Archwing Feedback

[TheGuyver]

For the last week or so I've been grinding Archwing pretty heavily since I'm so close to mastery 19 and it's the only way I can achieve it. While I do enjoy Archwing, I'm not the biggest fan of it, especially considering the numerous runs I've done to get what I've needed. Here's some thoughts I've collected based on my PERSONAL experiences.

I've broken it up into several parts.

1. General archwing tomfoolery.
It's difficult to get into, but fun for quite awhile once you do. The only problem with it is the lack of missions and mission types. It's hard to level in sabotage and exterminte because of the limited number of enemies (on exterminte) and line of sight spawn issues (on sabotage).

Interception is the only real good place to level, and there's only the two on Earth and Uranus. There needs to be another interception for intermediate levels. The jump from Earth to Uranus is pretty big in terms of difficulty for some people, and the missions between the two aren't really adequate to prepare you.

There are several other nodes that go virtually unused with nobody running them. It seems as though jupiter/uranus/mars and earth are the only nodes being run.

 

 

1A.) Enemies.

The grineer seem to have an okay mix of enemies, and by mix I mean literal mix. If it's not a shield dargyn, then it's a hellion dargyn. If it's not a hellion dargyn then it's a shield hellion dargyn. The Ogmas are pretty bad ! though, I enjoy those a lot. I enjoy fighting the grineer in archwing far more than the corpus.

 

The corpus are the most bland enemies. The human type enemies are just crewmen with dual opticors strapped to their backs being used as a jetpack. Then there's the million types of ospreys, which just add to the sea of bland that are the corpus. The Gox is almost essentially a clone of the Ogma too. They got old extremely fast, and offer little to no challenge.

 

2. Mission types. I'm sure you have more of them planned, and maybe more endless ones to help out a bit with the lack of an intermediate level mission for interception. An escort mission where you protect a space shuttle doing scans of an asteroid belt would be awesome, you could plant the scanners in the ground and defend on multiple fronts which would be a challenging mode.

Maybe the grineer could have a sabotage mission on ceres which entails a trench/bombing run on the fomorians that are still being constructed in the shipyards.

I could ramble on for awhile about different types of archwing missions/types but I don't want to hit the text limit.

 

3. Parts, Mods and General QoL. Some of these mods just don't make sense.

A. The lack of mods. There's really not much I can put here, it's pretty self explanatory. I wish we had some nightmare mods or something else besides what we have. It all feels very basic, which is understandable because Archwing is still in its infancy.

 

B) 30% multi shot. Why is it only 30? Don't most of the guns have low ammo besides the imperators? People use them because of the poor performance of the other guns. This is a personal experience and what I've seen and gathered from talking and playing with other people.
B1) I feel this also applies to the other mods where the general boosts, power strength, and such give what feel like lower tier bonuses. Mods that increase the shields/armor/health feel comfortable where they are.

 

C) 10 rank mods like Hyperion Thrusters and System reroute. Why are there rank 10 mods for archwing that give such low bonuses like this. I feel like these are a deterrant to people who are new to archwing because of all of the rank 10 mods currently in game and those still being added. I feel like system reroute is at a good place, but doesn't need to be a rank 10 mod because people don't really sit around and spam 4 in archwing like normal missions.

 

D) Melee is ridiculously superior to gunplay in most situations. The only time I personally use my gun is when I need to beat down an Ogma with viral procs.

D1) Gun play in general feels very boring, it seems as though most of the people I run into on missions are using the default imperator (or vandal) if they're even shooting at all. The balancing just feels way off, and because of this the grind to get some weapons feels unrewarding.

 

E) The Squad UI shows the warframes/guns/pistols etc the squad is using and not their archwing equipment. This would be a cool thing to see.

 

F) It feels like everything is shoved into Uranus. Of the numerous runs I've done for the centaur parts, I've stocked up on a life supply of T4 defense keys. It's terrible, and just flat out infuriating to get stuff like that as a reward. T4 keys have been greatly cheapened and have lost of a lot of their value (as mission rewards) to players with the damage syndicate packs have done. I have over 250 T4 defense/MD and survival from the old syndicate packs. It made them too easy to get and they let us stock up.

 

G) Leveling feels like a task, even with the affinity orb drop spam. I almost feel compelled to buy an exp booster because of how much I dread having to level archwings/weapons.

 

H) You've already primed Archwing. Painting the turd gold doesn't make up for its many problems. Seriously, it's been out how long with very few additions besides weapons. No new modes, excluding the event, which was so easy a caveman could do it. It shouldn't have been primed with how little it's been worked on since release.

I feel like this about sums up my thoughts on the primary issues of the gameplay/mode itself. I have faith that Archwing will become more popular than anyone could imagine once it's reworked a bit. I just like archwing for now. It's sort of like mudkips, I like mudkip, but I'm not really read to "liekz mudkipz" just yet.
 

Edited April 4, 2015 by TheGuyverOne

[K_Shiro]

Archwing problems:

- Loot. The loot is bad. The stuff you need to build archwing gear is hard to get, certain parts are just brutally rare, especially if RNG likes you. I still don't have Elytron harness and Fluctus Limbs. And someone over there thought it would be a good idea to even add keys making it even harder to get something worthwhile. Thanks. If I knew you dear source of this genius change, I would ask "Are you crazy/sadist or just don't understand what it is you have done?". Also the introduction of Tellerium was... well, I don't want to offend the devs or anything but I could elaborate how highly I think of those coming up with all the new resources. Fire them plz? We don't need many resources. Never did, never will. You have a ton already, do those properly. This one, akin to Oxium back when it was added and Argon just acts as an artifical extra slowing mechanic. No need. Worth mentioning that you need XP to play the maps where you can gain proper xp for your gain but to level those to that you need to play the other missions with weaker enemies. And those missions give practically nil xp. Joy.

- Boredom. Missions take long while they offer zero variety. Same enemies (yay, one is red, one is grey... one has shields... no matter, you can't tell from that distance or while meleeing), maps are the same too.

- Lack of tactics. You are best off hacking away but no way to use cover (you might impale yourself on a wall or object if you melee too close for example - I died 3 times like that in recent days) if you were to choose shooting. You can keep your distance but you might get attacked from behind and since you can't tell who has the homing missiles you might be offed within 1s if you are not careful. If you keep moving... good luck hitting anything.

- AI. Enemies are stupid. Big time. They do not move around, just fly there and shoot you. It's like a shooting gallery akin to the normal game, without the covers, parkour, with even less control in melee (though not much less than calling EEEEE a combo...), and less style. It's like button smashing if using melee or moorhuhn if shooting. Yay, joy.

 

Other than that it could be decent.

 

Since same thing actually. Would be cool if DE didn't forget any new content they add the moment it hits the game. Kubrows were hyped to hell first, when they got into the game they have been forgotten already. Nothing new other than 1-2 skins. Thaaaaaat's not much. Same for Archwing, Dark Sectors, Dojo coloring, Dojo Decoration, new Dojo rooms, Dojo functions, weapon balancing (giving buff to 2 weapons and nerfing 7 others is not balancing - balancing is simple math, would be about time they did it for ALL weapons).

Argh, gotta eat something so I'm less annoyed.

[CrendKing]

1. Lack of mission type: completely agree with you. Also want to add that DE please add eximus units to Archwing. Draco is good for leveling because it has good source of eximus, which gives 10x exp than normal units. Archwing is too slow/boring to level right now.

 

2. Mods: I think the balance of mods in Archwing is far better than normal mode. 30% multishot is like "it is not auto equip but good enough if have capacity". You have a choice of equip or not equip, increases variety. Same as Thruster and Reroute. Some mods in normal mode is simply too good to not equip.

 

3. Melee: Imagine in the normal mode melee is far better than gun, will you like it? I will, because it is more balanced. You take risk by using melee, you deserve reward. Will you bump into a group of hellion and crop them down one by one? You better have large reserve of hp.

 

TL:DR Archwing is currently much more balanced than normal mode.

[TheGuyver]

3. Melee: Imagine in the normal mode melee is far better than gun, will you like it? I will, because it is more balanced. You take risk by using melee, you deserve reward. Will you bump into a group of hellion and crop them down one by one? You better have large reserve of hp.

 

TL:DR Archwing is currently much more balanced than normal mode.

 

Melee is one of the best scaling mechanics in game in normal play. Like I said before, I almost never see anyone using anything besides the default gun in archwing. The gun play itself is just all wrong, and gives it an underwhelming feeling while melee seems to be in a much better spot. That's just from my personal experience though.

[Old_King_Belgothia]

G) Leveling feels like a task, even with the affinity orb drop spam. I almost feel compelled to buy an exp booster because of how much I dread having to level archwings/weapons.

 

 

Shh, don't tell them! Now they'll never change it!

[TheGuyver]

Shh, don't tell them! Now they'll never change it!

 

#wewontpay lol

[Kasarian]

If it's okay with you I'm gonna use your topic OP as source material for my own massive rant (covering entirety of WF), you fine with that op?

[TheGuyver]

If it's okay with you I'm gonna use your topic OP as source material for my own massive rant (covering entirety of WF), you fine with that op?

 

That's fine, thanks for asking first.

Edited April 4, 2015 by TheGuyverOne