Yareli - held back by Merulina

[(PSN)Unstar]

At the moment, I think the biggest issue with Yareli is that Merulina does more to limit players than it does to strengthen them.  I'm going to divide this into 3 sections: Offense, Defense, and Mobility.

Offense

When you're on Merulina, you gain survivability, but you have to give up both your Primary and Melee weapons.  This negates 2/3 of the player's options for how to deal damage, and means your only real means of offense is your Secondary Weapon.  However, unlike other "alternate modes" such as Titania's Razorwing and Hildryn's Storm Aegis, when Yareli rides on Merulina, she does not have access to an exalted weapon, and thus she can run out of ammo.  And if you do run out of ammo, it sucks to have to choose between your damage mitigation and your ability to deal damage.

A list of potential solutions:

• Make Primary and Melee weapons work on Merulina.  Undoubtedly a large technical challenge, but undoubtedly awesome.
• Give Merulina an exalted weapon that pairs great with Merulina.  Probably a big lift as well, though surely not as big as making melee work on Merulina.
• Have Merulina provide infinite ammo for secondaries.  The easy one!  And honestly, since mobility on a K-drive is pretty wild, probably not as overpowered as it might sound.
• Have Merulina automatically have Ammo Mutation for secondaries.  More hesitant about this solution since in theory I can imagine some users not wanting this?

Defense

In addition to losing access to weapons, Merulina prevents the player from using their Operator.  Many players use the Operator Arcanes as their primary means of healing, but the Operator cannot be switched to while on Merulina.  This means in order to access healing, Yareli has to disengage (and presumably later recast) her damage mitigation.  The flow of performing this process is tedious (especially at higher levels for damage is coming in much faster) and the additional energy cost for a recast is a bummer.  Other frames can swap to Operator without needing to recast their damage mitigation abilities, and Yareli's is hardly so amazing as to be worthy of a handicap.

Suggested solution:

• Allow Operator swap when Yareli is on Merulina.  I assume this would take some coding, but it would be a good fix.

Mobility

This is the area that is almost certainly the most subjective, so take this with a grain of salt; after all, some people love Zephyr's floaty jump, while other people hate it, and neither is "right".  But for what it's worth, I love K-drives, I just think Merulina needs some special functionality if she's going to perform in non-open-world content, because in standard tilesets Yareli she seems to lose more mobility than she gains by using Merulina.

Overall, my issue with Merulina is that it's very easy to lose momentum or even find yourself moving in the opposite direction you intended to.  For example, when I'm racing through a room and Yareli jumps and hits the ceiling, depending on the angle of the ceiling's geometry Yareli will be accelerated backwards until I'm actually moving backwards instead of forwards.  This is a real bummer because I feel out of control.  And there's so much geometry to bump or get snagged on.  I've never been reflected off of a surface while bullet jumping, and I would suggest that Merulina should work the same way.

In regards to simply losing momentum, this is a complex one, because you can run into objects or walls that seem to leech your momentum.  Which does make sense (an obstacle is in the way and you can't just go through it), but it's a problem on Merulina in a way that it's not when on-foot.  If I come to a complete stop as a Warframe, a single bullet jump gets me to my max speed again immediately.  Merulina has this problem where any slow-down means she'll need to accelerate again, which takes time.  Honestly, I dont know what to do about this, but my best suggestion is to allow Merulina to keep momentum even if something is in her way.  So if my aim is slightly off while going through a doorway and I end up spending a second sliding along the wall before actually going through the door, the instant I'm going through the door, give me back the momentum I had when I hit the wall (as long as my controller input suggests I still want to go in that direction).

Suggestions:

• Merulina doesn't move in directions that the user isn't pressing.
• Merulina stores momentum when impacting obstacles to easily get back up to speed again.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my feedback!

[Clowee]

I really like the idea of the ammo mutation for being on Merulina.  I've had to ammo mutation many of my 2ndary weapons for this frame because it seems like the 2ndary was not intended to be used all mission ammo wise.

[Vahenir]

12 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Allow Operator swap when Yareli is on Merulina.  I assume this would take some coding, but it would be a good fix.

This was added with the patch last week, though im not sure if its on console yet. Merulina will however be deactivated the instant you pop operator so you need to recast it when you go back.

The ammo problem is easy to solve with mods on the weapon really and i would barely consider it a problem at all myself. Of course it would be useful to have ammo mutation, but id rather have the damage reduction enhanced.
Adding melee and primary weapons to merulina is unlikely to ever happen as they would need to rework every single animation used by those weapons to work on the board. Its more likely they could add a secondary mode to the ability where you get the DR but dont have to ride the board.

Merulina would benefit a lot from a movement buff, but it would also make it no longer feel like a hoverboard. I'm probably one of the few that still dislike how much the new archwing movement setup feels like when you use noclip and similar in other games where there is zero inertia. It is a hoverboard, it should be a bit floaty, just not as much as now.

[Teridax68]

I very much agree with the assessment. Beyond Yareli's many balance problems, I think her fatal flaw is that the gimmick she's built around fundamentally doesn't work: her entire premise is being able to ride K-Drives indoors, yet K-Drives are terrible for indoor movement by design, as their tricks require a lot of verticality, they're incapable of letting us move quickly and make sharp turns at the same time, and their potential for exhilarating speed is constantly cut short by level geometry that is simply not made for it. Even if we were to buff every aspect of Yareli to be adequate, even strong, she would still have some serious gameplay issues because of this.

While it may be impossible to completely eliminate all of Yareli's problems, I do agree with the OP on how to address at least some of her issues: ammo mutation on Merulina would make it a lot easier to stay replenished on secondary ammo, reduced floatiness would make the ability feel less unwieldy indoors, and if we were to be able to use our full range of weapons (no doubt though at a great technical cost to DE), the ability would feel a lot less restrictive. My additional recommendations for Merulina specifically would include the following:

• Buff the damage reduction to 90%, or let us mod it to 90%.
• Allow us to heal Merulina by performing K-Drive tricks on it. The higher the score, the higher the healing.
• Allow us to mod Merulina like any K-Drive. The mod selection may have to be a little different, as Merulina functions somewhat differently from other K-Drives (hooray for consistency! /s), but it would still make the ability feel better to have around.
  • With this in mind, potentially give Merulina access to some completely unique mods that would change its movement more radically. One mod, for example, could prevent Merulina from floating at all when a movement input isn't pressed, whereas another could reduce its sprint speed and make us immune to wipes. 

[sunderthefirmament]

Merulina is also a pain to use when client side, as switching forms can be slow and unreliable.

 

Fixing this frame is going to be an uphill battle.

[Rey153]

Il y a 9 heures, sunderthefirmament a dit :

Merulina is also a pain to use when client side, as switching forms can be slow and unreliable.

 

Fixing this frame is going to be an uphill battle.

I believe Merulina should've came with it's own set of abilities just like Sevagoth's shadow does 

Giving you 3 more abilities that would make it worth it to use a VEHICLE that takes your mobility away  on a normal tileset 

[sunderthefirmament]

20 minutes ago, Rey153 said:

I believe Merulina should've came with it's own set of abilities just like Sevagoth's shadow does 

Giving you 3 more abilities that would make it worth it to use a VEHICLE that takes your mobility away  on a normal tileset 

It needs something, because right now it takes away so much and gives you so little in return.  The DR isn't enough to counterbalance the:

• terrible handling
• lack of vertical/aerial control
• frequent glitches
• loss of momentum
• loss of primary weapons
• loss of melee
• prevention of some PRESS X interactions.

 

I will say this- having Merulina does make the "Kill 20 enemies while riding a K Drive" NW challenge a lot easier to complete.

[Sojufueled]

15 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I very much agree with the assessment. Beyond Yareli's many balance problems, I think her fatal flaw is that the gimmick she's built around fundamentally doesn't work: her entire premise is being able to ride K-Drives indoors, yet K-Drives are terrible for indoor movement by design, as their tricks require a lot of verticality, they're incapable of letting us move quickly and make sharp turns at the same time, and their potential for exhilarating speed is constantly cut short by level geometry that is simply not made for it. Even if we were to buff every aspect of Yareli to be adequate, even strong, she would still have some serious gameplay issues because of this.

While it may be impossible to completely eliminate all of Yareli's problems, I do agree with the OP on how to address at least some of her issues: ammo mutation on Merulina would make it a lot easier to stay replenished on secondary ammo, reduced floatiness would make the ability feel less unwieldy indoors, and if we were to be able to use our full range of weapons (no doubt though at a great technical cost to DE), the ability would feel a lot less restrictive. My additional recommendations for Merulina specifically would include the following:

• Buff the damage reduction to 90%, or let us mod it to 90%.
• Allow us to heal Merulina by performing K-Drive tricks on it. The higher the score, the higher the healing.
• Allow us to mod Merulina like any K-Drive. The mod selection may have to be a little different, as Merulina functions somewhat differently from other K-Drives (hooray for consistency! /s), but it would still make the ability feel better to have around.
  • With this in mind, potentially give Merulina access to some completely unique mods that would change its movement more radically. One mod, for example, could prevent Merulina from floating at all when a movement input isn't pressed, whereas another could reduce its sprint speed and make us immune to wipes. 

Yeah, ground level kdrive changes are the solution, but it's complicated and they may not habe the resources or inclination to code it. Going straight into a wall would have to allow you to go up it like a half-pipe and into a k-drive wallrun state. In essence, wiping out should be hard to do.