Xavier
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Posts posted by Xavier
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@[DE]DrewDev What is going to be the new cap for Rank 3? Is it still 70k?
Edit: answered.
1 minute ago, [DE]DrewDev said:The max cap will not change.
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6 hours ago, fryhtan6 said:
I've leveled two different strikes and only got credit for one "zaw" isn't it bugged then?
In order for Mastery to be earned from a Zaw or Amp, the weapon must be gilded. I would imagine only one of the weapons you leveled was guilded, perhaps because you purchased it with platinum (the Zaws that are sold pre-built are also pre-guilded).
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We know that the mastery for a Zaw is earned by leveling each unique strike. We also know that leveling the (gilded) Amps gives mastery. Do we have any official confirmation from DE that the mastery for the Amps comes from the Prism (analogous to the Zaw's Strike)?
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IGN: Xavier
Mastery Rank: 23 (1398 in-game Hours)
Country: United States
Previous Clan: Cephalon Feisar
When I started playing Warframe: mid-July 2015
Do I have discord?: Yes! I'm active on RSB and a few other Warframe-based discords
A bit about myself: I've gotten a bit bored of doing the "bare minimum" to get through the grind toward the Great New Thing TM. I've been raiding with a few members of Quasars (like Seacamul, Kaga, and AthenaOdin) and I think that Quasars would be a perfect fit as I try to pursue very-high-level content.
(For raid stats: https://trials.wf/player/?user=xavier_rayne . I recently changed my IGN, so my trials record has been stripped.)
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On 5/22/2017 at 1:00 PM, MissDandi said:
Thing is whether they plan to bring it back or not they should give a free 5k to those clans and count it as complete until they have something. That way they aren't stuck behind older clans and having to stare at an incomplete.
This was exactly my point, yes. Thank you.
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1 minute ago, Ins. said:
I guess I was too busy finding the perfect spot for the trophy to notice. Thanks.
No worries. I feel like DE could have made it a little clearer that you needed to build it. x3
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4 minutes ago, Ins. said:
I hope the clan affinity will also be added with this fix.
3 minutes ago, Chameo62 said:Me too. Where is our clan affinity! We desperatelly need it!
The clan affinity is rewarded upon first completion of the trophy. You can see how much affinity you will earn if you go into the decorations menu and select the trophy. It will be displayed as "FIRST BUILD AFFINITY: [amount]" underneath the description.
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12 minutes ago, NeithanDiniem said:
It won't matter. Even with all available clan research, including the ignis wraith, it isn't enough to cap out another level. The max is 9. My clan is also missing some of those research items yet it is rank 9, meaning we got all the endo possible currently despite missing some research. Seeing as the kingpin system is near and the new darksector mechanics are progressing quickly, we will not likely get enough new clan weapons before their release to open up the next rank. Thus, it doesn't matter.
It won't make the difference between a Rank 9 clan and a Rank 10 clan, that's true. But I feel that's poor justification for having inconsistencies in terms of what clan research is and is not accessible. My concern is more with how this might establish a precedence for leaving content inaccessible to certain clans / players because the content is deprecated or old. Hopefully we'll see some more consistency once the kingpin system is released.
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12 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:
The parts are restricted to prevent clans from wasting resources on something they cant use right now and have no guarantee that it will ever return.None of the Dark Sector research does anything anymore, none of it can be used.
My clan has already completed all the other research. But the point that I was making was that the deployable specters are unable to be used, but can be researched. It seems inconsistent to allow clans to get some of the XP from Dark Sector research, but restrict other parts based upon the Armistice.
I understand that it's all going to probably be phased out in some fashion eventually, but in the meantime, I'd like to have the ability to research it to progress alongside clans that had the opportunity to do so before the armistice.
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12 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:
This research is more likely to be removed from the game, not given out without people being able to gain anything from it. DE is completely changing Dark sectors and the rail system, possibly even doing away with the rails entirely for all we know. You arent missing out on anything outside of the 5k clan rep, which is at this current point useless without the kingpin system.
But the clan reputation is still used for ascension, so that 5k could mean the difference between my clan getting 10k endo today or 5 weeks from now. And my point was more that if they're going to make some of the Dark Sector research avaiable, restricting other parts of it seems a bit inconsistent.
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So, I've been looking through my clan research and I noticed that the "Solar Rail - Tower Class" has been made unavailable for new clans due to the "Armistice".
Given that we have a completely new clan progression system now that Dark Sectors have been changed, and also given that we still have access to the specter research for the Dark Sectors that no longer exist, can new clans get access to this research... pretty please?
Supplementary Screenshot:
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17 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:
- Fixed built Exilus Adapters being offered as Rare Invasion rewards instead of the Blueprint.
This is extremely disappointing. I hope this change gets reverted soon. Considering that Exilus are awarded pre-built from sorties, wouldn't it be reasonable to keep the pre-built exilus reward in invasions as well?
This change makes the Exilus invasion alerts completely useless for most players that don't have a huge excess of forma to spend.
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5 minutes ago, chrisx1125 said:
Prime weapons will have one blueprint and X crafting components, which only show up if you have the blueprint.
I didn't find this confusing in the foundry , though I did find it confusing when trading since you need to go to either blueprints or crafting components, depending on which prime piece you're selling. It was also a little confusing that you couldn't trade a prime weapon - I made the mistake of building a Paris Prime before trying to give it to someone once.Yeah, this is my main issue with the current system. The situation I ran into yesterday was one where I wanted to know which components he had for a certain weapon so I knew which I could trade to him to help him out (since I've been playing a bit more recently than he has). In order to do this, he had to navigate all the way to his inventory whenever he didn't have the blueprint for a particular weapon instead of just going to the foundry components list (this is something that used to be possible, but was removed).
Perhaps I'm just blowing this out of proportion. But it would be nice to bring that back to being relatively accessible outside a nested set of menu dialogues.
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A friend of mine and I were talking yesterday about how much trouble it was to find out which prime parts you already owned if you didn't have the blueprint for a particular warframe/weapon/sentinel. I was thinking that maybe an additional dialogue could be added to the relic refinement screen so that all of the prime-collecting-stuff could be aggregated together instead of having to go: Esc > Equipment > Inventory > Prime Parts > Scroll alphabetically for everything.
What do you guys think? Have you noticed that prime parts are no longer listed in the Foundry as components? Do you think the relic refinement... thing is a better place for them?
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I recently encountered a bug during one of the infested salvage missions. During the stay-or-extract screen, the mission reward was listed as Nidus Systems but when we extracted the reward that was in the mission summary (and the reward that was received) was the Nidus Chassis. This was particularly frustrating as I had already managed to acquire the chassis in a previous salvage run.
Thanks for all your hard work, and well done with the new patch overall. Happy Holidays!
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I ran the Jordas Verdict just after reset today and encountered a bug in which other members of my team were not exiting their archwing upon entering the golem. That is, in the third stage after the your-shields-can't-run-out trench run, they entered the inside of the golem as teeny tiny archwings.
Clipping around for a bit or dying and reviving seemed to cause them to revert to their normal warframe states inside the golem. As the host, I did not encounter this problem.
This is the first time I have ever encountered this bug. Hopefully you can get this fixed as soon as possible. JV could use some love!
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@DE[Danielle] I have encountered this issue for the first time today. I completed both of the previous events, and have unlocked every node in the starmap. Hopefully you guys can get this fixed soon. Sorry to bother you on the weekend. Happy Holidays!
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Will the current droprate for Riven Mods in sorties remain unchanged with this update?
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Hey, everyone!
I just recently started my own clan and started decorating the hall of my dojo. I noticed that there were certain decorations (such as lamps and shrubs) that I would really like to be able to duplicate directly instead of having to reselect every time. Given that we have the new interface, perhaps they could bind "3" to duplicating an object when it's highlighted?
What do you guys think? Has anyone else had this same experience?
Edit: On the subject of the new decoration system, a shortcut to jump in and out of that mode would also be greatly appreciated in my opinion (both for the dojo and the Liset).
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"Megathread" is a tag reserved for the devs and the forum administrators. You should probably remove that. Also, TWW bug reports should probably go in this thread:
Make sure to check for duplicates before posting! :)
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[My apologies. I only noticed this Dev Workshop after I had posted my own thread on the subject. I will transcribe a slightly edited version here.]
Hello, everyone!
Below I have provided my views on the addition of our latest mod type, the Riven Mods.
What Went Right
First, I want to discuss what I believe the Riven Mods did right. In particular, these three attributes are most notable: meaningful unveiling quests, the potential for the MR requirement, and the increase in build diversity. It is worth noting that all three of these benefits predominately affect late-game players (and in this regard, I say "Well Done, DE!"). Late-game still has a great deal of issues to overcome, but I believe that Riven Mods can help assuage the concerns felt by the community regarding late-game content, especially by veterans feeling disenfranchised and forgotten.
Unveiling Challenges Reward Empowering Gameplay
The missions required in order to unveil the Riven Mods empower players by providing a niche for specialized builds (such as an Ivara with Covert Lethality) which encourage refinement, communication, and collaboration on these builds, in turn expanding the limits of what the player can accomplish. I believe that this niche provides a unique crucible in which players can refine optimal builds for particular tasks, and look forward to more content produced with this design philosophy in mind in the future. These challenges have been criticized for their variation in difficulty and how they introduce additional barrier-to-entry to new players, but I believe both of these costs are more than worth the benefit gained.
With respect to the concerns about the variety of mission difficulties, I think that many people understate the degree to which skill, experience, and proper builds can affect the ease with which these tasks are completed. If I rely on traps in order to perform synthesis target scans, for example, then I would find the synthesis challenge more difficult than some other players. I have yet to see any challenges that cannot be completed with a proper build and a bit of patience by a low-to-moderately skilled player. In addition, as of 19.0.3 several of these concerns have been addressed directly. To the allegations of barrier-to-entry, I would point out that Riven Mods are explicitly designed to be late-game content; just as DE does not design Raids to be accessable to new players, nor is it reasonable to expect Riven Mods to accommodate experienced veterans and blooming neophytes alike.
MR Requirements (Can) Reward Player Progression
The MR requirement for Riven Mods accomplishes two tasks at once: first, it establishes that these mods are late-game content, indicating to newer players that they should aspire to acquiring and including these mods at a later date after they have experienced more of the content that Warframe has to offer; second, it provides a gratification for players that can meet these mastery rank requirements that legitimizes their efforts and investment in the game.
Most notably, though, is the impact this has on those that are *just under* the mastery rank requirement for a particular Riven Mod. I believe that these mods substantiate and encourage the investment that players around MR 15-20 have put into the game right around the time they begin to encounter severe diminishing returns. At this rank, the extra 1000 daily standing or one (or two with potatoes) starting mod capacity loses a great deal of its significance and most if not all weapons have become available. Thus, Riven Mods encourage players that have already invested this far in the game to continue playing by rewarding them for the progress that they have made and providing incentive for them to progress.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:Firstly, we should all understand our goal and why this goal existed in the first place:
We want to give players something unique to them that can speak to their wider Arsenal. We want to give new life to the Arsenal in a non-static way.
Riven Mods were added to incentivize end-game players to revisit old weapons and to change up their play style. We’re all familiar with blazing through missions to the Extraction Point, but this system gives players new challenges that require them to test the creative limits of their Arsenal in their quest to Unveil their new Mods. Yes, meta weapons are in the selection pool, but Riven Mods are not needed to make this gear (like the Tonkor or Synoid Simulor) more powerful. What they can do is add an interesting buff to a comparatively underpowered weapon in order to encourage players to think outside of that meta box.
This is why we have prevented players from choosing what weapon the Riven Mod will be for; if we didn’t, we would end up with millions of Soma Mods and none for the Gorgon. The exponential Cycling costs are there to encourage players to try the existing stats before they embark on the journey to the ‘perfect roll’. For those of you who want to find the best Mod possible, that avenue is available to you, but that is not the goal behind this system.Raising the Ceiling for All Weapons Increases Build Diversity
There have been many vocal concerns raised about how part of the community feels that it is inappropriate for "good" weapons such as the Tonkor, Soma Prime, or Synoid Simulor to receive these benefits along side less powerful weapons. I vehemently disagree. Making all weapons more powerful increases the amount of options and interactions that can occur in mid-to-high level content. Sorties in particular benefit greatly from the combination of new weapons and the mission restrictions imposed, allowing for new and interesting builds to surmount or subvert difficult challenges.
While these Riven Mods allow for strong weapons to become even stronger, these weapons were already excelling at level-100 Sortie missions. Even endurance runs tend to rely less on the damage of weapons and more on the utility (such as Akstilleto Prime to deal with nullifiers, or Covert Lethality daggers that kill regardless of damage or health amount) when reaching the threshold of available high-level content. The only real issue I can see with allowing these weapons to become stronger is the impact that it may have on future late-game content; I will address this issue in another section down below.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:Your commentary about meta weapons has been taken to heart as well, and we will be tweaking the algorithm to account for 'Riven Disposition'.
'Riven Disposition' is the way in which power level of Mods is attuned to the weapon it is generated for. Mastery Rank and Stats will factor into this attunement, so you can expect to see more powerful Rivens for less used weapons and vice versa.
This modification will also affect existing Riven Mods to reflect our desire to give new life to ‘discarded’ weapons in a unique way, and not increase the power of the top tier ones.This makes me nervous, personally. What happens when an older, "discarded" weapon becomes more popular? Will it's Riven Mods get worse after it surpasses some threshold on the bell curve? In principle, I support it. In practice, I am concerned how viable this system will be. At the very least, I have faith that if it doesn't work out you will find an amicable solution to best serve the community.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:Secondly, this system will be slow to roll out and include iteration.
Perhaps you've noticed only Rifle Mods exist in the Riven tier at this time - this is no accident.
We want to hear what our community thinks, which is the reason why we only implemented these for Rifles. Perhaps there are tweaks to this system that can make these Mods more unique and interesting beyond randomized stats so that our intentions are clearer. This mechanic is something that hasn’t existed in Warframe before, and we want to be careful in making sure it doesn’t undermine our ultimate goals for the game.
We took a risk (Warframe wouldn't be here without risks), and the insight our fans offer us is so incredibly valuable as we work to make Riven Mods, and Warframe, better. As Developers, we want to emphasize: nothing is set in stone. Warframe is known to be always changing and adapting. Remember that groups work best together when respect is shown, so while we can and do look past a lot of vitriol to find what you think, it's better that you express your thought without it.What Went Wrong
The "elephant in the room", of course, is the RNG variation that these mods introduce into an otherwise relatively-stable build environment. If we describe certain attributes and gameplay within Warframe in terms of the genres from which they originate (such as the clans and raids fostering a collaborative community akin to an MMO or the implicit roles and classes within squads that resemble MOBA teams) then this change seems to borrow from the aRPG style of build progression and customization. I don't believe that this is an inherently bad thing, but it's important for us to understand this change within the context of aRPG game design.
aRPG's rely upon a very constrained statistical buff or debuff for any particular item in order to facilitate the variation inherent within that genre. Scott and Steve have discussed on previous devstreams how one of the things that they would do differently if they could go back and change the design of Warframe would be to reduce the amount of benefit that an individual mod provides on a pure mathematical level. Anecdotally speaking, it is much easier to accommodate the fringe cases for variation when the buffs you provide are 3% instead of 187%. It is important to consider, then, how the issues with random variation in any game become exacerbated in the context of a game like Warframe where these values, and the results of compounding them together, are heavily increased.
This section will focus on discussing how the variation described above can be mediated as well as addressing the poor communication that the players have suffered thus far and how Riven Mods may negatively impact the design of late-game content in the future.
Taming the RNG Beast
I believe it would be a grievous mistake to leave Riven Mods as they exist presently in the game. To allow the number of benefits, the number of detractions, the types of benefits and detractions, the values of the benefits and detractions, the maximum rank, the polarity, the MR requirement, and the weapon to which the mod is bound to *all* vary randomly is too much. It is simply too much. After a certain point, this amount of variation impedes rather than enhances the identity of each mod as unique and interesting. In the list below, I have collected recommendations that I hope DE will consider when implementing the next iteration of Riven Mods.
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The MR requirement and maximum rank both vary with little correlation to the value of the Riven Mods (in terms of damage or utility). While I would strongly recommend for any standardization of both of these attributes, I offer one solution in particular: scale the MR requirement by two or three with each rank of the mod. This would allow someone who is below a particular MR threshold to still be able to use a lower-rank version of the mod and further encourage that player to progress to unlock its full potential (see the above section on the benefits of MR requirements).
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In addition to the above point, please standardize the maximum rank of the Riven Mods. I maintain the unwavering position that both Auras and Riven Mods should have consistent maximum ranks. To do otherwise unnecessarily inhibits the potential for build permutations and in the case of Riven Mods, prevents the identity of a particular attribute combination from being fully actualized in a manner that overcomes the opportunity cost of traditional, pre-existing mods.
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Re-rolling is currently exceptionally heavy-handed and punishing. Having a geometrically compounding kuva cost with no upper limit potentially punishes players for investing in Riven Mods for weapons that they would like to use in a wider variety of situations. Thus, establishing an upper limit on the cost for re-rolling (for example, 5000) would prevent the feeling of gambling on potential lost investment when the kuva cost becomes too great to reasonably surmount.
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Re-rolling can also benefit from greater granularity. If there were options to re-roll a particular attribute for less kuva, or all attributes *and* the weapon to which the mod is bound for more kuva, I believe these alternatives would help lessen the frustration that players feel with this new system. Both Destiny and Tom Clancy's The Division serve as relevant precedence in this regard that demonstrates the community benefit afforded by greater granularization of customization.
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It is possible for "beneficial" attributes to provide no bonuses to a particular weapon. As a glaring example, gaining additional flight speed for a hit-scan weapon provides no real buff whatsoever. If these Riven Mods are balanced around the benefits outweighing all costs and detractions, these cases should be eliminated to prevent unbalanced combinations of stats from occurring.
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Given the amount of variation currently present in the Riven Mods, I find it hard to justify the necessity for the value of the benefit to fluctuate along with everything else. If I have a mod that gives damage, toxin, and status chance, while having decreased ammo capacity, that feels like a complete and cohesive mod identity. I fear that allowing the value of these attributes to change does little more than provide hidden, intangible power to certain mods that is not granted to others, while failing to allow for any meaningful decisions on the part of the player with respect to this variation; if someone is going to re-roll a mod in the current setting, they're going to do it because they don't like the attributes it has, not because the values are not as high as they would like. Please reevaluate the extent to which this variation provides value to the Riven Mods.
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It is currently possible to have a Riven Mod that gives damage, critical damage, and critical chance... on a crit-based weapon. It is also currently possible to have a Riven Mod with two (potentially useless) benefits and a glaring detraction on a nearly-universally desired attribute such as multishot. I do not see how this variation contributes to the identity, value, or niche of Riven Mods and would strongly recommend one of two alternatives: the first would be to standardize the number of benefits and detractions for each Riven Mod (e.g. all Riven Mods will have 3 benefits and 1 detraction); the second would be to assign relative values to each attribute to attempt to balance very strong benefits with equally meaningful detractions while avoiding overwhelming modest benefits with debilitating detractions.
- Sentinel weapons are currently included in the Riven Mod drop table. While I consider this to be a lower priority issue, I still believe that the consistency of the scope of the Riven Mods should be resolved. If the sentinel weapons are to be included, then shotguns, secondaries, and melee weapons should also be included if for no other reason than design consistency and functional orthogonality. If the scope of the Riven Mods is intended to be refined to primaries or even rifles, then sentinel weapons should be excluded from the drop table in the future.
My Kingdom for an Explanation
Many of the issues that I have with how Riven Mods were integrated into the game stem from DE's failure to effectively communication pertinent information to the players. There is currently no clear, in-game explanation (or reminder) for the fact that you need to have the Riven Mod equipped in order to complete the challenge to unveil the mod. Nor is it communicated outside of the "Mods" UI that Riven Mods can be re-rolled. Though perhaps more grievously, it is not possible to tell how many times a mod has been re-rolled yet. Apart from being inconvenient, this facilitates scams regarding re-rolling a mod and passing it off as having never been unveiled. Finally, a storage capacity of 15 has been established (seemingly arbitrarily) for Riven Mods, but it has not been explained whether that capacity can be increased and if it can, how to do so.
All of these lapses that I have listed can probably be supplemented by the wiki, the forums, and other third-party sources of information. But they shouldn't have to be. DE should be clearly communicating this information to the players as soon as new features like the Riven Mods are implemented, and failing to do so bleeds far beyond a simple inconvenience to negligence that facilitates dishonest trading and breeds frustration from players who don't understand why their mod has yet to unveil. I know that DE can do better, and I expect that they will do their best to improve in the future.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:In the past 3 or so days since The War Within has been released, our community brought up some very pertinent points concerning this system. The first is trading, and the lack of UI indication of how many times a Mod has been Cycled and the Weapon it is for, which will soon be added to both Veiled (after the initial Unveiling) and Unveiled Mods. For example, a Cycled Lanka mod will appear as Lanka Riven Mod until it is unveiled again.
This is wonderful news, but it does not address the issues with communication I discussed above. I hope that DE will prioritize more resources into providing this kind of information before hand to protect the interests of the players that are trusting that the information they are provided is genuine. In the case of these "Rifle Veiled Mods", this is an outright shortcoming.
Into This Brave, New World
The greatest issue I have with respect to game design is how these Riven Mods may affect the scope of late-game content in the future. If new late-game content is being made with the assumption that Riven Mods are readily accessible for powerful, meta weapons, then it is entirely possible that a large section of the community will be left unable to effectively complete and engage with that content. This, I believe, is the greatest risk incurred by these mods. However, there are additional concerns as well. As several other people have pointed out, if and when DE decides to transition into "Damage 3.0" the grandfathering of all the damage-inherent Riven mods is going to make things more complicated than they were previously. I would urge DE to strongly consider omitting Riven Mods from the equation when assessing the scope of content in the future (and the present issues with late-game scaling). Only time will tell if this will become an issue.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:Warframe content will not be balanced around Riven Mods, but Riven Mods will be balanced within their own ecosystem. We wanted this system to allow players to experiment with their Arsenal in existing end-game missions. It's not our intention to add content where these Mods will be necessary - it brings new ways of experiencing the existing game.
This is reassuring, but as some have mentioned before me, it does feel like PR. DE's word about what you intend to do has waned in value over time. I will reserve judgement (and maintain hope) until the next piece of late-game content is released.
6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:Prepare to see a difference in stats of existing Riven Mods in an upcoming hotfix.
[...]
These are just some immediate changes we will be making, but we will be taking the rest of your feedback into consideration as we further develop this system.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. The Riven system will go and change, and for those who choose to use it, this is a post that covers what you can expect!Do we have any details about how the stats of the Riven Mods will change? Or which will be affected?
As a parting note, I just wanted to thank everyone at Digital Extremes for all the hard work they've put into this game. Dialogues like these make me appreciate the extent to which everyone is invested in providing the best experience you possibly can. That effort does not go unnoticed. Keep up the good work!
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The MR requirement and maximum rank both vary with little correlation to the value of the Riven Mods (in terms of damage or utility). While I would strongly recommend for any standardization of both of these attributes, I offer one solution in particular: scale the MR requirement by two or three with each rank of the mod. This would allow someone who is below a particular MR threshold to still be able to use a lower-rank version of the mod and further encourage that player to progress to unlock its full potential (see the above section on the benefits of MR requirements).
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As a slight elaboration, the game resets at midnight GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which is not affected by any country's Daylight Savings Time. Thus, when Daylight Savings Time takes effect (and when it ceases) there is a relative change with the GMT timezone. That is why the game time shifts. :)
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Hello, everyone!
Today I am going to be discussing my views on the addition of our latest mod type, the Riven Mods.
What Went Right
First, I want to discuss what I believe the Riven Mods did right. In particular, these three attributes are most notable: meaningful unveiling quests, the potential for the MR requirement, and the increase in build diversity. It is worth noting that all three of these benefits predominately affect late-game players (and in this regard, I say "Well Done, DE!"). Late-game still has a great deal of issues to overcome, but I believe that Riven Mods can help assuage the concerns felt by the community regarding late-game content, especially by veterans feeling disenfranchised and forgotten.
Unveiling Challenges Reward Empowering Gameplay
The missions required in order to unveil the Riven Mods empower players by providing a niche for specialized builds (such as an Ivara with Covert Lethality) which encourage refinement, communication, and collaboration on these builds, in turn expanding the limits of what the player can accomplish. I believe that this niche provides a unique crucible in which players can refine optimal builds for particular tasks, and look forward to more content produced with this design philosophy in mind in the future. These challenges have been criticized for their variation in difficulty and how they introduce additional barrier-to-entry to new players, but I believe both of these costs are more than worth the benefit gained.
With respect to the concerns about the variety of mission difficulties, I think that many people understate the degree to which skill, experience, and proper builds can affect the ease with which these tasks are completed. If I rely on traps in order to perform synthesis target scans, for example, then I would find the synthesis challenge more difficult than some other players. I have yet to see any challenges that cannot be completed with a proper build and a bit of patience by a low-to-moderately skilled player. In addition, as of 19.0.3 several of these concerns have been addressed directly. To the allegations of barrier-to-entry, I would point out that Riven Mods are explicitly designed to be late-game content; just as DE does not design Raids to be accessable to new players, nor is it reasonable to expect Riven Mods to accommodate experienced veterans and blooming neophytes alike.
MR Requirements (Can) Reward Player Progression
The MR requirement for Riven Mods accomplishes two tasks at once: first, it establishes that these mods are late-game content, indicating to newer players that they should aspire to acquiring and including these mods at a later date after they have experienced more of the content that Warframe has to offer; second, it provides a gratification for players that can meet these mastery rank requirements that legitimizes their efforts and investment in the game.
Most notably, though, is the impact this has on those that are *just under* the mastery rank requirement for a particular Riven Mod. I believe that these mods substantiate and encourage the investment that players around MR 15-20 have put into the game right around the time they begin to encounter severe diminishing returns. At this rank, the extra 1000 daily standing or one (or two with potatoes) starting mod capacity loses a great deal of its significance and most if not all weapons have become available. Thus, Riven Mods encourage players that have already invested this far in the game to continue playing by rewarding them for the progress that they have made and providing incentive for them to progress.
Raising the Ceiling for All Weapons Increases Build Diversity
There have been many vocal concerns raised about how part of the community feels that it is inappropriate for "good" weapons such as the Tonkor, Soma Prime, or Synoid Simulor to receive these benefits along side less powerful weapons. I vehemently disagree. Making all weapons more powerful increases the amount of options and interactions that can occur in mid-to-high level content. Sorties in particular benefit greatly from the combination of new weapons and the mission restrictions imposed, allowing for new and interesting builds to surmount or subvert difficult challenges.
While these Riven Mods allow for strong weapons to become even stronger, these weapons were already excelling at level-100 Sortie missions. Even endurance runs tend to rely less on the damage of weapons and more on the utility (such as Akstilleto Prime to deal with nullifiers, or Covert Lethality daggers that kill regardless of damage or health amount) when reaching the threshold of available high-level content. The only real issue I can see with allowing these weapons to become stronger is the impact that it may have on future late-game content; I will address this issue in another section down below.
What Went Wrong
The "elephant in the room", of course, is the RNG variation that these mods introduce into an otherwise relatively-stable build environment. If we describe certain attributes and gameplay within Warframe in terms of the genres from which they originate (such as the clans and raids fostering a collaborative community akin to an MMO or the implicit roles and classes within squads that resemble MOBA teams) then this change seems to borrow from the aRPG style of build progression and customization. I don't believe that this is an inherently bad thing, but it's important for us to understand this change within the context of aRPG game design.
aRPG's rely upon a very constrained statistical buff or debuff for any particular item in order to facilitate the variation inherent within that genre. Scott and Steve have discussed on previous devstreams how one of the things that they would do differently if they could go back and change the design of Warframe would be to reduce the amount of benefit that an individual mod provides on a pure mathematical level. Anecdotally speaking, it is much easier to accommodate the fringe cases for variation when the buffs you provide are 3% instead of 187%. It is important to consider, then, how the issues with random variation in any game become exacerbated in the context of a game like Warframe where these values, and the results of compounding them together, are heavily increased.
This section will focus on discussing how the variation described above can be mediated as well as addressing the poor communication that the players have suffered thus far and how Riven Mods may negatively impact the design of late-game content in the future.
Taming the RNG Beast
I believe it would be a grievous mistake to leave Riven Mods as they exist presently in the game. To allow the number of benefits, the number of detractions, the types of benefits and detractions, the values of the benefits and detractions, the maximum rank, the polarity, the MR requirement, and the weapon to which the mod is bound to *all* vary randomly is too much. It is simply too much. After a certain point, this amount of variation impedes rather than enhances the identity of each mod as unique and interesting. In the list below, I have collected recommendations that I hope DE will consider when implementing the next iteration of Riven Mods.
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The MR requirement and maximum rank both vary with little correlation to the value of the Riven Mods (in terms of damage or utility). While I would strongly recommend for any standardization of both of these attributes, I offer one solution in particular: scale the MR requirement by two or three with each rank of the mod. This would allow someone who is below a particular MR threshold to still be able to use a lower-rank version of the mod and further encourage that player to progress to unlock its full potential (see the above section on the benefits of MR requirements).
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In addition to the above point, please standardize the maximum rank of the Riven Mods. I maintain the unwavering position that both Auras and Riven Mods should have consistent maximum ranks. To do otherwise unnecessarily inhibits the potential for build permutations and in the case of Riven Mods, prevents the identity of a particular attribute combination from being fully actualized in a manner that overcomes the opportunity cost of traditional, pre-existing mods.
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Re-rolling is currently exceptionally heavy-handed and punishing. Having a geometrically compounding kuva cost with no upper limit potentially punishes players for investing in Riven Mods for weapons that they would like to use in a wider variety of situations. Thus, establishing an upper limit on the cost for re-rolling (for example, 5000) would prevent the feeling of gambling on potential lost investment when the kuva cost becomes too great to reasonably surmount.
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Re-rolling can also benefit from greater granularity. If there were options to re-roll a particular attribute for less kuva, or all attributes *and* the weapon to which the mod is bound for more kuva, I believe these alternatives would help lessen the frustration that players feel with this new system. Both Destiny and Tom Clancy's The Division serve as relevant precedence in this regard that demonstrates the community benefit afforded by greater granularization of customization.
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It is possible for "beneficial" attributes to provide no bonuses to a particular weapon. As a glaring example, gaining additional flight speed for a hit-scan weapon provides no real buff whatsoever. If these Riven Mods are balanced around the benefits outweighing all costs and detractions, these cases should be eliminated to prevent unbalanced combinations of stats from occurring.
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Given the amount of variation currently present in the Riven Mods, I find it hard to justify the necessity for the value of the benefit to fluctuate along with everything else. If I have a mod that gives damage, toxin, and status chance, while having decreased ammo capacity, that feels like a complete and cohesive mod identity. I fear that allowing the value of these attributes to change does little more than provide hidden, intangible power to certain mods that is not granted to others, while failing to allow for any meaningful decisions on the part of the player with respect to this variation; if someone is going to re-roll a mod in the current setting, they're going to do it because they don't like the attributes it has, not because the values are not as high as they would like. Please reevaluate the extent to which this variation provides value to the Riven Mods.
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It is currently possible to have a Riven Mod that gives damage, critical damage, and critical chance... on a crit-based weapon. It is also currently possible to have a Riven Mod with two (potentially useless) benefits and a glaring detraction on a nearly-universally desired attribute such as multishot. I do not see how this variation contributes to the identity, value, or niche of Riven Mods and would strongly recommend one of two alternatives: the first would be to standardize the number of benefits and detractions for each Riven Mod (e.g. all Riven Mods will have 3 benefits and 1 detraction); the second would be to assign relative values to each attribute to attempt to balance very strong benefits with equally meaningful detractions while avoiding overwhelming modest benefits with debilitating detractions.
- Sentinel weapons are currently included in the Riven Mod drop table. While I consider this to be a lower priority issue, I still believe that the consistency of the scope of the Riven Mods should be resolved. If the sentinel weapons are to be included, then shotguns, secondaries, and melee weapons should also be included if for no other reason than design consistency and functional orthogonality. If the scope of the Riven Mods is intended to be refined to primaries or even rifles, then sentinel weapons should be excluded from the drop table in the future.
My Kingdom for an Explanation
Many of the issues that I have with how Riven Mods were integrated into the game stem from DE's failure to effectively communication pertinent information to the players. There is currently no clear, in-game explanation (or reminder) for the fact that you need to have the Riven Mod equipped in order to complete the challenge to unveil the mod. Nor is it communicated outside of the "Mods" UI that Riven Mods can be re-rolled. Though perhaps more grievously, it is not possible to tell how many times a mod has been re-rolled yet. Apart from being inconvenient, this facilitates scams regarding re-rolling a mod and passing it off as having never been unveiled. Finally, a storage capacity of 15 has been established (seemingly arbitrarily) for Riven Mods, but it has not been explained whether that capacity can be increased and if it can, how to do so.
All of these lapses that I have listed can probably be supplemented by the wiki, the forums, and other third-party sources of information. But they shouldn't have to be. DE should be clearly communicating this information to the players as soon as new features like the Riven Mods are implemented, and failing to do so bleeds far beyond a simple inconvenience to negligence that facilitates dishonest trading and breeds frustration from players who don't understand why their mod has yet to unveil. I know that DE can do better, and I expect that they will do their best to improve in the future.
Into This Brave, New World
The greatest issue I have with respect to game design is how these Riven Mods may affect the scope of late-game content in the future. If new late-game content is being made with the assumption that Riven Mods are readily accessible for powerful, meta weapons, then it is entirely possible that a large section of the community will be left unable to effectively complete and engage with that content. This, I believe, is the greatest risk incurred by these mods. However, there are additional concerns as well. As several other people have pointed out, if and when DE decides to transition into "Damage 3.0" the grandfathering of all the damage-inherent Riven mods is going to make things more complicated than they were previously. I would urge DE to strongly consider omitting Riven Mods from the equation when assessing the scope of content in the future (and the present issues with late-game scaling). Only time will tell if this will become an issue.
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The MR requirement and maximum rank both vary with little correlation to the value of the Riven Mods (in terms of damage or utility). While I would strongly recommend for any standardization of both of these attributes, I offer one solution in particular: scale the MR requirement by two or three with each rank of the mod. This would allow someone who is below a particular MR threshold to still be able to use a lower-rank version of the mod and further encourage that player to progress to unlock its full potential (see the above section on the benefits of MR requirements).
[SPOILERS] [PC] Update 23: The Sacrifice Quest Bug Report Megathread
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