Warframe should add an anti-grav race mode. Here's why.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

What are anti-grav racers? 

Games in the genre include: F-zero, Antigraviator, Redout, Grip, Fast RMX, and that pod racing game from your childhood. These are high-ocane, futuristic racing games that lean more toward arcade than realism. Your average speed in any of these games will be above 500mph at almost all times. The tracks are winding, and usually physically impossible as you often go upside down, through half pipes and tubes, glide off of miles long jumps, and you get the picture.

 

Why is Warframe suited for such a mode? 

1. Warframe is high ocatane, futuristic, high mobility game with many side-modes diverging from its core gameplay. Some are more successful than others. A few relevent modes of gameplay include: K-drive, archwing, railjack, and the frames themselves can move at blistering speeds with the right upgrades. 
2. But being fast and in the future doesn't make an anti-grav racer stand out. The F-Zero series and Redout 2 in particular have extensive lore and detailed characters. From the vent kids to John Prodman, Warframe has no shortage of stand-out scifi characters who are currently under-utilized. 
3. As of January 2023, Warframe has about 10 people who play its PVP. It's simply not fun OR rewarding to most players. A race mode in hyper-fast machines would negate the features of PVP that are unatttractive in conclave while staying true to the intenstiy of Warframe missions. 
4. A track of some sort on each planet would be a perfect scenario. Maybe on Mars, you get a ground track among the dunes. Maybe on jupiter, it's a corpus sky track. Visually.

 

Developement thoughts and speculations.

1. This should be a relatively lite game mode to craft. The enviroments don't need to be insanely detailed like tile sets or open-zones. The enviroments outside of the tracks are purely visual and pass by in an instant. But a Tusken raider situation would be amusing. If the races exist as regular nodes, then it might be better to use randomized tiles to generate tracks. It's just a tile, but simpler and bigger. 
2. Repurposing the drop ships and other existing crafts in the game would probably cut a good chunk of the work off while retaining the exact same gameplay. Reworking the drop ships to have abilities would be cool, but isn't needed. 
3. Allow for tight turns at full speed. Slowing down at all in these types of games tend to take the wind out of the your sails. 
4. The rewards need to apply to core Warframe, unlike most of the rewards found in conclave. 

 

All-in-all, I'm of the opinion that this would be a fantastic mission/mode. Not only in PVE, but in a PVP context as well. Warframe has the sci-fi variety needed for such a racer and it would be pretty easy for DE to come up with some lore for the races/crafts/tracks/characters. And I would personally enjoy breaking up the grind by doing a race now and then, so long as the rewards are reasonable. 

I hope some of you agree. Thanks for reading :)

_{This would justify a certain deluxe (Zephyr)}

[Numerounius]

I thought you were talking about the mod that many people don't know about but has some niche utility: Anti-Grav Array.

 

High speed racing could be an excellent form of utilizing archwings! Right now the current archwing missions are just honey I shrunk the warframe and putting them in warframe sized maps. Which makes them bonk every wall when trying to go through the tight corridors. With some tweaking I could see them being turned into a racing format. 

 

I don't know how it would work performance-wise though given you'd need to generating a lot of titles so that would probably be one of the major hurdles with generating something like this. 

[Tovon]

If competitive racing was part of conclave, I might would consider it. Especially if it has drifting as a mechanic.

[LSG501]

Please no.... there are so many of these types of games out there you can literally play them for free on most games focused websites, we don't need DE wasting resources on stuff that will be ignored after a few days when the newness has worn off.... how often do you play wyrmius, frame fighter or happy zephyr, this is little better than those.

And this is ignoring how clunky the movement mechanics are of things like k-drive and archwing...

[RLanzinger]

An INDEX Race mode, My dream since ... Fortuna ad hover board came out.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

2 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Please no.... there are so many of these types of games out there you can literally play them for free on most games focused websites, we don't need DE wasting resources on stuff that will be ignored after a few days when the newness has worn off.... how often do you play wyrmius, frame fighter or happy zephyr, this is little better than those.

And this is ignoring how clunky the movement mechanics are of things like k-drive and archwing...

You made a great point for me just now! DE should invest real modes, such as anti-grav-style racing missions rather than wasting their effort on sweet little nothing like instruments and flappy bird. You may have gotten the idea that I'm suggesting that they make something akin to frame fighter, but I'm not. Think more like the Index. 

Also archwing and K-drive aren't clunky. They're actually incredibly tight. I have no idea why people don't like archwing specifically. The issue I personally have with archwing is projectile speed typically reulting in having to lead shots to an unreasonable distance to land hits.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

4 hours ago, XHADgaming said:

I don't know how it would work performance-wise though given you'd need to generating a lot of titles so that would probably be one of the major hurdles with generating something like this. 

Given that Warframe has pretty good performance as it is, the real issue is going to loading tiles in a way that doesn't result in pop-in. 

[LSG501]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Architect Prime said:

You made a great point for me just now! DE should invest real modes, such as anti-grav-style racing missions rather than wasting their effort on sweet little nothing like instruments and flappy bird. You may have gotten the idea that I'm suggesting that they make something akin to frame fighter, but I'm not. Think more like the Index. 

Also archwing and K-drive aren't clunky. They're actually incredibly tight. I have no idea why people don't like archwing specifically. The issue I personally have with archwing is projectile speed typically reulting in having to lead shots to an unreasonable distance to land hits.

No I knew that you meant a 'full game mode'.... I don't think they should waste the time on that either.  In all honesty I think DE should focus on warframe and content to use them on, not waste time on 'niche projects' that will get ignored shortly after release.

Warframe has far too many 'bolted on' bits that are pretty much ignored, we don't need more.

And yes, k-drive and archwing are clunky... now it might be different on console with controllers and aim assist etc but pc's with mouse and keyboard not so much.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

1 minute ago, LSG501 said:

No I knew that you meant a 'full game mode'.... I don't think they should waste the time on that either.  In all honesty I think DE should focus on warframe and content to use them on, not waste time on 'niche projects' that will get ignored shortly after release.

Warframe has far too many 'bolted on' bits that are pretty much ignored, we don't need more.

And yes, k-drive and archwing are clunky... now it might be different on console with controllers and aim assist etc but pc's with mouse and keyboard not so much.

I'm thinking about posting another idea that I call "frontline" which is baisically pushing a frontline in an endless trench warfare. But to address your concern. Yes. We tried for like 6 years to get the core Warframe stuff expanded. Getting DE to move the story forward an inch requires constant support for it... But they take their sweet time on that stuff, and if there's gonna be bolted on parts, they might as well be parts I like.

I hate keyboard and mouse, even on my PC. So I'll have to take your word for it. The game feels great with my controller imo. 

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Architect Prime said:

, they might as well be parts I like.

Not everyone likes the same things....

IF DE were to invest time in 'random' bolt ons (ignoring my dislike for it) then I think at the very least they should have some sort of vote about it first and I mean votes down to the nitty gritty details.