I'm bored, so bear with me. I'm making this page for my opinions on some really annoying stuff on Doom Connector. If you don't know what Doom Connector is, this page probably isn't for you. Some of these things pretain mostly to the Doom Legacy port.
    UPDATE: I added a ninth thing that I put in after #5, so it's now the new #6. Yay...
    Anyway, let's get started:

1. Non-courteous players.
    I'm specifically talking about cooperative play for this one. In cooperative play, there should really be a few courtesy-based guidelines to follow:
    First off, don't shoot your opponents if they ask you to stop. It wastes their armor, forcing them to get new armor. Sometimes it's rather funny to play around by shooting each other, but there are limits.
    Don't run way ahead of the person or people you're playing with. It's no fun for the others if they can't help kill the monsters or do stuff in the level. In case you haven't noticed, it's called cooperative for a reason.
    Last, and most importantly, don't exit a level until you ask first. Sometimes people die or get low on health. They need to start the level in decent shape, and if the level suddenly ends while they're gathering things, they're sort of screwed. This is especially true of games with more than four players; players 5 and above end up starting at deatmatch starts, which are frequently placed right in the middle of monster-filled areas. Therefore, players 5 and above are thouroughly screwed. Another example? I can't tell you how many times I've had to race around the very first level, Doom 2 MAP01, to get the plasma gun, only to find that some moron has exited the level before I could get there. Please, people. It's not going to kill you to ask.

2. Moronic hosts.
    You know who you are. I'm talking about people who host rooms with a simple "screw everyone else" attitude. You're gonna play what you want to play, and if anyone has a problem with that, they can go to hell. Well, I've got news for you: online play is a two-way street. Just because you're the host of a room doesn't mean you don't have to listen to the people you're playing with. If you insist on having your way, don't be surprised if you end up playing alone.
    This also goes for game settings. Obviously some things should be left to the host to decide... but others should be set the same way every game. For instance, respawning items, in coop at least... you gotta give everyone a chance at getting the same items. Also, if you're using Legacy you should probably set the respawn time down to a managable number, such as 1, 5, or at the most 10 seconds.
    More importantly, though, is freelook/mouselook and especially autoaim. I have joined games before where the host didn't allow autoaim. I asked why, he said something to the effect of "well we use mouse anyway." Oh really? And I suppose everyone else will be expected to conform to your style of play when they join? I'm a keyboarder... always have been, probably always will be. And it pisses me off when a host won't even turn on autoaim to allow keyboarders to play decently, just because they don't give a crap about the other players. You see the trend here?
    I've also heard stuff like "well, autoaim is cheap..." as if autoaim was something new in Legacy or whatever source port they're using. No, autoaim is classic, because vanilla doom didn't have freelook, much less mouselook; therefore, you had to use autoaim to hit anything that wasn't on your level. And just because some of us play in this oldsk00l fashion, it's no right of yours to say they can't.
    On a related note, hosts should ask the others if they're ready to go before launching. Usually it's n00bs who do this; they set up their game with their own files, which happen to be invalid... then they launch without giving anyone a chance to tell them their problem. The host comes out of the game two minutes later, wondering why no one has joined, and finds the room empty.
    It happens all the time.
 

3. People who don't understand how lag works, but jump to conclusions.
    Holy crap. Some of these people just need to be slapped, hard.
    Consider this situation: someone's hosting a legacy game, starting with only two or three people. Another person joins. Now, you should know that Legacy lags for a moment when anyone joins the game, trying to admit them as quickly as possible. Once they're in the game, the lag should die down quickly. But this particular host sees the lag as the fault of the joiner. "OMG U LAG U LEAVE NOW!!!1!1!" is the first thing this person sees when they join. Disheartening, no?
    Lemme tell you something about myself. I use a 56k, dialup connection. Why? 'Cause my cable company is inefficient and evil, but that's another story. But you know something? I'll bet you about 500 people are ready to go right for my throat right now for using dialup on Doom Connector. I absolutely hate these people. Folks, the connection speed of a user only matters if that user is the HOST! If a person joins a game, they'll cause no lag of their own. Any and all lag that occurs is the fault of the host and only the host.
    So why, at some times, does the game suddenly lag and not stop when a person joins? Well, there are two reasons. One possiblity is that the person is a moron and has joined the game whilst downloading something; this causes lag. But the more likely possibility is the host's limit. If you're going to host a game, be aware of your own server's limit. Pay attention, and you'll find that after a certain amount of people join your game, you will encounter some lag that won't go away. You've hit your limit; now you know how many people you can host without getting lag. In the future, be sure to set up your room with this in mind; if your limit is 3 people (as many servers are, I've noticed), set up your room with a maximum player limit of 3. If everyone could just recognize and plan for their own server limits, it would save us a hell of a lot of confusion over lag.

4. BFG Lamers and BFG Whiners
    There has been a lot of debate over whether to use the BFG9000 in deathmatch games. Why? Because some people, commonly known as "BFG Lamers" or "BFG Whores," only use that weapon. They'll hide out in a corner and snipe people with the BFG, racking up lots of frags. Understandably, many people get pissed off about this, myself included. If you're going to be a coward, you don't deserve to win.
    But here's the other side of the coin: there are also people who make too big a deal out of it. So big a deal, in fact, that they don't want the BFG to be used in deathmatch at all. There have been rooms made with a rule specifically forbidding the use of the BFG. Now that's overkill. The BFG is a powerful weapon, but it has a weakness just like any other. It's on the ground with all the others and it should be used accordingly. If someone's being a coward, hiding and sniping with the BFG only, then kick them. But don't demand a no-BFG match.

5. People who keep closed minds as to what ports to use.
    Heh. This one sounds hypocritical coming from me. People who know me on DC know that I usually use Doom Legacy. But that isn't by choice. I've tried ZDaemon, csDoom, and Skulltag. Those are all ports that hook up to public servers, and they all hate me greatly. At the best of times, I get fire-lag, which makes me rather sucky in a deathmatch. Other times I'm not even that lucky. Except for Skulltag, which is more stable than the others, but I still get the firelag. The point is, I just can't use those ports. As for ZDoom, it's my favorite port offline, but it can't be handled on DC without considerable lag.
    If I'm biased on one thing, it's GL. I don't like GL, because it screws my wad. All my 3D effects, texture-related tricks and such are completely screwed by GL renderers. But you know what's worse? People who only use GL ports. Some people can't stand to play Doom without their fancy GL features. Same thing with public server ports; some people will only use those. Folks, keep an open mind, at least. If a port doesn't work for you, I mean totally screws you over in-game (I know that better than anyone), then don't use it. But don't write off a port just because it's not public server-based, or because it doesn't have any GL mode. That's just stupid.
    People will say of Legacy, "it's the most laggy port out there." This is not true, not true at all. You've got to realize that EVERY port will give you lag of some kind. I've never played a multiplayer game in any port without some kind of lag, and that's not because I'm dialup - remember that only the host's connection affects the amount of lag people get, and even the fastest cable host in the world can't create a totally lag-free game. Remember that if you are the host, you normally won't get any, but anyone who joins will. Why I think people criticize Legacy this way is because ZDoom, ZDaemon and Skulltag have better framerates. Legacy's framerate isn't bad, not by a long shot... compare that to the original doom2.exe's framerate and behold how lucky you are to be using a port in the first place. Even if Legacy's framerate sucked, bad framerate does not equal lag, people! Yes, Legacy has lag spikes sometimes, but what port doesn't? Go play Quake or Halo or some other more modern shooter if you can't stand the framerates. You can't expect luxurious framerates from a ten-year-old game! ZDoom and derivatives are the exception, so don't take that for granted. If you get pissed off just because the framerate is lower in Legacy, do us all a favor and leave.

6. People who can't live without weapon mods
    I'm starting to hate weapon mods by default. Why? Because there are people who just won't play without them. The original Doom weapons are unfit to touch for some reason... it's like it's mandatory to use grossly out-of-place looking weapons. "Oh, we can't play with the original Doom weapons because they aren't cool... we need super 1337 sniper rifles and uzis and combat knives and flamethrowers." Ugh... do you know how many flamethrower mods there are out there? The answer is "way too many," because every n00b who ever sees weapon mods and has some limited knowledge of Wintex is gonna say "OMG it'd be so 1337 to make a flamethrower out of the plasma gun LOLz!", even when there are 50 thousand of them (seems that way) out there already.
    What's worse are those mods with the dehacked patches that turn the projectile weapons into hitscan weapons. I can't stand those things. I mean, I want my plasma damnit! Hitscan weapons suck in multiplayer because you can't figure out what the hell you're shooting at until after you fire it. I can't tell you how many deathmatches I've left, pissed off because I couldn't aim the damn super shotgun in the lag, and then someone (probably the host) comes right up to me as I try futilly to get my ass out of there, and shoots me with perfect accuracy with the same weapon that screwed me over. At least with rockets and plasma you can see where you're shooting, and they have an equal chance of hitting people in lag.
    Another kind of weapon mod that sucks is that kind that drastically changes the look and feel. Those sleek-looking weapons and visible gloved hands look criminally out of place in Doom. I mean, what the hell is it with the leather gloves anyway? Doomguy is a marine, not some stupid hitman that needs to wear nice comfy gloves because he's running from the police or something. And then there are those mods that place the guns on the right side of the screen, or perhaps the left. Gee, that's fun, I LOVE having a whole side of my screen blocked off by some ridiculously detailed and out-of-place weapon while enemies fire at me from that side and I can't even see them, instead of having my weapon down in the center where it BELONGS. Weapons belong on the bottom of your screen because nothing ever happens right in front of your face anyway unless you're an idiot, or Doomguy happens to find his own feet incredibly fascinating.
    The only good use of look-changing weapon mods is for wads are made to use them. They JUST DON'T LOOK RIGHT in the regular levels. And yet people still barge into standard Doom 2 coop rooms, insist on using a stupid look-changing weapon mod and waste everyone's time while he sends the damn thing that nobody but him uses anyway. These people just beg to be kicked.

7. People who only play deathmatch.
    A lot of people like to play DM, and that's understandable; a competitive match can be far more fast-paced and uncertain than a cooperative one. But I've seen people who simply won't play anything else; the very thought of playing coop seems to make them ill. I don't mean any specific people (I'd have forgotten their names anyway), but I've been in rooms where one person will simply not shut up about playing DM. They'll argue and argue for it until the rest of the users start begging the mod to kick the poor sap. This is what I'm talking about. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.

8. People who come online with an invalid doom2.wad from kazaa, then wonder why it doesn't work.
    I feel sorry and pissed off all at once over this. Sorry for the poor n00bs who are in this situation, and pissed off at the idiot who started all this...
    Do you ever wonder why we get so many people yelling in the lobby "WILL SOME 1 PLZ SEND ME DOOM2.WAD!?!?1!?1?" I've tried to help out some of these people, but the fact is you can't send a copy of doom2.wad through DC's file transfers... at least without breaking a rule. I personally don't know how to help much, because I never had a bad copy in the first place.
    The point is: at one point I started asking the n00bs I talked to where they got the wad. And you know what? At least 75% of them said Kazaa. Coincidence? I don't think so. Clearly, some moron on Kazaa started circulating this invalid copy, and thus we get all the n00bs who come with it. Whoever did this needs to be slapped, hard.
    Why is it invalid? Well, because it's the german version. It has levels 31 and 32 cut out because they are like an homage to Wolfenstein 3D, which centered around Nazi Germany. Obviously, if you cut out two whole levels' worth of data, the wad becomes invalid.
    To the n00bs: I feel sorry for you guys who didn't get your copy off Kazaa. But for the ones who did: quit being cheap and buy the damn game. You can get it for $10 or less if you look in the right places.
    To the moron on Kazaa: thanks a lot, buddy, for all the clueless n00bs. You've made the Doom community twice as confusing.
    Update: I put up this page a few months ago that explains this problem in better detail. It's basically to help out all the n00bs.

9. n00bs who don't have what it takes to create a clan, and yet still do, and expect the clan to succeed.
    You know what I think about new people? They aren't all bad, no. We were all new once. It's just that a few moronic little kids (or moronic older kids and adults, which is even more sad) have annoyed the more.... *cough* "dedicated" people among us to no end. This is what we commonly refer to as a "n00b."
    So basically what we've got is a new guy, right? The guy should have a clean slate. But odds are sooner or later, somebody's gonna call this guy a "n00b." The guy takes offense, and starts thinking he needs to prove himself, right? To get some respect? And suddenly it dawns on him: join a clan!
    Unfortunately, some of the respectable clans on Doom Connector won't let him in. Why? Well, because he's a n00b. He has nothing to show, and therefore he isn't fit for whatever clan it is he's trying to join. At least, that's how it is according to that clan's leaders. So guess what? The new guy's even more of a joke now.
    Then he gets another idea: why not make a clan for himself? It can't be that hard, right? Well, it's true. Making a clan is not that hard. Getting someone to take your clan seriously, that's the hard part. How do they do that? "Uh, maybe if I beat this dude who blew me off earlier in a DM, he'll respect me, right?" WRONG!
    Having co-founded a clan myself, I can tell all the n00bs out there that this is not the case. Clan ORB has gained at least some respect (at least I hope so!), but it's not been through DM matches. No. Just playing someone in a DM doesn't mean you've got their respect. If anything, it only makes you more of a laughing stock. If I had to give advice on starting a clan, it would be this:
1.    Don't start a clan the day you join, because odds are no one's even heard of you. Get to know some people first. Play a few games. Then if and when you start a clan, people may say, "ah, he's starting a clan. that's cool..." instead of just "who?"
2.    Have a decent clan name. I can't tell you how many clans I've seen with "Doom Gods" as their name, or something to that effect. Please. You aren't fooling anyone.
3.    Have a good purpose for your clan. Even if it's just to play a few friendly games, that's cool. But a clan formed with the purpose of "we're gonna beat everyone!" is not gonna cut it. That's not going to happen anyway. Dream on, Captain n00b.
    On a side note, I'd like to give Clan ORB's stance on new people: we are by no means a "n00b clan," but that doesn't mean we hold anything against them. If a new person wants to join ORB, we won't hold being new against them. But on the other hand, I personally belive that a person should still try to familiarize themselves with a few people before joining any clan. No one's rushing you. And just joining a clan doesn't give you any more respect. Respect is earned, not given to you when you join and/or make a clan.

    Well, thanks for reading all these things that piss me off. I hope I've given you a couple things to think about. I may add something to this page in the future, so if you're bored sometime, you're welcome to come on over and check (heheh). Seeyaz.