Instead of changing Itzal teleport, give players more incentive to explore areas between bounty stages

[Xepthrichros]

Why do people love Itzal so much in the first place? The open world maps are beautiful. In your first few visits, you enjoy the view. But after a while, you are just there to complete the objective - be it hunting cetus wisps, or getting to a rare fishing spot fast, or moving between bounty stages, and especially so for bounty stages. The bounty stages can spawn quite far apart at times, sometimes literally on the opposite ends of the map, and thus people teleport from point A to B since these open world maps have no fast travel option (unlike other open world games). 

There was some talk (not sure if joking or serious) about changing Itzal in the recent devstream to stop people from spamming teleport. That seems like a shortcut route to just fixing an overused ability, which players use because there was no incentive to slowly walk or glide or drive around a K-drive once you are done with K-drive standing, or you are just not in the map for mining/fishing and the plan is to get the eidolon fast or bounty area fast; and you don't want to leave team mates waiting. 

I think to give people more incentive to not hop on their archwing, one of the current bounty stages should be removed from the list of stages and instead be turned into an ongoing side objective. That is, finding the hidden supply caches. This may make exploration more worthwhile. I.e. You start a bounty, can have 4 bounty stages, they are 1) exterminate 25 enemies. 2) defend console. 3) escort drone. 4) assassinate commander. But in between all that, there is an ongoing Optional Objective: Find 5 caches. (Sort of like when you do  Sabotage mission in the Void and there's a find 3 hidden caches side objective). Make these caches a bit tricky to find - beyond just finding them on loot radar, maybe it can require hacking a variety of consoles to trigger a supply drop with your reward, or some mini obstacle puzzle (imagine something like small lua ascension room type puzzles) in the Plains or on Orb Vallis (the caves and underground bases/camps of these maps have good potential for this), and let the caches have a chance to give some good stuff like a Tempo Royale or Bullet Dance, or Augur Secrets, or Arcane, or a bunch of Cetus Wisps or Toroids, or Nitain etc. Maybe people will then use itzal less and use K-drive more to explore the routes between bounties.

Then one day, there may be the inevitable Nightwave mandate to find 5 caches during a bounty.

 

 

 

Alternately, they can buff all the archwings and have every one of them have some variation of a mobility ability. The mobility ability doesn't have to replace anything on their current move set. Tweak one of their abilities so that it grants an acceleration buff in addition to whatever it does currently, so while not as fast as teleporting, maybe you can still be 70% or 80% as fast as a teleporting Itzal. 

 

 

Or just make both happen

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Xepthrichros

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Quests aside,

what about when you're doing casual open world stuff?

Like Conservation, or fishing, or toroid farming. Most of the time when I'm doing these things, I'll tag off a waypoint to the hotspot then blink my way there, not caring about the empty plains of ice in-between.

Maybe to give some incentive to K-drive or walk between these activities instead of rushing everywhere; give us stuff to do inbetween.

there could be Random Events, mini objectives that come up. stuff like capture drone, exterminate enemies, capture base, etc.

Kinda like those Random Incursions we used to have... ...oh wait... why did we get rid of those again?

 

[Xepthrichros]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

 

Kinda like those Random Incursions we used to have......oh wait... why did we get rid of those again?

 

Because the rewards were not worth the effort.

[(NSW)Fiftycentis]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

Kinda like those Random Incursions we used to have... ...oh wait... why did we get rid of those again?

As said above, rewards were not worth it, you can now start bounties from inside the plains, and honestly, I found them annoying with lotus bothering me with the damn drone while I was mining and couldn't give a * about it

[AlphaPHENIX]

If K-Drive tricks actually gave a reasonable amount of standing, I may still have the launcher in my gear wheel.
Note, that doesn't mean I would use it during missions, since I preffer the idea of providing air support. It would be even nicer if Odonata, the closest we have to a jet figther, wasn't the equivalent of Radial Javalin, forgotten and not viable.

But no, why buff the other archwings when nerfing one for doing what it was made to do is so much ''easier''.

[Xepthrichros]

Managed to dig up an old thread that complained about the incursion reward table... you can see why they removed THAT. If they implement my suggestion, these caches should should offer more exciting things, even at the common drop level.

The old incursions, which included mission tasks like escorting a drone for 2 minutes, or defending a console etc. (pretty much a task that is a bounty stage by itself) gave things like this:

 

 Rotation A

1000 Credits Cache Uncommon (12.65%)

1500 Credits Cache Uncommon (12.65%)

5X Iradite Uncommon (12.65%) <- which you can get a lot more of by running around attacking Iradite formations for 2 minutes

5X Grokdrul Uncommon (12.65%) <- which you can get a lot more of by running around and attacking Grokdrul drums for 2 minutes

5X Nistlepod Uncommon (12.65%) <- which you can get a lot more of by running around and attacking Nistelpod plant for 2 minutes

Maprico Rare (2.01%) <- which you can just get a lot more of by running around attacking Maprico Plants for 2 minutes

15 Endo Uncommon (12.65%)  <- which you can get a lot more of by just killing a couple of enemies.

and so on. many things they gave for 2 - 3minutes of work, you can farm the same quantity and more in half that time if you focused on gathering those things.  They did give some rare stance mods like Sovereign Outcast, Tempo Royale, Bullet Dance etc. in Rotation B but the reward table was so diluted with so many other useless things that nobody felt it was worthwhile, and the Lotus reminding us to do them, was just annoying, 

If they had wanted us to do a task that is equivalent to a bounty stage, the rewards should be equivalent in value to doing a bounty. 

But now we are digressing and beating a dead game mode.

In any case, for my suggestion, it is hoped the reward table is also valuable, even at the common drop level, including resources that people have need of, in decent amounts, such as Kuva, Endo, Toroids, Wisps, rare fish parts and gems, and at uncommon and rare drop levels, some gold stance mods, 60 60 status elementals, etc.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

1 hour ago, Xepthrichros said:

Because the rewards were not worth the effort.

And yet I did the Incursions when they popped up anyway

Why? because they're fun, and the point of a game is to have fun.

Being in minimax-speedrun-efficiency-farm-grind-mode all the time is Not fun.

 

Sometimes I don't want the formality of specifying a set Bounty...

[(PSN)chibitonka]

they could give the Itzals blink massive energy costs or give it a lengthy cool down between casts. Would remedy the problem without getting rid of a nice ability.

Like a cool down of 2 minutes per cast of blink. Or make blink cost 10 energy per meter covered in blink. Would run out of energy after 100 meters. 

Or they could implement both. 

Edited April 6, 2019 by (PS4)chibitonka

[Acos]

Scott isn't wrong for taking the simplest solution to the problem and fixing it. 

[(NSW)Fiftycentis]

7 hours ago, Acos said:

Scott isn't wrong for taking the simplest solution to the problem and fixing it. 

It doesn't mean it's the best solution.

As long as using archwing to fight properly in the plains is impossible (because you get knocked out of it after 2 seconds in fight) there's no reason to consider them more than transports, so buff the others to make them better at movement instead of nerfing the best one

[Acos]

17 hours ago, (NSW)Fiftycentis said:

It doesn't mean it's the best solution.

As long as using archwing to fight properly in the plains is impossible (because you get knocked out of it after 2 seconds in fight) there's no reason to consider them more than transports, so buff the others to make them better at movement instead of nerfing the best one

The discussion on the devstream was focused on how to make K-Drive competitive with Archwing (specifically Itzal) when a K-Drive was limited both by having to go around terrain and obstacles and the fact that Itzal can teleport an unlimited number of meters instantaneously contingent upon available energy. 

I imagine this might be before your time given your listed console, but Scott compared it to a period of time in Warframes earlier life where "coptering" was the most effective mode of transportation. If you are familiar with the melee slide/spin attack, know that it used to move you forward a horizontal distance based on your weapon speed. In a game before the parkour system it was an extremely fast method of transportation that forced players to use a very specific weapon in order to keep up with the meta crowd. This was troubling for the player because it limited player choice, and this was troubling for the developers because it meant that they could not develop a movement system that would be meaningful, or a melee system that players would actually use. Ultimately coptering was essentially taken out of the game, and players got the parkour and melee system you are more familiar with. 

Ironically, Itzal being as it is likely limits the merits of your argument. If one aspect of something is so dramatically outperforming every other aspect simply breaking everything else to be equally absurd might sound like a nice "please everyone" solution on paper, but it really limits the point of developing those aspects any further as there is no need too. Give everything an instant teleport ability and you doom Archwing and K-Drive to being very simple methods of transportation with no interesting gameplay mechanics attached to them. At that point you're better off scraping each thing entirely and just allowing us to fast travel. 

My point then is that it is better to nerf an outlier so that other systems and grow, be relevant, and offer enjoyment, than to simply sacrifice every other mechanic so that everything can be as broken as the outlier, just because that seems like the best way to please people. 

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

4 minutes ago, Acos said:

My point then is that it is better to nerf an outlier so that other systems and grow, be relevant, and offer enjoyment, than to simply sacrifice every other mechanic so that everything can be as broken as the outlier, just because that seems like the best way to please people. 

Disagree wholeheartedly with this point. Itzal was designed to be quick for AW missions. Nerfing it for Landscape stuff is going to affect how it functions in space combat and that irks the crap out of me.

Rather than nerf Itzal to the ground why not buff the speed of the other Archwings in sky mode? We know they tweaked the damage and speeds of them when we're in PoE and the Vallis (all of them are significantly slower than when I'm flying around in space). 

[(NSW)Fiftycentis]

8 hours ago, Acos said:

-snip

I know well what coptering was, I'm just logged with the switch account while using my mobile.

Well, to make k-drive able to compete with archwing (expecially in orb vallis) would mean that archwing would be so slow that I'll probably fall asleep trying to reach a point, or you speed up k-drives, which could be a better option.

But honestly thought, I don't think anyone always thought that k-drive would have been a faster way to move than archwing, it's just a more casual and funnier way to go around.

8 hours ago, Acos said:

Give everything an instant teleport ability and you doom Archwing and K-Drive to being very simple methods of transportation with no interesting gameplay mechanics attached to them. 

Archwings are no more than transportation anyway unless you buff them and nerf enemy ability to knock you out of them. I don't think giving a dash to everyone would help, just make them overall faster and able to be used for other things other than movement. Right now it's impossible to properly use them in combat before immediately seeing a "projectile incoming" and get you self set back on ground.

[Acos]

13 hours ago, (NSW)Fiftycentis said:

Archwings are no more than transportation anyway unless you buff them and nerf enemy ability to knock you out of them. I don't think giving a dash to everyone would help, just make them overall faster and able to be used for other things other than movement. Right now it's impossible to properly use them in combat before immediately seeing a "projectile incoming" and get you self set back on ground.

Exactly my point? AW cannot currently BE more than a transportation vector because Itzal has such a massive advantage in what it does. Even if you make AW viable in combat, you will still be forced into using Itzal because of the advantage it holds, unless you give every AW lightspeed capabilities at which point anything fun K-Drive can do becomes absolutely meaningless as well. 

Itzal has to be nerfed in order for any other aspect of the game to grow, much like coptering. That is the point Scott is making. 

If you're in favor of AW just being a method of transportation then I understand the defense of Itzal, but if you prefer AW to have some meaning outside of that you shouldn't also be in support of Itzal since its quick teleport invalidates any potential AW could have.  

[Methanoid]

their sparkly new open worlds become a lot less boring, a lot quicker when you can just zip across them in mere seconds.