"freespace" Of Archwing

[xRevelation]

Hi,

 

now i want to highlight something i really dont like in Archwing.

 

First being the auto mission fail thingy. It's not that hard to build in like an auto pilot to take you back to the mission area or something like that.

 

Second the minimap. I mean seriously, the minimap had some issues as for normal gameplay but in free space it's just worse than unusable. We need something more like a 3D Radar.

 

Third the free aspect itself. Of course you have the free space aspect and the following is rather a suggestion than criticism but i'd prefer something like real free space. Meaning that you can do loopings and so on, not being limited by an axis above. (Just try to move your mouse up and you know what i mean)

 

Would be nice if you'd take a look on those things.

 

Cheers ~NovaCry

Edited October 27, 2014 by NovaCry

[direcyphre]

I think part of it is that we don't have any waypoints in front of us at all, so there is no real way to tells at what altitude a waypoint is at. Not sure a 3D minimap would help as much as seeing directly where a waypoint is leading to. Probably make it easier to find all the bugs with the current waypoints (like in Corpus Sabotage) and why they are pointing to the wrong place.

 

They really do need an auto-turnaround function for free space. I mean, if Starfox 64 did it, it should be easy here!

[FrackingBiscuit]

For auto-failing:  Lots of players (including me) share your opinion, and most games do this.  I'm sure if we rattle our sabers enough DE will notice.

 

For the radar:  At the very least we need an extended range on the minimpa, even if we don't get height/elevation markers.  We also need on-screen markers for drops, and we need at least objectives and potentially other important objects (like nearby enemies and drops) that are nearby but no onscreen (read as:  behind us or off to the side) to be marked with nav markers at the edges of our screen that show what direction they're in.  Right now we get enemies ahead of us marked on our HUD; this is good, but we need them to be marked at much greater ranges, and there are many times when enemies are clearly visible and engaging us but aren't marked on the HUD (this might have to do with the host-client issues that are causing other problems like "ghost enemies" in Archwing).  All of these are basic features of flight simulators, which is what Archwing really is.

 

For the maneuvering bit:  Archwing at one point had full 3D movement but it was too easy to lose your sense of direction.  Their answer was to remove it and put a hard limit on angle-of-attack, giving space a defined "up" and "down".  Other games have answered the problem by having you automatically level out as you fly.  For example, pull up until you've gone past the vertical and are flying "inverted" - you will automatically roll to your natural orientation, keeping the define "up" and "down" but without restricting player movement.

 

Archwing is a very different way to move compared to shooters like DE's other games.  Map limits, radar/on-screen navigation aids, and maneuvering are very differing in flying games compared to shooters, and right now Archwing uses the shooter answers to these problems, which just create more problems themselves.  This is all new territory to them.  It might do the team good to play some flight simulator games to see how common problems are tackled.