Arch-Gun Hitscan Nerf is Painful

[Voltage]

I was concerned when I read this patch note, and was equally unhappy when I actually tried these weapons. If you missed the note, all Arch-Guns are now projectiles in space. This effectively makes Imperator Vandal a mess, and other previously hit-scan weapons annoying to use. I don't understand why this decision was even conceived considering how:

1) Arch-weapons are already underpowered. They are an underpowered weapon in one of the most underpopulated gamemodes.

2) DE just nerfed Itzal.

3) Experimental Flight was removed.

Quality of Life would be increasing projectile speed for weapons like Fluctus, not backtracking. 

This change to me feels like a cheap way to make Railjacked guns look more appealing to use. However, all this does is make Archwing even more painful to use and play with. Let's not mention how bad Arch-Melee is in Empyrean missions as well. I hope this change is reverted and buffs to projectile Arch-Guns are looked into.

Making Archwing slower and worse to use in general and in combat does NOT make Railjacked more fun or appealing. Archwing has somehow only gotten worse, and it's quite honestly disturbing how still, in almost 2020, the issues with Archwing from 5 years ago are still not addressed.

[TheGrimCorsair]

Nah, the change to the guns is fine. They've got plenty of velocity and leading is pretty easy with 'em.

[DarkRuler2500]

I like the Projectile-changes... we are sometimes fighting enemies at 3000m distance... I always felt a bit weird to hit my enemies instantly.

[Voltage]

7 minutes ago, TheGrimCorsair said:

Nah, the change to the guns is fine. They've got plenty of velocity and leading is pretty easy with 'em.

I don't have a problem with leading. My aim is easily adjusted. However, Arch-Guns requiring more effort than usual for the same kill makes it less fluid. Fluidity has been an issue with Archwing for years now. I used to enjoy Archwing, but Empyrean has not only neglected the issues with Archwing, it actually made the mode worse.

[zakaryx]

Imperator vandal is actually the weapon least effected by the change that I've found so far. Fluctus/grattler/Larkspur are all trash in railjack due to either low flight speed or trash tier range.

However fighters move so damn fast you almost have to use Amesha's third ability exclusively to hunt them down once you reach later missions.

[Kazouie101]

I always liked Fluctus the best and it's entirely unusable in Railjack because the enemies fly faster than the projectiles travel, so if you are behind an enemy fighter you just can't hit it.

 

[-Gii]

Not to mention damage nerf. The archgun damage on Atmosphere is only equal 1/3 of before. Good luck, especially R.I.P solo.

Edited December 13, 2019 by -Gii

[Voltage]

45 minutes ago, -Gii said:

Not to mention damage nerf. The archgun damage on Atmosphere is only equal 1/3 of before. Good luck, especially R.I.P solo.

It's just astounding that DEs best effort to make Empyrean look good is by heavily nerfing Archwing.

[Skaleek]

@Voltage, gotta disagree with you here. Having non-hitscan weapons is a staple of space simulator games. Hitscan weapons trivialize leading targets in a dogfight. This was needed to keep balance. Otherwise hitscan would be so much more powerful than any of the other weapons.

On the other hand, I do agree some of the slower projectile speed weapons like fluctus may need to be buffed, but isn't that a separate issue?

Now i havent tested regular Archwing missions, does this change apply to them too?

Also has anyone tested archwing nuke powers? Are they finally doing real damage?!

Edited December 13, 2019 by Skaleek

[Steel_Rook]

1 minute ago, Skaleek said:

gotta disagree with you here. Having non-hitscan weapons is a staple of space simulator games.

Agreed, but what does this have to do with Warframe? This is not a space flight simulator game.

[Skaleek]

Just now, Steel_Rook said:

Agreed, but what does this have to do with Warframe? This is not a space flight simulator game.

Railjack is.

[Steel_Rook]

2 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Railjack is.

Citation needed?

[Skaleek]

19 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Citation needed?

Play the mode? Not sure what you're trying to establish here. Also there was a devstream where Rebecca and steve were interacting and they literally said they are working on making the best co-op space sim mode or something along those lines (sorry im not going looking for the exact timestamp/devstream, im at work), if you really need a citation to be told its a space sim, but i get the feeling you are getting at something else.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Skaleek

[Steel_Rook]

3 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Play the mode? Not sure what you're trying to establish here. Also in the Rebecca + steve stream devstream, they literally said they are working on making the best co-op space sim mode or something along those lines (sorry im not going looking for the exact timestamp, im at work), if you really need a citation to be told its a space sim, but i get the feel you are getting at something else.

What I'm getting at is the fact that Warframe - Railjack included - is not a "space sim" even if it superficially resembles one. It's not Descent or Descent Freespace. That's why they removed roll controls from Archwings altogether in the last update. DE have a history of trying to copy other game genres for no real reason and we end up suffering the consieqneunces for years to come, with half-baked clunky implementation which isn't anywhere near faithful enough to evoke the intended genre but still far enough from Warframe's core mechanics to be damn near unusable. Turning all Archguns into projectiles might be a good fit for a flight sim, but it's not a good fit for Warframe where the majority of Archwing combat doesn't take place in standard fixed-wing aircraft dogfighting encounters but all too often from a dead stop. The Amesha is literally unkillable as long as you stay in your own bubble and the Itzal is untargetable as long as you don't move.

Warframe "aerial" combat is, if anything, closer to helicopter gunship combat. Trying to crowbar space flight sim mechanics only serves to tank what space mechanics we already had. Develop the game you have, and then maybe we wouldn't have to go back after three years of complaints trying to remove the Devil May Cry from the "not a Devil May Cry game" game. You're not going to have a flight sim with fixed-orientation controls and auto-level. I get that a flight sim is what YOU want, but Waframe's been trying to achieve that for years and it's never stuck. Never, to the point of flight-sim-like controls being entirely expunged from the game with initial Railjack update. Adding projectile travel to Archguns only serves to nerf what were already pretty damn bad weapons to begin with, while offering no real benefit.

Nobody ever played the actual Archwing mission nodes on planets already. Hobbling the few half-way decent weapons in there on top of breaking melee auto-tracking just serves to remove what few reasons those of us who still played them have to bother.

[Xzorn]

I had to go read this cuz since PoE League start is in a few hours.

Looks pretty backwards. Hit-scan actually makes more sense in a vacuum than it does in an atmosphere. Bullet drop being the biggest thing over distance in a realistic situation doesn't impact ballistics in space. Still, far as traditional game mechanics; Hit-scan is a thing in video games. In good designs this is balanced by Projectiles doing considerably more damage. In Warframe, there's pretty much never been a proper balance, esp with enemies.

I guess since most players don't even bother to head-shot anymore they figured they'd make it harder to land shots entirely? I dunno, it probably won't affect me much. Bolto was my jam back in the day. Always prefer Projectile weapons for the skill and reward involved in landing those shots.

[Skaleek]

11 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Descent or Descent Freespace

You just spoke my language there man. Those are like some of my favourite games ever made. You get my +1 just for knowing what those are!

11 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Adding projectile travel to Archguns only serves to nerf what were already pretty damn bad weapons to begin with, while offering no real benefit.

Sorry. My archguns were pretty monster before update 27. As far as I understand, because i haven't tested, these nerfs are only in railjack. If they were applied to in atmosphere + old archwing, I would agree these nerfs serve zero benefit and should definitely be reconsidered.

But back to railjack. I feel like if they didn't create the non hitscan paradigm, the content would be trivial. Yeah you sit still, a la helicopter warfare as you put it, but you can't snipe the fighters from 3km away anymore (Although i actually haven't tested the velocitus yet). I think that it was necessary to create a balance in railjack. Otherwise i could snipe the enemy fighters before they can even begin to threaten the escort target (railjack). I've basically been playing the role of interceptor/crewship eraser.

11 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Nobody ever played the actual Archwing mission nodes on planets already. Hobbling the few half-way decent weapons in there on top of breaking melee auto-tracking just serves to remove what few reasons those of us who still played them have to bother

Agree 100% on this one.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Skaleek

[Xzorn]

14 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

It's not Descent or Descent Freespace.

 

IMO Archwing was best when it was emulating Descent style controls and combat. Enemies were too small but the overall feel was good.

Why not copy a famous award winning and ground breaking space combat game? It's still good to this day.

Then again my Flight Stick is so old it uses a Serial Port but I'm sure analog controllers would still get a good organic feel.

[Skaleek]

1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

IMO Archwing was best when it was emulating Descent style controls and combat. Enemies were too small but the overall feel was good.

Why not copy a famous award winning and ground breaking space combat game? It's still good to this day.

Is this becoming an I love descent and freespace thread? Because all of my yes.

[Xzorn]

16 hours ago, Skaleek said:

Is this becoming an I love descent and freespace thread? Because all of my yes.

 

Still got the box....

Spoiler

On point of course though. Descent had hit-scan weapons also. They simply did less damage or functioned more like suppressive fire in case of Gauss Cannon. Meanwhile weapons like the Fusion Cannon or a well placed Mercury Missie would do considerably more damage.

Warframe doesn't really have this basic functional difference between hit-scan and projectiles.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Xzorn

[Steel_Rook]

10 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Sorry. My archguns were pretty monster before update 27. As far as I understand, because i haven't tested, these nerfs are only in railjack. If they were applied to in atmosphere + old archwing, I would agree these nerfs serve zero benefit and should definitely be reconsidered.

The cnahges were definitely not applied to Atmospheric Archguns. The patch notes were pretty clear on this subject. Atmospheric Archguns use an entirely separate weapon implementation so those were not affected. Archwing missions, however, WERE affected. I just jumped into one to confirm and YUP! Projectiles have travel time and also projectiles drawn in space. My Imperator used to reliably hit enemies even a kilometer away though obviously with reduced damage. Landing those shots is no longer going to happen. The problem is that there's no mechanical distinction between Archwings in Railjack missions and Archwings on, say, Salacia. The only distinction is between those and Archwings on the Plains/Vallis, where the flight model is STILL DIFFERENT for some stupid reason. You can't really use Archguns with Archwings on Free Roam maps, though (Archwing Launcher is blocked when in Archwing mode and Archgun is recalled when entering Archwing mode). Space Archwing nodes are really going to suffer, though.

Unless DE are planning to straight-up SCRAP the 9 or so dedicated Archwing nodes and move Archwing space combat purely to Railjack missions, this is going to constitute a significant nerf to a mission type that's already highly unpopular for a litany of reasons.

 

17 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

But back to railjack. I feel like if they didn't create the non hitscan paradigm, the content would be trivial. Yeah you sit still, a la helicopter warfare as you put it, but you can't snipe the fighters from 3km away anymore (Although i actually haven't tested the velocitus yet). I think that it was necessary to create a balance in railjack. Otherwise i could snipe the enemy fighters before they can even begin to threaten the escort target (railjack). I've basically been playing the role of interceptor/crewship eraser.

I get that much - if Railjack ship weapons have travel time but Archwing weapons don't, then that makes handheld weapons more powerful than ship weapons. Obviously that's not going to work. However, you could have accomplished the same thing with just damage dropoff without also implementing projectile weapons and a target lead indicator. Again, I like Descent Freespace but Warframe has consistently failed to provide this kind of gameplay. There's no benefit NOT standing still inside your Amesha bubble, there's no benefit to not strafing in a circle. Space ships in Warframe - Railjack, Archwings, etc. - can fly freely in old direction and pivot in place. That's incompatible with the Vietnal era dogfights that games like Descent Freespace try to emulate. There's not a lot of reason to try and out-turn an enemy in a high-speed turn when you can straight-up strafe.

I'm of the opinion that it would have been simpler to do for Railjack what Waframe already does for shotguns and Archguns themselves - hit weapons with an aggressive damage dropoff value and high spread, which would then naturally force pilots to engage at closer range. Incidentally, DE did that ON TOP of turning all Archguns into projectile throwers.

 

23 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

IMO Archwing was best when it was emulating Descent style controls and combat. Enemies were too small but the overall feel was good. Why not copy a famous award winning and ground breaking space combat game? It's still good to this day. Then again my Flight Stick is so old it uses a Serial Port but I'm sure analog controllers would still get a good organic feel.

You don't copy games when you can't replicate their gameplay. What you end up in doing so is a cheap, low-quality knockoff which only serves to piss off fans of the original on top of not entertaining everyone else. Warframe's 6DOF controls were always an unfunny joke. Not only were maps not properly designed for them, but the game's physics model was a terrible, hitting you with massive uncontrollable drift sometimes but spinning you around on the spot other times, creating a very artificial-feeling and janky mess of an attempt. Yes, the old Archwing model did resemble a flight sim if you hold your nose and squint really hard, but it was utterly dreadful for actually accomplishing missions in any of the tilesets that DE gave us to play with.

By this same logic, you may as well as why Warframe didn't just copy Startopia with its Clan Dojo system because that too is a highly-acclaimed and really good game. The reason is the same - that's a whole lot of mechanical implementations that Warframe doesn't have, so what you're going to get is a shallow unfulfilling clone of a much better experience. I tried playing Archwing games like a space sim, and it just never worked expressly because the physics were artificial, wonky and unintuitive and most of the locations were laid out with a clear up-down orientation which caused me to spend extra time realigning myself lest I lose my bearings.

Borrowing ideas from other games is fine, as long as you can fit them within your existing gameplay mechanics. Borrowing other games wholesale rarely works well.

[Renegade343]

47 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Looks pretty backwards. Hit-scan actually makes more sense in a vacuum than it does in an atmosphere. Bullet drop being the biggest thing over distance in a realistic situation doesn't impact ballistics in space. Still, far as traditional game mechanics; Hit-scan is a thing in video games. In good designs this is balanced by Projectiles doing considerably more damage. In Warframe, there's pretty much never been a proper balance, esp with enemies.

Or you make everything projectile if you're going to argue about realism, because hit-scan violates physics already.

[Anthraxicus]

This made the already underpowered and annoying archwing gameplay even more painful

[Xzorn]

49 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

You don't copy games when you can't replicate their gameplay. What you end up in doing so is a cheap, low-quality knockoff which only serves to piss off fans of the original on top of not entertaining everyone else. Warframe's 6DOF controls were always an unfunny joke. Not only were maps not properly designed for them, but the game's physics model was a terrible, hitting you with massive uncontrollable drift sometimes but spinning you around on the spot other times, creating a very artificial-feeling and janky mess of an attempt. Yes, the old Archwing model did resemble a flight sim if you hold your nose and squint really hard, but it was utterly dreadful for actually accomplishing missions in any of the tilesets that DE gave us to play with.

 

The 5DOF, Yes said 5 on purpose was DE trying to get away from the original Descent feel. They even said so in the Devstream specifically saying "Descent". Why I said the original was far superior. It was Descent with auto-leveling enabled and as a huge Descent fan I found it enjoyable if not flawed. Mostly the enemies as I mentioned.

You could do everything in the original Archwing that you could do in Descent but Roll.

The point isn't to copy a game entirely. It's when controls work. Why break them? Which is what they did with 5DOF.
I don't know many space combat games that had better feeling controls without turning into a total Sim than Descent and Tie Fighter / X-wing Vs Tie Fighter.
Good control formulas simply become standards over time. Shooters, RTS, MOBAs, ect. That's my point here. DE trying something different just botched it up.

Just in case there's confusion about which version of Archwing controls I'm talking about. Took me a min to find someone who didn't absolutely suck at Archwing but you should notice the difference and ease of play with the original. It's stable, it's fast, easy to keep your barrings.

Spoiler

 

 

39 minutes ago, Renegade343 said:

Or you make everything projectile if you're going to argue about realism, because hit-scan violates physics already.

Of course. Just saying it at least makes more sense in a vacuum.
Velocity alone is the main factor unlike in an Atmosphere where you have gravity, friction, ect.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Xzorn

[Steel_Rook]

38 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

You could do everything in the original Archwing that you could do in Descent but Roll and Vertical strafe. The Pro move if I might add for Descent PvP.

Ugh... What? Unless you're referring to boosting, Archwings had access to all of the movement directions and rotation along all of the axes. Movement controls to go forward, back and strafe side to side, jump and crouch to "strafe vertically," mouse for rotation around X and Y axes and the dedicated roll controls for rotation around the Z axis. It's the same controls I used back in the days of Descent. I distinctly remember this because I played purely via keyboard at the time. It wasn't until Descent 2 that I started using the mouse, and that game had utter garbage for mouse support, defaulting to inverted mouse and offering broken sensitivity if you set it the right way around. Unlike Descent, Descent 2 also had levels with a distinct up and down, even if it offered a lot of verticality. Even offered a lot of open areas which didn't let you fly out of bounds anyway.

 

38 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

The point isn't to copy a game entirely. It's when controls work. Why break them? Which is what they did with 5DOF.

Because they didn't work - that's my point. I personally found Experimental Controls to be utterly dreadful. The roll controls I could take or leave - found them largely pointless and adding an unnecessary level of complexity forcing me to constantly realign my roll because circular motions with my mouse would roll my view due to the implementation. Momentum I found a lot more disruptive, because it was all the worst parts of momentum physics put together. It was inconsistent, with some animation states having a lot of drift, some having little, some following my view and some not seemingly at random. I've tried stopping in an Archwing. If I hit back while Boosting (which is what you'd expect would be most effective - full reverse thrust) my Warframe would pivot in place and fly backwards at full speed, seemingly without suffering any whiplash. If I stopped boosting, however, my Archwing would drift for over 50 meters with my back input seemingly doing next to nothing. The only reliable way I had to stop was to disable boost (I use Toggle Sprint), hold back on the controls then perform a series of backward dodges. That more or less defines pointless, unnecessary complexity. Especially since if I miscalculated and did an extra backwards dash, I'd jump back too far and have to slowly hover back into position.

And if quite literally any of the Archwing missions in any way benefited from pretending my Archwing is a WW2 fixed-wing aircraft in space, that might be a justified tradeoff, but none of them do. The likes of Interception and Mobile Defence benefit from me flying TO a location then standing in one spot and shooting down enemies as they approach like a fixed turret. The likes of Rush, Pursuit and Sabotage do benefit from faster movement, but only from the perspective of terrain navigation. Once you actually GET to the fight you've been rushing towards, that fight still works best by standing still in one spot and firing like a helicopter gunship. I GUESS guided missiles might have been a way to make us move around and keep flying, but they fail at this for two reasons. First of all, most if not all Archwings have an ability which passively breaks missile locks. Press button, ignore missiles. Secondly, you have no indicator of where the missile is coming from or what distance it is from you, nor any good way to identify it in space other than catching a glance of the actual projectile by chance. As such, dodging missiles was utterly pointless. Might as well shoot the stuff firing missiles and drop flairs whenever you have a lock.

I mean, MAYBE that might have been a thing with a low-level Archwing. However, I've held onto my Amesha for a very long time now, and I've found no enemy I couldn't fight by deploying a Snowglobe and trading damage with them. Because realistically, it's the "trading damage" bit of Warframe that's the real kiss of death to space combat. When you have to mag-dump into powerful enemies, complexity in gameplay becomes more of a chore. It's one of the reasons people hate the Jordas Golem - that's a big pile of HP that you have to manoeuvre around and mag-dum into the back of. I've been going back to Archwing missions in order to level up some Archwings and Archmelee weapons (because MR) and I've found almost without fail that standing still and trading with enemies works in damn near ever Archwing. I can't speak to Archwings vs. typical ground targets because the only environments where that's doable - the Plains and the Vallis - are also replete with AA missiles which ignore Archwing abilities, hitting through shields and defences, to the point where it's basically useless even trying to fight in them.

I see nothing in Warframe's Archwing combat encounters to suggest that this was ever going to work as a "space sim" unless players themselves REALLY REALLY WANT it to be one and are willing to play along with every mechanic available to do so. Someone earlier described Archwing flight as "MineCraft noclip," which is all that Warframe can realistically model. It's all it has the gameplay mechanics to support, either. I'm fine with giving players a bone, but trying to design an actual flight sim inside Warframe is not going to work. We'll be back here in another year or two wondering why nobody's playing it.

 

39 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Just in case there's confusion about which version of Archwing controls I'm talking about. Took me a min to find someone who didn't absolutely suck at Archwing but you should notice the difference and ease of play with the original. It's stable, it's fast, easy to keep your barrings.

I see nothing in that video to suggest there's ANY roll control of any kind. This is more or less a copy of the control scheme we have now.

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

-snip-

 

There have been 3 1/2 versions of Archwing controls. The first did not have Roll. I redacted the vertical strafe as I recalled you could do it.

The first version of Archwing controls was in 2014. I think we're confusing control schemes here like I mentioned. BTW, I always play Inverted mouse due to those games but used a flight stick cuz well.. that's how you played those games back in the day. Even the newest version is inferior to the first IMO. There's no momentum where as in 5DOF there was too much and in the first version there was just the right amount with dodge and flips to help prevent hitting walls. Backwards trust was also appropriate to forward in slowing momentum instead of a total inverse. Turning was far more crisp as well.

I can't really explain it much better if you didn't try it then I'm not sure there's a point since it's gone and dead either way.
I can only say it was a lot more fun and much like Descent just with auto-leveling.

EDIT:

Oh, to be more specific about Vertical strafe. I didn't mean simply moving up and down I meant circling around the target. This was how you could usually spot a good Descent PvP player. Most everyone would left and right circle strafe shooting at each other but a good player would swap to vertical which threw most players completely off then when you found those players who could keep up you'd throw afterburner into it thrust past them and switch again.

A 1v1 between two good Descent PvP players lasted a good minute usually and things like those low damage hit-scan weapons sometimes came into play. I would charge Fusion Cannon then launch a Merc Missile simultaneously and insta kill typical players but that didn't work as well on good players.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Xzorn