Judicat0r: When the enemy is just a dumb counter which comes at you in a straight line while throwing green orbs at you and is a threat only if it can single or double shot you or if you are movement-constrained, then you are not fighting against the enemy's skills, you are fighting the enemy's HPs:
Agreed. That is why I said that a single enemy/boss with predictable attacks and just a million HP is a bad thing. Proper combat in FPS games is about combat scenarios, not 1v1 duels. A singular Baron in Doom is just a block of 1000 HP. But a Baron in combination with other enemy types in various positions is a threat. And even then, if everything just falls over nearly instantly like in Duke 3D, it can lead to very boring gameplay. A good mix of enemies, fragile and tough, is always the best.
Judicat0r: That is exacly my point: it just takes time, not skill, to take them down and in DooM, you can ignore imps and grunts while you take out the bullet sponges. I don't want to be rude, It looks to me you are confusing development choices/lazy development and clever use of limitations with features: Carmack and Romero admitted frankly that the enemies where so stupid they had to use workarounds and clever monters' placement to make up for the lack of AI which was basically non existent and there's nothing wrong with it per se.
What takes skill is not killing a single enemy, but efficiently working your way through a combat scenario. You can ignore imps in some, but they might be the greatest threat in the other.
And I'm not confusing anything. I vastly prefer the way enemies behaved in the older FPS games as in "moving towards you and actually attacking you" instead of doing random "realistic manoeuvres" and what not. I'll take dumb but dangerous over fancy but ultimately less threating any day of the week.
Judicat0r: There are many games out there where enemies in cover are completely that and, again, making an enemy not completely hidden while he is in cover is just plain stupid, disrepectful and an attempt at ingratiating the player.
I mean: there are games where while one enemy is in cover, completely in cover, others shoot at you.
There are, but it is not the case in the vast majority of them. I've played tons of FPS games over the years (my favorite genre), so it is definitely more of an exception rather than the norm.
Judicat0r: Regarding Unreal that's exacttly the point I was initially making: shooters from before that time didn't have complex mechanics and AI because of limitations and/or lazy development which led to the bullet sponges, that trend kept going through the years even after games that did things mostly right came up.
That's what I'm not totally OK with: the highest difficulty level: they went the easy/lazy way, but to be honest they made an exceptionally good work up until then and I can't blame them for adding it too much.
Indeed, Unreal had a very good enemy AI for the time. Actively dodging your shots, predicting their shots with your movement etc. Which is why it was not about fighting dozens of enemies at the same time, but tackling small groups of quite smart and reasonably durable enemies. But I really fail to see this what you call "trend". I've played them all. Doom, Blood, Heretic, Hexen, Shadow Warrior, Duke, Unreal etc.. Hell, in most of these games, difficulty does not even affect the enemy HP (Blood and Unreal being the exceptions) and only affects the amount of pickups and enemy numbers. Even then, Doom still remains as one of the games with the toughest roster of enemies when it comes to HP vs player weapon damage. I guess we just have a very different threshold when it comes to calling enemies spongy. On the contrary, I take old shooters as the norm and in most later FPS games, all enemies are as durable as wet tissue paper.
And an additional note, the difficulty in Unreal does not increase only the enemy HP, but also improves the enemy behavior.
Judicat0r: You need to be close to them, very close, in order to score a Flack Cannon or a non-hitscan hit, and when you do it is very satisfying.
Yes, or make them dodge and then hit them where they end up after the dodge. If you know that, then I rally can't think of a reason why you'd call Unreal enemies spongy. Is 3 direct hits to kill one of the toughest enemies in the game too much? Just for the sake of it, I started playing Unreal again yesterday and no, the enemies are far from what I'd call spongy, even on Unreal difficulty.