If your next expansion is archwing related it's time to fix the game mode.

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

Following are my opinions, but they are opinions I stand by.

Okay look. Over all. Warframe is a good game. The AI is a little............ slow. And it can be glitchy. But over all the game is enjoyable to experience. But archwing was only thought out as much as "wouldn't it be cool to have jetpacks?" and it shows that it was never fully thought out. There are many third person free space shooters that have been on the market and because they actually focus on only this game mechanic they do it a lot better. So we're going to go over things that need to be changed for this game mode to be successful as opposed to avoided at all cost.

1. Targeting. 

Targeting needs to be added as a major system. How targeting needs to work is that there needs to be a button assignment to assign target, or release target. By pressing the assign target button, a reticle will appear around the target. This will keep the aim of your equipped weapon on this assigned target. Because none of the arch guns (to my knowledge) are hit scan, this is not an issue because evasive targets at great range will still be missed. A small line with arrow should be leading the target in the direction of it's travel with a distance based on it's speed of movement and the projectile speed of your equipped weapon, "aiming" will center you on the physical location of the target on screen and force you to lead the target in it's flight path aiming towards the arrow indicator for your projectiles to intercept the target.

When not aiming, the target acquisition system will orient you to the targeted object. Moving forward will cause you to move on an intercept course toward the target, when it moves, your intercept course will adjust to keep you in line with the target, when moving away, again the course will adjust to the the target. When ascending, descending, or strafing left or right, the frame needs to move in a circular motion around the target, imagine an invisible sphere surrounding the target, any motion up down left or right will movie you along the surface of that sphere, when you move closer, that sphere grows smaller, when you move away, that sphere grows larger. Any movement not towards or away from the targeted object will move you along the invisible surface of that sphere. Or in other words to say orbit the target specified in the direction indicated. Literally every third person space sim I have ever played has this mechanic. 

When the targeting keybind is pressed, it will target either the object most directly in the center eighth of your screen or the target which is closest to you, placing priority on the closer target. If no object which can be targeted (asteroid, debris, intercept node, enemy target, etc) is within this targeting area, an audio sound will que to indicate no target acquired. When in battle however, when a target is destroyed, the next closest target will be automatically selected as long as said target is within a certain distance, creating fluidity of combat in an active engagement. Pressing the targeting keybind when a target is selected will deselect all targets and return you to "unassisted piloting" which will allow you to navigate the area in the same way that you currently experience.

As an example I present this tutorial from the videogame Zone of Enders which has an over all similar movement mechanic as it applies to targeting. Notice how the player character's movement automatically orients to the selected target allowing for a more fluid engagement.
 

2. Radar.

Radar as currently implemented is simply not effective for this kind of game mode. What is needed is a three dimensional multivector radar system. The most effective means for this is to have narrow circles surrounding the player character while int his game mode. We can have three circle types, color coded, white for the three nearest enemy targets, blue for objectives, and green for team mates, if you so desire you could adjust the team radars to change from green to yellow based on the health of your team mate. This circle will be hair thin, but widen and form a point as directed towards the object indicated and will tilt around the player character maintaining continuous tracking of that target in the 3d environment. The width of these circles will increase or decrease as the target indicated is nearer to, or further from, the player. Think about the universally identified symbol of electrons orbiting an atom, it would be something similar to that, the radar rings would tilt in orientation to the tracked objects you see. This form of heads up radar will allow you to keep constant situational awareness of your allies, objectives, and enemies, and where you need to turn to engage or disengage. 

I feel that these changes would also benefit Titania as she is basically playing the game in archwing mode. 

If the player in question really prefers the current mechanics (seeing as literally no one seems to play this game mode unless they're trying to get a specific mod for their "heavy gun" the numbers who prefer current mechanics would not be the majority of players) then it should be possible to disable them and play the game mode essentially as it is now. But seriously it is time that this game mode fell more in line with the game mechanics of pretty much every other game of this type to make it an enjoyable experience that will encourage people to play it for fun rather than because they just specifically "have to" in order to get something. 

If you really want to center your next content around the archwing system, this needs to happen. Archwing just can't continue in it's current state. 

[xXDeadsinxX]

They already have stated that Archwing is going to be changed/reworked when the Railjack update comes out.

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

20 minutes ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

They already have stated that Archwing is going to be changed/reworked when the Railjack update comes out.

Ahem. "Now all archwings can blink... CHANGED EVERYTHING! - That changes nothing. - EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW! EVERY WING CAN BLINK! - yes but the rest of it is still - SO DIFFERENT AND NEW, BLINKING!"

I'm giving actual real world examples of what needs to be done and how the mechanics and interface needs to be improved with actual examples. The only thing they've stated they are changing is that now everything can blink. That is a change. That there will be modular arch wings instead of just the default archwings. That is change. None of the changes they have announced will in any way improve the game play experience or make people want to play this game mode unless they have to. Which i why, instead of taking for granted they are going to do the overhaul the system actually needs, i am giving them specific examples of what i think needs to happen. Because i have every confidence that if no one makes it clear that it isn't a small change that is needed, but a total mechanic overhaul, they are going to take the path of least resistance, ie, do basically nothing other than add a few features. 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Ahem. "Now all archwings can blink... CHANGED EVERYTHING! - That changes nothing. - EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW! EVERY WING CAN BLINK! - yes but the rest of it is still - SO DIFFERENT AND NEW, BLINKING!"

I'm giving actual real world examples of what needs to be done and how the mechanics and interface needs to be improved with actual examples. The only thing they've stated they are changing is that now everything can blink. That is a change. That there will be modular arch wings instead of just the default archwings. That is change. None of the changes they have announced will in any way improve the game play experience or make people want to play this game mode unless they have to. Which i why, instead of taking for granted they are going to do the overhaul the system actually needs, i am giving them specific examples of what i think needs to happen. Because i have every confidence that if no one makes it clear that it isn't a small change that is needed, but a total mechanic overhaul, they are going to take the path of least resistance, ie, do basically nothing other than add a few features. 

They literally mentioned a full rework, bud. Blink was just the latest statement on it since it was a hot topic needing to be adressed by DE.

Edited July 22, 2019 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

They literally mentioned a full rework, bud. Blink was just the latest statement on it.

Okay good, so you being this well informed you'll have a link to exactly what they plan on doing that is going to revolutionize the experience so that i can read all about it and lay my concerns to rest.... Tried doing a search for an article discussing exactly what they're doing to archwing... didn't find much other than link after link to a conversation about how broken archwing is...

So please go ahead and send me a link discussing exactly what they are planning. I will be very eager to read it and be able to lay my concerns to rest.

But until they give out the final version of what, exactly, they are going to do, the entire scope, not just comments here and there but literally everything that the changes will encompass, there is no reason to just sit back and not say anything and hope they get it right. Because if they get all the work finished, after months of hard work and stress about being sure they made the right decisions, put out the final release notes, and everyone says in unison "this isn't enough, you should have done this and that and the other thing" they are going to say "Well if you had all these ideas why didn't you say anything?" and they'll be damn well in the right for saying it because if nobody says anything, DE just has to go on best guesses of what they think will make people happy.

This is a topic we should be discussing, not just waiting for DE to put out the final product and /complain/ about it if we don't like all the work they put into it. It's bad for the game, it's bad for the community, it's bad for the morale of DE's hard working developers. So if people have things to say about what they want to see in Archwing they should be saying it NOW. Not six months from now when it's all done and nothing to be done about it.

[Oreades]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Okay good, so you being this well informed you'll have a link to exactly what they plan on doing that is going to revolutionize the experience so that i can read all about it and lay my concerns to rest.

I don't think they've actually pushed a dev workshop related to Emperion/AW changes 

Tho I do sorta recall them mentioning 6dof controls when they where showing it off at Tennocon which made my heart absolutely ..... sink. Cause AW with 6dof was absoloutly absysmal IMHO and one of the first things I advise people who are having trouble with AW is to turn off experimental controls (6dof). So I hope I'm overreacting but I'm afraid they are gonna make another attempt to cram that down our throats again 😭

[Xzorn]

From what I saw and from previous experience in how DE handles this sorta thing Archwing will likely remain 90% transportation.

I'm having trouble thinking of a time they showed something and we actually got more and interesting than what they showed.

Maybe months down the line they'll add more into it but looked like the framework was done already.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

8 hours ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Okay good, so you being this well informed you'll have a link to exactly what they plan on doing that is going to revolutionize the experience so that i can read all about it and lay my concerns to rest.... Tried doing a search for an article discussing exactly what they're doing to archwing... didn't find much other than link after link to a conversation about how broken archwing is...

So please go ahead and send me a link discussing exactly what they are planning. I will be very eager to read it and be able to lay my concerns to rest.

But until they give out the final version of what, exactly, they are going to do, the entire scope, not just comments here and there but literally everything that the changes will encompass, there is no reason to just sit back and not say anything and hope they get it right. Because if they get all the work finished, after months of hard work and stress about being sure they made the right decisions, put out the final release notes, and everyone says in unison "this isn't enough, you should have done this and that and the other thing" they are going to say "Well if you had all these ideas why didn't you say anything?" and they'll be damn well in the right for saying it because if nobody says anything, DE just has to go on best guesses of what they think will make people happy.

This is a topic we should be discussing, not just waiting for DE to put out the final product and /complain/ about it if we don't like all the work they put into it. It's bad for the game, it's bad for the community, it's bad for the morale of DE's hard working developers. So if people have things to say about what they want to see in Archwing they should be saying it NOW. Not six months from now when it's all done and nothing to be done about it.

They said they'd be reworking AW. I don't know of details, only what DE said they are planning to do. And they might have their own ideas already, not necessarily yours. Discuss, theorize, do what you want, but don't be surprised if they don't do what you expect. They might have information that you don't. They may have another angle.

Everyone thinks they have the next big solution to the game. You have suggested, I'm sure they'll at least glance over it. If they do it, congrats, if they don't you just have to accept it like we all do. They don't owe any of us any details. You will know when they want you to know.Otherwise it'd be a chaotic mess like every time they let the players know of pretty much every detail to be added. Because sometimes saying too much also makes people overreact over absolutely nothing.

Even though I also want a dev workshop on it. But since the community tends to raise a stink at every little detail, even though they haven't experienced stuff yet, I understand why keeping information until the right time is a valid strategy.

---

As for the discussion itself, I do hope it is a good rework. Not that I find AW bad atm, just in need of improvements. And I sure do hope they are way better than the current ones if we are to use the Railjack system more. 

Though in all truth I'm less worried for the Archwing, since I believe DE has had plenty of time to know how to improve on it, and more worried about the Railjack controls. Since it's a completely new thing to maneuver there is a chance it may feel as clunky as Archwing once did. And if so it'll probably be abandoned once the novelty factor wears off. You can have the prettiest pew-pew thing but if ot doesn't have nearly infinite replay value and player friendly interface it'll still be tossed aside. But I do hope I'm wrong, and that it feels as good as it looks.

Edited July 22, 2019 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[xXDeadsinxX]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

So please go ahead and send me a link discussing exactly what they are planning. I will be very eager to read it and be able to lay my concerns to rest.

Ask and you shall receive. 

Timestamp at 22:55

 

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

5 hours ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

Ask and you shall receive. 

Timestamp at 22:55

 

Good. Good. I saw zone of enders in print............. followed by literally nothing of what it was they want to take from it. I still don't see why you feel the need to shut down discussion on the matter.

They're looking at a rework for archwing. Great. Objectively great.

They didn't say what they're thinking about doing so, please, tell me, exactly what in my comments do you object to them doing? Since. Their lack of further comment indicates that they haven't made all the final decisions yet. 

I provided a great deal of highly specific feedback.  So either there's something specific i said you object to. Or. You just don't want people discussing the matter. If there's something I stated you disagree with then I'm happy to talk to you about it. But if you're just looking to shut down discussion because you figure they've already got a handle on it? Well... This is a feedback forum. It's for discussion. Even on things that DE has already made decisions about.