Minions -- TOO easy?

As a random thought, does the simplicity of minions rob the player's sense of accomplishment when he/she kills one?

I have to say, as a DM, I love them (minions) -- I don't have to track HP. I can just tally mark them off my scrap sheet for the battle as they get killed.

On the flip side, as a DM, I get a little annoyed when a PC's secondary damage (like from a cleave that does a couple points of damage to an adjacent enemy) is enough to kill one when the primary enemy target took 20+ damage.

As a player, sometimes (though not always) I can get in to it and do an internal "yay" every time I kill/incapacitate one. Other times it is a "yes, it was a minion, but let's get to the important enemies!"

And whether I am a player or DM, sometimes I look over at the faces of other players and when they kill a minion it's that "no big deal, just a minion" or in our after game discussions, the people that killed dozens of minions (while everyone else held back a brute) will say something like "yeah, I felt completely useless in that fight" (even though they killed the most, just not the one big bad guy).

As a DM I am not sure I want to give up the "tally" simplicity of minions for tracking more hp of several enemies. But I am not keen on the "any amount of splash damage is enough to kill it" aspect either.

I mentally toyed with a couple ideas:

• a minion has extra hp equal to it's level. This would mean that the DM has to track hp but it gets rid of the splash damage issue. Default rule of no damage on a miss still applies
• a 1 hp minion has a 1/4 chance to stay alive after taking damage. The DM still wouldn't need to track hp (just roll a d4 after every hit). This would also vary the staying power of the minion adding to a sense of accomplishment for the kill. Default rule of no damage on a miss still applies. Or maybe it's a 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 chance, whatever.. just was throwing out a number.
• the second time a minion takes damage, he dies (regardless of amount of damage taken); default rule about no damage on a miss applies. But this means the DM has to keep track of how many times he's been hit.
• any single attack that deals damage equal to one-half its level is enough to kill it. No tracking involved. But this could be trouble for the controllers in the group since they have the lowest damage output (comparatively).

Will I actually get around to implementing any of this as a house rule? Doubtful. But it did get me thinking about minions, simplicity vs sense of accomplishment.

So, back to the original premise of this blog. To anyone reading out there, how unsatisfying is a minion kill?

Edit: The more I think about it, I think I may have part of the explanation.

Given two scenarios:

Scenario A:
The entire party is facing hundreds of minions trying to breech the city walls. All the PCs are fighting minions, etc.

Scenario B:
The party is facing 8 minions, and 3 other types (elites, solos, brutes, lurkers, whatever). One person is clearing away all the minions and everyone else is concentrating fire on the 3 bigger types.

In scenario A, i can forsee everyone feeling equally good about their kills (presuming the dice were kind and they weren't always missing).

On the other hand, scenario B is sort of what I've been seeing in my groups so far. Sure the one person single-handedly took out 2/3 of the enemies but was less satisfied by it because they may have been comparing thier actions to those of the other PCs -- so that comparison may be part of it.

Anyway, just wanted to add that after though to this stream of words on the topic..