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

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

https://reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/bab6jn/i_fixed_itzal_buffs_nerfs/

spoiler: it was ME! I am aware that one should not expect genius like this to come for free, but I’ll let you have one this time DE. 

You’re Welcome!

[ChaoticEdge]

57:52 - 58:00

Dev no nerfing because it proves the point K-Drive is not reliable for anything because of you flip and you have to get off in some point and I don't think its really reliable tool for any mission for I am sorry dev I have to say no for nerf, I like you guys but there is a time you have to think wisely instead of improvised every single time that commenting of just nerf it.

I do like wisp a bit of her abilities is kind of nice and unique to be but is it nessary give wisp a death laser sort of remind me from this...

Spoiler

 

kind of irony giving her that much power I mean she would op the field because its another death laser and also dbz joke blasting of kamehameha thing...yea bit overkill just imagine increase the range and maxing the power for full dmg and have group of energized battery ppl giving wisp full on tank of energy....yea that would be overkill beam...

 

[BeldarTheBrave]

Just because the animation is flashy doesn't mean it will actually be powerful. We just don't know yet.

[0_The_F00l]

Wait... Does ember or Excalibur have the butt plug that the cable is attached to? 

[Etan-gK]

3 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Wait... Does ember or Excalibur have the butt plug that the cable is attached to? 

yes

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

1 minute ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Wait... Does ember or Excalibur have the butt plug that the cable is attached to? 

Both. First passenger gets on the back of the Arch Wing and then the second passenger gets on their k drive and fires 2 tow cables.

A second k drive rider can attach to the first k drive rider and so on.

[0_The_F00l]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Sk0rp1on said:

Both. First passenger gets on the back of the Arch Wing and then the second passenger gets on their k drive and fires 2 tow cables.

A second k drive rider can attach to the first k drive rider and so on.

Kinky. 

[0_The_F00l]

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Sk0rp1on said:

 

*accidental double post*

Edited April 7, 2019 by 0_The_F00l
Error

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

but sure, Amseha would be somewhat useful for small invulnerability and 'not Mesmer Skin'. mostly that one, tbh. you still only might see one per Squad, if that.

The Amesha is what I used to use for fighting Eidolons before I got my effectively immortal Inaros, myself. That Archwing is basically unkillable, really good for point defence (which is half of Orb Vallis bounties and a lot of Cetus ones) and it's easily on par with a lot of Warframes, I'd argue.

 

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

anyways whatever the reason for there to be more AA missiles than World War III, it certainly isn't a good one in the current state of things, yes.

Yeah, not arguing that it is. I'm of the opinion that the entire AA mechanic needs to be ripped straight out of the Plains, or at the very least cut down significantly. Have only certain units equipped with those missiles - probably Tusk Bombards - and have them simply deal damage rather than disable the Archwing. That way the Odonata's flare countermeasure ability still has a reason to exist and those guys' mortars aren't completely useless, but they don't also completely shut down Archwing combat altogether.

Very few shooters have proper mix of fully-functional aerial and ground combat. Warframe is one of them. Don't try to curtail Archwing combat in the Plains - build for it instead.

[ExcaliburUmbra]

Sure you could press 4 and kill the small group of enemies right in front of you with Wisp. Or you could press 4 with Saryn and kill everything in the entire room.

Not really seeing how a single focused beam is “overkill”.

[LuckyCharm]

Hey Y'all. After hearing about the idea that Itzal may get it's 1st ability changed I figured I'd make a lil thread outlining a few thoughts on the different transportation options available and my opinions on them. Do be aware these are purely my opinions so they may not reflect everyone. 

Expectations I think people had for K-drive on original concept: 

-Run and gun style, shooting/melee while on the board still. 

-Tony hawks pro skater style trick system, (multiple versions of the same tricks performed in different ways depending on button press, special tricks unlocked with standing. Fluid control system relying on button combo presses and holds to perform tricks)

-Customisable base stats based on what parts you used akin to the kitgun system. (if you want more handling and less speed etc you could do that, or increase accelleration at the cost of handling or max speed etc.)

-More ramps and bowls and grinds in the terrain, half pipes even, rather than trying to find that sort of stuff to play on in the "natural" sort of terrain that doesnt seem to have been built with that sort of fun in mind at all. 

-Vertical movement off terrain rather than purely horizontal for the most part

 

Reasons to use archwing vs k-drive: 

-You can get a height advantage for easier long range sniping.

-You can use the unique archwing skills vs k-drives lack of any skills. 

-Travelling over terrain isn't stopped by small rocks, fences, small ledges etc, and you can fly straight over anything you like pretty much letting you travel in a mostly straight line the whole way to your destination

-Has barrel rolls (aileron rolls?) when you dodge sideways. 

-You can fire from the archwing and keep going

 

Reasons to use k-drive over archwing.

-Tricks

-Look cool-ish while travelling. 

-Don't get weird camera movement  when turning. 

-Dont seem to get immediately knocked off of kdrive by any damage like what happens with archwing

 

Reality:

Honestly couldn't think of any more reasons for the k-drive thing and thats an issue, They don't have skills, they dont let you attack on them, they get stuck on any fence, rock etc unless you jump but even then cannot travel straight over mountains etc like archwings do. This means they're always going to be slower regardless in pure traversing terrain. Given how much terrain is in your way and how easy it is to fall off too  it doesnt feel like increasing their speed even more will do anything for me other than increase the frequency of times I'll smash into something.  

As for tricks you can't reliably perform them in most places because a) you dont get the vertical air that skating games award you via half pipes and bowls etc since we don't have that terrain or movement system (it feels like the majority of the movement directions are horizontal and most flight arch shapes performed are done with the character mostly horizontal unless specifically directed by the player.) 

This said, warframe isn't particularly a skating game, it's mostly a shooter that this skating has been added to so trying to compare a skateboard to a jetpack is a hard ask, given the thousands of meters you have to travel between shooty bits. Personally I dont like the current k-drive system at all given how easy it is to crash and ragdoll off them, among getting shot by random enemy spawns because you're closer to the ground which makes them spawn closer to you usually. If im travelling long distances I just want to get from place to place efficiently since I'd generally be there for a purpose if i have specific areas im aiming to get to. For pure messing around k-drive is fine i guess, but given there's not much to "mess around" doing in the maps where there's only hostile enemies and no hidden side quests, npcs or anything it doesn't particularly feel worth using the boards. At least for me. 

 

Solutions?:

-Let players attack from k-drives

-Make a lot more ramps, halfpipes, and bowls (particularly in the "natural" terrain areas since most things able to be tricked off are mostly just mountain tops or corpus buildings/objects) , and actually make the momentum similar to skating games in that if you go up a halfpipe you can come back down and land on that same pipe. 

-add some skills to k-drives, or maybe allow warframe abilities to be castable from them. 

-Make incentives to use and land tricks off some areas, be it achievements or otherwise. 

-reduce random enemy patrol spawns when travelling by board in secluded areas of the map so you can actually have fun doing tricks etc without having enemies teleport in and blast you all the time

-Speed up archwing in the open worlds and improve their breaking. (they're always going to be the better way to get to places so make that less of a chore) 

 

Anyway, that's my take on it. I don't think itzal needs to be changed as much as k drives purpose needs to be re-defined. 

Thank you for reading ^^ 

[Ikusi_Prime]

2 hours ago, (XB1)Zweimander said:

The thing is the choice will still be nonexistent unless they nerf the Itzal's speed down to the next slowest fastest Archwing as well. Because guess what...the Itzal stil has the fastest speed and people will still be unable to compete with it's speed anyway. Also the utility of Blink will be gone for normal Archwing missions then as well and it being the fast and sneaky Archwing are out the window. You need to think about this more in depth my dude...

There's a massive difference between being 20% faster than the other Archwings and being 20% faster AND having ~300 meters of instant movement in your pocket at the start of the mission and getting a free 40m teleport every so often while you're flying around. 

The problem isn't that it's the fastest, it's that it's the fastest by such a huge margin that it sets the pace for travel in the open world. Right now, even just flying the Iztal feels slow because of how quick the Blinks let you be. It makes no other Archwing ever worth picking. 

DE isn't just going to remove the ability or nerf it to the ground with no compensation, odds are they are going to replace it with something that is just as good, but doesn't allow you to warp across the open maps. The Iztal and its role will not go "out the window", they'll change into something healthier for the game overall. I expect them to change Iztal's 1 that still allows it to be sneaky and mobile, while also increasing the "super dash" (Sprint + Jump) speed significantly to give all Archwings the speed we're looking for. 

20% extra speed is minor compared to the breakneck speed of Blinking around. There's no problem with it being the fastest by a small margin. Don't tell me I didn't think about it in-depth when you obviously haven't thought about it at all.

[KuruSeed]

Nerfing the Itzal is a crass overreaction when there's virtually no use for Archwing in the open worlds besides moving from point A to point B. During combat encounters enemies will nearly immediately fire that missile that removes the Archwing making them useless overall. So most players would more than likely consider the use of the Archwing - Speed.

I posit that players had no choice in the matter from the very beginning because of the Archwing removal missile. It will always be better to use a fast Archwing in the open worlds until we are given the freedom of using them for combat situations.

[ChaoticEdge]

1 hour ago, BeldarTheBrave said:

Just because the animation is flashy doesn't mean it will actually be powerful. We just don't know yet.

it depends on penteration amount, if it goes though walls (like countless walls) it would just point 1 direction of the hall and whoever behind the door just get vaporized

27 minutes ago, OmegaZero said:

Sure you could press 4 and kill the small group of enemies right in front of you with Wisp. Or you could press 4 with Saryn and kill everything in the entire room.

Not really seeing how a single focused beam is “overkill”.

true, but still Saryn doesn't do whole map so remember that.  certain radius she can do but wisp what is the measurement is her skills with the laser that is the problem I mean I could of took PoE's map and simple measure out it just wisp how long does the laser reach and if wisp reach half the map all she need to do is spin her self around 360 and in the right angle then yea you got another reverent.  No offense it just that pointing the things of the obvious.

[Lion]

Itzal does not need a nerf, and it's not a good idea to give us more options by making others obsolete.

I agree with a lot of the responses here - I do think Itzal is meta just because it's so effective in open world nodes, in the same vein that's not really a bad thing. I just think other options (K-drive/AW) need to be brought made more appealing with their own strengths.

Currently Archwing is just used to get from point A to point B - Itzal does that very effectively, and there's nothing else that comes close in that regard. But what if DE gave us reasons to use archwings where speed isn't as much of a factor? 

The Flying Eidolon comes to mind, in this regard it might be a better idea to bring a high damage/utility archwing instead of a go-fast archwing. 

---

As far as K-drives go, I think overall they are hurting, and need buffs to mobility and utility - they need to be able to instantly and easily overcome terrain obstacles like mountains in order to compete with archwings. Being able to use weapons and possibly even one handed Warframe abilities would make K-drive much more appealing than they are now.

 

[Variks_Prime]

Ooof. Saying what needs to be said right in the title. The other archwings work fine in non-free-roam content (they actually all have useful niches there already,) but the EMP rockets make them almost irrelevant to free roam, so the EMP rockets pretty much have to be removed for people to use different archwings.

I managed to use Amesha for Thermia a bit, so I can fill in that bit - it half works. Even with max range, the 4, 2, and 1 up constantly, full health/armor/shield mods, energy at 100ish or below, all constantly, it will give you about 2-3 minutes of blocked EMPs on average before one gets through anyways. Go figure. That's with EVERY trick in the book up. Total invulnerability on extreme levels and there's still something - a glitch? where it just knocks you out of Amesha anyways, and that cancels all your abilities so you have to re-cast everything once you get back into AW in the first place. SUPER annoying. I would never bother using it for normal bounties or anything else in free roam, but because Thermia is a group activity and I could leave the can-ferrying to an Itzal in the group, it sort of works there as a half decent clutch option, IF you fully max out everything. Only even semi-viable application I've personally found for a non-Itzal archwing in free roam with the EMP as it is, which is honestly extremely sad. The EMP has got to be toned down or given stronger counterplays.

[Marvelous_A]

What I can say is they can nerf Itzal all they want but it doesn't make players use K-drive. At worst we will just switch to Amesha which is the second fastest Archwing.

Like seriously as long as K-drive is slower than an Archwing and constantly throw you off the board with a slightest bump, nobody will prefer K-drive over Archwings. Even K-drive has double the speed navigating in a clear sky is much more convenient.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Marvelous_A

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

The Amesha is what I used to use for fighting Eidolons before I got my effectively immortal Inaros, myself. That Archwing is basically unkillable, really good for point defence (which is half of Orb Vallis bounties and a lot of Cetus ones) and it's easily on par with a lot of Warframes, I'd argue.

 

Have only certain units equipped with those missiles - probably Tusk Bombards - and have them simply deal damage rather than disable the Archwing. That way the Odonata's flare countermeasure ability still has a reason to exist and those guys' mortars aren't completely useless, but they don't also completely shut down Archwing combat altogether.

Don't try to curtail Archwing combat in the Plains - build for it instead.

yeah, Amesha is a viable option for Eidolon Hunting for just surviving - it's not efficient but it works. for some of the Bounty Objectives it'd also call it just viable.

or possibly even a dedicated Enemy Type? that way it could potentially look cooler.
the AA Turrets can be left ofcourse, since those are in predictable positions and large enough that you could see it before it's too late. we have Enemies with Archwing Weapons on Venus, so we could have them on Earth, too? 

but yeah, make it a real feature rather than preventing us using it! it'd make the game better overall.

[Marvelous_A]

1 hour ago, Lion said:

The Flying Eidolon comes to mind, in this regard it might be a better idea to bring a high damage/utility archwing instead of a go-fast archwing. 

First of all they should give AWs proper durability. Currently all AWs act like they are made of paper and can't take even a few 9mm rounds. We relies on our weapons for damage output too so only Amesha and Itzal are useful coz they do what our weapons can't do.

[Marvelous_A]

For one I don't like K-drive coz I learnt driving from GTA series and every time the slight bump occurs I get immediately thrown off the damn board. 

From both skywings and K-drive there is only one thing we desire - speed coz:

>Skywings are made of paper and they are not practical in combat

>K-drives don't provide any offensive power at all

>We get little aerial combat

>Even if there is aerial combat shooting from ground is much easier and you don't need to worry about survivablity

We already did tons of damage with our own weapons so a DPS-based archwings are pretty much unnecessary. There goes Elytron and Odonata.

K-drives are land based and just like what I said you get thrown off all the time easily. AWs however allow you to navigate aerially and there aren't any obstacles.

They replace K-drives perfectly without any function loss.

I don't see why it takes DE that much of time to realize the problem of current AWs and K-drive.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Marvelous_A

[TwilightVulpine]

Archwing balance aside, I believe K-Drive has the potential to become much more useful if they allow us to use at least some weapons and tools in it. K-Drive will never be as fast as Archwing, because even if it had exactly the same speed it would have to go around rough terrain. However, it is pretty good for skimming terrain fast while Archwing flying low is extremely awkward. That gives it many possibilities, if DE gives it some adjusts:

• Allowing Loot Radar and Vacuum would make it very useful to gather random destructible resources on the Plains or Orb Vallis, especially if Cetus Wisps can be picked up.
• Allowing Mining Lasers can help with faster mining runs
• Allowing Fishing Spears can help by letting you hover right over the place where the fishes are appearing, rather than being limited to nearby land and rocks
• If you can use any weapon, that allows you to fight spread out enemies more effectively, to defend and to attack mobile targets

Particularly I think K-Drives could complement melee weapons on Open World maps very well. I'd imagine they don't mean for us to be riding and fighting from them all the time, but because enemies are often far apart in the Plains and Orb Vallis, it is more difficult to melee them effectively. But it could work out if we could rush and slice them from the boards... which would be pretty cool!

Edited April 7, 2019 by TwilightVulpine

[Femuru]

I like the idea of attacking on boards but as to "speed up archwing" I'm just gonna assume this was a type to speed up k drive which yes they do but either way archwing will still be better. What they probly need is probly some k drive dedicated bounty or mission. Maybe connect all the underground areas for underground tunnel missions would probly be alot of work tho. Maybe actual race mission that involve going from point to point while fighting enemies on their own kind of vehicles. Or they could take the lazy route of adding a mission where you can't use archwing but give more standing/reward. Personally I'm tired of pointless new modes when there still so much that the game needs fixing/update but that's the only way I could really see them useful. 

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, TwilightVulpine said:

Archwing balance aside, I believe K-Drive has the potential to become much more useful if they allow us to use at least some weapons and tools in it.

that is an aspect i didn't cover here but yes, Hoverboards now allowing us to do anything while using them is a further reason as to why they are rarely used.

just like how Spectral Scream (Chroma) is never used - because the Tools it takes away, are far, far, far, far more valuable than what you gain access to.

[Sandomere]

DE is not needing Itzal to favor kdrives. They want to nerf it to favor other archwings. 

[Jitsuryoku]

2 minutes ago, Sandomere said:

DE is not needing Itzal to favor kdrives. They want to nerf it to favor other archwings. 

I know it's probably DE's opinion and not yours, but it's flawed logic. Other archings are useless because there are no missions to complement their skills (much like there's no mission / enemy to complement titania's skills. She can dish out a lot of damage on single targets, but that's only needed on bosses where other frames can out-do her by a significant margin).

• Odanta is outright useless. It feels like a nerfed of Elytron and Sasha. Idk why anybody would use it in any circumsstances
• Elytron's damage can be outdone by any arching weapon and even itzal's 3 (this is really curious). I'd love to use it on plains or orb vallis, but I can do more damage with a poorly modded secondary weapon than I will do with a fully forma'ed Elytron!
• Amesha is awesome (I mean I did use it for immunity on eidolons for some time), but again no missions that actually needs it

Take away speed (movement and blink) from Itzal and it will turn into a squishier Elytron, which only has 1 thing going for it. AoE loot....

If you want to get people to play other archwings, give them a use. Make some missions that require Amesha's defense. Boost Elytron's maximum damage output, so I can't kill 20 enemies with any archgun, before elytron kills 5 with skills. Odanta.... Idk I think it would require an overhaul to be useful. I don't recall a single skill that I would use it for.