name), the visuals are barebones and in many occasions you wouldn't really understand what the map is supposed to represent if not for their names giving you a clue. Despite featuring a low number of monsters in general, it's a pretty tough megawad, especially in it's later parts. I liked the first half of it better, because the levels seemed more interesting and creative to me, towards the end it turns more into classic "eat revenants and archviles" type of unfun bullshit, it also becomes way more stingy with weapons and ammo. I still finished it, had fun playing maps 1-20, not so much with 20-30. Ran it with Final Doomer, the screenshots won't show you much (I haven't even bothered taking them until the very last levels.), because as I've said the visuals are extremely basic.

Screenshots

Spoiler

Struggle - Antaresian Legacy

I don't have a final stance on this megawad yet, at the moment of writting this post I haven't yet finished it and only played through the 14 maps. The maps in this wad are non linear and I didn't like it at first, the maps 1-5 seemed too confusing and restrictive to me, especially map 5 which features a lot of damaging floors. It didn't help that a lot of rooms and corridors looked the same and I was constantly getting lost, exploraion aspect just didn't grab me. I managed to convince myself to hold on and it was worth it, after 5 map it gets a lot better and levels become more destinct and fun to explore. You get some new guns to play with, they function largely the same as classic weapons, but kill things better: pistol fires in bursts, SSG is more accurate, chaigun (replaced with akimbo pistols) fires faster, rocket launcher does more damage and explosions cover bigger area at the expense of fire rate, plasma gun (replced with high caliber automatic rifle) hits harder; only regular shotgun feels lackluster in comparison to everything else, since the only boost it got is slightly increased firerate, as for BFG I'll let you see it's analogue yourself. To compensate for the buffs to your arsenal you gain less ammo from every pick up and it actually makes things more interesting, because your shotguns can actually run out of ammo. There are some new enemies, I won't comment on them until I finish the wad, but my initial impressions are positive. There are also some tweaks to regular monsters, thumbs up to the author for removing revenant seeking missiles. The difficulty is just right most of the time, although there are a couple of bullshit ambushes, but overall I'm happy with the wad and will definitely continue my playthrough.

Screenshots

Spoiler

Ancient Aliens

This megawad might be the greatest experience I've ever had with Doom. I don't have anything but praises for it, the gameplay, the visuals, the soundtrack, the new enemies, just everything about it is great. I tried getting into it several times and it only clicked when I went Final Doomer + pistol start. The first episode is definitely the hardest and the most gimmicky one, you would have to maneuver around bigger enemies, while not having access to big enough guns to kill them, there are also plenty of tough battles, where you aren't given much space to move around. But if you manage to overcome it, the wad looses it's grip and maps become easier in general. You will get introduced to new enemy types, like partially invisible plasma shooting soldiers and floating skulls that shoot several revenant missiles at once. I really like those additional monsters, both of them are glass-cannon types and die as soon as you sneeze at them, floating skulls are especially fun, because they explode on death and can hurt other monsters (and player) standing nearby, you can even trigger a chain reaction if they group together, it's such a cool and fun monster, way better than the revenants from the original Doom 2. The levels themselves are very varied, you will go through egypt themed maps, alien ships, outer space, various temples, techbases and more. And majority of them really stand out and don't blend together, the gameplay though is mostly about arena fights, but the pacing and item/monster placement is very good, so it never feels repetitive or boring, I'm telling you this as somebody who doesn't enjoy arena type battles. During my playthrough I grew very accustomed to Skillsaw type of gameplay, where you are given a rocket laucher (and other powerful weapons) very early into the level and have to battle through hordes of demons and aliens. Somebody on the internet described difficulty of Ancient Aliens as "safe hardcore" - you fight hordes of monsters, but you also get a lot of ammo and various powerups, so you are allowed to make a big number of mistakes before monsters can kill you, I agree with it. You don't even have to look for secrets to have basically everything, there was a time when I ate 2 direct hit cyberdemon rockets during one battle and still had spare soul/megaspheres to pick up after that. For majority of people the most "Wow" moment of Ancient Aliens happens when they reach map 24 - Culture Shock, I agree that it's a very pretty and unique looking map, but personaly I was blown away by the map that comes before it - Trinary Temple. You know, I thought that I outgrew times when I could've been seriously impressed by visuals in a video game, but map 23 proved me wrong. I was literally stunned looking at it, I seriously did not expect to see something so cool in Doom, funny that a lot of people consider it to be the weakest map in the wad, while I agree that the gameplay is lacking, but it's just so pretty and atmospheric. I love Ancient Aliens, I really recommend this wad to anyone, except may be those who are just starting to play Doom, I think that the very new players won't fully appreciate it's greatness.

Spoiler

I also wanted to mention some things about vanilla Doom and gameplay mods, but I'm feeling too lazy at the moment, so may be I'll do it later.

 

[Sjukob]

Also, can you guys help me with Quake ? I'm just beggining to experience it, I've already set it up, finished original campaign with Quake 1.5 and played through some fan made maps. I was wandering if I should play something besides the maps mentioned in the video below. Are there any gameplay mods that I should check out ? Are there any sites to browse besides quaddicted and quakeone ?

 

[Curratum]

Also, can you guys help me with Quake ? I'm just beggining to experience it, I've already set it up, finished original campaign with Quake 1.5 and played through some fan made maps. I was wandering if I should play something besides the maps mentioned in the video below. Are there any gameplay mods that I should check out ? Are there any sites to browse besides quaddicted and quakeone ?

Just get Quakespasm the sourceport and Arcane Dimensions and you're largely set.

 

[Sjukob]

Just get Quakespasm the sourceport and Arcane Dimensions and you're largely set.

I've already set up Quakespasm, but I want to play some more simple stuff before moving onto the pinnacle of Quake mapping - Arcane Dimensions.

 

[Zenith]

There's a Quake thread.

One good recommendation for a beginner would be Underdark Overbright - a decent, well-paced, fairly detailed episode released this year (so, after that video you linked). The video itself is pretty good as far as recommendations go. It skips some things (off the top of my head: Marcher, Insomnia, Nehahra, than's maps) and some inclusions are questionable (Ter Shibboleth), but it's a fair overview.

There's no real reason not to start with AD by the way. Better to play through it and then move on to the real stuff, than to first get acclimatized to ijed's or Tronyn's maps and then be bored throughout AD. I guess start with Beyond Belief and Zerstorer if you'r afraid AD will spoil you visually.

 

[Sjukob]

Here are some more things I wanted to mention about Doom.

Playing Quake made me realise how much Doom tries to restrict your movement. Obviously, you can't jump, of course, I know that it is a limitation of the original game, but I still find it annoying how you have to around big portions of the map when some measly ledge rises slightly above you and blocks your way, especially when you are not sure where to go and backtrack. Then there are enemies: hitscanners, arachnotrons (can't change the direction of strafing without getting hit), revenants, archviles; all of them force you to take some sort of cover if you want to avoid taking damage, yes you can "hide" behind other monsters to save yourself and cause infighting, but the point stands. Have you ever noticed how much vores in Quake "stick out" from the crowd of other monsters ? Well, it's because how strongly they affect the pace of combat when you encounter them. They force you into hiding and if you don't, the punishment you get is pretty big, as for hitscanners there's only one such enemy in Quake and they are far less threatening than sergeants and chaingunners in Doom.

By the way, I've always hated revenants in Doom, such a dumb and overpowered monster: hardest hitting projectile in the game (not counting cyberdemon's rockets) and is the hardest one to dodge, it hits you for 80 damage if you don't have armor, the monster itself is pretty fast and is durable too. So how the fuck did the guys in ID think it was ok to put shit like that in the game ?! Some people say that the revenants are glass cannons... Lol. No they are not. Chaingunner is a glass cannon, the plasma troops and the floating skulls (which are much more fun to fight than the revenants) from Ancient Aliens are glass cannons, but the vanilla revenants are just too tough. Some modders tried to tweak the revenants a little bit, like reducing their damage or health, making the tracking of their projectiles worse or just removing homing rockets enterily, I've played Doom for years and learned how to deal with them, but I still find that overall they are crazy and should have not been released in such state.

Next thing I'd like to mention is telegraphing. Even before I tried playing Quake, I've noticed that a good number of monster attacks in Doom are pretty poorly telegraphed, take cyberdemon for example - shoots out the most devastating projectile in the game with no warning whatsoever, cacodemons and imps throw out their fireballs pretty quickly too, sudden revenant homing missile in tight spots can fuck up anybody. In Quake there are only really ogre grenades you have to watch out for, but even if you eat it, how much damage do you take ? 40 according to Quake wiki, in Doom a comparable analogue is hell knight/baron green fire, but it hurts significantly more than the ogre grenades.

I also want to say a couple of words about weapons. In Doom it's way harder to adapt to situation and use your arsenal accordingly, because weapon switching speed is so slow, often you just pick one weapon that suits the encounter best and stick with, especially if it's a difficult one. For example, you don't usually see people switching from SSG to regular shotgun midfight to place more accurate shots, instead most people would just shoot their SSG from midrange, it's generally pretty risky to switch your weapons in Doom. In Quake weapon switching is instant and allows for easier use of your entire arsenal as well as creation of various "combos".

And finaly it's time for my biggest gripe with both Doom and Quake - pistol/shotgun starting. For a very long I was playing Doom without thinking about pistol starts, because I've not been feeling like giving away my weapons each time I started a new level. Only recently I've begun doing it regularly, but to be honest I'm not a big fan of it and would rather prefer continous play. What is my problem exactly ? Nobody ever creates maps for continious play. It's even more ridiculous that some people say, that maps are balanced for both pistol start and continious play, because it's outright impossible. You either give player enough ammo and weapons to finish the level starting from nothing or they carry over their staff from previous map and get oversupplied with things you placed for pistol starters, there is no inbetween. What I have against pistol starting is weapon progression: "You can have a shotgun and a shotgun, and another shotgun, I might give you a chaingun too... What ? Rocket launcher ? Nah, you will have to look for secrets to get that one. Oh and I also didn't place any additional ammo for it on this map. You want plasma gun or BFG ? Lol, forget about those". Yeah it's a hyperbole, but I'm sure if you played Doom you should be familiar with such things. Apparently it's so much more exciting to kill groups of hell knights/barons (or other strong monsters) with your boomstick than use actual powerful weapons. Additionaly I find that it's just much more fun to use your entire arsenal in a way you personally find best, not just being strictly limited by a mapper. Some authors do get it right, it's I why I had zero issues with pistol starting Ancient Aliens, on many levels you got rocket launcher right from the start and the authors weren't stingy with other weapons and ammo either, which allowed for more flexibility during battles. Quake's original campaign was such a pleasant breath of fresh air for me, it was actually balanced for continious play, initially I didn't expect much from it, but in the end I had a lot of fun playing through it. Then I got to the expansions and immediately noticed that they were made for shotgun start, I managed to finish Scourge of Armagon, although it was way less exciting than the original campaign, as for Dissolution of Eternity, I dropped it after beating the first episode.

This post is not meant to put a fight between Doom and Quake. It's just that I wanted to share my concern about certain things in Doom, but I've also happened to start playing Quake recently and the comparison kind of happened itself, although I do believe that Quake does some things better, like weapon switching.

 

[lightbane]

There is the usual amount of bullshit in the cacowards. They gave an award to Shotgun Symphony, mostly because some guy worked on it for 22 years, even though it's just an Episode 1 replacement.

Meanwhile, Jimmy's "Deathless" got just a sidebar mention as a "coffee break mapset", and it's a 3-episode replacement made over 9 days, that looks and plays better than Shotgun Symphony.

Doomworld never changes.

It's an hyper-hostile and mentally unstable community, where many of the modders intentionally introduce "evil code" to sabotage their mods if they detect anything belonging to Brutal Doom, even if it's a sub-mod barely related to that (ie: the Ketchup mod), due the immense hatred and envy of Sarge.

Stuff like that was to be expected.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

By the way, I've always hated revenants in Doom, such a dumb and overpowered monster: hardest hitting projectile in the game (not counting cyberdemon's rockets) and is the hardest one to dodge, it hits you for 80 damage if you don't have armor, the monster itself is pretty fast and is durable too.

It's a great post and I agree with almost all your points. But there are no revenants in Doom. All this decline - revenants, chaingunners, overpowered ssg, monster closet design, boring city levels - was introduced only in the rushed cash-grab sequel.

 

[Average Manatee]

This post is not meant to put a fight between Doom and Quake.

Well it's still on regardless.

Then there are enemies: hitscanners, arachnotrons (can't change the direction of strafing without getting hit), revenants, archviles; all of them force you to take some sort of cover if you want to avoid taking damage, yes you can "hide" behind other monsters to save yourself and cause infighting

Hitscanners are designed with very low HP so you can annihilate them at close to mid range (where they are deadly) with the shotguns and at long range they barely ever hit you and can be very easily forced to cause infighting. You shouldn't really need cover much against them unless playing with Fast Monsters. Of course Chaingunners break this mold but they should be used sparingly by good WAD makers that aren't intentionally making something sadistic.

Arachnotron shots can be dodged through, you want to move at full speed sideways strafing for a few seconds then quickly cut back in between the (sparse) shots, ideally while moving backwards to give yourself a bit more time and space to get through. You can also just stand almost still and just strafe an inch sideways every second or so to barely evade streams of shots and greatly extend your dodge room. It's all very bullet hell shooter-y, if you think of it as a bullet hell type of game just with a perspective shift to FPS you can translate most of the dodging strategies.

Archviles are bastards, but they serve an important gameplay purpose: a strong monster that you want to advance on and delete ASAP rather than standing around picking things off slowly. They are also ultra-sensitive to infighting, they are the only monster in the game that has a 100% chance to stop attacking the player if anything else even slightly touches it, even aborting their attacks at the last second. This sort of soft-caps their power too, the more shit they revive the more likely they are to be stuck infighting.

By the way, I've always hated revenants in Doom, such a dumb and overpowered monster: hardest hitting projectile in the game (not counting cyberdemon's rockets) and is the hardest one to dodge, it hits you for 80 damage if you don't have armor, the monster itself is pretty fast and is durable too. So how the fuck did the guys in ID think it was ok to put shit like that in the game ?! Some people say that the revenants are glass cannons... Lol. No they are not. Chaingunner is a glass cannon, the plasma troops and the floating skulls (which are much more fun to fight than the revenants) from Ancient Aliens are glass cannons, but the vanilla revenants are just too tough. Some modders tried to tweak the revenants a little bit, like reducing their damage or health, making the tracking of their projectiles worse or just removing homing rockets enterily, I've played Doom for years and learned how to deal with them, but I still find that overall they are crazy and should have not been released in such state.

Cmon, you're complaining about Revenants after talking about Vores? Revenant attacks can be fairly casually dodged, even if you aren't looking at them you can get into the general pattern of how to avoid them. Even if you have dozens of revenants its sort of the same as long as they are all from the same direction. Vores on the other hand deserve to have the Benny Hill theme playing whenever they fire. There's a reason Vores were almost always fought on their own without other monsters around, its because they suck to fight and would combine horrifically with anything else, while the Revenant generally works fine in wide open areas with lots of monsters around. Also the revenant shots are 10-90 damage, avg 50. I do hate how random Doom damage is though.

Next thing I'd like to mention is telegraphing. Even before I tried playing Quake, I've noticed that a good number of monster attacks in Doom are pretty poorly telegraphed, take cyberdemon for example - shoots out the most devastating projectile in the game with no warning whatsoever, cacodemons and imps throw out their fireballs pretty quickly too, sudden revenant homing missile in tight spots can fuck up anybody. In Quake there are only really ogre grenades you have to watch out for, but even if you eat it, how much damage do you take ? 40 according to Quake wiki, in Doom a comparable analogue is hell knight/baron green fire, but it hurts significantly more than the ogre grenades.

You don't really need telegraphing for most monsters in either game because you know when they are attacking you, its whenever you are in their line of sight. If you understand this and have good spatial sense you can dodge projectile enemies without looking almost endlessly in Doom and the situation is fairly similar in Quake. The reason the Ogre needs a wind up is because they are the one enemy in both games that are highly unpredictable due to the wildly different ways grenades can bounce depending on what's going on. Furthermore Ogres are pretty much the one and only Quake monster that I'd consider well-designed (I'd also consider Zombies pretty good when used well). I already talked about how the Vore sucks. Let me also mention the Shambler: Essentially Hitscan? Check. Absurdly huge damage? Check. Incredibly high HP? Check. Essentially no telegraph (its like 2 frames)? Check. An awful, awful monster that absolutely forces you into cover shooter mode or else instant death.

I also want to say a couple of words about weapons. In Doom it's way harder to adapt to situation and use your arsenal accordingly, because weapon switching speed is so slow, often you just pick one weapon that suits the encounter best and stick with, especially if it's a difficult one. For example, you don't usually see people switching from SSG to regular shotgun midfight to place more accurate shots, instead most people would just shoot their SSG from midrange, it's generally pretty risky to switch your weapons in Doom. In Quake weapon switching is instant and allows for easier use of your entire arsenal as well as creation of various "combos".

Ehh, I kind of agree but it should be fine for the vanilla campaigns where you always have plenty of room to dodge and avoid damage for a half second. In ultra-high difficulty WADs it gets to be a problem when there are so many monsters and you are in such a confined space that the only way to succeed is to have the right weapon selected before you pass a spawn trigger, lots of ammo, and Mouse 1 held down for a minute straight, but that's an issue with the WAD rather than the game. The reason people don't switch from the SSG to the SG is simply because the SSG is kind of overpowered to the point where its still the better tool for mid-range work unless you are desperately low on ammo and are against a specific enemy likely to die in one SG shot.

And finaly it's time for my biggest gripe with both Doom and Quake - pistol/shotgun starting. For a very long I was playing Doom without thinking about pistol starts, because I've not been feeling like giving away my weapons each time I started a new level. Only recently I've begun doing it regularly, but to be honest I'm not a big fan of it and would rather prefer continous play. What is my problem exactly ? Nobody ever creates maps for continious play. It's even more ridiculous that some people say, that maps are balanced for both pistol start and continious play, because it's outright impossible. You either give player enough ammo and weapons to finish the level starting from nothing or they carry over their staff from previous map and get oversupplied with things you placed for pistol starters, there is no inbetween. What I have against pistol starting is weapon progression: "You can have a shotgun and a shotgun, and another shotgun, I might give you a chaingun too... What ? Rocket launcher ? Nah, you will have to look for secrets to get that one. Oh and I also didn't place any additional ammo for it on this map. You want plasma gun or BFG ? Lol, forget about those". Yeah it's a hyperbole, but I'm sure if you played Doom you should be familiar with such things. Apparently it's so much more exciting to kill groups of hell knights/barons (or other strong monsters) with your boomstick than use actual powerful weapons. Additionaly I find that it's just much more fun to use your entire arsenal in a way you personally find best, not just being strictly limited by a mapper. Some authors do get it right, it's I why I had zero issues with pistol starting Ancient Aliens, on many levels you got rocket launcher right from the start and the authors weren't stingy with other weapons and ammo either, which allowed for more flexibility during battles. Quake's original campaign was such a pleasant breath of fresh air for me, it was actually balanced for continious play, initially I didn't expect much from it, but in the end I had a lot of fun playing through it. Then I got to the expansions and immediately noticed that they were made for shotgun start, I managed to finish Scourge of Armagon, although it was way less exciting than the original campaign, as for Dissolution of Eternity, I dropped it after beating the first episode.

"Balanced" doesn't mean necessarily mean that everything is fair or that all levels are of equal difficulty. Doom is not a PvP game in single player. Balanced just means that its both reasonably doable and should be fun for someone. Its up to the player whether they want to pistol start or continue. Also some WADs will effectively force a pistol start at various mid-points through their levels, which I like. A major failing of the Doom 2 campaigns compared to Doom 1 is that there was no enforced pistol start for each new episode. But in the end letting the player choose their difficulty isn't necessarily a bad thing and providing multiple options to alter difficulty is a good thing. Besides the normal difficulty levels and pistol vs. non-pistol start, there's also fast monsters and respawn that can be applied to any level independently, and I generally play Doom 1 and 2 on UV + Faster Monsters. One of the strengths of Doom IMO is that the game doesn't have to always be played at the absolute highest difficulty you are capable of to be fun, because the fun doesn't just come from difficulty. It comes from a constant, interesting application of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop in concert with good map design and enemies that work with it.

 

[Sjukob]

Hitscanners are designed with very low HP so you can annihilate them at close to mid range (where they are deadly) with the shotguns and at long range they barely ever hit you and can be very easily forced to cause infighting. You shouldn't really need cover much against them unless playing with Fast Monsters. Of course Chaingunners break this mold but they should be used sparingly by good WAD makers that aren't intentionally making something sadistic.

Arachnotron shots can be dodged through, you want to move at full speed sideways strafing for a few seconds then quickly cut back in between the (sparse) shots, ideally while moving backwards to give yourself a bit more time and space to get through. You can also just stand almost still and just strafe an inch sideways every second or so to barely evade streams of shots and greatly extend your dodge room. It's all very bullet hell shooter-y, if you think of it as a bullet hell type of game just with a perspective shift to FPS you can translate most of the dodging strategies.

Archviles are bastards, but they serve an important gameplay purpose: a strong monster that you want to advance on and delete ASAP rather than standing around picking things off slowly. They are also ultra-sensitive to infighting, they are the only monster in the game that has a 100% chance to stop attacking the player if anything else even slightly touches it, even aborting their attacks at the last second. This sort of soft-caps their power too, the more shit they revive the more likely they are to be stuck infighting.

Are you sharing your vision ? That's fine with me, but as I've said, I've been playing Doom for years, I am familiar and do understand all of this.

Cmon, you're complaining about Revenants after talking about Vores? Revenant attacks can be fairly casually dodged, even if you aren't looking at them you can get into the general pattern of how to avoid them. Even if you have dozens of revenants its sort of the same as long as they are all from the same direction. Vores on the other hand deserve to have the Benny Hill theme playing whenever they fire. There's a reason Vores were almost always fought on their own without other monsters around, its because they suck to fight and would combine horrifically with anything else, while the Revenant generally works fine in wide open areas with lots of monsters around. Also the revenant shots are 10-90 damage, avg 50. I do hate how random Doom damage is though.

I don't like vores either, as for the revenants, if my point is not clear enough, try thinking of them like stat bloated enemies in RPGs, yes you can beat them with cheese tactics or by abusing overpowered stuff, but it's not a proper way to design a game and create difficulty. I don't really consider revenants "broken", but still think that they are bullshit and badly designed. Not a fan of Doom's RNG either.

You don't really need telegraphing for most monsters in either game because you know when they are attacking you, its whenever you are in their line of sight. If you understand this and have good spatial sense you can dodge projectile enemies without looking almost endlessly in Doom and the situation is fairly similar in Quake. The reason the Ogre needs a wind up is because they are the one enemy in both games that are highly unpredictable due to the wildly different ways grenades can bounce depending on what's going on. Furthermore Ogres are pretty much the one and only Quake monster that I'd consider well-designed (I'd also consider Zombies pretty good when used well). I already talked about how the Vore sucks. Let me also mention the Shambler: Essentially Hitscan? Check. Absurdly huge damage? Check. Incredibly high HP? Check. Essentially no telegraph (its like 2 frames)? Check. An awful, awful monster that absolutely forces you into cover shooter mode or else instant death.

Doom is mostly about close or midrange combat, fast attacks become much scarier when there's little room to sidestep and monsters are close to you, that's when it becomes easy to eat those attacks and they add up quickly. When I mentioned Quake's ogre I wanted to compare him to Doom monsters, because he's the only enemy in the game, who has a fast, unpredictable and pretty powerful attack, while there are more monsters like this in Doom. Also, I too hated shamblers initially, but I soon learned to abuse their melee attacks to make them stop shooting lightning, which turns them into the big punching bags, basically. I've only played Quake for a couple of days, so my opinion hasn't really formed yet, but so far I'm ok with shamblers.

"Balanced" doesn't mean necessarily mean that everything is fair or that all levels are of equal difficulty. Doom is not a PvP game in single player. Balanced just means that its both reasonably doable and should be fun for someone. Its up to the player whether they want to pistol start or continue. Also some WADs will effectively force a pistol start at various mid-points through their levels, which I like. A major failing of the Doom 2 campaigns compared to Doom 1 is that there was no enforced pistol start for each new episode. But in the end letting the player choose their difficulty isn't necessarily a bad thing and providing multiple options to alter difficulty is a good thing. Besides the normal difficulty levels and pistol vs. non-pistol start, there's also fast monsters and respawn that can be applied to any level independently, and I generally play Doom 1 and 2 on UV + Faster Monsters. One of the strengths of Doom IMO is that the game doesn't have to always be played at the absolute highest difficulty you are capable of to be fun, because the fun doesn't just come from difficulty. It comes from a constant, interesting application of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop in concert with good map design and enemies that work with it.

I wasn't talking about difficulty levels at all, so I'm only going to adress my initial point. So, pistol starting and continious play balancing, look at how it can go: I found a secret BFG on one of the levels, cool. I carry over my BFG to the next level, even though the wad is balanced for pistol starting. In the next level I get a plasma gun and a lot of cells, because the author wanted me to actively use it, since the wad wasn't balanced for continious play my BFG trivializes every encounter and turns the game into a snoozefest, because the fights weren't made with BFG spam in mind. Every single campaign that wasn't balanced around continious play would turn out like this, some to a lesser extent, some to a greater. For example, in Dissolution of Eternity for Quake you will hoarde multi-rockets and nothing would be able to challenge you. Forced pistol start in the middle of the campaign doesn't help the issue. And the games need to be challenging to be fun, what's the point if you can't lose ? I strongly support customizable difficulty options in video games, but for 99% of the levels, if you choose continious play, you automatically set the game to "very easy" mode.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Current features:
*Completely redone art for weapons, as well as many textures. Many enemies will be getting a facelift too.
*Weapon upgrades. Use scrap at a workbench to modify your weapons to a more effective version, much like the "secret" upgrade in episode 1. Almost all weapons have at least one mod that can be installed. Give your pistol a bit more accuracy with the aid of an old laser pen and some duct tape! Or perhaps an expanded, high pressure fuel tank for your flamethrower!
*Two new weapons. Both are super-duper rare though. Make em count.
*New enemy behaviour. Human enemies will react depending on how many of their buddies are nearby, as well as how well (or badly) they are doing against you. Mutants will occasionally be able to benefit from a ranged attack if you get somewhere they can't reach.
*New music from John S Weekly!
*Four maps completed so far, with a story following on from the end of the last episode.

Planned features:
*Expanded bestiary of at least 8 new enemies, including new raider and mutant "leader" types, more horrible radiated chimera things, and some really freaky shit that we can't explain.
*Full map total of about 14-18 levels, taking you on a journey from the City interior to the northern mountains and beyond.
*Redone bike controls, as well as an extra upgrade to this later on. Also a brand new mount that is... A little more offensive focused.
*An extra mod option for most weapons, bringing two tiers of murderous utility. Dot scope for your machine pistol! Improved motor for the jackhammer!
*Completely cleaned up and pretty-fied textures, props and effects. More stuff to smash! Mortal toilets and fire extinguishers! Set everyone on fire! Better player sprite! A new "action" mode that takes out all the talking and poignant wandering and replaces it with constant, old-school looter shooting! Fuck!

 

[Curratum]

Wait, I thought I was vostyok's secret lover, how the hell do YOU have an early build and I don't! I'm going to cry now!

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

That is no build, just Vostyok's latest update on ZDoom forums.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Possibly retarded question but due to the title, is this a good place to showcase your own WADs or just WADs made by others that you think are good?

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Alright, I could start with one of my more unique maps. Back in 2018 hidfan and Mr. Rocket of Doomworld released the Doom 3 for Doom 2 textures where he converted the Doom 3 textures to the Doom 2 palette.

I made one of the first maps for it and it taught me to really appreciate the Doom 3 textures. It is a realistic-ish survival horror map where the odds are stacked up against you. Most people really enjoyed it BUT it's not for everyone. Some people really enjoyed it, some found it infuriating. Due to it being more survival horror, it is meant to be played without running.

https://www.doomworld.com/files/file/19062-doom-3-primary-exavation-site/

Here is a playthrough of it if you want to know what it's about before you get into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3lNpnGlOT4

I have other WADs if you are interested.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Have anyone tried this? https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Going_Down

 

[d1r]

Have anyone tried this? https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Going_Down

Fantastic wad. Go play it immediately.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Have anyone tried this? https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Going_Down

Fantastic wad. Go play it immediately.

Could you recommend how (like with what game version) should I do it properly?

 

[d1r]

Have anyone tried this? https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Going_Down

Fantastic wad. Go play it immediately.

Could you recommend how (like with what game version) should I do it properly?

I used to play wads with Skulltag, but that was a long time ago, and Skulltag is not maintained anymore afaik. Best you grab the newest version of Zdoom and you should be fine.