Your most HATED monster?

Barons and knights in a small area if you don't have the plasmagun.
Mancubi are fun targets with a shotgun. I think most maps would be much more interesting if they wouldn't give you the ssg. A weapon with almost as much(in fact more) impact the rl is so much more fun, it 's riskier to use, it's faster and has splash damage. I like the pain elementals and their lost souls. Fighting cyberdemons and lost souls is still (mildly) challenging for me.

Revenants.

God I hate those Hell Revealed sort of maps with 200x Revenant traps. They're the THE most annoying monster ever.

I don't mind revvies I just suck at escaping from their rockets, I don't hate any doom monsters but maybe my least favourite would be the Lost Soul I don't use them alot in my maps reason is because they are dumb and its also the reason why I don't use Elementals alot.

My favorite would be the imp I like how it sounds especially with the psx imp sounds, you gotta love that brown little bastard.

I hate lost souls. Waste of ammo.

Although they're something that can only appear in ports like Zdoom, I recently played a wad with invisible demons. The fact that they only become opaque when they're attacking point blank makes them more annoying than the average invisible monster.

All the monsters in Doom have their uses and can make for fun fighting scenarios. Most of the reasons people hate certain monsters is likely due to their misuse in maps rather than the properties they have.

For example, Cyberdemons. Perhaps he most misused monster ever. Cyberdemons should only be faced one at a time and only in the right circumstances.

If you are going to use a Cybie you need two basic things first and foremost.

1. Enough space.

2. Cover for the player to avoid both the rockets and splash damage.

Sufficient weapons/ammo isn't necessary at the time of the encounter provided you give the player enough space and cover so he has the time to think and look around the weapons needed to fight. Setting up a situation where the player has to deal with being stalked rather than being blown to smithereens in seconds is much more fun all around.

Cyberdemons make excellent guards as well. You could for example place one guarding a powerful weapon or key in a tight area the player can retreat from if he doesn't have the weaponry to fight it at the time. Later on the player can come back, kill it and retrieve the item. This is a good way to put an item out of reach without having to resort to making the player find a hidden door or switch.

Really, anytime you set up a scenario where the player can actually think his way out of jam rather than blast his way out or require superhuman dodging ablilty you increase the funfactor of a map.

Coldfusio said:

Barons and knights in a small area if you don't have the plasmagun.

I always kill them with shotgun, super or not :).

Revenants are annoying, but not pain, cos they die pretty easily, and missiles can be those cant-miss-it-comes-towards-you-blahblah, but still it does surprisingly little damage even in UV. Many of those guys is different thing...

Arachnotrons are also hard guys because they can hit you even if you have invisibily, if I remember right, but they are no pain. They are also enought easy to kill.

Many say that Arch- vile is bad enemy number 1. Don't know, because its only enemy that against you have good chance to kill it or go away before you take damage. Its funny.
Demons are the most easy to kill, and funniest enemies in Doom.

Actually there is no enemies I really hate cos I know how to kill each one.

Look I know this is an opinion thread, but what's with all the people complaining about monsters that fire projectiles being used where no cover exists. Revenants rockets are some of the easiest weapons to defeat in Doom. They're slow, easy to dodge, and half of them don't even seek. In wide open areas you can lead a seeker to one side of the room, then run around it and go kill the revenant(s) before the slow ass rocket even gets back to you. You can trick it into flying in a perpetual circle around you. You can dodge it close to a wall so that when it tries to turn it destroys itself, there's a dozen easy ways to beat revs.

As several people have pointed out the AVs attack is delayed, so you can break line of sight, kill it or at least make it flinch. It's not that hard. Now when I fucked with hardcore_gamer, he hadn't said anything about a bunch of AVs in an open area. In that case, if you can't retreat back into the place you just came from, you're a tad bit fucked without cover.

The only reason I really said I hate lost souls is because they're like gnats, they don't really hurt you they're just annoying. And if I just get done fighting 6 cyberdemons and I'm down to 6% health nothing pisses me off more than getting cut down by a stray LS.

stphrz said:

All the monsters in Doom have their uses and can make for fun fighting scenarios. Most of the reasons people hate certain monsters is likely due to their misuse in maps rather than the properties they have.

For example, Cyberdemons. Perhaps he most misused monster ever. Cyberdemons should only be faced one at a time and only in the right circumstances.

If you are going to use a Cybie you need two basic things first and foremost.

1. Enough space.

2. Cover for the player to avoid both the rockets and splash damage.

Sufficient weapons/ammo isn't necessary at the time of the encounter provided you give the player enough space and cover so he has the time to think and look around the weapons needed to fight. Setting up a situation where the player has to deal with being stalked rather than being blown to smithereens in seconds is much more fun all around.

Cyberdemons make excellent guards as well. You could for example place one guarding a powerful weapon or key in a tight area the player can retreat from if he doesn't have the weaponry to fight it at the time. Later on the player can come back, kill it and retrieve the item. This is a good way to put an item out of reach without having to resort to making the player find a hidden door or switch.

Really, anytime you set up a scenario where the player can actually think his way out of jam rather than blast his way out or require superhuman dodging ablilty you increase the funfactor of a map.

Unless a cyberdemon is guarding an area in such a way that eliminating it is essential to get the key/switch/move to that area you can just run past them rendering them almost pointless.

Lost souls are cool precisely as an annoyance, especially if you're playing "max kills" style where they won't count scorewise. In that case they are more of an environmental hazard (like poisonous slime, lava, or crushers) than actual opponents.

hardcore_gamer said:
I bet that very few people enjoy all of the enemy's from Doom and Doom2.

I doubt that would be "very few" people. On the contrary, most Doom fans probably like them all (in a certain order). The good thing about DOOM and DOOM II is that each monster serves a function and they each have their own characteristics. You don't have redundant monsters that are only slight variants of others. The closest thing to that would be the Baron of hell and the Hell knight, but those make sense in allowing the Baron to be a semiboss while giving you the Hell knight as a more numerous monster to kill with the SSG.

And what monster kills you the most often.

Maybe Revenants when their missiles catch me off guard...?

But I could be wrong and it's hard to say, really; I even get killed by lesser monsters relatively often simply for being more careless around them.

The Lag said:
but those fucking pain elementals are as bad as the cliffracers in morrowind.

Some engines have removed the limit stopping Pain elementals from spewing them if there are a score Lost souls present, which is usually taken into account during level design and Pain elemental placement. Without the limit, Pain elementals can spew hundreds of their minions, given the time. In another thread you said you use ZDoom; there you can set the limit back on through the compatibility settings menu.

I don't hate any particular monster, so I guess my least favorite (not counting the Nazi used outside of a Wolfenstein map) is the pain elemental. Its only attack is to fire lost souls, so if there's enough of them (in the original and some ports) they no longer spawn anything and they become harmless. It would be a whole lot better if they had some other attack in addition to what it already has. In ports without that limit, they become real annoying, because before too long you'll end up with a wall of lost souls between you and the pain elemental. Infighting won't work because if they start attacking other monsters, they'll just spawn more lost souls which will just fly after you instead.

Other than that, every monster has its strong and weak points.

And they're real pushovers when there's plain ground between you and them. And they look stupid too. All in all they're ambulant, fortunately killable, Lost Soul generators.

I wish Doom 2 had more wall-placed invulnerable infinite monster generators like the Icon of Sin, but on any level, kinda like the crazy horrific generators in Blake Stone and Descent. How were the Revenants if every level past 10 had an infinite invulnerable Revenant Generator? :P

The rocket launcher+lost souls= A toasted player

Unless there is enough room like an outside area.

hardcore_gamer said:

The rocket launcher+lost souls= A toasted player

Unless there is enough room like an outside area.

Yeah, but at least you kill the lost soul as well.

heh

Hmmm, I forgot about Arachnotrons and Mancubi, maybe not all Doom2 monsters are terrible...

pain fucking elemental, especially on a source port that removes the lost soul limit

POTGIESSER said:

Unless a cyberdemon is guarding an area in such a way that eliminating it is essential to get the key/switch/move to that area you can just run past them rendering them almost pointless.

Yes it does take careful planning.

I did it in my map for NDCP. It consists of a small door and a gated enclosure off a building. Inside the enclosure is a yellow key and a Cyberdemon.

During playtesting I tried many many times to simply run through the door past the Cyberdemon and grab the key and get back out. Couldn't do it. Someone of greater skill than me might be able to do it but even then they would likely still die the vast majority of the time. To make it a little easier for myself (and the thinking observant player) I put an invulnerablity sphere secret nearby :)

1. Revenants (People use these worthless enemies in too many maps. They do way too much damage, and the homing ability makes it even worse)
2. Lost Souls (Takes too much ammo to use, and there are usually a lot of them to kill)
3. Pain Elementals (They spawn Lost Souls... 'nuff said)
4. Chaingunners (They like to snipe when far away, making them hard to hit, but somehow they always hit me. I usually lose a lot of health due to these guys)
5. Arachnotrons (They like to snipe as well, and their shots can be particularly painful)

That's my top five. No I don't have anything wrong with Archvile's, Cyberdemons, and Spider Masterminds, because they are all meant to be hard, and they all are easy to kill them.

When I was younger I used to think I had gotten really good at Doom. Then as I got older, and saw people beating the game on Nightmare, something I've yet to do, I figured I was just a mediocre player. But with all of the people complaining about how hard Revs are, I must be a stellar player because I am about as cautious around Revs as I am around the Former Human.

Non-Fanatic_Doom_Fan said:
But with all of the people complaining about how hard Revs are,

Yeah, a number of comments seem to reduce themselves to hating monsters due to flaws of the player, rather than actual flaws of those monsters.

myk said:

Yeah, a number of comments seem to reduce themselves to hating monsters due to flaws of the player, rather than actual flaws of those monsters.

Agreed... if you've never heard of strafing, I could see how a Revenant might kill you. That's also taking into account you have no skill with your SSG or rockets, it only takes 2 hits from this to kill the fucker.

leileilol said:

anything doom2 adds, because they have too much hit points, and look and sound inane.

Every monster added by D2 has less hit points than the Baron. And the PE and Rev take about the same firepower to kill as the Caco, 2-3 rockets. Have you played these games?

That wasn't exactly my point with hating the revs. The reason they're bad is not because I don't know how to dodge or kill them, but because when I pick up a keycard and the mapper have decided to open doors all around me with revenants in a tight room, there is little you can do but to get provoked. Especially when they tend to make this a tradition in all of the maps in the megawad. It wouldn't be that bad if it hadn't been for the fact that they're so overused.

Yeah, revvies really aren't that bad, provided that you don't have to fight them in a narrow, straight hallway (well, even then running right next to them while shooting with the chaingun is pretty effective, most of the time they don't get to shoot even once). Similarly PEs aren't that bad either, there's plenty of tricks to taking care of them: First, if you use mouse with autoaim, try without autoaim for a change. Now you should be easily able to shoot at the PE behind those lost souls/whatever else there is in front of it. Second, strafe around the PE so that you can get a clear shot at it. If possible melee it, because then it can't attack you at all. The chainsaw is particularly effective. If you have to take on it at range, either use bursts from the chaingun (with the 100 % accuracy and their high pain chance, this is very effective) or take a shot with the ssg and strafe behind any corner to reload and come out only once you've reloaded: The chances are that the PE got into pain state, and even if it didn't, the possible lost soul it launched hit the wall instead of you.

Also, after killing the PEs, run around in circles like an idiot instead of fighting the lost souls, if you have the space. They'll sooner or later start infighting and you'll only have to kill one or two of them by yourself.

Generally speaking, the best order to kill monster in a fight is something like this (the best order for the particular fight may vary based on monster placement, guns and ammo):
Arch-viles > PEs > hitscans > revvies > manci&arachs > anything else


On an other note, I love arachnotrons. Because of their dying sound. Always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

stphrz said:

I did it in my map for NDCP. It consists of a small door and a gated enclosure off a building. Inside the enclosure is a yellow key and a Cyberdemon.

During playtesting I tried many many times to simply run through the door past the Cyberdemon and grab the key and get back out. Couldn't do it. Someone of greater skill than me might be able to do it but even then they would likely still die the vast majority of the time. To make it a little easier for myself (and the thinking observant player) I put an invulnerablity sphere secret nearby :)

Have to agree with potgiesser:
Retried it and manage to do that in my first 3 runs. The hard thing of that map is a: open en b:not knowing it. a+b killed me the most. Like the building with the revenants, I realized about their presence after getting hit. The best trap I found is that where you get the blue card, it's so simple and it worked.

myk said:
The good thing about DOOM and DOOM II is that each monster serves a function and they each have their own characteristics.

In my experience too much map makers aren't so aware about that. How many times you get those barons/knights in a (too large) hallway or medium size room. Or demons when you got berserk/ssg.

Coldfusio said:

Have to agree with potgiesser:
Retried it and manage to do that in my first 3 runs. The hard thing of that map is a: open en b:not knowing it. a+b killed me the most. Like the building with the revenants, I realized about their presence after getting hit. The best trap I found is that where you get the blue card, it's so simple and it worked.

Well you are a much better player than me :) Still though, attempting to blow past the Cybie and grab the key and escape is a substantial risk regardless of skill. It's one option along with killing the beast first or finding the invulnerablity sphere. I like to try to offer more than one solution to a problem. I believe a map with a bunch of obstacles each with only one way of overcoming them limits replay value. In fact my goal for that map was essentially one big puzzle with an almost limitless number of possible ways to solve it. Some solutions are more efficient than others of course.

Ok from reading this, some people dis-like the Revvies, I love them, they make good In-fighters and Cyber Demon killers if you get enough of them on your trail, or just there rockets, gather all those up, and use em to kill the Cybie, but i'll list: (But this list for those who dislike them in any way, but also will have a solution)

Q1. Narrow Path ways that of which keep you from moving.
Q2. Seeker Missles and Straight on Missles confusion.
Q3. Too many in a Level.

A1. Simple to avoid death is- When they are coming out, BFG them OR run straight and shoot with chaingun or a bfg(Most time, when they come out, go to 1 side and blast them with a bfg) or just run away.
A2. If in a open area with out a trap to worry of, run around when the missles near then move backaway and you'll see the seekers and thne use the seekers to kill other monsters or in-fight.
A3. Well, then some one must not be so great on killing them if you say theres too many, look at the 2006 Megawad, theres going to be Rev only levels at times, so 1 simple solution is this, learn to kill them with weapons of flinching, hence Shotgun with Rage Rune (Skulltag), chaingun, rocket launcher (Not Recommended at closer ranges since they are fast), Plasma Rifle and BFG (Useful if a group is about to rape you).

The mapper doesn't always provide you with the weapons and ammo you need to take them out safely. Been given only a super shotgun in a keycard trapdoor rape is pretty much horrible no matter what. I can't say I blame the revies as much as i blame the mapper, but damn, you do get tired of them after a map full of this shit.

Jodwin said:
On an other note, I love arachnotrons. Because of their dying sound. Always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. [/B]

Ooh, yeah :D
The collapsing noise they make with the metallic yelp.
It's good.

When I'm in a big open area, the revenants fireballs seem to merge together into one massive flying nuke.

How about this?
Whatever killed me - indirectly or not.

If I am in a perfectionist mood , then the shotgun/chaingun guy. Not much warning until they shoot.

Barons and Cacos.

Both have way too many hit points (probably twice as much as necessary) and pose very little threat to a nimble player. Cacos are even slower than Barons, their fire-lightning balls aren't all that powerful, and don't have a real melee attack.