hexen: beyond monster variety

I think this has come up before, but I'm pretty sure Hexen has the lowest variety of all Doom engine games where the bestiary is concerned. I can deal with epic switch hunts and each class having only four useful weapons (better than having a score of useless ones, like in Doom 3). But it always bothered me that half the monster roster was made up of variations of existing monsters, usually varying so slightly I'm left wondering, "Why even bother?" With Hexen having twice as many monsters as Heretic, you'd expect twice the variety (like Doom 2 compared to Doom 1), not HALF.

You essentially have ettin, afrit, green chaos serpent, stalker, and dark bishop. End of list. Some ettins can block attacks, and some of those blockers can also shoot; some stalkers can shoot too; some green chaos serpents are brown instead. Everything else appears no more than twice, which would be cool if there were about thirty monster types and all of them unique. But Hexen basically has 5, which is easily enough variety and balance for a 9-map episode or a 5-map hub; not for a nonlinear adventure spanning 5 hubs. Did they really modify the Doom engine so much that they didn't have room left for bad guys?

I'll grant you the original Doom had half as many monsters, and some of them were similar to one-another; BUT arguably each one brought something different to the table, and arguably each type was utilized to its full extent in the iwad. Even though the Baron is just an imp on steroids, you don't flee in fucking terror when you hear an imp screech; and after fighting two of them as the E1 bosses, you kept running into them for the rest of the game, usually at inconvenient times. You don't see another Hexen death wyvern until the Deathkings expansion, where there are several at once that actually pose a threat. I can count the number of wendigos I've seen on my fingers, and they were boring anyway -- imagine how nasty they'd have been if they froze you temporarily, leaving you open to enemy attacks.

Anyway my point is this: we've seen tons of mods released over the years that add extra crap to the games, like Aeons of Death and its pointless quest to cram everything from every fps into one game; and we've seen mods that try to add more rpg elements to Hexen. Has anyone made a mod that simply dumps all the stuff from Heretic into Hexen? Say, a monster randomizer adding Heretic enemies to the mix. All I've ever found was a couple bad weapon/class replacement mods.

I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from.
Let's see, counting all things that count as monsters...

Doom 2: 19 (17 without spectre, and hell knight)
Heretic: 15 (10 without all "ghost" and "boss" variants)
Hexen: 18 (15 without slaughtaur, "boss" stalker, and one of the serpents)

Heretic is far more crippled in respect to a variety of "unique" monsters. But in the end, they all serve a purpose and all have unique qualities or combinations of qualities. Even Doom's Hell Knight has a niche to fill. And you can't argue the spectre doesn't have it's uses also. You're aware Heretic ghosts have a special property that even sets them apart from the spectre, right? Everything has a use, and I don't feel any of the games are lacking in terms of a bestiary.

The only thing I think Hexen is lacking in is weapons, mostly because we're used to the whole arsenal at once in Doom or Heretic, but at least they're largely different from one another.

EarthQuake said:

Even Doom's Hell Knight has a niche to fill. And you can't argue the spectre doesn't have it's uses also. You're aware Heretic ghosts have a special property that even sets them apart from the spectre, right?

I....don't recall arguing against ANY of that. Or speaking in terms of a "thing" count.

You get my point and miss it at the same time. Yes, the hell knight has a niche to fill as a high-damage bruiser who herds the little shits around and doesn't eat your ammo like the baron, thus essentially allowing for more "baron" placement in a map without making the map unforgiving. But if you ambush the player with one or more hell knights, it's different than ambushing them with a group of imps, or a group of revenants, isn't it?

What's the difference between getting ambushed by a group of ettins, a group of centaurs, and a group of slaughtaurs? The time it takes to kill them all. MAYBE the damage you take if you're careless. It's basically three ranks that equate to the same rank -- the mooks who get underfoot and die -- which means they could've had one monster fill that rank to leave room for two more completely different monsters. I suppose one version of the centaur would be enough, because they can make it tougher to wipe out a horde blocking your escape. But then you still have two identical serpents, one which could have been an entirely different critter instead; and two versions of the stalker; and a score of underused monsters, some whom, with a little tweaking, could've had more universal applications.

The other games have similar monsters or monster variations, but they justified it by giving each one a different function and using them frequently (except episode bosses in some cases). Put 'em together in different combos and the player has to utilize some combat strategy to survive.

There's no strategy in Hexen because everything is copy-pasted wandering fodder, with a flying nuisance here or there. Maybe the class system was meant to compensate for that in a way, focusing on player variety instead of enemies.

How would you improve the bestiary?

The difference in monster behavior between centaur and slaughtaur, or between stalker and stalker boss, is enough to make them different monsters altogether, gameplay-wise. For example, you can put them in unreachable place from where they'll shoot the player; something you can't do with their pure melee counterparts.

It's also excessive to lump the affrit, dark bishop and reiver together as just one monster: affrits have low hit points but are invulnerable until they wake up; bishops strafe madly, shoot low-damage homing projectiles and will hurt you if you're too close when they die; reivers fire high damage fireballs and will drain your health to heal themselves in melee.

So if you agree with the Hell Knight versus Baron scenario, how is any other case in Hexen different? The chaos serpents I can understand; they're exactly the same, except for sprites. But all other monsters have some sort of unique quality to them. All of them.

So maybe there are quite a few monsters that only work great as bosses. Hexen has about five. Excluding the "duplicate" monsters, that leaves 10. The original Doom had 10 monsters, including the "duplicate" spectre. Did that limited bestiary impact Doom's initial response? Were people like "god damnit, there's only 10 types of monsters"?

So the point I'm trying to make, is that you're not really making a good argument against Hexen. The bestiary is just as strategically varied as it is in Doom, if not more. You just don't have as many different monster sprites, which means zilch from a gameplay perspective.

Impie didn't say:
-- imagine how stupid they'd have been if they froze you temporarily, leaving you open to enemy attacks.

FTFY

Impie said:

I can count the number of wendigos I've seen on my fingers,

Go play the Deathkings last secret level then, if you dare.

With this logic Blood has probably the minor variants on monsters (acolytes, zombies/fat zombies, hounds, spiders, perhaps other that I'm forgetting).
I think Hexen has a perfect variation, and gives itself the privilege to have monsters saved for specific maps. My only complain is that everything goes down too easy, specially if you play with the Fighter that barely uses mana to kill.

Also Hexen's monsters have behaviors that are easily on par (or even pass in my opinion) to what you can find on The Bestiary (name that was first used to list monsters on Hexen's manual).
The Reyver for example, not only fires these fireballs that drop that cool trail, it also drops blood at random, has a class that appears buried and climbs out, drains your health at melee, and splashes parts when gibbed.
All these things aren't hard to code on DECORATE, but are placed all together in an aesthetic and clever way that most Zdoom coders hardly achieve.

Impie said:

Some ettins can block attacks, and some of those blockers can also shoot

Ettins are the two headed ones with the maces. None of those can block attacks, and none can shoot. You're thinking of Centaurs, all of which can block, and some of which (Slaughtaurs) can shoot.

Wagi said:

Ettins are the two headed ones with the maces. None of those can block attacks, and none can shoot. You're thinking of Centaurs, all of which can block, and some of which (Slaughtaurs) can shoot.

You missed the metaphor -- he was trying to make the point that centaurs are (gameplay-wise) just ettins with shields.

I found the Ettins to be stronger than Centaurs damage-wise.

Xaser said:

You missed the metaphor -- he was trying to make the point that centaurs are (gameplay-wise) just ettins with shields.

And that makes them very different from Ettins.

So basically it's like saying "Hell Knights are just Demons with a ranged attack"?

Not at all, becuase Hell KNights actually I think have a stronger melee than the Demon, plus the fireball. They have more health too. They are very different.

Impie said:

I think this has come up before, but I'm pretty sure Hexen has the lowest variety of all Doom engine games where the bestiary is concerned.

I strongly agree, and are working on a Vavoom mod that adresses this. Not just monsters, but weapons too. Classes play too much like each other. Once you get the 3rd weapon, each class becomes a ranged powerhouse. You can PM me if you're interested in details. The mod is no secret, I just don't advertise it because there's still work to do. If I announce ambitious changes in advance, I risk not being able to deliver.

I can deal with epic switch hunts and each class having only four useful weapons (better than having a score of useless ones, like in Doom 3).

But wait a second. There are too many weapons which don't feel different - or useful ! Mace of Contrition is basically strictly worse version of fists. Fists are so good they're barely worse than the axe, and much better than hammer in melee. Sapphire wand is so great you can easily beat the entire game with it. Compare with Frost Shards, which rarely kills an ettin in 2 shots (which is 6 mana already !) unless you use it like poor man's melee weapon.

Bloodscourge has very limited usefulness, it's only reliable in long corridors. Otherwise don't be surprised if you fire a shot and don't kill a single thing. Quietus is rarely worth the mana cost, and just underwhelming. Wraithverge feels like a debug weapon, /killall replacement, not something that belongs in a game.

But it always bothered me that half the monster roster was made up of variations of existing monsters, usually varying so slightly I'm left wondering, "Why even bother?" With Hexen having twice as many monsters as Heretic, you'd expect twice the variety (like Doom 2 compared to Doom 1), not HALF.

I'm totally with you on this one. Suffice to say Hexen is by far the least popular of the big 3 DooM engine games. Doom may have less monsters number-wise, but everything added in Doom2 is excellent and each monster presents an unique threat. DooM2 monsters are notable because they're deadly. No Hexen monster is deadly, save for perhaps Ice Wendigo (which is very limited). There are no Arch Villes, Revenants and Mancubi of Hexen/Heretic. Chaos serpents are annoying if you're a warrior. Cleris is the only class that REALLY can't survive without mana.

Too many monsters have only minor differences. Brown/Green chaos serpents are identical in terms of mechanics. Slaughtaurs/stalker bosses look identical to their brethren. (Why does Heretic/Hexen insist on making different monsters look identical ? To save memory which was precious at the time ?)
=========

The good news is that the boring monsters can be modified/replaced in a mod. Hell, you can even replace Spikes with monsters for extra variety. Hub4 (Castle of Grief) is by far the dullest.

printz said:

Go play the Deathkings last secret level then, if you dare.

I'm talking original iwads though, and not community mods or expansions. Deathkings used almost nothing but Slaughtaurs peppered with ettins, basically acknowledged the centaur was unnecessary, and brought the gameplay from "cakewalk" to "fuck this hurts".

I could justify two chaos serpents if the brown one could actually poison you, but it doesn't: it's identical except for the sprite.

Earthquake said:

So the point I'm trying to make, is that you're not really making a good argument against Hexen.

I think I make a decent enough argument that most people are reacting to rather than thinking about. I should have just said "The Hexen iwad's monster variety/placement: too bland or just right? Discuss." if I knew everyone would assume I'm some kinda "MERGE ALL MONSTERS" extremist.

I still love the game, but I think this is the issue that makes me so bored with it so quickly. I'm surprised that more people complain about the weapon selection than this.

Clonehunter said:

Not at all, becuase Hell KNights actually I think have a stronger melee than the Demon, plus the fireball. They have more health too. They are very different.

Also stupidly easy to outrun, unlike the demons. But again, the main reason they exist is an excuse to have lots of Barons in a map without the high ammo cost.

b0rsuk said:

Classes play too much like each other.

I could probably argue with you on this one. I got the impression the classes WERE the difficulty settings. As the fighter, I breeze through the game, whereas the mage forces me to use the hell out of my inventory.

Vegeta said:

With this logic Blood has probably the minor variants on monsters (acolytes, zombies/fat zombies, hounds, spiders, perhaps other that I'm forgetting).

Blood has those goddamn gargoyles that throw bones at you and swimming shark men things. The expansion added immobile flowers and added new acolytes.

Impie said:

Also stupidly easy to outrun, unlike the demons. But again, the main reason they exist is an excuse to have lots of Barons in a map without the high ammo cost.

You know, I've never really liked hell knights. I've always thought that the best way to deal with the situation would've been to maybe lower the barons health by 10-15% and add another 'baron' type as a more archvile-ish rather powerful sub-boss things you might encounter in 1s or 2s. The hell knight sticks out like a sore thumb in game that doesn't utilize lame palette swaps and every monster fills a niche that it and only it can fill. Unlike heretic and hexen where you have 'different' monsters that look that same. In games in the doom engine that are rather fast paced, visual and aural identification at an instant can be crucial.

b0rsuk said:

But wait a second. There are too many weapons which don't feel different - or useful ! Mace of Contrition is basically strictly worse version of fists. Fists are so good they're barely worse than the axe, and much better than hammer in melee. Sapphire wand is so great you can easily beat the entire game with it. Compare with Frost Shards, which rarely kills an ettin in 2 shots (which is 6 mana already !) unless you use it like poor man's melee weapon.

Bloodscourge has very limited usefulness, it's only reliable in long corridors. Otherwise don't be surprised if you fire a shot and don't kill a single thing. Quietus is rarely worth the mana cost, and just underwhelming. Wraithverge feels like a debug weapon, /killall replacement, not something that belongs in a game.

I don't get how you say the mage's wand is "so good" and yet frost shards are useless. They will still dispatch most enemies faster than the wand, and give the mage much more power in close range (after all the mage IS the poor man in terms of melee). The Mace has a longer range than the fists. The fists are much weaker than the powered up axe, and obviously the hammer sacrifices fast punches for the long-range ability. Bloodscourge is extremely destructive in the right instance, like when you don't have time to wait for arc of death to whittle down your opponent. Quietus uses less mana than any other 4th weapon and devastating in the Fighter's strong point; close combat. Wraithverge uses a ton of mana.


As far as the monsters I thought they were varied and cool enough to entertain me throughout the game. Doom didn't have any enemies with unique movement like the Bishops, or the ability to deflect certain projectiles. Why is Doom so much better if all of the monsters use the exact same movement pattern (except lost souls)? Not to mention the bosses are pretty much as bare-bones as you can possibly get: They just have a lot of hit points and more powerful attacks than any other monster. Fighting them seems more monotonous to me than facing the Heresiarch or Korax (not so much the Wyvern).


My previous question still goes unanswered. Instead of bitching about the variety of monsters, why don't you tell us what you think would make the bestiary more interesting?

I surprised no one has mentioned the Strife bestiary... Someone brought up Blood, but I found that just horribly off topic for some reason.

Introducing Hell Knight was a good decision ! Barons were bad even in the days where no one used mouse to play. Notice how rarely DooM2 uses barons - there's a reason for that. For the same amount of ammo you can have 3 barons or 5 knights. Dodge 3 missiles at once or 5. I think Baron of Hell is the only monster that remains without purpose. Changing Baron would break backwards compatibility, too.

I'm flabbergasted by the number of people who are in denial. Yes, Hexen has high points, but monster variety is not one of them. It has extremely repetitive combat. Centaurs are very formulaic - hit, wait, hit, wait. Stalkers - forward, back, attack, forward, back, attack. Use anything you like against ettins and afrits, they're pathetic. Heresiarch is very formulaic - hide behind a wall until the shield wears off.

HeXen has some of the most interesting bad guy behaviour options of Doom engine games, but they wern't all used in the best possible way.

For instance, the Herisarch's shield is cool, but the way it's used is poor; I would have considered making the Herisarch have his shield up whenever he was walking and have him bring it down only when he attacks.

That would make the shield have an impact without being annoying.

I made a ded for Doomsday long ago that adjusted the behaviour of several of HeXen's bad guys, as much as Doomsday allowed.

Clonehunter said:

I surprised no one has mentioned the Strife bestiary... Someone brought up Blood, but I found that just horribly off topic for some reason.

Strife has great enemies. But just like Hexen, I don't think the stock level design does much to push their traits.

Clonehunter said:

Not at all, becuase Hell KNights actually I think have a stronger melee than the Demon, plus the fireball. They have more health too. They are very different.

Likewise, Centaurs have faster movement, attack more rapidly, have more health, plus the shield.

This is basically quality over quantity. The monsters in Hexen actually behave differently from eachother. Some defend, some dodge around, some hide in a ball until they think they're ready to fight you, some drain your health. The Wyrven dashes around the level at high speed and fires balls at you. Heresiarch has many attacks, summons bishops, and can make himself reflective. Zedek, Melenikir, Traductus move like players. Korax teleports around and can manipulate the environment.

...And the monsters from Doom just wander around, aim, and attack.

Wagi said:

...Wyrven...Heresiarch... Zedek, Melenikir, Traductus...Korax.

But they are all bosses i.e bad guys that only appear once or twice in the game).

Vermil said:

That would make the shield have an impact without being annoying.

That's a very good point: he should have had at least some sort of cool-down so he couldn't just cast the shield right before it was about to run out

magicsofa said:

I don't get how you say the mage's wand is "so good" and yet frost shards are useless.

It goes through enemies, meaning if you line up a long series of monsters (like in a hallway or something), you can take them all out at once. It also rips through centaurs' shields, making it the only effective weapon against them other than the cleric's flechette.

EarthQuake said:

It also rips through centaurs' shields, making it the only effective weapon against them other than the cleric's flechette.

No it doesn't, except with the centaur ghosts. It does go through them when they have their shields up, but it won't hurt them then.

Vermil said:

But they are all bosses i.e bad guys that only appear once or twice in the game).

But the other ones I mentioned weren't. I was comparing these bosses favorably with the mindless Barons, Cyberdemons, and Spider Masterminds.

Well they are mindless demons :P