I just completed Plutonia UV for the first time and i dont understand the fear of chaingunners in this wad

[El Juancho]

You can kill them from afar very easily one by one with the chaingun, the only time I felt they were a bit annoying was on map 15.

 

I found revenants and lost souls / pain elemental MUCH more annoying.

 

But hey, I think it's the best officially released wad, all levels maintain a good level design curve (not like doom 1 and 2) I think the levels have aged quite well.

[Grazza]

I've always felt that Plutonia punishes poor movement skills a lot more severely than other wads of a similar overall difficulty level. Probably the people who complain about Plutonia being unfair don't use strafing very fluently, or tend to rocket suicide when trying to take out distant chaingunners.

 

If you are finding lost souls annoying, maybe you are playing with a port that doesn't correctly enforce the lost soul limit. I'm not saying a handful of lost souls can't be annoying, but with the limit in place you won't be facing such huge swarms, and won't feel under such pressure to kill them quickly at the cost of suffering heavy damage.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Because Plutonia has too many stupid traps where a switch\invisible floor line unleashes +2 of them from different directions and unless you know it is coming you will probably take some damage. Same can be said about shotgunners. 

[PasokonDeacon]

I don't recall there being many "sudden chaingunner" traps in Plutonia. They exist in a few maps spread out across the WAD, the exception being MAP12 which frankly goes overkill with hitscanner hell towards the end. As for archviles resurrecting chaingunners, you're given a sneak peek at that level mechanic right from the opening map, so it's possible to parse the ridiculousness of MAP15's chaingunner setup when you reach it.

A bona fide problem might come from how often chaingunners can blend into backgrounds. Red on red can be hard to distinguish at times, and I bet the red/green look of many maps in the middle block can prove troublesome for anyone with red-green color blindness. The fact that chaingunners can snipe you from a distance, often sporadically and without spatial cues, is a good reason to learn better movement tactics and to leap from cover to cover on harder maps.

[P41R47]

Fear of chaingunners is a big no, pal!

Thats not what people felt while playing Plutonia.

Just annoyed from the constant usage of ''tower enemies'', like the chaingunners, manubis, arachnatrons, revenants archviles that can really hit from afar no matter what you do, while at the same time facing numerous treats around you.
The maps are designed better with try and repeat process, so foreknowledge is rewarding in this case.

For some, thats not a good designed challenge, prefering a great challenge that is somewhat manegable if you had the skills. While getting caught in somewhat unfair traps is not.
For others try and repeat is fun.

[DooM Bear]

I think it’s mainly a historical thing.

 

You gotta remember Plutonia came out only 2 years after DooM 2 and at the time it was plain insanity to have that many mid to night level enemies!

 

 

[Final Verdict]

More or less what @DooM Bear said, it was once considered quite a tough wad. These days I think most people would consider it tricky but not too hard.

 

Back when Final Doom came out, most of us were kids or still in our teens and we certainly weren't used to having to deal with so many mid/high tier enemies. You have to look at it from another angle, most of us had played Doom and Doom II but not everyone had internet access for wads. Even if they did it was the early wads, before Plutonia ramped up the difficulty.

 

So most of us had never seen that level of difficulty in Doom until then, which is where Plutonia gets it's reputation from. Nostalgia and being the grandfather to a particular type of mapping style. For the time this wad was as hard as granite, but by today's standards it's not too tough unless you're going in blind. Even then if you've played a lot of Doom or FPS then you should be fine.

 

But the fact it provides any challenge at all after all this time really says a lot about it. It was made with passion. 

 

Final Doom was a great bundle for the time, one wad (TNT) was more relaxed and fun, adventurous if you will. The other (Plutonia) was more exciting and gritty, blind-siding us at every turn with new ways to kill us. Two very different wads that catered to both sides of the fan base.