Judicat0r: No, it's not.
It's you that were opinionating based on your likings and tastes.
I don't, I'm referring to facts and technology.
A bullet sponge is just an an HPs container which poses no threat to the player but its own HPs as opposed to enemies capable of more complex behavior than just coming at you and shoot like: take cover and make pot shots, cooperate with other AI entities, act collectively as one entity, adapt to changing conditions and so on.
And that's not debatable, it is just a fact, especially in DooM.
Sooner or later every AI becomes unrefined compared to newer iterations and, as a matter of fact, due to their lack of behavioral branches compared to newer ones, could easily and lazily only be improved by raising their HPs.
And that was my point to begin with: the enemies from that time, the 90s, the early 90s specifically, are just bullet sponges in most cases, because they lack the skills required to look like they are acting credibily, which happened later on, and something you may not like but that is a fact and objectively true.
The enemy AI did get more complex in the later games. I'm not disputing that. But does that necessarily mean better? Who is to say.
But the core of the issue here is obviously our definition of a bullet sponge. A bullet sponge to me is only an enemy, that takes a tediously large amount of time to dispatch with the arsenal the game provides to you, compared to the rest of the enemies. Their time to kill is disproportionately higher than most other enemies.
But that doesn't mean you can't use them effectively in a combat scenario.
And even if we go by your definition, the enemies in Unreal are definitely still not sponges. As you said in your initial post that started this entire discussion, they actively dodge, attack/retreat depending on their HP or sometimes even pre-fire a corner etc. Meaning they don't just walk in your general direction and attack. And all of them besides the mentioned Titan die in a very reasonable time, supposing you hit your shots.
Judicat0r: No, it's not.
It's you that were opinionating based on your likings and tastes.
I don't, I'm referring to facts and technology.
A bullet sponge is just an an HPs container which poses no threat to the player but its own HPs as opposed to enemies capable of more complex behavior than just coming at you and shoot like: take cover and make pot shots, cooperate with other AI entities, act collectively as one entity, adapt to changing conditions and so on.
And that's not debatable, it is just a fact, especially in DooM.
Sooner or later every AI becomes unrefined compared to newer iterations and, as a matter of fact, due to their lack of behavioral branches compared to newer ones, could easily and lazily only be improved by raising their HPs.
And that was my point to begin with: the enemies from that time, the 90s, the early 90s specifically, are just bullet sponges in most cases, because they lack the skills required to look like they are acting credibily, which happened later on, and something you may not like but that is a fact and objectively true.
The enemy AI did get more complex in the later games. I'm not disputing that. But does that necessarily mean better? Who is to say.
But the core of the issue here is obviously our definition of a bullet sponge. A bullet sponge to me is only an enemy, that takes a tediously large amount of time to dispatch with the arsenal the game provides to you, compared to the rest of the enemies. Their time to kill is disproportionately higher than most other enemies.
But that doesn't mean you can't use them effectively in a combat scenario.
And even if we go by your definition, the enemies in Unreal are definitely still not sponges. As you said in your initial post that started this entire discussion, they actively dodge, attack/retreat depending on their HP or sometimes even pre-fire a corner etc. Meaning they don't just walk in your general direction and attack. And all of them besides the mentioned Titan die in a very reasonable time, supposing you hit your shots.
My definition... Oh man. Let's leave aside the fact that it's you that keep opinionating (to me..., tediously, reasonable, hate this..., I vastly prefer..., I'll take...).
It's not my definition... a bullet sponge is a common and accepted concept that defines an enemy which has a very high an amount of HPs in relation to it's skills/abilities and to the player's damage output to the point that it can become a threat, there's not much up to debate here and that's been like that for 20 years, if you don't trust me, I mean, you can ask somebody.
About Unreal I think I've been clear but I can go over it again: Unreal enemies have higher than average skills due to a more refined AI (let's call it AI) compared form other gamens from that time. What I blame on the devs is that, because they had to or because of lazyness, they didn't keep on that path but went the easy way for the highest difficulty setting: pump up the HPs, again they didn't have much choice but that strides compared to the good work made up until then.
DooM is from 12/93 Magic Carpet is from 06/94, six months apart from eah other, and the first one pales compared to the second technically: 3D terrain which can morph in real time, textures that can morph in real time according to the landscape, enemies that can dodge fireballs, computer-controlled mages that can use spells, steal your mana, build their castle, more advanced pathnoding, basic physics implementation AND a bunch of bullet sponge enemies but not just those.
