Fix the ugly rng machine aka the rivens

[Fallen_Echo]

Rivens, when they were talked first about they sounded like the ultimate solution to several gear becoming unuseable as the levels go up.

A great promise what when got introduced showed that its nothing more than gambling combined with gambling with some more gambling.

 

Lets start be an example, you want to get a riven for the tysis.

First, you gotta get a riven. Rng.

Second, you gonna need it to be for secondaries. Rng.

Third, you gotta get it for the tysis. Rng.

Fourth, you gotta get acceptable positive stats. Rng.

Fifth, you gotta get acceptable negative stats. Rng.

This is five cursed layers of pure luck to decide if you get anything acceptable. Also theres a gring gate too, just to make sure that if rng hasnt driven you to madness yet the kuva grind will.

Also since the whole thing is based on popularity you always have the chance that your hard earned rivens become useless as time goes on.

 

Now i wish to suggest a way what ensures that the rng is cut back severly and the balance start from the weapons itself and not some unknow popularity stat.

First of all the aqusition is stays rng, thats in a good spot there. The riven type too stays and expands a bit to make sure the users dont get it too easy. Everything else is removed.

If you get a riven for secondaries, you can fuse it into your choosen secondary but with this it cannot be used on anything else from now on. Fusing in a riven simply removes one of the modslots for as long as the riven is equipped to the weapon.

 

Second, the stats of the rivens. Instead of rolling a randomised card in hopes to get what you need your riven comes with every possible stat unlocked from which you can choose 3 to keep when you equip it. These stats are activated once you put it on your weapon and reset when you remove the riven.

The universal stats are determined by DE, they are flat increases to base stats so no faction damage bonus or multishot from now on.

Every time you equip a riven the system checks the max universal stats avaible and compare it to the weapons current stats to generate the avaible bonuses to choose.

For example if DE set the max status chance to 25%, crit chance to 25% and damage to 100 that means that the Tysis can get 0% status bonus as its already over it, 22% crit chance as it currently has 3% and 21 more damage in any setup choosen as it currently has 79 corrosive damage.

This makes a bunch of weapons useable even if their base stats were too low to riven boosted and makes sure that weapons stay on equal grounds.

 

Tl;dr the presented system decreases the rng to 2 gates at max, raises the useability of rivens greatly and grants us the original promise DE made.

 

[GnarlsDarkley]

You should watch the Q&A with [DE]Scott. He clearly states that Rivens won't change in the way you suggest it. Reason is powercreep.

Don't bash me for this answer....it's an official statement

[iHaku]

i really like the idea behind rivens, changing their power based on community usage.

But i wish they'd change their dispositions way harsher and more often, ideally every month and not doing some half-assed "oh we dont want to reduce this rivens dispo because 2 people might not hit 100% status with their currently rolled riven"

[Dabnician]

30 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

First, you gotta get a.....

First they gotta get rid of rivens.... problem solved... .SOOOOO many problems solved by getting rid of rivens...

[Gabbynaru]

21 minutes ago, Dabnician said:

First they gotta get rid of rivens.... problem solved... .SOOOOO many problems solved by getting rid of rivens...

Agreed. By far the worst system in this game. DE should never have lowered themselves to the point of introducing lootbox-lites to the game, much less defend their existence.

[(PSN)Double991]

Scotts reply indicates they've created a monster that they don't know how to deal with.

If they make the acquisition process easier, they are compelled to nerf the end result because you can't have fun without the dreaded "powercreep". If they keep the powerful end results possible then they are content with doing nothing.

However even if they don't want to do anything about rivens, they could adjust kuva gains. It feels like the amount you get with a booster should be the default.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

Honestly, I don't see the problem with them. They make weaker weapons stronger, and have a chance of making interesting combos. For example I have one riven that has three different elements on it. Making for some cool combos. I feel a lot of the issues with riven is what we the player base has done with them, trying to min max them, trying to roll for the very best to either use or try to sell them for plat. 

Really we don't need these Rivens to play the game. But they are a little extra thing for us to do. I love doing the challenges, and then using the weapons they go with that I might normally not use. 

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I'd rather they be trashed completely, but if they stay...

Rework them. Not every weapon needs to be able to have a Riven. Anything currently under Disposition 3 should just be removed from the Riven table entirely. Only allow it for the bottom half of weapons, readjust the positive numbers if needed and make the negatives less harsh. You can keep all RNG associated as is since I'm sure DE drools at the plat sales associated with the Riven economy. 

It was created to make low tier weapons viable in comparison to high tier, but that will never happen as long as high tier can get rivens to push them to god tier weapons.

[DrBorris]

56 minutes ago, iHaku said:

changing their power based on community usage.

This has so many problems with it conceptually though. Usage does not equate to power, those are two different factors with a very dynamic relationship. If you want to balance meta usage, you FIRST balance the power. It is a picture perfect representation of "Treating the symptom instead of the cause."

Just think about...

• Niche Synergies
• Exclusive weapons
• The Distribution of player power level
• New weapons
• How "fun" a weapon is (should fun weapons be the weakest weapons?)
• Usage is variable and necessitates constant balance updates and statistical analysis unlike power which is constant and predictable.
• And probably some more if I keep thinking about it...

"Disposition based on usage" is an extremely flawed concept at base and even if it was balanced monthly it would still have massive flaws.

Edited December 5, 2018 by DrBorris

[KilluaWalker]

Stop thinking of rivens as mods and instead as lottery tickets. They are simply a time and money sink for veteren players to min max 🙂

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

You should watch the Q&A with [DE]Scott. He clearly states that Rivens won't change in the way you suggest it. Reason is powercreep.

Wait a little bit, so they wont gonna make rivens work like this because it would be not fair to have an mr2 weapon being as useable as the mr9 one but its perfectly okay to release weapons what continously powercreep each other?

My suggestion theoretically would make all weapons equal to some degree and wouldnt result with what we have currently, weapons what are unuseable with even top-tier rivens and weapons what have become OP thanks to their base good stats and high disposition.

[peterc3]

2 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Fusing in a riven simply removes one of the modslots for as long as the riven is equipped to the weapon.

What is this supposed to mean? Mods already take up a slot. Is this supposed to be a meaningful balance by making you take it off one gun and put it on another?

2 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

you can choose 3 to keep when you equip it.

Not just stat locking, wherein you still have to get the right roll to lock, but outright choosing the stats? They would sooner delete the entire system than allow this.

2 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

grants us the original promise DE made

Pray tell, what promise did DE make?

This is pure power creep. Base, flat, stat increases for essentially no cost. This isn't fixing anything. This would warrant Rivens having to be considered in game balance.

[DrBorris]

15 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

This would warrant Rivens having to be considered in game balance. 

And why exactly should they not be considered "in game balance" now?

Let's say that there was a weapon that was so rare that only 1% of the 'veteran' player-base was able to attain it. According to [DE]Scott's logic, that weapon could be an automatic Tigris Prime with infinite ammo and it wouldn't matter because it is "rare".

[peterc3]

6 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

And why exactly should they not be considered "in game balance" now?

They are explicitly extra. There is literally nothing in-game that was designed to "need" a Riven to fight against. The hoops you have to jump through to get what you want are by design.

7 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Let's say that there was a weapon that was so rare that only 1% of the 'veteran' player-base was able to attain it. According to [DE]Scott's logic, that weapon could be an automatic Tigris Prime with infinite ammo and it wouldn't matter because it is "rare".

The suggested changes would make anyone with a Pistol Riven, that is, nearly anyone who has run one of the recent Alerts, able to add a Riven to their preferred gun and choose the stats on it.

This is the antithesis of "rare".

[(PSN)teacup775]

15 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

The suggested changes would make anyone with a Pistol Riven, that is, nearly anyone who has run one of the recent Alerts, able to add a Riven to their preferred gun and choose the stats on it.

 This is the antithesis of "rare".

Riven stats per weapon need to be set and moderated by its MR lvl.

A Riven for a weak (and prolly low mr) weapon should bring it up per riven mr and should allow a user to tweak stats to their play style.

You could think of Rivens then as enhanced mastery of that weapon.

Disposition is a lazy thing they tried which doesn’t really work, game play wise or contentment wise.

People might invest time into one. Getting the rug pulled out will never sit well. Ever.

A different riven system could also be used to tinker with weapons.. as a means to truely unlock them. They could add a new dynamic and I would hope engaging process to the forma leveling grind. 

[peterc3]

27 minutes ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

You could think of Rivens then as enhanced mastery of that weapon.

This isn't even a small tweak or a slight change. This is a system that has nothing to do with Rivens.

[DrBorris]

1 hour ago, KilluaWalker said:

Stop thinking of rivens as mods and instead as lottery tickets. They are simply a time and money sink for veteren players to min max 🙂

You do know that there are people who have gambling problems, right? And that there are some people (like me) that hate the core concept of putting something in for an unknown return? An end-game min/max system is a great idea, but please don't tie it to a slot machine.

 

54 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

They are explicitly extra. There is literally nothing in-game that was designed to "need" a Riven to fight against. The hoops you have to jump through to get what you want are by design.

The suggested changes would make anyone with a Pistol Riven, that is, nearly anyone who has run one of the recent Alerts, able to add a Riven to their preferred gun and choose the stats on it.

This is the antithesis of "rare".

I... I think you missed the point.

Your first statement has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked. You say that if Rivens became common than they would need to be better balanced. That statement insinuates that how common an item is is reflective of how well balanced that item should be. So you are saying that because only a few people have a thing, it is okay for that thing to be unbalanced.

I know that the OP is saying Rivens would be rare, I am asking you why it is okay for something that is rare to be unbalanced?

Yes or no question: If something is rare enough, is it okay for that item to be "unbalanced"?

• If Yes: Why is it "okay" for a select group of people to be able to break the fundamental balance of the game?
• If No: Then why are Rivens "okay" as they stand when a developer openly said that the high end of Rivens was unbalanced?

 

And my question to anyone who is "pro" Riven (as they are now):

Why is having RNG better than having a system that everyone has to put an equal amount of work in to get a certain power level?

Edited December 5, 2018 by DrBorris

[peterc3]

2 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

You say that if Rivens became common than they would need to be better balanced.

No, I said that if RNG was basically removed from them, they would have to be considered for balance because anyone with a Riven would be able to get the stats they want on them. There would no longer be a reason for someone to have a Riven and not have it on their weapon, unlike now where you have to seek out or happen to get a Riven for a weapon you have or want to use with the stats you want on it.

5 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

So you are saying that because only a few people have a thing, it is okay for that thing to be unbalanced.

There is nothing in the game that even acknowledges the stats Rivens can put on a weapon. Rivens are not unbalanced. They aren't part of the balance. They are outside it, on top of it, however you want to put it. Not having a Riven means nothing in the game at this point.

11 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Yes or no question: If something is rare enough, is it okay for that item to be "unbalanced"?

• If Yes: Why is it "okay" for a select group of people to be able to break the fundamental balance of the game?
• If No: Then why are Rivens "okay" as they stand when a developer openly said that the high end of Rivens was unbalanced?

False choice. Great that you have an opinion that you want to sell, but don't bother quoting me if you aren't going to actually engage with what you are quoting.

[bibmobello]

This is not the main problem. I rolled a riven 100 times to get only +recoil,zoom and ammo...Then i see a lot of people selling UNROLLED rivens(or with 1 or 2 rolls) with +multishot, crit damage, critical chance or damage... the random system is broken or someone is just too lucky...

Edited December 5, 2018 by bibmobello

[DrBorris]

2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

They aren't part of the balance.

You are basing everything you say on this statement, and I am having trouble with it.

Rivens are a system DE put in the game to "breath new life" into lesser used weapons. How is it not part of the balance?

 

3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

No, I said that if RNG was basically removed from them, they would have to be considered for balance because anyone with a Riven would be able to get the stats they want on them.

So you are telling me that this does not mean more common? If everyone gets a thing, it is therefore more common, correct?

4 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

There would no longer be a reason for someone to have a Riven and not have it on their weapon, unlike now where you have to seek out or happen to get a Riven for a weapon you have or want to use with the stats you want on it. 

How exactly is this different from traditional mods. If you want to increase the power of a weapon, you need to seek out the mod, correct? Rivens are just a more "rare" version of mods. So again, is their balance irrelevant because they are rare?

[bibmobello]

17 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

You are basing everything you say on this statement, and I am having trouble with it.

Rivens are a system DE put in the game to "breath new life" into lesser used weapons. How is it not part of the balance?

  

So you are telling me that this does not mean more common? If everyone gets a thing, it is therefore more common, correct?

How exactly is this different from traditional mods. If you want to increase the power of a weapon, you need to seek out the mod, correct? Rivens are just a more "rare" version of mods. So again, is their balance irrelevant because they are rare?

I took a break from this game but can you tell me what's new life is bringing a riven to this game? You make more damage = more fun? i don't think so instead i think this kind of extreme (pseudo)random games and extreme grinding can only create more frustrated persons and toxic players.

A breath of new life for me means: new enemies, new mechanics, original weapons systems, new challenges. I don't find any difference fishing a robotic fish or a normal fish or mining on fortuna or cetus, it seems to me the same book with only a different cover...

And lately the cooperative mode of this game, the only decent aspect, is only a bloody hell!Toxic players, full of MR 5 or less on sorties without any idea or the necessary gear(aka repeat 3 or more times a mission till you get decent players) and this doesn't change if you have a riven or not!

Edited December 5, 2018 by bibmobello

[Dabnician]

2 hours ago, DrBorris said:

It is a picture perfect representation of "Treating the symptom instead of the cause."

The cause is there are trash weapons that arent worth crafting except to level MR.

[bibmobello]

6 minutes ago, Dabnician said:

The cause is there are trash weapons that arent worth crafting except to level MR.

Most "trash" weapons useless in PVE are good in PVP but the PVP is practically dead...

[DrBorris]

1 minute ago, Dabnician said:

The cause is there are trash weapons that arent worth crafting except to level MR.

Let me pitch you this...

So let's say you are leveling some "MR fodder" and notice that you actually kind of like the mechanics of the weapon. Be it firing mechanics, a weird gimmick, whatever. There is something about that weapon you like, but unfortunately the statistics suck. Now imagine you could target a Riven for that weapon, and to spit-ball let's say it takes you 8 hours of grinding to put it in that column all of the way to the right in the picture above.

Now given that every weapon took the same amount of time to get the the absolute maximized state, wouldn't leveling "MR fodder" be just as interesting an experience as leveling the new bee's knees?

 

I think that having a "glorious imbalance of initial weapon progression" is a good thing. In the time between MR0 and MR15 you have this wide array of weapons available to you and then the meta-game becomes trying to pick out what is the best. Be it watching YouTube videos, learning game mechanics on the wiki, or just trial-and-error. Having 'good and bad' weapons during that initial progression give you a reason to learn how the game works, what stats are good, etcetera. So then once you finish up that initial weapon progression and hit the cap power of base weapons (around MR16), you are fully equipped for the later half of weapon progression, specialization. Now while you are grinding up random weapons as "MR fodder" you are also having to think about if you want that "MR fodder" to be something more, and if you do then you have an avenue to do so. If you don't care for a weapon, trash it, but if you like it, invest in it.

[iHaku]

36 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Rivens are not unbalanced. They aren't part of the balance. They are outside it, on top of it, however you want to put it. Not having a Riven means nothing in the game at this point.

"not having a riven means nothing in the game at this point" This whould mean that "having a riven means everything in the game at this  (or any) point", yes? Not sure how you could justify that statement

see, as a matter of fact everyone can have a  riven for any weapon if they want to pay the right price for it (just not everyone at the same time, but that's where dispo is supposed to come in, so that not everyone wants a riven for their ignis). Might not have the mods you desire but you can sit down and farm kuva. you can work your way to get a riven that has EASILY better stats then literally any mod that whould fill the slot instead.

also, they are actually acnowledged in the game. not only are there alerts for them and everyone has a chance to get one for their daily sortie reward, but every player in the game gets one as a reward for completing a certain main story quests. they are most definetly part of the balance, especially after a lead developer basicly comes out and says "yeah they are a bit unbalanced, we're looking into it".

 

3 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Let me pitch you this...

the problem with that picture is that what you see on the left, is an attempt by DE to hit the weapon balance on the right. they regularely do big weapon balance updates to adress inbalances in how strong weapons are compared to others, but they just arent as good as a the community as a whole, especially the hardcore croud that is really good at figureing out what's good and whats not because they put more time into this then developers often do. That's not critizism towards the developers. most people that worked on the developement of a game or invested a lot of time into making mods for a game know very well how this kind of stuff can lead to an alienation towards the thing you're working with and often makes it hard to see things the way players do.

Edited December 5, 2018 by iHaku