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A Thorough Analysis of the Riven Mods


Damocles
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You don’t have to read everything here; there’s a tl;dr at the end

 

Basic background:

The game has a static upgrade system. Everyone can look the same, feel the same and perform the same because all mods in the game progressively improve the same way. All mods such as serration and hornet strike improves damage, a desired stat of all weapons, for rifles and pistols respectively, and never differ amongst players because all mods linearly improve the same. Every mod can only be equipped once, meaning you cannot put 8 serrations (although not efficient anyways) as you cannot even equip any more than 1 copy of serration, regardless of level. Variations of the same mod, such as primed variants also prevent duplicates, so you cannot have primed reach, with regular reach, or any combination of reach where more than 1 exists. All weapons (with the technical exception of melee weapons) are granted 8 mod slots (with melee granted an extra stance slot). Combined with the fact the game is limited  by the set of currently existing mods in game, for example, getting soma prime to guaranteed critical chance (100% or higher) requires a total of +233.34% critical chance, and can only be accomplished by point strike and argon scope, or some combination with a critical change riven mod.

 

Rivens and their practical value:

Because players want to strive for greater progression beyond the static system of generally referred to as “mandatory mods”, alongside the fact the limited existence of mods to select from, sometimes the only way for a player to achieve a desired effect is through the acquisition of riven with said desired stats. However, pushing the limit is not as simple as buying the desired riven with the desired roll. Each riven, bound to their weapon type and specific model, has a disposition. To keep things short, the displayed value of the disposition out of 5 is a multiplier to their available stat. More accurately, you can roughly estimate the number of 3/5 to be neutral, as taking standard variations of mods, like serration, divided by a constant 3, then multiplied by the 3 disposition, meaning the magnitude of the numbers gained from a positive riven roll for rifle damage is roughly the same as the normal counterpart serration at 165%. More specifically, the disposition n/5 can be also thought of x = (0.5+n*0.2) hence why the recent workshop thread on riven changes chose to cap all changes to at most a difference of 0.2, which is equivalent to 1 n. You can take this number x and directly multiply it to the regular counterpart, which means for melee, an x=1 rolling for critical damage will results in 90% whereas the same roll for rifles would grant 150%. This is of course the difference in their available counterparts.

edit: "Eight Symbol + ) symbol makes some kind of emoji"

The primary value of riven mods is how they offer (at the cost of a single mod slot out of EIGHT) multiple desirable stats. Some riven mods can also compensate for weapon shortcomings (as DE already proved awareness by not touching Kohm and Detron rivens) that in the example of shotguns, reaching 100% status chance before multi-shot make every pellet a guaranteed procc. Sometimes these are difficult feats, like making corrosive slash tigris prime requires a total of + 233.34% status chance. This can be done by adding the 4 dual status mods, but adding an undesirable blast procc to the mix. A status chance riven without the elemental necessary to produce blast is required. As for a more well-known example, the Vectis prime 1 shot sniper. The Vectis prime is best built for having 1 shot in the magazine. This is because the weapon auto reloads immediately upon the shot and every shot is first shot of the magazine, allowing it to be a prime candidate for bonus damage mods like primed chamber or charged chamber. How unfortunate that Vectis prime has 2 magazine cap, meaning the linearity of damage is decreased from a stat increase due to the firing mechanics. To rid itself of 1 bullet the only 2 options are either depleted reload, a mod added in to reduce magazine size and increase reload shortly after player feedback on the 2 shot magazine, or a riven with negative magazine capacity off less than -25%.

Impractical value of rivens:

Riven mods being randomly rolled with various stats and values are relatively unique and finding 2 identical riven mods are astronomically impossible. This gives them value as both a functional item and collector’s item. Some turn the riven mods as their source in platinum trading income because they are highly sought after collectables that can dramatically improve the performance of weapons if the stats are right. Some trade riven mods as currency in some cases, but often to acquire riven mods as often rivens are the only item in game that are considered highly expensive. In the best example of Artax, a perfectly useless riven (which we’ll explain later why rivens don’t fix trash weapons) is currently the most expensive. This is because they’re no longer obtainable, making their collector’s value really high. The recent removal of sentinel weapons will fuel this fire, but is ultimately not the point of this thread. The point I want to get across is small changes affect the price dramatically, from 20p trash item to a 20,000p collector’s item.



Why changing the dispositions is bad

In the case of the riven mod, the negative stat’s magnitude also changes with disposition, meaning (in my own personal case) having previously -25.4% magazine capacity now -23.4%, my Vectis will no longer see use over my other sniper, the Rubico, which didn’t an important hit. Later I will explain why changing riven disposition has mixed positions because it matters and does matter in some cases, but for now, the reason I won’t use depleted reload is because the riven I have offers damage and critical chance to also fix the lack of guaranteed crit. The riven supposedly fixing two shortcomings will now only fix one. The value of my Vectis drops by 30%-50% of its original value since this top tier roll is now considered middle tier. This is why DE didn’t change the disposition of Kohm and Detron, knowing that the decimal difference can make drastically different effect. Other cases include:

 

-110%+ multishot on rifles due to split chamber (+90%) giving 10% of the shots “dud shots”

-critical chance on all weapons because guaranteed crit is often unobtainable

-status chance on shotguns because guaranteed procc before multishot makes all pellets 100% procc

-melee range because reach is the exclusive mod for range and area is radius squared, making range highly scalable but impossible to obtain aside from riven mods

-special cases like gram being too slow and desires attack speed, aklex being deprecated dual pistols with reload speed of THREE whole seconds, making it the slowest reload of all non-fodder weapons, etc

As mentioned before, the lack of stat magnitude affects the core behavior of certain weapons. Not reaching guaranteed multishot, critical chance, status creates the possibility of “dud shots”, a term to describe the inconsistency of a weapon. Take split chamber for example with 90% multishot. 90% of the time it will double your base damage (assuming no other mods/buffs are present). You essentially double your damage for most of your shots. However every 10 shots, you can expect to have equivalently no split chamber installed at all. Compared to stats like guaranteed damage which scales linearly, it may be better to go for serration instead. However, over saturation of a stat is ill advised. Suppose 165% from serration was installed 8 times into a rifle vs the standard serration, split chamber, point strike, vital sense, 90% elemental x2, 2 free slots. 100%+165%x8 = 1420% damage, whereas the standard build is independent stats grant 165%*1.9*(in varying cases roughly 2)*(2.2 should crit be guranteed)*2.8* 2 free variables = 3862.32 and 2 free variables. This clearly indicates that compensating stats of all fields grants exponentially better results. The best known method, due to mod exclusivity, is of course through rivens.

 

Why changing dispositions won’t achieve DE’s original intention

 

Tiberon Prime used to have 5/5 disposition, now 4/5. Tiberon prime is a prime example of great weapon potential, not because it has godlike stats, but rather is has great stats and 5/5 disposition. This makes it capable of achieving the highest possible potential of all rifles. It is the Jack and King of all assault rifles. In the case of the Braton Prime, it has lower damage, lower critical stats but higher status stats. Riven modding for Braton Prime is unrewarding as status doesn’t scale past 100%, nor does is offer noticeable differences in the critical department as riven mod stats increase proportional base stats.

 

Suppose in this tiberon vs braton case, that tiberon is 1/5 disposition and braton is 6/5 both with harmless negative and we’re modding for the most desired stat critical chance. Meaning the tiberon with base 28% critical chance with a +100% chance riven will grant 58% total critical chance and a 12% chance with (an impossible benefit of the doubt compensation of) 400% critical chance, will only grant 58% critical chance. Not to mention, we haven’t added point strike for +150%, which totals 98% critical chance for tiberon prime, and 78% chance for braton prime. This shows that it doesn’t matter what you buff and nerf, the weapon potential of the weapon is not solely determined by the riven and its disposition. In order to properly balance the weapons, DE must change the base weapon stats so that the entire community, regardless of their finance, will benefit or detriment from the changes.

 

Let’s take a step back and see what changing dispositions have done. Because the changes are general (easier on DE to no manually change weapon stats) certain exception weapons like aforementioned Vectis prime 2 clip and opticor 110% multishot slips through the holes. My friend's bro's 100% status chance strun is now 99.7% which also fell through the gaps. They dramatically reduce the price of riven mods for popular weapons when their subtle change causes functional differences, which was mentioned in their workshop that they intended to change small numbers to not cause drastic differences. This is further evidence changing disposition is not a good method of rebalancing. There are various loop holes in the argument for buffing riven mods for unpopular weapons and nerfing riven mods for meta weapons.

 

Take the case of soma prime (pre-minor buff) to not insult your intelligence, you would have calculated that the best possible roll for a riven and modding the most optimal possible roll for soma achieves no more than roughly 50,000 damage per second. An unriven modded tiberon prime starts at 60,000 damage per second. The previously 5/5 tiberon can achieve almost 190,000 damage per second, but was recently changed to 160,000 damage per second with 4/5 nerf. Looking at the bigger picture, it is impossible for riven mods as they currently stand to achieve the original intention DE sought. The highest potential of the weakest rifle, Soma prime at 5/5 is roughly 120,000, which will overtake tiberon assuming we nerf the tiberon to a 2/5 or 1/5. This further exemplifies how low disposition rivens are actually useless as players and developers often forget a mod slot is sacrificed in place of a riven (ie at 1/5 dispo you might as well use argon scope). The opportunity cost is often disregarded but plays a factor. Mathematically, major adjustments must be made to achieve the goal DE sought, and ultimately it converges to a weaker average weapon potential

 

You may have heard the phrase if everyone is super, nobody will be. It simply means if everyone pulls ahead of others, then nobody is really “ahead” of others. And the same is said with the opposite and how this opposite is being applied to riven mods. When you weaken the strong and buff the weak, players switch to the buffing weapons when they exceed the potential of the nerfing weapons. After they jump, the popularity table distributes and equalizes, converging on a mediocre point on the damage potential chart which as we’ve seen lowers the total average weapon potential. It is impractical to base the rebalance of weapons off popularity because you haven’t considered the multivariable calculus required to accurately base the desired change. Take for example, the population of users who own a Braton. Well every player owns a braton because it is easily accessible and skews the popularity. This point applies to when DE twitch drops or gives away free weapons like the Vectis prime. There’s a conspiracy DE does market manipulation with their drops and giveaways because they’re often vaulted weapons and changes the popularity of weapon use by increasing their availability. With the recent Vectis prime drop X 2, and the following nerf it is reasonable to see why some would assume this.

 

There are also players who use a weapon solely because they have a good riven for it, and would otherwise not use the weapon should their riven be lack luster. There are also players who enjoy the weapon in its functionality by preference, and would use a weapon regardless of damage potential. Given different populations of people using the weapon, where 1 population is directly proportional to the riven change and possesses a reverse causal relationship, it becomes impractical to base riven changes off the multivariable generalized as a single population. If a weapon is too strong and gets nerfed, then DE didn’t really deliver the game they promised where the player is empowered. Some will make the argument you don’t need stronger weapons to pull ahead of other players, and although that clause is true, some forget these rivens are hard earned items. They come from a slot machine and often are purchased at thousands of platinum. Their strengths are well deserved, but if DE decides that all weapon potential shall converge, good to them, riven mods will lose their meaning. And for players like me who completed all the content and have only stuck around to play with rivens, I quit.

 

What is the proper way to achieve both DE and player goals?

As mentioned before, players like segregation of classes to feel uniquely defined from others. This is why fashion frame is a thing because everyone wants to feel unique, useful, and powerful, hence why they’re playing Warframe. DE wants to make their content fun and interesting, with regard to recycling content so they want to make all weapons relatively equivalent in usage. The best way to keep the power creep in check yet present while balancing weapons is to change base stats of weapons. If you recall, when DE did a pass-by of weapon base stat changes, they were mostly welcomed changes with positive feedback. The beam changes created the beam meta, and before that, godly rivens could not make beams useful at all. Although it’s easier and lazier to auto correct riven dispositions for weapons based on the automatable popularity, it changing rivens dispositions (as proven above) will only converge the weapon potential to a lower standing, and bring nothing new to the table. The only result of disposition change is lost market value of rivens, what was previously possible now impossible, and what was previously trash (now upgraded by riven disposition) is still no better than an unriven modded meta weapon.

 

Lastly, to resolve the riven disposition controversy, the best ideal solution to resolve all conflicts between parties is to set the disposition of all weapons to 5/5. Every player wants to see their weapon shine as they are. If DE wishes to rebalance weapons then they should do so to their base stats and functional mechanics. Love the weapons as they are changing, the riven never changes, and your investment into the weapons riven is never falsely advertised since your inventory isn’t subjected to change, the global mechanic is. This is best explain by NO OTHER GAME DEVELOPER will reduce, remove, invalidate player inventories and accounts by specifically targeting their possessions. They always change the global variables that result in the change necessary to achieve their rebalancing goals while keeping player investments intact.

 

 

TL;DR:

Basic background:

-we have limited slots, and mod choices, and possible options to mod our weapons

-riven mods can fix weapon shortcomings and make previously impossible things possible (Vectis prime 1 bullet without wasting a mod on reload speed, or corrosive blastless tigris prime)

Rivens and their practical value:

-These things are expensive because they work and hold their value

-These things are hard to acquire and can push the potential of a weapon

Impractical value of rivens:

-Riven mods are also considered collectors items. Like the Artax, their removal will only skew the market

Why changing the dispositions is bad

- The changes make strong weapons mediocre, and weak weapons mediocre, mediocre weapons stay the same, and everyone loses because nobody is super, every weapon performs more or less the same with convergence

-Not all weapons function the same, minor changes is stats, -25.1% magazine Vectis vs -24.9% will reduce the value of the riven by up to half, as the faulty firing mechanic of the Vectis prime was never fixed outside of the riven mod

-Market manipulation techniques from DE skews the popularity of weapons

-The popularity of a weapon is a multivariable relationship rather than DE’s assumed single variable, basing the riven strength off popularity causes convergence and game-wide nerf.

-The weapon’s base stats and function are what makes a weapon popular/strong. Changing the rivens for the weapon will not affect the popularity or strengths as DE intended, as 30% base * 2 riven-factor is 60% but 10% base * 5 riven-factor is 50%, the base stats play the major role, not the riven.

What is the proper way to achieve both DE and player goals?

- Rebalancing the base stats of weapons and their mechanics instead

- Set all riven mods to the same meaningful disposition

 

 

Edited by Descent-of-Damocles
Emoji popped up and some confusing grammar
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3 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

😎

Take the case of soma prime (pre-minor buff) to not insult your intelligence, you would have calculated that the best possible roll for a riven and modding the most optimal possible roll for soma achieves no more than roughly 50,000 damage per second. An unriven modded tiberon prime starts at 60,000 damage per second. The previously 5/5 tiberon can achieve almost 190,000 damage per second, but was recently changed to 160,000 damage per second with 4/5 nerf. Looking at the bigger picture, it is impossible for riven mods as they currently stand to achieve the original intention DE sought. The highest potential of the weakest rifle, Soma prime at 5/5 is roughly 120,000, which will overtake tiberon assuming we nerf the tiberon to a 2/5 or 1/5. This further exemplifies how low disposition rivens are actually useless as players and developers often forget a mod slot is sacrificed in place of a riven. The opportunity cost is often disregarded but plays a factor. Mathematically, major adjustments must be made to achieve the goal DE sought, and ultimately it converges to a weaker average weapon potential

Lastly, to resolve the riven disposition controversy, the best ideal solution to resolve all conflicts between parties is to set the disposition of all weapons to 5/5. Every player wants to see their weapon shine as they are. If DE wishes to rebalance weapons they do so to their base stats and functional mechanics. Love the weapons as they are changing, the riven never changes, and your investment into the weapons riven is never falsely advertised since your inventory isn’t subjected to change, the global mechanic is. This is best explain this is NO OTHER GAME DEVELOPER will reduce, remove, invalidate player inventories and accounts by specifically targeting their possessions. They always change the global variables that result in the change necessary to achieve their rebalancing goals while keeping player investments intact.

Thank you for writing this, I hope DE reads it and considers it carefully.  But yes you touch on two very important things:  Rivens cannot salvage a bad weapon, and that when Riven changes are rolled out that they're directly affecting player's inventories.  Even with weapons that are too weak currently, the rivens for bad or weak weapons change too slowly to matter while changes on rivens for good weapons drastically change it's output.

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2 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

The RNG element is a chore. Too many layers. Too much time for a few crap shoot rolls.

The other element is a progression path over RNG spam. Being able to locks stats and roll others (at increased cost) would also be a highly desirable change.

 

I think what your saying is that rerolling has no linear progression and the problem is that if it made rolling easier then there would be no point to rivens. Imagine me locking in negative zoom. Depending on my reroll of 2+/3+, I might get more or less zoom. And eventually I would get the top tier or perfect roll in 10-20 tries, assuming I lock in critical chance, damage, multishot as I go. Which means nobody will have a special inventory, everyone would just have inventory. I believe the best purpose of rivens is to be a wild card. This is why changing these wild cards with disposition changes is an absolute insult.

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A very wordy rambling, but the only message is that you're displeased. Your premise is wrong though, you consider rivens as an "investment" which they are not. Rivens are temporary, that's their nature, their numbers go up and down with how much people use a given weapon, so you should consider them as something constantly in flow. Stats and satisfaction are not guaranteed! Trade them if you're unhappy with what they become and get something else you like more.

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16 minutes ago, sixmille said:

Your premise is wrong though, you consider rivens as an "investment" which they are not.

As long as you ignore the time/platinum, endo, and kuva that goes into acquiring and creating a useful riven, that is true.
So, basically every practical gameplay mechanic that makes Rivens distinct from other mods.

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il y a 9 minutes, Dwagon a dit :

As long as you ignore the time/platinum, endo, and kuva that goes into acquiring and creating a useful riven, that is true.
So, basically every practical gameplay mechanic that makes Rivens distinct from other mods.

It doesn't really matter how much you value these things, by nature rivens are not an investment. By nature. Because they change over time. If you treat them as such you are doing a mistake that is going to backfire eventually. At best they can be compared to speculation. You may win big on the short term and lose a lot on the long term, but that's stretching things a bit.

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Said it better than I did.

rivens for me are just something to keep me playing. Theres literally nothing else sense the small drip feed content gets ripped through as quick as its given.

Kuva farming us super boring and your not even garenteed payoff for your work. And then after all that your mod could very well weaken to the point its not even worth a slot.

I hope DE listens, rivens can be a very great concept for weaker weapons and a decent buff for strong ones if it's properly balanced. As it is right now they dont help weaker weapons and their just pissing off people with the stronger ones.

I know a lot of people are saying how these aren't investments. Thing is you are investing your time and/or money and seeing that disrespected will piss people off no matter how you defend it. At this point the problem is not that DE did it, it's how their doing it.

Edited by (PS4)XxDrakenguardxX
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4 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

I think what your saying is that rerolling has no linear progression and the problem is that if it made rolling easier then there would be no point to rivens. Imagine me locking in negative zoom. Depending on my reroll of 2+/3+, I might get more or less zoom. And eventually I would get the top tier or perfect roll in 10-20 tries, assuming I lock in critical chance, damage, multishot as I go. Which means nobody will have a special inventory, everyone would just have inventory. I believe the best purpose of rivens is to be a wild card. This is why changing these wild cards with disposition changes is an absolute insult.

Not everyone is going to sweaty grind resources to upgrade a riven. Who cares if all those who want to do so? If it took weeks to make something great, then more power to them. They setup the stats they wanted and ground them out. The market as it stands is filled with tulip craze mentality for a very few rivens (rubico, gram, paracesis, arca plamor), and for a while sentinel rivens. Everything else pales.

If the system could actually redeem weapons with no mentionable stats, then I think rivens could actually accomplish their stated intention.

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15 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

..... rivens are hard earned items. They come from a slot machine and often are purchased at thousands of platinum. Their strengths are well deserved, but if DE decides that all weapon potential shall converge, good to them, riven mods will lose their meaning. And for players like me who completed all the content and have only stuck around to play with rivens, I quit.

 

What is the proper way to achieve both DE and player goals?

As mentioned before, players like segregation of classes to feel uniquely defined from others. This is why fashion frame is a thing because everyone wants to feel unique, useful, and powerful, hence why they’re playing Warframe. DE wants to make their content fun and interesting, with regard to recycling content so they want to make all weapons relatively equivalent in usage. The best way to keep the power creep in check yet present while balancing weapons is to change base stats of weapons. If you recall, when DE did a pass-by of weapon base stat changes, they were mostly welcomed changes with positive feedback. The beam changes created the beam meta, and before that, godly rivens could not make beams useful at all. Although it’s easier and lazier to auto correct riven dispositions for weapons based on the automatable popularity, it changing rivens dispositions (as proven above) will only converge the weapon potential to a lower standing, and bring nothing new to the table. The only result of disposition change is lost market value of rivens, what was previously possible now impossible, and what was previously trash (now upgraded by riven disposition) is still no better than an unriven modded meta weapon.

 

I still remember how the beam weapons' changes affected the weapons  --- very positive. I started to use and try beam weapons and really enjoyed them since. I have also seen many people using these beam weapons as their primary choices. I really don't see how robbing, degrading players' existing items can bring any balance to the game play. Players all want to be powerful, and they first see powerful players with powerful loadouts/builds. And we discuss about that all the time. This also encourages new players to work their way through to become powerful. Why can't the new balance be done like last time? This easy fix is very dis-respectable for players who have really worked so hard to reroll/buy/acquire their Rivens of specific stats. Is DE listening? 

I was going to ask several friends to join Warframe after Fortuna is released. After getting this non-sense Riven nerf on the same day - it's like being poured cold water on top of my head as I open the door of my new car to show friends, I don't feel like to do that or share it anymore. I have also stopped doing one of the favorite things in the game - everything about Rivens, and will just complete Fortuna missions/standings and spend less time on playing Warframe.

Edited by George_PPS
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Riven Disposition just needs to go away if the solution is to set to 5/5.  I'm not sure what to do in place of that.  The numbers need some sort of range and parameters.  If each stat had a range then the only way I could see that working is to let players lock down a stat and you keep rolling the others.  Maybe let you lock down 2 stats if you are high mastery rank or something.

I don't know just trying to think of something that would give players a little more control and still keep some of the grind and rng in there that DE seems to want.  It's just not a great feeling to have gone to the trouble of procuring an excellent Riven and now to have it slightly nerfed.  Of course a slight buff is welcomed but the negative outweighs the positive.

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16 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

-snip-

Interesting post. I agree with 50% of it, and disagree with the other 50%.

The part I agree with, is that Rivens do not and cannot achieve the officially stated goal: "Make less popular weapons more appealing". Especially not with disposition based on popularity. Also, it was right to say, that basic weapon balance does more than Rivens.

The part I do not agree with, is how you suggest to treat them. Riven's initail intent aside, right now they function as meta weapons enhancers and in small number of cases create meta gear themselves. Disposition changes are necessary damage controll. While disposition shifts won't create a perfect environment, they are necessary to relieve rampant power creep, that was created by the Riven system itself.
I also hesitate to support suggested equal disposition for every weapon. 200% more crit chance for every weapon seems fair, but Akstiletos P. will go a lot further with this buff than a Kraken. Furthermore, this new baseline is hiden behind the same RNG system.

9 hours ago, Dwagon said:

As long as you ignore the time/platinum, endo, and kuva that goes into acquiring and creating a useful riven, that is true.

The very foundation of this way of thinking is flawed. Rivens were introduced with the intend to be changed later. With this condition in mind, eager time/platin/resource investment is self-imposed misery. I did not not invest in Rivens, not only because I do not like their design, but also because I knew they are temporal. Observing all the attention dedicated to Rivens, I was shocked to see ever growing bubble fed by ignorance and greed.

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18 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

What is the proper way to achieve both DE and player goals?

- Rebalancing the base stats of weapons and their mechanics instead

- Set all riven mods to the same meaningful disposition

This undermines the entire development-side reason for Riven mods to exist: they allow DE to not do the work.

Random stats on mods were the original design, and were removed because they proved to absolutely destroy any semblance of balance one could hope to achieve.
Their return in a limited form is partially allowed because DE has embraced the bombastic, "feels good", nature of ridiculously high numbers, even if they are forced to apply gimmicks that gate progression(be it invulnerability states for bosses, or daily caps on progression outright).

 

Also, it is worth noting that:

18 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

Why changing the dispositions is bad

This entire section could be populated by a single sentence: The player base is ignorant.

It was the design from day one that disposition would change to accommodate both usage statistics, stat adjustments, and other balance changes(such as a Prime/Event version of a weapon being released).

Everyone should have known this, or at least expect it due to every other bit of content being subject to balance changes.

 

The second greatest mistake DE made after greenlighting the introduction of Riven mods, was to also greenlight their monetization via player Trading.
Were they not lazy, the balance could have been achieved via Syndicate mods(i.e. the content that was meant to do the Riven job originally).
Had they any foresight, all of this could have been avoided by scaling back the rate of power creep.

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4 hours ago, Naqel said:

Had they any foresight, all of this could have been avoided by scaling back the rate of power creep.

They could work into their lore that enemies adapt. Each weapon would have its “time” when new, fall off after adaptation, then recover after a time. Or it could be cyclic within the star chart.

Rivens could be the thing you work on to counter the adaptation. 

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I think everyone is confusing power creep with progression. At times when people state "that's power creep" it means one weapon is slightly better than another. And the truth is, why would power creep be taboo anyways? If you sacrifice everything for that extra bit of damage, then yeah that's unhealthy and something is wrong with you. But in this instance we have different weapon classes locked at different stages of the player progression. Whether it be research locked, MR locked or resource restricted, there is supposed to be an improvement/incentive to building to harder to acquire weapon because it is a component of player progression. In all games, player strive to find the better gun, the better armor, the better gear. In an effort to not add new/better gear, rivens were introduced to recycle trash weapons. Although their intent was lazy at best (You can tell from the fact they recycled existing stats, not even making new stats like we see in the new set mods) it inadvertently spawned a new use case, an end game wild card. The majority of the player base widely accepts riven mods as wildcards that keep the game interesting. Controlling that wild card is a contradiction to what makes a wild card "wild". Now if you don't agree with me then fine, I don't expect you to use/buy/sell for min/max rivens for meta good weapons henceforth, less you be a hypocrite. I agree that these minor changes are minor with the exception cases stated above where decimal places change the mechanical functionality of weapons, but the term "minor changes" is a blanket term over the analytical truth that they intend to have future iterations. Iterations which will progressively make the best weapons worse, and the worse weapons mediocre. When that day comes, there's literally no reason to play this game, all weapons are equally trash. When everything performs the same, in my optimistic eyes, then everything is trash.

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1 hour ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

I think everyone is confusing power creep with progression.

If anyone is confusing anything, it's you.

The amount of power the player is able to exert in warframe has grown quite rapidly for quite some time. Be it: weapons with outright broken stats, Warframes with increasing amounts of crowd control and durability, or Mods (especially Riven) that amplify the former.

It was the challenges that DE offers, and restrictions to progression, that are playing catch-up, not the players and their arsenals. The precise and exact symptoms of "power creep".
Was there any foresight to the "progression", Rivens would never enter the picture (custom weapons do 'endgame' better).

Edited by Naqel
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45 minutes ago, Naqel said:

If anyone is confusing anything, it's you.

The amount of power the player is able to exert in warframe has grown quite rapidly for quite some time. Be it: weapons with outright broken stats, Warframes with increasing amounts of crowd control and durability, or Mods (especially Riven) that amplify the former.

It was the challenges that DE offers, and restrictions to progression, that are playing catch-up, not the players and their arsenals. The precise and exact symptoms of "power creep".
Was there any foresight to the "progression", Rivens would never enter the picture (custom weapons do 'endgame' better).

DE does this power creep to themselves, just look at the new kitguns.  Furthermore, they seem interested to push these new power creep weapons... by nerfing the rivens for alternative weapons that aren't as OP.

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On 2018-11-10 at 10:12 AM, Descent-of-Damocles said:

What is the proper way to achieve both DE and player goals?

- Rebalancing the base stats of weapons and their mechanics instead

- Set all riven mods to the same meaningful disposition

Frankly speaking, you'd be better off asking them to just undo the dispo changes, or at least the ones with a negative sign attached.

From what I'm gathering from a skim over this post, and what I understand about how this TL;DR suggestion could work at all, you're wanting to make base weapons function basically on a similar effective power level. In the process, this removes a good chunk of weapon progression. But a big part of the feel-good of Warframe is progress. So that doesn't seem terribly tenable (and certainly something I don't see DE doing).

There's no way I can see to reach all those goals. Someone or something has to suffer because of it. At least a Ctrl+Z function is, relatively, painless.

(IMO a big part of the "real" fix is setting dispositions on a per-variant basis like they accidentally showed they can, but when people are upset by relatively minor negative changes, I hesitate even suggesting something bigger like that...)

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13 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

From what I'm gathering from a skim over this post, and what I understand about how this TL;DR suggestion could work at all, you're wanting to make base weapons function basically on a similar effective power level. In the process, this removes a good chunk of weapon progression. But a big part of the feel-good of Warframe is progress. So that doesn't seem terribly tenable (and certainly something I don't see DE doing).

Thank you for clearly stating you only read the tl;dr. I did mention progression being a big focus in the main body. I suggested that because every weapon iteration from start of the game progressing to end of the game should provide linear progression. I also stated that riven dispo balance is counter productive because it makes all weapons converge to the same mediocre performance and proved that it will never achieve DE's intended design. I suggested to modify the base stats if they wanted to re balance things, not to make them all equal.

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5 hours ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

Thank you for clearly stating you only read the tl;dr. I did mention progression being a big focus in the main body. I suggested that because every weapon iteration from start of the game progressing to end of the game should provide linear progression. I also stated that riven dispo balance is counter productive because it makes all weapons converge to the same mediocre performance and proved that it will never achieve DE's intended design. I suggested to modify the base stats if they wanted to re balance things, not to make them all equal.

I sense I poorly phrased my post last night. What I meant to say was that your proposed solution creates the following scenario:

  1. DE wants to flatten the power curve of Riven-equipped weapons (otherwise they wouldn't downward-adjust dispositions)
  2. DE wants to retain base weapon power progression
  3. A global 5/5 disposition means each Riven-equipped weapon gets the same boost
  4. Because of this, to achieve 1, base stats of some weapons must be increased (if x * 100 = 500, then x = 5 by necessity)
  5. Increasing base stats of some weapons to achieve 1 goes against 2
  6. Thus we cannot have both 1 and 2

Whether that's literally making weapons equal in efficacy or tending them toward that point, this problem occurs in some measure. So it doesn't achieve DE's goals.

There are workarounds, like altering Riven stat calcs to account for a weapon's base stats or adding a "gilding" system that boosts a weapon's MR requirement along with their base stats (someone else suggested that, I'd cite them if I knew who...). But that's a bit more than just modifying base stats.

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As revealed in "Dev Workshop: Weapons, Mastery Ranks, and Stats!", DE has an MR-based damage/crit/status scale in mind for weapons. Assuming they wish hold to that standard, modifying base stats may be difficult to achieve.

While I do find serious flaws in the Disposition system, I like its original premise: To buck the meta, by making less used weapons more appealing. To do this efficiently, such a system needs to be based (at least partially) on usage data. The variables used to make some weapons more appealing than others is the current issue. IMO, basing all Riven stats on Disposition goes against the entire Riven system, as it directly harms the three key stats DE has decided to use as a part of their MR scale. As it appears you have already crunched some numbers between the Soma Prime and Tiberon Prime, I'm curious what would happen if the Riven damage stat was scaled off DE's MR groups (0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 and 13-15) while all other potential stats continued to be based on disposition. That could give low MR weapons a damage bump to bring them up to par with high MR weapons, but still allow build variety from other stats.

As for your Vectis, it would be at -25% mag capacity (-38% if 3 buffs) if you managed to make a perfect max roll in the stat ranges attributed to it. Perhaps the removal of that additional pool of randomness could also prove beneficial, without disparaging other aspects of the Riven system?

Edited by MasterBurik
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This thing has already been discussed and tbh the only logical thing they should do is to implement new specific rivens for each new prime version weapons. Tiberon and Tiberon prime shouldn't share the same disposition, rivens should help unpopular and weak weapons, not popular and already overpowered items such as Gram prime or Pyrana prime.

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I was about to post a new topic related to this subject. The OP said a lot better and more clearly than I would have.

The riven disposition changes were absolute crap. A weapon w/ a 1 disposition vs one w/ a 5 is a huge difference in stats considering some can roll 160-300% bonuses, but with a 1 disposition you're lucky to see +50-60% on a particular stat.

Also.. sorry, not sorry - but the claim that they are based on the weapons use within the community is also kind of crap. The Simulor for example had a broken window where it was nerfed. I don't mind the new firing function and would like to make use of it, but with how the weapon is now - I expected it to jump up to at least a 3 (given that a lot of people simply do not use it anymore). I saw more of my weapons take a 1 point drop than I did increase and many weapons such as the Simulor are still screwed.

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I had similar thoughts recently and wanted to make a thread like yours albeit smaller and not as eloquent. The general idea would be to nerf weapons alongside rivens but have the rivens cap at a lowest dispo of 3/5, which makes sense since rivens cost 18 and are supposed to be 2 in 1 mods which is not the case with lower dispo rivens.

Edited by Thanzilla
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On 2018-11-13 at 1:48 AM, Tyreaus said:

I sense I poorly phrased my post last night. What I meant to say was that your proposed solution creates the following scenario:

  1. DE wants to flatten the power curve of Riven-equipped weapons (otherwise they wouldn't downward-adjust dispositions)
  2. DE wants to retain base weapon power progression
  3. A global 5/5 disposition means each Riven-equipped weapon gets the same boost
  4. Because of this, to achieve 1, base stats of some weapons must be increased (if x * 100 = 500, then x = 5 by necessity)
  5. Increasing base stats of some weapons to achieve 1 goes against 2
  6. Thus we cannot have both 1 and 2

Whether that's literally making weapons equal in efficacy or tending them toward that point, this problem occurs in some measure. So it doesn't achieve DE's goals.

There are workarounds, like altering Riven stat calcs to account for a weapon's base stats or adding a "gilding" system that boosts a weapon's MR requirement along with their base stats (someone else suggested that, I'd cite them if I knew who...). But that's a bit more than just modifying base stats.

Reminder, Proportional means if a term n is increased by some percentage p, the product of the terms also increases by p.  [n(1 + p)]a = (na)(1 + p) for some number a being the additive stat; this is the Commutative Law

1 and 2 are not as hard as you think they are to achieve. Mathematically, those numbers (base numbers) scale proportionally, not additively, combined with the fact riven mods function like any other mod with a proportional increase, every weapon's potential while assuming dispositions held constant would depend on base numbers. Because the base numbers proportionally affect the performance as a result, we can thus assume these numbers on their progression state such as acquisition difficulty and MR.

3, the disposition i listed (5/5) is arbitrary, but as proven in many cases, riven dispositions of 2/5 or less are often worse than slotting in another mod in its stead. At 3/5 it is often a break even point where selecting a riven is approximately as good as selecting a predefined mod. In rare cases of godly/top tier rolls, the 3/5 dispo riven will obviously pulls ahead of predefined mods. At 4/5 or higher, players get excited and is presented with an obvious incentive to actually obtain and use riven mods.

4, I have no idea what that sentence means, what's x? where did 500 come from? If you're saying point 1 and point 2 contradict each other and are mutually exclusive events then yes, it is not possible to have both power scaling in a linearly progressive game while also binding all weapons to an equivalent level of performance, it's like asking for equality and equity at the same time.

5, yes, it is better phrased as the better a weapon is, the worse it should get, I explained this contradiction in my main body where I described convergence. It neither achieves the desired goal DE sought nor does it make sense

6, exactly, DE wants to achieve the impossible, but in it's process the game is taking a nose dive. Recently I have been losing faith in their design decisions, and having recently confirmed that end-game support is null, and new player support has taken the spotlight I feel the time for Anthem to come into the picture cannot be sooner. What DE had was great, but like all politicians, move the chairs around enough and soon the city will collapse.

As for the gilding and artificially induced riven offsets, the offsets for riven exist, they're called disposition, which they do manually perform. If you recall, all serviceable snipers that are actually sniper-like and not semi-auto sporting rifle like all got disposition nerfed. This goes back to the argument that the method dispositions are influenced by is multivariable and lacks consideration towards the "why a weapon is used". They utterly nerfed an entire category of weapon as a result. As for giling existing weapons, that's a solid boost in all weapons, and leads to a major overhaul of all weapons. Simply adding a proportional base boost would cause broken effects, like mentioned in my main body, vectis having slightly more or less magazine size, shotguns having more or less status, and the possibility of dud shots.

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