What if there were no hitscanners?

[Sarmenti]

Lately I've taken a break from doom and decided to play quake instead, and due to the fact most maps use Arcane Dimensions, all enemies that were originally hitscan instead use really fast projectiles. 

Now, here's the question,a how would you feel if a PWAD used some DeHackEd magic to change give them projectiles (while still allowing them to infight with themselves)? Close range they would still be just as deadly, but at longer ranges you would be able to avoid their attacks, with medium ranges somewhere in between.

Now, I would like to mention that I think hitscanners are fine, annoying, but fine. As with all monsters it just comes down to the maps placement of them, so just take this as a "What if?"

[Alaxzandarz]

Hitscanners are pretty important for area denial and as high priority threats. Changing them to be projectile based would diminish their effectiveness in those roles. The change probably wouldn't matter that much in easy to medium run and gun maps, but it would harm combat puzzle and slaughter ones quite a bit.

[DemonicSavage]

Heretic is basically Doom with no hitscanners and a medieval theme.

[Murdoch]

Hard no. It would affect the gameplay too badly. Hitscanners are basically realistic anyway. You aren't dodging a bullet with anything but dumb luck. Bullet firing guns you have time to dodge always look weird to me.

[sandwedge]

I find hitscanners to be quite fun, as while they can be annoying they also force you to take cover and they are all very squishy so it's fun to dispatch them.  Probably the worst for me is being sniped across a map by a chaingunner, further than the autoaim will even track, but they are more inaccurate at that distance and if the projectiles were fast you'd have a lot of trouble dodging volleys like that anyway.

 

I will say the Beautiful Doom mod by default adds projectiles for you and enemies, however I'm not sure how that works, if it's purely cosmetic or what.  I don't think I remember being able to dodge hitscan attacks, but it WAS useful for knowing which direction bullets were coming from.  Which if anything was a bit of an advantage over vanilla.  It's kind of an interesting puzzle to have to figure out where hitscan attacks are coming from in the first place, though. 

 

Of course as you said this all depends on the mapper, but I find that I have a pretty high tolerance for hitscanners, as long as it's not the aforementioned super long range chaingun snipers.

[Maribo]

To be moderately pedantic: the end of hitscan would gimp the archvile, which would be a monumental tragedy.

 

To reply more seriously: Most people's issues with hitscan rely in the absurd damage range of the shotgunner or the range at which you can be hit from, rather than their overall existence. Taking away hitscan wholly would eliminate a lot of flexibility in encounter composition, like has already been said. Convenient area denial and eas(ier than projectile guidance)y infighting are the two that immediately spring to mind. Pure projectile design wouldn't necessarily be bad or anything, but to get the same flexibility, you'd probably have to end up setting the speeds of the replacements to be very near equivalent to hitscan.

[Sarmenti]

Just now, Maribo said:

To be moderately pedantic: the end of hitscan would gimp the archvile, which would be a monumental tragedy.

You know, I completely forgot the archie technically counts as hitscan :p

 

[maxmanium]

Partial invisibility would be completely useless

[Bobby :D]

This sounds like the start to a terrible Imagine cover

[vdgg]

There are thousands of hiscanner-less maps. From IWADs  Slough of Despair and Dead Simple come to mind, and if we discount arch-viles, even Sunder maps.

[sandwedge]

49 minutes ago, Bobby "J said:

This sounds like the start to a terrible Imagine cover

 

Imagine there's no hitscan

It's easy if you try

No more instant damage

Only projectiles

Imagine all the Doomers

Living for today

[BigMetalhead]

IMO, Doom has an incredibly good balance of hitscanners and projectile foes. As others have pointed out, hitscanners are excellent at forcing players to be cautious in certain areas especially considering how they can snipe you from afar. Not to mention, they're generally squishier than most projectile foes, so making their bullets be avoidable would be a massive nerf to them. It wouldn't matter too much in close quarter combat, but I think you'll definitely see a significant drop in difficulty in WADs like Plutonia where they rely on hitscanners being able to snipe you.

[jazzmaster9]

for existing PWADs mostly likely no.

But a mapset based around Fastprojectile "hitscan" will be an interesting dynamic.

Fast Projectiles is the best of the both worlds. Being close to a fast Projectile Chaingunner would be just as deadly but now you have the option to put them in Wide open areas and not have them be just a dice roll if you get hit or not, which opens up different set of enemy encounters to play with.

[Shepardus]

50 minutes ago, Maribo said:

To be moderately pedantic: the end of hitscan would gimp the archvile, which would be a monumental tragedy.

To be even more pedantic, the arch-vile's attack is a line of sight check rather than a hitscan.

 

Now the real question is whether the "hitscanners" would retain their randomized attack spread. If so, I think it could be interesting, otherwise I think it'd be yet another enemy to circle-strafe at moderate to long range.

[Rudolph]

I have played gameplay mods that remove all hitscan attacks - with the exception of the Arch-Vile's - and it does not make the game that much easier.

 

Also, if I recall right, Doom 2016 has no hitscanner whatsoever.

[Dubbag]

"Imagine there's no hitscanners,

or projectiles too,

imagine all the demons,

living life in peace,

you may say im a Doomer,

But I'm not the only one,

i hope one day you can join us,

and Doomworld will live as one."

Edited May 8, 2022 by Dub Bag

[Sleep Deprivation]

It would ruin the combat loop of DOOM II to Plutonia Experiment. It's no longer about going into cover at the right moment after killing some imps with the SSG, and since there's no Arch-Vile or Chaingun Guy, it's just the same boring, flat and overly easy encounter with projectile based enemies.

[BGreener]

To me, enemies landing shots while you’re moving and dashing about is the whole point of hitscan.

 

To attempt to replace what these kinds of attacks are accomplishing, the projectiles would not only have to be considerably fast but those enemies would also have to be able to lead those shots.

 

(I also don’t think that second requirement can be accomplished through dehacked magic).
 

@Rudolph Those hell razors had a railgun if I recall. It’s just easily avoided, and not thought of a “hitscan attack” much like people don’t regard the archvile’s attack as hitscan.

[RjY]

23 hours ago, Maribo said:

To be moderately pedantic: the end of hitscan would gimp the archvile, which would be a monumental tragedy.

23 hours ago, Sarmenti said:

You know, I completely forgot the archie technically counts as hitscan :p

21 hours ago, Shepardus said:

To be even more pedantic, the arch-vile's attack is a line of sight check rather than a hitscan.

 

This is an important distinction, more than mere pedantry IMO. Consider: if archvile attacks were hitscans, you would be able to avoid them by hiding behind other monsters :).

[BigMetalhead]

@RjY This is off-topic, but your pfp is throwing me off so hard lmfao

[BigBoy91]

Just play Brutal Doom if you hate hitscanners that much. You can literally dodge bullets Matrix style. Yes, fireballs and bullets are both technically projectiles. One is supposed to be much harder to dodge than the other.

[i_like_cheeese]

for certain wads, this may seem like a godsend, but think about. what about chain gunner heavy maps or the spider mastermind? this may make the game unplayable because of projectile only hit scanners that fire often, especially with fast monsters enabled. 

[Solmyr]

On 5/6/2022 at 6:53 PM, DemonicSavage said:

Heretic is basically Doom with no hitscanners and a medieval theme.

Also, without infinte height.

[Sena]

Don't think it would work that well, as the main strength of hitscanners is probably their long range damage, which can only really be replicated by the cyberdemon, whose 100+ damage rocket means it has to be used sparingly. Some kind of interim that has fast projectiles that deal 20-30 damage could work, but I would probably suggest that it would work better to supplement hitscanners, rather than replace them.

[RjY]

14 hours ago, BigMetalhead said:

@RjY This is off-topic, but your pfp is throwing me off so hard lmfao

 

Heh, thanks. Sadly, after a minor update of the forum software in 2018, it ceased to be a perfect match.

[Eurisko]

I’d miss swearing at them 

[Mystic 256]

chaingunners make up the most of my deaths in doom

So it would make things easier if there were no hitscanners,

 

however hitscanners are an important part of the prioritization and combat loop of doom and it wouldn't be the same game without them

[Samz707]

On 5/6/2022 at 10:23 PM, Sarmenti said:

Lately I've taken a break from doom and decided to play quake instead, and due to the fact most maps use Arcane Dimensions, all enemies that were originally hitscan instead use really fast projectiles. 

Now, here's the question,a how would you feel if a PWAD used some DeHackEd magic to change give them projectiles (while still allowing them to infight with themselves)? Close range they would still be just as deadly, but at longer ranges you would be able to avoid their attacks, with medium ranges somewhere in between.

Now, I would like to mention that I think hitscanners are fine, annoying, but fine. As with all monsters it just comes down to the maps placement of them, so just take this as a "What if?"

 

Doom 2016 did that and it made the Zombies a complete joke aside from the Shield ones so I think it'd generally just make them far less deadly.

Z-Sec in Doom 3 have relatively more advanced AI and hit-scanners so I actually get worried when I hear Z-Sec Radio chatter in that game, them being projectiles would reduce that.

[ludicrous_peridot]

Hmm... I did a mod replacing low tier Doom enemies and shotgun sprites as at that moment I was getting sick of the legion of bald men, endless pumping, and the legion of "Joker-headed" men as well, having just replayed Knee-deep. As I've replaced Zombiemen with demons not using any aparent arms I switched their attack to Imp fireball (also making the projectile slightly faster) "for consistent looks". The justification I had was that while it may have "broken" some of more "tactical" pwads (and demos), having significantly more "avoidable" projectiles fly around the map, would create more havoc and mischief and give more incentive for the player to move around.

 

As I'm more of a tinkerer than a player, I can't really say I felt much difference gameplay wise, but you could try the mod to see for yourself. 

[out_of_service]

Then you wouldn't have bullshit moments where a hitscanner snipes you down all the way from the other end of the map while you're at 1% after fending off 500 Revenants lol omfg lol wut.