K-Drives are a "grind" that no one should be forced to do

[Gandergear]

Seriously, the xp rate is slow (even using the high efficiency methods), the fun you have using it is low, they control more finicky than the worst tony hawk pro skater game, their codex affinity is hidden, and they have 6000 mastery a pop (total of 18000 mastery between the 3 boards). However DE hasn't done a good job explaining how the mastery on these boards even work

Questions about the boards:

Does the bondi provide mastery or not? Why did it get removed from my inventory if it does, and why does it show up in my codex (forever at MR4 as a stain on my codex page) if it doesn't. How can I get it back to be able to complete it?

Ways to 'improve' the experience of using kdrives:

Remove the xp cap on tricks, that's it, if I want to stack up a 1m xp combo then let me, I don't want to skate board, if i did I'd play Tony Hawk's Underground and listen to Ska music, these boards are just MR fodder that are more obnoxious to use than old archwing.

 

EDIT: The Bondi K-Drive does not seem to provide mastery, my current mastery is 1801627, the important part is the 627 'loose' change caused by the star chart missions, if the bondi provided mastery, i should have 627+800 = 427 loose mastery instead. This means that you don't have to worry about your bondi ruining your MR27 rush, but you do have to worry about it staining your codex worse than the login reward weapons

Edited January 17, 2019 by Gandergear
XP CALC

[(PSN)SCHEISER]

I rocked the sh*t out of Tony Hawk back in the day.  It was fun and not as complicated.

The k drive's are so boring here because you can get from A->B on the Archwing faster and deal damage (real damage not the small mod values for k-drive) if need be.

I am pushing for maximum MR but haven't touched these as the mechanics / controller setup for them doesn't make them functional or intuitive for most users (console player).

Compare ranking anything up in the game to k-drive.... yeah...  not the same in the slightest. (Adjust point values)

I agree remove or fix the amount a trick value is so that grinding the rank for these isn't frustrating.  They don't serve the same purpose for all players or are as used as much by all.  I won't rank any of these up until its fixed.  

[DebrisFlow]

No use in combat (damage mods are ridicolous), unbearably slow to move between bounty stages as compared to AW, tediously slow to master, no other use in game than few tricks that become boring after the 1st day of playing, totally unrelated to a space ninja shooter game 

BUT a must of for MR because of the 6000 xp per board (3)

Don't you see the perfect recipe to bait invite you to buy an affinity booster for plat and end your suffering as soon as possible?

[Gandergear]

3 hours ago, DebrisFlow said:

No use in combat (damage mods are ridicolous), unbearably slow to move between bounty stages as compared to AW, tediously slow to master, no other use in game than few tricks that become boring after the 1st day of playing, totally unrelated to a space ninja shooter game 

BUT a must of for MR because of the 6000 xp per board (3)

Don't you see the perfect recipe to bait invite you to buy an affinity booster for plat and end your suffering as soon as possible?

I actually just finished all 3 boards now, took like an hour/board once you get the jump height and magnetism mods to make combo stacking bearable. Now my poor codex is stuck w/ the lvl 4 bondi because i dunno what happened to mine, did i sell it, did it dissapear, idk? but seeing how after this, and assuming the bondi doesn't give mastery, we're 5 weapons away from MR 27 (9 for me since i don't have sigma or zylok and bondi isn't maxxed out). So any argument to ignore them for players who are very high MR is just ridonk.

[IceColdHawk]

I don't see why they give mastery at all. All boards are the same and don't even have any unique abilities. Plus, the whole system is unnecessary since Archwing is so much more mobile and you can use weapons + abilities. I really don't feel like spending a whole weekend grinding in a circle endlessly just to gather "Standing" or XP.

[Chewarette]

8 hours ago, IceColdHawk said:

I don't see why they give mastery at all. 

This. I'm perfectly fine with K-Drives existing, but so far, the only stuff awarding Mastery are offensive stuff. K-Drives are just here for doing skillz in two areas of this game, them giving Mastery is as dumb as if Framefighter, Flappy Zephyr or Wyrmius did.

What's next ? Syandanas to be leveled/gilded to gain Mastery too ?

I'm also on the "Boycott!" group, I won't grind nor level any of these. Maybe I'll consider if one day those bought with Plats actually reward  Mastery, but until then, that's a nope. I'll just have to wait a few more weeks to have my 27.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Chewarette

[Gandergear]

17 hours ago, Chewarette said:

This. I'm perfectly fine with K-Drives existing, but so far, the only stuff awarding Mastery are offensive stuff. K-Drives are just here for doing skillz in two areas of this game, them giving Mastery is as dumb as if Framefighter, Flappy Zephyr or Wyrmius did.

What's next ? Syandanas to be leveled/gilded to gain Mastery too ?

I'm also on the "Boycott!" group, I won't grind nor level any of these. Maybe I'll consider if one day those bought with Plats actually reward  Mastery, but until then, that's a nope. I'll just have to wait a few more weeks to have my 27.

Bought boards provide 6k affinity just fine, I know because 2 of my 3 boards were bought for plat, and I recorded all 3's difference in my mastery score to dispute the claim that the boards only provide 3k mastery. The only one i'm not sure of is if the bondi does or not.

[.Genix.]

The objective is long term, not what you consider to be a "right now" thing, newbies will have k-drives long before they ever get ahold of an archwing and will have earned their standing passively, I'm in no rush to get from bounty stage to bounty stage myself and I own everything from ventkids.

[Sharkgoblin]

On 2019-01-15 at 3:37 PM, DebrisFlow said:

No use in combat (damage mods are ridicolous), unbearably slow to move between bounty stages as compared to AW, tediously slow to master, no other use in game than few tricks that become boring after the 1st day of playing, totally unrelated to a space ninja shooter game 

BUT a must of for MR because of the 6000 xp per board (3)

Don't you see the perfect recipe to bait invite you to buy an affinity booster for plat and end your suffering as soon as possible?

affinity booster does not work on k drives

[Nmotsch987]

Nobody *is* forced to do anything related to K-Drives. And of course the Bondi doesn't give MR; you can never go back to it once you build a K-Drive and it can't gain XP in the first place.

[Nmotsch987]

On 2019-01-16 at 11:42 PM, .Genix. said:

The objective is long term, not what you consider to be a "right now" thing, newbies will have k-drives long before they ever get ahold of an archwing and will have earned their standing passively, I'm in no rush to get from bounty stage to bounty stage myself and I own everything from ventkids.

Getting an archwing launcher is not hard. It has no prerequisites to research it, and the cost is low enough that you can easily start researching it even if you're in a clan by yourself, once you have a Tenno Lab up and running (and that's assuming they don't just join a clan that already has it researched). I agree that newbies will end up getting a K-Drive first, but it's not like it'll be that much longer until they get an archwing launcher. It wouldn't be hard to obtain one before even getting to the point of finishing The War Within, if one so chose to do so.

[.Re-light.]

On 2019-01-16 at 9:06 AM, Chewarette said:

. I'll just have to wait a few more weeks to have my 27.

Wow, 27 is possible.. I finally got cured around the time they introduced 50 pvp only mods in a single update from having to have everything and have it max rank.

 

   I am rank 22, ready for test to 23 but I just never take it.. No shame in just being a Dragon, + ever since I stopped obsessing with being max rank, WF has become much more fun, much less work. 

[Chewarette]

4 hours ago, .Re-light. said:

Wow, 27 is possible..

No I don't think so. But when the next update with the next warframe and probably a couple of weapons will arrive, it will be technically attainable.

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-01-17 at 4:42 AM, .Genix. said:

The objective is long term, not what you consider to be a "right now" thing, newbies will have k-drives long before they ever get ahold of an archwing and will have earned their standing passively, I'm in no rush to get from bounty stage to bounty stage myself and I own everything from ventkids.

No they won't. The mastery (and therefore standing) gain for doing anything other than pure dedicated trick grinding (which incidentally is no longer possible and hasn't been for about a month and a half) is utterly negligible. If they're extremely lucky, they might possibly have accumulated enough points to buy one or two parts by the time they've done the AW quest and enough Plains to get the far superior AW launcher.

[.Genix.]

Well I think I realize why they haven't changed it as that people like me who find this easier to farm, can sell to those that can't farm the mods. Now for the mastery? its 18k total from all 3 boards which for those that find this too hard to grind probably haven't mastered every weapon or even every pet type as that too is a massive grind/credit/possibly plat sink. What we are looking at is the issue with standing/affinity gain across all things and when something is slightly too selective with it, then those issues stand out like the solar reflectors over orb vallis.

[-SG-CzechDeath]

Being able to shoot and to ragdoll/kill enemies by running in to them on K-drive, that would probably make it  way more fun for me. (Remember Maco from MassEffect1 - how u could go carmageddon on thier ass? =D) Yea

[uxx0]

It used to be way easier to grind K-drive affinity. It's just another dead-on-arrival gimmick you only might want to do for completion. It doesn't offer great rewards, doesn't integrate well with other gameplay mechanics and I don't even know if people really want to compete on K-Drive leaderboards.

I'd put it in the minigame category like Framefighter and Wyrmius as others said, instead of it giving MR.

[(PSN)N7_Dredgen]

I agree it's a painful grind.  I did my boards on my journey to Vent Kids 5. 

The real grind is the 1,000,000 meters you have to travel on it for the Trophy/Achievement... for the hunters out there, this is a cardinal sin.  I reached Ventkids 5 and maxed all 3 drive and don't even have 200,000 meters yet.  I haven't been bothered, but one day I'm gonna end up loading up the game and driving around for 800,000 meters and I'm not at all looking forward to that - but I'm also not going to let Warframe sit at 99% forever.  

K-Drive is alright when you master tricks - but after I'm done the trophies you won't ever catch me using them again.  Why would I when I have Itzhal and cross all of Fortuna in less than 20 seconds with it.  K-Drive is slow for travel.  

Edited February 8, 2019 by (PS4)lagrue

[Cuchullin]

In my opinion the k-drive is more an experiment in what can be done mechanically in game and a draw for new players rather then a serious replacement for the archwing.

Who knows though it could end up being significant later somehow (e.g. k drive courier missions or something) but given the way DE tends to implement something then move on to the next big thing it seems unlikely.

[(PSN)N7_Dredgen]

1 hour ago, Cuchullin said:

In my opinion the k-drive is more an experiment in what can be done mechanically in game and a draw for new players rather then a serious replacement for the archwing.

I do agree with this - especially for any new players who joined, because in theory they have access to the K-Drive before the Archwing, so it's sort of a stepping stone to that point.  

[Cuchullin]

9 hours ago, (PS4)lagrue said:

they have access to the K-Drive before the Archwing, so it's sort of a stepping stone to that point.  

That and it's something that DE experimented with part as a genuine this may be cool to put in part can it be done.