The best place for monster infighting

[Leo Sosnine]

In general, all Erik Alm's wads are good for a method of passing thru them, that can be described as monsters vs. monsters.

But one is absolutely great, absolutely insane is 'FEAR', level 26 of his old project 'Scythe'. It has quite simple architecture, but not without some salt in terms of design.

Most interesting part of it is monsters. There are A LOT of them (666 entities) in close vicinity. And they are combined from different species, which makes easy to provoke them to fight each other. And those fights are quite on a big scale. A crowd of specimen of one type fighting other crowd of specimen of other type.

And cybies. Ummm. There are tens of them in this level. Just imagine how two cyberdemons aim their rockets at you, but with a clever dance on your part poor disabled cripple-legged boys lay their rockets directly in a huge swarm of cacos or revenants. Of course cacos and revenants do not tolerate such a behavior and fall on poor cybies, while you stand aside and watch epic battles.

Nothing impresses me more, than watching cybies fighting crowds of other monsters.

Did you ever questioned yourself, how many cacos are enough to rip apart one cybie? Or how many revenants? That type of questions are ideally for this level.

I don't understand people, who spend their ammo in levels such as this. Why bother shooting at them, while one cybie can give anyone an infinite flow of rockets, three shots in a row?

I consider every cybie I meet as my own intelligent gun, which is able to sweep half a level without spending a bullet from your backpack. And I always feel sorrow when they die. Or when I have to finish them, because noone else left on a battleground.

In 'FEAR' only last nine cybies on porches need to be dealt with weaponry. All other 666-9 monsters kill each other.

Of course, Erik put tons of guns and ammo in that level. In fact, most of it isn't needed. I even consider putting so much weaponry here as a mistake. No weapons and ammo in such levels would encourage people to find different ways to pass them thru. And that different way is to provoke monster infighting.

You know, there are plenty of first person shooters out there since 1993. And almost all of them suck miserably, because there are few monsters there and monster infighting not implemented.

I seriously think, that 1) lots of monsters 2) monster infighting are among those nice points, that make DOOM still live up to that date.

Remember that level in Doom II, named GOTCHA!, where Cybie and Spider Mastermind were slowly exposed and clever doomer used level design features to provoke fight between them? What could be better than that!

I want to encourage Erik Alm and all level makers to build more levels, that are suitable for interesting monster infighting scenarios and encourage players to share their experiences of monster infighting style of play, share wads for monster infighting play style.

[Reisal]

-Large outdoor areas with hitscanners and non-hitscanners.

-Monsters outside a window who cannot hit you from their line of sight, due to the player's elevation.

-Tricking splash damage projectile monsters (Inferno on R667) or spread weapon monsters (Fusion canon spider on R667) into a group of non-related demons.

[Creaphis]

Erik Alm's map design is also oriented towards speedrunning, so a surplus of ammo isn't really a "mistake" as it allows for a faster UV MAX runs than a reliance on infighting would allow.

[Super Jamie]

In b4 someone suggests that idiotic small blocky map from PSX Doom.

[Jodwin]

Long Days and Nuts, anyone?

[Leo Sosnine]

Creaphis said:

Erik Alm's map design is also oriented towards speedrunning, so a surplus of ammo isn't really a "mistake"

Of course, that's obvious.

I just put emphasis on a "monster infighting" play style here.

All in all, DOOM is way too old and, to be honest, sometimes it becomes boring to play fast and perfect. We play it speedy for more than a decade.

However "monster infighting" style of play brings some freshness to the game. Recently, f.e. I played Scythe II with that style, not killing anyone, if it was possible to provoke monster infighting. Quite funny it was.

[sparerib1968]

My own SpareRib 2 has lots of monster infighting. Give it a go and see if it suits you.

I think it is something I'll try to avoid in future maps though. It doesn't seem to make for a very fun experience for most players based on the responses I got. It is also harder to balance weapons and ammo because monsters do unpredictable things when hordes of them fight each other.

[Ichor]

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