Archwing Defense is still a chore that noone wants to play

[MobyTheDuck]

So, after finally getting (and maxing) Elytron, I decided to play a round of Archwing Defense on Neptune/Salacia. I didnt play it since update 17.5, almost 7 months ago, back then it was a loooong and boring mission with a defense pod as sturdy as a wet biscuit. Of course that after all that time, they surely fixed it, right?

Well, I was disapointed to see that, after waiting about 15 minutes for some other fool to show up, since noone on recruiting or on my clan was up for it, it was literally the same it was 7 months ago.

- Shuttles still have almost no health for the level of the mission, 500 shield and 2000 health. Mobile defense consoles on Earth/Mercury have more than this, even a rank 30 Archwing has more than this.

- The shuttles are in the open, divided by that wall, so going solo is suicide. Makes Elytron and Iztal a must since the room is so cramped.

- Enemies still take too long to spawn, are barely visible, get stuck on walls and tunnels all the time, most of the time dont get marked on the radar and can still rip through the shuttle before Lotus has any time to speak.

- Takes more than ONE HOUR to do 20 waves. You can bring 2 Elytrons and 2 Iztals to speed things up, but is still a massive waste of time, 12 waves of T4 Interception is faster than this, I could do about 40 waves of normal defense in that time.

- Drop rates are still unbalanced, 20 waves/one hour for mostly Corvas parts, that take 50% of the drop table, while Onorix and Kazsas blades have 10% each. Meanwhile, the exterminates on Mercury and Saturn still dont have unique drops aside mods.

Is there any hope for this mode to get a revisit? I heard some new Archwing stuff will be released on u19, something about the Trinity Archwing and a Hook weapon of sorts.

Edited April 25, 2016 by MobyTheDuck

[(PSN)Oddreign]

Archwing as a whole is a chore. DE needs to make it less jittery and twitchy.  I've played Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 space shooters that are way better than Archwing (e.g. Zone of the Enders, Macross, Gundam)

If only they can fix Archwing and make it play like a decent space shooter then people would play that game mode more often. As it stands, Archwing is just a waste of time and feels very broken and detached from the core game of Warframe.

[Culaio]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Oddreign said:

Archwing as a whole is a chore. DE needs to make it less jittery and twitchy.  I've played Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 space shooters that are way better than Archwing (e.g. Zone of the Enders, Macross, Gundam)

If only they can fix Archwing and make it play like a decent space shooter then people would play that game mode more often. As it stands, Archwing is just a waste of time and feels very broken and detached from the core game of Warframe.

Sadly I must agree and I believe that Archwing has potential to be something great, I have ever archwing, archwing weapon(yup I even farmed on archwing defense...) and pretty much every archwing mod which shows  that I am someone who want archwing game mode to be something great, sadly now that I have everything archwing related there is absolutely no reason for me to play archwings anymore since it offers rewards inferior to main game, and not many people want to play archwing missions so its hard to find people to play with and most of people that do play it are under-leveled so I must carry them through mission.

The small changes planed for archwing wont be enough to fix archwing game mode problems, which means they wont attract people to play this game mode, what DE needs to do is big rework of archwing game mode, something on the level of pvp rework to pvp 2.0, which included dedicated team working only on pvp, we need something similar for archwing game mode, archwing 2.0 with its own dedicated team.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Culaio

[(PSN)JaviOnTheRocks]

I don't think Warframe missions carry well over to the archwing area, or at least not in the way they are currently implemented.

Defending two fragile shuttles in a cramped space against tiny enemies that get stuck all over the place is the exact opposite of fun, and while interception and mobile defense aren't as bad as Salacia, they aren't exactly fun either.

The archwing is an opportunity to break from the exact same mechanics from Warframe missions, and yet it seems that the idea so far is trying to shoehorn them into space.

Just taking something not really all that sophisticated as "Strike Suit: Zero" as reference, there are lots of ideas that could apply to the archwing, with a WF twist: we could be taking down Grineer and Corpus cargo ships before they dock into a space station (maybe switching to a sabotage mission if the ships finally docks), defending cargo ships from attacks (and maybe alternating archwing with standard WF inside the cargo if the ship is boarded), participating in battles between capital ships (both fending off small and medium ships on archwing and sabotaging capital ships from the inside)... probably many ideas could turn to be a technical challenge for DE, but I'm sure they could come up with many that wouldn't be much more difficult to implement than the current ones.

I like the archwing idea, but the current missions are a massive let down, and if the idea is to make a 1:1 copy of the core WF gaming but flying through space, I don't see it ever working very well.

In space, no one can hear you yawn.

[Culaio]

@(PS4)JaviOnTheRocks

I completly agree, archwing game mode is very mobile game  so adding very stationary mission types to this game type is bad idea, since you cant use full capabilities of archwings in missions like that, floating in space in one pace and shoting enemies is not really fun >_>

Closest thing to "defense" type mission archwing should have should be actually more like hijack mission: escorting moving object(space ship), but object should be much faster then in hijack mission

 

Archwing game mode being too stationary is Its main problem, VTOL shoting each other in space barely moving is not fun, I would do anything to ave space dog fights(like in mentioned Strike Suit: Zero) in archwing game mode

 

Also here is thread of my friend where he created and collected many ideas for archwing missions that actually are much more interesting and unique compared to archwing missions we currently have: