Which monster do you neglect when mapping?

1 minute ago, NuMetalManiak said:

I neglect all Doom II Monsters in favor of Doom I monsters. The pain elemental is the exception, the only one I'll ever liberally use.

Doom 2 monster roster>Doom 1 monster roster. Way more variety imo, especially HK as an alternative to Barons.

Demon. Because I can just put spectre instead (good at liquids and dark places).

And maybe arachnotron because it's too clumsy. Also my latest map which I worked on, I put 2 arachnotrons on little higher and far away building, and they good at firing at wide open area.

P.S. Also my next mapset will include plasmagun zombies (WolfSS replacement) and so the arachnotrons is rare species.

Keens , I don't use it a lot , because its sprite is really out of place compared to a lot of themes.

Spider-Masterminds because you need a lot of space to place it. However I managed to put 2 SM in my latest map.

Nazis because they don't fit in almost every theme so I prefer using them in joke maps.

I make use of all the monsters, because why not.

Revenants.  A lot of my maps are tight and cramped, and having a monster that can use homing projectiles is a little unfair in that circumstance.  I might consider using them more if I add some more wide open areas.

16 hours ago, Grain of Salt said:

Excluding obvious joke answers like "wolf ss", "commander keen" and "romero head". If you answer with something like this you will activate my trap card and be exiled from doomworld forever.

9 hours ago, Glaice said:

Keens

Boss Brains

SS Nazis

Send us a postcard.

Well i published only one single doom map, it had no Arachnotrons though

Every monster has its place, they just need to be used in interesting ways to make them threatening.

I guess in general I don't use Spider Masterminds that often, they are far too easy to be killed by a single weak monster if they get inside their hitbox. For Doom 2 I tend to use hellknights over barons so they tend to get neglected there but in UDoom maps I do use barons quite a lot either in a mix of other monsters or in situations where space is restricted. 

Does anybody use stealth monsters any more? Did anybody use stealth monsters anyway? Only WAD I remember using them is DBZone.

9 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

Does anybody use stealth monsters any more? Did anybody use stealth monsters anyway? Only WAD I remember using them is DBZone.

You mean like the ZDoom feature? There's Plasmaplant. I think you may have more luck in finding authors who do use them in the ZDoom forums than here.

18 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

Does anybody use stealth monsters any more? Did anybody use stealth monsters anyway? Only WAD I remember using them is DBZone.

There's KZDoom1, Plasmaplant (mentioned above) and this.

The Spider Mastermind.

I was gonna go with former humans since they are kinda boring and only really serve as filler most of the time, but on second thought I'm pretty sure I've never put even a single lost soul in anything I've made.

1 hour ago, Altazimuth said:

Does anybody use stealth monsters any more? Did anybody use stealth monsters anyway? Only WAD I remember using them is DBZone.

Generally i find stealth monsters to be unfun from a player perspective, so personally i never ever think about using them.

Returning to topic: excluding bosses i suppose barons and aracnotrons are the most underused.

In answering this question, I'm going to ignore Keens, Romero heads, Spider Masterminds, Cyberdemons, and the Icon of Sin. Keens and Romero heads are more of a gimmick than a monster (although they can allow you to do some neat things, particularly in vanilla), and I personally am not a fan of putting dozens of Cybers and SMM's in a map. Others can do it, I just don't like doing that. Besides, as NIH said, the SMM is VERY BIG and that size makes it difficult to use her effectively.

The SS are legitimate enemies, between a sergeant and chaingunner in terms of difficulty, but I don't like the idea of populating a level with a bunch of nazis. Perhaps it would make sense for a Hell level, but, eh, I just don't really use them.

Setting the SS aside, I would have to say I don't really use the arachnotron. I like them for what they do, but they're pretty big and require a fair amount of room to be effective. You could just put them on turrets, but those would end up taking up a fair amount of space. Personally, I would put 2 turreted chaingunners in place of 1 turreted arachnotron.

The mancubus is big, but still smaller than the arachnotron and they fire a double volley. So, I find I use more mancubi than you would think given their size.

I use archviles less often, but they can be incredibly useful. I suppose I don't use them as often because they have such potential to unbalance an encounter due to their going around resurrecting everything if you don't deal with them.

I don't use zombiemen that often, because they're usually just fodder. They're someone difficult to make very threatening, but they have their uses. I usually use them toward the beginning of maps, but I still use them.

I tend to use hell knights more often than barons, but I still use both, particularly in narrow confines. I like sergeants and chaingunners, particularly for ambushes. I like to use demons and revenants, particularly in traps such as monster closets or teleport traps, but also in the open.

So, I would say the monsters that I tend to neglect most are arachnotrons followed by archviles.

For boss monsters, ignoring the Icon of Sin, I've always had trouble with the Spider Mastermind. It needs so much space, infights so easily, and takes really good level design to not be made inept by a skillful player. I honestly can't remember if I've ever used one in a released level.

For standard monsters, I despise Pain Elementals and Lost Souls, yet I know I've made use of them anyway. Arachnotrons are probably the one enemy that I enjoy fighting in others' levels, but never think to use in mine. Even when I go out of my way to build a level around them, they seem to fall to the sidelines.

I rarely use the spider mastermind since it's too huge.

The non-boss monsters I don't see myself using much are the Baron of Hell and Lost Soul.

Baron of Hell makes for a good in-fight monster and moving wall. I know the Baron is the original but I wish he was a bit different than the Hell Knight. Maybe if he threw two projectiles and his HP was lowered down to 900, I'd probably use him a bit more. The new Baron of Hell from the megawad Bloodstain is cool because he throws two projectiles, utilizing both of his arms.

The Lost Soul might be placed more in my maps if their HP was lowered to 70 or 60.

In Doom, probably the hitscanners; simply because I can't ever recall making a tech base map; it's always brick or hell for me it seems.

22 hours ago, Pegleg said:

The SS are legitimate enemies, between a sergeant and chaingunner in terms of difficulty, but I don't like the idea of populating a level with a bunch of nazis. Perhaps it would make sense for a Hell level, but, eh, I just don't really use them.

 

I've done a bit of experimenting with them, and in practice they are a bit less dangerous than shotgunners. They have higher HP and a rapid-fire attack (a repeated zombieman attack), but their low damage output per second generally makes it easy to avoid taking much damage -- usually you take a shot or two at worst (less than expected given how inaccurate the zombieman attack can be), and then either get to cover or kill them. The shotgunner, with its single burst, can really hit hard if it gets even a single shot off, especially up close. And the 67% greater HP makes a relatively small difference, as a SG blast kills them, and a CG stuns them, and SSG+ all obliterate both a shotgunner and Nazi.

I neglect lost souls because I want my levels to have the same amount of enemies across all source ports, whether they are ZDoom-style or vanilla-style.

I should consider using a pack of zombiemen once in a while, they are fun in groups when 'zerked or having a lot of ammo for the high-slot weapons. If I don't plan on having encounters like this in a map, I tend to use a balanced mix of shotgunners and imps instead. Other than green zombie, the Arachnotron

is my least used enemy because of A) size, and 2) the noise (especially in packs)

30 minutes ago, Uncle 80 said:

I should consider using a pack of zombiemen once in a while, they are fun in groups when 'zerked or having a lot of ammo for the high-slot weapons.

A big group of zombiemen in front of the player is, more or less, only good for berzerk gibbing or mowing them down for fun. If you want them to be more dangerous to the player, you need to have them more spread out. Unless you only have a pistol, chainsaw, or a non-berzerk fist. Even then, I think that just putting them all in front of you still makes them less dangerous.

Regardless, zombiemen do have their place.

There was a map on idgames, called noobs.wad, if memory serves, that had only zombiemen in it, and had something like a thousand of them in it. As I remember, it was rather challenging.

I can't seem to pull up idgames (error 504), or I'd supply a link here, assuming I could find it.

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/m-o/noobs

On 6/13/2018 at 1:20 AM, Capellan said:

 

Still doesn't have enough cacos :-P

 

Then you'll want to try Cacophony. Cacos, the whole cacos, and nothing but the cacos.

Until recently I avoided barons of hell prefering to use two hellknights instead but now I put them behind some thougher monster to make them take some damage. I'll generally restrict archvilve encounters and make them into some sort of miniboss thing.

On 6/13/2018 at 11:20 AM, Altazimuth said:

Does anybody use stealth monsters any more? Did anybody use stealth monsters anyway? Only WAD I remember using them is DBZone.

daedalus

Everyone loves to bombard you with chaingunners but in early levels they should not exist. I feel final doom made this error and I didn't enjoy level 1 of plutonia having so many because it didn't make for a very inviting level 1. Maybe that was the point. I try to avoid them in later levels also due to the fact they're such a nuisance.

3 hours ago, Pegleg said:

A big group of zombiemen in front of the player is, more or less, only good for berzerk gibbing or mowing them down for fun. If you want them to be more dangerous to the player, you need to have them more spread out. Unless you only have a pistol, chainsaw, or a non-berzerk fist. Even then, I think that just putting them all in front of you still makes them less dangerous.

 

Regardless, zombiemen do have their place.

they're good for making the player fire at them and alert stronger monsters, or just get in the way.

or, the opposite, for comedic value, being splattered by a player armed to his teeth.