Deathmatch WITH Monsters [DMwM]

I am not alone...

I've been spending my time lately researching old posts in the Wads & Development forum at Doomworld. It's been an invaluable resource for finding old archived websites of Doom users' "how the Internet once was". This one post/discussion in particular tweaked me though. Click the red title if you want to verify my quoting.

Dumb question... [DM with monsters]

Commibstrd	Posted July 11, 2004
	Ok what I'm about to ask may sound really stupid so brace yourself Is there a way to have a Deathmatch game with monsters in it? You know, just random monsters walking around while you try to kill each other? (I'm not trying to describe Coop mode) The reason why I ask is I have never seen a Death match map with monsters in it.
boris	Posted July 11th, 2004
	Yes, it's possible. Aren't monsters enabled in DM by default anyway?
Mogul	Posted July 11th, 2004
	I think they are, actually. But to the original poster - they're technically not random. They'll be in the same place as they are in the single player game.
deathbringer	Posted July 11th, 2004
	I made a DM level of my school once, that had cybers and spider masterminds in key locations just to get the 'corpse saturation' up, the spiderdemon teleported onto the playing field (from the main hall) the moment it saw you, i sent it to some bloke for doomlegacy.co.uk, which is probably down or doesnt carry the wad anymore, he said it managed to scare him twice because of that
Jayextee	Posted July 12th, 2004
	Yeah. Make hidden-behind-the-wall-but-they-can-see-you (A la Plutonia) Archviles that can 'see' camping spots. Just an idea, but I think if used correctly, monsters could make a DM level play better, especially with -respawn. Just my two penneth.
Infinite Ammunition	Posted July 12th, 2004
	Mega2 has monster DM maps 250th post yay

I've made this point in my Doom Philosophy page before but never imagined I'd find evidence of prior art/opinion which matches up with my thoughts on the subject.

Another person elsewhere proves the point that such a mode of play existed at least as far back as 2000 even if this particular user didn't like it:

AltDeath

"I still don't like altdeath. It's for playing DM in the IWAD with monsters on IMO. But I can understand using it for the champion factor. If you have 16 players on a server, the three or four best ones will use altdeath to dominate and stand well apart from the crowd. On a Old DM server, the best players would probably win, but by far fewer frags."

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Btw, that author prefers Doom (old) to Quake (new at that time).

I like deathmatch. I don't really care for capture the flag. I like deathmatch with monsters. What I don't understand is how players can join a server that says in the title "deathmatch WITH monsters" and be shocked and surprised at the existance of monsters in the map when they enter the game. The attitude I get from some players over this is disdain.

I'm not a great player of video games. What I mean when I say that is that I can be good, but just not great. When it comes to Doom, a video game, I can be good but I'm just not great at Doom. And that's okay! I play keyboard only as I just could never adjust to using a mouse at the same time as the keyboard to play a game. That means I'm automatically at a disadvantage to the "pro" FPS players out there. So I die, so what? I press the space bar and I'm alive again. The map ends and I'm last or second last in frags on the scoreboard. Again, so what? I still had fun. It almost seems like some players take their game playing too seriously or something, like they're mortally wounded in real life if they can't control everything.

Seriously, it's a mindset issue about control. The only score that matters in deathmatch is frags. By extension, the only score that matters in deathmatch with monsters is frags. But what if your opponent doesn't give a shit about the score? Apparently, I'm not playing by their control rules. I'm supposed to be as concerned about frags/score as my opponents. And if I choose to ignore the warrior who's entered the mesa and blast away at the monsters I created instead, it's infuriating to those players. They still "win" the game when the scoreboard is shown at the end of the map. But it's not good enough. I'm supposed to feel humiliated by their prowess and skill at FPS games. So, they get pissed and don't even wait until the frag limit or time limit is hit and instead rage quit. I hope it felt good.

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