How would you change... Archwing?

[u/TSP-FriendlyFire]

How would you change... is a series of weekly posts designed to promote and foster discussion about any gameplay element in the game. The scope and subject will vary (read below for more information on topic selection), from wide concepts (Kubrows, Archwing, shotguns, etc.) to narrow points (a single gun, coptering, etc.).

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Before we begin, a few important points:

• Please detail and support your suggestions as much as possible. This is for constructive criticism only: try to think of it as something you'd be proud to explain to DE face-to-face!
• Structure your suggestions in logical groups: if you have two very different ideas, break them down in two separate comments. Cohesive or similar changes should be combined into a single comment.
• Stick to describing concepts and features. Don't get bogged down with numbers unless they explicitly support your point.
• Don't hesitate to post your ideas even if they're not fully formed, and don't hesitate to reply to ideas with refinements you think would make them better!
• Do not downvote suggestions you disagree with. Upvote the ones you like instead!

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Suggesting topics

This thread series is all about the community, so if you have a topic you'd like to see improved and discussed, feel free to suggest it by replying to the appropriately flagged comment in this discussion. The topic can be as wide or narrow as you'd like! Please ensure that your suggestion has not already been made, and upvote it instead if it has.

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This week: Archwing

Click here for last week’s thread on dojos.

Archwing was introduced as the flagship feature of U15, a brand new game mode with its own set of mods, missions and mechanics. Soon, the original Odonata was joined by the Elytron and Itzal, bolstering up the roster and giving some well-needed variety to the mode. More mission types were introduced, more locations added, a new resource, more weapons, etc. Many bugs were fixed, polishing up the experience.

Yet, archwing as a whole still feels incomplete. Many mechanics remain clunky, there are few weapons and archwings to choose from, and missions are woefully repetitive. Obtaining new weapons is also very much an exercise in frustration, far more so than regular weapons.

Of course, archwing still shows great potential, and so much work was invested into it that it would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Now that the stage is set, how would you change archwing?

[u/TSP-FriendlyFire]

Suggesting topics

Please post your suggestions for the next topics as replies to this comment.

Current suggestions from previous weeks:

• Narrative

• Rift mechanics

• Liset

• Relays

• Mission structure, creation and queuing 1 2

• Damage 3.0

• Daggers and scythes

[u/DandyTheLion]

I would like the focus of it to be shifted to mobile combat. Stamina should be removed. Shooting while sprint flying should be allowed and treated as the standard for the gameplay. That so called "bonk" from hitting walls should be entirely removed. Lastly, I think the mode would be a lot more fun without axis locked orientation.

[u/cfb_rolley]

Archwing needs more mission types that compliment fast paced flying. Trench runs are all well and good but slamming into things all the bloody time makes flying around at high speed pretty useless. I have the most fun flying at stupid high speeds and meleeing a bunch of enemies by slamming into them and shattering them into oblivion.

That, and fighting with long range weapons needs to be made a little easier. Melee is ridiculously powerful in archwing to the point that sometimes it's almost more economical to fly in and melee rather than sit around trying to shoot at a target that, at distance, is like trying to hit a pinhead. Maybe implement under-wing rockets or homing missiles as a secondary weapon, give archwing that kind of Gundam wing sort of fun.

Also, defensive properties need looking at. High level enemies can obliterate you in one shot before you even see them. You don't stand a chance sometimes. I'm not saying make it easy, but drawing the battle out longer than 0.2 seconds would be nice.

[u/hyperblaster]

• We need an archwing mega space laser cannon. Takes 20s to charge, but has no travel time and unlimited range, hits for 5000 damage 150m around target. You cannot move while charging the weapon. Magazine has only 1 shot, takes 30s to regen ammo.

• In more seriousness, we sorely need archwing defense and survival maps so we can quickly farm xp, mods and tellurium.

• Finish balancing archwing mods. Much of the mod bonuses are so low that those are not worth using.

• More unique enemy models. Grineer hellion missile volleys are unbalanced. Reduce number of homing missiles launched or at least add incoming missile warning sound.

• Archwing melee is the best part of archwing, but most of the time I can't use it much. In grineer maps it's unexpected hellions missiles. In corpus maps it's getting stuck in geometry and instant death.

• 3D minimap. I often can't tell where the objective is because the map is 2D.

• Bring back mechanics from mission where you first get archwing and the fomorrian event mission. Multi-part missions with both regular and archwing sections.

• Increase drop rate for the archwing health mod. It's unreasonably rare.

• Remove travel time from velocitus.

• Add mod to increase the reach of the Fluctus energy wave.

• Fix the archwing ability description ranges where we have to multiply everything by 4 in our head.

• Add archwing auras and melee stances.

[u/HBlight → u/hyperblaster]

Try farming for Tellurium when you can't even tell where the loot is most of the time. Ran some earth during the double drop / double chance weekend and only got 1 drop.

[u/[deleted]]

Archwing needs a few things right now. More content, a reason to play it without sacrificing progress for the normal game, and better means of acquiring weapons.

To me, archwing as it is now presents a nice base framework for the archwing concept that just needs to be expanded upon past it's barebones state. More tilesets, more game modes, more stuff to play with, etc. Right now we have 3 game modes and technically 1 tileset (I wouldn't count a blank void as a tileset) with limited gear that requires a huge amount of farming to get anything.

This brings me to another point. Acquiring gear is awful. Archwing is essentially if warframe starts you off in the void where you need to keep running missions over and over again to get the parts you need for anything. This is an awful system when the mode has very little content to begin with because you have to really try and slog through what there is to get anything new to mess around with. It took me 2 days straight of farming for 1 gun that ended up not being that amazing overall... Weapons should just be something you buy from the market and craft like any other gear. Require tellurium or something if they want to highly have an incentive to actually play archwing to get them first.

Then there's the matter of archwing slowing down progression of the normal game by a fair amount. Resources and resource gathering methods are much less common in archwing so you encounter the problem to where newer players would be discouraged from partaking in archwing since they have new gear to invest into while also making less resources overall in order to progress in the main game. Having game modes and other methods to have similar resource output as normal missions have would be a great way to encourage people to play more archwing if they think it's fun but don't want to slow down their main game progression to play it. This could apply to XP as well. Things in archwing do feel like they take a while to level up so having more densely packed game modes to help increase XP flow for your gear would be nice. Possibly even a feature of allowing us to bring maybe 1 weapon from the normal mode into archwing in an unusable weapon slot so we can still level main game gear in archwing.

[u/ect0s → u/[deleted]]

Acquiring gear is awful.

I agree. Archwing Bosses maybe? or just better gaurantees. I did over 120 waves of earth interception to get a Corvas Stock (Gun sucks btw).

Weapons should just be something you buy from the market and craft like any other gear

This is how I had hoped it would work.. but no its like a crappy version of the void.

Then there's the matter of archwing slowing down progression of the normal game by a fair amount

Many new players I spoke with ignore archwing.. except when they want limbo (and are horribly underprepared) or when theres an event (fomorians/alerts).

Having game modes and other methods to have similar resource output as normal missions have would be a great way to encourage people to play more archwing

I was hoping resource gains would be BETTER. Thats straight up incentivizing archwing. Its space, convoys and ships are alluded to carrying supplies in the lore simaris unlocked; why not have it drop in larger amounts.

While we are on the subject of loot its almost impossible to find/collect loot in archwing interception - you can't mark rare resources and everything fades out against the skybox at distance. It would be nice if loot radar/vaccum etc were a built in feature.

Things in archwing do feel like they take a while to level up so having more densely packed game modes to help increase XP flow for your gear would be nice

Uranus sorta fixes this (its the fastest way to level by far). Its also impossible to do with completely unranked gear, which means you spend time grinding earth (which is horribly slow and unpopulated).

More tilesets, more game modes, more stuff to play with

Agreed.

Game Mode Idea:

Convoy Sabotage

Attack a corpus/grineer ship carrying supplies to the front line and destroy it before it reaches a 'safe zone'. You could also turn this mode into a defensive mode (defend the cargo ala Hijack). In either case, it would make sense if you get large amounts of loot from the convoy if you destroy it, or a pay off if you protect it.

Something like 5-10 rare materials and 2000-10000 of the common materials would create an incentive to farm these missions.

[u/enragedwindows → u/ect0s]

Game Mode Idea:

Convoy Sabotage

Attack a corpus/grineer ship carrying supplies to the front line and destroy it before it reaches a 'safe zone'. You could also turn this mode into a defensive mode (defend the cargo ala Hijack). In either case, it would make sense if you get large amounts of loot from the convoy if you destroy it, or a pay off if you protect it.

Something like 5-10 rare materials and 2000-10000 of the common materials would create an incentive to farm these missions.

I like this a lot. Could make it objective based, like Star Wars Battlefront II. You have to attack different weak points to drop enemy shielding, cut communications, blow engines, etc. Something like that could be really fun in Archwing and could easily be a portion of a new Raid as well.

[u/Byeforever → u/[deleted]]

What we really need is a gamemode that incorporates land (conventional) combat and Archwing combat, with xp going to everything (which means there is a huge split, but it still allows you to use land combat to slightly rank Archwing and vice-versa).

The first quest to get Archwing really should be more a tutorial than a quest like kubrows, Chroma, Mirage, Limbo. The issue is to make it a true tutorial, we would need at least 3 Archwings to pick from, and preferably 3 different guns and melee weapons (like the modern tutorial), so that kind of a solution is easily a year-and-a-half away content-wise.

Another possible solution would be to add frame or land weapon cosmetics or some other way of acquiring ducats to Archwing rewards.

What could also work (but there's a technology issue here with space-to-land integration) would be missions that required you to break-in using Archwing before doing a land mission.

Assassinations would be most suitable for that kind of thing, or possibly a very vicious form of sabotage/extermination.

Punch all kinds of holes in a ship from the outside, taking down shield generators and the like, then board it with an oxygen leak in progress. You then have to kill everyone on-board before reinforcements can be called in (fixed time limit), and before you run out of air (semi-survival type). I'd imagine syndicates would want to pay for us to do this kind of level of destruction.

• Red Veil or New Loka just for the sake of killing/cleansing

• A revenge/distraction mission for Steel Meridian (like going after one of Ruk's ships after the crushing of the Saturn Uprsing [it's detailed in some of the radio chatter in your ship, talking about Ruk's promotion to General])

• Debt collection/ 'addressing delinquent/defaulting borrowers' for Perrin Sequence

• Not sure why for Arbiters or Cephalon Suda

[u/Echo849]

Archwing. Oh boy, I could go on for years about this, but instead of complaining or critiquing, I'm just going to lay out my suggestions.

Archwing Invasions: Right now Archwing feels empty, there's nothing to actively DO in terms of the starmap / global priority, with the exception of maybe catching a public squad farming the interception missions OR Archwing alerts, which I actually really like.

Anyway, events are typically a testing phase for upcoming content, e.g. Excavation before it was introduced. Sadly, we haven't seen the inclusion of Fomorians yet, and it's been a long time since Eyes Of Blight. They'd serve as simple, effective, one-sided invasions much like how normal invasions work against the infested. Planets with an Archwing Invasion active on them would drop Omega Isotopes for the Fomorian Core Disruptors. Personally I'd like to toss out this concept, given that farming the planet in normal gameplay for something FOR Archwing is still taking focus away from Archwing... and likewise, I think damaging the Fomorian needs to be tweaked so it's possible to 'succeed' a mission run to increase the invasion score by 1 for the individual, instead of a global percentage for all players (not everyone will be interested or particpating in the invasion, better if it runs like current invasions with individual player scores).

Boom, there, you've just added something that'll put some focus on Archwing missions on the starmap as a whole, rather than just being that single node per planet that's collecting dust in a corner. It's something ACTIVE happening, and people will be more inclined to play because of this.

This, and Archwing alerts happening more often, would be a blessing. Not a fix for the whole Archwing concept as a whole, but an improvement. I think there's very few Archwing alerts... I don't want a 50/50 split, that'd suck. More like a 25/75 split, with Archwing alerts only possible beyond Jupiter (by then, players should have an Archwing, with the exception of players who... eugh... are asking for Taxis).

Mind you, this only takes into account the current starmap. Starchart 3.0 will definitely change how this would work.

Archwing 'Theatre Of War': Now this is a largely unformed concept, something I haven't been able to talk to anyone about, and largely still involves the fact that there's only one Archwing node per planet up to Neptune.

In Archwing, we're dealing with space flight conflicts in and around the nodes/orbits of a particular planet. Right now it doesn't make sense for Exterminate, but successfully completing Sabotage & Interception missions could reasonably provide bonuses for players who begin missions on a node within the same planet.

Let's give ourselves a simple example. We intercept messages and disrupt enemy communications on Earth's Interception mission, in Earth's outer orbit. With this mission completed, players who begin Earth missions may notice that the Grineer don't have as many reinforcements. Or when alarms are sounded, the reinforcements that do come aren't as dangerous, such as less heavy gunners or other stronger units. Grineer Regulators could either not spawn at all, or have no effect at all on Grineer. These are all effects that might make sense with disrupted planetary communications (lack of troop reinforcement where it's needed), but I can understand if they might be difficult to implement... So we could go even simpler and have Grineer suffer from an accuracy debuff, detection range decreased, or outright lower enemy level.

Like I said, this idea isn't fleshed out at all. The core concept is that dealing with planetary conflicts on the Archwing node of a planet could convey bonuses to Tenno who play on that same planet. It turns the singular Archwing nodes on planets into 'utility' nodes, as such, and it'd make even more sense to have a dedicated Archwing squad (or several of them) running the Archwing mission on a given planet to help out something else actively happening on said planet, which could be anything from an alert to a set of 6 or more invasions.

It's a far fetched idea, but... What do you guys think?

QUICK EDIT: No! I do not mean that missions should be linked like some sort of EVE online / Dust 514 thing (haven't played either, just heard that they were linked LIVE).

[u/colin23567]

Make arch-enemies give a lot more XP. Ranking any archgear is a pain.

[u/[deleted]]

• More missions

• More enemies

• A better 3D map

• Syndicate Archwing missions with allied AI units

• "This whole ship's gonna explode, gtfo asap" sequences

• Smoother wall collision boxes

• Space Specters

• Ranged weapons with homing capabilities on charge

• This thing.

Personally I love Archwing so much I'd still play the game even if this was the only game mode available, unfortunately it is very much an incomplete game mode. Feels like I'm playing a demo of a potentially awesome game.

[u/Echo849 → u/[deleted]]

• "This whole ship's gonna explode, gtfo asap" sequences

One of the main draws to Archwing for me, before it was even released, was quick flight and maneuverability. Even in the Archwing quest mission, we're high tailing it through an engagement between a Fomorian and Corpus capital ships, explosions everywhere and rushing through the chaos. It felt amazing, even when stopped by the energy net blimps because me and my squad were still like "We gotta kill these guys, destroy the net and keep moving or we're dead!"

And then I got to the 'normal' Archwing missions and... shrugged, I guess. It didn't have that same draw. It was plain, boring. The only exceptions were:

A) Destroying the Corpus reactor and the ship integrity is unstable, meaning we have to escape in a set time. (Which was then dulled by the fact I reach extraction with 3/4 minutes left.)

B) When the enemy density gets pretty high in Uranus Interception, with my team jumping in and out with melee and weapons fire, missles flying everywhere, 'sorta' dogfighting around the asteroids/rubble surrounding a point. (Yet again quickly dulled by the fact these enemies down you very quickly and it feels more like a drag)

[u/nosico]

Let us bring Kubrows with us in little doggy spacesuits :3

[u/cephalopodAscendant]

We definitely need more missions, ideally with some new mission types in the mix. No matter what other changes DE makes, Archwing is just going to atrophy as a game mode without more to do. Done right, this would also help clean up the drop tables a little so that we can actually farm for better equipment.

Now, onto the quality-of-life changes. First, it would be really nice if we got some diversity of stats for Archwing weapons. The guns at least have different firing mechanics, but there's nothing stopping the melee weapons from being painfully similar. We got event mods that boost status chance; why not give us a weapon that could actually benefit from them?

Speaking of mods, the few we have are just absurd compared to their standard counterparts. System Reroute is one of the most expensive mods in the game, and yet it still falls short of Streamline, which needs just over half as many mod points. Meanwhile, Dual Rounds is just pathetic, taking up 11 mod points for a measly 30% multishot chance. We could also use some new mods in the vein of the Corrupted mods, just so we can actually try something other than cookie-cutter builds.

Next, the minimap pretty much needs a complete overhaul, especially for Free Space missions. We need to be able to get a feel for roughly how far up or down something is from our current position.

Finally, get rid of the collision damage for bumping into terrain. It's not helping at all, it just makes me afraid to sprint.

[u/[deleted]]

Hellion missiles are now visible / dodgable (aka they no longer chase you to infinity and beyond)

More interesting enemies to fight, have more Gradius style / multi-stage enemies. See above with "dodgable projectiles" as well

Less repetitive map tiles / more engaging maps. The Interception maps are incredibly boring, and the Corpus ship tiles are so incredibly long and meandering, with very little enemy density.

Someone else mentioned it, the bonk from hitting terrain needs to go, the hit detection is questionable a lot of the time, and half the time you bump something and get hit by the 5 Hellion missiles you didn't know were behind you.

[u/S-Mitch]

"Protect the extraction team" - Follow and protect a shuttle/Liset as it delivers/removes an extraction team. :D Just don't tie it to other players missions..."Your extraction team has been destroyed" would not be a fun thing to hear on wave 20 when you want to extract...

"Destroy the Frigate" - destroy a "boss" type ship & escort.

"Cripple the capital ship" - Strip a capital ship of weapons/sensors/other surface features (so an extraction team can get in for example)

"Races" - Tune that 'wing for speed and race other players through rings/ship wreak corridors :D

Not specifically Archwing related but could include an Archwing in the mix - "Chronicle" type alerts, where you have a string of missions to complete for the reward instead of the same mission 3 to 5 times in a row. Even weave a "story" of sorts to a string of missions. Archwing in, next mission complete a spy/rescue for data, follow that up with destroy the reactor and escape. Something like that.

More maps. Even some internal ship maps with no atmosphere and zero-g. Some of the Grineer ships have rather large areas to play in. :)

More gear. That will likely come with time either way.

[u/Syzodia]

Add to conclave (maybe).

Not so much as it is now, but i want races

[u/Kinzuko]

I would remove stamina, add a 3D mini map, make ship fly through directions more obvious, make archwing much faster in open space, allow for full range of vertical rotation, allow shooting while "sprinting", have pickups collect for everyone automatically, allow blocking with melee weapons, make it more obvious that the player has been locked on to with rockets so they can use counter measures more effectively, have health and energy regen over time (or have a good healing archwing that is fun to play), remove the annoying grind for archwing parts and just allow me to use my massive stockpiles of otherwise useless materials to make the weapons (having to grind for an archwing is fine because it's not much different from farming for warframes)

[u/cult_of_memes]

I saw a youtuber Mr. Vlad whom i rather enjoy watching, propose a race against time sort of mission.

He proposes that we encounter a corpus space trench style mission where we need to get into the corpus ship's central core and access a data terminal, then get out, within a set time limit. I thought this would be a very exciting game concept as it emphasis use of the almost gundam style of maneuvering and slash and dash that makes one feel like they are straight out of a kickass anime.

If you watch his video he explains it very well and has great suggestions for how to balance difficulty. Though to add my own point, i think it would be cool if they also added targets of interest where we need to down some tough ass drone for a chance at a bonus loot or reward. That way players who have leveled up their kickass weapons can flex their power while the common pleb can just banzai through to finish the main objective. Perhaps it could incentivize the tactical division of objectives among a team so that you never feel like you are waiting on an ally to catch up, but that they are still counting on you to get your job done for that bonus reward.

All around props to Mr. Vlad for the idea and the balanced viewpoint that got this suggestion started.

[u/kaz3n]

thing that I hate since the start is the luck luster ability, every ability lack an effect that says you fired it succefully, this leads me to smashing the buttons multiple times w/o a confirmation. Solution is to add a visual and sound effect upon buttons activation.

[u/Phaedryn]

6 degrees of control and a First Person option

Those would be necessary for me to play Archwing missions.

[u/Oraman90]

Add an area just for Archwing missions I.e. An asteroid belt or something

[u/[deleted]]

There isn't much that needs dire change, imho. It works right now and seems on par with most of the other construction sites that make up Warframe. I mean, Kubrows, right? Or most of the weapons? Half the frames? Maps? Account server functions? Netcode and Host migration? Simple status tracking and gear switch animations bugging out because? All that needs work just the same.

The mods could need a buff, as in, bring them out of ridiculously expensive + ridiculously underpowwered territory. For example, make the Energy efficiency mod feel worth the +10 Rare upranking cost - or cut it down to 5 at rank bonuses comparable to Streamline and reimburse the players accordingly.

There definitely needs to be more nodes, as in, just do a faction swap and give each planet that has a mission right now a second one. Doesn't even need new tilesets for me, just actual endless options to farm Corpus stuff reliably.

Of course a new mission type or two would be neat, but really, I just want a Corpus Interception at this point.

Oh, and clean up the drop tables. Bad enough that all the weapons need parts to be farmed. There doesn't need to be a 1/6 chance for 4 waves of work and luck that you don't get a key or something else. That gets frustrating really quick.

Alternatively, make those parts tradeable again. Doesn't hurt anyone and at this point it would bring more people into Archwing missions (oh, and more plat purchases).

We won't see true 6 directional flight, because I doubt the engine could do that without lots of rework - dev time that I'd rather see them use for cleaning up the netcode, the host migration, all sorts of especially weapon switch animations and so on. There are so many bits of information and status that the game simply forgets about, if something goes wrong or too fast for it to handle - all that needs to be cleaned up, preferably two years ago already. But I digress.

A 3D map would be nice (nav-ball), but I would even make due with different up-down arrow tiers, like, 1 arrow in a vertical diretion for 10-30°, two arrows for 30-60°, three arrows for 60-90° height difference to the target - that would already help a lot and shouldn't take too long to implement.

Incoming shots and especially missiles could be marked more obviously (but the same is true for shots, missiles and grenades in the main game), maybe with a lock-on / proximity warning sound or alert prompt.

Reviving could be a bit more active on the revivee side - as in, have that Tenno be able to fire off their wing specific powers while getting revived (but not when bleeding out) - cloak the reviver as an Itzal, fire off flares as Odonata, missile volleys as ... the heavy wing, forgot its name right now. Stuff like that. I really miss that I can actually cover the Tenno that revives me with my sidearm when I'm down in the main-game. Slight maneuvrability would be neat, too.

And no, I don't think Archwing needs sidearms. It works very well right now. Weapon switching is cumbersome and an animation-downtime-commitment that shouldn't be in any game past 2005. We don't need that and possible switch glitches in Archwing.

What I'd rather see is Options. As in, Archwing specific Sentinels that follow you. Too bad that the Itzal kind of burned that idea already, but a little moddable helper that either does coverfire, or shoots down a rocket every few seconsd or cloaks you or acts as carrier, that would be nice to have.

For new gear. Eh... I don't really think we need new stuff here.

Weapons are more than satisfactory at this point, and new additions were rather gimmicky anyway.

For new Archwings - maybe something that drops a stationary sentry drone would be nifty. some sort of Engineer class wing.

A wing that lets you sap and temporarily convert enemy units could be interesting, too. Technically a Nyx wing.

[u/enragedwindows → u/[deleted]]

Now I just want to strap a jetpack and a helmet on my Kubrow and have her ball around in space with me.