What makes a good cyberdemon fight?

[DragonsForLunch]

I recently released a level where you fight a cyberdemon. While designing the space for the fight I was thinking about what makes a good cyberdemon fight. I came up with the following:

 

• Make sure the area is big enough that the player can easily move around the cyberdemon while avoiding missiles
• Add some cover to give the player some breathing room and allow the player to "lure" the cyberdemon to it
• Weapon requirements: SSG, Rocketlauncher, Plasmarifle
• verticality can be used to dodge the the cyberdemons rocket so it fires into the ground. 

 

What do you guys think are some good principles for a cyberdemon fight? What do you think of the fight in E2M8?

Edited July 26, 2020 by DragonsForLunch
Added link to level

[Isquilt]

Rocket launcher really isn't that great for fighting cyberdemons, since cyberdemons cannot take splash damage and on average that's the majority of the damage each rocket deals. The super shotgun works, but it's painful. The plasma rifle works quite well, but it's not as ammo efficient as the BFG for the same task.

 

Verticality can be helpful and it can be painful. Dodging rockets is easier than dodging explosions, and if the rockets are hitting the ground or ceiling there's a lot that can go wrong.

 

A single cyberdemon isn't objectively very threatening to an experienced player, but a cyberdemon with a horde of enemies is inviting a lot of infighting. A couple of cyberdemons are some of the best damage output a player can get, but that's not a bad thing in encounter design. The question then becomes how the mapper controls the infighting: a cyberdemon fight where you need to keep taking cover from archvile turrets is absolutely a different thing than a cyberdemon fight where there's a wave of barons between you and it. Contrast Doom 2's MAP08 with E2M8, and if I'm picking something I think is memorable also Scythe.WAD's MAP23. Breathing room is good if you want to lower the stress of the encounter instead of raising it, but at a certain point all the breathing room a player really needs in a solo-fight is to have nothing directly behind them and about 64 map units of space to dodge from left to right.

 

Another aspect of cyberdemon encounter is that it's not just a question of what the player can do to the cyberdemon, but what the player can have the cyberdemon do for them. This can be used in more than just an in-fighting sense: something like an invulnerability sphere for cyberdemon-assisted rocket jumps can be a major boon. Or without an invulnerability, putting a megasphere and a BFG at the destination? Similarly, examine the same ideas for potential level-breaking skips: maybe you should leave those sorts of things in but make sure they can't actually break the level, or maybe you want to take some measures to prevent them in a certain level.

 

If you want a challenging cyberdemon encounter, it's about making the player focus on more than just the cyberdemon. The cyberdemon is a high priority target because it can instantly kill a player that doesn't have enough armor, but there are other things that can take just as much priority. A cloud of pain elementals, a swarm of revenants, a couple of archviles, another cyberdemon (or two), and so on. Alternatively, treacherous footing, high precision movement requirements, or just little space to maneuver over all are all good options.

 

If you want a memorable cyberdemon encounter without necessarily going for challenge, then I think it's more of a question of framing the fight with the level than it is about the fight itself. A cyberdemon used for the first time as a final boss of a grueling fight at the end of a challenging map is much more memorable than a cyberdemon used as a random mid-boss, in my opinion. E2M8 has that going for it, as an episode boss, but it is otherwise rather dull. Monster teleport lines could probably be used to good effect here, as in Doom 2's MAP11.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Isquilt

[Nevander]

What you came up with is good, sans Rocket Launcher. You can also use Cyberdemons as distractions or other obstacles the player deals with at a later time, like the first map of Ancient Aliens. Clever players can use its rockets to kill enemies behind them.