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SovereignX9

Why does the Arch-vile not have a melee attack in Doom II?

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Was it due to limitations? Did id think he just shouldn't have had one? 

 

I've always wondered about this through the years. Have there been any mods that have given him a melee attack? 

 

I could just see it in my mind him throwing his big ass arm at you and it throws you back 10 feet or insta killing you or something. It'd make him that much more of a feared foe. 

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I suppose it's because the Arch-Vile's ranged attack is threatening enough that charging it at melee range isn't nearly as effective (for the average player) as finding cover and attacking at a distance. Could also possibly be a conscious decision based on it's healer status.

 

edit: also good to note that Arch-Vile is a hitscan enemy and if memory serves, no other hitscanners have melee attack frames either.

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Furthermore, introducing a melee attack to Archvile could lead to cheesing tactics similar to the Revenant where you could theoretically play Punch Out with it forever.

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My guess would be they figured that between its powerful attack and high health it didn’t need one.

 

Generally I try not to get up in their face as is so I can hide behind a wall once their attack starts so don’t think I’d ever see it’s melee much anyways.

 

Also, not sure about this one but maybe the engine only supports 2 attacks per demon and the resurrect counts as their second attack? Don’t know about this stuff though and am sure there are many people here smarter than I can confirm / disprove my theory :-D

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Because then I wouldn't be able to run up, shoot him in the face with a double barrel shotgun, the run back behind cover if he didn't enter stun state. If he did, then I get two shots before running away. His distanced attack is overpowered enough as it is. Or, as has been mentioned, he would become like the Revenant, where you run up, which triggers his melee, shoot him in the face, and run away. I mean you could give him one, but:

 

I'm oretty sure the Arch-Vile is OP enough as it is, being a hit-scanner that causes a ton of damage. Don't need to give him a melee attack, at least not in the original game. If you're a modder and think it would be a good idea, then more power to you. I think he's enough of a threat in the original games to call it good. If you don't think you' level is too tough, then add more Arch-Viles. And 30 Revenants. And 10 Cyberdemons at the exit.

 

Why not give the Cyberdemon a melee attack where he slaps you with his rocket launcher? Mancubii (mancubus'?)don't have a melee attack, give them one. Arachnatrons and Spider Masterminds don't. I'm sure it was done this way for balance reasons.

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2 hours ago, kwc said:

I suppose it's because the Arch-Vile's ranged attack is threatening enough that charging it at melee range isn't nearly as effective (for the average player) as finding cover and attacking at a distance. Could also possibly be a conscious decision based on it's healer status.

 

edit: also good to note that Arch-Vile is a hitscan enemy and if memory serves, no other hitscanners have melee attack frames either.

Good point. Especially with the hitscan. That would be pretty interesting if hitscanners had melee attacks. 

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2 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Furthermore, introducing a melee attack to Archvile could lead to cheesing tactics similar to the Revenant where you could theoretically play Punch Out with it forever.

Playing punch out with Archie? That just sounds like a good time ;) 

 

If you could do that, it'd be interesting to see it happen in Hunted. 

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2 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Furthermore, introducing a melee attack to Archvile could lead to cheesing tactics similar to the Revenant where you could theoretically play Punch Out with it forever.

 

Agree with this, it would remove a lot of the Archvile's threat if you could do this. I think this is also why it has such a low pain chance, it's meant to be a demon that you have to battle from afar behind cover.

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7 minutes ago, DooM Bear said:

My guess would be they figured that between its powerful attack and high health it didn’t need one.

 

Generally I try not to get up in their face as is so I can hide behind a wall once their attack starts so don’t think I’d ever see it’s melee much anyways.

 

Also, not sure about this one but maybe the engine only supports 2 attacks per demon and the resurrect counts as their second attack? Don’t know about this stuff though and am sure there are many people here smarter than I can confirm / disprove my theory :-D

Yeah that's pretty much what I'm thinking at this point. I mean if the engine had the capabilities I'm sure id would've made most of the enemies, if not the arch-vile, crazier in my opinion. More attacks and such. They made do with what they had with the technology at the time. They probably had so many different ideas that just couldn't be implemented.

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12 minutes ago, Jello said:

If you don't think you' level is too tough, then add more Arch-Viles. And 30 Revenants. And 10 Cyberdemons at the exit.

No, that's simply not hard enough man. I will have to add 90 Revenants, and 30 Cyberdemons at just the exit. Along with an Arch-vile and 4 Barons on the other side of every door you open. 

 

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From a gameplay perspective, that frantic rush to try and make it flinch and interrupt the attack it does have is one of the more exciting parts of the base game. Likewise, I don't think a melee attack would make other enemies not retaliating to it make as much sense.

 

From a technical perspective, you can see they were struggling for frames within their naming scheme as it was, and the extra animations and file size bloat might have been a struggle at the time. 

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Maybe they're not skilled in hand to hand combat. They're more the "mage" type of monster.

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Because they didn't need one. Their ranged attack is devastating and the fire usually blinds the player for a while.

 

That's more than enough.

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Can't we consider his monster resurrect ability as a "meele" attack?

Technically it's a limited-distance attack, but instead of attacking player if nearby, it "attacks" nearby corpses.

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The arch-vile already is the monster with the most frames of animation, 29 total forcing it to use the [, \, and ] characters instead of just letters like the rest of the bestiary. And contrarily to the imp and hell nobles whose ranged animation doubles as a melee animation because they fling fireballs from their claws, the arch-vile's pyrokinetic attack doesn't look like a slap, so it'd need a separate melee animation.  Talk about overkill.

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