Why are there so few "cannon fodder" enemies in Doom?

[TootsyBowl]

By "cannon fodder" I mean enemies that take only a short burst of chaingun bullets or a single shotgun blast to kill.

 

You have the three types of zombie and the Imp. That's it. The rest of the bestiary, aside from the Pinky and the Lost Soul, take multiple hits from the Super Shotgun before going down, and the two types of enemies mentioned still have too much health to qualify as cannon fodder, requiring several shotgun blasts or great expenditure from the Chaingun.

 

EDIT: It's not the amount of fodder enemies, it's the variety. Only four kinds, three of which are just "guy with a gun"?

Edited July 4, 2017 by TootsyBowl

[CzechMate29200]

first off, sweet avatar :)

 

well, Doom wouldn't be as fun if most of them were Fodders. The whole Doom game would be a breeze, and that's not what we like Doom for. We like it because its a challenge, and I mean, a really good challenge. Because of the stronger enemies Doom is a fun, and great challenge.

[Graf Zahl]

That doesn't answer the question, though... ;)

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

4 hours ago, CzechMate29200 said:

first off, sweet avatar :)

 

well, Doom wouldn't be as fun if most of them were Fodders. The whole Doom game would be a breeze, and that's not what we like Doom for. We like it because its a challenge, and I mean, a really good challenge. Because of the stronger enemies Doom is a fun, and great challenge.

Play a shmup like DoDonPachi that has a good "popcorn-rush" in it. Those "cannon fodder swarms" are going to tear you a new orifice quicker than you can imagine.

 

As for the topic: I'm not sure if the game needs more "fodder", to be honest. You have several fodder tiers of hitscans with varying lethalty, and you have the imp as low tier projectile staple along with pinkies as low-tier "tanks". Unless you're talking about sprites, I don't quite see where there would be an urgent gap to fill. Granted, sets like valiant had low HP enemies in them that were custom made, like arachnorbs or suicide bombers, both of which could be killed relatively quickly, but those enemies also had a certain role to them that made sense. Doom64 had different imps, for example, but those didn't feel like they made much of a difference, from my point of view.

 

I dunno... If you think there's a gap to fill, you can always grab a custom monster from realm667 and modify that so you have something to experiment with. Maybe you can find something that really adds to the game.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

One or more of these:

A) Development time\cost to code and model\animate\sprite.

B) Lack of character design ideas (Both gameplay wise and lore\art wise)

C) Overlapping with existing monsters (Hellknight gets away by design)

D) Mid-tier and high tier monsters need more variety and are higher priority. 

E) Complex\strong cannon fodder are annoying as hell to play against\map.

 

I wouldn't rank chaingunners as cannon fodder since they are easily at the top of killing priority over most monster types. (Behind bosses, viles and tying with revenants)

[Memfis]

Maybe it would cheapen the satisfaction of killing stuff. You know, like in slaughtermaps you're killing large packs of enemies every 5 seconds, at which point it becomes just silly and not cool anymore. Monsters shouldn't drop like flies all the time.

[Not Jabba]

It's all relative. Doom 2 has four very powerful weapons: the SSG, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, and BFG. You have the SSG the vast majority of the time you're playing, and when you have it, Demons and Lost Souls are cannon fodder. When you have the rocket launcher and plasma rifle, most of the enemies go down quite quickly. When you're using the BFG, everything but the Cyber is cannon fodder. Doom 2 was built around the idea that using the shotgun and chaingun all the time isn't very interesting, so in turn, adding more Imp-level enemies to use those weapons on wouldn't have been very interesting either.

[galileo31dos01]

I guess they wanted more variety for bigger enemies. Although I do think Lost Souls should have same HP as an imp, for example. This is the case of the PSX version, in which they have less HP.

 

In my opinion, the variety for "fodders" is just fine, can you imagine a little weak monster shooting rockets?... Umm that's actually not a bad idea... that is why custom enemies exist lol

 

Maybe creators thought that adding more variety of weaker enemies was unnecessary, something that will create dull encounters, or too dangerous?, I really don't know... one or two more "fodders" wouldn't be bad.

[Lila Feuer]

The possessed humans being the weakest yet the most dangerous for their hitscan attacks and the lowest tier demon with the Imp are more than enough I'd think and set the tone for the original game's first episode. Hell can't exactly make things too easy for you with their mainstay armies can they?

Something that sets Doom apart however from other classic shooters from the era is that none of them feel bullet spongy, unless you count the Baron of Hell outside of bosses and even then a handful of rockets or a single BFG blast will put him down. Everyone else is very well balanced in the hit point department to prevent the tougher monsters from seeming artificially strong when they already pack high offensive.

[MrGlide]

Differentiating enemies types is Important I feel. The trooper, imp, Sergent and lost soul cover all there is to pretty much cover on the low end, all while retaining stratigic and interesting purposes. The monsters have a power ramp with how much damage they can do, their priority and health, which helps greatly with a sense of progression. I do there was a good mid tier representative of the Zombie side of things in doom.

 

If you disagree with how few monsters there are in doom I might advise you try something like project brutality, tons of different enemy and gun types added to the game. Those kinds of add ons aren't really my thing personally.

[Not Jabba]

Just now, galileo31dos01 said:

In my opinion, the variety for "fodders" is just fine, can you imagine a little weak monster shooting rockets?... Umm that's actually not a bad idea... that is why custom enemies exist lol

If you ever play around with adding one of Realm667's rocket zombies to your levels, you'll see exactly why there isn't one in the original game. They mostly just make your life easier by blowing up themselves and other enemies for you. The Cyberdemon doesn't have this problem because it's a boss enemy, so they could make it immune to splash damage and mostly use it on its own, without lots of other enemies around. Even when there are lots of other enemies, the Cyber is a good focal point for a battle and an interesting tool for infighting setups, as opposed to just an ineffective suicide bomber.

[Phade102]

Ultimately, i'd say its because the developers thought the same as the players. Cannon fodder enemies...simply aren't fun. they're there purely to block you and cause you to waste ammo, while posing very little threat. However, the fact is the fodder monsters we have are a wide variety. you have three hitscanners, one weak, one extremely powerful if it gets a good shot on you (Shotgun guy) and one with a chaingun that will literally tear you to pieces if you let it. The imp, however is good in groups because it has dodgeable projectiles, yet poses a threat if combined with said hitscanners. Its not about the variety of monsters, but how you use them.

[baja blast rd.]

32 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Maybe it would cheapen the satisfaction of killing stuff. You know, like in slaughtermaps you're killing large packs of enemies every 5 seconds, at which point it becomes just silly and not cool anymore. Monsters shouldn't drop like flies all the time.

I think you misread the OP -- it speaks to the variety of fodder monsters, not the quantity.

 

21 minutes ago, MrGlide said:

Differentiating enemies types is Important I feel. The trooper, imp, Sergent and lost soul cover all there is to pretty much cover on the low end, all while retaining stratigic and interesting purposes. The monsters have a power ramp with how much damage they can do, their priority and health, which helps greatly with a sense of progression. I do there was a good mid tier representative of the Zombie side of things in doom.

 

If you disagree with how few monsters there are in doom I might advise you try something like project brutality, tons of different enemy and gun types added to the game. Those kinds of add ons aren't really my thing personally.

 

Mapsets like Valiant show that there's still a lot of ground to cover outside of what the original roster provides, so I wouldn't agree with the 'all there is to cover on the low end' part. The original game is quite sparse in flying monsters, for example, with only three of them. The arachnorb fills a niche that imps or lost souls (or on the mid-range end, the bulkier, less trigger happy cacodemons) don't. The suicide bomber showcases the power of a speedster that is threatening up close -- pinkies are notoriously ineffective as primary threats. The low-tiers in the original roster are reasonably diverse, but there's still a lot of ground left unconvered.

 

21 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

If you ever play around with adding one of Realm667's rocket zombies to your levels, you'll see exactly why there isn't one in the original game. They mostly just make your life easier by blowing up themselves and other enemies for you. The Cyberdemon doesn't have this problem because it's a boss enemy, so they could make it immune to splash damage and mostly use it on its own, without lots of other enemies around. Even when there are lots of other enemies, the Cyber is a good focal point for a battle and an interesting tool for infighting setups, as opposed to just an ineffective suicide bomber.

I've also played maps that use rocket zombies, and even without that immunity, I wouldn't characterize them as 'ineffective suicide bombers'. They were still pretty scary and needed to be taken seriously, because an errant rocket could be the end. Certain placements (e.g. ledges or turrets) or layout designs (an absence of convenient architecture for self-implosion) can make the self-destruction a rarity, too. But I do think a rocket zombie, if included in the original games, would have been hardcoded to be immune to splash damage anyway.

 

9 minutes ago, Phade102 said:

Ultimately, i'd say its because the developers thought the same as the players. Cannon fodder enemies...simply aren't fun. they're there purely to block you and cause you to waste ammo, while posing very little threat. However, the fact is the fodder monsters we have are a wide variety. you have three hitscanners, one weak, one extremely powerful if it gets a good shot on you (Shotgun guy) and one with a chaingun that will literally tear you to pieces if you let it. The imp, however is good in groups because it has dodgeable projectiles, yet poses a threat if combined with said hitscanners. Its not about the variety of monsters, but how you use them.

 

I think a lot of people would disagree with your characterization of cannon fodder enemies as not being fun. That's a decent bit of what makes skillsaw popular, for example. Turning a cluster of low-tier monsters into gibs with a neatly placed rocket, or mowing down lots of zombiemen, or punching out a group of imps and pinkies ... all stuff that would rate fairly highly in the community at large if a survey were done, and the archive of DWMC threads attest to that. 

 

 

 

Anyway, I do think low-tier monsters are the backbone of non-slaughter gameplay in many cases (in slaughter gameplay, the tiers shift a couple of notches and monsters like revenants and hell knights become functionally 'cannon fodder' as well). One of the things I'm glad Ancient Aliens did was add a couple of glass cannons that are fun to fight with almost the whole armory. I think skillsaw understands the versatility of low-HP monsters well, part of why Lunatic added two new zombies too (although the fat, slow rev-rocket firers arguably exist more for their narrative value). 

[Not Jabba]

23 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

I've also played maps that use rocket zombies, and even without that immunity, I wouldn't characterize them as 'ineffective suicide bombers'. They were still pretty scary and needed to be taken seriously, because an errant rocket could be the end. Certain placements (e.g. ledges or turrets) or layout designs (an absence of convenient architecture for self-implosion) can make the self-destruction a rarity, too. But I do think a rocket zombie, if included in the original games, would have been hardcoded to be immune to splash damage anyway.

It's not impossible to use them, and a few mappers have done it well, but they are much more finicky to use than any of Doom's stock monsters, which is why I think something like the Cybruiser or the actual zombie Suicide Bomber is more likely to get used, and a likely explanation for why id didn't use a rocket zombie. You may be right about the hard-coding, but to me when I was playing around with the rocket zombies, it felt silly to have a squishy-looking zombie be immune to rocket splash.

 

Anyway, new low-tier enemies are usually pretty cool, and skillsaw in particular has done a great job creating them, but if you're defining cannon fodder as Imp-tier or below, as the OP seems to be, then I don't think there's a ton of room for more. The Arachnorb and the AA flyer are more like Demon-to-Cacodemon level. To me, even the Trooper from AA feels like it's in a higher tier because its speed makes it harder to bring down than many enemies that have more health, but maybe that's just semantics.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Not Jabba : Added second paragraph

[Deadwing]

I actually always find amusing when a Rocket zombie kills himself haha (especially if he brings someone else with him)

[baja blast rd.]

13 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

It's not impossible to use them, and a few mappers have done it well, but they are much more finicky to use than any of Doom's stock monsters, which is why I think something like the Cybruiser or the actual zombie Suicide Bomber is more likely to get used, and a likely explanation for why id didn't use a rocket zombie. You may be right about the hard-coding, but to me when I was playing around with the rocket zombies, it felt silly to have a squishy-looking zombie be immune to rocket splash.

Yeah would certainly agree on the superiority of a suicide bomber or cybruiser. 

 

My tastes are unconventional, though*. I think most maps that currently exist would be strictly better off (in terms of fun) if random low-tier monsters were replaced with rocket zombies at a low-ish probability, because they'd give me another thing to fear. So I'd consider rocket zombies easy to use well from a gameplay standpoint. The main concern about them (at least with the sprites that are available on R667), is that they are quite silly and stand out as such, although that mostly affects their use as custom monsters. I feel as if they were in the original games to begin with, we'd be used to that -- revs and mancs are very silly too, for example. 

 

 

*Proof: I like monsters like these:

 

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by rdwpa

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Does something as high threat as a rocket zombie count as cannon fodder though? Am always scared of them more than 90% of monster types the moment I meet the first time.

[baja blast rd.]

OP clarified what they meant by 'cannon fodder':

 

7 hours ago, TootsyBowl said:

By "cannon fodder" I mean enemies that take only a short burst of chaingun bullets or a single shotgun blast to kill.

 

You have the three types of zombie and the Imp. That's it. The rest of the bestiary, aside from the Pinky and the Lost Soul, take multiple hits from the Super Shotgun before going down, and the two types of enemies mentioned still have too much health to qualify as cannon fodder, requiring several shotgun blasts or great expenditure from the Chaingun.

In essence, all monsters with a low amount of HP.

 

So it might be worth a line or two from someone to clarify what 'cannon fodder' actually means, but the main discussion would be best off if conducted with the OP's intended meaning in mind.

 

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

Anyway, new low-tier enemies are usually pretty cool, and skillsaw in particular has done a great job creating them, but if you're defining cannon fodder as Imp-tier or below, as the OP seems to be, then I don't think there's a ton of room for more. The Arachnorb and the AA flyer are more like Demon-to-Cacodemon level. To me, even the Trooper from AA feels like it's in a higher tier because its speed makes it harder to bring down than many enemies that have more health, but maybe that's just semantics.

 

Yeah, turns out my HP threshold was a bit wider than the OP's at that time, but functionally the arachnorb and alien drone would play the same role even if they had imp- or chaingunner-level HP. Speedy monsters in general are an underexplored niche; and there's room for rocket-firers and stationary turrets of all sorts, as well as monsters that use the vile attack, etc., just to name a few things. Lots still feels undone.

 

 

 

EDIT: 

 

33 minutes ago, Pegg said:

But rocket zombies are Glass cannons not cannon fodder. They break the balance way more than they'd ever add to it beside some gimmicky uses. (Even in custom maps they tend to be scarcely used)

My response to this post is the same as my response to your last post, so I don't want to waste another post on it. You're still fixating way too much on the term 'cannon fodder' without realizing that OP just used somewhat vague terminology and was wondering why there are so few monsters with comparable HP to the trooper/sergeant/imp/chaingunner (the latter of which is often a glass cannon too). 

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by rdwpa

[Not Jabba]

13 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

OP clarified what they meant by 'cannon fodder':

 

In essence, all monsters with a low amount of HP.

 

So it might be worth a line or two from someone to clarify what 'cannon fodder' actually means, but the main discussion would be best off if conducted with the OP's intended meaning in mind.

In the bit you quoted, they specifically said that the Demon and Lost Soul have too much health to qualify as cannon fodder, and therefore only Imps and zombies count. Which is what I said they said, I think.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

But rocket zombies are Glass cannons not cannon fodder. They break the balance way more than they'd ever add to it beside some gimmicky uses. (Even in custom maps they tend to be scarcely used)

 

Edit : Sure let's also add the bfg zombies found in 90% of the randomizers while at it. Especially the 15k zombie.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Pegg

[Marcaek]

Custom monsters are scarcely used period, your argument doesn't hold up there.

 

You're really nitpicking over vague nomenclature here: a low HP zombie can still be used as """cannon fodder""" regardless of whatever other niche it may fill. Doom's gameplay fundamentally allows monsters to have multiple uses depending on how they are placed\combined.

[Deleted_Account]

To the Doomguy, they're all cannon fodder.