What enemy do you think can ruin a level or section of it if used incorrectly?

I know the obvious answer would be to say that any enemy can be awful to fight against if it gets spammed constantly, but i want to get into specifics like different situtations or fight scenarios.

chaingunner snipers shooting from an excessive distance, height or just obscure spots. they tend to be quite ineffective at that range while also being inconvenient to kill. they'll just take miniscule amounts of your health off every 10 seconds but the red flash with the hurt sound causes me distress that is in no way matching the danger I'm actually in. not necessarily ruining but really annoying

I’ll grab the low hanging fruit out of the way: close-quarters cyberdemon and cyberdemons that feel like mapper just felt one has to be put as a final boss for the map, when the map would in fact have already have sufficed just fine. They most often feel out of place, put there just because the author felt there had to be one final ordeal. It’s like a good book, but author didn’t want it to end so they wrote a totally unnecessary epilogue the book would have been better off (looking at you, War & Peace).

I think that chaingunners and archviles the highest potential to break a level if used incorrectly, inasmuch as it's pretty easy to place them in a way or in numbers sufficient that the scenario is decided entirely by the RNG (or is unbeatable).  Of course, all hitscanners lend themselves to this problem somewhat, but the chaingunner's rapid fire and the fact that they're easy to place anywhere mean they can completely ruin your shit in seconds if there's too many of them or if the player doesn't have adequate cover or distance or an invulnerability or something.  

Barons and cacodemons are probably my pick for enemies that can up the tedium of a level if they're used too liberally.  Barons, of course, because they can tank so much damage, but cacodemons can take a fair amount too and are more likely to appear in swarms.  The fact that they fly also means they're harder to hit and tend to scatter, making for annoying cleanup afterwards.  In both cases, the scenario becomes much more boring if the player has a lot of space to maneuver and there's nothing else around to complicate things.

24 minutes ago, Majin said:

chaingunner snipers shooting from an excessive distance, height or just obscure spots. they tend to be quite ineffective at that range while also being inconvenient to kill. they'll just take miniscule amounts of your health off every 10 seconds but the red flash with the hurt sound causes me distress that is in no way matching the danger I'm actually in. not necessarily ruining but really annoying

Hell 2 Pay is a really impressive wad for the time, but I find it really frustrating because of this issue. 

Well said!

Revenants.

Yeah I'd say Archviles are the easiest to mess up and mess up hard. PE too but only if there is no lost soul limit.

I'd say any enemy can ruin a level or section if used incorrectly. I know, captain obvious.

Maybe, a different way to address is it is to say that most of the time it's quite difficult to misuse imps. They are a very nice monster, while being pretty weak. Misusing them is possible, of course, but you would need to really try.

Spamming hitscanners and imps because you draw 200 hallways in your maps and don't know how to utilize them well.

i say this as a massive Revenant defender: a few too many Revenants in one encounter, or snipers put in the exact wrong places, can really (maybe not ruin) take the fun/enjoyment out of a map. but on the bright side, i think people have learned what not to do the last few years.

I'm going to toss in Arachnotrons since it is VERY easy to cheese them in some maps because their hitbox is so massive, thus people just use them as long ranged plasma turrets. The gimmick is overused to hell and back and due to their size, you can very easily rocket them down.

Another enemy that can usually ruin a map is Archviles when not done properly. They're meant to stall you and force you to not act so belligerent, yet some maps happily toss them in your face without much thought.

Lastly, Pain Elementals. Whenever I want to add these to my maps, I HAVE to add at least 1-2 extra boxes of bullets as they can quite easily flood a map against your will cause some cacodemon half-way across a massive cavern decided to try and get a cheeky shot on me 10 years ago.

I'm gonna go a different way here and say spectres. It's a fine line between being sneaky and being mean, some maps just end up being too dark or too chaotic where they aren't easy to spot. Usually it's a face rocket and not bites that kill me in regards to them, it's just so embarrassing when it happens.

1 hour ago, RHhe82 said:

I’ll grab the low hanging fruit out of the way: close-quarters cyberdemon and cyberdemons that feel like mapper just felt one has to be put as a final boss for the map

Absolutely agree but i feel like turret Cyberdemons are way worse than close quarters ones, atleast those requiere some level of skill

Inescapable death pits. They count because they are my enemy.

sniper mancubi

Archvilles hidden behind a transparent or invisible door,  like in Cyberden

Spectres in a super damaging floor

monsters can also be misused to be too easy and too hard.  the archvile's a good example, where if you just have him alone in a room or hallway with lots of cover and no corpses its kind of a snorefest.  I played a map that had a bunch of these hallway encounters and it really messed up that section of the level.  however, last night I was playing a map where an archvile would teleport in with a whole room of monsters, so they came in completely randomly while I was being pressured from another direction.  It felt like pure RNG whether the archie would teleport in just in time to escape.  they definitely feel like a hugely polarizing enemy, where they can be an absolute bore or the most dangerous thing you've ever seen, lol. 

At least a cyberdemon can always hurt you (though in a big empty room that's also a bore).  The spidermastermind also ruins levels more than not just because it sucks, lol.  And I'll be honest... I can't think of examples where revenants ruined a level, unless maybe you just aren't given the ammo to deal with them.  Along with the archvile and the cyberdemon, revenants are perhaps the most interesting enemy in the game, and they are fun and dangerous just about anywhere you put them, even in an empty room because of their homing missiles.

Barons. Think about when you place a Baron: "what does placing a Baron accomplish in this spot that having a Hell Knight doesn't?" Barons make good area denial enemies to guard doorways and force the player to deal with them, but they overstay their welcome real fast in maps where the player's ammo is being pushed to its limits as is. If your player isn't able to just spam rockets or BFG willy-nilly, that big crowd of Barons should probably be Hell Knights (with maybe a couple of Barons interspersed throughout). Otherwise, they just become an ammo sink that isn't even that hard to deal with, just time-consuming.

All of them have the capacity to ruin a level if used poorly, but I think the most common are revenants and archviles. Both are overused as an easy way to make a fight/level difficult without requiring much thought on balance and flow. I'm not saying that maps that frequently use them are bad, just that they are often tossed in rather than finding more creative ways to challenge the player.

Imps and zombieman.

About imps: pretty much the standard monster, the creep of the doom. And since it is easy to place, putting them in swarms or, even worse, letting a huge swarm of them get stuck can really fuck up the flow of the map... or sometimes...you just run past them because they can't shoot while standing on the ledge of a sector that is raised too high.

Zombieman: actually this one is very understated, but spamming zombieman in a position where they are no use really can ruin the map.

An unavoidable tentacle commando in a basement closet or 8 Z-Secs rushing down from the attic the second you fire your gun. Skyscraper 2.0 is still very good.

I would use tentacle commandos in long dark corridors or as the perfect enemy that charges from behind you, because his running footsteps are very audible. Z-Secs are meant to take advantage of cover and walls and are not well suited to fight in a staircase.

Revenants. If they are in a level the level is ruined.

I like when maps use barons and I don't have the ammo or weaponry to kill them because it's so obvious I just have to run past them and maybe come back later (or not), which I enjoy doing! 

I like when wads use masterminds because a lot of people talking about spider masterminds being poorly used is just availability heuristic. I regularly come across groups of mid-tiers with similar total HP (before or after infighting) that are pretty bleh and minimal threat and hurt a map's pacing. But cases of that go under the radar or just seem like the map itself being lacking. But then when a mastermind use is subpar, or even par, people jump to their DWMC posts like, "this was a mediocre mastermind use!" -- because it's easy to notice and conceptualize and talk about. But if you plopped a mastermind into every third map (I also do appreciate when they are rare rather than common, because seeing them every once in a while, like "oh yeah this weird monster exists," is cool), that use, even without much thought, probably wouldn't be too bad. And with good thought and understanding of some of the weird concepts involved, mastermind setups can be easily fun. (The mapping "meta" is bad at talking about how to make masterminds fun, but it's not that hard.) 

I like when maps use ample numbers of revenants, archviles, and cyberdemons because I find them fun to fight. (Re revenants and archviles, I've found it more important as a mapper for many encounters to not use one or both of them, to explore different concepts instead. There's a lot of value in trying to make, like, just cacos and imps really dangerous, or nothing stronger than hell knights, or mancs-trons -- and not relying on revs/viles/PEs/cybs as a quick "auto fun" addition. The constraint adds ingenuity. But it's also okay for individual setups to really lean on them. Unless it's something like a Angry Archvile concept, I'd rather play a map with like 100 revvies and archviles, concentrated in a lower number of fights, than 50 but every encounter has both.) 

I like when maps have annoying chaingun snipers because they often require tactical ingenuity to avoid or get rid of, which is a fun dynamic. 

I like arachnotron for a zillion reasons. Like masterminds, they are not that hard to use well; most mapping practices are not really set up for using them in a diverse range of situations. A lot of it is that people make small-scale maps layout-first and then try to thing-place later, which is not all that great for using arachnotrons. But even then, it's possible to use arachnotrons well.

Could go on, but as someone who is basically impossible to frustrate or tilt in games, and who doesn't really get value in beating things but rather understanding them, who once in a while FDAs 90-minute maps and if I die at 75 mins I'm like "fuck that was exciting and fun," I think dickish placement is cool and easily gives maps character. (Not that it's the only way to accomplish that by any stretch!) So to me "ruining a level by using incorrectly" is way more likely to be the blahness of overly dogmatic monster usage. 

As a mapper, I’m still a little clueless when it comes to decent monster placement, so this thread is helping no end! 
 

As a player, I personally love a cat and mouse situation rather than masses of enemies coming at me all at once, unless they are positioned well to encourage infighting. 

Long distance chaingunners or shotgunners can get very irritating if overused. Given that they can see you with near pinpoint accuracy (even if their actually firing accuracy is not pinpoint) and yet all you can see is an indistinct blur of pixels if you are lucky, it's not exactly a fair fight.

Pinkies when used too much and placed too closely together. Having multiple squads of pinkies swarming you as a way to increase the difficulty ruins the map for me.

1 hour ago, TheMightyWhoosh said:

As a mapper, I’m still a little clueless when it comes to decent monster placement, so this thread is helping no end! 

It might feel that way but it's probably actually making you worse lol. These threads are pretty worthless for instruction (or need to be taken with a heavy dose of salt, at least), for several reasons it'd take way too much writing to get into.

Dozens of Chaingunners Sniping from a very long Distance... With an Archvile Behind them.

It brings up an interesting philosophical question, is it really possible to use a monster "incorrectly"? Or is it a case of the mapper choosing the incorrect monster types or making general shitty poorly thought out decisions that truly ruins maps?