What Happened to Arch-Viles?

I know this is probably an "old" topic by now, but why weren't Arch-Viles included in DOOM 4? It seems that the new Summoners would be way more straining on a game because of it's powers. (Creating new beasties instead of resurrecting them) My best guess (without researching the subject) would be that A. It would be difficult to reverse the beautiful little giblets that you turn the demons into via Glory Kills, B. Bethesda didn't like Arch-Viles because let's be honest, they're assholes, or, C. They didn't want the entire game to be identical to the originals. That being said, I'm probably completely off on these guesses because I know barely anything about game coding and shit, and am not on the up-and-up on with the inner workings of Bethesda and modern ID, except that Bethesda wants DLC money.

17 minutes ago, 1230Reanimator0321 said:

B. Bethesda didn't like Arch-Viles because let's be honest, they're assholes

Bethesda didn't make the game and wouldn't have been involved with this sort of design decision.

The real answer is most likely none of the above. Note that Summoners work the same way Arch-viles did in Doom3, except without the attack, so the decision likely came down to the question of "Is this even an Arch-vile? Why not call it something else?" and that was that.

1 - Arch-Vile design didn't work in the new game because their job was to revive dead enemies, But since the enemies disappear few seconds after killing them, their only solution was to spawn new ones.

2 - Leaving corpses behind for Archviles to resurrect would cause FPS to drop on lower-end hardware (oops consoles) especially for that kind of games where there's waves and waves of enemies in 1 Room.

I still maintain that the game could've easily had dead enemies dissolve into Resident Evil-like gore heaps to fix the issue. But eh, 'tis as it is.

Interestingly enough, if you looked through the game files of the alpha/beta versions of the game, you'd see that Summoners were indeed supposed to be called Arch-Viles during development.

What helps this theory is that in the demo that Game Informer had gotten the chance to play, Summoners were described as these hooded figures which floated around from place to place, as opposed to the Not Arch-Viles that we ended up with in the final product. 

It was most likely a last-minute decision, just like the decision to have vanishing corpses in the campaign. 

My best guess, is that dead enemies, would have caused massive fps drops, like @dmg_64 said, but i think, the summoners are limited of how much monsters they can spawn based on how much enemies are in the arena currently, so they decide based on that how much new enemies needs to be spawned, i'm sure you've seen some summoners that did not summon any enemies, so my best guess is that they kind of still "revive" the enemies, but with a really different method. (I may not be correct here this is just my guess, i think this makes sense, in designing them, because this method avoids the problem that summoners would be stuck in a circle and just spawn enemies nonstop)

And for the attack changes, the old archvile attacks would have not worked with the new doom, so they just went with changing the archville a lot, so they gave them new attacks and teleporting, i think that was a great idea.

If you think this makes no sense please correct me i'm really not 100% sure in this answer.

On 8/28/2017 at 6:55 AM, dmg_64 said:

1 - Arch-Vile design didn't work in the new game because their job was to revive dead enemies, But since the enemies disappear few seconds after killing them, their only solution was to spawn new ones.

2 - Leaving corpses behind for Archviles to resurrect would cause FPS to drop on lower-end hardware (oops consoles) especially for that kind of games where there's waves and waves of enemies in 1 Room.

6 hours ago, McSteer said:

And for the attack changes, the old archvile attacks would have not worked with the new doom, so they just went with changing the archville a lot, so they gave them new attacks and teleporting, i think that was a great idea.

Very true, the old AV line-of-sight attack wouldn't work at all in the new Doom.  The player moves far too slowly and the levels simply don't have the hidey holes necessary - they're much more open after all.  

I could see them bringing back the AV as a dedicated boss fight though where you could create an arena that supports that kind of attack.

I read somewhere that the reason for not including the Arch Vile was because of its bad reputation... I'm not sure where I saw that (Doom wiki maybe), I never really thought that was a good reason. The ideas presented here make much more sense than what I just said. Technical and game play restrictions are far better reasons than a misconceived "bad reputation". Plus, I think the Summoner is an even more annoying enemy than the Arch Vile ever was!

I do believe they are still there. Just now they are call Summoners, maybe with a few differences, but their essence is the same.

They are still assholes tho.

.- ''Feel the pain one last time.'' 

They're called Summoners now.

1 hour ago, Piper Maru said:

They're called Summoners now.

I refuse to see them as the same in hopes that we'll see the archville once again some day. They also provoke different movements from the player.

2 minutes ago, MrGlide said:

I refuse to see them as the same in hopes that we'll see the archville once again some day. They also provoke different movements from the player.

I don't approve of it either. I would rather very much see the Pumpkinhead, fire walking, demon reviving pain in the ass from the original series than what we got. The Summoner is just a noisy insectoid  that looks like something right out of Power Rangers.

I'd like to see them return in a direct sequel as more of a boss monster. You enter an enclosed arena, you see quite a number of dead demon bodies laid around, and when the boss fight starts the Arch-Viles can revive some of the dead bodies. It would be semi-scripted and regular demons anywhere else could still have their bodies dissolve after a moment.

I mean the banshees in Bioshock Infinite worked in a somewhat similar manner a console generation ago, I don't see why it couldn't work now.

I also like that the Summoners are called Summoners and not Arch-viles, it gives id leeway to adding in proper Arch-viles later.