Doom Eternal has enjoyed a highly positive reception, but there’s been an ongoing controversy regarding the game’s Marauder enemies. They’re by far the most complex enemies and mirror many of the players’ own skills, so as soon one enters the fray, the demon-slaying power fantasy becomes a tense duel to the death. Such a common action game trope hardly seems worthy of debate, but the counterargument is that they hurt the pace enough to where the free-flowing core of the combat breaks down entirely. With the Marauder seizing control of the battle with his speed and persistence, players can’t comfortably glory kill other enemies for health, use the chainsaw for ammo, or switch their focus to other enemies. They instead have to follow the very specific instructions given to them in a pop-up tutorial, which I will quote in full:
The Marauder is a defensive powerhouse.
Stand too close, he uses his Shotgun.
Stand too far away, he throws projectiles.
Keep him at mid-range, counter his attack when his eyes flash green; otherwise, he blocks your shots.
The Marauder is resistant to Super Weapons.
This “butter-zone” between standing too near or far is an incredibly hard thing to balance, especially when being chased and blasted with attacks, so it’s easy to sympathize with players who struggle with it. It’s also easy to sympathize with the expert players who have no trouble at all, because they don’t even need to follow those guidelines. In fact, no one does, because those instructions are incomplete at best, and completely misleading at worst. Players can instead just stagger the Marauder as he charges with his axe, and chain it with another powerful blast as he stumbles for even more damage. So why don’t players just do this instead?
The best way to explain why is by comparing the Marauder to the other enemies in the game, with a great example being the Cacodemon. Its pop-up tutorial states the following:
The Cacodemon is a Pressure Demon with a powerful close-range bite.
If you can fire a Sticky Bomb or Frag Grenade into its mouth, it instantly Staggers.
This stagger is not only a 100% consistent glory-kill setup, it’s inarguably the most efficient way to take down these enemies. Since grenades operate on a cooldown instead of ammunition capacity, and the ammo requirement from other weapons can be high, the strong majority of Cacodemons killed in the average playthrough will be through the tooltip’s grenade-glory double tap. Other tutorials are fairly comparable: players are told to shoot the armor off Mancubi, the guns off Revenants and Arachnotrons, to hit the back of the Pinkies, and so on. While these are useful hints, they communicate a worrying precedent to the player that the strategy outlined by the tooltip is what you should always try to do. By having information spoon-fed before the enemy is even visible on screen, players are being trained to turn their brain off and follow the instructions. Another good point of comparison would be the Shield Soldier, the other enemy in the game who prominently uses an energy shield to block the player’s shots. They’re common enemies, so players will be used to chainsawing through them, throwing explosives behind them, or just using the BFG. If you use these same strategies against the Marauder however, none of them will work, which isn’t a problem in itself, but it fits the pattern of Doom Eternal’s poorly handled conveyance.
Put simply, conveyance is how a game communicates its rules to the player, and this is the heart of what the real problem is. The Marauder is simply where it came to a head, where a misleading tutorial collided with players disincentivized to think critically, thanks to a series of patronizing explanations of dominant strategies. The easy answer may be to just turn them off, but when disabling that setting also turns off help for how contextual gimmicks work, there’s no good solution. The combat has also been balanced around the player knowing these tips and using the dominant strategies they outline, weighing down the player’s capacity for mechanical expressiveness. It's not just the Marauder that's impacted, the player's entire mentality when engaging with enemies suffers from the rigidity of this design. It makes sense that with all the new features in Doom Eternal, the developers wanted to tie enemies to specific mechanics to ensure their use, but depth isn’t just a measure of how many decisions a player could make, but how many they’re actively incentivized to make.
If players only require an active sense of incentive though, doesn’t that bring us into a paradox, where the Marauder’s poor tutorial, and hidden better strategy, could be seen as an incentive for players to think for themselves? It may seem like I’m contradicting myself by acknowledging that’s how certain players will see it, but when games are such subjective experiences, analysis can only go as far as the positive and negative reinforcements that affect players on a general level. There are lots of Doom fans who will rise to the challenge like this and have an amazing time experimenting with the crazy amount of toys the game lets you play with, but the majority of players won’t bother to put in the effort unless prodded to do so. With fewer explicit tutorials and combat based around a more flexible variety of ways to counter enemies in general, players would be primed to test their entire arsenal against each new enemy and experience the joy of mechanical discovery action games are all about.
The Marauder is a defensive powerhouse.
Stand too close, he uses his Shotgun.
Stand too far away, he throws projectiles.
Keep him at mid-range, counter his attack when his eyes flash green; otherwise, he blocks your shots.
The Marauder is resistant to Super Weapons.
This “butter-zone” between standing too near or far is an incredibly hard thing to balance, especially when being chased and blasted with attacks, so it’s easy to sympathize with players who struggle with it. It’s also easy to sympathize with the expert players who have no trouble at all, because they don’t even need to follow those guidelines. In fact, no one does, because those instructions are incomplete at best, and completely misleading at worst. Players can instead just stagger the Marauder as he charges with his axe, and chain it with another powerful blast as he stumbles for even more damage. So why don’t players just do this instead?
The best way to explain why is by comparing the Marauder to the other enemies in the game, with a great example being the Cacodemon. Its pop-up tutorial states the following:
The Cacodemon is a Pressure Demon with a powerful close-range bite.
If you can fire a Sticky Bomb or Frag Grenade into its mouth, it instantly Staggers.
This stagger is not only a 100% consistent glory-kill setup, it’s inarguably the most efficient way to take down these enemies. Since grenades operate on a cooldown instead of ammunition capacity, and the ammo requirement from other weapons can be high, the strong majority of Cacodemons killed in the average playthrough will be through the tooltip’s grenade-glory double tap. Other tutorials are fairly comparable: players are told to shoot the armor off Mancubi, the guns off Revenants and Arachnotrons, to hit the back of the Pinkies, and so on. While these are useful hints, they communicate a worrying precedent to the player that the strategy outlined by the tooltip is what you should always try to do. By having information spoon-fed before the enemy is even visible on screen, players are being trained to turn their brain off and follow the instructions. Another good point of comparison would be the Shield Soldier, the other enemy in the game who prominently uses an energy shield to block the player’s shots. They’re common enemies, so players will be used to chainsawing through them, throwing explosives behind them, or just using the BFG. If you use these same strategies against the Marauder however, none of them will work, which isn’t a problem in itself, but it fits the pattern of Doom Eternal’s poorly handled conveyance.
Put simply, conveyance is how a game communicates its rules to the player, and this is the heart of what the real problem is. The Marauder is simply where it came to a head, where a misleading tutorial collided with players disincentivized to think critically, thanks to a series of patronizing explanations of dominant strategies. The easy answer may be to just turn them off, but when disabling that setting also turns off help for how contextual gimmicks work, there’s no good solution. The combat has also been balanced around the player knowing these tips and using the dominant strategies they outline, weighing down the player’s capacity for mechanical expressiveness. It's not just the Marauder that's impacted, the player's entire mentality when engaging with enemies suffers from the rigidity of this design. It makes sense that with all the new features in Doom Eternal, the developers wanted to tie enemies to specific mechanics to ensure their use, but depth isn’t just a measure of how many decisions a player could make, but how many they’re actively incentivized to make.
If players only require an active sense of incentive though, doesn’t that bring us into a paradox, where the Marauder’s poor tutorial, and hidden better strategy, could be seen as an incentive for players to think for themselves? It may seem like I’m contradicting myself by acknowledging that’s how certain players will see it, but when games are such subjective experiences, analysis can only go as far as the positive and negative reinforcements that affect players on a general level. There are lots of Doom fans who will rise to the challenge like this and have an amazing time experimenting with the crazy amount of toys the game lets you play with, but the majority of players won’t bother to put in the effort unless prodded to do so. With fewer explicit tutorials and combat based around a more flexible variety of ways to counter enemies in general, players would be primed to test their entire arsenal against each new enemy and experience the joy of mechanical discovery action games are all about.
5 Comments
This is a really good analysis of your issues with the game, but I don't fully agree, although I do wish the game had given me more freedom to think for myself.
However, my counter argument to this point would be that if the game didn't give so many tutorials, wouldn't trial and error impact the flow more than an abundance of tutorials? Particularly in a game with so much to focus on, where you're making small decisions constantly based on a given situation.
A further argument is that the feeling of being this unstoppable legendary demon slayer might be impacted if the player is always experimenting, instead of ruthlessly killing demons in the most efficient ways possible.
I can't think of a way they could have handled the tutorials any better. Giving the player the answer and then challenging their ability to give the right answer at a moment's notice amongst the chaos of some of these encounters is the reason why this game is so fun. It's relentless and experimentation might slow it down.
However, my counter argument to this point would be that if the game didn't give so many tutorials, wouldn't trial and error impact the flow more than an abundance of tutorials? Particularly in a game with so much to focus on, where you're making small decisions constantly based on a given situation.
A further argument is that the feeling of being this unstoppable legendary demon slayer might be impacted if the player is always experimenting, instead of ruthlessly killing demons in the most efficient ways possible.
I can't think of a way they could have handled the tutorials any better. Giving the player the answer and then challenging their ability to give the right answer at a moment's notice amongst the chaos of some of these encounters is the reason why this game is so fun. It's relentless and experimentation might slow it down.
If the game didn't give enough tutorials it'd have a slower start, the way it is players who are going for a second run can just skip/turn off stuff
Right, if the enemy balance was kept as-is, trial and error would definitely make things clunkier, because the enemies have been balanced around players reading the tips and using those specific strategies. Removing the tutorials is simply the first step, the next would be to allow for more flexible approaches. For example, the Cacodemon grenade kill can only be achieved from the front, but doesn't require much precision when it comes to aiming. Maybe it could have a small, precision weakspot that could be hit from behind too. The Revenant's cannons can already be sniped off, but what if you could also fry its jetpack with the plasma rifle? The general idea is that by providing more unique strategies, players are afforded more ways to maintain flow, and the chance of them discovering something naturally is increased exponentially.
As with every action game I review, I can't help but make comparisons to Devil May Cry. It gives no explanations for any of its demons, but because your baseline strategies are effective enough against all of them, it doesn't feel the need to verbally tutorialize the best approaches. Instead, it teaches you simply through enemy design itself. Sin Scissors don't have much health, but they block most of your attacks, so it's obvious that you should capitalize on the moments they let their guard down. You could also try to just hit them from the back, where they can't block you. Blocking also stuns them for a second, so you can lock them in place with fast attacks instead and forcefully break their guard, et cetera.
In short, the same information the tutorials give can be communicated by enemy design, and with more strategies, players will find them naturally, so everyone benefits.
As with every action game I review, I can't help but make comparisons to Devil May Cry. It gives no explanations for any of its demons, but because your baseline strategies are effective enough against all of them, it doesn't feel the need to verbally tutorialize the best approaches. Instead, it teaches you simply through enemy design itself. Sin Scissors don't have much health, but they block most of your attacks, so it's obvious that you should capitalize on the moments they let their guard down. You could also try to just hit them from the back, where they can't block you. Blocking also stuns them for a second, so you can lock them in place with fast attacks instead and forcefully break their guard, et cetera.
In short, the same information the tutorials give can be communicated by enemy design, and with more strategies, players will find them naturally, so everyone benefits.
Thanks for your response. Your solution to add more weaknesses to enemies seems like it could be a good way to balance the effeciency of having these tutorials while also providing some freedom for experimenting and discovery.
I suspect that if the devs had considered this option that they wouldn't have had time to implement among everything else packed into this game. Would be great to see something like this for the next title!
I suspect that if the devs had considered this option that they wouldn't have had time to implement among everything else packed into this game. Would be great to see something like this for the next title!
smhomg
3 years ago