Archwings - why all the " nerfing" ?

[GPrime96]

4 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Or because you did dodge them but they turned around and came back at you from behind, which they do do.

^^ Only the bigger Crewship orange Missles would miss your Archwings but the small red ones, those still Seek and Destroy you.

[Skaleek]

Unfortunately none of the archwings ever really had any potent powers with the exception of itzal's 1 and amesha. With itzal's 1 out of the picture, well... There's only one option left. As for the archguns... I guess they tried to bring them in line to be balanced with Railjacks new system.

They are nerfs, don't get me wrong, but i think their goal was to create a better flight sim-esque experience. There's already a thread by @Voltage about the archgun hitscan-> projectile speed nerf with a good amount of information and arguments both for and against, i suggest you check it out in general feedback for more info on that.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Skaleek

[Test-995]

6 hours ago, Uhkretor said:

Power Fantasy Tactical Shooter

I can't stop laughing.

[(XBOX)TheRosenBones]

6 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

True, but there are a lot more tanky warframes than there are tanky archwings. Arcanes and Adapatation also help a lot to make semi-tanky ones tanky enough to be viable.

A lot of people say DE has no clue how to balance, but that's not quite true. In reality DE has no clue how to design gameplay mechanics. Hitscan bullets, invisible AoE damage, and aggressively homing missiles can't be avoided through skillful play, so of course the only viable frames and archwings are those that can simply face-tank the damage. Balance is impossible while those things exist.

Uuuuuggghhhh thank you for putting this into words. There are some days where I get Uber frustrated because I’ll go down to..... something?-and no matter of mods or my own skill will prevent it. Most prevalent is how enemy units on OV and POE all have anti-air guns that instantly drop you from arch wing. I’d love to provide air support on missions, but it’s next to impossible due to invisible heat sealing missiles. Was super depressed to see the same issue on RJ with the crew ships. Starting out without slingshot, getting to a crew ship far away is impossible without either Amesha or a few deaths. 

[GrimSinner]

2 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

That's a very old-school understanding of games, one that I 100% share and agree with. Sadly the modern gaming industry doesn't. When I saw Steve say they made the liches kill you because "you kill everyone, so that's why we did that inversion", I wanted to throw something at the screen. That was like a gas station owner saying "we put water into one of our pumps because everyone always just pumps gas". B*tch, that's what we come to you for! I don't know if it's me or them, but someone's seriously out of touch here. It seems to me DE have no clue what people play the game for and how games should even work.

This guy is in touch, DE is not.

For whatever reason, imo DE has lost sight of what makes a game fun and is looking at it as more of a players job.  It seems like anything that players find fun (stuff players use a lot or spend a lot of time doing) is monitored and nerfed out of existence.  Rather than capitalize on what players ARE using and giving them more of that type of power and content, DE takes away anything that is too much fun in the game.  That's about as out of touch and backwards thinking you can get as a game developer.  

I was having a fantastic time zipping around in my Amesha and shooting stuff with my Cyngas.  It felt good!  But then they nerfed particle damage and that fun became meh.  So much so that I don't even bother with dog fighting anymore.  I cannot stand sitting in railjack turrets, that is boring AF.  So they stole my fun in railjack.  Now they're going to nerf Amesha and kill it altogether.  I'm about to be done with this game mode unless DE can get their act together and stop killing stuff players think is fun.  I have a real job and real life that's not fun, when WF becomes like that, who needs it?  

Edited January 13, 2020 by GrimSinner

[RazorStrike1]

I don't know why DE doesn't just add a resistance type class to the enemy fighters in railjack for just archguns instead of nerfing every archgun individualy. When you nerf the archguns, you change how the weapon works against all other types of units in the game and not just the railjack ships which in turn creates a cascade of damage imbalance in the game.

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

4 hours ago, Skaleek said:

Unfortunately none of the archwings ever really had any potent powers with the exception of itzal's 1 and amesha.

Elytron's thumper was the original OP archwing power.  It literally broke the baylor formorian fight and saw a sequence of multiple nerfs over time.  The end result of the nerf train is Elytron became a piece of junk that no one wants to use for anything.  Granted thumper is a very stationary power so it fit perfectly for the defense mission that no longer exists and the interception mission that there is no reason to actually play.  Even if the power was good again it wouldn't be useful in the fast and mobile rail jack game mode. 

The other obvious problem with the Elytron is that it has three garbage powers that you never use no matter what.  You can't say that about the Itzal or the amesha, as both of those have 4 powers you want to use.  The itzal being 100% blink is only in the context of open world where the AW is 100% about mobility.  In AW content Itzal has a nice set of powers and you use all of them.  Same goes for the amesha in AW content.  The issue there is AW content is EASY EASY EASY so there is no need to use any amesha power except for the 2.  When literally nothing can kill you why would you cast the 1 or 3 or 4?  Jump up the difficulty to RJ levels and suddenly you realize just how powerful the amesha is. 

DE's track record of over reacting to balance problems like this is horrendous.  I really enjoy the current amesha in RJ content and I'm playing the crap out of it because I fully expect DE to ruin it with nerfs.  That's what they do.

[GPrime96]

22 minutes ago, (PS4)Agent_CHAR said:

The other obvious problem with the Elytron is that it has three garbage powers that you never use no matter what.  You can't say that about the Itzal or the amesha, as both of those have 4 powers you want to use.  The itzal being 100% blink is only in the context of open world where the AW is 100% about mobility.  In AW content Itzal has a nice set of powers and you use all of them.  Same goes for the amesha in AW content.  The issue there is AW content is EASY EASY EASY so there is no need to use any amesha power except for the 2.  When literally nothing can kill you why would you cast the 1 or 3 or 4?  Jump up the difficulty to RJ levels and suddenly you realize just how powerful the amesha is. 

This is true. What’s preventing me from using Itzal again even with the Hotfixes is how it’s Abilities work in Railjack. GL using Archline there, Penumbra gets you killed for some reason (getting hit by a homing Rocket from a Fighter while cloaked), Cosmic Crush works with the Fighters but it got a small range (like really small for the Environment), and i don’t even want to know how it’s 4 would work there. I know Amesha’s 4 is messed up in Railjack as in killing you while you’re still invincible before the invincibility is gone but i would deal with that as long as there’s no Crewships or a bunch of Rockets flying towards me at the same time. So if DE want to balance Archwings for Railjack, they should look at fixes at the same time. Haven’t tried the other Archwings but yeah Itzal got one Ability that’s ok for Railjack instead of 3 or maybe 4 that’s Amesha.

[grindbert]

10 hours ago, Mr.Fluffins said:

I would suggest for you to try an actually good Railjack, because it has better speed (with piloting skills) and it kills enemies faster than Archwing.

not since cryophon has been nerfed. 3 ameshas are faster again.

Edited January 13, 2020 by grindbert

[Voltage]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Agent_CHAR said:

Elytron's thumper was the original OP archwing power.  It literally broke the baylor formorian fight and saw a sequence of multiple nerfs over time.  The end result of the nerf train is Elytron became a piece of junk that no one wants to use for anything.  Granted thumper is a very stationary power so it fit perfectly for the defense mission that no longer exists and the interception mission that there is no reason to actually play.  Even if the power was good again it wouldn't be useful in the fast and mobile rail jack game mode. 

The other obvious problem with the Elytron is that it has three garbage powers that you never use no matter what.  You can't say that about the Itzal or the amesha, as both of those have 4 powers you want to use.  The itzal being 100% blink is only in the context of open world where the AW is 100% about mobility.  In AW content Itzal has a nice set of powers and you use all of them.  Same goes for the amesha in AW content.  The issue there is AW content is EASY EASY EASY so there is no need to use any amesha power except for the 2.  When literally nothing can kill you why would you cast the 1 or 3 or 4?  Jump up the difficulty to RJ levels and suddenly you realize just how powerful the amesha is. 

DE's track record of over reacting to balance problems like this is horrendous.  I really enjoy the current amesha in RJ content and I'm playing the crap out of it because I fully expect DE to ruin it with nerfs.  That's what they do.

I completely agree here. It's starting to show more and more how disconnected DE is with gameplay. I don't mind rare drops and grinding the same mission, but the way to farm Railjack has become mind-numbing and uninteresting because there really aren't more than 1-2 strategies for tackling a skirmish unless you want to double the mission time. A major contributor to this issue is how horrendous Archwing is.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Voltage

[(PSN)oblivion_13test]

                            The Amesha and cyngas are fine how they are. People including myself die all the time using the Amesha so it is not always immune to enemy attacks. You need at least one viable archwing or the whole team is stuck on the ship pissing off the captian by "wasting" side gun ammo. Two on the ship and two running archwing is the perfect setup. It's important to remember the missions need to be fun for the whole team not just the ship captain. 

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

7 hours ago, GPrime96 said:

So if DE want to balance Archwings for Railjack, they should look at fixes at the same time. Haven’t tried the other Archwings but yeah Itzal got one Ability that’s ok for Railjack instead of 3 or maybe 4 that’s Amesha.

This is a really good point to stress.  We are now using archwings in three VERY different types of content: open world, original AW and now rail jack.  (I'm not going to count shark wing because that is just an abomination).

DE is doing things to balance one of those types of content and ignoring how it impacts the others.  Blink was solely an open world problem.  Their solution to that was to take blink away from the itzal and give it to all AW's.  My amesha in RJ sure uses blink A LOT.  Their open world "fix" made the amesha even better in RJ.  Now they want to nerf the amesha so the cycle continues.

Hey DE, it's OK to give archwings a meta niche to fill.  That is not a problem that needs fixing.  That is a reason for you to fix other things like the crappy elytron powers and give us new content that is worth playing to create different opportunities for other AW's to shine.  Give me a reason to play AW interception.  Bring back the AW defense.  Make the rewards worth the effort.  Make the difficulty scale because they are endless mission types.  Avionics and/or ship parts (vidar reactors anyone) would be awesome rewards for those two AW missions.

BUILD A BRIDGE between the islands!  You have so many opportunities to do that, but you always go for the solution that takes the islands further apart.

[Skaleek]

8 hours ago, (PS4)Agent_CHAR said:

The other obvious problem with the Elytron is that it has three garbage powers that you never use no matter what.  You can't say that about the Itzal or the amesha, as both of those have 4 powers you want to use.  The itzal being 100% blink is only in the context of open world where the AW is 100% about mobility.  In AW content Itzal has a nice set of powers and you use all of them.  Same goes for the amesha in AW content.  The issue there is AW content is EASY EASY EASY so there is no need to use any amesha power except for the 2.  When literally nothing can kill you why would you cast the 1 or 3 or 4?  Jump up the difficulty to RJ levels and suddenly you realize just how powerful the amesha is. 

Yep, this is the crux of the problem. Archwing was given the typical design that older frames got, except it never got a rework. It got left with superjump type abilities that just didn't fit in. Itzal's powers were better than elytron and odanata because they were utility based: Looting, Stealth, Mobility. Things that are always useful regardless of scale. But now that itzal's lost mobility, stealth doesnt matter in the context of not moving (because that crewship missile still kills you), and looting in railjack is easier done with RJ itself (pretty sure the innate vacuum of the RJ is larger than cosmic crush), Itzal's abilities have been relegated to elytron/odanata tier, leaving us with Amesha. Amesha's the only archwing that can survive in the current content. Nerfing Amesha won't solve anything. It will infuriate the player base and make RJ that much harder to play.

The ideal solution is to bring up AW survivability significantly, then amesha will see far less play because her abilities will be somewhat redundant (except her slow). They also need to make the other archwing abilities not suck period. On itzal's added skill ripline: They said they would monitor usage and tune as needed. Such BS. No one's using itzal, and no one is using that stupid ripline they gave itzal. Standard DE lip service for we gave you the worst ability from Warframe and put it into Archwing, and you'll never use it and we know it.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Skaleek