I'd like to see more intricate infighting. Like two monsters that just have an absolute hatred for each other, and will go after each other if they get a whiff of the other's smell or something. 

Q1's monsterset, even default, is probably the best ever. Out of the new abilities you mention, I'd say wall/ceiling climbing is by far the best, in that it really adds to the gameplay. Poison sucks (it was in CoE and dropped for SoE). Homing shots, ala Vores, I think has been exploited (by me - lol) too much - there should be a monster with homing shots that do much less damage but home faster. That way, it wouldn't be a linear "run away, find an obstacle" thing. I realize I did force the player to do this in nsoe3 and 4, but to me it seemed like Vores hadn't been used that way before and if you really wanted to, you could take them out (otherwise they were a constant source of tension).

Quoth additions are extremely well designed, especially the Gaunt. Quoth basically outdoes all other new monsters, in actually creating new monsters that the player must fight in a new way (although I think nsoe bane has quite a few tricks up his sleeve).

Overall, new monsters fall into two categories: those that change the gameplay (ie Quoth additions) and those who are basically "same old" but look different. Even now there are very likely new "styles" of monster that have yet to be implemented/exploited. 

soldiers who use cover, and retreat to more cover then blind-fire, or pop out from behind cover, take a few shots then hide again 

Travail's take on poisoning the player was fairly cool, it'd be great if people used them in their own projects more. If one would get poisoned, it was usually their own fault, rather than the unfair gameplay's.

As for the rest of ideas:
spawning/cloning - it's one painfully cliched method.

teleportation - overdone.

shields - I usually dislike shielded monsters (if the designer wants people to waste ammo on a monster, why not just give them more hit points?) but the Death Lord (Quoth) did it well.


An idea I recently had is making a monster damagable, but impervious to pain - basically it wouldn't go into pain frames unless seriously damaged. It would make the player have to act quickly before he finds himself cornered by a group of those. 

Will muse on it. 

Cover makes things so static. It reduces a game that's about movement and aiming and target priority and dodging and shooting to basically precision whackamole. Not really fun IMO. The way you usually deal with monsters who behave that way is to snipe them off or just go up to them and execute them in their hiding places, which also isn't much fun.

Quake really is better when the maps are interconnected and non-linear, because it makes you move around and mix it up and deal with monsters from all angles - czg03, dm3rmx, and gmsp3 are all awesome examples of this. Real linear maps don't work so well, because the player winds up in a pattern of "go forward 5% more, back up while you kill the stuff chasing you, go forward a little more than before." Face to face firing-squad cover gameplay is more suited to that kind of level design. 

it would increase realism? 

it would increase realism?

You're really not making an friends here, you know? 

Quake needs more low-mid level monsters. Something in the 3-DBS-shots-to-kill range. You can only arrange ogres and hknights so many different ways before you want to eat a gun. Look here:

http://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/quakefaq/qfaq.html#8-1

There's a jump from the 60-80 HP's to the 200's. That's the perfect gap.

They don't need to be special, they can still be cannon fodder to any player with a nailgun, but their behavior should be such that you can't afford to ignore them while you take care of the more immediately threatening Shambler or Fiend.

On poison: the drowning mechanic, and the poison headcrabs in HL2, both have a great mechanic. They reduce your health but not permanently - it comes back over time. Momentarily injects the panicky tension of only having five health left without being overly cruel.

On monsters spawning monsters: how is this cliche when no quake monster has ever done this? the pain elemental from doom2 was swell, and had a way of also becoming a "high-priority" dangerous monster because you'd be swimming in other monsters if you didn't deal with it. Same with the arch-vile - resurrecting the things you already killed (and also being able to blow your ass sky high) made it a serious threat.

If Quake had something smallish and fairly pushover-y like a lost soul, this would be ideal. If spawns weren't so annoying the vomitus would have fit right in. (how about something that gives birth to scrags in mid-air?) 

Ricky, I'll steal kell's favorite valve quote here for you:

Realism is a tool, not a goal.

Let that be the last of this, now, this thread shouldn't turn into the same old for & against realism circlejerk. 

Quake needs more low-mid level monsters <...> afford to ignore them while you take care of the more immediately threatening Shambler or Fiend.

We have a monster to fill this exact role in mind for Quoth.

Also: alternative swim monsters. Don't know when that'll happen though :/ 

If Quake had something smallish and fairly pushover-y like a lost soul, this would be ideal.

How about a vore queen that gives birth to vorelings, a la the Gonarch from Half-Life 1 birthing baby crabs? 

"like a lost soul only not even more annoying and with a properly sized bounding box" :)

For the mid-monster, I suspect something like a hell knight in training would be enough. Halfway between a knight and a death knight - still opens you up like canned meat up close, but hasn't fully mastered the fire spell enough to produce the full spread. But, something Quake hasn't got: monsters that can fire on the move. Maybe that's their trick.

Something from RTCW and Hexen and countless other games: monsters with shields that only protect them directionally. It's not an ammo waster that way, but makes the monster more unique to fight. I can easily see knights in Quake dragging around big towering blood-spattered kite shields, although implementing the hit detection in Quake would be ... non-trivial. Preach?

Something from Byzantine: a monster that fires a projectile which sticks where it hits for a moment, then explodes. Has the immediacy of a rocket (doesn't uselessly bounce all the hell over like ogrenades) but with player-avoidability of a grenade (you can still dance away from it if lands near you). Direct hits still blow up immediately.