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. 

<quote>On monsters spawning monsters: how is this cliche when no quake monster has ever done this?</quote>

Gremlins? The vore queen idea does sound cool though.

For explosive death there should be a jetpack enforcer dude (loses control of jetpack or goes kamikaze on you). If you armed them with rapid fire lasers you could say they were used for aerial defence before bob drones were invented to replace them. 

Something from Byzantine: a monster that fires a projectile which sticks where it hits for a moment, then explodes.

Didn't Nehahra have a player weapon like this - don't know if it was used by monsters though. 

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.

shamblers have that bit coded in them. they always play their pain sound, but don't do a pain animation unless the damage is over 50~60 and even then, only a percentage of the time.

good discussion so far, guys :) and yes, i'd like to see a monster that does resurrection.

i think the main problem though is it creates uncertainty about how much ammo is needed. resurrection would need to be kept in check-- only a certain number rezzed at a time (or even cap it to a static number). the death lord's shield adds enough uncertainty as it is (if the player is frugal and only attacks when the shield is down vs firing when shield is up). 

The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die. 

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.

hm... monster_death_guard? :P well, i guess he could have had slightly less health, but your description is almost verbatim of when kell was describing them to me. :) they fire single projectiles and have a very slow (and avoidable) sword chop attack.


oh: i also think quake can use more bosses. ^_^
stuff that's more complex that just attacking or gimicks. monster spawning maybe, minions, attack protection/deflection, healing(limited amounts and interruptible), different phases (completely/mostly different ai for health levels), etc etc...
or maybe something like a boss that's actually more than one monster. two bosses that work in unison (shared ai) and that have different complementing abilities.
bosses that creates dynamic goals during combat that are more than just 'run for cover'.
i guess i'm pulling from experiences in WoW with bosses like eradar twins or kalecgos/sathrovarr.
maybe a boss that will teleport you into a different area to fight a different boss simultaneously or maybe a very slow attack that will take a large portion of health and in unavoidable but can be interrupted by explosives or something... 

The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die.

i like this! what you could do is only have it resurrect certain monsters and you could have different skins for the different levels of healthiness after each rez. like say a grunt who ends up looking almost like a zombie by the end. :P

i dunno if this would overload quake for skins and stuff. :P 

some monsters with shootemup like bullet patterns with fairly slow projectile speeds. A few simple ones used in different combination could result in some hectic action that encourages movement. The hell knight already has an attack like this and I think I remember someone using a q2 grunt with a plasma gun that also worked rather well. 

the cool thing i like about his attack is that sometimes you can just over a bolt. even though i'm not a fan of rail shooters, i do like that kind of thing in a few monsters. spread attacks that are slightly random like the hell knight i think can be a good thing.

i liked the stomp attack the guardian has in doom3. it's not random, the fire balls are even spaced, but they move slow and are avoidable fairly easily. they're the kind of thing that keeps you moving, but also thinking about where you're moving to. 

It would be interesting to see the Shambler's imperviousity code implemented in a lower class monster, though. Something that would serve as a more melee-oriented Death Knight replacement, I guess.

About resurrection: Omus' idea of halving the HP is fine though it may be kind of useless for stronger monsters (i.e. Shamblers or Gugs). An alternative would be bringing back dead monsters as Zombies, though that may be inappropiate in a few cases (Rotfish? Vores?) 

I've got an idea for a ghoul monster, but don't know if I'll be implementing it.

The idea is to rip off Lovecraft's ghouls and have a pack of them living in tunnels inaccessable to the player - spawnpoints, basically, but with a limited amount of ghouls.

If injured then the ghoul runs away, heading for the nearest tunnel entrance to escape, every ten seconds or so the game checks if there are any ghouls hiding in the tunnels and if so, spawns one from one of the points (that's not near the player). This may sound like an NPC creature, but they'd still attack the player, and maybe try to feast on zombies as well - but then run away almost immediately as the zombie fought back.

Also to have them recover health by eating corpses.

As for spawning, I was thinking of a necromancer type enemy - creating zombies out of dead grunts and / or enforcers. The ammo problem is solved by the replacement for the player axe, which can gib zombies.

Thanks for that list, Lun. 

A monster that blows up corpses. Cleans up the mess after large hordes! 

one other problem with resurrection, at least if we're talking an addition to quoth (or any mod with this feature).

corpse removal. :(

sure the ability to turn off corpse removal on some monsters is there, but it would be very telling if all of a sudden, the corpses of the monsters you're killing don't disappear. it would be an all too obvious sign that a rezzing monster was up ahead.
then you could just disable corpse removal globally? well yes, but corpse removal was to help huge maps with edicts. that means huge maps couldn't really have rezzer monsters. :S