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What Archwing Missions Need.


MysticDragonMage
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before i start, im going to make this point 100% clear.

since 2014, DE has done their best with archwing.

  • they've included archwing within various gameplay features, including sharkwing, twice in open worlds, once with a raid boss and regular boss of the same type, and later on in railjack missions (they are still trying).
  • they've added and updated archwing enemies multiple times.
  • they've added two missions called pursuit and rush as well as a neat invasion mission with the formorian.
  • a handful of weapons and archwings have been added.
  • and finally, we have just received the third update to the movement system.

yet this is not helping archwing. or at the very least, its core missions. it is improving it on a technical level, but not helping it long-term.

as i have said specifically with the movement, this is the third time we've received an update to the mechanics. thus far, the third fix we've received has not motivated a majority of this community to finally invest more time into archwing's core missions.

why do we keep doing this? why do we act as if more attempts to do the same thing will eventually make its entirety more popular?

my point is, based on community feedback, most of what had been suggested has been done at least once.

i am going to point out something that has not been included yet and how it can improve standard archwing mission popularity more than what any update to the movement could ever offer.

the answer is MORE LOOT

what exactly do you get for investing so much time into archwing missions? an average amount of resources per mission, mods exclusively for archwing, and mastery if you are ranking-up arch-weapons and archwings. what does that compare to regular missions?

an extremely big part of the community plays for the loot. for example, how likely would you play just one archwing mission if completing it would reward you with platinum?

Formorian missions prove that a larger part of the community are more likely to play a simple "go here, use this item, damage that, run away, repeat" mission if the results provide worthwhile reward.

SUGGESTION:

limited time and replayable archwing missions with high-quality rewards for completing them as special alerts (similar to fissures, invasions, syndicate alerts, etc.). every hour or so, a player will be presented with the opportunity to play a handful of limited time archwing missions. only by completing them either multiple times or just once they will be rewarded.

  • this would make progressing in archwing far more rewarding.
  • it would attract the larger part of the community interested in the loot.
  • potentially allow some archwing missions to present more various difficulties.
  • in general, just more rewards for playing archwing.

 

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Let's wait and see, my understanding is Railjack will pretty much replace the current archwing missions. If that proves to not be the case....I doubt "more loot" will solve the problem, as the problem is....well...you did kinda point it out, it's all 'enclosed', it's all connected to itself, it affects none of the rest of the game, and the gameplay itself is...decent. Admittedly i've been avoiding archwing even after it's mobility changes because i've been waiting for Empyrean, so I have no idea how the missions "feel" with the current movement system, but much of the rest of it remains the same.

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Being honest what Archwing needed was to be completely and entirely scrapped and rebuilt from a completely new and fresh direction.... It should have completely ignored physics found elsewhere in the game and been built specifically and exclusively for that kind of game design. The ultimate reason Archwing is a failure is because they tried to build something that felt kinda like the rest of the game, problem si the rest of the game does not lend it's self to a free space flight sim...

I had high hopes for this archwing rework but seeing the end result of what's coming I am more than disappointed. They needed a completely redesigned system that only made use of the existing 3d models but over all functioned in a completely different manor. What they ended up doing was just... kinda slap a bandaid on it and hope it would be good enough. 

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9 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

i am going to point out something that has not been included yet and how it can improve standard archwing mission popularity more than what any update to the movement could ever offer. the answer is MORE LOOT.

No, it isn't. Not even remotely. Gating "more loot" behind content that players decisively do not want to run isn't a good way to promote said content. Look at what happened when Nightwave gated Elite Weeklies behind an hour's worth of Kuva Survival Life Support grind. What Archwings need is MORE CONTENT! Currently, there are 9 Archwing nodes across 2 tilesets. One tileset is "just empty space" with very limited props and the other tileset is excessively cramped for the movement system and consists of it can't be more than maybe 12 tiles. Yes, there's Sharkwing but that's godawful with the dampened movement, clipping into terrain and clipping issues. Yes, there are the Free Roam maps, but there you get knocked out of your Archwing any time you try to actually fight in it. Basically, it's pretty much just Salacia that's worth playing, MAYBE Galilea if you get bored. Everywhere else is either rarely available or clumsy to fight in.

Archwings need more tilesets. They need tilesets with more tiles. They need more enemies - actual enemies. They need more guns, more melee weapons, more actual Archwings - brand new ones. They need more nodes with a variety of mission types across a variety of tilesets. I'd like a Grineer Sabotage mission. I'd like a Corpus Exterminate mission. They also need to not utterly suck in Free Roam maps. Get rid of homing missiles entirely (across all game modes, it's a bad system) and replace them with long-range explosive flak. Let us actually FIGHT in our Archwings on the Plains and in the Vallis. Maybe even let us use our Atmospheric Archguns WITH our Atmospheric Archwings. And that's just a start. Archwings are a badly neglected "thing" that grew out the side of Warframe and got only very feeble, limited treatment. They need ACTUAL content.

That's not to say loot is irrelevant, mind you. Another big gate to Archwing missions is that Archwing mods drop in the dumbest of ways. Most of even the dirt simple basic mods are hard to get because they only drop from one rotation on one node. It's a bad game mode and you have to deliberately fail it partially because it's B rotation and you only get C if  you do well. So you grind one of the less popular game modes for BASIC STUFF, do it in a dumb way and still have to hope RNGesus smiles on you. And that's the GOOD news. Want Sabo Rounds for your Imperator Vandal? Tough. Most of the actually decent Archgun mods are locked behind the Profit-Taker Orb Heist. You know - that team-only raid boss which requires Old Mate in Fortuna and has nothing in the slightest to do with Archwings? You know, that raid boss who INSTANTLY knocks you out of your Archwing if you attempt to use it? That boss? That's where a plurality of Archgun mods are.

Archwings have barely any content to offer and their own progression is utter ass. THAT is why nobody wants to play them. I have friends who've played Warframe for over 1500 hours and yet have barely touched Archwings because the grind to mediocrity is so long and boring. Slapping more rewards on Archwing missions might get some people to grit their teeth and go through the motions, but it's going to piss off a lot of people who recognise how lame the system is. And in both cases, it's going to lead to burnout and resentment. Make the thing fun to play, THEN worry about adding rewards to it. I know this community sticks around out of Stockholm syndrome, but there is SOME value to making fun, engaging gameplay across a wide variety of content SEPARATE from what it rewards, no? Maybe I missed the memo, but we're not being paid to be here. We come here presumably because we enjoy being here.

And that's not even considering all the ways that Archwings can be integrated into standard content. Sharkwing is terrible because it's set inside claustrophobic tight quarters and narrow tunnels, but it has the right idea. Using Archwings to move between indoor sections within the same unified instance is a brilliant use of them, as long as the Archwing section itself isn't terrible like the Sharkwing sections are. That's all Railjack really is, realistically speaking. It's a bunch of small on-foot instances linked via Archwing. You can easily do that in all of the spaceship tilesets - Corpus Obelisk, Grineer Galleon, Grineer Asteroid. You can even go full Dead Space by hosting several ships with several entraces inside a bridging Archwing map allowing players to seamlessly access all of the on-foot instances in whatever order they want.

Rewards help, but they aren't the answer. People don't stray from Archwings because they aren't paid enough to play Archwing missions. People stray from Archwings because all of the Archwing content we have right now sucks ass. Fix that, improve on it, expand it, make it into a legitimate aspect of the game rather than a throwaway experimental toy and people will play it.

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On 2019-12-01 at 8:56 AM, Steel_Rook said:

No, it isn't. Not even remotely. Gating "more loot" behind content that players decisively do not want to run isn't a good way to promote said content. Look at what happened when Nightwave gated Elite Weeklies behind an hour's worth of Kuva Survival Life Support grind. What Archwings need is MORE CONTENT! Currently, there are 9 Archwing nodes across 2 tilesets. One tileset is "just empty space" with very limited props and the other tileset is excessively cramped for the movement system and consists of it can't be more than maybe 12 tiles. Yes, there's Sharkwing but that's godawful with the dampened movement, clipping into terrain and clipping issues. Yes, there are the Free Roam maps, but there you get knocked out of your Archwing any time you try to actually fight in it. Basically, it's pretty much just Salacia that's worth playing, MAYBE Galilea if you get bored. Everywhere else is either rarely available or clumsy to fight in.

Archwings need more tilesets. They need tilesets with more tiles. They need more enemies - actual enemies. They need more guns, more melee weapons, more actual Archwings - brand new ones. They need more nodes with a variety of mission types across a variety of tilesets. I'd like a Grineer Sabotage mission. I'd like a Corpus Exterminate mission. They also need to not utterly suck in Free Roam maps. Get rid of homing missiles entirely (across all game modes, it's a bad system) and replace them with long-range explosive flak. Let us actually FIGHT in our Archwings on the Plains and in the Vallis. Maybe even let us use our Atmospheric Archguns WITH our Atmospheric Archwings. And that's just a start. Archwings are a badly neglected "thing" that grew out the side of Warframe and got only very feeble, limited treatment. They need ACTUAL content.

That's not to say loot is irrelevant, mind you. Another big gate to Archwing missions is that Archwing mods drop in the dumbest of ways. Most of even the dirt simple basic mods are hard to get because they only drop from one rotation on one node. It's a bad game mode and you have to deliberately fail it partially because it's B rotation and you only get C if  you do well. So you grind one of the less popular game modes for BASIC STUFF, do it in a dumb way and still have to hope RNGesus smiles on you. And that's the GOOD news. Want Sabo Rounds for your Imperator Vandal? Tough. Most of the actually decent Archgun mods are locked behind the Profit-Taker Orb Heist. You know - that team-only raid boss which requires Old Mate in Fortuna and has nothing in the slightest to do with Archwings? You know, that raid boss who INSTANTLY knocks you out of your Archwing if you attempt to use it? That boss? That's where a plurality of Archgun mods are.

Archwings have barely any content to offer and their own progression is utter ass. THAT is why nobody wants to play them. I have friends who've played Warframe for over 1500 hours and yet have barely touched Archwings because the grind to mediocrity is so long and boring. Slapping more rewards on Archwing missions might get some people to grit their teeth and go through the motions, but it's going to piss off a lot of people who recognise how lame the system is. And in both cases, it's going to lead to burnout and resentment. Make the thing fun to play, THEN worry about adding rewards to it. I know this community sticks around out of Stockholm syndrome, but there is SOME value to making fun, engaging gameplay across a wide variety of content SEPARATE from what it rewards, no? Maybe I missed the memo, but we're not being paid to be here. We come here presumably because we enjoy being here.

And that's not even considering all the ways that Archwings can be integrated into standard content. Sharkwing is terrible because it's set inside claustrophobic tight quarters and narrow tunnels, but it has the right idea. Using Archwings to move between indoor sections within the same unified instance is a brilliant use of them, as long as the Archwing section itself isn't terrible like the Sharkwing sections are. That's all Railjack really is, realistically speaking. It's a bunch of small on-foot instances linked via Archwing. You can easily do that in all of the spaceship tilesets - Corpus Obelisk, Grineer Galleon, Grineer Asteroid. You can even go full Dead Space by hosting several ships with several entraces inside a bridging Archwing map allowing players to seamlessly access all of the on-foot instances in whatever order they want.

Rewards help, but they aren't the answer. People don't stray from Archwings because they aren't paid enough to play Archwing missions. People stray from Archwings because all of the Archwing content we have right now sucks ass. Fix that, improve on it, expand it, make it into a legitimate aspect of the game rather than a throwaway experimental toy and people will play it.

i am not sure if "gating loot behind content" has any relevance to this conversation since most if not all features gate loot behind content and is just how the game works now a days. the only way to get syndicate weapons are investing more time into syndicates. the only way to get a kit-gun is to invest more time into Solaris United reputation.

back on topic; unless the content's purpose is to give players some worthwhile reward, more or improved content will hardly fix archwing. the prof is in its history.

since 2014 the devs have tried to make archwing relevant by doing exactly what you have asked for. they added new weapons/archwings, updated missions, added more missions, tried their best to include archwing in other gameplay features, and updated its movement three times. they've also added new enemies and one boss.

of course, based on archwing's current controversy, it was never enough to boost its popularity. not because of its lack of content, but because archwing was never rewarding to begin with. people never wanted to invest their time into playing something that was never rewarding in the end.

so why would more content work now if it did not work back then? there is no solid evidence that people will suddenly play more archwing missions if they have more content. there is evidence that people are more motivated to play these missions if there is worthwhile reward.

formorian missions are somewhat tedious to complete, for example. demanding that players craft formorian disruptions before encountering the formorian, then tasking the player to search and destroy the reactor. despite however many steps or tries it takes to complete the mission, more players were more motivated to play a simple archwing mission because it offered decent rewards and amounted to something (the safety of our relays).

 

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More loot wouldn't matter. Archwing mission giving archwing stuff only. It's something you can skip with very little impact on the rest of the game. Kind of like k drives. Aside from that, there are those who are willing to just pay plat for those rewards skipping it entirely while waving around the rewards. Can you imagine if we get archwing in sorties after railjack gets launch? Think of all the randoms with Itzel with their Imperator in an archwing sortie.

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Archwing suffer from weapons locked due to syndicate, bad XP or ressource farming, and poor pathing... I mean it's so bad even npcs get stuck all ghe time (levels concept aren't that bad).

Add unvaulted relic farming, hydron equivalent for XP, make weapons accessible with only 3 syndicates, add void fissures, and scale down players / npcs so that you don't spend your time hitting corridors wall... and people will play archwing missions more than today

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On 2019-11-30 at 11:21 PM, Hixlysss said:

Let's wait and see, my understanding is Railjack will pretty much replace the current archwing missions. If that proves to not be the case....I doubt "more loot" will solve the problem, as the problem is....well...you did kinda point it out, it's all 'enclosed', it's all connected to itself, it affects none of the rest of the game, and the gameplay itself is...decent. Admittedly i've been avoiding archwing even after it's mobility changes because i've been waiting for Empyrean, so I have no idea how the missions "feel" with the current movement system, but much of the rest of it remains the same.

with all due respect for development efforts toward railjack, i have reason to believe standard archwing missions will still not increase in popularity just because archwing is included.

to me, archwing in railjack is just another attempt to include archwing within another game feature, just as they did with open worlds and sharkwing.

while it is good to know that the full functionality of space archwing will be implemented this time, there are still a few things to take into account. for one thing, archwing is just an optional role to play in railjack. secondly, players will be ultimately tasked to manage and take care of their railjack. thus far, the railjack update seems to mostly benefit railjack and little to no benefit toward the standard archwing missions themselves. in general, if the railjack update were to motivate people to play archwing more often, it would not be within actual archwing missions, and only motivate players to play the archwing role in railjack instead.

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6 minutes ago, MysticDragonMage said:

with all due respect for development efforts toward railjack, i have reason to believe standard archwing missions will still not increase in popularity just because archwing is included.

to me, archwing in railjack is just another attempt to include archwing within another game feature, just as they did with open worlds and sharkwing.

while it is good to know that the full functionality of space archwing will be implemented this time, there are still a few things to take into account. for one thing, archwing is just an optional role to play in railjack. secondly, players will be ultimately tasked to manage and take care of their railjack. thus far, the railjack update seems to mostly benefit railjack and little to no benefit toward the standard archwing missions themselves. in general, if the railjack update were to motivate people to play archwing more often, it would not be within actual archwing missions, and only motivate players to play the archwing role in railjack instead.

I think that's the point though. The Railjack missions are supposed to replace the standard Archwing missions as the place where Archwing is used as intended. Ideally, they'll be the that blend of Archwing and ground combat that DE has been looking for the whole time.

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3 hours ago, Iamabearlulz said:

I think that's the point though. The Railjack missions are supposed to replace the standard Archwing missions as the place where Archwing is used as intended. Ideally, they'll be the that blend of Archwing and ground combat that DE has been looking for the whole time.

Railjack is going to have its own star chart and navigation. its not going to replace regular archwing missions nor was it confirmed that blending with railjack was going to be archwing's new intentional direction. as far as we know, archwing is just included as an optional role when managing a railjack.

either way, i dont see why we cant still have the option to play regular archwing missions just because railjack missions exist.

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The main reason why i don't do archwing much is it is just too much work to get the important mods,they should make it possible to obtain archwing mods through normal non archwing gameplay,and the lack of corrupted mods and some other misc important mods like Vig armements,HM,HA,adaptation,etc makes archwing and their weapons extremely underpowered compared to normal frames and weapons.

 

 

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21 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

since 2014 the devs have tried to make archwing relevant by doing exactly what you have asked for. they added new weapons/archwings, updated missions, added more missions, tried their best to include archwing in other gameplay features, and updated its movement three times. they've also added new enemies and one boss. of course, based on archwing's current controversy, it was never enough to boost its popularity. not because of its lack of content, but because archwing was never rewarding to begin with. people never wanted to invest their time into playing something that was never rewarding in the end.

Correlation does not apply causation. Archwings as they sit right now have basically nothing for content. That DE had to add as much content as you suggest just to get to a point of having barely any content speaks to the dire state of Archwings on release but is irrelevant to their current popularity. There are still 9 Archwing missions total capping at level 30 or so, with a pluraity of them being utterly awful. There are still a total of four Archwings, maybe two of which are actually worth playing and even then not for intrinsic reasons. There are still maybe two dozen Archwing weapons between guns and melee, and a majority of those are interchangeable - especially the melees. Hell, Archwings don't even offer "secondary" weapons, just "a gun" and "a sword." Not to mention that most of the Archwing weapons are gated behind awkward content to begin with.

And if that weren't bad enough, Archwing progression is abominable. Archwings are expensive to research and get, their weapons are hard to obtain and their mods are locked behind their own game modes. A player has to LIKE Archwings in order to PROGRESS their Archwing gear, and - like Operators - Archwings are hot garbage until you get a good way into their progression. Most people never bother with the boring, painful slog of using unmodded Archwings grinding horrible mission types just to get basic, essential mods. And even THEN, that only gets you to a borderline usable set of gear. You then have to run raids which have nothing to do with Archwings to get some of their more useful Archgun mods.

The issue was never that Archwings aren't rewarding. They aren't, but that describes the majority of Warframe. The issue was that Archwings suck ass across the board. Slapping expensive rewards behind Archwing content MIGHT get some people to hold their noses and play Archwing content they don't enjoy, but this is no solution. It's like saying "Hey, I'll give you $50 if you bang your head on that light pole until it rings like a bell." Forcing people to play content they don't enjoy against their will is not a solution, but the makings of a problem all its own. Creating content worth playing is the actual solution. DE have been #*!%ing around with Archwings for I don't know how many years now, and all they have to show for it is a pile of hot garbage. Regardless of how much progress they've made, the state we're in now has not budged from "terrible."

I personally like the new controls, I feel the Orb Heist rebalance of Archguns was a major improvement and giving Archwings some use in the Plains was a good idea. However, until Archwings stop being the equivalent of Happy Zephyr, nobody much is going to play them regardless of how much you pay people to do so. We need more Archwings, more weapons, more missions and for Archwing mods to not be such a pain in the ass to unlock, and that's at a bare minimum. Make content worth playing, THEN think about rewarding people for playing it.

 

12 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

Railjack is going to have its own star chart and navigation. its not going to replace regular archwing missions nor was it confirmed that blending with railjack was going to be archwing's new intentional direction. as far as we know, archwing is just included as an optional role when managing a railjack.

Personally, I feel that the end goal should be for Railjack + Archwings to entirely replace the Landing Craft and the standard Star Chart. Take the Railjack TO the mission, go EVA, Archwing to the actual entrance, then transition to an indoor instance, then go back out to space, back to your Railjack and jump away to end the mission. If you don't have a Railjack, then all you can do is take the Landing Craft, go invisible and approach the mission that way. I know it's not going to happen, but I really wish it would. Railjack has the potential to bridge the game's disparate pieces, but I doubt DE have it in them any more to make these kinds of major milestone changes.

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1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Correlation does not apply causation. Archwings as they sit right now have basically nothing for content. That DE had to add as much content as you suggest just to get to a point of having barely any content speaks to the dire state of Archwings on release but is irrelevant to their current popularity. There are still 9 Archwing missions total capping at level 30 or so, with a pluraity of them being utterly awful. There are still a total of four Archwings, maybe two of which are actually worth playing and even then not for intrinsic reasons. There are still maybe two dozen Archwing weapons between guns and melee, and a majority of those are interchangeable - especially the melees. Hell, Archwings don't even offer "secondary" weapons, just "a gun" and "a sword." Not to mention that most of the Archwing weapons are gated behind awkward content to begin with.

And if that weren't bad enough, Archwing progression is abominable. Archwings are expensive to research and get, their weapons are hard to obtain and their mods are locked behind their own game modes. A player has to LIKE Archwings in order to PROGRESS their Archwing gear, and - like Operators - Archwings are hot garbage until you get a good way into their progression. Most people never bother with the boring, painful slog of using unmodded Archwings grinding horrible mission types just to get basic, essential mods. And even THEN, that only gets you to a borderline usable set of gear. You then have to run raids which have nothing to do with Archwings to get some of their more useful Archgun mods.

The issue was never that Archwings aren't rewarding. They aren't, but that describes the majority of Warframe. The issue was that Archwings suck ass across the board. Slapping expensive rewards behind Archwing content MIGHT get some people to hold their noses and play Archwing content they don't enjoy, but this is no solution. It's like saying "Hey, I'll give you $50 if you bang your head on that light pole until it rings like a bell." Forcing people to play content they don't enjoy against their will is not a solution, but the makings of a problem all its own. Creating content worth playing is the actual solution. DE have been #*!%ing around with Archwings for I don't know how many years now, and all they have to show for it is a pile of hot garbage. Regardless of how much progress they've made, the state we're in now has not budged from "terrible."

I personally like the new controls, I feel the Orb Heist rebalance of Archguns was a major improvement and giving Archwings some use in the Plains was a good idea. However, until Archwings stop being the equivalent of Happy Zephyr, nobody much is going to play them regardless of how much you pay people to do so. We need more Archwings, more weapons, more missions and for Archwing mods to not be such a pain in the ass to unlock, and that's at a bare minimum. Make content worth playing, THEN think about rewarding people for playing it.

i do strongly believe that my suggestion is a better solution (for reasons ive mentioned before).

a majority of this community plays for the rewards and loot. the game is commonly advertised as a third person looter shooter.

applying more worthwhile rewards and loot to archwing will attract a large portion of this community to invest more time into archwing.

i know this will be the result because missions like Formorian attacks become more popular than any archwing mission despite the steps to complete the event being tedious (a lot of the game has some criticism, yet we bang our head against every light pole on the street anyway. as noble as it is, why expect anything different from archwing).

i know that even more archwing content will not work because players have been ranting about archwing's lack of content for years. admittedly, archwing does have more content than it did in 2014 so the devs have already done what you are asking for. yet it never boosted archwing mission popularity then, so what difference would it make now?

this is not me disagreeing that archwing needs more polished content. this is me saying that i dont thing we should treat it as a first priority for now. if it means anything, my suggestion will be a good first step for archwing. it would be a lot less work than creating content from scratch or reworking an entire system.

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1 hour ago, MysticDragonMage said:

a majority of this community plays for the rewards and loot. the game is commonly advertised as a third person looter shooter. applying more worthwhile rewards and loot to archwing will attract a large portion of this community to invest more time into archwing. i know this will be the result because missions like Formorian attacks become more popular than any archwing mission despite the steps to complete the event being tedious

That's not a good example. The Fomorian has terrible rewards for anyone who doesn't care about Archwings. It offers an (admittedly pretty good) Archgun and a bunch of Archwing mods. The only people who want this are people who already like or at least play Archwing content. I suppose unless you're referring to the Credits and Catalyst for finishing the event itself, which - I can guarantee - won't be available on any kind of easily repeatable content. No, the Fomorian is popular because it's a rare event which players jump in to grind for a bit while it's there. Obviously not a lot of people play it because it's fun, but the mechanics which make the Fomorian, the Razorback, the Plague Star, etc. popular are not extendable over repeatable content.

 

1 hour ago, MysticDragonMage said:

i know that even more archwing content will not work because players have been ranting about archwing's lack of content for years. admittedly, archwing does have more content than it did in 2014 so the devs have already done what you are asking for. yet it never boosted archwing mission popularity then, so what difference would it make now?

Again, DE haven't done "what I'm asking." More content than no content isn't much of a high bar. Frame Fighters has more content than Archwings and can hardly boast a lot of content. Hell, I'm pretty sure the Conclave has more content than Archwings. We've had four new Warframes JUST this year. We've had probably a dozen new weapons since 2018 not counting Vandal/Wraith/Kuva variants. We received an entirely new tileset. In that amount of time, do you know what Archwings got? An Archgun - the Larkspur. In fact, I started playing Warframe serious in 2017. The Larkspur is literally the only new thing added to Archwings since that time - one solitary sodding gun. So no, I don't buy that there's anywhere near enough Archwing content, nor anywhere near enough of a pace of Archwing development to hold players' interest, because DE don't put any resources into it.

It's the same as the PvP Catch 22. People don't play it so DE don't develop it so people don't play it so DE don't develop it. Archwings are unpopular because Archwings suck ass, it's simple as that. I don't know how far back I'd need to look, but I've seen nothing in the last two entire years that addressed Archwings in a meaningful fashion up until just now, and even now - what exactly did we get? A less S#&$ flight model which does address one of Archwings' more irritating issues, but that's it. Oh, wait, also an Archgun locked behind the fractal RNG of the Kuva Lich system, so I guess we've doubled the new Archwing content. I take it all back.

Do you think anyone would be playing Warframe if it the only Warframes were Excalibur, Mag, Loki and Rhino, the only weapons the Braton, the Lato, the Cenros, the Kunai and the Skana, the only tilesets the Coprus Ship and Grineer Galleon and only mission types Exterminate? Regardless of how much "rewards" you offer people, that game would have died back in 2014 if nothing had been done with it, nothing had been added and nothing had been fixed. Warframe as it is right now exists as the result of constant addition, refinement and development. Archwings are a look into the past where only four Archwings with S#&$ for weapons, tilesets and game modes exist. Offering more rewards for A BAD PART OF THE GAME is not a good solution. It is a lazy solution which is going to backfire in the long run.

You think about Defection and Infested Salvage and you tell me how well gating expensive rewards behind them worked. Or Night Wave. Or The Old Blood. The list goes on. You can force people to play a game mode they hate, but they'll only play it as long as they're being paid. There's no way to keep paying people to play a game they hate indefinitely. DE are trying to implement "sustainable rewards" which just come down to rentals, consumables and upkeep, and we've all seen how well that was received. Yeah, why DON'T we implement an Umbral upgrade which lasts a week and then you have to grind for it again? The whole reason people play Warframe solely and only for the rewards is because DE have consistently eschewed content and good design practices in favour of habit-forming Skinner boxes, to the point where a majority of players are horribly burned out but playing anyway.

DE might have added content to Archwings over the last five years. Considering this was content over the last FIVE YEARS, it's not even remotely enough to hold any kind of interest. DE appear to have abandoned Archwings all but entirely until very recently. Is it any wonder that players abandoned it in turn? You can force players to play your game, but you can't make them enjoy it. Sooner or later, that backfires without fail.

*edit*
Just to put it in a nutshell - I refuse to paper over S#&$ design and lack of content with a Skinner box. Archwings need content and fixes, not a Skinner box.

Edited by Steel_Rook
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