The Larkspur is one of the best Archwing Weapons (and demonstrates why aim assist in Archwing is necessary)

[MJ12]

The Larkspur primary fire is amazing. It's a weapon with generous aim assist that makes high-speed Archwing combat easy, reasonable range for dogfights, and plenty of damage output against both groups and single targets. Its secondary is... less amazing because of how unwieldy it is and how self-damage exists but it has its uses. But this demonstrates, again, how aim assist is necessary if DE wants Archwing to be about high-speed high-agility dogfighting rather than staying still and being a floating turret. 

There are only a small handful of Archweapons which can be used at medium ranges while doing high speed movement, and that's basically the Larkspur, the Fluctus, and the Grattler. All of which have forgiving aim in one way or another. The others tend to lose way too much of their damage output when you start doing wild maneuvering because the enemies you shoot tend to be extremely small and fairly agile themselves due to the distances and scale of Archwing combat.

DE_Steve's whiteboard said that he wanted Archwing combat to be more like Zone of the Enders than Elite-and Zone of the Enders emphasized high-speed combat with rapid switching between ranged and melee attacks. However, Zone of the Enders did so in part because the game gave you a very powerful lock-on system, homing attacks, and deemphasized mechanical aiming precision to make combat more a matter of managing your movement, evading enemy attacks, and considering the proper attack type to use against an enemy rather than mechanical aiming. In fact, the original game basically had only two weapons which ever needed aiming precision, and one of them was a mission-specific subweapon intended largely to help you beat a single mission.

If DE wants Archwing combat to be similarly high-speed and fast-paced, Archwing combat cannot continue to reward slowing down and picking your shots like the current complete lack of aim assist does. All Archwing weapons will need to require less precision in dogfights if you want average players to move around in their fights rather than just standing still and using precision aim. This could be done by adding some level of autoaim to Archwing hitscan weapons and projectile magnetism to all Archwing projectile weapons so that nothing in Archwing requires pixel-perfect aim. Doing so would deemphasize pixel perfect aiming, which would subsequently deemphasize staying still to land every shot and allow Archwing to be balanced around more dynamic movement and more nimble, erratically moving enemies. This would allow Archwing combat to feel more exciting and dynamic, in line with DE's desires.

[Nerf_SupYo]

Makes sense 👍

[0_The_F00l]

So... Have all archguns turn into a lesser peacemaker? 

[LogaMC1995]

20 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

So... Have all archguns turn into a lesser peacemaker? 

More like turn all archgun into having mini Tactical Visor from Overwatch

[MJ12]

10 hours ago, 0_The_F00l said:

So... Have all archguns turn into a lesser peacemaker? 

There is a wide range of possible aim assist settings and setups between "none" and "full autoaim within field of view." You don't need that much aim assist for Archwing weapons to be significantly better in high-speed engagements, but you do need some. I'd say 2-3 or so degrees of aim assist/bullet magnetism (so if your shot is off by an angle of 2-3 degrees, it'll still hit) would be sufficient to make longer-range shooting feel a lot better without making it feel like the game's playing itself for you.

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

So just get the enemies within the crosshair to see damage?

[vaarnaaarne]

A related quality from the ZoE comparison, the wall bumping animation's got to go. Warframes still have arms and legs, just have them do something to show they are against a wall (ie by just squatting against it to push against the Archwing's thrust), but not get interrupted by it. Jehuty never bumped against a wall because mecha are too cool for that. And because it clashes with having fast XYZ axis combat.

[MJ12]

2 hours ago, (PS4)jaggerwanderer said:

So just get the enemies within the crosshair to see damage?

Pretty much. Is that really a bad thing? "Put crosshair on enemy -> crosshair turns red -> shoot -> enemy takes damage" seems like a reasonable setup.

[Test-995]

Actually lot of mecha or such kind of games do that, so i don't really see the problem.