Archwing Implementation

[Zeful]

Yeah, this is early as hell but I feel based on the Archwing update trailer that there are some concerns with the content and it's implementation as seen through the flaws of previous content, as well as some more general concerns about the mission mode in full.

 

Enemy variety In Space!

In the Archwing trailer we were introduced to what is essentially a shump section to gameplay. The biggest problem with that is that we are shown 1 new enemy type for it . Considering previous content updates, while it might be more than one new enemy, it is not going to be enough for the mode to have any longevity. 9-15 enemy fighters per faction-- including Infested so that's 27-45 new enemies in total-- is pretty much the minimum; that's roughly 3-5 enemies for each major area of the starchart (levels 1-10, 11-20, and 21-30) and gives you some room to mix up missions by using higher or lower tier fighters so they aren't as repetitive and samey everywhere.

 

Now expecting 27-45 new enemies might seem a little extreme for some of you but consider this; how many enemies should a totally new faction have? Is a faction of 1 unit really a faction? The archwing missions are essentially introducing one new faction for every area this mission type can take place in. Wouldn't it be kind of weird for a space empire like the Corpus to use a Grineer fighter to sortie us? And that's before we get into gameplay styles (which I will mention below) to suit each existing faction. Our enemies are already in space-based combat, and they should have weapons to sortie with eachother alongside boarding parties like the current invasion missions, and the update at launch should reflect that.

 

The other concern of enemy variety is distinctness of enemies, with less total ships available for our enemies, it becomes harder for each side to have distinct play. Fighting Corpus cruisers should not feel or play like fighting Grineer fighters. So mechanics distinctions have to be made in what is available to each faction and how we interact with those mechanics. Of course to do that you have to establish baselines, like time-to-kill, like enemy damage, or bullet pattern, or movement, and then you have to deviate from those baselines for each faction. For example, a basic corpus drone fighter might take two shots to down but has a higher damaging tracking laser attack (in terms of damage per second rather than damage per hit), while the Grineer fighter might take three but have a much easier to dodge blaster that does your baseline damage a hit.

 

Of course this might mean the the update might have to be postponed, but I'll pose a question. Which would you rather have, a barebones update released as soon as possible that you only have to play once to see everything it has to offer, or a robust update that requires playing across the entire starchart to experience everything?

 

Controls In Space!

Assuming the loading screen Liset controls carry over we're mostly good on that front but for the love of god, do not make the alt-fire of our gun zoom. Zoom is for high precision shooting against tiny targets across large distances. While space is large, mostly empty and anything we need to shoot will be starting at several times our size (as in larger than the Jackal), so if we need the ability to zoom, you have made a mistake. Instead, put another weapon on right click. Ideally and based on what we have seen from the trailer, we should have 3 weapons. Our gun, our sword, and what looked like three lasers from each wing or drones 53 seconds into the trailer that remind me a lot of Astebreed's radial lock-on system. Those can easily bound to left click, right click and space respectively (shift should be boost with control our dodge, and we've covered the entire set of changed controls), with the PS4 controls being the analogs to that scheme.

 

Skill in Space!

Warframe is kind of lacking in skill-based play. Mechanics and expectations never change to require the player be more precise both in terms of economy of motion as well as timing as they mow down a bunch of dudes, instead the dudes just get more health. With the new Archwing segments you can actually introduce a lot of skill to the game by having each of those 9-15 enemies per faction require different aim priorities and targets to better introduce skillful play. Imagine a 5-man Grineer heavy fighter bearing down on you with a radar station along the top, a set of front guns, missiles, and a large turret on one side. Fighting it would involve destroying the radar station first to disable the targeting system for the missiles while dodging enemy fire and shooting down missiles, and then dodging the main broadside turret while blowing off the armored skin to get to the reactor powering it and destroying the ship. If every enemy had different designs and targets, then it's not a matter of do nothing while introducing bullets to face. Of course this means the only time hitscan weapons on either side are acceptable are to have fights that actually prevent us from regaining shields so we have to shoot those guns down first or eat the drain on our shields to hit other targets.

 

How you design enemy baselines also determines how much skill is in play, if everything is taken down in one hit, then it doesn't matter how complex their mechanics are, we'll never be interacting with them, but if it takes forever to down something then all you've done is make things tedious. One of the first baselines you should make is how fast our weapons take down the target, both with no mods, and optimally modded to improve time to kill (assuming archwing systems use mods). If we can mod them, they will have an optimal configuration, but you can make things like "rainbow" builds non-optimal by deliberate design (I.E by making reload times (assuming magazines, but I have no reason not to) longer and magazine size mods larger so that increasing your magazine time increases your weapon's uptime and thus DPS more than fitting more elements in) while still letting them be effective (the rainbow build will have more damage and take fewer shots to kill ships, it just won't be as fast at it)

 

tl;dr? Give us a proper shmup, even if it takes a lot longer to implement, the update will be better for it.

[--FORMA--]

 

tl;dr? Give us a proper shmup, even if it takes a lot longer to implement, the update will be better for it.

 

Don't worry, they're bound to put more content into this, it's just the beginning.

[Zeful]

Don't worry, they're bound to put more content into this, it's just the beginning.

The entire reason I wrote the big wall of text was because I worry and have seen the recent updates and wanted to actually address potential issues before they are issues so we don't spend a month of hotfixes and patches trying to fix something that should have never been broken.

[Calsius]

Did I miss something? I tend to ignore devstreams these days.

[Zeful]

 Did I miss something? I tend to ignore devstreams these days.

. Edited August 16, 2014 by Zeful

[Calsius]

.

My connection is atrocious right now, so I can't really buffer the video. Could you instead just tell me what they are planning to add please?

[Zeful]

It looks like they are adding a rail shooter mode in the style of Starfox, where the archwings are a bit of tech that straps on to our warframe and lets us survive the vacuum of space and fight against what looked like some Grineer drones.

[Calsius]

It looks like they are adding a rail shooter mode in the style of Starfox, where the archwings are a bit of tech that straps on to our warframe and lets us survive the vacuum of space and fight against what looked like some Grineer drones.

Well that sounds interesting.

[Dtexas]

My connection is atrocious right now, so I can't really buffer the video. Could you instead just tell me what they are planning to add please?

Space battles.

[Somedude1000]

Well that sounds interesting

 

I cant wait for them to arrive so we have more gameplay variety

[Demo102]

Meh, I was hoping for something better, instead they give us a very boring looking bullet hell game mode, in space which means no sound so nothing you shoot will have this "punch" and "impact" you inflict on the enemies.

 

I'll just go play a real bullet hell game like Touhou if that's the case.

[Calsius]

Meh, I was hoping for something better, instead they give us a very boring looking bullet hell game mode, in space which means no sound so nothing you shoot will have this "punch" and "impact" you inflict on the enemies.

 

I'll just go play a real bullet hell game like Touhou if that's the case.

I give DE a lot of Flak which I still feel they rightly deserve, but I've never been against them trying something new. Give it a chance.

[Somedude1000]

I give DE a lot of Flak which I still feel they rightly deserve, but I've never been against them trying something new. Give it a chance.

 

Not many games will have this much variety, presumbaly after the new mission types appear. Let them try it, if its not a super duper ubergrindfest 3000, its worth some extra time in game simply for the fun of it

[Zeful]

Meh, I was hoping for something better, instead they give us a very boring looking bullet hell game mode, in space which means no sound so nothing you shoot will have this "punch" and "impact" you inflict on the enemies.

 

I'll just go play a real bullet hell game like Touhou if that's the case.

Uh, dude? Not all shmups are bullet hell games. Not all shmups try to be bullet hell games. This looks to be more along the lines of Salamander/Lifeforce or Starfox than Crimson Clover or Touhou.

[Demo102]

I give DE a lot of Flak which I still feel they rightly deserve, but I've never been against them trying something new. Give it a chance.

But the gameplay they showed was really boring and wasn't anything "exciting" besides the fact that it's something new.

 

And though it seemed like you had free movement, if you look at it from a realistic point of view, there has to be a LIMIT, which means many of these missions will be very linear and will have you go straight down a path full of enemies you can choose to shoot or slash with your sword, while dodging space junk and or asteroids on the way, all that with no sound to backup.

 

The only thing I would find interesting is dodging through an asteroid belt of a planet you want to get land on for the mission to begin.

[SoulEchelon]

It looks like they are adding a rail shooter mode in the style of Starfox, where the archwings are a bit of tech that straps on to our warframe and lets us survive the vacuum of space and fight against what looked like some Grineer drones.

 

It's not going to be an on-rail shooter mechanic. You'll have full range.

 

You can see this when Excal is flying forward while shooting enemies in front of him, and then he stops, turns, and flies backward while aiming at enemies that were at one point to his side.

 

The camera movement didn't feel forced.

[Zeful]

It's not going to be an on-rail shooter mechanic. You'll have full range.

 

You can see this when Excal is flying forward while shooting enemies in front of him, and then he stops, turns, and flies backward while aiming at enemies that were at one point to his side.

 

The camera movement didn't feel forced.

It doesn't have to be forced, we could be given free look since our wings don't seem to require silly things like visible thrust to work so we might be allowed to look and aim wherever we want but are still stuck "on rails" concerning moving forwards. Granted I could very well be wrong, but I doubt we're getting full free flight.

[Somedude1000]

It doesn't have to be forced, we could be given free look since our wings don't seem to require silly things like visible thrust to work so we might be allowed to look and aim wherever we want but are still stuck "on rails" concerning moving forwards. Granted I could very well be wrong, but I doubt we're getting full free flight.

 

You rasie good points, I cant wait to see the devs consider your suggestions :D

 

 

Also, I wonder whether there'll be physics stopping us from crashing into the hulls of ships

[Warriorrogue]

According to one of the people who said they were at gamescom, it's an open area, with "wall"(Lotus tells you to go back) when they were talking to the devs.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Warriorrogue

[Zeful]

Also, I wonder whether there'll be physics stopping us from crashing into the hulls of ships

Looking at the video it seems we can hit the hulls of the ships.

 

 

According to one of the people who said they were at gamescom, it's an open area, with "wall"(Lotus tells you to go back) when they were talking to the devs.

Which can work out, but does make things more problematic in terms of controls.

[Gektr]

Wow! It will be great!

And it also would be great if there will be open world for all Warframes and they could move free. And if there will be PvE and PvP.

There can be destroyed spaceships found in space. Ships are full of infected aliens and Boss. And resources can be found in these ships.

And meteorites in space. Crashed spaceship remains on them. Possibility to find resources on them.