Open World Archwing - Quality of Life improvements

[metroidman12311]

So I've been doing a lot of Fortuna bounties and started noticing some really annoying issues with Archwing in open world. They're small but compound in certain situations making Archwing more annoying to use than it's worth.

1. Abilities being reset

I'm sure a bunch of people already know that using Archwing on the Plains or Orb Vallis cancels your abilities. This is fairly minor for some Frames and makes others difficult to play. Mag for example couldn't care less about abilities being reset when she flies off. Same to Frost because his Snowglobe is independent of him. Rhino, Inaros, Mesa, Oberon, etc all have abilites they keep up for survival and this hurts them quite a bit. Now, I know what you're thinking "This idea is just a buff for already strong Frames!" and "They need this to work how it does to nerf those Frames and make other Frames more viable!". That way of thinking is flawed though. This isn't any sort of nerf or something that will make you think twice about what Frame to bring to open world. This simply makes it annoying to play open world because you are given two choices, Use Archwing to keep up with your team but have to refresh abilities every time you move OR don't use Archwing and be left behind by your team constantly. That's not acceptable simply because you will be forced to use Archwing to stay with the team. You're pigeonholed into dealing with abilities being removed whenever your team moves. I understand why this problem exists and have an answer to it I'll talk about later.

 

2. Companion link mods don't link to the Warframe properly

Unlike abilities being reset, this can't be seen as an indirect nerf to anything really strong. When going into Archwing your stats change to the Archwing's. This causes companions like Kavats, Kubrows, and Moas to re-link to the Archwing stats. This isn't noticeable for shield Frames as the shield will recharge after landing. Health and armor Frames will have a much bigger issue with this due to how health is handled. upon entering Archwing the companion will link their health to the Archwings health whether it is higher or lower than the Frame. if the Frame has higher health than the Archwing then the companion will not regain that health when you leave Archwing. For example, let's use an Inaros with 7000 health, an Itzal with 900 health and a Companion with 100 health and 120% health link. before entering Archwing the Companion has 8500 health. After entering Archwing the Companion has 6100 less health to link to leaving it at 1200 health. You now leave Archwing giving the Companion more health to link to. Their health cap now raises to 8500 again but current health stays at 1200. This means they lost 7300 health or 85% of their total health just so you can go somewhere faster. Now with only 15% health remaining you need to heal them. The only way to do this is to devote all your time to healing with pack leader melee attacks or let them die to revive them. Both will take a while and put you in a dangerous situation. Do you rush a group of enemies to melee them for nearly a minute or sit in a group of enemies hoping they kill the companion? All of this happening because you didn't want to be left behind by your teammates.

 

My Fix - Change the Archwing to act like K-Drives in open world

Currently not of those problems arise when you use a K-Drive. it's doesn't replace the Frame stats nor remove abilities when active. Now, I know the problems with Archwing arise because it acts as the Warframe. Abilities are removed because the abilities have been changed. Stats are altered because the "character" being played is the Archwing not your Warframe. What I propose is to alter the Archwing to function as a vehicle, not a character, in open world. The shield and health of the Archwing can overlay your frames and must be diminished before the Frame is affected. Once the health is damaged enough to become 0 it blows up and excess damage goes to the Frame. This allows the companion to retain a link with the Warframe at all times. With the Archwing running as an extension of the Warframe you could now have the abilities being separate as well. The K-Drive shows it is possible to have a "vehicle mode" that doesn't affect current active abilities like inaros' scarab swarm. Implementing a similar idea for Archwing would solve these issues.

 

TL,DR: Making Archwings function as a vehicle like K-Drives would fix some of it's problems in open world content

 

Thanks For taking the time to read this! I look forward to Feedback on what I've posted as well as other things I may have missed!

[birdobash]

Tbh even the controls in open world archwing are really dumb, if you play normal archwing missions or Titania, the movement just feels so much smoother and makes so much more sense. I have no idea why it regressed when they gave us open world access to archwings.

For example, in normal archwing if you press w, you move in the direction your camera is looking, in a 360 degrees sphere, but for some reason open world archwing is limited to a weird 2D plain of movement where if you look down or up and press w, you stay at exactly the same altitude and fly off in whichever direction the camera is closest to, that is unless you press shift.

Momentum is also carried quite stupidly in open world archwing. If you fly full speed up parallel to a cliffside, but if you let go of shift, you won't keep flying up. Instead your archwing decides to suddenly defy the laws of physics and with the full speed of your ascent, change direction perpendicular to the cliff and smash face first right into that cliffside.

Normally in normal archwing or razorwing, momentum works like it should, it keeps you moving in the same direction even if you let go of shift, or you end up braking if you turn your camera 180 because your acceleration in the opposite direction counteracts your momentum. On the contrary, open world archwing just kind of decides momentum doesn't want to follow any sort of logic, and any directional change you make will keep the full 100% momentum and speed.

This is most noticeable if you go max speed in 1 direction, then let go of shift and spin your camera 360 or more very fast, in non open world archwing you end up safely stopping quite smoothly, but in open world archwing you spin at the speed of sound uncontrollably.

Edited December 24, 2018 by birdobash