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Gore

Nobody likes Lost souls.

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I like lost souls from Doom 64. Low enough health to be killed by a single shot from the shotgun, but are also slightly faster and more aggressive.

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I like Lost Souls, they're versatile, they work well as a mid-difficulty monster, they're always threatening on their own. What I would like to see more is ceiling vents from where Lost Souls emerge (similar to how in DOOM3 the Trites arrive from small tunnels). When mapping for Ultimate DOOM and in doubt, place more Lost Souls!

 

Interestingly, with each new Doom game, Lost Souls have become more and more threatening.

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Absolutely no love here for Doom 3's version? At least the cut scene was decent for them. 

 

I actually like D64 lost souls, but only for the balance due to missing demons. 

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1 hour ago, Swordofdanu said:

Absolutely no love here for Doom 3's version?

Well, they make some of the most chilling screams in the game when attacking or dying. Also, they're a terrifying sight when you fail to kill them and they all hover above your head, each one taking quick potshots at you and you being probably dead or severely maimed after that. Definitely not the goofy giant skulls from Ultimate DOOM. They're criminally under-used in the main DOOM3 campaign, but custom map designers love to place them...

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6 hours ago, Lucky_Edie said:

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Abandon map10 is a good map. 

 

i didnt read the whole thread, but i just wanted to contribute and say that i love lost souls. and that also what edie said. 

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If you do not put a lot of lost souls in a rocket launcher heavy map then why do you map

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I like them, you can use them in a very sneaky way, which helps creating engaging incidental setups and they offer more danger than demons, altough they fill different roles.

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19 hours ago, Gore said:

Lost souls are the most fucking annoying thing to ever be created. They piss me off all the time. They take one second to exercise. What do you think of them? Also fuck Pain elemental.

 

are they just really fit or lazy?

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I think a lot of the people who get frustrated by lost souls - or a lot of Doom's mechanics - are used to the modern conception of game design as needing to be inherently fair, so that the player only dies/gets hurt when it's their own fault. The two Bethesda Dooms lean way into this, and that's all good for those that like it, but that's simply not the appeal of Classic Doom, with its hitscanners and leaking radiation suits and random damage values. In Classic Doom, you are GOING to take unfair damage and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it - the thrill comes from overcoming that unfairness and surviving emerging victorious despite it.

 

That's what the lost soul is all about. If you have a rocket launcher and trigger a big swarm of pinkies, it's a challenge so trivial as to be meaningless. If you have a rocket launcher and trigger a big swarm of lost souls, watch out. Unlike the pinkies who are going to shuffle over in a herd, you don't know which lost souls are going to move first, or when they're going to move, and so you have to keep your wits about you and play reactively rather than proactively. They're a genuine threat, and genuine threats are a good and fun thing to have in a videogame.

Also: I hope this doesn't sound rude, but I mean it genuinely - I'm confused as to why so many people are complaining about how lost souls take two hits considering the SSG exists. Heck, now that I really think about it, why use shotgun at all when even in Doom 1 the chaingun can pretty reliably stop their charge? There's lots of weapons in Classic Doom and I feel like between them they do a pretty good job of covering all situations.

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21 hours ago, Gore said:

Lost souls are the most fucking annoying thing to ever be created. They piss me off all the time. They take one second to exercise. What do you think of them? Also fuck Pain elemental.

 

Tbh I hate specters placed in dark areas more. I have bad eyesight so sometimes it's really hard for me to track them. At least I can see lost souls because they have the common decency to light themselves up.

 

Oh god now I'm imagining lost soul specters. Please send help.

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14 hours ago, StoneMason said:

I like lost souls from Doom 64. Low enough health to be killed by a single shot from the shotgun, but are also slightly faster and more aggressive.

 

13 hours ago, Swordofdanu said:

I actually like D64 lost souls, but only for the balance due to missing demons. 


I echo this! I enjoy them in Doom 64. They are agents of chaos which make it interesting for players who have played the maps a lot. They are easy to shoot and don't have that much health to be too annoying. Plus their aggressive nature just enhances their chaos.

A lot of FPS games have small enemies that could be great agents of chaos, but they often make them too hard to shoot (spiders, rats, and spawns). And conversely sometimes they add too much health to the agents of chaos like the Doom 1 lost souls.

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Lost Souls are annoying and not fun to fight. Despite that, they're redeemed by the introduction of the Pain Elemental in Doom 2, which gives them a purpose beyond just being minor yet irritating speedbumps.

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I've said it before in the unpopular opinions thread, and I'll say it again here. 

 

Lost souls are fine. I really don't understand why so many people find them annoying. They're fun to dodge, and I don't see why they should have less health. Maybe some of the hate comes from the fact that most ports don't include them in the monster count, leading people to see them as obstacles rather than actual enemies to fight.

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I'm feeling sorta guilty. The map working on , one of the goals of the map is to shut down pain elementals. There's window shutters to close to limit lost souls getting in then was even considering lost souls ressurecting the dead ( sacrifice self). I'll make lost souls have 1 hp? The pain elementals are invincible till you repair the solar panels... Outside coff coff.

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Excluding the two Barons of Hell in E1M8, the enemies from episode one are the “low tier” monsters of Doom. The enemies introduced in episode 2 that were not in the shareware were never intended to be mere cannon fodder, and the lost souls were no exception. In fact, they initially were akin to a hitscan monster in the press-demo, so I don’t think they were ever initially designed with the idea that they were meant to be fragile weaklings like the former marines and imp, but that they were intended to be a fairly common threat similar to the pink demon, only harder to hit because they can take to the air.
 

I fail to see what there is to not love about that, it makes for an interesting character, one in which clearly inspired several other monsters in other games such as the sentry drone in DN3D or the gargoyles from Heretic, amongst many other examples. Seems to me that there are quite a lot of people that like this monster, especially those deploying them into their own maps. 

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It's certainly one of the enemies I may be cursing most, but I respect them. They're unique in their movement and thus really enrich the game.

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I think they're really cute to be honest. "Dumb. Tough. Flies. On fire. 'Nuff said."

 

I do prefer the health for Lost Souls in Doom 64 though. One shotgun blast should be enough to take one out, they really shouldn't have 100 health. But they're still adorable. And I love sidestepping one and watching it fly off into the distance. They serve their purpose, even if it's just to be an annoyance. But yeah... they should really be at 30 health, there's no reason a skull should be that tough.

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Thanks to modern sourceports like Zdoom, we can make gameplay enhancements to them!

1. make them have fire aura which damages enemies around them, 5 hp per second.

2. On death effect which release the fire in them as some fiery homming ball acting as homing revenant missle, doing 25-35 damage on impact.

3. Profit!

 

Imagine playing all those wonderfull maps now.

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Well, I don't like them myself.

 

Since you can't look up or down in vanilla Doom (or Boom/MBF), in tall levels, as with other flying enemies, they can be hard to autoaim at.

They don't leave a corpse or anything when they're dead(unless crushed), so it's even less satisfying to kill them than it is to kill other enemies.

 

For an enemy so small, they have too much health. They have just as much health as a player, which means a single shotgun blast won't cut it. I can't help but feel a super shotgun is overkill, even though it's just the bare minimum 99.99% of the time.

 

As for Pain Elementals, I wouldn't mind if they didn't spawn Lost Souls. I'm glad vanilla Doom 2 has the 21 Lost Soul limit, as it's the one limit that you should not raise. They also don't leave a corpse when dead unless crushed.

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I have no idea why they are always compared with pinkies. Lost souls are much more interesting mechanically due to flight, silent wake up, stunlock and being the best demon at blocking routes the player already used. If they had less hp they will have no ability to do their role anymore.

 

Modded lost souls with very low hp and high damage can fuck off. Already tried them in a lot of mods. They are much more badly designed ( super fast, probably can charge attack nonstop, if it reaches you it will probably kill you with an explosion with very little reaction time, will probably kill you even if you kill it first with more stupid explosions) than the original meat shield. Oh let's not even mention pain elementals that summon those explosive ones instead of the normal ones. Not even arch-viles or chaingunners take targeting priority over them. Even if it is just one placed in an open area.

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There is a difference between finding lost souls annoying and saying they are a bad monster. The former to be honest is what I would expect. They are extremely annoying at times, but then that only means they fit their role perfectly. Even the health is fine, being able to consistently remove them with a single shotgun blast would make them a lot more trivial.

They are a solid monster and the same with pain elemental. They provide something the rest of the roster do not have.

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I think the problems people have with Lost Souls stems from the fact they are just skulls which should easily be dispatched by a shotgun blast. That mindset would probably not exist if they had some meat on their bones.

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