Examples Of Unusual Monster Prioritization?

[DSC]

One of the advices people often gave to beginners to the world of Doom was "prioritize certain monsters, like pain elementals and arch-viles". For the context of most vanilla style levels it seems like sound advice. However, it has been torn apart by some of the more knowledgeable members of the community, because it doesn't apply to every single encounter you might come across playing a user-made map. Over the years, as the players gained more and more skill and level design knowledge, many mapping styles such as slaughter and combat-puzzle started to develop and mature, and with those kinds of wads also came new design philosophies. Many of the fights common to those genres employ very strict set-ups that often require some very specific ways of playing in order to conquer. And this is where my question comes up: what are your favorite examples of fights with such an unusual progression?

 

I personally am not an highly-skilled player, so I can't really commentate on detail about most ultra-hard wads and their intricacies, but I believe I still can contribute with an example easy enough to understand for everybody. In the circular room of Sunlust MAP29, according to the monster prioritization strategy, attacking the arch-viles first would be the path to follow, however in practice it's a terrible idea. There's just too many of them and you would get fried instantly. Plus, the only cover you can take from them is constantly moving around, and the only way to get to that cover is clogged up by imps. What you are supposed to do instead is to focus on the imps, killing them to open a path to safety from the viles. After you are done with the fodder, you can press a switch in order to activate a crusher and effortlessly kill the AVs.

[SPG]

Not quite the specific examples I think you're asking for in this thread, but this topic reminds me of the video linked below. I was hoping would turn into a series, but I get the impression that's not going to happen. I'd love to see other videos like it though!

 

[roadworx]

iirc in plutonia 2's map21, there's a cyber that you need to use in order to take down a big cacocloud.

 

there's a lot of maps that use cybers as a helper of sorts in general, actually. so that's a pretty good example of a fairly common way of having rather unusual monster prioritization.

[Orii]

My favourite examples of unusual monster prioritization has got to be fights where actually you need to prioritize gaining space back instead of targetting a specific type of monster, and a great example of this is the RSK fight from 1x1 Map17. With 4 cyberdemons on one side of a spiral staircase, archviles and revenants at the other end, and then lower tier monsters arriving through teleporters behind you, the fight is incredibly cramped.

In terms of prioritization, you can't focus on getting to one of the corners and focusing down either the cybers or the archviles, and its also not as simple as keeping the cybers alive to infight and killing everything else, you need to fight for your space and show some love (BFG) to both the cybers and the archviles, all while keeping the space behind you clear too.

(Video linked at the fight im talking about)

I adore this level and how uncomfortable it makes you feel in every fight, always needing to fight to keep your space which often leads to typical monster prioritization taking a backseat. :) 

[fruity lerlups]

In Map 12 of Rush, in the BFG section, after getting the BFG and leaving an archville spawns perched on the highground whilst a cyberdemon roams in the level surrounding the archville, if you keep thr archville alive and gets the revenants it revives to attack the Cyberdemon, you can basically get them to slowly thin each other out, eventually the archville may die from the cyberdemons splash damage while attacking the revs, and the cyberdemon will be so weakened from archie and revenants you can one tap it. You can witness it at 10:06 in this video, 

 

[Fonze]

Atypical monster prioritization is one of the fundamental building blocks of combat puzzles and something I adore. Thinking outside of the box and coming up with something unconventional that works well is super satisfying to me, on either end of the playing/mapping hobby. 

 

It's been years since I've played much to be able to come up with a specific example outside of my own use or the iwads, all of which I guess are too burned into my brain to forget, but I'll give a general shout out to nih and rd as they've both (individually and collectively) made some super fun encounters that reward out of the box thinking. Also +1 to combat puzzles revolving around preserving space as Orii mentioned. The feeling of claustrophobia as you fight for space is so visceral and evocative that these types perhaps speak the best to me.

 

Lastly, from the iwads, of course love for e2m9 as being among the first combat puzzles, even if its solution is relegated to infighting, but also e3m8 for similar reasons. Both maps become increasingly awkward without provoking infighting. It could probably also be argued that the IoS fights are combat puzzles of sorts as well.

[bofu]

I've done it a few times. In one map, the player gets ambushed by perched imps and revenants, but the imps are perched beneath the revenants, and thus, they'll eat the autoaim before the revenants do. Meanwhile, a swarm of pinkies get released into the courtyard.

 

Normally, most players would focus the revenants, but doing so in this case leaves the player open to getting locked in place by pinkies. The pinkies become target 1 because even if they get aggroed by the imps or revenants, they're still getting in the player's way, leading to potential face rockets.

 

In other areas, mancubi and arachnotrons can take the top slot because their big hitboxes limit movement. And even imps can become a top priority if there's an Archvile hiding behind them, not because you want to get to the Archvile, but because killing them will buy you some time before you shift to the next priority target.

 

Any monster in your face is probably a much bigger priority than even an Archvile or Pain Elemental if the geometry is set up a certain way.

 

 

[slugger]

 

In the first post of this thread baja blast rd. talks about an encounter where, counter to the orthodox Doom strategy, the best thing to do is to just sit in place and let stuff fill up the room. Otherwise your precious meat shields walk off behind the thing you want them to infight with.

 

There's a thread I can't find now where someone was talking about a combat encounter with cyberdemons, pinkies, and a huge custom enemy that shoots fireballs. They were saying something similar, like the fight is much easier if you stop attacking and let the most obvious targets fan out.

 

One of the reasons I love Doom and it still feels so fresh is because the enemies have such an expressive, wide variety of applications. In modern games I rarely think "what a useful enemy"; they have no function beyond executing their animations and shooting at you, or they were placed to be exploited in a prefabricated way. In Doom the dynamic demons can change at the drop of a hat into friends and even rivals. Any of them, any time, like you're herding a bunch of angry pigs, playing them off against one another.

 

And it works so well, from an aesthetic/narrative standpoint, because they're demons who are violent above all else, so it's sensible and satisfying that they'll turn on their "allies" almost as easily as turning on you, while forgetting just as quickly as they're enraged. In other games people would ask "why are these braindead soldiers firing on their own guys for five minutes just because they're annoyed at one instance of accidental friendly fire?" and it would make the enemies seem pathetic and uncoordinated; in Doom that pathetic, dog-eat-dog nature just emphasizes the evil and insanity of the Hell setting.

Edited January 29, 2024 by slugger

[baja blast rd.]

Yeah this might be counter-orthodoxy, but I don't use target prioritization as a concept at all while playing hard wads. I find it is better to think of what I want to accomplish in a broader way. The answer might be killing something specific (which is what target prioritization does, so I don't lose out on that) but it might also be something really specific/arbitrary (and tunnel-visioning on target prioritization would cause you to miss out on those strategies more often).

 

Target prioritization is more useful for regular difficulty wads. In those wads, decisiveness counts for a lot, and if you shoot at the right thing and do an okay job of avoiding damage, you'll beat most encounters. And playing around with different combinations of what to shoot at might get you past an impasse. 

 

In hard wads, though, it's not uncommon that every combination of priorities fails if you're missing some nuance or not good enough at some required tactic. So I've found it's not the best way of thinking.