Opinion of Loyal Merulina, from a disgruntled Yareli main (with tl;dr summary)

[Skoomaseller]

tl;dr at the bottom

I wanna start by saying no, I won't ever knock anyone who'll end up liking Yareli as a result of the augment. This is unnecessary gatekeeping, which is stupid. I'd use a stronger word but I already have 2 warnings, so stupid it is.

And don't worry, this isn't a post about the augment going against Yareli's core theme/identity or whatever (it does, but I'm not making that point here. Besides, there's more to love about her than just her main gimmick).

On the latest Devstream DE showcased a new augment for Yareli, Loyal Merulina.

What it does is it turns Merulina into man's best friend (an AI companion), yet gives you the benefits of Merulina without any of its K-Drive aspects. You get the 90% DR and the damage redirection, but also get full access to your arsenal, and you're free to use Helminth abilities. It also casts its own Sea Snares, presumably for free! As a trade-off, you lose access to Merulina Guardian, since you cannot use 2 augments for the same ability (an assumption based on observation as seen with Nyx's Assimilate and Singularity, and Atlas' Rumbled and Titanic Rumbler).

Now, what I predict is that many more people will start using Yareli with this augment installed. Most people, as proven by the 2023 usage statistics, don't use Yareli, and understandably so since K-Drives suck. This is not a secret, and even a Yareli main like myself can recognize this. Not to mention, the many bugs that still have not been addressed.

Now, Loyal Merulina seems like a "true" augment at first: it changes completely how the ability functions and opens up an alternative playstyle. However, what this augment also does is cover up the mess and jank that is Merulina. By eliminating the need to be on Merulina, the augment hides the bugs and glitches that come with it. 

In short, Loyal Merulina is a bandaid.

You may think "oh but like you said, K-Drives suck, they weren't meant for indoor use, bugged to hell, etc, so why not have this augment?" and I won't blame you for that, because it is true.

What I'm worried about is the extended period of radio silence from DE with regards to improvements for K-Drive/Merulina mechanics, bug fixing, until her inevitable Prime Access, or worse, indefinitely.

You see, I've not been silent about asking for improvements to Merulina. I've made a whole post about her bugs here:

 

 

And not everything on that list has been fixed. Mind you, Yareli is almost three #*!%ing years old now, and still many of these bugs still persist. And these are just the ones I, and members of the community, have found. The radio silence that is already happening, is truly deafening. 

What the introduction of Loyal Merulina tells me, is that at best, DE is still holding off on fixing and improving Yareli, and at worst they've given up. 

This doesn't bode well for long time Yareli mains like myself, since it could mean that going forward, if Yareli becomes more popular as a result of the augment, they won't bother fixing base Yareli/Merulina, since most people (the very same people who asked for Merulina to be a hat or a backpack or whatever) won't encounter the bugs associated with Merulina. They'll see even fewer reasons than now to tackle them, because why put in the painstakingly arduous effort into debugging Merulina, when most people are on the augment? 

Mind you, this is merely a prediction of future events. Given the radio silence already happening today with regards to Merulina bugs though, I don't think I'm too far off.

tl;dr: I welcome more people finally playing Yareli (though a little sad it'll be without actually using Merulina as originally intended), even if it's through the augment's introduction, but the fact that the augment will be introduced at all tells me DE may have given up on trying to fix Merulina, which doesn't sit right with me. 

Edited February 26 by Skoomaseller

[Hexerin]

Posting my acknowledgement of your concerns, and my support for Yareli's many issues being fixed.

[Skoomaseller]

Just now, Hexerin said:

Posting my acknowledgement of your concerns, and my support for Yareli's many issues being fixed.

Cheers.

[DrivaMain]

The one big turn off of Yareli for me is the unmoddable Merulina. Let me make some meme builds with K-Drive Mods DE! It's not like I'll trivialize the already trivialized gameplay that screams "NERF ME" using a modded K-Drive.

[Pakaku]

44 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

In short, Loyal Merulina is a bandaid.

Pretty much every augment is a bandaid... what else is new. I'm not surprised the devs are as stubborn and avoidant as ever to design a whole companion out of a skateboard.

[quxier]

24 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

You get the 90% DR and the damage redirection

It's assumption.

27 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

 

Now, Loyal Merulina seems like a "true" augment at first: it changes completely how the ability functions and opens up an alternative playstyle. However, what this augment also does is cover up the mess and jank that is Merulina. By eliminating the need to be on Merulina, the augment hides the bugs and glitches that come with it. 

In short, Loyal Merulina is a bandaid.

AFAIR, one that posted suggestion about this mentioned this as well.

30 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

The radio silence that is already happening, is truly deafening. 

Let me give you Brug (bro hug). Welcome to the family. It happens a lot.

39 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

tl;dr: I welcome more people finally playing Yareli (though a little sad it'll be without actually using Merulina as originally intended), even if it's through the augment's introduction, but the fact that the augment will be introduced at all tells me DE may have given up on trying to fix Merulina, which doesn't sit right with me. 

The most people that wanted to play Yareli would already play her. You can already use 1, 3, 4 and passive. Some Sea snares won't change it too much - you have it already on 1. Damage reduction that require mod? Just slap adaptation and/or rolling guard.

If it was some sort of tap/hold functionality that you can change midsession then they could at leas allow helminht in automatic proces (you need to press/hold just one key - You are on Merulina > you try to cast Helminth > Yareli changes into "pet mode" & cast helminth > turn on Merulina again).

[Skoomaseller]

10 minutes ago, quxier said:

It's assumption.

AFAIR, one that posted suggestion about this mentioned this as well.

Let me give you Brug (bro hug). Welcome to the family. It happens a lot.

The most people that wanted to play Yareli would already play her. You can already use 1, 3, 4 and passive. Some Sea snares won't change it too much - you have it already on 1. Damage reduction that require mod? Just slap adaptation and/or rolling guard.

If it was some sort of tap/hold functionality that you can change midsession then they could at leas allow helminht in automatic proces (you need to press/hold just one key - You are on Merulina > you try to cast Helminth > Yareli changes into "pet mode" & cast helminth > turn on Merulina again).

I'm uhhh not sure what you're talking about. 

[trst]

Honestly I doubt the augment will do much at all to her popularity since the frame is entirely usable without Merulina and is even a free Helminth slot for those who hate the ability. Making it a bandaid only for players who refuse to play her because "ew K-drive". And at which point they deserve to sack a mod slot for something they can already "fix" yet choose not to.

And with that I doubt it'd also change DE's prioritization on fixing whatever bugs she has. As it's unlikely for her popularity to change enough either way for DE to put more or less effort into addressing them.

Also skimming that list of bugs I'm not all that surprised that DE hasn't fixed them as they all seem to be rather specific/niche scenarios and/or aren't game breaking concerns. And niche edge cases that aren't causing significant issues on a low popularity frame is the perfect storm of issues getting repeatedly pushed back for more pressing concerns.

[Skoomaseller]

46 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

The one big turn off of Yareli for me is the unmoddable Merulina. Let me make some meme builds with K-Drive Mods DE! It's not like I'll trivialize the already trivialized gameplay that screams "NERF ME" using a modded K-Drive.

Conspiracy theory: If you use Vapor Trail in conjunction with Nitro Boost in missions, there is a chance that a traffic police officer will come to your house and issue you a speeding ticket. To prevent players from getting fined even more when Yareli was released, DE decided to block modding on Merulina altogether. 

Edited February 26 by Skoomaseller

[Slayer-.]

Why didn't they just use a toggle, press to ride board, hold press to run around beside it?  Seems simple,e enough in my mind.  

Making a player drop a mod for an augment to look cool, I guess seems destructive.

[Hexerin]

4 hours ago, quxier said:

It's assumption.

It's not an assumption, we can literally see that the 90% damage redirection is happening in the devstream.

[ReddyDisco]

This is a bandaid, trying to track down the culprit that causes all the bugs in merulina is probably too much drain of resources and a lot of effort so the next best thing is to add an augment that removes the need for k-drive indoors altogether. Maybe this was done to increase play of yareli before her deluxe this year, bolster the sales.

[quxier]

7 hours ago, Skoomaseller said:

I'm uhhh not sure what you're talking about. 

Sorry to hear that. Sadly I cannot help because I don't know what exactly you don't understand.

3 hours ago, Hexerin said:

7 hours ago, quxier said:

It's assumption.

It's not an assumption, we can literally see that the 90% damage redirection is happening in the devstream.

Ok, it's applies to Merulina. Does it applies to Yareli as well? Maybe. but you don't have any mod config. Maybe it's adaptation or something causing that *cough* 90% damage reduction *cough*. It's just rank 40 enemies, in the corridor, CCed by merulina (Sea snare).

 

[SpiritTeA]

Yareli problem is not K-Drive, Yareli problem is some completely ****** farming. Probably among the worst. I finished quest just to find out I need to do something else (God knows what without wiki) to get her parts. Well nope. No way. Just f@ck it. It’s good I had platinum from prime access and bought whole Yareli bundle, otherwise I’d still won’t have her.

That’s why this augment won’t fix anything.

 

And regarding radio-silence from DE, I might assume that’s not because DE deliberately doesn’t want to fix it, but “can’t” find a way to fix those bugs in that spaghetti code mess without huge resource investment. 

Edited February 26 by SpiritTeA

[Skoomaseller]

55 minutes ago, quxier said:

Sorry to hear that. Sadly I cannot help because I don't know what exactly you don't understand.

i just don't know what point you were trying to make. not to insult you, please understand, but perhaps you could phrase what you trying to say a bit better? again very sorry.

56 minutes ago, quxier said:

Ok, it's applies to Merulina. Does it applies to Yareli as well? Maybe. but you don't have any mod config. Maybe it's adaptation or something causing that *cough* 90% damage reduction *cough*. It's just rank 40 enemies, in the corridor, CCed by merulina (Sea snare).

The DR should apply to Yareli as well otherwise it wouldn't really make sense to run the augment at all. 

[Skoomaseller]

46 minutes ago, SpiritTeA said:

Yareli problem is not K-Drive, Yareli problem is some completely ****** farming. Probably among the worst. I finished quest just to find out I need to do something else (God knows what without wiki) to get her parts. Well nope. No way. Just f@ck it. It’s good I had platinum from prime access and bought whole Yareli bundle, otherwise I’d still won’t have her.

That’s why this augment won’t fix anything. 

no her problem is definitely the k-drive, waverider isn't too hard.

47 minutes ago, SpiritTeA said:

And regarding radio-silence from DE, I might assume that’s not because DE deliberately doesn’t want to fix it, but “can’t” find a way to fix those bugs in that spaghetti code mess without huge resource investment. 

yeah i get that there's challenges to tackling them between allocating time for it and actually finding out how to fix them, but cmon. it's been 3 years. this isn't the standard I'd expect from a company who has been keeping the game afloat for years now. 

[SpiritTeA]

6 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

no her problem is definitely the k-drive, waverider isn't too hard.

Yes Wavedriver isn’t hard, I did it very fast when I get into K-Drive. But you completely ignored my statement. WAVEDRIVER DOES NOT GIVE YOU MERULINA. Unlike Khora which can be farmed in Sanctuary Onslaught with ridiculous droprates(and you can actually realize it when you start getting her blueprints in SO), I have 0 clues where to farm Yareli. Game doesn’t tell me where to farm her, her parts aren’t even brought from Ventkids. I still have no clue where and how to farm her.

[Skoomaseller]

8 hours ago, trst said:

Also skimming that list of bugs I'm not all that surprised that DE hasn't fixed them as they all seem to be rather specific/niche scenarios and/or aren't game breaking concerns. And niche edge cases that aren't causing significant issues on a low popularity frame is the perfect storm of issues getting repeatedly pushed back for more pressing concerns.

this somewhat lax attitude is likely what DE has adopted with regards to her bugs and it ticks me off so much. there's some that impact her gameplay quite a bit, and others a little less, but they all add up to sour the overall experience. 

doesn't bode well for Yareli's future. but I already knew that, I suppose. I'm still holding out some hope for even a slight improvement to the overall experience, or even some small fixes in the future (and hopefully before her prime access).

Naive? probably, even though I've been around for a while. 

[Skoomaseller]

1 minute ago, SpiritTeA said:

Yes Wavedriver isn’t hard, I did it very fast when I get into K-Drive. But you completely ignored my statement. WAVEDRIVER DOES NOT GIVE YOU MERULINA. Unlike Khora which can be farmed in Sanctuary Onslaught with ridiculous droprates(and you can actually realize it when you start getting her blueprints in SO), I have 0 clues where to farm Yareli. Game doesn’t tell me where to farm her, her parts aren’t even brought from Ventkids. I still have no clue where and how to farm her.

this is more of a lack of info problem than a strictly Yareli problem, don't you think?

her parts can be researched in the ventkids' bash lab in your dojo.

I will say though, it's just completely stupid to create a new room, JUST for her parts, and the ghoulsaw parts when it could've all just been in the tenno lab (for yareli) and the grineer lab (for the ghoulsaw). like why even go through the effort to create something so meaningless lmfao

[MutoManiac]

The only issue I've come across now that I’m actually playing her, is that pressing forward and jumping from a stand still position while on merulina doesn’t really make you move a bit forward. You just kind of go straight up and fall back down as if you don’t even have the forward key pressed. The solution is to roll while jumping if you wanted to move forward from being stationary. That’s the only issue for me so far and she’s a ton of fun.

Everyone complains about the quest to get her, but you can cheese it by getting a moddable k-drive first and just one extra jump height mod. If you try to do the quest with the free k-drive, you’ll probably regret it.

The new augment is just weird that makes you not use merulina. What’s the point in using her then? The reason I like her is that she has a different way to move around tilesets just like Titania and Wukong which makes her fun.

[Drachnyn]

I think your worries are well founded. Yareli's problem is that Kdrives are so restrictive for 0 upside. She has to trade in both primary and melee, and helminth abilities on top of that to get what nezha gets without having to give up anything. DE messed up here when they introduced kdrives with all those restrictions in place. Those didnt even make sense back then.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

10 hours ago, Skoomaseller said:

the fact that the augment will be introduced at all tells me DE may have given up on trying to fix Merulina, which doesn't sit right with me. 

DE painted themselves into a corner by constantly making new frames, while the rate of reworks and fixes for frames was almost nothing in comparison. most fixes are done to the newest frame to ensure it still sells (Xaku and Kullervo come to mind) but once the community "accepts" it, it gets left for months or even years. look how long it's taken just to get them to acknowledge Mirage's Eclipse needed fixing.. I love DE but they are WAY out of touch with how a lot of frames are used/not used, and no, posting usage stats doesn't prove anything: that just shows they have the numbers, not that they are willing to address the reasons why the numbers are the way they are. it's easy to say "Caliban is never used", without asking "why is Caliban never used?"

we now have so many frames that it's pretty much impossible now for there to be consistent reworks, and yeah, it grinds my gears a lot. Yareli is unfortunately just one of several frames that are on the pile of "effective enough but could be much better" along with Chroma, Equinox, Loki, etc. 

42 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

it's just completely stupid to create a new room, JUST for her parts, and the ghoulsaw parts when it could've all just been in the tenno lab (for yareli) and the grineer lab (for the ghoulsaw). like why even go through the effort to create something so meaningless lmfao

it also means those damn kids are forever in my dojo now.. touching all my decorations with their grubby little hands... pests, the lot of them!

 

[Skoomaseller]

40 minutes ago, MutoManiac said:

The new augment is just weird that makes you not use merulina. What’s the point in using her then? The reason I like her is that she has a different way to move around tilesets just like Titania and Wukong which makes her fun.

it is aimed at people who don't want to ride Merulina/deal with kdrive mechanics, but want the damage reduction and full arsenal. 

I can see the "what's the point" angle, yeah, because I kinda agree that if you're gonna use the augment you might as well just use another frame (mind you this is NOT me trying to gatekeep) who doesn't need to dedicate 1 slot to an augment, or doesn't even come with Merulina in the first place yet still offers similar buffs like damage reduction, on top of weapon damage buffs or armor strip. 

Edited February 26 by Skoomaseller

[Skoomaseller]

4 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

DE painted themselves into a corner by constantly making new frames, while the rate of reworks and fixes for frames was almost nothing in comparison. most fixes are done to the newest frame to ensure it still sells (Xaku and Kullervo come to mind) but once the community "accepts" it, it gets left for months or even years. look how long it's taken just to get them to acknowledge Mirage's Eclipse needed fixing.. I love DE but they are WAY out of touch with how a lot of frames are used/not used, and no, posting usage stats doesn't prove anything: that just shows they have the numbers, not that they are willing to address the reasons why the numbers are the way they are. it's easy to say "Caliban is never used", without asking "why is Caliban never used?"

we now have so many frames that it's pretty much impossible now for there to be consistent reworks, and yeah, it grinds my gears a lot. Yareli is unfortunately just one of several frames that are on the pile of "effective enough but could be much better" along with Chroma, Equinox, Loki, etc. 

agreed 

4 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

 it also means those damn kids are forever in my dojo now.. touching all my decorations with their grubby little hands... pests, the lot of them!

we should throw them out into open space via Railjack. that'll teach those whippersnappers some respect 😤

[MutoManiac]

1 minute ago, Skoomaseller said:

it is aimed at people who don't want to ride Merulina/deal with kdrive mechanics, but want the damage reduction and full arsenal. 

I know, but you can do that with any frame so it’s just a weird thing they are doing. The players who like Yareli won’t use it and others will not see a reason to use her since her other abilities are nothing special. Hopefully they’ll eventually rethink it and just incorporate the “companion” merulina as a toggle so we don’t need an augment.