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Deadwing

Hitscanners: Yay or nay?

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What's your opinion about hitscanner usage on Doom? Do you find fun to fight them? (for example, a barrage of chaingunners?)

 

IMO, one of the aspects that makes Doom so dynamic is the mixture of projectile monsters and hitscanners, which enhances the target priority aspect  and the way you should move (hitscanners priorize taking cover while projectile enemies allows more space to move)

 

Anyway, these weak but deadly folks are used in lots of different ways by the community, sometimes working well, sometimes not as much (?) Which way do you prefer, if any at all?

 

 

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Answer: Yay

 

Hitscanners are formidable opponents, fun to fight and very fun to watch them infight. Certainly, they can be annoying too, but in my case I've never raged because of them. Since some of them are the weakest enemies, watching them infight each other or stronger enemies is something funny. In general, I liked whatever way they are used, whether as snipers, turrets, close combat, oh wait, exceptions could be them very distanced and hard to kill due to autoaim. That and hitscanners behind fake walls. Zombiemen are funny, Shotgunners are not jokers, Chaingunners are deadly, SS Nazis don't do much damage. 

And my favourite hitscanner is the Spider Mastermind, she is the only one that will likely kill a Cyberdemon in close ranged combat. Although is not common to see her being used as a real threat in wads, partially because she has a propensity to become paralyzed when infighting, and people take advantage of the single-BFG-shot to get rid of her.

 

22 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

these weak but deadly folks

Don't forget about the Queen of the monsters (;

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They definitely have their uses, but in the majority of my experiences with them, they're used the way they are in MAP15: Industrial Zone. They're just fucking everywhere, around every corner, behind every crate, sniping from cliffs, spread out all over the place etc. They're especially common at the start of a long map or a map intended to be early in a mapset, yet they are the most difficult to avoid taking damage from.

 

Hitscanners are good to provoke the player to shoot in situations where they might go full pacifist to thwart the mapper's teleport ambush traps. Chaingunners especially are pretty good at stalling the player from moving around too much. Shotgun guys and zombie men are basically walking supply crates that sometimes hurt you. Projectile monsters are generally more fun though.

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I like them. They're an integral part of Doom.

 

The Spider Mastermind is the most deadly monster in the game when used correctly. Same with Chaingunners. Hitscanners will always be more dangerous than projectile based enemies, and that's what creates tense combat situations. You get hit instantly, so there is a sense of priority with what needs to be killed first. This becomes conflicting when you introduce Arch-viles and Pain Elementals into the mix. Alas, le tense moment.

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I was just reminded of an idea I had for some kinda program where you could feed it a demo recording, and it would output some sort of graph that showed you how much health the player had during the timeline of the entire map's length. Could be super useful for playtesting and not having to watch hour and a half FDAs when you're trying to figure out if the player was really struggling or not.

 

Because of the abundance of those (#3) situations that @rdwpa described, I'm willing to bet that the majority of my demo library has got me at like 10% health for most of the first quarter of all of my demos, just because I'm getting plugged by hitscanners until I find some armor and weapons to kill with. Then when the rest of the map is hell knights, cacodemons, and revenants my health really steadys out after that.

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Hitscanners are necessary in Doom. It adds the extra layer of difficulty needed for the gameplay. Of course, it can be negated somehow with the blur sphere but they still are formidable enemies. Even a big army of the lesser zombies can fuck you up if you're not careful...

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23 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

3) pistoling a shotgun guy or chaingun guy in a tiny room blocked off with a door at the very start of a map to get my first weapon (sounds specific, but a surprising number of maps start off this way);

 

5) forced weapon switch nuisances.

Or normal Shotgun a Chaingunner, and also not only tiny room I guess. Of course, this depends. I remember my UV -Fast run of Plutonia Map25, well, this is kind of specific.

 

#5 is one of my all time least favorite design, not only talking about hitscanners. For example, in Disjunction Map10, you'll release a 6 Revenant-group trap when you pick up SSG/Plasma Rifle, which should be dealt with Rocket Launcher.

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IMO part of why DOOM was/is fun, especially episode 1, is the 'popcorn' nature of hitscanners. Once you have the shotgun, they're essentially one-hit fodder that makes you as a player just feel good about picking 'em off with a single shot each. Balances out that these weakest of enemies can be the ones that force less-careless play when there are a lot of 'em around.

Mastermind is an exception to that, but thankfully a rare one as a boss enemy. Get to Doom 2, and chaingunners... not so fun (or at least, not as immediately-fun - they too have their uses in map design).

A 'yay' from me, then.

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I don't like them, but I've gotten used to them. I'd rather see the hitscanners use very fast projectiles rather than hitscan. Whether the removal of hitscan is a positive or negative improvement, is not my concern. It's a matter of personal taste.

In fact, I think I'll write up a small DECORATE/mutator just so I can play against zombiemen, SMs and nazis that fire really fast bullets.

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I freakin' love hitscanners.  Projectile enemies have their place, and blending the two effectively is still the best way to go.  But overall, hitscanners are invaluable in creating some very deadly traps, as well as changing the gameplay from just dodging and crowd management into something more varied.

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Good hitscanner is dead hitscanner, preferely in crunchy red gibbed state. These guys have unlimited ammo supplies, that's why they are dangerous and without them main gameplay would suck. 

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Nay! It's infuriating when a zombieman who couldn't hit the broadside of a barn five feet in front of them can suddenly snipe you off with deadly precision from across the map.

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Like Yukiraven said, hidden traps with shotgunners and chaingunners can be deadlier than projectile-based monsters. And of course, masterminds takes the cake. The good thing about it is that you can make some infighting and have a chance of surviving the ordeal...

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I think hitscanners work out nicely. Even the lowly zombieman seems like they can be okay at harassing the player some as a type of skirmisher, and shotgunners and chaingunners open up more opportunities for direct attack.

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Hitscanners show that sometimes the monsters with the strongest attack aren't always the deadliest. Even though a Revenant can kill a Chaingunner in just one hit, A Chaingunner could, given the right circumstances, kill a revenant.

 

Don't forget about another hitscanner - the archvile. It's attack only misses if it cannot see you during the time of the strike. It takes a while to perform the attack, but due to it's pain resistance and health it is very deadly. Oh, and don't forget about tanks that come with it that it can resurrect when they die.

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22 minutes ago, Pure Hellspawn said:

Don't forget about another hitscanner - the archvile

Oh yeah....that bastard is the worst of them all. But it's a good thing (or bad thing) that the archie is rarer than the zombies...

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One of the things I absolutely love about hitscan enemies in doom is how well their attack is telegraphed. I just wanted to throw that out there. If the pre attack animation wasn't there they would feel far cheaper. Love me some good Zombie action.

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Hitscaners are good in moderation.  Probably not such a good idea in large areas with no cover, unless you are actively trying to piss someone off.

 

Really, it boils down to user discretion.

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"Yay", hitscanners are integral to the ethereal magic that is Doom's lovely game balance. They don't need to be everywhere in every map (or even present in every map), but if they all disappeared from future releases starting tomorrow I guarantee you that EE and WADs & Mods would both show a massive uptick in professions of personal depression and ennui towards the game, and games in general. ;)

 

Jayextee and rdwpa already said most of what I'd have said, though I do think that zombies and their 'popcorn' nature do lend them a special quality only otherwise remotely approached by the imp where they're satisfying to kill in combat setups often otherwise targeted as questionable/limited design, simply because they're so easily felled en mass with almost any weapon. I think that swinging from side to side of a door or other threshold and firing SSG shots into a throng of advancing undead for minutes of gametime can be really enjoyable, as can any number of other iterations of the same basic thing, which can't be said for similar scenarios using other types of monsters. 'Hold the breech' fights are tricky to do right, and making them work with more advanced monsters generally requires much more threat of actual mortal pressure or stressful multitasking demands or even just a lot of blueballing in the level pace beforehand, but with an army of zombies you can put them almost anywhere in almost any type of level and have them feel right (save for those based heavily in an austere supply balance), simply because mass-killing them just seems to stimulate that same part of the reptilian brain which gets a charge out of popping bubble-wrap. I guess I'd say, then, that they seem to have a sort of cinematic usefulness and flexibility that most other enemies lack, simply because they potentially represent such a low time investment and only rarely demand very specific weapon/tactical selections on the player's part.

 

That the 3-4 different types of them are largely interchangeable in these circumstances also adds a certain edge to the mise-en-scène of such encounters, in that you're mowing down a heterogeneous group (with different appearances and death animations and likelihood to be gibbed and whatnot), as opposed to a homogeneous group of some other monster type (the infighting effect being less relevant in disposable/over-the-top zombie-based encounters probably being another factor). Thinking on it, I reckon this is probably one of very favorite things about Rylayeh (which also sprite-swaps the SS for another type of zombie who fits in the crowd naturally enough, incidentally), a somewhat less-heralded WAD that I still feel is a triumph of that appealing gameplay quality, perhaps most canonically enshrined in the design of the original KDitD, that I often refer to as 'bloodiness.'

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2 hours ago, riderr3 said:

Even an zombiemen can be serious threat when you have 10% health without armor!

Or a fly buzzing around your ears when you're using both hands to carry pudding to your cousins baptism.

 

Normally the hitscans are first priority, but if your fighting a few Revenants or other demanding monster they can be a begrudgingly accepted annoyance as they peck at you and steadfastly wait for their fate to unfold.

 

Hitscans are great monsters and can at a lot of urgency to your gameplay.

 

Hitscan breaks up the Nascar.

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Yay, and also nay....

 

...My opinion depends on whether or not the placement of these hitscaners  are correct or at least make sense. For example, the Plutonia Experiment goes a little bit overboard with these bastards in my opinion. And it just doesn't make to much sense to me. It just looks like they quickly scrambled everything together and slapped some demons in there and called it good.  when really it just seems unbalanced....(granted though they did only have 4 months to make a full WAD, so I cant give them too much crap)....

 

Knee-Deep in the Dead, however, is a great example of good hitscanner placement.  it has just the right amount of hitscaner placement that makes sense. and it also gives a good challenge on higher difficulties, but with making it too much of a challenge and becoming completely freakin ridiculous. Thy Flesh Consumed gives a much harder challenge, but it is still not as overboard like Plutonia...

 

that's just my opinion though :D.....

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5 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

They're a reminder of what was missing from Heretic, so yay for hitscanners indeed.

And Hexen...

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Much like Barons, hitscanners are oftentimes used in a wrong way, in my opinion. The early imp+hitscan mixes seen in iWADs and pWADs are usually a nice way to get players up to pace, also they're a good way of placing ammo.

 

Unfortunately, at times people end up with a map in which rooms consist of colourful mixes of monsters and it's the hitscans you only really need to worry about. When people build large rooms, this quickly becomes an issue that can be annoying, because the gameplay dictates to quickly pluck the turrets, and then circle strafe the rest to death. Make that a theme for most of your maps' encounters and you're way down the road of repetition. The reason it is so annoying after a while is that you have these enemies that are like flashing red buttons that cry for attention like a spoiled little child.

 

The moment players start corner or doorcamping most of the rooms in a map, it is a good indication that hitscans have been used wrong. Prickly gameplay is nice in a while, and hitscans make for nice reflex-tests, but if hitscans are the only way to consistently threaten the player in a map, something went wrong.

 

I personally have a very nuanced stance on traps, and hitscan traps can be just as lame as teleporting the player into his own voodoo-doll, because he went the wrong way, or took the wrong teleporter pad. Hitscan traps that are supposed to be deadly oftentimes do not work consistently, which results in mappers putting down more and more of them, until they get themselves killed relatively regularly, or even guaranteed if they don't perform the one dance-move they had in mind as the solution. The problem that arises here is that a person who does not know about such a trap will get stopped dead in +80% of the cases. Granted, if the map isn't supposed to be FDA friendly, that's less of an issue, but if mappers fail to set the tone early, and then create an untelegraphed "figure this out in less than 0.5seconds" trap to rack up pelts, there is something out of line. Sets like SoD have these nasty traps that will get you at some point no matter what, but that megawad sets the tone early, and stays true to it. That made me want to look past insta-pop monsters and figure things out. Plutonia went down the same road quite often, hitscan cabinets, lots of them...

 

Difficulty concerns aside, I think the purpose of making maps isn't to kill players with dicey traps in otherwise easy maps, the purpose is to create a feel of threat. Even if you create a ribbiks-type of difficult map, you actually do not want to kill the player just like that. Even the most difficult bullet-hell shmups actually do not want to kill the player on their highest difficulty setting, believe it or not, yes they can and they will, but they always offer a solution that works consistently.

 

Quite a few people say that projectile based enemies are the better way to make maps difficult, and I would personally agree. Hitscans usually promote two approaches, kill them fast or take cover, because otherwise: Damage. Projectile based enemies leave you with more choices. Take cover, oust them fast, ignore them for a while if you think you can afford to do so, etc... Well made projectile-based fights can be ten times more engaging than plucking hitscans, but they're more difficult to make, and require lots of testing to be threatening while functioning consistently, if we ignore slaughter maps, which can turn into projectile hell at times.

 

Are hitscans bad? No. Do they get used wrong at times? Yes. Still though, hitscans are nice to have.

Edited by Nine Inch Heels

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Yes except for chaingunner closets\towers. Especially if they appear from multiple sides at the same time and proceed to turn doom into an execution simulator.

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