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Xaser

Revenants.

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Okay, it seems like a rather trite thing to say, much less post about, seeing how we all know Doom and we've played it for years, but I've recently reached a conclusion about a certain something I've been mixed on ever since I started playing the game all those years ago:

Revenants. I like them.

Now, you're probably thinking "Big whoop, whatever." But hear me out here. Revenants have more or less been the series' most controversial enemy, with many arguing that their cheap homing attacks are nothing short of annoying as hell (a view I tended to hold for quite a long time). True, they can be horrendous if used wrong, but after playing around with enemy placement in my own maps, I often find myself returning to this one enemy to fulfill a variety of different roles. Though it's taken me a while to realize it, I've gained a whole new love and respect for the Rev after concluding that he is the most versatile enemy in the game.

At close quarters, they can fill the role of a demon with their mad punching abilities. In hordes, they force you to run and hide. As snipers, they keep you constantly moving and on your toes. And in any situation, they provide wonderful opportunities to cause infighting if you're good at directing the flow of their fireballs. They're tough enough to take more than a single rocket or SSG blast of punishment, but not out of the league of the shotgun or chaingun, meaning they can be used effectively as either a high- or low-tier enemy. And more than any other non-boss enemy (except the Archie, arguably), the Revenant's cry injects the most fear (or at least that "shit just got serious" feeling) into almost every gameplay situation.

The most beautiful part of this, in my eyes, is the fact that introducing a Revenant to the fray encourages you to stay mobile, which I see as one of Doom's greatest gameplay assets and the one that most sets it apart from other shooters (namely, that speed itself is key to staying alive). Sure, you can duck behind an object or trick that fireball into slamming into the wall behind you, but in many cases, the best strategy to avoiding getting blasted is to never stand still, which introduces another level of excitement when executed well. I'm starting to understand why wads like Plutonia and AV seem to use so many of them, and most importantly, why they all seem to work so well even when I was cursing them for their devilishness. Funny how these things can hit you even after years upon years of the same game.

So, yeah, that's my spill. I'm sure that to some of you I'm making a huge deal of of something silly, but I'm at least curious to know your thoughts on this, even if it just boils down to another "Revenants: good or bad?" discussion. After far too long of debating this point in my own mind, I think I'll have to toss my coin into the "good" pile.

So there, I said it. My name is Xaser, and I like Revenants.

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tl;dr... maybe tomorrow.

I'd say the most controversial enemy would be the arch-vile. People tend to hate any enemy that actually pose a challenge. Because they don't want to be challenged. Challenge leads to frustration when you fail. People just want to kill stuff. But they are at the same time too stubborn to not play on UV.

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<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 Archie (tactical and dangerous, fighting it combines fast thinking and fast movements)
<3 <3 <3 <3 Revvie (dangerous, requires fast movements and, in close spaces, perfect movement with knowledge of how the missiles move)
<3 <3 <3 Manc (see above)
<3 <3 HK (just because they're 50 % weaker than barons and stronger than imps)
<3 Arach (dangerous but difficult to use well, love that death sound)

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kristus said:

People tend to hate any enemy that actually pose a challenge. Because they don't want to be challenged.

Correct.

Challenge leads to frustration when you fail.

Correct.

People just want to kill stuff. But they are at the same time too stubborn to not play on UV.

You've earned yourself a third correct!

Though I would often find myself sputtering anguished cries of rage after having my face immolated by an Archvile's combustive strike or smashed through by a Revenant's missile (What are they anyway? From side on they alomst look like cannonballs), I've realized that what kristus says is true: I only hate them because sometimes I lose touch with what it was that made me goggle at these monsters in the first place. Unfortunately, sometimes I just want to kill stuff, and the complexity of these monsters - their versatility and their having the ability to make me run rings around the room just finding a way to take them down - doesn't stop me from feeling as though my play time has been garroted by the whimsically careless smattering of monsters across a map by an equally all-to-careless mapper. Revenants are, I think, one of the most likable monsters if viewed outward from this respect (something I should do more often), but I think the real problem lies with monsters such as Pain Elementals, Barons and Spiderdemons.

After all this time, it's these three monsters that I still feel most mappers havn't got to grips with using properly yet. I'm not going to go into a frenzy about it, but it gets on my metaphorical goat!

Also:

Xaser said:

introducing a Revenant to the fray encourages you to stay mobile, which I see as one of Doom's greatest gameplay assets and the one that most sets it apart from other shooters (namely, that speed itself is key to staying alive).

I think this was why the Super Shotgun was introduced fore mostly. Not only as a means to combat the new monster make-up, but also to require the player to get in close to deliver the goods, and hence move around a fair bit more. Hell, even the BFG requires you to get close to things. The Mancubus, Pain Elemental, Archvile and to a lesser exctent the Arachnotron also complement this gaming philosophy you've mentioned, although they of course lack the versatility of the Revenant.

Oh dear... Post much?

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I'm always wary of adding Revenants to my maps, simply because I'm afraid of the feeling that I'm adding an overused monster. But they're so damn handy in almost any situation that it's hard not to add them.

I certainly don't mind fighting them. Swarms of them will take out/weaken cyberdemons, and their homing missiles certainly cause trouble in the ranks.

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I use revenants very sparingly in my maps, usually in situations where just one of them can fuck you up.

I hate AV style wads where 1000 of them come at you at once, sometimes one monster can cause more hurt than a thousand of them if you use them properly.

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As with everything, it can be used well and it can be used badly.

Putting 10 revenants in a wide open space without any real cover is just annoying. Using Revenants in moderation can create a good challenge - but you have to be very careful not to overdo it.

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Revenants are also deceivingly disruptive for other monsters: they can easily fuck up anything below their "rank" in one-two hits, and their unusually high missile damage and fast attack timing lets them even take down or seriously damage monsters that, theoretically, "outrank" them.

E.g. my favorite is a single Revenant vs HK: if you give the Revvie the advantage of first strike and the exchange is mostly fireballs, then the HK is toast or, the very least, will be near death. Not a bad result for a monster that has 200 HP less than the HK!!!

Note: don't question it anymore, it CAN happen, it HAS happened and even verified independently from me, so there :-p

Two revenants can even place a Baron in great difficulty, crippling it enough to go down with 1-2 shotgun blasts. Three revenants vs a Baron? A waste of a Baron, at the hands of "inferior" monsters that are usually much more abundant in any given map.

Revenant vs manc? Only outside of melee does the manc stand a chance, else it just sits there and take a painful beating, moaning in pain.

And the player? Well....just hope you aren't playing in a Jodwin map with under 80 HP ;-)

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^^^Yet again Maes doing his stock arguments.

I call revenants the Grim Reapers of Doom 2 by the way.

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@OP:

I just realized the exeact same thing just a few months ago. You almost took the words out of my mind.

When I make maps these days, I do use lots og revenants. "Lets put a HK here. Hmmm, no, too easy, poses no threat. A Baron? Hmmm no, just the same as HK. Lets use another rev..."

When it comes to stationary monsters, I always find the rev to be the best (most difficult) choice. Maybe not when the player has to move on thin ledges though...hard yes, but also annoying

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I'd blame the thin ledges more than the Revs in that case, though. :P

Interesting take on the SSG, Alfonzo. Never thought of it that way myself, but one does tend to do a lot of weaving in and out when using it. Moreso than other weapons (except the BFG, which is awesome in its own right).

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darkreaver said:

When it comes to stationary monsters, I always find the rev to be the best (most difficult) choice.

They fall too easily to rockets in this case though.

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Graf Zahl said:

Putting 10 revenants in a wide open space without any real cover is just annoying.

Like Xaser said, just keep moving, group them, fire 5 rockets then switch to SSG.

There are always outer walls you can slam the homing missiles into. Other revs too.

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Sometimes I do have to admit to myself that I'm just not as impervious to Revenant fire as I'd like to be, and that I should stop going all in for the delicious SSG kill. I have to swallow my pride, pull out the Plasma Rifle, and burn away.

Less satisfying yes, but it's the best and the most modest means of taking them down (except for when the plasma obscures your vision, and a missile smacks you right in the cake hole. Then I scream profanities and use the chainsaw. Sometimes taking a bit of a beating in order to give your opponent a gritty death is grand enough compensation!).

Maes said:

just hope you aren't playing in a Jodwin map with under 80 HP

Oh yeah, one other thing. Murphy's law is a crock of shit. The only reason the worst possible outcome appears to happen all the time is because you only really take notice of when it does. Be sure to count your 10 - 30 missile damage blessings and stop taking it all for granted. Though, yeah, I gather that's not what you were getting at. Jodwin's maps are diabolical =p

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Splendid! In that case, I'll just nab a quote from a certain Mr. Alm to top off my previous post:

I do not believe in Murphy's law. I however do believe that human memory is biased.

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st.alfonzo said:

Oh yeah, one other thing. Murphy's law is a crock of shit. The only reason the worst possible outcome appears to happen all the time is because you only really take notice of when it does.


With deterministic RNGs and repeated load-save cycles, Murphy's law becomes much more clean ;-)

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I used to hate revenants terribly, but as I've gotten better at playing the game I've taken more of a shine to them. As with any enemy, they're only really unfair when the mapper puts them in a stupid place, making their homing rockets no more of a cheap shot than any other attack. And because the revenants are so versatile, it's surprisingly difficult to create such situations. (Compare with the arch-vile, where all you need is one or two and nothing to duck behind and you're basically screwed.)

As for what the most annoying enemy is, I'd probably go with the pain elemental. Lost souls by themselves are pretty frustrating, but the one thing more frustrating is having somebody shooting large numbers of them at you. What makes them even more annoying is that, if you don't either run away or kill it within 10 seconds of the demon spotting you, it will very quickly have you surrounded with a horde of lost souls, meaning that you basically have to kill it as soon as you see it.

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I'd have to disagree. I think the Imp is by far the most versatile monster in the game. Small easy map? One or two imps. Hard as balls map? 200 Imps + 500 more via teleport ambushes. Imps are easy, fun to fight, seeing them drop to the floor in a single shotgun blast and pounding the floor in a pool of it's own gore is an excellent reward, even when there is still many more imps to go.

Being able to viaibly see them drop to the ground and the huge army of them shrink in size as you open fire is an apparent sign of progress, unlike damaging a few hard monsters being unsure of when they're gonna die already.

Revenant's are certainly versatile, and have a greater advantage of being able to target distant enemies with tracking missiles that imps couldnt dream of hitting. (Doom 2's large maps is probably why they added that feature) but you kinda require some stronger weaponry to take them down. You can kill them with a pistol, but they're fast and quickly juke around in different directions which calls for a lot of wasted ammo. I'll also give you the point that they require you to stay mobile while imps just require you take a small step to the side. But imps can be used in more dangerous scenarios like the trap in UAC Ultra MAP01, where imps appear from all different directions after the first teleport.

Imps are fun to take out with chainsaws, berserk, pistols, shotguns, small groups are better for super shotguns, chainguns, larger armies are better suited for rocket launchers, any extreme number of imps is suited for plasma gun and BFG.

I can think of many scenarios where revenant usage can get really annoying but It's actually kind of difficult to accidentally place an imp somewhere where they are annoying. They're fun to fight and easy for the mapper to use. They go down easily so they don't block your movement, they do little damage (but enough if you aren't generous with armor), their slow movement is vulnerable to barrels, and increase in difficulty in larger quantities. I would definitely have to say that imps are by far the most versatile enemy.

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40oz said:

Hard as balls map? 200 Imps + 500 more via teleport ambushes.

That's not a monster's versatility, that's swarming, something Doom in particular (probably the ONLY shooter ever made, along with its idTech1 spawn) is good at, especially because most of its monsters are dumb and unthreatening on their own. I find it more subtle to place four revenants in strategic positions, than swarm the map like it's Knockout, especially if I want to keep things moderate and quiet. Those numbers say enough -- imps are wimps unless in VERY LARGE numbers. I have more respect for monsters who are still easy to kill, but very dangerous if untaken care of. Wolf3d comes to mind. Heretic's nitrogolems also fit, due to their annoying homing attacks, yet they die from only about two crossbow shots.

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Hmm actually there is something I do like about Revenants, from my slaughter map tactics:

Revenant bottlenecking: a "dynamic" variation of [alcoving/snaking], if sieged by revenants you can fend them off (or at least stall them) if you find an alcove deep enough to stay within the "no missile attack" distance of sieging revenants, farther than their melee range, and be narrow enough for them NOT to be able to walk in and close the melee distance (e.g. the alcove in the Great Bicycle Mystery MAP15). This way, revenants will soon crowd outside of it but their numbers and attraction towards their target (YOU) will keep them in a "stalemated" position: the one(s) closer to you won't fire at you (unless you go within melee range or move farther beyond the "no missile" range, and those farther away will fire uselessly at the backs of the frontal one. You can stay like this almost indefinitively, at least until other monsters drop in and infighting disrupts the equilibrium.

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