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Teo Slayer

Was the Pain Elemental a good idea?

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1 minute ago, Gez said:

I like them when lost soul limit is on and there are 21 lost souls sleeping peacefully in some other room far away.

I think the map called The Pit in Doom2 has that problem, the first Pain Elementals you fight are useless because they can't shoot Lost Souls because of the limit

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1 minute ago, 1Destro3456 said:

I think the map called The Pit in Doom2 has that problem, the first Pain Elementals you fight are useless because they can't shoot Lost Souls because of the limit

Ah, that explains why that one Pain Elemental couldn't summon any Lost Souls on my playthrough

 

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Yeah, you can make very interesting combats with these, its an enemy that rushes you to kill them as soon as possible before they make a mess with lost souls.

I like to use them to make fights a little more difficult and in a hurry

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Pain Elementals can be among the most dangerous demonswhen the player doesn't have any big guns. And even if they do, they're still great priority enemies. I love 'em, even if they're pure evil.

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My answer to the question is yes and no. 

You gotta love those guys and at the same time you say fuck those guys.

 

Lost souls are just a complement to the bigger plan.

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Pain Elementals are one of the most interesting Doom 2 enemies and also one of my top 3 favorites. If any changes at all, i'd make them and lost souls more similar to those in Doom 64 rather than nerf either or god forbid overhaul them.

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They're good enemies but Pain Elemental spam can be absolutely annoying. I personally don't think that's ever a good idea to include in your maps. If it were up to me I'd probably design them to have a close-range attack similar to Revenants and Imps just so it's not as easy to "cheese" them by running against them. Having said that, it is an awfully useful strategy.

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What a name. And what a guy. Killing him is almost as bad as letting him live.

 

Although the Doom 64 Pain Elemental is my preferred elemental because this version really is a pain in the ass. Spawns two hyper active lost souls, and if you kill the Pain Elemental when it's up in your grill you get exploded. 

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2 minutes ago, Arrowhead said:

It was definitely a good idea, and I would definitely keep one as a pet.

@DCG Retrowave made something for you:

 

 

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i generally try to save some bullets so i can stunlock their mouths shut and needle them to death at a distance if need be. doesn't always work when there's other monsters distracting you tho, chaingun's low damage output means this takes some time. the fact that they're annoying proves that they're good enemies. if an enemy doesn't get your attention in some way, it's not a good enemy. frustration is still more interesting than being bored by a monster

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8 minutes ago, Arrowhead said:

It was definitely a good idea, and I would definitely keep one as a pet.

 

I heard they have a nasty habit to lostsoul on the carpet, though.

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2 hours ago, Gez said:

I like them when lost soul limit is on and there are 21 lost souls sleeping peacefully in some other room far away.

The fact that it's 21 and not 20 bothers me deeply to this day, for some odd reason. I remember some ports used to specifically describe this flag as "limit pain elementals to 20 lost souls", that's how common the misconception was..

 

And if that's not enough, here's another barely related thought - Lost Souls have the perfect amount of HP as-is. The SSG takes them out in a single blast. Wads that reduce their health turn an already stupid (as in unintelligent) and easy-to-kill enemy into an even more helpless little thing.. I almost feel bad for them!

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14 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

And if that's not enough, here's another barely related thought - Lost Souls have the perfect amount of HP as-is. The SSG takes them out in a single blast. Wads that reduce their health turn an already stupid (as in unintelligent) and easy-to-kill enemy into an even more helpless little thing.. I almost feel bad for them!

I think they're at their best with lower HP but much higher aggression. Makes them terrifying without being stupid. Doom 64 got it right. Seeing a pain elemental in that game is a serious oh fuck moment and I love it.

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19 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

The fact that it's 21 and not 20 bothers me deeply to this day, for some odd reason. I remember some ports used to specifically describe this flag as "limit pain elementals to 20 lost souls", that's how common the misconception was..

 

And if that's not enough, here's another barely related thought - Lost Souls have the perfect amount of HP as-is. The SSG takes them out in a single blast. Wads that reduce their health turn an already stupid (as in unintelligent) and easy-to-kill enemy into an even more helpless little thing.. I almost feel bad for them!

Why is the limit for Lost Souls at 21 anyways? Such an arbitrary number. Why not 37 or something lol. 

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The Pain Elemental is a very good "kill this bastard now" kind of enemy. He's not too difficult to deal with on his own or with a lot of weapons, but can be very good at keeping pressure on you as part of a larger fight. Much like the Arch-Vile's annoying line-of-sight attack and dickish ability to resurrect enemies, if the Pain Elemental didn't have his most irritating trait of constantly spawning Lost Souls, he'd just be a crappier Cacodemon.

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I’ve noticed many people like the lost soul limit. I personally do not. I think the pain elemental is a far better enemy without the limit. This may have something to do with my like of slaughtermaps and using large amounts of enemies in fights.

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11 minutes ago, Jacek Bourne said:

I’ve noticed many people like the lost soul limit. I personally do not. I think the pain elemental is a far better enemy without the limit. This may have something to do with my like of slaughtermaps and using large amounts of enemies in fights.

 

I just think it's appropriate for such an enemy to have truly Hellish consequences for ignoring it.

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23 minutes ago, PSXDoomer said:

Why is the limit for Lost Souls at 21 anyways? Such an arbitrary number. Why not 37 or something lol. 

someone at id software must've liked Blackjack

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14 minutes ago, Jacek Bourne said:

I’ve noticed many people like the lost soul limit. I personally do not. I think the pain elemental is a far better enemy without the limit. This may have something to do with my like of slaughtermaps and using large amounts of enemies in fights.

I agree, it allows for more enemy placement, I once had Pain Elementals unable to spit out any because of the amount of monsters in a level, so they just look weird opening and closing their mouths repeatedly.

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3 hours ago, 1Destro3456 said:

I think the map called The Pit in Doom2 has that problem, the first Pain Elementals you fight are useless because they can't shoot Lost Souls because of the limit

Actually, this must be what I'm referring to lol!

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1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

And if that's not enough, here's another barely related thought - Lost Souls have the perfect amount of HP as-is. The SSG takes them out in a single blast. Wads that reduce their health turn an already stupid (as in unintelligent) and easy-to-kill enemy into an even more helpless little thing.. I almost feel bad for them!

I don't like when wads lower their hp as well. They can't infight anything anymore to cause chaos and the player sneezes to remove them from the field. They already have a very strong attack compared to other low tier monsters ( blocking the player at a horrible time is very underrated). One of the very few enemies that also spice up large open areas because you can't just circle strafe in peace anymore.

 

Not all monsters need to be what kills the player to add to the game. It is a lot more interesting when monsters force you to ignore the meta tier lists or die. ( Loved watching Decino die a million time because of hell knights in several of his -fast gameplays, waiting the update for A tier hell knights and cacos in those mapsets :P ).

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Doom 1 Lost Souls should have had 70 hp, so you could knock em out with a shotgun blast.

Doom 2 Lost Souls should have had 30, so you can snipe them with a chaingun. 

 

They both should have been faster and dealt more damage (A rule which I think applies to pretty much everything, except the Arachnotron, Cyberdemon, Archvile, and Spider Mastermind)

The Pain Elemental is not the problem, it's the lack of rebalancing the monster behaviour for the new functions. A Pain Elemental spawning glass cannon lost souls that can take a chunk off you, but can be cleared with a chaingun forces you to think. A Pain Elemental that drops harmless lost souls in huge groups to flood a room is a bullet sponge.

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I remember as a kid back in the 90's, I was terrified of pain elementals.  I hated them!  If I had a BFG with at least 40 cells and I ran into a pain elemental, that big brown ball got a mouth full of big green ball every.. single.. time.

Now, I love pain elementals in doom.  They are such a unique enemy that adds so much to the game.  I'm not a doom mapper but if I was, I would not change a thing about them.

Don't you all remember your first time seeing that big brown cloud slowly coming your way at the end of God Machine?  And then you noticed that cloud started spitting out lost souls by the hundreds!  I remember IMMEDIATELY being awed by the beauty and absolutely terrified with panic at the same time.  No other enemy elicits that response like a swarm of pain elemental.  (Well, maybe the arch vile.  But it's in a different kind of way.)

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8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

The fact that it's 21 and not 20 bothers me deeply to this day, for some odd reason. I remember some ports used to specifically describe this flag as "limit pain elementals to 20 lost souls", that's how common the misconception was..

 

And if that's not enough, here's another barely related thought - Lost Souls have the perfect amount of HP as-is. The SSG takes them out in a single blast. Wads that reduce their health turn an already stupid (as in unintelligent) and easy-to-kill enemy into an even more helpless little thing.. I almost feel bad for them!

 

I disagree. Probably because when I look at the lost soul I don't see a demon, I see a living projectile. I see a monster meant to act as a kind of distraction. It's supposed to fly all around the player chaotically to make it harder to move around and shoot. Basically forcing the player to make mistakes and get killed and makes it so its impossible to stand around. Kind of like pinkies with less HP and less tendency to block you but will get you killed if you stand behind cover for too long.

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I like pain elementals and think the lost soul limit should be 21 per pain elemental instead of 21 per level.

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8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

The fact that it's 21 and not 20 bothers me deeply to this day, for some odd reason. I remember some ports used to specifically describe this flag as "limit pain elementals to 20 lost souls", that's how common the misconception was..

That's because the number used is indeed 20, but the operator used is "greater than", not "greater than or equal to". So the pain elemental is only blocked from spawning another lost soul if the amount of lost souls around is greater than 20, which puts the effective limit at 21.

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