Why are level designs so bad?

[King Of Lolis]

Doom 1 made me rage quit a lot cuz of enemies and the map layout especially consume thy flesh.
Then after somehow beating it, doom 2 was kinda chill till i get blocked by progress everytime cuz it requires a damn blue or red or yellow card so now i gotta go back all the way to find what i missed and to make it worse through lava with low health.
Like seriously, it took me 20 minutes for each level and then the one after city finally made me quit and delete because red card is on boxes i have no idea how to climb and yellow card i picked up opens just 1 gate. Who knows where blue one is.

[angstlicht]

imho the level designs are more literally deranged and insane than they are bad. helps with the evil dead 2 tone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpcdJ_V5_M

[lost horizon]

game was made when computers didnt have mouse. everything was black and white, and storage was 1kb

[fernandown]

XDDDDDDDDDD

[Pvt. Parts]

The short answer is: Sandy Petersen was an evil genius that slammed together 20+ diabolical levels in less than a year. They weren’t pretty to look at, but they sure do provide a challenge. In contrast to maps from John Romero, Sandy’s maps were definitely quantity over quality.

I suggest the level walkthroughs on doomwiki.org. I have consulted them on occasion because I don’t have hours and hours to spend being stuck.

[King Of Lolis]

Thanks for the reply guys
Honestly makes me wonder if all old fps games are like this
Duke nukem had like 2 good maps and then it was confusing like this
Now i dont wanna try doom 64 and wolfenstein after this one lol
Honestly it wouldnt be so bad to track down the cards if it wasnt for the lava
I died to lava way too much and the bait traps that have loot but squish you
Thats just evil

[Tuttermuts]

You call it bad maps,...

We played games like this because we loved it.

No handholding, no arrows, no nothing, ...just you vs the g*dd*amn puzzle.
Sometimes you get stuck and spend 10 minutes backtracing and trying out every nook and cranny of the level just to make your brain click "aaaah I should jump on here and turn that switch" or whatever the situation is. And that's the payoff, the catharsis of finally figuring it out.

That's not to say it won't piss you off in the process.

[OutSIdeOfTheBoX (chrisvig71)]

Doom 2 level design is famous for being a bit crazy, to enjoy doom 2 more just accept that is a puzzle game, doom 2 is crazy... I like the level design of doom 2 because I play very slowly anyway, but if you play fast I can understand why some puzzles can feel tedious... City levels level design above all is pretty messed up...

[benakenobi]

They were initially going for semi-realistic design but promptly changed to more abstract levels because these turned out more fun to play

[Rocket]

You can save and load anywhere at anytime and these were the first fast 3d PC games. Something had to give somewhere and there was a lot of experimentation. Uživaj malo brate, ove su stare igre.

https://youtu.be/Laoe9bDpH9M

[angstlicht]

Originally posted by King Of Lolis:

Thanks for the reply guys
Honestly makes me wonder if all old fps games are like this
Duke nukem had like 2 good maps and then it was confusing like this
Now i dont wanna try doom 64 and wolfenstein after this one lol
Honestly it wouldnt be so bad to track down the cards if it wasnt for the lava
I died to lava way too much and the bait traps that have loot but squish you
Thats just evil

doom 64 is fairly easy, the navigation does get strange sometimes later on, but it has nothing like perfect hatred or the chasm. it was by midway, not id, so the insanity is more hydro thunder or mortal kombat than cereal box mazes.

wolfenstein 3d is worse than doom maps, by a lot. guards are corner-camping like himmler put them in 5 minutes time out, and it might not be possible to make worse maps than the return to danger or ultimate challenge for SoD, or those maps in wolf3d chapter 6 with the guys hiding in inlets and then the entire wall is inlets and the entire map is halls of inlet walls with a guy or two in them each.

if you don't like key card hunts, you might just want to go straight to unreal engine and id tech 2 onwards games like deus ex 1, quake 1 and 2, half life 1, return to castle wolfenstein, unreal, or ironically even dark engine games like system shock 2 and thief, which feature key card hunts but for items that make any sense.

this genre was mainly the model hedge maze from the shining; you're just staring at a maze and getting angrier.

[lost horizon]

this is why half life1 was revolutionary, for the first time there was a game with a story and natural progression with no card hunt

[King Of Lolis]

Yeah...about half life 1
I also quitted that one because of some puzzles. If i remember right i had to turn on some big fan and then climb the ladder out of it and it kept killing me because it was going so fast.
Or maybe it was some nuclear laser, dont remember but you gotta like climb on top of it i think.
Died so many times on that i gave up and moved on

[OutSIdeOfTheBoX (chrisvig71)]

Originally posted by King Of Lolis:

Yeah...about half life 1
I also quitted that one because of some puzzles. If i remember right i had to turn on some big fan and then climb the ladder out of it and it kept killing me because it was going so fast.
Or maybe it was some nuclear laser, dont remember but you gotta like climb on top of it i think.
Died so many times on that i gave up and moved on

You just had to moonwalking to the ladder, you press the button and then just press "s"... That is a part very easy, you just press and go backwards, you climb the ladder and you are out... Strange that in all the points you could've give up, you did it there...

[benakenobi]

Originally posted by duke32:

... for the first time there was a game with a story and natural progression with no card hunt

you don't count System shock?

[lost horizon]

Originally posted by benakenobi:

Originally posted by duke32:

... for the first time there was a game with a story and natural progression with no card hunt

you don't count System shock?

no it may be different but feels like a doom clone