Get rid of primary and secondary “mandatory” mods give us Stances instead

[jfhsanseiIII]

Here’s an idea I’ve been juggling for a while. I welcome all feedback be it positive or negative. Please keep it constructive though.  

 

All primary and secondary weapons have mods that always need need to be put on with very few exceptions. Primaries have serration and split chamber that we put in. Shotguns and secondaries have their respective versions.  I propose we get rid of the mods that affect those stats in favor of a single item we can get once as a primary/shotgun/secondary add-on that affects them In perpetuity.  So, we no longer need to deal with them.  Dual stat mods like lethal torrent will, for the monent, remain as is.  

Once those are taken care of we can get stance mods.  Mods that give your weapon a boost in damage if you meet a certain requirement.  Three examples;

Gut Shot (for shotguns): shooting your target in the stomach causes them to double over and any headshots by the shotgun have their damage doubled, on that target, for three seconds. 

Ricochet  (snipers): when zooming all enemies will be highlighted in a certain area. Hitting an enemy in that area causes the bullet to ricochet and hit the next closest enemy for the same damage.  Hitting that enemy within 3 seconds will increase the damage by 10%, reset the timer, and continue the increase in damage until the timer falls off. 

Shattered Rounds (rifles): killing an enemy causes the last round you shoot to split apart and hit an additional three enemies for a small amount and increasing your multi shot by 5% for five seconds. Killing any of the enemies hit by the fractured round will increase the timer an additional 5 seconds, up to a maximum of ten seconds, and increasing your multi shot. 

 

The idea is to take away the mandatory mods and replace them with stances that’ll keep gun play fast and fun. The examples I gave are just spit balls and you can tear them apart or toss in your own ideas. 

 

 

[Razorv2]

First, you cant replace serration or split chamber, dmg drop is very noticeable and enemy scaling is nuts so no. 

Though your ideas are good. They will not remove or replace them as long as these enemy scaling exist. 

Second, A lot of good weapons are crit reliant, if you have no dmg to multiply, why build crit? 

[jfhsanseiIII]

3 minutes ago, Razorv2 said:

First, you cant replace serration or split chamber, dmg drop is very noticeable and enemy scaling is nuts so no. 

Though your ideas are good. They will not remove or replace them as long as these enemy scaling exist. 

Second, A lot of good weapons are crit reliant, if you have no dmg to multiply, why build crit? 

That’s why I said make them a single drop that is added to all weapons always. 

[peterc3]

Your use of stances conjures the existing use, that is - a mod that adds capacity and changes the animations for melee weapons. Guns do not need more capacity. Especially if you are getting rid of existing damage mods only to open up slots for more damage mods.

If this problem was as simple as people pretend it is, DE would have changed it years ago.

[Xaero]

I don't see why it should be capacity messing stances instead of just new mods.

18 minutes ago, Razorv2 said:

First, you cant replace serration or split chamber, dmg drop is very noticeable and enemy scaling is nuts so no.

The goal is build diversity, not making weapons weak. Increasing damage can be a thing tied to levelling the weapon (this was even suggested by devs long ago).

[Urlan]

27 minutes ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

Here’s an idea I’ve been juggling for a while. I welcome all feedback be it positive or negative. Please keep it constructive though.  

 

All primary and secondary weapons have mods that always need need to be put on with very few exceptions. Primaries have serration and split chamber that we put in. Shotguns and secondaries have their respective versions.  I propose we get rid of the mods that affect those stats in favor of a single item we can get once as a primary/shotgun/secondary add-on that affects them In perpetuity.  So, we no longer need to deal with them.  Dual stat mods like lethal torrent will, for the monent, remain as is.  

Once those are taken care of we can get stance mods.  Mods that give your weapon a boost in damage if you meet a certain requirement.  Three examples;

Gut Shot (for shotguns): shooting your target in the stomach causes them to double over and any headshots by the shotgun have their damage doubled, on that target, for three seconds. 

Ricochet  (snipers): when zooming all enemies will be highlighted in a certain area. Hitting an enemy in that area causes the bullet to ricochet and hit the next closest enemy for the same damage.  Hitting that enemy within 3 seconds will increase the damage by 10%, reset the timer, and continue the increase in damage until the timer falls off. 

Shattered Rounds (rifles): killing an enemy causes the last round you shoot to split apart and hit an additional three enemies for a small amount and increasing your multi shot by 5% for five seconds. Killing any of the enemies hit by the fractured round will increase the timer an additional 5 seconds, up to a maximum of ten seconds, and increasing your multi shot. 

 

The idea is to take away the mandatory mods and replace them with stances that’ll keep gun play fast and fun. The examples I gave are just spit balls and you can tear them apart or toss in your own ideas. 

 

 

While I think the stance idea is a sound one, adding points and different playstyles to the weapons but to remove mandatory mods one would have to re-balance the enemies entirely. Making enemies have a power plateau as we players do would be a good start and would justify removing progression mods - either building them into the weapon or warframe or removing them outright.

[jfhsanseiIII]

9 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Your use of stances conjures the existing use, that is - a mod that adds capacity and changes the animations for melee weapons. Guns do not need more capacity. Especially if you are getting rid of existing damage mods only to open up slots for more damage mods.

If this problem was as simple as people pretend it is, DE would have changed it years ago.

Again it’s not getting rid of the mod(s), just making it a single add-on that is always added to weapons.  The stance mods would be there to change how we play and encourage some different playstyles.  They don’t even need to be straight damage increases but could include effects when a certain requirement is met.  

[MysticDragonMage]

i feel as if this is one of those "save a mod slot" concepts. because, yeah, damage and multishot mods are mandatory and guarantee two slots covered for all builds, but they are both two different mods for a good reason. while one mod type is just pure damage, the other multiplies not only that damage, but crit, crit chance, status chance, status damage; if we just had one mod that does more damage base combined with the damage multishot offered, that would be a massive nerf.

we are lucky to have something like multishot in the first place.

however, i like your idea of "firearm stances" rewarding players for doing certain actions.

for example, a mod like "my day" would be a single-pistol stance that increase damage for knocked down enemies.

or "commando" would be an assault rifle stance that decrease recoil and bullet spread when crouching.

i think this would increase the combat quality of the gun-play, because you would have more people performing skill shots and maneuver more often with firearms.

Edited August 24, 2018 by MysticDragonMage
fixed my wording.

[jfhsanseiIII]

4 minutes ago, MysticDragonMage said:

i feel as if this is one of those "save a mod slot" concepts. because, yeah, damage and multishot mods are mandatory and guarantee two slots covered for all builds, but they are both two different mods for a good reason. while one mod type is just pure damage, the other multiplies not only that damage, but crit, crit chance, status chance, status damage; if we just had one mod that does more damage base combined with the damage multishot offered, that would be a massive nerf.

we are lucky to have something like multishot in the first place.

I don’t want to get rid of the mods per se. people have worked for them and they have their place.  I think it’s something that should be instantly added to all weapons as an upgrade you can collect once and then never have to worry about again.  I don’t care about the “space” rather the action of putting them in there every time. The stance mods are there solely to keep gun play fun. 

Thank you for the ideas.  

[peterc3]

55 minutes ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

I propose we get rid of the mods that affect those stats in favor of a single item we can get once as a primary/shotgun/secondary add-on that affects them In perpetuity.

8 minutes ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

I don’t want to get rid of the mods per se.

Then edit your OP to actually reflect what it is that you want, here, because unless said notmodbutreallyamod either takes up as many slots as the mods it replaces or is met with an equal number of slots being removed from the game, that's just more damage that is going to be slotted.

This doesn't even take into consideration the Endo and Credits required to level them, what would this actually look like, how it would affect game progression.

[kyori]

Instead I would like to know why those mandatory mods are not included into each weapons' stats automatically, because I believe no one will go using weapons without mandatory mods' stats. So I am curious on DE's decision on this.

[BloodAppraiser]

There are rumors that I heard about damage 3.0 making weapon base damage scale with mission level. In the posts and websites I read, it seems to be that DE is actually looking into the "mandatory" mods problem closer than we thought. This concept of making weapons scale with mission levels is something that I have never seen in any game but might be exactly the solution to a lot of warframe's problems. 

What I propose is to let weapon damage depend on three variables :

1. weapon base damage

2. weapon current level

3. mission level / enemy level

This way we can avoid the use of base damage mods and not hinder the gameplay at the same time.

Multishot mods might become utilities that split damage into multiple pellets, so even though it does not increase the weapon's damage but it can still increase the chance of status procs procced per shot ( it's some complicated math which I really don't want to go through right now QAQ )

[jfhsanseiIII]

5 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Then edit your OP to actually reflect what it is that you want, here, because unless said notmodbutreallyamod either takes up as many slots as the mods it replaces or is met with an equal number of slots being removed from the game, that's just more damage that is going to be slotted.

This doesn't even take into consideration the Endo and Credits required to level them, what would this actually look like, how it would affect game progression.

I am not sure why you are quote mining when both posts you took from say the same thing.  My OP says exactly what I want it to say.  I purposefully left out the minutiae of what would happen because I wanted to focus on the big picture.  I am not a programmer and I don't work for DE.  I will let them plan the details of changes.  My only goal is to provide an overview of something that I think would prove interesting for modding.  Slapping in those 'required' mods takes no thought and I personally would enjoy taking other things into consideration when I put my mods down.

Endo used for those mods that I suggest changing could still be used for the change to a permanent add on.  There is no credit cost to leveling a mod so I am not sure what you are saying there.  The new stances would be acquired the same way we acquire stance mods for melee now.  The goal is to let us solely worry about modding it for the situation and adding a fun factor to play. Stance mods could prove a good way to prevent the action with primary and secondary weapons from feeling stale.

[jfhsanseiIII]

4 hours ago, BloodAppraiser said:

There are rumors that I heard about damage 3.0 making weapon base damage scale with mission level. In the posts and websites I read, it seems to be that DE is actually looking into the "mandatory" mods problem closer than we thought. This concept of making weapons scale with mission levels is something that I have never seen in any game but might be exactly the solution to a lot of warframe's problems. 

What I propose is to let weapon damage depend on three variables :

1. weapon base damage

2. weapon current level

3. mission level / enemy level

This way we can avoid the use of base damage mods and not hinder the gameplay at the same time.

Multishot mods might become utilities that split damage into multiple pellets, so even though it does not increase the weapon's damage but it can still increase the chance of status procs procced per shot ( it's some complicated math which I really don't want to go through right now QAQ )

I am not sure about that.  I have heard the same thing but I don't recall where.

The examples I provided were seriously just spitballs.  The idea being that a stance mod could be something that lets player take advantage of a bit of skill when playing.  The required mods would be a permanent attachment that once applied always goes into your weapons without having to add it in every time, and lets us focus on the more interesting part of building a weapon.

[Dishonored]

i wonder if kit gun would have arcane slot on it?

[jfhsanseiIII]

5 hours ago, kyori said:

Instead I would like to know why those mandatory mods are not included into each weapons' stats automatically, because I believe no one will go using weapons without mandatory mods' stats. So I am curious on DE's decision on this.

There be magic in DE's rational.  lol.  From my point of view just make it a permanent part of the weapons you're building. Find serration, pour the necessary endo into it, and bam all your weapons automatically have it for every build.  I'd prefer it as a quality of life move more than anything.  My second point for the stance mods mostly is about making the guns we use have a fun element to them.  They don't have to be straight damage bonuses but could do something else like jam weapons, reduce accuracy, stun, make more ammo drops etc..

[jfhsanseiIII]

5 minutes ago, HEA-Devazone said:

i wonder if kit gun would have arcane slot on it?

Maybe.  The zaws certainly have them so it isn't outside the realm of possibility. 

[Otaiken]

5 hours ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

There be magic in DE's rational.  lol.  From my point of view just make it a permanent part of the weapons you're building. Find serration, pour the necessary endo into it, and bam all your weapons automatically have it for every build.  I'd prefer it as a quality of life move more than anything.  My second point for the stance mods mostly is about making the guns we use have a fun element to them.  They don't have to be straight damage bonuses but could do something else like jam weapons, reduce accuracy, stun, make more ammo drops etc..

 

The problem with "fun element" is that weapons which fail to kill anything are not fun to play with no matter how many gimmicks you slap onto them. There are many fun but weak weapons in this game and that's how the whole riven thing started. In the end people simply care about power more than fun otherwise they wouldn't pay thousands of platinum for riven mods to make their favorite "fun" weapon usable outside of low level star chart stuff. Warframe honestly has an insane amount of really fun guns, the problem is their power. Trying to mod fun into powerful weapons seems rather backwards.

Secondly you suggest CC as an alternative to damage mods. Let's get one thing clear first: Dead enemy > cc'd enemy. Dead enemies do no damage and hence raw damage is the best type of crowd control (hello slash). That said there are already cc builds for many weapons through the use of already existing status and elemental damage mechanics. And that is before adding frame abilities to the mix. Adding more "utility" cc mods is rather pointless. And remember that you still need to kill those enemies after you cc them unless you play a mode in which you don't need to. So you will still want some damage on your weapon.

Balancing out fun and viability is really hard and I fear removing mandatory mods would not change as much as people hope. Problems always start when enemies start to shoot back and actually do decent damage. As fun as it is to have a mod that slows enemies by x% when you shoot them in the leg it won't do you much good when there's 30 enemies and they shred you warframe in two seconds if you fail to kill them fast enough.

[BloodAppraiser]

13 hours ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

I am not sure about that.  I have heard the same thing but I don't recall where.

The examples I provided were seriously just spitballs.  The idea being that a stance mod could be something that lets player take advantage of a bit of skill when playing.  The required mods would be a permanent attachment that once applied always goes into your weapons without having to add it in every time, and lets us focus on the more interesting part of building a weapon.

 

That is exactly what I am doing! The majority of the player base would just choose damage over utility, so if we really want to give players the option utilize mods that contribute more to utilities than to damage, making weapon base damage scale with mission levels and/or enemy levels is one of the best solutions here. It might not sound so powerful and might even sound like a nerf to some weapons but just bear with me a second here.
 
This is the formula of enemy level scaling currently used in warframe : 
Current Value = Base Value × (1 + (Current Level − Base Level)^Exponent × Coefficient)
 
Now convert it into a weapon stat based formula :
Current Value = Base Damage × (Current Weapon Level / Weapon Max Level) × (1 + (Current Enemy Level − Base Enemy Level)^Exponent × Weapon Scale)
 
Now translate it into human language :
Current Value = Base Damage × Weapon Level Scale × Mission Level Scale
 
Now, did you notice the "weapon scale" variable in the second formula? That's the interesting part. The "weapon scale" variable decides the curvature of the arc, in other words, it's the variable that decides how the weapon performs at each mission/enemy level. If the weapon scale is higher then it would suffer less from relative damage falloff at higher levels, and if the weapon scale is lower then it would suffer more. The benefit of each weapon having their own individual weapon scale is that this can result in a more balanced and development-friendly system. For example: for some of the currently "underpowered" weapons, we could just increase the damage scale of those weapons a bit more so they benefit relatively more at higher levels, and if DE found that a weapon is too OP, they don't necessarily need to nerf its damage but simply lower its weapon scale a tad bit so it still functions with the same efficiency at low to mid-level content but suffers a bit more at higher levels. It's like a riven disposition but far more practical for most of the players. I know this sounds crazy and the people who originally came up with this idea might be smoking weed, but I like what they're putting in their weed cause this is just too neat!
 
 And about the stances of primaries and secondaries, I simply adore this idea, but there two problems that keep nagging at me. The first problem is that if you look into the popularity of melee and guns, melee seems to stand out a bit more. Well, this might be simply because it outperforms guns in many ways, but another reason for this is that it takes less effort to make it functional. This is due to the fact that stances give extra mod capacity so players require less or no forma to make it work effectively against higher level enemies. The point I want to make here is that many players I know simply buy forma rather than going for the grind and DE makes money out of this. If we give stances to primaries and secondaries too it might result in a decrease in the amount of forma purchased. I know some of you may argue that people min-max their weapons and that still requires a lot of forma (8 forma braton lol), but the point is will DE agree? I really want stances for primaries and secondaries, I really do. And the fact that only the melee weapons get to have stances just seems unfair, but will DE approve? I really hope they do.
 
The other problem is that weapons aren't in the proper state to have stance mods. The categorization of primary weapons and secondary weapons are in a bit of a chaos right now. Beam weapons, energy weapons, shotguns, launchers, rifles ... etc, a lot of weapons don't quite fit into their category and some weapons even fit into multiple categories. Melee, on the other hand, has a much better categorization so stances work fine with them. The point I'm making here is that before DE implement primary and secondary stances, DE need to make sure that the categorization of primaries and secondaries are put in order. But other than that I love the idea of primary and secondary stance mods.
 

 

[Andaius]

Is what I imagined the OP was talking about. XD