Thoughts On The Mod System: Nightmare, Auras, Events And Alerts

[DaWolv]

After reading the Endgame thread (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/92326-we-need-endgame-and-a-challenge-what-do-we-expect-for-warframes-future/) and keeping in mind that some changes have been confirmed or have already been realized, like the Mod Sharing across Frames and weapons, I’d like to direct attention to other parts of the Mod and endgame discussion.

The mod acquiring and viability.

First, let’s start Event mods

Event Mods are awesome. Of course they must be, or else no one would care about them, but instead of giving you a little edge, they become the main part of your build. If you have them, they are pretty much a must-equip. I don’t like how many of these mods, Lethal Torrent, Rending Strike and Shred being the best examples, become the one thing to have, instead of a side-grade that you have to sacrifice other things for. (Most notably here Shred, which gives you more puncture than Metal Auger for less mod points, making Metal Auger almost obsolete, provided +0.8 puncture is enough for you) These mods, as a tradeoff, should consume more mod capacity. They already enable you to bring two functionalities while only using one slot.

Auras are kind of the same. Besides being hard to get, which I will focus on later, Auras are simply not varied enough. There are currently 4 Auras that I would consider useful: Energy Siphon, Rejuvination, Corrosive Projection and Rifle Amp. Any Aura is better than no Aura of course, as they now award you with extra mod capacity. Why not bring new Auras into the game, while taking some of the garbage out! Does anyone even use the Scavenger Auras besides people with only Scavenger Auras? I’d propose adding some more Auras, to also give Frames with an Offensive or Defensive polarity a bigger pool to choose from, like O: Power Damage Increase, Melee Speed Increase, Overcharge (when Shields are down, you do damage in an area and shields recharge ~ Internal Cooldown 2min) ; D: Armor Boost, Knockdown Resistance, Shield Boost/Recharge; T: Faster Sprinting, Lightweight (low Gravity effect) and many many more.

Now onto acquiring these mods:

Event mods are fine the way they are. The limited availability is something I don’t have that much of a problem with. Even though I still don’t have the, arguably, most overpowered pistol Mod (Lethal Torrent), I can get behind the idea of “you weren’t there? – Though luck.” I wasn’t there that weekend, and while I still had time to complete the missions in the next 2 days, the community decided to just finish this thing 48h before the event timer ran out… bad luck.

It’s enough for me to know that at some point they will be coming to the nightmare mode: They are quite fun, as they can be frustrating sometimes (No shields mutation $&*^ing everyone over who brought shield mods and so forth), but all in all they are quite fun. The rewards however are not. I have played, in search of Lethal Torrent, many different maps on different planets. 45% of the time, I got Rending Strike, 45% of the time I got Wildfire, and the last 10% I got either Constitution or Vigor.

The problem I have with the Nightmare is that the rewards are not up to scale with the difficulty:
The rarest Mods I expect to be dropping in the most difficult Nightmare, i.e. No Shields, Energy Degeneration and higher Enemy DPS. While the easier Nightmares, i.e. Vampire, should reward less rare mods. Doing a no shields, no energy, high DPS mission Solo (because, except bosses no one cares about Nightmare) and then get rewarded with Wildfire for the 100^th time is just annoying.

You don’t need to show us up front what rewards there will be, but show us the type of Nightmare mode, and make it possible to derive the rarity of the reward from that information. (Maybe even add small chances of Forma and Potatoes on there to lure people into Nightmare! At some point, people will have all the mods, but you can never have enough Forma!)

This is also looking ahead to when the Ammo Conversion Mods and Equilibrium make it to Nightmare. These mods are very situational but very powerful when needed, so many min-maxers will be on the hunt, who missed the previous events. And even if they have them already, having multiple fusion levels of the same mod is not just a quality of life-thing, sometimes you just don’t have the same mod capacity across weapons due to forma and different mod priorities.

With the Auras at least now we don’t need to follow the Twitter 24/7 or take shots in the dark, but still Auras are very few and far between (even the useless ones like Scavengers). While I like that now Alerts can give extra resource rewards, anything but rare materials and maybe Plastids is not worth the time. Neither are credits! I don’t even know why credit alerts exist. Doing a T3 Capture awards you with so much credits (that you cannot spend anyhow), doing anything else for credits is just suboptimal. I’m not saying remove credit only alerts, but maybe throw in more Alerts altogether. Sometimes there are 4 online at the same time, all with crappy rewards, sometimes there not even one.

Why not expand the Alert system to give mods! Especially now since you updated the loot tables, I’ve noticed the same 5 mods dropping over and over. I don’t care, because I have mostly all of the existing mods, but a friend, who just started playing, has stacks and stacks of Reach and Quickdraw, but lacks variety (something I miss now, being able to swap out mods to try different things with the limited amount of mod capacity you had). He sits there with 5 mod points unassigned, because he only found 2 different rifle mods as of yet.

This whole situation with the reward system leads to the endgame of Warframe currently only featuring Towers and Bosses. Why not make the Alerts and Nightmare modes more prominent. Better yet, combine them: Do Nightmare alerts again that show you right away what mod you will get. Maybe even give Void keys as rewards for Alerts, but generally, give us more alerts at any given time.

[Mogwhi]

Yesterday I was using my latron prime for the first time in a week, its my favourite weapon and most used. I noticed that I didn't seem to be doing as much damage. When I checked my mods I seen piercing hit had gone from 90% amour piercing to 60% armour piercing which is damn annoying considering that once you hit level 50+ mobs, there armour increases at a dramatic rate.  

This wouldn't be a problem with an automatic weapon but its annoying with a semi automatic. I find my myself switching to my acrid at lower level mobs now or even starting missions with it.

 

I love and hate the new mods for every frame\gun system.

 

I love the fact that I don't have to now manually switch mods onto a new weapon or warframe.

 

I hate the fact that I don't have to now manually switch mods onto a new weapon or warframe, because with having all waframes I was playing the game to collect mods and fusion cores so that I each weapon and warframe could have its own separate maxed mods. Now with having 1 set of steel fibre, redirection, and vitality all maxed out for frames and serration for primary. It just leaves me with hornet strike to max for my secondary weapon. Once that's done its ok what now (yes I know there are other mods to max out, but they are a lot easier to do than the ones I have mentioned and I have most likely already done so.)

 

I have a feeling we will go back to the old mod system, so at the moment I am just collecting all mods and core if this happens. I would like to go back to the old system as this gave me a long term goal to head for.

[MeteorKing]

I love and hate the new mods for every frame\gun system.

 

I love the fact that I don't have to now manually switch mods onto a new weapon or warframe.

 

I hate the fact that I don't have to now manually switch mods onto a new weapon or warframe, because with having all waframes I was playing the game to collect mods and fusion cores so that I each weapon and warframe could have its own separate maxed mods. Now with having 1 set of steel fibre, redirection, and vitality all maxed out for frames and serration for primary. It just leaves me with hornet strike to max for my secondary weapon. Once that's done its ok what now (yes I know there are other mods to max out, but they are a lot easier to do than the ones I have mentioned and I have most likely already done so.)

 

I have a feeling we will go back to the old mod system, so at the moment I am just collecting all mods and core if this happens. I would like to go back to the old system as this gave me a long term goal to head for.

I think I speak for most people when I say that I'd rather just switch mods than rank up multiple sets for each weapon, and that this most recent change has been a godsend.