Lost soul limit outside of demos: yay or nay?

Curious to hear some thoughts about this. I have it enabled but then it sometimes feels like I'm cheating with Boom mapsets.

Usually I leave it off because it looks funny to have thousands of lost souls from infighting.

Hordes over 21 usually tear themselves apart fairly quickly anyways so it's not too big of a deal for me.

It's a personal preference imo I'd say turn it on for IWADS and off for anything after.

Always off. One of the original engine limitations that I was super glad to get rid of.

Never messing with it myself, to play the wads the way they were intended.

But I occasionally enable it if a giant group of Lost Souls can form and I just want them to taste their own medicine.

1 minute ago, seed said:

Never messing with it myself, to play the wads the way they were intended.

How can you know what's intended outside of vanilla wads?

1 minute ago, maxmanium said:

How can you know what's intended outside of vanilla wads?

Because why would it be restricted in wads and mods that do not depend on vanilla limitations?

Vanilla: needs the limit.

Boom/MBF: nope.

ZDoom and derivatives: also nope.

unrelated but seeing doom 2 maps like the pit were pain elementals dont spawn lost souls because limit is already reached and refueling base were pain elementals spawn very few lost souls it feels like at least during development the limit didnt exist or at least it was way bigger

though most of the time i leave it on

8 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Because why would it be restricted in wads and mods that do not depend on vanilla limitations?

 

Vanilla: needs the limit.

Boom/MBF: nope.

ZDoom and derivatives: also nope.

I guess I don't see it so much as a limitation as a balancing mechanism. I understand why they actually had to put it there originally tho, so I guess you make a good point.

Depends on the complevel the wad was made for:

For vanilla/simple limit-removing wads: limit is on

Everything else: limit off

23 minutes ago, omalefico32x said:

unrelated but seeing doom 2 maps like the pit were pain elementals dont spawn lost souls because limit is already reached and refueling base were pain elementals spawn very few lost souls it feels like at least during development the limit didnt exist or at least it was way bigger

though most of the time i leave it on

Or it was overlooked during the testing phase, and because it is a fiddly thing to mess with in the engine, which affects the balancing of other maps, it could cause more issues than solve, so they left it as it was.

Hardware was very limited back then, and spawning too many enemies in maps could easily cause performance issues due to more things needing to be processed too.

I always play with the Lost Soul Limit on. Usually because I'm playing in Chocolate Doom a lot, but when I'm using LZ Doom I see no reason to keep it on.

(Unless the Map is a Slaughter Map like a toned down Version of Nuts. Cause My PC is Garbo in those situations)

I always thought it would be cool to have a less global lost soul limit, for each pain elemental. Maybe something like ten lost souls for each, and then when it tries to spawn another, the earliest spawned lost soul dies. So it's always capable of attacking, but it never gets too crowded.

It's fine, I believe it was implemented so the computers wouldn't explote.

You can turn it off if you want, I usually keep it on.

So, neither yay or nay, it's your choice

56 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

I always thought it would be cool to have a less global lost soul limit, for each pain elemental. Maybe something like ten lost souls for each, and then when it tries to spawn another, the earliest spawned lost soul dies. So it's always capable of attacking, but it never gets too crowded.

That would have been good. Perhaps it would have made the game a little more balanced

No fixed answer to this as I play with the correct complevel.

For newer maps, it should be designed under the assumption of complevel, so if there's a vanilla map with 21+ originally placed Lost Souls and the map uses Pain Elementals as the big chunk of the enemy, then it's the fault of the map. An old example for this is Doom 2 Map09, but I guess that's back in the dark ages, so we should cut some slack for Sandy.

If a Boom level uses some *annoying* placements of Pain Elementals and they can easily produce 21+ Lost Souls and screw up your day. Then this is something the player needs to overcome instead of just limit Lost Souls to 21. An example for this is Sunder Map05 where you can push the Pain Elemental into the wide open area and screw yourself.

I always just load wads with the complevel they were designed for regardless of if I'm recording or not, so I don't control over whether it's on or off. Turning it on in some maps would be a big downgrade, especially in slaughtermaps where mass pain elementals are part of the fun. Can you imagine the final fight in Sunlust map30 without that insanely giant cloud of meatballs and lost souls? It would be a waste of a good fight.

Limited souls is always disabled for me cuz it's the intended way I think it's meant to play Doom

I have the limit enabled because it's vanilla™. And I also hate lost souls/pain elementals.

Absolutely I keep it on!

Spawned lost souls are one of the few demons that I dislike as they are just an annoyance and ammo drain in large numbers.