but that guy usually had 4 quads per map and you always had shit to kill in his maps. 

yeah, i wonder if the solution to quads is just to put more quads. o_. 

I just played through e4 last week and I was thinking that too. I think one of those maps you can get to the next quad as the last one runs out and chain them all the way to the exit. 

I'd argue that you're adding gameplay to the level, which is intrinsically more valuable than ammo collection. And nothing stops you from filling the secret with ammo as well.

Chaining power ups was great in ep4. It's rare that a mapper uses it nowadays though, think I'll give it a try. The nice thing of them being in the open was they changed the tactical approach to the level greatly depending on when the player grabbed them, but didn't really punish the player if wasted. 

If you think of a secret as something to give you a leg up in the level/game, it's odd. If you think of a secret as hidden content, though, it does make perfect sense. Secrets usually aren't, although that's not to say they can't be. The exception is when they're secret levels. A hidden battle with the quad becomes almost a miniature secret level that way, I guess.

Could you make a secret area, then, with no items in it? A back door that lets you ambush the monsters waiting in an ambush closet? Or nothing more than a nice vista? 

The knave remake of gloom keep has a massive secret area that served no purpose other than to be a cool easter egg 

In my coag map, there's a secret that opens up routes and increases the level's connectivity for easier maneuverablility and less pressure in a time-limit gameplay event later on. I thought it was a good idea, although unfortunately it's way too difficult to find. 

Most of ITS could be considered as such, if you try playing both with and without the amulet.

My favourite secrets are the large complex ones which just give more gameplay or something cool to look at, rather than just a bonus.

Whenever I find myself adding a lazy secret like that I always try to remove it completely or replace it with something that has a greater pact on how the level is played, or just makes the player think "ha, cool!" 

 

and e1m2 as well have good quad placement. In e1m1 either way you find it, you are just in front of the spiral with monsters on the platforms and at the bottoms. In e1m2, it can be wasted if you find the silver door first and then the quad, but if you get the key first and pick up the quad, it gives a nice power trip as you blast through the ogres and the introduction of the fiend (which may serve to make you underestimate the health of the fiends later in the game). So you don't need to go full Sandy, sometimes full Romero works. 

what you could do is make it a double secret, first one lets you find a quad, wich seems to be o typical quad like described above: rendered useless because you already killed everything in th eroom where you found it and next combat is not close enough. 2nd secret opens up a shortcut to the next combat 

was full willits.

Gloom Keep had such expansive and interconnected secrets since it was built to double as a deathmatch map. All those extra between-the-walls spaces that lead to teleporters across the map just become part of the flow of the level. That's one of the reasons it made such a great base for an ITS level. 

I get mixed up on the map authors sometimes, but yeah my favorite sp maps are the ones that also work well for dm, they just have some button and key gates in them. The connectivity just feels right.