Archwing Variety Fix (Itzal Nerf), K-Drive problems

[Colyeses]

I had to copy this from another topic that got removed as I was writing this post. Anyway...

Scott mentioned that the Itzal is overbearing in the vehicle department and that it is a bit of a problem. In my opinion, that is because this is a complaint about a very specific job, and a very specific tool that was crafted very specifically for the purpose of handling that job.

The problem isn't the Itzal, and it doesn't deserve nerfing. The problem is that vehicles have no application outside of mobility. No one goes into a Tridolon hunt with the idea of bringing an Amesha for support, no one goes into Profit Taker with an Elytron for damage. Archwings and K-Drives are ONLY for movement, and as such, the most mobile arch-wing will be the best tool available.

Changing blink will not change this. The Itzal still has a higher base movespeed and as such is still objectively the best tool for getting around. If the devs want to make the K-Drives compete, they need to do so by incorporating vehicles into combat. 

For Archwings, this -should- already be done via their own missions, but the problem there is that those missions are awful. The massive scale of distance in those fights means it's actually quite difficult to get work done. Aiming is a ton harder and AoE doesn't work nearly as well. Underwater Archwing, on the flipside, seems to be better spaced out and much more tolerable, which brings us to partial solution #1.

Quote

Incorporate underwater segments into the Plains and the Orb.

This would incentivise players to bring the other Archwings to take advantage of their combat capabilities, as the Itzal's in-combat performance is lacklustre compared to Odonata, Amesha and Elytron.

But forcing players into underwater segments may not be enough. Well, there's another issue: Even if you -wanted- to bring an Archwing into combat on the Plains or the Vallis, you -can't-. Because every enemy and their mother, mother's sister, mother's sister's nanny, mother's sister's nanny's neighbour and mother's sister's nanny's neighbour's dog is carrying anti-air missiles with exceptional accuracy and guaranteed OHKO potential. 

You -can't- do combat in Archwings in the Plains or the Vallis, which renders ALL Archwing abilities obsolete. 

Fixing this is a little more difficult than 'remove the missiles', as that would allow players to sit miles out of harms way and simply snipe hopeless targets for maximum easy mode toroid farming. But I think I have a solution: partial solution #2.

Quote

Anti-air missiles should deal considerably less damage, but apply a long-lasting debuff that drastically hinders flight capabilities.

Leave the Archwing alive, but lower the movespeed, and make it unable to ascend, or unable to ascend above a certain height. This forces players into mutual combat while not also immediately disabling everything else an Archwing has to offer. You want to use Amesha's healing on the Vallis? Now you can.

As for K-drives, these can never properly compete with Archwings for movement since they're bound to much more complicated land routes, but movement is all they have. The fix here is in the last part: Make it so movement is NOT all they have. Partial solution #3.

Quote

K-drive Kinetic Batteries

Imagine an Arcane for your K-drive. Now imagine that it charges up as long as you are riding it around, gaining extra charge for doing tricks and the like. Now imagine that it has a battery with a LOT of capacity. Now imagine that, when you dismount, the kinetic battery uses the stored energy to project a persistent effect.

You could position your K-drive somewhere and have it project an energy regen aura, or a hazardous aura, or a shield, or a healing aura... It could project a wide range of abilities all charged from the movement it took to get where you had to go. This would incentivise players to use K-Drives to benefit from them in ensuing combat areas, particularly in areas where players are meant to hold out. This would open it up to more modifications too, like increased battery capacity, charge speed, power range and efficiency or strength... 

I really don't think nerfing the Itzal will do -anything- but frustrate the playerbase, as it serves no purpose but slow players down. Instead, the devs should look at incentivising other options to make them more viable in other aspects. The Itzal has a job, and it shouldn't be punished for doing that job well. That design philosophy leads to flatlined designs, where nothing is particularly good at anything, for fear of upsetting the other options.

[Sloan441]

18 hours ago, Pr1A said:

AFAIK they didn't say anything about removing it altogether, just that they feel like Blink should be nerfed or removed because it's pretty much the biggest reason you rarely see anyone use Archwings other than Itzal.

Not totally true, but when it comes to open world movement you sure wouldn't know it. 

Seriously, when did you see someone using something besides Itzal on PoE or OV? Last time I remember was when I went there straight from an AW defense and forgot to swap the Amesha out for Itzal--and it's entirely because of Blink. 

Itzal has a lot of other utility other than Blink. If it's changed or removed in favor of something new it's not going to make the Itzal useless. 

[JackHargreav]

1 hour ago, lnfine said:

You do realize blinking with Nova was THE meta for wisp farming since forever and till now when wisps aren't required in industrial volumes anymore.

Yeah and? Nova is not an Archwing. If you use Nova you're limiting your self.

As for Itzal It's exactly this feed it and blink mentality/functionality that I find broken. Even with Nova you have to throw out a portal and sprint instead of just spamming 1 like it's a cookie clicker or something.

[(NSW)Katsuro]

itzal's new skill hyper speed: double thrusters speed to you and allies and stuns nearby enemies in the trail last for 10 seconds there you go problem solved! 😄

[Hyohakusha]

People hate normal AW missions. People hate sharkwing too. The one redeeming feature AW's have gotten is the value they have for getting around the big maps. Itzal doesn't have the best ability weapons, it doesn't have the best ehp or tanking ability. It has only two things going for it; nitrous (press 1), and brakes (press 2). When it comes to getting around a big space, those are more useful than being un-killable in the Amesha, or firing rockets from an Elytron. Those two simple movement abilities make flying around the open maps in an Itzal… wait for it.... actually fun.

That's right DE, after everything AW's been through and all the changes its seen, you've got at least one player who, as bizarre and impossible as this might sound, genuinely enjoys at least one aspect of Archwing. And that should be nerfed, because k-drives suck? The logic behind that makes no sense.

Say you do nerf the Itzal's 1. It will still be faster than any k-drive, as will the other AW's. K-drives will still be miserable to use, because the threshold for what triggers a collision has been broadened to the point where a four inch bump in the hill you're riding up can send you flying like a forty foot ramp. Let's say you nerf AW's in general until they're all as slow as k-drives. We'll use Zephyr, Khora, Volt and Nova to get around the plains and vallis, while the standing gain for k-drives will still be a slog due to what constitutes registering a clean trick getting nerfed to the point where riding over a small rock at the end of your trick chain instantly breaks it.

As for fixing k-drives themselves, there are plenty of threads with common themes.
- Increase their speed. This is obvious. Buffing the speed mods would be a start. Extreme Velocity should affect both base and boosted speed. Nitro Boost should then scale off of that. Currently if you only put Extreme Velocity on, you actually move more slowly when you start boosting, with 23.40 in base speed and 21.00 in "boosted" speed. It really seems like that's something someone should have caught and fixed a while ago.
- Roll back the triggers for crashing and flying off to what they were at launch. This is the biggest problem. Not only are they slow to begin with, you end up wasting even more time waiting for a rag doll animation to end before just relaunching the board. And forget about landing tricks with the current version. Because of how sensitive k-drives are now, as well as the nerfs to the way score is calculated, it makes both tricking and general movement feel worse.
- Double the cap for trick scoring, at least. It's become an annoying chore to grind standing and max them for mastery.

Basically, if you want to make k-drives better, then make k-drives better by buffing k-drives. They need it, and there are several obvious ways to do it. You can't make something better by breaking the fun and usefulness of something else. Then you just have one thing that still needs help and another that's worse now, along with bunch of people that are annoyed that you didn't even bother to fix the thing that needs fixing.
 

[-DG-ShadowPrime]

Wait DE is nerfing archwing?

[Ahcruna]

Just now, ShadowExodus said:

Wait DE is nerfing archwing?

They were joking about it on the last stream and Scott said to enjoy it because it was going to go away.
It came up because some one asked about the speed difference when it came to K-Drives.

In my honest opinion they don't need to change either of them, just add risk-reward, aka have more flying enemies that focus on you once you go Arhcwing.



___________________________________________________
There was a hole here, now it's gone. I guess...  (╯°Д°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[(NSW)Katsuro]

2 minutes ago, Ahcruna said:

They were joking about it on the last stream and Scott said to enjoy it because it was going to go away.
It came up because some one asked about the speed difference when it came to K-Drives.

In my honest opinion they don't need to change either of them, just add risk-reward, aka have more flying enemies that focus on you once you go Arhcwing.



___________________________________________________
There was a hole here, now it's gone. I guess...  (╯°Д°）╯︵ ┻━┻

the new ability will be applied to all allies like volt speed with some duration

[Jitsuryoku]

Well first of all, It's first I'm hearing that they are planning to nerf archwings 0_O....

There's 1 really obvious way to improve k-drive (at least that's the mod I was looking for with 2nd wave of k-drive mods). Make doing tricks while traveling rewarding:

• Give speed boost (and more crash resistence) when doing tricks. Right now I lose speed (and often trip of something that I don't even consider an obstacle) while doing tricks.
• Give a reliable way to keep score after landing on the ground. Right now THE ONLY good way to keep score is grinding rail. Jumping immediately after landing is also a way, but it feels more like a bug than a feature, because you lose almost all of momentum on 2nd jump.
• Split off the visual effect mods (and take away the damage) into their own slots (give 1 or 2 "visual" slots or make them unlockable toggle effects). All elemental mods look awesome and feel awesome to use, but feel like a waste of slot, because damage is worthless, when I need speed, jump height, crash prevention, etc.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jitsuryoku

[peterc3]

If the only use for Archwings is using Blink on Itzal, that is not really using Archwings, it's a time skip. That's it. DE has to do something to change that.

[-DG-ShadowPrime]

This sounds like total BS. I never understood people's complaint. I can understand that K-Drive feels slow so if that's the case buff the speed or like Jitsuryoku said get a speed boost everytime you do tricks. And the people complaining about this seems like the types that want to get from point A to point B the fastest. So for some reason they scream "Nerf Archwing" because a players wanting to finish the mission quickly is getting to the next area faster than them? 

It's complete BS. Well I still have Zephyr and Nova in the inventory either way, Max range will be the new king of traversal... again.

[(NSW)Katsuro]

3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

If the only use for Archwings is using Blink on Itzal, that is not really using Archwings, it's a time skip. That's it. DE has to do something to change that.

We also only use volt for capture missions for void relics. Which means DE will make itzal into a volt for archwing sharing its buff

Edited April 6, 2019 by (NSW)Katsuro

[Ahcruna]

2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

If the only use for Archwings is using Blink on Itzal, that is not really using Archwings, it's a time skip. That's it. DE has to do something to change that.

To be fair, any Arhcwing with maxed Hyperion Thrusters will still outrun any land based mechanics if you use the afterburners.



___________________________________________________
There was a hole here, now it's gone. I guess...  (╯°Д°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[peterc3]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Katsuro said:

We also only use volt for capture missions for void relics.

We? You. This is also not even remotely equivalent.

Just now, Ahcruna said:

To be fair, any Arhcwing with maxed Hyperion Thrusters will still outrun any land based mechanics if you use the afterburners.



___________________________________________________
There was a hole here, now it's gone. I guess...  (╯°Д°）╯︵ ┻━┻

To be fair, there is one part of Itzal that makes it a target and not all the other Archwings.

Edited April 6, 2019 by peterc3

[(NSW)Katsuro]

2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

We? You. This is also not even remotely equivalent.

statistics show that itzal is the most used archwing in poe but thats because:
1 its the fastest archwing even without blink heck I dont even use it that much outside eidolons which is necessary for tricaps.
2 its the only archwing that can accurately stop in a instant plus gives you invisibility.
3 it can suck up loot which is useful in a large area when farming.
the other archwings do not provide the same benefits that itzal provide for the current meta even if they nerf blink its still better than the rest and wouldn't change players choice away from it making it a meaningless nerf. 

[Jitsuryoku]

Idk about you, but I only use itzal because it's fastest, it's got blink and skill 3 (forgot the name), which is IDEAL for traveling through large maps. Until I got itzal I also used the defensive one, the immunity skill on eidolons. If you look at combat, all of the archwings are useless (mostly). I'm not sure if it's a big problem, because it's not the only thing in the game that only has 1-2 uses.

As for volt. There's plenty of uses for volt. Eidolons, speed melee builds, aoe skill 4 builds and I see people using them whenever the situation allows it. Somebody choosing not to use volt is not a huge problem that needs to be fixed, because volt is clearly a great frame, that CAN be used almost anywhere.... Unlike some other frames like atlas and wukong, which are so niche, that there are at least 3 other better frames to choose to invest to instead of those 2.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jitsuryoku

[Astewart42]

I really would hate this change. I'm now getting into Archwings and it would be very disappointing if they removed this ability. K-Drives are what they are, but unless they greatly increase their speed they are not comparable to the speed of the Archwing. 

Nothing's wrong with Teleporting, its a viable traversal mechanic. And so is the K-Drive.

I don't know if anyone ever played City of Heroes but they had far more movement types and they were all comparable, it was a matter of player style and choice.
One was Teleport which remained comparable to SuperSpeed which only allowed running across the terrain. 
 

Another Super Speed VIdeo

And here is a clip from a more recent game, Champions Online which is essentially a new City of Heroes. You'll note that there is a sort of speed ramp up with a meter to get you into Super Speed mode from a sprint. I'm thinking to save on UI time this could just be a double tap on shift (Roll) if that hasn't already been used on K-Drives. 

The height of Jump changed depending on your speed. That allowed for easier traversal at high speed so the user doesn't need to have super reflexes, or think too far ahead on how long to hold the spacebar to jump. 

Teleport moved you forward a set distance (That you could mod using..mods) and then you hung in the air for a few seconds before either falling to the ground, or you used Teleport again. 

 

None of these powers were objectively better than any other, it all came down to player choice and theme. What did they like doing, what fit their character. But in the end everyone reached the same point at roughly the same time in most cases. Some landscapes made Superspeed tough if they were very vertical, but I think you could run up the side of buildings to get to the top and I know that I have K-Drived up extremely steep mountain slopes so that's not a problem. 

I would advocate improving the K-Drive speed rather than removing a beloved feature of the Archwings. Double Tap Shift key could trigger fast Traversal speed mode and still leave regular Shift for tricks. Another thing is performing tricks (front flip twice, jump and spin twice etc. ) could trigger 60-second buffs maybe to energy regen, or health regen, or fire rate that save up and trigger when the player gets off the K-Drive. This would give people a reason to use the k-drives and spread out the player base in what they want to use. If you look further in the Champions online example you will see that different Traversal powers provided buffs/ resistances so again, it became about player choice. 

Any adjustments to any one Archwing should come via a complete overhaul of that system where DE actually balances and improves ALL the Archwings to match both the current state of the game and the reality of the maps, and the capabilities of the player base. (full 6 degrees 3D combat in the style of Descent 3D does not seem to be working for these Tennos). I think the game needs to provide more hand-holding options for Archwing Space/Water fights. 

This is what Archwing Gameplay on some maps remind me of now 

And I'm not sure the Playerbase is up for that. But talking about a rework of this is proably for another post

To Recap, Blink can co-exist with K-Drive. K-Drives speed needs to improve. Please don't remove or nerf Blink. 
I totally dated myself with these examples didn't I 😄 
 

[GreeneLanterne]

I know all of these games above.

[Oreades]

34 minutes ago, (NSW)Katsuro said:

itzal's new skill hyper speed: double thrusters speed to you and allies and stuns nearby enemies in the trail last for 10 seconds there you go problem solved! 😄

And then everyone is still probably going to run the Itzal because you won't know if someone else is going to bring it or not.

The best bet is to make everything else competitive by bringing it up not by knocking the Itzal down. 

[lnfine]

1 hour ago, JackHargreav said:

Yeah and? Nova is not an Archwing. If you use Nova you're limiting your self.

But I thought limiting yourself was the problem, and if Itzal lets you not limit yourself to specific frames - it's good.

Quote

As for Itzal It's exactly this feed it and blink mentality/functionality that I find broken. Even with Nova you have to throw out a portal and sprint instead of just spamming 1 like it's a cookie clicker or something.

 

Nova is exactly the same. You bullet jump and spam 3, just Nova portals for open world have much bigger range than Itzal so you also have to keep track of where you're going. Zephyr is the same - you spam'ish 1.

Feed and blink functionality is broken yes, because it's bloody inconvenient. It's less inconvenient than spending half the mission running through the vast empties for the nth time though, so have to get by with blinking. Though to be fair i've never seen anyone feed'n'blink in regular bounties. You just blink if you have energy and fly normally when you don't. Feed'n'blink comes into play for dolans, but in public games you don't really inconvenience anyone if you don't. Unless you are Trin because now you have to get all the lures from around all the map and sometimes they don't spawn where you expect them so you have to fly an extra mile.

The problem is not the blink though. The problem is you want to goddamned blink all the time even if you have to farm polymers for it, because farming polymers is still better than semi-interactive cutscenes that is traveling the same route for the billions time.

Edited April 6, 2019 by lnfine

[peterc3]

11 minutes ago, Astewart42 said:

Nothing's wrong with Teleporting

There is if it totally eclipses every other choice. I dare you to try and envision using a K-Drive at the same speed as the already fastest Archwing, with Blink added on top. For me, this sounds like an uncontrollable mess.

Are your examples exactly the same as Warframe or is there some element that might make the two games, and how they are designed, as different as apples and oranges?

[(NSW)Katsuro]

5 minutes ago, Oreades said:

And then everyone is still probably going to run the Itzal because you won't know if someone else is going to bring it or not.

The best bet is to make everything else competitive by bringing it up not by knocking the Itzal down. 

Laughs in void dash

[DatDarkOne]

1 hour ago, Colyeses said:

You -can't- do combat in Archwings in the Plains or the Vallis, which renders ALL Archwing abilities obsolete. 

Fixing this is a little more difficult than 'remove the missiles', as that would allow players to sit miles out of harms way and simply snipe hopeless targets for maximum easy mode toroid farming. But I think I have a solution: partial solution #2.

This isn't exactly correct.  Itzal is one of the only frames that can successfully do combat in the Plains because it has the ability to stop the homing missiles from targeting it.  Penumbra is what allows this.  Combine that with the other abilities of Itzal and there really isn't a need to use anything else in the open worlds.  DE would have to nerf everything about the AW to the point that it was a different AW altogether for it to not still be the best option in most cases.  

I only mention this for those who might be so focused on the Blink ability that they are missing the larger picture.  

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_IGN]

Scott sounded pretty serious about it in the dev stream.  I understand people not wanting to nerf the Itzal because its speed is what seperates it from all the other archwings but....

I use Ely and have hyperion thrusters and it sucks watching everyone else blow by just because I dont wanna use itzal.

I also cant imagine k-drives going alot faster.   I dont even have that speed boost mod yet.   But K-drive is pretty hard to control now lol.   It also sucks we dont get to use guns from them like you can archwings.   AS WELL as our radar mods do not work at all while on our boards.  

-------------

I want to use my K-drive to travel but even my slow #$^ Ely archwing is faster at covering ground because I dont run into trees or stuck on mountains.   

I guess when you enter into K-drive speed mode the anti-grav should elevate you waaaaay off the ground and just let you rocket through the air like a bad #$^(like 50-100 meters).  Then when your going at cruise speed your just hovering above the ground and can grind on things and do tricks and stuff.   That would be a cool compromise.   And then we could BUFF the K-drive speed mode to make it more competitive with AW's.

[(NSW)Katsuro]

welcome to the new meta of void dashing