Improving the design philosophy of Archwing

[TheKihunter]

Let's start off positive. What's good about Archwing?

• Speed
  • Archwing does a great job of providing a sense of speed, from the movement, to the combat. In that regard, it translates what's good about the standard Warframe experience into space flight quite nicely.

That's... all I got, actually. Archwing really doesn't have much going for it, but why is that? We need to identify what's holding the game mode back.

• Controls
  • The controls, as of writing this post, are horrible. It's too easy to spin yourself around and disorient yourself, and the momentum thing just isn't fun. The open asteroid field levels aren't quite as bad as ships, but it's still very disorienting, especially because the minimap does not alter itself to properly account for changes in angles. As an example, if you're upside down, the entire minimap's mirrored, and that's not very functional.
  • Steve's gone on record that the controls were an attempt at making the mode more like a space sim, but the problem with that is we don't expect, nor really want realism in a game about magic space ninjas. Arcade-like gameplay is perfectly fine. There's a damn good reason Galaga is still popular after 30 or so years.
• Missions and Variety
  • Mobile Defense, Defense, Interception, Exterminate, and Pursuit. Only five mission modes, not counting the Jordas Golem. Notice that three of these involve standing around most of the time? In Exterminate you move around more, but only Pursuit really makes an attempt to take advantage of Archwing's speed. Combined with the very few Archwing nodes across the entire star map, the game mode and its missions get dull very quickly.
• Mods
  • Archwing requires mods independent of your Warframe's mods. This normally wouldn't be that big of an issue, but low drop-rates and decreased efficiency compared to their normal counterparts really put a damper on things.
• Affinity
  • Affinity, like the mods, is shockingly scarce. Even if you play Archwing religiously, leveling is much slower than in regular gameplay. It's irritating, and comes off as little more than an way to artificially extend playtimes.

There are numerous other issues, but I would say these four are the biggest problems with Archwing today. They make the mod very boring, or at times, downright unfun to play. This should not be the case when the core concept is magic space ninjas wielding giant guns and swords in space.

The solution, in my opinion, is to focus on a more arcadey feeling, getting rid of any defence-type missions and embracing the speed that the mode does so well. A game I think DE should look at for inspiration in redesigning Archwing's core experience is Star Fox 64.

Archwing always reminded me of the free-range levels in Star Fox. Both have a good sense of speed, and shooting down enemies is oddly satisfying. But Star Fox is much more rewarding of skill than Archwing, and makes more use of speed with its tighter controls and more varied missions. The Star Wolf missions, in particular, exemplify these traits. How awesome would it be if Archwing let you have dog-fights against fast-moving AI opponents instead of shooting down sluggish space potatoes?

Even the on-rails segments could be translated over, though this suggestion is admittedly quite a stretch. At one point in the War Within (don't worry, not spoiling anything major), you use your Archwing to follow a ship so you can sneak into an enemy fortress. You have to keep up with this ship, while at the same time hiding behind it so you can pass through scanners undetected. I had to restart the mission several times due to the sloppy controls and inability to match my speed with the ship's for too long. The entire time I was pulling my hair out, I kept thinking back to the Zoness stage of Star Fox 64, which had a similar concept of avoiding detection from searchlights, but with its constant speed and scripted timing, it was much more manageable to deal with. If the Archwing sequence had been on rails, and all I had to do was react to the angles the scanners were coming from, rather than having to focus on keeping my speed even while still trying to remain upright, I would have found it much less irritating, and maybe even fun.

TLDR;

DE should focus on a fast, arcadey experience for Archwing, and could look to games such as Star Fox 64 for inspiration.

 

[Zandermanith222]

Don't forget the Rush game mode! Pursuit and Rush are the latest modes and both of them are focused around speed. (Also the only Defense mission was removed due to being in a horrendous state) So I think DE's at least getting a grasp on what Archwing modes should be like!

I've always wanted a sorta Archwing specific "planet", like maybe an asteroid field that's also littered with Corpus ships. Or having three Archwing nodes per planet as a sorta...sub-track on the side! There's such a thing as too many nodes, but there's also definitely such a thing as too little nodes, which we have right now.

I'm gonna doubt DE are gonna remove anymore of the current modes we have, but it'd be at least nice for all future modes to at least partially involve high speeds! More ways to get mods and affinity would be nice too. I mean sure a majority of Archwing enemies give way more Affinity than ground-units, but it's just not really enough given the current selection of modes.

 

[ArchPhaeton]

But Starfox64 was a masterpiece bro. Kinda unfair to compare

Thing with archwing is, while i kinda like the controls, a. levels weren't designed with that in mind and b. it's missing an Autolevel button - Shadows of the Empire had it back in '97

[ArchPhaeton]

2 minutes ago, Zandermanith222 said:

-snip- (Also the only Defense mission was removed due to being in a horrendous state) -snip-

I've always wanted a sorta Archwing specific "planet", -snip-

 

I miss soloing that Def so much. Countless days farming the Centaur blade...

inb4 community outrage for "forcing" us to play archwing due to a planet locked behind it.

[djternan]

Only dedicated Archwing missions have that sense of speed.  Sharkwing feels like swimming in molasses.

[Shalath]

I really enjoy AW but the newer controls are definitely worse than the old ones. Boost and up on the same key? Really?

I like the idea of an asteroid field "planet" or similar to provide more AW missions as a farming ground where we can get mods. Weapons would be nice as well as the amount of work to get weapon parts from syndicates is pretty insane considering how few AW missions there are.

[Culaio]

I think that one of problems DE has with archwing is that every player wants archwing to be something different, which makes satisfying players very hard if not impossible.

For example I would like archwing to be more like strike suit zero:

dark void game flying parts also could be good inspiration:

 

I believe that DE needs to make archwing their own thing instead of copying(DE said archwing is based on Zone of the enders games) other  games but use other games as inspiration to add to it(all of stuff in warframe is inspired by other sources like venka being inspired by wolverine), like for example they could give us switchable movement system like in strike suit zero:

-faster but less precise movement mode for pursuit/space dogfight combat

-slower but more precise movement mode for close combat

[Shalath]

I've always assumed AW was at least partially inspired by Gundam. I would certainly love bigger and blastier beam weapons.

Missile spam for noodleata's 3?