Majes1337
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Posts posted by Majes1337
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These are great changes; really happy to see this getting iterated on so rapidly and effectively. There are still a couple of issues I have that I do not see addressed however:
1) Sentinel weapons: why are Riven mods for these still a thing? It does not noticeably impact your game play, and just feels bad all around.2) The stat generation algorithm needs further tweaking to avoid useless rolls (IPS on elemental weapons, Crit on the Miter, etc.) and the variance on the values needs to be eliminated, or at the very least, significantly tightened up. (It's possible to roll a Riven mod with -100% damage. That does not let us to use our weapons in "new ways that typical builds don't encourage or allow")
3) The stats on the mods, frankly, are not interesting. They do not enable new builds. They do not encourage experimentation. They just take a gun and make parts of it better. Sometimes a little better, other times a lot better. Sometimes the mods make a weapon worse. For some weapons, all they need are slightly better stats. Most weapons however, would benefit from something more. This system has a lot of potential to unlock brand new play experiences that players could use to personalize their favorite guns. Just buffing the stats is not living up to that potential.
I love the idea and potential behind this new system. Once the changes mentioned in the OP go live, I plan to continue experimenting with my Flux Rifle mod. However, I cannot see this system being something that occupies much of my time/energy in Warframe until something is done along the lines of my above points, particularly 2 & 3.
As an aside - Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide had a lot of issues with their loot model at first, but now they have a really good system in place (mostly). I think the Riven Mod system would benefit from looking at what Vermintide does for their gear, rather than taking cues from games like Diablo and World of Warcraft.
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I love the change! The only thing I want to be different is, I would love to get rarity indicators for the different rewards, like has been done for relics. Exact % values would be great, but I would settle for color coding on the sortie reward table to indicate relative rarity.
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I actually like the idea behind Riven mods. Your design goals were apparent to me from the get-go, and I think they are admirable. I'm building a new Flux Rifle, that I probably never would have tried had I not gotten a Riven mod for it. I love completing the challenges. Before extending the system to other weapon types however, there are some things that I feel definitely need to be improved before Riven mods will be in a state I am truly happy with.
1) Remove Sentinel weapons from the pool. Thankfully, I did not get one, but a lot of other people have, and it just feels really bad. I use a Kavat, and I love it, so if I had gotten a Riven mod for a Sentinel weapon I would have been upset. We do not even wield the weapon ourselves, so it just feels like it would have no impact.
2) The stat generation algorithm should either be more contextual, or more weapon agnostic. It should not roll for stats that are useless for the weapon (like +IPS on an elemental gun). Alternatively, rather than having all the stats scale as a percentage, perhaps consider making some of them an additive base increase. +100% crit chance for Flux Rifle does not excite me, or change my view on the weapon; it only has 5% base, so increasing that to 10% is negligible. If it added +20% base crit chance however, that would fundamentally change how I mod the gun. It also would probably make things more balanced, as +20% flat crit chance would be great for the Flux Rifle, but not so much for the Dread (still pretty good, just not completely crazy)
3) Remove, or significantly lower, the scaling Kuva cost. As it is, the cost gets way too punishing way too quick. This is related to my next point:
4) Give us a way to affect the outcome, at an increased Kuva cost. My proposal is to have a tiered cost structure: a player could re-roll all the mod's attributes (including possibly the weapon type) for a relatively cheap amount. If they are happy with one or more of the rolls they got, they could "lock" one or more attributes that would persist when re-rolling. In exchange, the roll would cost significantly more Kuva, scaling to the number of attributes locked. (for example, to re-roll everything would be 1000 Kuva, to lock one attribute and re-roll would be 2000, locking 2 would be 4000, etc. Values subject to tweaking of course, but hopefully it illustrates the idea) By increasing the Kuva cost when locking attributes, it avoids punishing people with terrible luck, while still preventing all but the most dedicated from continually re-rolling to get the perfect stats. Of course, every re-roll would still need a new challenge completed.
5) Limit or remove the range of values for a prefix, and tie the negative stats into the prefix structure. The variance of this system is already extremely high, between obtaining a Riven mod at all, rolling the weapon, and rolling for 2-3 positive modifiers with a bunch of possibilities, and a possible negative. We should not also need to worry about getting +90% crit versus +150%. It does not add any value to the system in my opinion. One of the beauties of Warframe until now was the clear upper power level, and consistent stats across mods; every Split Chamber is just like every other. I like the idea of the randomized grouping of modifiers, but if two people have Riven mods for the same weapon with the same modifiers, the values should also be the same. Tying negative modifiers to the prefixes allows the variance to be kept high (you could have several prefixes with the same bonus but different negatives) while removing the variance within a prefix makes the system as a whole more sensible and less frustrating (and maybe easier to balance).
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I also experienced the same. I was doing Derelict Survival solo. Holding the key that reduces shields, I got the artifact and Lotus went into her dialog and Corrupted spawned in. However, when I extracted I got neither the mod nor the Orokin Cipher. Got Nova Prime Systems though, so at least it wasn't a complete waste.
Improving the New Player Experience
in Art, Animation, & UI
Posted
The three biggest questions I had, and that I frequently see being asked, are:
When I first started, I also had difficulty figuring out how to progress between planets, but thankfully the new star map makes that clearer.
One big help on the last point would be tool-tips in the foundry to tell you where to obtain certain materials. For example, one of the first Warframes people will try to craft will be Rhino. However, Rhino Systems require a Control Module to build. The number of people I routinely see asking where to find Control Modules in chat, or even worse, post stories about how they spent 10 of their starter plat on a Control Module because they thought it was some super rare material, is staggering. A little tool-tip that popped up when you hovered over the Control Module icon in the Foundry that said "Autonomy processor for Robotics. A Corpus design. Control Modules are a rare resource drop on Europa, Neptune, and the Orokin Void." would go a long way toward helping players.
My last bit of feedback is more on the game-play side, rather than UX/UI. The "Core Mods" are just way too difficult to obtain for new players without assistance. By "Core Mods", I am referring to the following: the base damage mods (Serration, Hornet Strike, etc), the multishot mods (Split Chamber, Barrel Diffusion, etc), the four 90% elemental mods (Fever Strike, Stormbringer, etc.), Intensify, Streamline, Continuity, Stretch, Vitality, Redirection, and Steel Fiber. These mods are the basic building blocks upon which every build is formed, and they are frustratingly hard to obtain for new players.
The first time I reached Phobos (back when it mostly used the Grineer Desert tile-set), I had only obtained Pressure Point, Vitality, Redirection and Stretch; I found it all of a sudden basically impossible to kill enemies and survive any reasonable time, and it was incredibly frustrating because I had no idea what was wrong. New players are already gated off from power due to needing endo and credits to rank up all these mods, not to mention limited weapon capacity to slot them, due to lack of Forma/potatoes; there doesn't need to be this annoying scavenger hunt for basic tools on top of it. Leave the mod hunt for more powerful/niche mods. The bounties and incursions help this somewhat, but I feel that at the very least the core damage mods for weapons should just be awarded to players, perhaps during the Stolen Dreams quest.
In fact, awarding these mods could also serve as a tutorial to the whole modding system. Have a quest where the Lotus basically tells you that you need to get geared up to take on the threats to the Origin System that have emerged since you first entered the Dream. One mission would be a Spy mission where you need to break into Corpus vaults to steal the Electric Mods. Then you have to search for caches on a Grineer ship to get the Heat mods, then an extermination mission against the Infested for the Toxin mods, then an Excavation missions on Venus for the Cold mods, and finally a 15 wave defense mission to get Intensify, Streamline, and Continuity. Between each step of the quest, the Lotus tells you to equip the mod on an applicable weapon. Or maybe you structure the quest so that one mission awards you all the core Warframe mods, another gives you the pistol mods, and so on. Regardless, there needs to be a clearer path for new players to obtain these basic building block mods, so that they can more quickly get to experience all the wonderful stuff that Warframe has to offer, rather than getting bogged down with no guidance 10 hours in.