(WIP) The Ultimate Icon Of Sin

[Cardboard Marty]

Conclusions of reasons: Lack of HP on boss, lack of damage from boss, lack of attacks from boss.

I hate to be argumentative, but that is completely incorrect. I tried using some of these mods while fighting the boss and it still took forever. I stand by my earlier statement that has been echoed many times in this thread, it has wayyyy too much health among other things.

[Valherran]

Conclusions of reasons: Lack of HP on boss, lack of damage from boss, lack of attacks from boss.

I hate to be argumentative, but that is completely incorrect. I tried using some of these mods while fighting the boss and it still took forever. I stand by my earlier statement that has been echoed many times in this thread, it has wayyyy too much health among other things.

Should have probably put "or" in between those.

But in any case, I averaged about 4 min in each easy rated run, about 7 on the mediums, the hard ones took well over 10 min. The HP amount it currently has is nothing compared to other things I have fought from other MODs. Psycho Phobia I think still has the scariest Doom boss I have ever fought, and that SoB took me about 30 min to take down, would be alot longer if it had help like this one does.

[Cardboard Marty]

It's possible that you might just be a better player than me (actually it's pretty likely to be honest), but I think the point still stands; He has 7.5 times the health of a Cyberdemon. I guess that amount of HP would be okay if he was given more variety, discernible points of damage, and a better arena. The only reason I continue to post in here is because I really like what I see and I think it has a lot of potential, it just needs a bit more work.

[Ghostbreed]

You peeps seems to forget that this a WIP!!!

[TheDarkArchon]

You peeps seems to forget that this a WIP!!!

Work In Progress does not mean that it cannot be criticized.

[Nightfall]

You peeps seems to forget that this a WIP!!!

I think you might want to correct your English before making inflammatory claims like that, in huge bold red text even... I don't think people really are convinced yet that it's fully done, to be honest.

[Max Dickings]

I played it with Brutal Doom and it seemed fine to me. His HP didn't feel too too high, first try I only had to resurrect once (twice if you count "suicide" from firing point blank at a spectre I didn't see...)

As usual great work!

[Quadruplesword]

Maybe you could have the number and strength of the monsters it spawns increase as it's health drops?
Like at the start only zombiemen, shotgunguys and imps spawn, then later revenants and chaingun dudes, all until it is spawning pain elementals and archviles.
You could also have more and more of the monster be exposed as it teleports. It could start with just its' head, then it's torso and two arms, then its' whole upper body and finally the whole thing.

That's a neat idea, except it wouldn't make sense for him to spawn zombies. Maybe instead have him start with imps and pinkies and work his way up from there. Also, I think spawning nothing but archies and pain elementals near the end might be overkill, considering that just one pain elemental or arch-vile can throw a monkey wrench into your strategy, let alone multiples.

You peeps seems to forget that this a WIP!!!

Yes, which is exactly why we're discussing our criticisms concerning this mod. It won't get better if Mark doesn't get feedback.

[Untitled]

Alright, my thoughts on it.
I'm generally a boss enthusiast (I love big impressive doom monsters), so I thought this was pretty cool. In fact, playing it was pretty fun from my point of view. From my experience of boss making, here are my nitpicks, using Mephistopheles, The Final Boss of Samsara/Stronghold, as reference:
-30000 was a bit much in terms of health, unless you can get up close to BFG him, which you can't. Well yes, I've made bosses with far more (Mephistopheles has 200,000 hp, for instance), in general, the situation you fight him in means the BFG is nigh-useless (too long range), so killing him with the BFG takes a while, plus Mephistopheles is balanced for multiplayer, so 200,000 ends up only being 50,000 or so per player (assuming 4 players), and you get pretty close to him, allowing you to use superweapons galore, which can be a HUGE difference. This boss, on the other hand, takes forever to kill.
-The ability for the boss to move would be nice, as now it feels rather than trying to shoot at a hole in a wall, it feels more like just shooting at the wall.
-The arena you fight him in could do to use some more cover, as to be able to have an easier time dodging the roar of hax.
-Said arena could also use more ammo, as ammo stresses in Boss Fights are never fun. Mephistopheles, for reference, gave you more cells than you're EVER going to use.
-Finding some new music would be cool, as the current one, epic as it is, just doesn't convey the epicness for me quite as well as I think it could. Though music is a highly subjective thing, so I'm not really going to make a fuss about it.
-Not enough attacks. For reference, Mephistopheles has 14 different attacks (though a few attacks are either A:More Decoration than actual attack, B: Rare, or C: Just a variation of an existing attack, so more like 9), and this has...6, (The summon, the fireball with the trail, the mancubi fireball spam, the lightning, the roar, and the revenant missile spam which he only does when low on health, 7 if you include the upgraded fireball spam which he does at low health.), and you'll generally get familiar with his attacks very fast, since it takes too long.
-Although optional, Multiple phases would be nice. The main problem is this boss wears out its arsenal way too quickly, and starts becoming tedious. Throwing a curve for the players and coming up with something would be nice. This is the short coming of Mephistopheles, but he has 14 attacks with varying probabilities, and tends to combo the attacks together in unique fashion which tends to stay fresh, so it tends to not come up. The reason it doesn't have them is because the multiplayer experience was less than optimal. And yes, while this does have a second "phase" so to speak (The revenant spam/Meteor shower), more phases are always good if they're balanced.
-More Fire! More Flame! More Heat! More Burning! More Flashiness! This is like, one of the lords of hell we're talking about here! If anyone deserves The Special Effects of ZDoom Magic, it's someone like our boss here!

Overall, I'm very impressed. I found this very fun to play through, and man, it's much better than the old "Icon of Sin". As much as people were complaining about sprite rotations, it's not like he looks at anything else, but yeah, I'd get some rotations if possible since some day, some one is gonna try this in multiplayer mode, and well, it'll look silly when he looks at you and fires a projectile to someone else. Still, pretty good boss you have there. I think this is pretty good, and I think this has the potential to be awesome.

[LkMax]

Holy shit, this boss is awesome.
The end in Doom would've been epic if it was on the original game.
(PS: Haven't tried it yet, only saw the video demonstration).

[Ghostbreed]

People praise this more than it deserves. Sure, it may be alot more cool than that wall texture but it's really not much different than the wall. It just stands there and attacks you with spawn cubes and some other ripped attacks from Strife and such.

[Marisa the Magician]

Yeah the fact it was still mostly static threw me off a bit.

I think my concept is better, but that's just like... my opinion...

I wanted the vanilla fight to be kept, but when the icon of sin had appeared to be defeated, it would just move its head back into a hole, revealing a much bigger area beyond, where you'd have to fight it for a second time, it being kind of a cross between said icon of sin, a bruiser brother and heretic's minotaur, with a height around the 100 meter mark, or something. I never take into account engine limitations when I think of these things, so I wanted the fight to involve climbing on his body as if it were a colossus.

This concept was later kept for another character. :V

[Quadruplesword]

People praise this more than it deserves. Sure, it may be alot more cool than that wall texture but it's really not much different than the wall. It just stands there and attacks you with spawn cubes and some other ripped attacks from Strife and such.

People are allowed to have different opinions, my friend . It may be basically the same fight as before with some added stuff but the presentation just blows the original out of the water and that is enough for me to say this is an excellent improvement on the original, at least in my opinion. I've always thought that a boss fight is 60% presentation, 40% actual boss fight, at least for me. If a boss fight is easy, but has a kick ass presentation (i.e. good setting, music, ambience, etc.) it still is well designed in my opinion, whereas if a boss is tough as nails but the presentation is lackluster, it leaves me feeling a little empty afterwards.

[Untitled]

Quadruplesword is right. I always believed in a triangle-30%/30%/30%/10%, of Presentation/Actual Boss Fight/Play-testedness/"Special Feeling".
Presentation: How boss is presented,the music choice, the pre-boss build-up, so on, so on. Casually bringing a boss out of a box, for instance, wouldn't evoke the same rush.
Actual Boss Fight: I believe my earlier comment describes this in better detail.
Play-Testedness: Because a fight is no fun if it bugs up and clearly wasn't designed well.
"Special Feeling": I always have some sort of special switch with these things. Some bosses, even if it's theoretically terrible, still can give me that special feeling where it still *seems* to play well to me personally and vice-versa. It's hard to describe.

[Ghostbreed]

Sigh, when did I say that different opinions is a no-no?