How did they mess up so bad with the Spider Master Mind in Doom II

[ᒐack102]

Many Doom II enemies are threatening, challenging, basically puzzle encounters at points, and almost every enemy has a purpose. Almost.

 

The Spider Mastermind, Fianl boss of the first game, reappers as somewhat of a miniboss enemy. And being such a tanky hitscan enemy, you'd assume she'd be a threat right? Well, no. She appears FIVE times, compared to the CyberDemon's, I don't know, it feels like a lot though. At least the point are challenging, right?

 

Well let's see. In Map06, she is under a chrusher than you can activate and hide besides making her completely non threatening at all while you wait for her to die.

 

Map 20 (Yes it takes her very long to reappear) She is right in the front room with the Cyber Demon. So NOW she's threatening, right? Well, you can just get the Cyber Demon to kill her, which is random, but works most of the time.

 

Map 23, one of my favorites, she appears with her little baby arachnatrons, and you know what? If you're going for 100% kills, she's slightly threatening considering the room she's in. You can just shotgun here and rocket launch her too, or even get the arachnatrons to fight, getting her lower before actually fighting her. It's a neat encounter.

 

And Map 28, she appears twice in the same room, but there's a BFG that you can one shot her with, and Invincibility orbs. Oh yeah, a bunch of cell ammo too. And I mean Packs, the ones that give 100 cells. So yeah, it's possible.

 

The only slightly neat encounter is Map 23, KABOOM. The others are very pathetic. I don't know, lemme know what you think of these encounters.

[ChaingunChaCha]

Even in Map23 she's infight bait with her babies. But yeah her Doom 2 encounters are disappointing, especially Map28 imo. Nearing the end of the campaign and we get invulns and loads of cells just seems off. The highlight for me is her battle with the Cyber. As a kid I'd watch it over and over.

 

None particular come to mind right now but outside of the official wads there are some better encounters with her. Most revolve around her being in the middle of a large area with some cover. Sometimes the cover raises and lowers to keep you moving. And you've not got the BFG so have to take her down slowly. All while other enemies are in the room. She can deny space and offer a threat when used like that.

 

So I think she's usually terrible but some good placement and thought can use her to her advantage.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

She is more of a comedic relief than a boss in all her appearances. Crushed without a fight, squashed y cyberdemon, killed by her babies and finally you get to make arachnotrons kill her again, twice!

[Shepardus]

1 minute ago, ᒐack102 said:

She appears FIVE times, compared to the CyberDemon's, I don't know, it feels like a lot though.

The cyberdemon also appears five times in Doom II on UV, in levels 8, 10, 32, 20, and 29 (seven more cyberdemons in co-op, though!). The one in level 8 is an infighting gimmick that also gives you an invulnerability sphere just in case (multiple of them on lower skill levels), the one in level 10 has two nearby invulns, the one in level 32 also has an invuln available, the one in level 20 is mostly taken care of by infighting with the spiderdemon, and you can just run past the one in level 29 to the exit. I think id struggled to make the most of their boss monsters in general, not just the spiderdemon. The cyberdemon in E4M6 is the only really effective one I can think of across Ultimate Doom and Doom II.

[ᒐack102]

3 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

The cyberdemon also appears five times in Doom II on UV, in levels 8, 10, 32, 20, and 29 (seven more cyberdemons in co-op, though!). The one in level 8 is an infighting gimmick that also gives you an invulnerability sphere just in case (multiple of them on lower skill levels), the one in level 10 has two nearby invulns, the one in level 32 also has an invuln available, the one in level 20 is mostly taken care of by infighting with the spiderdemon, and you can just run past the one in level 29 to the exit. I think id struggled to make the most of their boss monsters in general, not just the spiderdemon. The cyberdemon in E4M6 is the only really effective one I can think of across Ultimate Doom and Doom II.

The ones in 8 and 10 are the best, 10 because there's a giant arena, and finding the invulnerability are secrets, so they're harder to find, and in level 8, it's very circumstancial, but if he wins and possibly leaves, while you're doing another room multitasking, he can probably catch you off guard.

[Roebloz]

The main problem with the Spider Mastermind is that her nature as a fast-firing hitscanner with a massive hitbox makes her extremely hard to use well, as if she's alone she's pretty easy to deal with, while if she has any support she just risks either killing said support or turning them against her, and given how wide her hitbox is it's pretty easy to see why she ends up as not much of a threat, and thus underutilized.

[LadyMistDragon]

Yeah...

 

Although when playing through for the first time, 28 at least seems like an epic setting and 23 has just constricted enough room that it's not so simple to just circle strafe and have the spiders all infight.

[Logamuffin]

I think the main issue is that the Spider Mastermind is just really anemic as a boss monster. Its freaking huge hitbox make it easy to shoot around corners or BFG and its damage is pitiful when compared to the Cyberdemon, the other boss monster. 

 

I’ve only played like 2 maps that made the Spider feel like an actual boss, and one of them used trickery to make it invincible for the majority of the map (Struggle’s Map11, for those curious). To be fair, pistol starting Dis does make for a somewhat engaging boss fight but I don’t pistol start so I’m not counting it.

[NintenGunner]

Something about how she was used in Doom 2 makes me think that they realized how pathetic she was as a boss in Doom 1. As much of a GZDoom-ism as it is, being able to oneshot the final boss of the video game with ease is pretty goddamn funny.

As for a more detailed look at how she's used, I think Roebloz's post sums my thoughts up pretty well. She's just a very tough enemy to utilize, and is just not much of a threat considering what exactly she is.

[Andromeda]

2 hours ago, Shepardus said:

The cyberdemon in E4M6 is the only really effective one I can think of across Ultimate Doom and Doom II.

Even that one can be dispatched easily with the invulnerability nearby.

[erzboesewicht]

I agree about the poor SMM placement in most of Doom 2. In PWADs she's often used better (BTSX, Eternal Doom ...). In open areas without BFG she is a threat, more than the cybie actually. But her problem is the tankiness. A SMM, or more than one, with the size of a baron or cybie following you through all the map with you only armed with SSG and perhaps rockets would actualy be a respectable monster.

[RileyXY1]

1 hour ago, NintenGunner said:

Something about how she was used in Doom 2 makes me think that they realized how pathetic she was as a boss in Doom 1. As much of a GZDoom-ism as it is, being able to oneshot the final boss of the video game with ease is pretty goddamn funny.

As for a more detailed look at how she's used, I think Roebloz's post sums my thoughts up pretty well. She's just a very tough enemy to utilize, and is just not much of a threat considering what exactly she is.

No wonder Sigil 2 had to triple her health just to make her a better final boss.

[Lila Feuer]

1993. The second proper FPS to follow Wolf3D. Yeah, there were no standards. Even masters of their craft still make mistakes.

[Li'l devil]

I've seen an argument that id Software struggled to use not just bosses in Doom 2 but also all the new non-boss enemies. This is certainly true with arch-viles to some extent. The debut one in map 11 isn't effective, for instance.

Or pain elemental's debut on UV where it can't even attack you in vanilla due to the lost soul limit.

[Cutman 999]

56 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

1993. The second proper FPS to follow Wolf3D. Yeah, there were no standards. Even masters of their craft still make mistakes.

On paper works the same as wolfenstein bosses, were you just need to hide behind cover to win. In execution is even worse than that, at least wolf3d bosses don't take more than 200 map units just by existing

[Cutman 999]

5 hours ago, ᒐack102 said:

 

Map 20 (Yes it takes her very long to reappear) She is right in the front room with the Cyber Demon. So NOW she's threatening, right? Well, you can just get the Cyber Demon to kill her, which is random, but works most of the time.

 

Literally a gag section, lol, it is obviously meant to be for infighting the same way tricks and traps' cyberdemon is supposed to fight the barons around him.

Edited March 21 by Cutman 999

[ALilGrayBoi]

Wouldn’t even matter if the spider had interesting encounters. She dies in 2 BFG shots anyway. She’s only a threat when she has backup but the massive hit box makes infighting very easy. 

[Andromeda]

13 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

I've seen an argument that id Software struggled to use not just bosses in Doom 2 but also all the new non-boss enemies. This is certainly true with arch-viles to some extent. The debut one in map 11 isn't effective, for instance.

Or pain elemental's debut on UV where it can't even attack you in vanilla due to the lost soul limit.

The arch-vile is actually fairly effective, the only cover is by fleeing the room and if it targets you in the mean time the flames blind you well enough to prevent an easy escape. As for the pain elemental it debuts in an optional room on MAP08, which is a solid introduction if you happen to get into that area especially from a pistol-start.

Edited March 21 by Andromeda

[Sinnesloeschen]

Too big, hitscan, slow, one attack no tricks (The Cyberdemon atleast is a bit more lean, less slow and flying rockets can catch you off guard).

 

The spider mastermind just sucks design-wise which makes it difficult to utilize it in a satisfying manner. It's basically just a very beefy turret.

But it looks cool as hell.

 

FPS games back then generally had problems with shit boss fights. And also usually shit endings. :p

 

I mean Doom, Duke3D, Blood, Heretic, they all had bosses that mostly sucked. Blood even has its own shit spider boss fight.

[Roebloz]

I think one solution to make the Spider Mastermind more threatening in Doom 2 would have been to make it impossible for her to infight with her children, which would have at least made the MAP23 and 28 fights a lot more dangerous. (Well, as long as you remove the Invulnerabilities from MAP28)

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I always thought most of Doom 2's issues (including poor SM usage and that stupid abomination called the Icon of Sin) were caused by a lack of leadership. Doom 1 had Tom Hall (for a time) and then John Romero supervising most of its development. For Doom 2, Tom Hall was gone, Romero ignored it in order to play rock star while also helping with Heretic/Hexen, Carmack forgot Doom even existed and was working on Quake, and so Doom 2 was quickly slapped together by the remainder of Id without much oversight, supervision, or creative direction from the people who made Doom 1 successful. In hindsight I think it's incredible how well Doom 2 actually did, because personally I always thought Doom 1 was a much better game.

Edited March 21 by aRottenKomquat

[Stupid Bunny]

They had to make the final boss giant and scary for full impact, as is usual for final bosses; but the problem is that nowadays you can make the boss indestructible save for weak points or some other exploit, whereas in Doom the spider’s face and brain and knees and toes and empty void above the arms are all equally vulnerable. This means that neither you nor any other monsters really need to aim to land a “direct” hit.  The SSG can bear its full weight against it from a healthy distance. BFG tracers are eating right through it. Combine this with a repeating hitscan spread attack that is guaranteed to antagonize everything in the room and the spider’s impressiveness is suddenly its biggest liability. This is before taking into account blockmap chicanery that lets imps and pinkies come up and tickle the poor thing to death, again a function of its size.

 

The icon of sin is a pretty lame final boss in many ways but it was at least an attempt to try something to this effect. It’s a worthwhile concept that just didn’t really land right.

Edited March 21 by Stupid Bunny

[Maximum Matt]

On 3/22/2024 at 5:28 AM, Roebloz said:

(Well, as long as you remove the Invulnerabilities from MAP28)

Yeah, FIVE!?! Even on UV??