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MegaSphere

Your least favourite enemy?

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As much as I hate Revenants at least they serve a purpose which can't be said for Pain Elementals who just litter the map with Lost Souls which are also completly fucking useless and should be removed from the game most wads just throw few of them in between hordes of other monsters as if hell had to abide some diversity quota if you're a mapper just use Cacodemons instead.

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Pain Elementals are actually really fun to fight, at least for me. Hell, I don't think there's a single monster in the Doom bestiary I dislike, with the exception of the...

Baron. We don't need meatier Hell Knights 99% of the time! Barons are generally just boring to fight and exist purely to soak up ammo.

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I second pain elementals. If they didn't exist I'd say lost souls. The only thing worse than a lost soul is the thing that makes them. The pain elemental is the one monster I vow never to use under any circumstances in a WAD.

Edit: Okay... Maybe as a monster floating in the background that gets killed by a script before the player finishes the level. That's about it though.

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Hmm this is hard. I guess if I had to pick, I would choose the cacodemon. Not because it is a bad enemy, just because it flies around so lazily and only has a slow moving projectile attack. Ofc there's ways to utilize them to their strengths, but in the IWADs for example, they're just a floating imp with a lot of extra health.

Regarding the baron, giving him a slightly different attack pattern does wonders. Making him more aggressive gives him a little bit of a different niche for gameplay.

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Pain elementals and lost souls. Who thought it was a good idea to make a floating head that rams itself to you? And who thought it was good idea to make a demon that SHOOTS out the little bastards?

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I don't think there's any criticism of a baddie that isn't countered by greater attention or creativity on the part of the player or the mapper.

I only have least favorite baddie uses, such as:

- Pop-up chaingunners, revenants and archviles.
- Barons (and to a lesser extent pinkies) when the player has plentiful time and space to avoid them.
- Spider masterminds when they can be killed easily, such as when the bfg is available.
- Pain elementals when they can be shut down immediately. (All too often in my opinion).

etc. Each baddie is great and brings something unique to the table when it's used well.

And if as a player I find a baddie irritating, it's probably due to a lack of creativity on my part. For instance, I tend to get irritated by revenant turrets.

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probably the Hell Knight. I like the psychological advantage the Baron has, IE, the "this guy has more HP than the threat he represents when alone, so I'll leave him be" trap players set for themselves. Hell Knights aren't boring enough and are thus my least favourite enemy. lol

(Shotgunner and Pain Elemental are the best enemies)

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Actually, the zombie man sucks the most. Usually in big groups or tucked away somewhere to harass you or draw you into a more dangerous position. You're lulled into a false sense of security because of their inaccuracy (which isn't that often) and then they peg you for 10-15 health, which is infuriating for an enemy that takes 2-3 bullets.

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I love all of Hell's dark children for the special brimstone ashflakes that they are. Some are difficult to use (spider mastermind) or often misused (the woefully maligned Baron), and one or two could mayhap use a minor attribute tweak (lost soul has too much HP), but all have their unique uses and a contribution to make to the game.

So I suppose my answer is something of a copout in that I'm going to pick on the poor SS Nazi, an underpowered and aesthetically asynchronous means to a joke that stopped being funny all of 1.2 seconds after the first time I heard it. They still have a unique behavior, which is good, but it's tough to impossible to use them in a 'regular' map without skewing the mood, and so they don't have the same ability to contribute that any of the other enemies do. That being said, reskin them to look like a variant of the other Doom zombies, and all's well....

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Pain Elemental. The catch here is that he serves a purpose (and a damn good one too!): he's a high-priority floating target. The problem is that he's not a high-priority danger like Archviles and Chaingunners are, but that he can potentially drain you of all your ammo if kept unchecked. He has a good role but it doesn't stop him from being completely obnoxious and stupid, especially when he's used in terrible ways (whereas you can just run past poorly placed barons & cybers). Even when used effectively, I still don't like fighting PEs as much as the other monsters in Doom's repertoire.

But I agree with Macblain that terrible monster placement (distant chaingunners, specters in the pitch black, barons instead of HKs) are usually much greater offenders than the monsters themselves.

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Zombiemen. They're too weak to be challenging, despite their hitscan attack which ends up just being an annoyance instead of a threat; they don't drop anything worthwhile contrarily to shotgunners and chaingunners; they are just terribly boring.

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Demon of the Well said:

I love all of Hell's dark children for the special brimstone ashflakes that they are. Some are difficult to use (spider mastermind) or often misused (the woefully maligned Baron), and one or two could mayhap use a minor attribute tweak (lost soul has too much HP), but all have their unique uses and a contribution to make to the game.

So I suppose my answer is something of a copout in that I'm going to pick on the poor SS Nazi, an underpowered and aesthetically asynchronous means to a joke that stopped being funny all of 1.2 seconds after the first time I heard it. They still have a unique behavior, which is good, but it's tough to impossible to use them in a 'regular' map without skewing the mood, and so they don't have the same ability to contribute that any of the other enemies do. That being said, reskin them to look like a variant of the other Doom zombies, and all's well....


My thoughts exactly.

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Gez said:

Zombiemen. They're too weak to be challenging, despite their hitscan attack which ends up just being an annoyance instead of a threat; they don't drop anything worthwhile contrarily to shotgunners and chaingunners; they are just terribly boring.


when they're in large groups they can be pretty hard.

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roadworx said:

when they're in large groups they can be pretty hard.

No, they are never dangerous IMO. They fire too rarely and can be killed with a couple of pistol shots even! Sometimes they keep missing from point black range! They are jus cannon fodder.

In large numbers they are also not dangerous because of infighting and because the player's guns can mow through them easily.

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IMO, Zombiemen can have a valuable role when you combine them with other monsters: They are great for slightly increasing general havoc and risk of getting randomly damaged (or bumping into one when you least want it) with each one you ignore or willingly leave alive, particularly in highly interconnected maps or ones with excellent strategic monster placement. And then there's the fun factor of easily killing something just for the fun - this trope has its good uses too.

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Yep, and they are funny.

As a player, my least favorite traditional monster is the lost soul. It's not even that they have a bit too much HP, since I don't play a lot of SG-centric maps these days anyway. Their attack pattern irritates me.

As a mapper, I can't say I hate any of the monsters at all, but I've only used one spiderdemon, ever, and I can't recall using a spectre at all. But that speaks more to the setups I've decided to use in my maps and to the spiderdemon's relative inflexibility, not to any hate for them.

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Lol yakfak.

I think my vote would have to go towards the SM as my least favorite simply because the space he takes up and the fact that do we really need a huge, massively healthed hitscanner? I think he'd be better with plasma like the arachs, but then again thatd take away one of the few good uses for the also almost-worthless blur sphere...

Then again, I love Doom's roster and every monster has its place and strategeric advantage.

The baron is perfect as a self-imposed trap as yakfak said, or a meat-shield, causing the player to have to choose his target, or as a slightly longer distraction so something else can happen while the player is preoccupied. In very tight spaces barons can become real threats.

PE's are another great enemy, albeit one I used to hate when I was younger. Nowadays I love em and use them all the time because they are fantastic for applying timed-pressure to the player without being too dangerous and kill-oriented. Being highly specialized, as it seems that most of the "most hated" monsters are, they have to be used in specific ways or they're just gonna make players say, "well, that was stupid." Not that it's a great example or anything, but put some of these guys behind a wall of barons (and watch your players die of tedium). Nah, but seriously, that fight is gonna require a lot of ammo and more specifically punching a hole through the barons to quickly get back to the PE's to kill them before you have a hundred skulls in your hands (which will promptly infight and reduce number to 50, ;p )

All I gotta say about the lost soul is if it's really such a stupid enemy, skip it; you don't need it for 100% kills anyway. As long as you don't mind it tailing you and attempting murder or strange sounds in previously cleared sectors. Most players kill it because it is somewhat deadly and I actually like the health it has for the simple fact that in Doom there's a thing called vertical autoaim so if they died from 4 or 5 bullets like an imp theyd be even more worthless than they are now. I remember when I was a little kid in the 90s playing Vanilla and learning to wait for them to charge so one shotgun blast would have a better shot at killing them, instead of wasting two. They are also good at causing general chaos. Also, they stand up to imps well.

Zombiemen are much the same as lost souls in the general chaos deparment for the same reasons scifista mentioned. Personally, I like them for the fact that if left unchecked, not only does the player take random damage and feel stupid in the process for not just killing them quickly (at least I do, lol), but their inaccuracy causes chaos among the monsters which can sometimes make things easier and if used in just the right way, can make things harder as the good infighters are pulled away from the fight.


My biggest problem with the monsters is not a fault of the monsters, but from faulty/lazy placement by a mapper.

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This thread is providing me with tons of info and inspiration towards mapping. Keep it up! :D

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Same as Technician. I guess I'd say Commander Keen just because he doesn't serve much purpose usually, but even then, why remove such a cool little easter egg.

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Who said that our (everybody's) least favorite enemies should be removed from the game? :)

EDIT: Now I saw the OP said it, but he was speaking just for himself about his least favorite enemy.

EDIT2: I don't actually consider Commander Keens and Romero Heads and Monster Spawners to be "enemies" anyway, and I tend to exclude Nazis for obviously being just easter-egg non-Doom-like enemies, but if I was to disregard the fact and add them to my monster favorite arrangement in the other thread which I previously linked, I would place them somewhere between Chaingunners and Zombiemen.

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rdwpa said:

The second fight in this 1-hr (cl -9) speedmap of mine is everything I love about Doom's blursphere: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1542845, which is quickly becoming my favorite powerup.

"Really easy" is an exaggeration -- the third fight, and therefore the map, was a lot easier than I planned it.


Cool dude! I'll check it out tonight after work. As for what you said in the other post

Spoiler

working on making this conveyor example wad not look like total assbaggery-inducing shit, but I can't make rooms anymore without feeling like they look terrible, so it's taking a lot longer than it prolly should.

As for the blur sphere; when I was young, playing vanilla, I used to love the thing. Berserk has and always will be my favorite power-up, but that used to be a close second. Though since I've gotten older I guess maybe my tactics/playing habits have changed and now I only grab it for the 100%, reluctantly, or willingly if there are hitscanners nearby. I love it in maps where someone puts a SM somewhere to be dealt with later, then provides a blur sphere at an inopportune time so the attentive player can use it for the SM. Aside from hitscanning moments, though, that blur sphere is like an airbag. Kills more than it saves ;p

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