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

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

To Buff everything to Itzal levels of travel, you would need to give all Archwing the blink ability.

DE simply doesn't want that 1 Archwing is the necessary for travel, so they would either need to give every Archwing a Blink ability passive (and give Itzal a new 1) or nerf Itzal 1 so that its balanced Togheter whit the other frames, like a timer for example.

That or make every Archwing but Itzald fast has hell.

1 minute ago, AirMaskNinja said:

Someone tell me what has been nerfed about Itzal ?

Nothing, just DE thinking about nerfing Italz 1 so that Blink isnt mandatory for travelling in PoE and OV.

[Dark_Lugia]

nothing _yet
it might get a rework/revisit, but i don´t expect anything prior to the railjack update

[(PSN)robotwars7]

Do you really wanna nerf me..

Do you really wanna make me cry...

if DE decides to nerf the Itzal, all they will end up doing is pushing more players towards Nova and Zephyr. you cannot stop the Meta, only change it's form. there will always be those that want to travel as fast as possible, all this would do is hurt the Itzal everywhere.

[Rinzanami]

the fact that archwing is used for no more than transportation in the open world is damming enough.

the devs have a habit of removing and band-aidsing stuff instead of spending effort on reworking and overhauling them and we as community allowed this to happen repeatedly without push back, this need to stop.

playing a game of wake the mule will accomplish nothing, players in mmorpg have always gravitate toward doing the grind faster and efficient, you cant change that so your whole logic is bust scott, just focus on something else like i dont know, nerfing trinity ?

[ismellpestilence]

17 minutes ago, (PS4)d_HopeCraft_b said:

To Buff everything to Itzal levels of travel, you would need to give all Archwing the blink ability.

DE simply doesn't want that 1 Archwing is the necessary for travel, so they would either need to give every Archwing a Blink ability passive (and give Itzal a new 1) or nerf Itzal 1 so that its balanced Togheter whit the other frames, like a timer for example.

That or make every Archwing but Itzald fast has hell.

Nothing, just DE thinking about nerfing Italz 1 so that Blink isnt mandatory for travelling in PoE and OV.

Oh, then it’s not a nerf, it’s a buff XD

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

1 minute ago, AirMaskNinja said:

Oh, then it’s not a nerf, it’s a buff XD

Depends, placing a timer on Itzal 1 would make Itzal have the same "Travel Speed" as the other Archwings, making it a Nerf, but if DE makes it so all other Archings are fast its a buff.

But the nerf is easier then the buff.

[Rinzanami]

il y a 20 minutes, (PS4)d_HopeCraft_b a dit :

Nothing, just DE thinking about nerfing Italz 1 so that Blink isnt mandatory for travelling in PoE and OV.

its not mandatory, its efficient and that was tick scott off and dare say the whole devs teams.

they regret making blink because they didnt foreseen the open worlds expect.

the archwing as whole is not necessary in the POA and Fortuna because they're underpowered as hell compared to your frame or gun, so they still only be used for transportation no matte what.

[Kaotyke]

I'm just looking at the Forums reactions, Scott saying that he was "going to nerf the sh*t out of it". And no questions asked, people go to arms, even saying that this was all a ploy on DE's part to test our reactions.

The only thing that comes to mind is Scott's reaction to it all:

[Rinzanami]

il y a 1 minute, Kaotyke a dit :

I'm just looking at the Forums reactions, Scott saying that he was "going to nerf the sh*t out of it". And no questions asked, people go to arms, even saying that this was all a ploy on DE's part to test our reactions.

The only thing that comes to mind is Scott's reaction to it all:

it was no joke, it happened before and it will happen again if we keep quite about it, and vacuum disaster is proof of that.

DE history is filled with betrayal, and yes people figured that much, they're testing the water and we will show them that its on fire, never ever give a dev an inch, he will take a mile, and then some more.

[SneakyErvin]

Am I the only one that read the title with a Mutalist Salad V voice?

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

1 minute ago, Rinzanami said:

its not mandatory, its efficient and that was tick scott off and dare say the whole devs teams.

they regret making blink because they didnt foreseen the open worlds expect.

the archwing as whole is not necessary in the POA and Fortuna because they're underpowered as hell compared to your frame or gun, so they still only be used for transportation no matte what.

Scott : "Its very limited to a piece of gear, basically telling players "if you want that speed, you most take this Archwing" and I think thats game braking and takes away choice from the game, at it shouldn't be the be-all end-all that we say if you want movement speed that we are requiring in game you have to take this Archwing, and I think thats terrible, so eventually, thats going away."

Steve : "I think the problems are that Itzal feels required wen you have an open world whit only 1 exit point, so I think that if we are gonna do that or when we are gonna do that I think we also need to solve some of the getting the bounty and have to traverse whit nothing to do for a lot of long periods" "Wen we did Orb Vallis its original design was the deal or merge at different points and we never accomplished that goal."

So no, its not about efficiency, but removing choice since you NEED Itzal to get from point A to point B whiteout having 1 mins of silence and nothing to do.

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

12 minutes ago, Kaotyke said:

I'm just looking at the Forums reactions, Scott saying that he was "going to nerf the sh*t out of it". And no questions asked, people go to arms, even saying that this was all a ploy on DE's part to test our reactions.

The only thing that comes to mind is Scott's reaction to it all:

Look at my reply before this.

[LupoDWolf]

So, what warframe was originally? A Doom-esque horde shotter, fighting hundreds of enemies in somewhat closet spaces. even in the space with the archwings. We really didn't had the need of fast trasportation ways and etc. 
But, what we have on PoE and OV? Huge areas, for warframe standard, with nothing. Orb is worse in that because there are places with literally nothing - top right and botton right of the map for example. 
What people hate on plague star? that sometimes we have objectives over half a map away from each other. I hope we never have something like that in Vallis.  I really hope think that the next open map should not be bigger than vallis, or even PoE.

A sugestion is to decrease the open maps size, I doubt people would notice if PoE or vVallis lost 10%~15% of its area. and no, fill it with enemies would not hel when the objectives still are way far apart wuld not help.

Edited April 9, 2019 by LupoDWolf

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

The tunnel system "shortcut" idea seems the best candidate here. It doesn't make archwing obsolete or non-functional, it just makes them both an option.

In order to make the tunnel system non-archwing skippable, to maintain its K-drive benefit, maybe "grinding" along some electrical conduit is required to power up and open some forgotten doors in the tunnels (remember those portals on Corpus ships during Invasion missions? They can be like those.) Maybe it's part of an extended abandoned area of Fortuna connected to Deck 12/Fortuna, like a central hub that would have been part of the city's transportation system, but the area was too unstable, or was ruined by Corpus activities.

The tunnels could have too much wind/turbulence for Archwing flight, or coolant "waterfalls" and such that the K-drives are built to deal with.

If nothing else, these tunnels could be (or lead to) good Toroid hunt locations.

 

[(PSN)Onder6099]

Players don’t know how to chill. Using AW, preferably Itzal, they are forcing players using K-drives to use AW too. So again, no to AW    in Fortuna, min, because K-drives XP is shared without range limit and if all used K-drives probably everyone have already Ventkids Standings on max.

[Ohforf3]

On 2019-04-08 at 7:30 AM, Elessara1 said:

Given that K-Drives are essentially cosmetic there should be no reason the devs should force people to use them.  It would be like forcing people to use syndanas and sugatras (to continue the comparison from above).  If few people like them and they aren't being used then DE should just consider it a failed experiment and move on.

 

Nobody is talking about forcing people to use K-Drives.  They are talking about adding functions to give people a reason to want to use them.

K-drives are a good idea but poorly implemented, if they put a little effort into fixing the issues they would be used more.  For one thing turning down the difficulty of Vox Solarus quest so newbies getting to Venus can do it and changing the recipe for the T1 board to not require the second highest gem would help greatly.  By the time you can get a K-Drive you most likely have an archwing which is better in pretty much every way.

[MJ12]

The problem with Archwing transit is that anywhere it can go, it's always going to be faster than ground transit unless you make it slower than ground transit, because Archwing can always move in a straight line. This means that no matter how much you nerf Itzal, people are still going to neglect K-Drives and use Archwings for transit, they'll just be mad about it.

The obvious solution, then, is also the most radical one-make it so that there is a place in the open world zone where players might want to spend extended amounts of time in that is also designed to be relatively difficult for Archwings to maneuver in, but can be negotiated by the use of K-Drive (or if DE ever implements it because running fast is cool, my Sprint Overdrive idea). This place would have to be relatively tight quarters, with low ceilings and long corridors that branch out into caverns and manmade structures, but we already have something which might work for that.

DE could build upon the caves in the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis, and add an underground layer to the map where Archwing transit is impractical. DE could do so by connecting the caves, adding Grineer or Corpus structures to it, and adding potential mission locations, collectibles, and other things in said caves that people might want to pay attention to. Perhaps certain minibosses might even spawn in these underground bunkers, who could drop useful mods or resources-and perhaps you might even have 'incursions' there (call them 'targets of opportunity') to differentiate the underground from the general open world.

Doing so would give K-Drives a useful traversal niche rather than being a suboptimal alternate movement mode that is outclassed in every way by Archwing.

Edited April 9, 2019 by MJ12

[Voltage]

While on paper this sounds sweet, unless the caves restrict you into only using K-Drive to move, Void Dash, Wormhole on Nova, and just parkour movements would be more practical. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't use K-Drive in the current cave systems.

Amps were the solution to the same issues K-Drive suffer from in its own way. Amps are physically required to do Eidolon hunts and have access to Warframe Arcane Enhancements. By doing this, DE forced the player to get these (generally) under-performing weapons because they must be used in certain areas. Amps are impractical almost everywhere else in the game compared to normal weapons, but they see a good usage due to Eidolons.

If DE wants to promote K-Drive over Archwing, they need to force it onto the player like Amps for Eidolons and Arch-guns for the Profit Taker. Transportation is meant to go from A to B, and K-Drive is next to Dargyns on the list of "worst ways to get around". Putting K-Drive somewhere that is not solely for transportation and a requirement for a boss or vent-kids event or something would make it desirable because it is the only allowed gear item in that mission instance.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Voltage

[(XBOX)RPColten]

This all sounds well and good in theory.

 

Is it worth the development time and resources? Is K-Drive important enough and valuable enough to validate this kind of expansive solution?

Is it better to double-down on what defines K-Drive in order to further establish its goal and intent, or is it more important to drum up a solution to a player-made problem? 

[Teridax68]

I'm mostly on board with this: while I don't think giving innate abilities to vehicles is a great idea, and I'd in fact support removing them from Archwings as well and turning the kits into warframes instead (because vehicles are niche and situational, whereas warframes are at the core of our gameplay), I can very much agree with many of the other proposals: I absolutely agree that we should be able to use our weapons on K-Drives, for example, and the latest wave of updates to casting restrictions I think demonstrates just how much players appreciate it when they no longer have their agency arbitrarily restrained due to rigid preset animations and poses. Similarly, I agree that leveling and Standing gains for K-Drives need to improve significantly, because right now all of that just boils down to grinding on the Pearl, Fortuna half-pipe or Temple of Profit repeatedly for about a half hour every day until one is maxed out (which I think we can all agree on is not great gameplay). I also very much agree that it would help to take another look at bounties, and the gameplay of large levels in general, because right now they're just disconnected mini-missions with a whole lot of travel time in-between, and nothing truly interesting to do while going from objective A to objective B.

What I think would also help, and what I think the OP doesn't really talk much about, is to update our control scheme on K-Drives, as well as their speed: even with weapons enabled and entirely new abilities, K-Drives may still see no use relative to Archwing, because Archwing is just so much better for traversal (plus you also get weapons and abilities there too). Thus, we should likely be going much faster while boosting on our K-Drives, so that the difference should be more one of raw speed (i.e. K-Drives) versus the inherent freedom and tactical advantage of three-dimensional aerial movement (i.e. Archwing).

Trouble is, right now it might not be such a great idea to increase our K-Drive speed, because K-Drive controls are so unwieldy that if we were to go even a little bit faster, we'd be ragdolling nonstop with every small rock in our path (and there are a lot more of those on the Plains now, in addition to bigger obstacles). This, in turn, I think comes from two main problems:

• Jumping in K-Drives is a predictive, rather than reactive move: in other words, whereas jumping in most of Warframe is instant, jumping while on a K-Drive needs to be charged up to reach full power, which requires the player to predict when and where they will make the jump (and also how high the jump needs to be). This is not great for navigating rapidly changing terrain at high speed, because at that point it is simply impossible for the player to see what they're going to be up against, let alone instantly make the fine calculations to make a jump that may already be too late to do at that point. The faster we go, and the more diverse the terrain, the more this becomes a problem.
• Controls are far too focused on tricks, rather than navigating terrain: in our parkour, pretty much all of our moves are designed for function, rather than for style. For sure, we look stylish while parkouring, and some options might be a little redundant (why do we even need to run if we can sprint?), but ultimately all of our inputs help us reach our goal. When we hop onto our K-Drives, however, most of our buttons end up converted to perform tricks: this could be fine on its own, except the end result is that we don't really have that many ways to negotiate terrain. We can't wall latch, wall run, or really do anything with a lateral surface, we can't slide for a quick strafe to the left or right, we can't brake easily, and as mentioned above, we can't easily jump out of the way of an incoming obstacle. Coupled with a ragdoll effect on collision that's funny at first, but that quickly grates the next few dozen times, especially when the collision in question occurs from some tiny ledge, and the result is a movement scheme that doesn't really feel ideal for just moving around.

With this in mind, I feel one of the things that will need to happen to K-Drives, especially if we're adding weapons and abilities, is to overhaul their current movement and controls, and preferably map them more onto our typical movement controls. Jumping should be based on tapping, not holding the jump button, and both the initial jump and double jump should feel good enough to instantly navigate terrain as needed. Grinding should stay, but should likely be made more three-dimensional, so that players can also grind on walls and other lateral surfaces, like a wall run (and, in fact, one may want to bind that whole move to ADS, as with aim-gliding and wall latching/running in parkour). Crouching on K-Drives should probably let us quickly slide in our chosen direction, and withholding movement commands should likely put us to an instant stop. Collision should probably no longer ragdoll or even dismount us, and should instead be as forgiving as possible, especially when it comes from small objects or differences in elevation we could easily be hovering over. With all this in place, the trick system I think should be adjusted to reflect this, so that the highest-scoring tricks should come from performing the longest string of K-Drive "parkour" maneuvers, rather than just mashing a whole lot of buttons that all could just be boiled down to a single, Press-X-to-do-trick button. Ideally, this should let us hover around at much higher speeds, without constantly cannonballing ourselves every time we go near a bush or whatever.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Teridax68

[(XBOX)Huggs93]

Someone, please tell me they weren't serious as someone who loves archwing ALL arcwings and how they are designed they do not need a nerf if anything they need a slight buff for the open world but even then they are fine. K drives do need to be faster and I'm a big fan of what Triburos mention about impaling people you drive through dragging people along or have 2 drones similar to the Itzal follow you around. imagine circling enemies and just having drones eviscerate enemies. K drives are more fun than utility and that is fine let archwings be the utility they are and further develop k drives to be fun weapons of travel

[EinheriarJudith]

i dont know what people are so worried about. i use itzal with hyperion thrusters i like it much better than blinking but thats just me.

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

Ignoring Kdrived entitely and itzal is kinda the only reasonable option purely for mobility. Further still you are better with itzal ignoring blink entirely than using another AWs abilities.

Fact is there is no benefit to either AW or KD than getting from a to b as fast as possible. The open worlds have key design issues that DE just doesn't understand.

They need to understand the core issues of "why and why not".

They do not. They just understand that A is better than B, C, D etc.

Well i admit they might understand why but i do not think they care. Implementation of the kind of changes to valis and plaind they need to have real benefits to using other archwings let alone K-Drives would require a total overhaul to their design of the open worlds.

And DE is all about ignoring issues in older content to push out new content.

[(PSN)GrandisSupernus]

3 hours ago, Voltage said:

If DE wants to promote K-Drive over Archwing, they need to force it onto the player like Amps for Eidolons and Arch-guns for the Profit Taker. Transportation is meant to go from A to B, and K-Drive is next to Dargyns on the list of "worst ways to get around". Putting K-Drive somewhere that is not solely for transportation and a requirement for a boss or vent-kids event or something would make it desirable because it is the only allowed gear item in that mission instance.

This is all starting to sound like some Dev is mad that people aren't using their carefully designed K-Drive system enough. Which, if it's just an added option (you know, an extra? For fun??) shouldn't matter unless we're trying to appease that one guy in a squad that swears and calls everyone else noobs because they have to wait for an extra ten seconds. Spamming the waypoint button to tell everyone else to hurry up. You know, The Worst. I don't go out of my way to annoy those people, because that would make me also The Worst, but I don't adjust my playstyle only to accommodate them either. So I use my K-Drive to get places. Because it's fun.

I'm not a fan of systems that DE has put in to "force" people into using gear that they don't like, like Operator Mode and Amps. I still don't like using those things, but if I want to kill Eidolons, pretty much everyone in the squad is going to have to use them. I can only go collect and fill Eidolon lures for so long before I have to begrudgingly drag out my Operator. And after all that, all it did was further taint my view of the Operator, and I don't think that's a good direction to go in. I use the K-Drive over the Archwing because I like the K-Drive. It's fun to use. That's the impetus for me to use it. If I didn't think it was fun to use, I'd like the option NOT to use it. And while I suppose that was the point of the original post here (that aggressively min-maxing people don't feel like they CAN use the K-Drive while Archwings exist) I don't know if a K-Drive-only cave system would help matters. I could be wrong on that, but no matter what, it would be a lot of extra development time for the devs and maybe a whole new map. People already have a problem with how long the Orb Vallis can take to load sometimes, and that would either have to get worse to implement this cave system, or it would be a separate loading screen just to get in there, which would defeat the purpose. I think. I'm no professional game developer (despite my best efforts...😞) so I can't say for sure, but it seems like this would be the case.

[(XBOX)Huggs93]

Someone, please tell me they weren't serious as someone who loves archwing ALL arcwings and how they are designed they do not need a nerf if anything they need a slight buff for the open world but even then they are fine. K drives do need to be faster and I'm a big fan of what Triburos mention about impaling people you drive through dragging people along or have 2 drones similar to the Itzal follow you around. imagine circling enemies and just having drones eviscerate enemies. K drives are more fun than utility and that is fine let archwings be the utility they are and further develop k drives to be fun weapons of travel