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

[X4vi0uR]

12 hours ago, Methanoid said:

you are trying to make it sound like the itzal trades shields/hp for some form of magic dodging or evasion via that speed which it does not, its "1" is only used to cheese straight line movement, typically in open world, it doesnt use that ability to try and evade damage thsu saving its low shields/hp.

It also hasnt had its speed taken away, its still got the highest base speed of all archwing which is further enhanced with hyperion thrusters.

But it does. It has low hp and shields compared to other archwings and has 1 and 2 as defensive and maneuvering skills allowing player to blink through or hide from enemies and projectiles. It also has the highest base speed because the Itzal (as it was first thought of for Archwing missions) is supposed to be exactly that: a stealthy high speed Archwing.

I'm saying that the Itzal has mobility as its strong suit. The blink ability of the Itzal is just that: high mobility traded with little to no offensive or defensive capability. The Itzal was thought first and foremost for the Archwing space missions so it makes absolutely sense to have that ability in those missions to move rapidly through meteorite debris and away from exploding Phomorians.

On big maps like Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis the blink ability is still absolutely fine. It is the most efficient option to go from point A to point B. My point is, nerfing it like putting the blink on a cooldown sounds ok...removing the blink, reducing its speed is absolutely stupid.

Also, the point of the Itzal nerf is to make people more likely to use K-Drives but that just isn't gonna happen. Somebody else pointed this out already: all of the Archwings are more efficient options than the K-Drives (since by flying you have no geographic obstacles allowing you to move between keypoints in a straight line while with the K-Drives you have to take many detours) and some frame abilities too (Volt Speed Buff and Nova's Blink). So, they either need to nerf all of this stuff next or people are still not gonna use K-Drives.

All in all, I don't see the point in the nerf altogether. If players want to be ultra efficient allow them to use Itzal with its blink constantly to move through the map in seconds, nothing is stopping other players from using the K-Drives (even though they're objectively the worst way to move around) or even traverse the maps by walking if they prefer to do so.

By nerfing the Itzal, I personally think, they risk of taking an option away from players and the nerf direction itself is stupid IMHO. Personally, I think they should just buff K-Drives. Make them more fun and faster to move in, give them some cool innate abilities and mods that make them absolute beasts and there we go the number of players who use them will naturally rise up.

I hope I conveyed my thoughts properly on this matter. Personally, if they nerf the Itzal, I'm just gonna use another Archwing too. I grind for my loot and, since I like to keep my platinum usage to a minimum, I farm a lot so I need to move fast while doing missions and this way of playing is exactly the main way of playing this game at end-game. If they give me an option to farm even faster for free I'm up for it but I'm absolutely against anything that makes me slower.

[X4vi0uR]

7 hours ago, Lion said:

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.

 

I think the same. Either make content where the Archwings are the worse option to use (for example, missions in a medium\large arena with not much height space but a lot of horizontal large corridors) or give proper buffs to the K-Drives so they don't suck as much as they do now: allowing players to use weapons and gravimag weapons on them, allowing players to use frame skills from them, removing the chance to be dropped off the K-Drive on a bump, buffing their handling on the ground and make players have full control in the air, giving them mods that severely alter the way they're used (ex: a mod that every 3-5 secs drops mines that take their dmg and stats from the players' secondary weapons, a mod that allows K-Drives to Glide or to fly for a short period of time, a mod that insanely buffs the speed for a short while giving players the option to do short bursts on straightaways, and so on.

These are two ways to give players more options without making them angry by nerfing what is already meta. Nerfing itself sets a very dangerous precedent because at that point there's a chance that all of the Archwings are simply gonna be nerfed just because K-Drives suck so much at the moment and what if next DE puts in a vehicle that is even worse than K-Drives and wants to make that meta? Do you nerf K-Drives too at that point?

It also, keeps from developing these traversal methods into something the players love. Personally, I think players like K-Drives and their idea but they're just underwhelming at this moment...so BUFF THEM!

[DenisJaguar]

Archwing for me is like an airplane and we can use our weapons.

K-Drive for me is like the car but we can't use our weapons

Walking, running and jumping with Warframe, we can use our weapons.

Doing the math, its simple, Want peoples to use something you created, put your energy on the K-drive and leave the rest alone. If i want to fly, i will fly, K-drive at the moment is only a skate board nothing more. I use it for fun, now change the option if us to use weapons with K-drive and then fun will start. Been suggested by other users.

Nerfing an Archwing is the easy and lazy choice to choose instead of going to the root of the problem that is the K-drive. Its an accessory.

[Cephalycion]

We delet K drive

[Artekkor]

No, i'm pretty sure deleting Itzal is the better option here.

Maybe once its nerfed  i'll actually feel  justified  to sell  it.

[WhiteMarker]

At this point DE will just change Itzal, so these meme-threads stop.

Let's face it: Itzal will get changed. People could give proper feedback on how to make Itzal a better Archwing (This way it isn't just a taxi for bigger maps)
But instead of giving proper feedback, people are just ranting like little children...

[Marvelous_A]

In the current setting K-drive will never be able to compete to even the slowest AW, Elytron.

You lose offensive ability upon riding one. Get severely hindered by uneven terrain. Is slower than the slowest AW.

Logically speaking is there any real reason to use K-drive instead of Archwings?

6 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

At this point DE will just change Itzal, so these meme-threads stop.

Let's face it: Itzal will get changed. People could give proper feedback on how to make Itzal a better Archwing (This way it isn't just a taxi for bigger maps)
But instead of giving proper feedback, people are just ranting like little children...

Let say what we will get after they nerf Itzal though? Are other Archwings and K-drive better now?

Before the change: Itzal and other useless stuff

After the change: Itzal, but worse and other useless stuff

You do realize Itzal is popular coz Itzal is the only thing useful among them? Especially DE is taking K-drive for comparison which makes even less sense.

Say like even if you take out Blink it still has the fastest speed and free vacuum. The only way to make players use something else is to delete Itzal entirely.

When you say AW isn't just taxi it shows that you know as much as DE only. Coz both AWs and K-drive are just glorified taxi at this moment. DE made them so.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Marvelous_A

[LuckyCharm]

I actually meant speed up archwings xD I feel the k-drives are plenty fast for how you're actually expected to do tricks on them, if they were faster the kdrives would be more uncontrollable, and you'd probably end up with even less time to actually perform tricks with them. But your idea of races with enemies having their own vehicles would be pretty awesome.  Hopefully something like that comes about in the future

[WhiteMarker]

11 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

Before the change: Itzal and other useless stuff

After the change: Itzal, but worse and other useless stuff

You do realize Itzal is popular coz Itzal is the only thing useful among them? Especially DE is taking K-drive for comparison which makes even less sense.

Say like even if you take out Blink it still has the fastest speed and free vacuum. The only way to make players use something else is to delete Itzal entirely.

When you say AW isn't just taxi it shows that you know as much as DE only. Coz both AWs and K-drive are just glorified taxi at this moment. DE made them so.

Itzal is useless when it comes to actual archwing stuff. It's only usefull in two open worlds. But even there you can easily play without it.
When the CHANGE Itzal (stop shouting "nerf"), it might be usefull in actual combat.

But why am I even arguing with you? You clearly have no clue what archwing is. You are just using Itzal in Open Worlds and that's it.

[LuckyCharm]

I think k-drives need a few fixes to make them more popular choices that would require more work than an unnecessary nerf to itzal. 

-allow attacking from k-drive

-k drives get unique skills like archwings do. 

-k drives become like zaws/kitguns in that their parts actually change how they perform in a way. increased accelleration vs top speed vs handling sorta thing. 

-tricks need a bunch more versitility. Landing tricks could also give you bonus's like increased move speed etc

and most of all..

The terrain actually needs more things to jump off of rather than slam into, make more ramps, halfpipes and bowls. The lack of this stuff is what makes archwings always a better choice, you get stuck or slowed down soo much by inaccessible areas and walls blocking you compared to being able to just fly over everything till you get to your destination. 

 

Just my opinion anyway, I use amesha or itzal for everything anyway (usually amesha because i like it better for archwing content and im too lazy to swap off)  but odonata and elytron could defs use a few buffs

[Jiminez_Burial]

14 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

Logically speaking is there any real reason to use K-drive instead of Archwings?

If you want to gain energy on your Warframe while still moving somewhat fast.  Using the Zenurik Void Dash and then jumping on a K-Drive keeps the energy building up on the Warframe instead of on the Archwing which you would choose for pure transport speed.

[Marvelous_A]

6 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Itzal is useless when it comes to actual archwing stuff. It's only usefull in two open worlds. But even there you can easily play without it.
When the CHANGE Itzal (stop shouting "nerf"), it might be usefull in actual combat.

But why am I even arguing with you? You clearly have no clue what archwing is. You are just using Itzal in Open Worlds and that's it.

And "actual archwing stuff" matters because??

Do they hold any actual meaning besides as a place for you to level for AWs equipment?

Are you one of those minority that do Archwing missions constantly?

Funny someone even using AW missions as arguments.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Marvelous_A

[WhiteMarker]

6 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

And "actual archwing stuff" matters because??

Because Railjack is coming up...

6 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

Do they hold any actual meaning besides as a place for you to level for AWs equipment?

People had no interest in Archguns, and then the Gravimags dropped. And people were crying because they never ranked up there Archwing-stuff.
Let me phrase it so that you will understand it: It doesn't matter until it does. (The War Within had a Archwing section. Man, people keep crying about that aswell)
And when DE introduces more important Archwing Stuff, I want Itzal to be usefull and not useless as it is right now.

8 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

Thank you for ending our little argument right here... ^^

[Takkov]

The main problem is, that people are simply not interested in looking at the open worlds for more than their current goal. In every open world game I just want to get to the place where I can do what I came in the mission for. K-Drives offer not a single advantage to anything else, are boring to play with and lock you out of your weapons. Warframes, weapons and everything else are mere tools in this game for me to take advantage of to achieve the things I want to achieve. And seeing that most people playing open worlds choose itzal over the other archwings (or K-Drives), I am not alone in that approach.

I dont mind changing up Itzal, if at the same time traversing the Plains or Orb Vallis will be as fast with any other alternative. And as a sidenote: Archwings are intended for Archwing missions. Changing them because of other applications is not a good approach imo.

[Marvelous_A]

32 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Because Railjack is coming up...

People had no interest in Archguns, and then the Gravimags dropped. And people were crying because they never ranked up there Archwing-stuff.
Let me phrase it so that you will understand it: It doesn't matter until it does. (The War Within had a Archwing section. Man, people keep crying about that aswell)
And when DE introduces more important Archwing Stuff, I want Itzal to be usefull and not useless as it is right now.

Thank you for ending our little argument right here... ^^

Then isn't Archguns the prime example of how actual Archwing content has no meaning? Coz they shine the most outside of Archwing battles....?

Did you watch the Railjack trailer though? I mean, with your eyes instead of mere imagination?

Coz you know what DE did with your little precious AWs? To fly from one ship to another...yes, that's the only thing they did.

And that's what the current Itzal best at LMAO..I suggest you check out the Railjack trailer, for real, this time.

But hey, at least you tried pulling out something not existing yet to persuade someone how AW missions are actually important. That's pretty impressive.

 

EDIT:

And how can someone actually call Itzal useless in "actual archwing stuff"?

It got speed, nuke, invisibility. It appears you've never used Itzal in archwing missions at all.

The only competitor is Amesha in Mobile Defense coz it can heal the satellite but that's pretty much it

Edited April 7, 2019 by Marvelous_A

[-_Highlander_-]

 If Itzal gets nerfed i would be dissapointed but hey we have to face it one day ..

Zephyr and Nova would be a good alternative if it comes to Teleporting .. ok Loki can do too but for more accurate job i would take Nova and Zephyr for it

As long they don't nerf it into the ground that is

R.i.p Itzal you will be missed

 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

45 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

At this point DE will just change Itzal, so these meme-threads stop.

Let's face it: Itzal will get changed. People could give proper feedback on how to make Itzal a better Archwing (This way it isn't just a taxi for bigger maps)
But instead of giving proper feedback, people are just ranting like little children...

I don't disagree on the meme threads but if DE nerfs Itzal solely based on k-drives disadvantage and community behaviour the ones childish would be them.

And I still disagree with this nerf based on one single use, because Itzal does not outshine other AW's in space, and needs tactical advantage to it (not necessarily blink). They should wait for Railjack and see the whole picture rather than acting rashly.

[Teridax68]

I think even when Itzal gets nerfed, K-Drives will still be slower than Archwing, but at least this could be a step forward. I think K-Drives are fun and, with a new coat of polish, could absolutely deliver on their hoverboard fantasy, but in order to get their I think their boost speed needs to be increased (and perhaps Archwings in general should be slowed down). In the meantime, changing Itzal to trivialize traversal less in the Plains or Vallis could certainly help, particularly since Blink itself is next to useless in most actual Archwing missions.

[ArcKnight9202]

When I found out that being invincible with the Amesha didn't matter in the case of anti-air rockets in the Plains, my soul died.

This is 100% why I use Itzal. There's no point to use the rest when the game can take such a dump on them despite their supposed "specialties".

[Femuru]

1 hour ago, LuckyCharm said:

I actually meant speed up archwings xD I feel the k-drives are plenty fast for how you're actually expected to do tricks on them, if they were faster the kdrives would be more uncontrollable, and you'd probably end up with even less time to actually perform tricks with them. But your idea of races with enemies having their own vehicles would be pretty awesome.  Hopefully something like that comes about in the future

I'm lost y archwing need a speed boost but I think k drive might need atleast need some boost when yur operator can be faster. As for uncontrollable I agree it can be a pain and that they should put a option to turn off ragdolling off the board to help with the speed boost then. I honestly would like to see a underground tunnel system where all underground areas become connected wit races and maybe grineer show up with hover bikes shooting as u drive. But as they said, they can't compete with our imagination so probly won't happen and we will see how they handle k drives. 

[SirTobe]

Problem is DE's initial nerf of AW's for open worlds. They are all designed with different pros/cons, but since DE for some reason don't want AW's to have any kind of survivability nor deal any damage in atmo, their only use is for transportation. So obviously the fast Itzal is the Meta, and they never thought about nerfing Blink to begin with since it is not doing anything for your performance in battle. 

If the Elytron could actually DEAL SOME DAMAGE, or the Amesha could offer SURVIVABILITY, then there would be valid reasons to choose them over the Itzal. 

This is really just another reason to completely overhaul AW's and their purposes. Nerfing Itzal after all this time does not solve anything, just pissing people off. Scott better be joking, or I have greatly overestimated his way of thinking.

Edited April 7, 2019 by SirTobe

[(PSN)NemitheNem]

It's all over the feedback and Gen, nerfing Itzal when the community thinks we should Buff the K Drives.

No matter how much the Itzal/Archwings in general are nerfed they will still be better than K-drives.

In Archwings we can shoot, use powers, move freely vertically, and go faster, of course.

Proposals

• Combat buffs:
  • Guns in K-drive mode, switch us to coasting/drifting while we aim.
  • Maybe melee weapons come out when we do tricks?  Like we can't swing them, but we can twist our entire bodies via K-board around
  • Keep our companions out while we are on K-drive would be a direct buff compared to Archwing
  • Make it count as being in air so we don't get knocked around by ground effects
    • Combined with 1 would make the Vets very happy as it would be viable in Eidolon runs'
  • Power use on K-Drives.  I love Roky but I don't think she could manage to give K-Drive their own powers, at least not without a heist or two and us giving her something from the Tenno Lab.  If its the sort of power where we have to be still just kick us off the board
• Utilitarian buffs:
  • Companions
  • Tool use while on K-Drive, like the mining laser so we can quickly cover ground and search
  • Let us use them in normal missions
  • Better tricks
  • Faster remounting, at least on console.  I hotkeyed my Archwing and my K-drive with the touch pad and it...just doesn't work all the time?  I get the not available/invalid launch point thing a lot.  I'd love to jump over some enemies dismount and rain some destruction down on them, then get back on my K-drive.  But it's a no go.

Edited April 7, 2019 by (PS4)NemitheNem

[kingvaldemir]

Heya my fellow space ninjas and folks at DE. A little background for those who isn't keeping up with the news. Recently, DE had devstream 126, and at it's end, there was a discussion of potential Itzal nerf because according to Scott, it's game breaking and limiting choice. I'm here to give you guys some of my thoughts about it and it's basically: No. I don't think nerfing Itzal is a good idea as I think the problem isn't lie on the itzal itself. Kay, I'll break it down bellow, but first, let's put Scott's perspective first.

This is his reasoning behind the nerf idea and his quote: "The problem is like 'coptering' back in the day, it was limited to very limited piece of gear that added that ability. So basically we are telling players that if you want speed you must take this archwing and I think that's game breaking and I think that removes the choice of the game".

I actually agree with Scott's thought on 'coptering'. 'Coptering' does limit the player with a single melee weapon should they want speed. This results if the player wanted speed, then they have to give up other melee choices and missing out the 'melee gameplay experience'. Melee should be use as a combat tool, not a booster tool to move fast. Ergo, nerfing copter, along with giving something else as a replacement (was it bullet jump? I forgot and I was on and off at that period) is a good choice and it enhance the 'melee gameplay experience'.

Itzal nerf on the other hand will simply take the speed away from players without enhancing any other experience. Archwing, in the context of open world, is just a tool to speed up our movement from one place to another. That's it. I will explained this later down below.

Now there are some other Tennos here in the forum that said "But, by nerfing Itzal, other options are then opened up right? So Scott achieve his "more option" target right?" Okay now. Let's take a look at these 'options' shall we?

 

Itzal VS K-Drive

K-Drive is the thing that made we have this conversation in the first place anyway, so lets talk about it. My point of view is, (and I believe a lot of people can agree with this), even after itzal has been nerfed, it won't make K-Drive take it's place as a mean of transportation. K-Drive is waaaaay underperform in terms of transportation and there are a lot of options that can outperform that board. Okay, lets say Itzal does get nerf. What then? You guys gonna nerf other options until K-Drive viable and make our open world experience way waaaaay slower? No, right?

What K-Drive need is actually content that can utilize their kit. Let's see what they have. They can 'parkour'-ish with their air roll, copter or whatever that is, and it can also grind. Why don't we use these? Maybe after doing some flips, the K-Drive will then boost. Or maybe there's an underground railway that if we grind in it, it'll boost out K-Drive speed by an enormous amount (like booster in racing games like Crash Team Racing, if you guys play that game).

Don't nerf the thing that performed better than K-Drive, but instead buff the damn hover board! Utilize it's kit and uniqueness!

 

Itzal vs 'Other Options'

There are actually quite a few 'other options'. Let's take a look at them one by one

• Warframes that has a great mobility (Nova and her worm hole and Zephyr with her dash): The problem with this option is that, this is actually really against Scott's perspective. Remember what he said about 'coptering'? Yeah. If we want speed, then we are limited to a very specific gear, in this case, these 2 warframes. The main problem is, our judgement when we chose warframe should be based on their kit, not by their ability to traverse the world.

How does this warframe perform against the mission and the challenges in the bounties? Should I take frost so I have easier time when I have to defend the objective? Or should I chose Loki to tackle down the spy missions? Those kinds of questions are the ones that we should ask. It shouldn't just "Imma just grab this frame so I can go fast between mission".

• Void Dash: Okay, but kinda what's the point? Does Itzal "kills" void dash? No! Void dash is not primarily for mobility. Mainly it's used to restore energy (zenurik ftw) or any other combat related usage like strip armor by using unairu or magus lockdown. It is not meant for transportation! So, Itzal's crazy speed has no correlation with void dash at all.

In a nutshell, it's either even hurt our options even further by 'forcing' us to use a certain frame in the name of speed, or it is something that has no correlation with transportation at all. I feel like these options are more like an 'artificial' options anyway. A gimmick that the players found so they can travel faster.

 

Itzal vs Other Archwing

Now this is the the closest argument with the one that Scott has. Because we want speed, we basically ignore any other archwing, which in theory is bad. But, like I said above, does it even matter? Open world area don't have any archwing related mission, the missions are more suitable to be handled by warframes, the enemies keep trying to take us down, and heck, even in trailers, devstream or any other DE's showcase, never even once they showed us playing the open world content by utilizing archwing kit. It's simply not advertised nor meant to be used as a combat tool in the open world area. It is, however meant for transportation purpose. And which one is the best option? Itzal!! Heck, even if DE does nerf Itzal's first ability, we probably would still chose itzal over any other archwing because it is the fastest archwing.

However, if there is some kind of content that require us using archwing's kit, then maybe the nerf can be justified. But!! If there is a content like that, players will switch Itzal to another archwing that can do the mission better anyway, so the nerf probably wont even be needed.

 

Basically, DE, from my point of view, nerfing Itzal will simply take away our speed and the down time that the player experience by traveling from one bounty stage to another, or from one mining spot to another is increased, making the overall gameplay experience in open world area slower, while not making any other gameplay experience stands out.

What you are lacking is actually the content. A content that's related with traversing the open world. Scott said it's terrible to just have one option to traverse the world. Then instead of take away the fastest, add other way to traverse the world that has the same or similar speed to that. (Make it fun while at it). Other than the underground railway that I mentioned, maybe by capturing corpus's base on Vallis, we can actually fast travel between them? That would be dope.

Maybe Steve is right. There's simply no content in between bounty stages so we just want to get there as fast as we can and it is not game breaking at all. Tbh, if Itzal make us skip a content that we should do then, yes it is game breaking. But there simply isn't any content so.... what does it break?

_{On another note, tbh this nerf is actually doesn't impact me much. For a long time, before I had Itzal, I can live in the open world area by using void dash and Odonata just fine. But, I just find DE don't have any REAL reason to nerf Itzal. It feels like Scott just see the Itzal can do that and go like "I must drop nerf hammer on this thing!!"}

_{and it appears this post was moved to another existing one. Sigh... Okay then, just wish DE still get my points}

Edited April 7, 2019 by kingvaldemir
Change the title to be more suitable with the content

[birdobash]

I think one big issue that people are overlooking is that skywing controls are utter ass, one of the main reasons, even if you're not thinking about it, is that itzals blink and invis are both 100% better than the controls the game gives you in open world, not to mention the abilities also making you faster.

With the blinks you can turn on a dime whenever you want, no matter your momentum, and the invisibility stops your momentum instantly no matter what, skywing controls are the complete opposite where you're locked on the horizontal plane unless you sprint, and you can never stop completely without dashing backwards 3 times and never within 2 seconds.

On the other hand, all the other archwings have to deal with the bad controls because they are forced to, which doesn't help their case, nerfing itzals blink or removing would be equivalent to saying "use our bad controls LMaO".

On the other OTHER hand, k-drives while awesome, don't fill any niche that we would need atm in warframe. They don't fill the medium speed niche because operators already do that with their dashes, they don't fill the long distance traversal niche because they have to deal with terrain and they're not as fast as the archwings, and they don't fill the strength and power niche because warframes already do that themselves.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I said several times now... They are acting rashly with the nerf hammer and I hope they wait for Railjack to truly see the big picture. During fractures Amesha was the defense meta on archwings, on general AW missions you see Itzal being slightly inferior to Amesha and Elytron.

More, Itzal has vacuum as well, not just speed and blink, making it perfect for Open World transportation. This shouldn't even be a debate just because people keep comparing the new K-Toy to a weaponized air 360 degree freedom machine. And I know DE enough to know that if they nerf Itzal and make it underperform compared to other equipment it'll be a year or two of neglecting it before they buff it again.