No super shotgun = Barons have too much health?

[sym]

This isn't a whine post or anything, I was just wondering what other people thought about Baron hp in Doom 1. I always liked the Hell Knight way more, because it was basically the same enemy, except it didn't have an absolutely ridiculous amount of HP. It seems like Ep.4 is full of these semi-annoying gameplay lulls because I have to stop and take my sweet time to kill them. They aren't that much of an issue in Doom 2, because the super shotgun makes quick work of them.

Thoughts?

[geo]

People always forget that you can run by Barons or other enemies. Even use other enemies to fight them.

[40oz]

The baron's are a boss in doom 1, the shareware episode in fact. It's not unlike any game of it's era for a boss monster to have about ten times as much health as any other standard enemy you encounter before it. I think the baron's would be extremely lame if all you needed were anything less than 5 rockets to kill each one.

[hex11]

I like barons, so long as there's enough firepower to deal with them. In the secret level of Classic Episode (class_ep.wad), you face something like half a dozen barons at once. The thing is, that map has rocket launcher, plasma gun, chaingun, and there's even a handy crusher trap... And on top of that, the barons can't even get to you unless you activate a switch that raises a bridge (you still have to avoid their shots though, but it's not that hard).

If all you're given is a shotgun to defeat hordes of them, that sounds like bad map design.

[Xeros612]

Has E1M8 taught you nothing? Rocket launcher. Boom, dead.

[Phml]

In addition to the previous points, even fighting a lone baron or two with the shotgun and chaingun doesn't seem so bad to me. Anything under a baron doesn't take long to kill, it can have its uses as a "tank".

[finnw]

I don't think Doom2 MAP08 would work as well if you replaced the barons with any other type of monster.
I like that map. I'm not sure why since it has a lot of features I complain about it PWADs.

[PRIMEVAL]

As with any other monster, if used well, the Baron is perfect. I wouldn't mind if I had only a regular shotty and a good amount of shells (perhaps give a medkit too) and take on one or two Barons. Now if it was just a pistol or a whole horde of them, then I think we have a problem.

[Lüt]

40oz said:

The baron's are a boss in doom 1, the shareware episode in fact.

This.

No super shotgun = Barons serve as bosses.

[Alfonzo]

My thoughts summed up in this thread!

[Clonehunter]

geo said:

People always forget that you can run by Barons or other enemies. Even use other enemies to fight them.

Where's the fun in that?

[kmxexii]

Barons are pretty versatile in OG Doom. You can use them to make tense one on one fights in close quarters, they're excellent minibosses (and stand out well in a pack of non-barons), and you can use them to put pressure on the player when they have a more developed arsenal (rockets and plasma) where most other monsters would be blown away in short order.

[Daiyu_Xiaoxiang]

I don't think so.

1st Barons are already bosses in Episode 1 of both Ultimate Doom and 2002ADO.
2nd players can make use of infighting to lower Baron's health.
3rd Barons are not very hard to deal with, you still got the rocket launcher, plasma gun and BFG right even ther's no SSG?
4th in Ultimate Doom, Barons just 2.5 times more health than 2nd highest health monster cacodemons with 400HP.
5th Barons are very easy bosses compared to Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds, they have 3 to 4 times higher health than Barons!
6th Barons are just common in hard wads like AV, HR, SOD etc.
7th using just shotgun and chaingun to kill barons is not that hard and doesn't take a long time to do so, as long as you got enough ammo.
8th Berserk can make good use against Barons. In 2002ADO E2M4 ammo is quite limited in vary parts so fisting against them are needed. Berserk can actually finish Barons the fastest if careful.
9th compare to some new monsters in Doom 2, it's just typical for a Baron to have such health.
10th compare to that replaced super hell knight to Doom 3, Baron is just a piece of cake.

Maybe people have really complained that Barons have too much health so ID Software added a Hell Knight in Doom 2, but I really disagree Barons have too much health and hard to kill. Even there's no SSG, there's still a lot of easy methods to kill Barons.

[Graf Zahl]

The problem with the Baron is not that it's a 'hard' monster. Hard to kill yes, due to the high health points - but in many, many cases they just grind the game to a halt because it takes too long to kill them.

Here the common misconception 'more health = harder monster' comes into play. Look at Doom 2's new monsters:

Revenant 300 HP
Arachnotron 500 HP
Arch Vile 700 HP
Mancubus 600 HP

These are all considerably less resistant than the Baron and in many cases for precisely that reason much easier to use. 1000 HP for a commonly occuring monster are too much. It's fine as the first boss in Doom 1 but most subsequent occurences in the game wouldn't change much if they were replaced by Hell Knights.

Effectively a fight against a Baron is not more challenging than one against a Hell Knight. Both are pitifully boring monsters that are easy to handle. The only difference is that a fight against a Baron takes longer and wastes more ammo.

[Jodwin]

Graf Zahl said:

The problem with the Baron is not that it's a 'hard' monster. Hard to kill yes, due to the high health points - but in many, many cases they just grind the game to a halt because it takes too long to kill them.

Here the common misconception 'more health = harder monster' comes into play. Look at Doom 2's new monsters:

Revenant 300 HP
Arachnotron 500 HP
Arch Vile 700 HP
Mancubus 600 HP

These are all considerably less resistant than the Baron and in many cases for precisely that reason much easier to use. 1000 HP for a commonly occuring monster are too much. It's fine as the first boss in Doom 1 but most subsequent occurences in the game wouldn't change much if they were replaced by Hell Knights.

Effectively a fight against a Baron is not more challenging than one against a Hell Knight. Both are pitifully boring monsters that are easy to handle. The only difference is that a fight against a Baron takes longer and wastes more ammo.

This. No other monster ruins gameplay flow the same way as barons do. They're incredibly easy to kill, but take ages to do so (unless you have a BFG, but wasting a BFG shot on a single baron just to keep up the flow is ridiculous).

Barons are also terrible as boss monsters: Their behavior isn't even any different from imps. The only differences they have compared to imps is higher damage and more health, there's nothing special about the monster whatsoever. Imagine if back in time the two barons in E1 were arch-viles...now that would have been epic. But instead all we got were two uber imps on steroids. Bleh.

[kristus]

Jodwin said:

Barons are also terrible as boss monsters: Their behavior isn't even any different from imps. The only differences they have compared to imps is higher damage and more health, there's nothing special about the monster whatsoever. Imagine if back in time the two barons in E1 were arch-viles...now that would have been epic. But instead all we got were two uber imps on steroids. Bleh.

Same can be said about the cyberdemon.

[Jodwin]

kristus said:

Same can be said about the cyberdemon.

Yeah. The only redeeming factors the cybie has are splash damage and almost guaranteed instant death on hit. But other than that it's not a special monster behavior-wise.

[Sigvatr]

Barons are pretty much Doom's "tank" class. They soak up all of your damage, so other monsters can hurt you.

[Ultraboy94]

If their behaviour was more interesting, say they fired their projectiles in a three-way spread, then the Baron would be more useful. Shame, as I feel the Baron is one of the best-looking Doom monsters.

[Sigvatr]

Barons are best used in small and tight maps. They can be really brutal there. Check out chordg.

[Maes]

Ultraboy94 said:

If their behaviour was more interesting, say they fired their projectiles in a three-way spread, then the Baron would be more useful. Shame, as I feel the Baron is one of the best-looking Doom monsters.

Strain had a white-colored variation of the Baron called "Hell lord" (actually a modified mancubus) which fired a simultaneous 5 or 6-way plasma streams at high speeds. Now THAT sure was something to be on the watch for.

[Belial]

What Graf said.

UDoom maps that force you to kill more than one baron with sg+cg are flawed IMO.

The cyber can't be compared to the baron, its firing pattern and instant attack animation make it way more interesting and doing a 2 shot BFG kill is always fun.

[dew]

Belial said:

doing a 2 shot BFG kill is always fun.

so is killing two barons with one. barons can be used well, but that usually involves close combat with heavy weapons in tight spaces.

[j4rio]

Barons are okay. They may change the way you handle certain situations, like skipping a bunch and coming back with better stuff instead of taking them out with ssg/sg/cg. In maps with quite plenty of cells, it is speedrun-wise to take out even a single with BFG rather than anything else. Places like baron courtyard in av27 would just not work with simply HKs placed there instead.

[Daiyu_Xiaoxiang]

Maes said:

Strain had a white-colored variation of the Baron called "Hell lord" (actually a modified mancubus) which fired a simultaneous 5 or 6-way plasma streams at high speeds. Now THAT sure was something to be on the watch for.

So does Scythe 2 and Deus Vult 2 a Super Baron which throw both high-power mancubus's fireballs and super revenant's charging missiles.

[hex11]

Jodwin said:

This. No other monster ruins gameplay flow the same way as barons do. They're incredibly easy to kill, but take ages to do so (unless you have a BFG, but wasting a BFG shot on a single baron just to keep up the flow is ridiculous).

Ages? I can kill a baron within 5 seconds with a rocket launcher and 5-6 rockets. Or a few rockets and finish off with plasma or chaingun. You don't need BFG. I only use BFG when facing hordes or big boss like cyberdemon/spiderdemon.

And the bruiser bros in E1M8 were epic at the time. Now it's easy, because everyone got better at Doom. Back in the day, when I got to that map it was scary as hell. Most players were probably still using the default keyboard config, no mouse, and hadn't mastered proper straffing yet. I bet more than a few met their doom on that map, and I don't mean the teleporter trap. ;)

The other thing about barons is they're incredibly useful for quickly taking large groups of monsters via infighting. Their shots slay everything in its path, and then you can go finish off the survivors and the weakened baron.

You can also run past a baron when there's an opening. If you're low on ammo or only have pistol, that may be the best option. If there's no way to get past him, you can lure him into an area with more room to maneuver. Of course then you might have this pissed off baron lurking about the map, lose track of him and later run into him again, esp. in non-linear map layout. ;) But that just adds an extra dimension to the game.

[PRIMEVAL]

Jodwin said:

They're incredibly easy to kill, but take ages to do so (unless you have a BFG, but wasting a BFG shot on a single baron just to keep up the flow is ridiculous).

Ages...if you're doing a speed run. It takes all of 15-20 seconds to kill a Baron with a shotgun. If you don't have that sort of time to spare, you may want to loosen up your schedule.

[D_GARG]

alternatively, if you love the extensions of DOOM that has been done with DB and ZDoom, all you need is to chose between 2 things:

for Zdoom ony; use a DECORATE script

Universaly: make a DEHACKED file :D



if youre not willing for those alternatives; make a really smart mapping :)

[Blastfrog]

D_GARG said:

alternatively, if you love the extensions of DOOM that has been done with DB and ZDoom, all you need is to chose between 2 things:

for Zdoom ony; use a DECORATE script

Universaly: make a DEHACKED file :D



if youre not willing for those alternatives; make a really smart mapping :)

Um, wrong thread maybe?

[Vermil]

I think he's suggesting that if you don't like the Barron's health, you can change it with Dehacked, Decorate, Ded, etc.