/vr/ - Retro Games

I see "slaughter" come up when discussing Doom maps a lot, both inside these threads and other satellite Doom communities, usually to differentiate it from "normal" maps, and also usually with negative connotation. I think a slaughter map requires a different set of skills than a traditional map, and most of these skills were not really emphasized on in the IWADs, things like infighting, misdirection, streaming, and efficient BFG usage. That's where I believe the negative reputation comes from. When a slaughter map comes out of nowhere in a WAD that was full of otherwise traditional maps, it can throw a player off, because on the surface it does look like mindless monster spam to kill the player, but it actually just requires the player to take a different approach, utilizing skills that the IWADs didn't teach. It's kind of like SHMUPs and the bullet hell subgenre. A bullet hell shooter looks like mindless bullet spam at first when in reality it just requires a different set of skills.
Just rambling here.