Why are damage mods still a thing?

[taiiat]

10 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Base damage mods are "mandatory" because their values are typically in the *2-*3 range and they're multiplicative with damage type buffs which themselves can stack into *3-*4. When a weapon's damage can be increased a factor of 20, 50, 100, balance becomes difficult to the point of being impossible.

the same is said about literally every other type of Damage Mod. because ALL TYPES are Multiplicative with each other.
you can't argue one is more of a problem than another when they all do the same thing.

i have been saying for years that Damage Mods all have numbers that are too large - but the keyword is all of them. they're all too big. we should be thinking about adding 20-40% of something on each type of Damage Mod, no matter what it is.
to which end for a long time, Archwing Weapons had the best modding system in the game(still had problems, but the best of the bad?). it's still ok now but it's not quite as great as it once was since the Mods all got Powercreeped.

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

the same is said about literally every other type of Damage Mod. because ALL TYPES are Multiplicative with each other.

That's not even remotely true. The percentage point values of base damage mods are additive with each other, the same goes for damage type specific mods, the same goes for critical damage mods. However, the sum total of your base damage mods is multiplicative with your damage specific mods, which is multiplicative with your critical damage mods. I'll give you an example:

Let's look at a Soma Prime that we've built for as much damage buff as possible. You have Serration and Heavy Calibre for base damage, you have Hellfire, Cryo Rounds, Stormbringer and Infected Clip for elemental damage, you have Vital Sense and Hammer Shot for critical damage. Not a great build, but good for illustration. All mod categories are additive within themselves but multipicative with each other, so you end up with the following damage bonus:

damage_bonus = (1 + Serration + Heavy Calibre)*(1 + Hellfire + Cryo Rounds + Stormbringer + Infected Clip)*(crit_damage*(1 + Vital Sense + Hammer Shot)) =
= (1 + 1.65 + 1.65)*(1 + 0.9 + 0.9 + 0.9 + 0.9)*(3*(1 + 1.5 + 0.6)) = 4.3*4.6*9.3 = 183.954

In other words, a critical hit like that will deal over 166 times base damage. The Soma Prime has a base damage of 12, so that hit will actually deal 2207.448 damage. A 12-damage weapon dealing nearly 2200 damage per shot is - as I said - "a stupid amount of damage buffs." Hell, even if  you ignore critical hits, you're still looking at a 19.78 damage multiplier. That's still a damage increase of nearly 20 times. How do you balance for that?

Well, let's look at the same situation through my proposal. ALL of the damage buffs from ALL of the sources are additive. In that case, we get:

damage_bonus = 1 + Serration + Heavy Calibre + Hellfire + Cryo Rounds + Stormbringer + Infected Clip + crit_damage*(1 + Vital Sense + Hammer Shot) =
= 1 + 1.65 + 1.65 + 0.9 + 0.9 + 0.9 + 0.9 + 3*(1 + 1.5 + 0.6) = 17.2

That's 12*17.2 = 206.4 damage per shot. By making all damage bonuses (including the critical hit damage bonus) addutuve, we've gone down from a *184 damage multiplier to a *17 damage multiplier, roughly speaking. On the one hand, yes - we've slashed top-range damage by a factor of about 10, that's true. More importantly, however, we've VASTLY reduced the individual weight of each damage type category. Every single percentage point of bonus damage "weighs" the same regardless of whether it comes from base damage mods, elemental damage mods or critical damage mods. In the current system, the difference between a crit and a non-crit is the difference between *20 and *184 - a factor of 9 or thereabout. In this proposed system, the difference is *7.9 vs. *17.2, a factor of a little over 2.

Moreover, the above system has inherent diminishing returns. Because your weapon's base damage never changes, the impact of individual damage buffs as a proportion of total damage diminishes. A 100% damage bonus will double your base damage with no other bonuses present. With a 900% damage bonus present, however, that 100% damage bonus will only increase your damage by 1/10th. And a 900% damage bonus is not actually all that hard to get, as we've shown above. That would be a *9.0, which both the Live system and the proposed system easily exceed.

---

Just for the sake of completeness, let's look at a less crazy and distorted example. Let's look at a non-critical Supra Vandal and what I imagine your average player who got lucky on a Baro visit might do to it. Let's say the player read up on the Wiki that you can get the weapon to 100% status with Thermite Rounds, Rime Rounds, High Voltage, and Malignant Force, then slapped a Serration on top of that and used the rest of the slots for "cool" stuff like magazine size, ammo mutation and projectile flight speed. Let's compare the Live damage buff vs the damage buff from the proposed system:

live_damage_buff = (1 + 1.65)*(1 + 0.6 + 0.6 + 0.6 + 0.6) = 2.65*3.4 = 9.01
proposed_damage buff = 1 + 1.65 + 0.6 + 0.6 + 0.6 + 0.6 = 5.05

Still a damage nerf, to be sure, but this time to the tune of ~22%. Granted, that's because a massive critical hit damage component isn't there to massively bloat the Live damage buff, making the difference appear smaller, but that's kind of my point. With my proposed system, you can't HAVE massive damage buffs which bloat the your multiplier unless you go overboard and offer players something like 1000% damage buff. More to the point, though - the greatest nerf with my proposed system would be to those excessively high stacked damage buffs which in themselves entirely break the combat system and force enemy design to include 96% damage resistance over 40K health, bringing enemy EHP into Clicker Heroes numbers.

In conclusion: No, you can't say the same about all damage bonuses. The multiplicative stacking between base damage mods, elemental damage mods and critical damage mods creates ridiculous damage buff stacking which breaks the combat system and is responsible for a disproportionately large chunk of the game's balance problems.

[NezuHimeSama]

Because there are so many mods to be rebalanced that it's too much work to rework all of these things while still preserving the investment players have made into ranking those mods and putting forma on those weapons.

[Teridax68]

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

the same is said about literally every other type of Damage Mod. because ALL TYPES are Multiplicative with each other.
you can't argue one is more of a problem than another when they all do the same thing.

You can, though, because even though crit mods add damage, at least they're not mandatory on every weapon, and while elemental damage mods also contribute to the problem, they at least have some marginally more interesting level of choice relative to elemental combinations that a pure "more damage" mod simply does not have. Moreover, just because the current modding system is saturated with damage increases does not mean we should withhold from addressing the most obvious outliers, i.e. damage and multishot.

I also feel the whole idea that we somehow need these mods, or that the game needs these mods to not feel "purely cosmetic" is dubious at best: there are many, many more mods besides Serration, Split Chamber, etc., and one of the main reasons we don't get to use them is precisely because almost every single mod slot on our weapons is currently occupied by some damage-increasing mod. Considering how early those mods are maxed out, I feel it's pretty ridiculous to pretend that damage increases are the sole reason players remain attached to Warframe.

Within those same lines, I also feel that there's a bit too much abstraction going on here, in a manner that only makes sense on an internet forum, rather than in-game experience: for sure, almost every mod could perhaps be labeled a damage-increasing mod one way or another (e.g. punch-through increases DPS because one can damage multiple enemies at a time), but this abstraction completely ignores the gameplay associated with these mods: to go back to the example of punch-through, killing multiple enemies at a time requires lining enemies up beforehand, which involves some degree of gameplay. Argon Scope is technically a "pure DPS" mod, but one that relies on landing headshots, which itself requires some minimum amount of gameplay. Serration and its equivalents, by contrast, do not require any gameplay to deliver their power: the problem with them isn't just that they increase weapon damage, but that they do so permanently and unconditionally. Because these mods are so powerful as well, more so than even situational damage mods, there is effectively no real choice or gameplay tied to equipping them.

If there's room for compromise, it could be to split mods between "stable" mods that offer unconditional, yet low amounts of power, and "risky" mods that offer higher power for satisfying a certain condition, or in exchange for some downside: if Serration offered +33% increased damage, but then some other mod offered +100% increased damage on headshot, there would probably be more of a choice to be had (assuming current permanent bonuses on mods get nerfed, or riskier bonuses get buffed). Even so, however, I still think there's room to cut stuff, and in particular multishot I think achieves nothing that isn't already achieved by damage and status mods.

[taiiat]

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's not even remotely true. The percentage point values of base damage mods are additive with each other, the same goes for damage type specific mods, the same goes for critical damage mods. However, the sum total of your base damage mods is multiplicative with your damage specific mods, which is multiplicative with your critical damage mods. I'll give you an example:

thank you for regurgitating a bunch of off topic numbers in order for you to effectively say 'i agree' through your actions.

the solution isn't to make Mods even more obfuscated and complicated like you're aiming for - but to reduce the values on all Damage Mods.
Mods shouldn't be dramatically Multiplying the total Damage on their own. and far, far, far more than just Base Damage and Multi-Shot Mods currently do that. let us not mistake how the 99% Mods their Weapons as the complete mathematical truth.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

You can, though, because even though crit mods add damage, at least they're not mandatory on every weapon, and while elemental damage mods also contribute to the problem, they at least have some marginally more interesting level of choice relative to elemental combinations that a pure "more damage" mod simply does not have. Moreover, just because the current modding system is saturated with damage increases does not mean we should withhold from addressing the most obvious outliers, i.e. damage and multishot.

Base Damage Mods make interesting choices too. it's just that the Playerbase isn't experienced enough to make those choices.

there are multiple Base Damage Mods available for all Weapon types. you will sometimes use more than one, and sometimes not. because of limited Mod Slots, Additive Bonuses have Diminishing Returns to themselves vs other choices.
almost every other type of Mod is in the same boat as this lame complaint about Base Damage Mods being 'used too often'. you say it's ok that that Crits and Elementals exist because "atleast they change sometimes" but do they really? across entire Stat classes of Weapons, people use the same total Elemental Bonus. sometimes there are interesting choices via weighing Status Probability vs Damage vs Diminishing Returns. ofcourse, Base Damage Mods are much of the same...(weighing Damage Bonuses vs Slots)
and Crit Mods are optimally used on... more Weapons than Players even consider them to be used on (almost all of them, basically).

to make matters more interesting, there are situations on Melee Weapons where the Base Damage Mod gets pushed out due to needing room for other Mods. while i would agree it is difficult for this situation to be created, it can nonetheless because of how many even more 'mandatory' Mods Melee Weapons have in the first place.

which is also funny then, i didn't even think about - so if Base Damage Mods are no good, what of with Melee Weapons where 90% of Melee Weapons should have Blood Rush Equipped, and 100% of Melee Weapons should have Condition Overload Equipped? i'm sure there's some sort of lame excuse as to why that is suddenly ok instead. because double standards are such a great love in this world.

 

(RE: when i say Base Damage Mods, replace with Base Damage / Multi-Shot Mods)

[Teridax68]

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

Base Damage Mods make interesting choices too. it's just that the Playerbase isn't experienced enough to make those choices.

The playerbase is plenty experienced, that doesn't stop the fact that Serration, Split Chamber, and their equivalents are present in almost every weapon setup. The fact that Heavy Caliber sometimes features on beam weapons or whatever does not change this.

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

almost every other type of Mod is in the same boat as this lame complaint about Base Damage Mods being 'used too often'. you say it's ok that that Crits and Elementals exist because "atleast they change sometimes" but do they really?

Please point to the exact part of my post where I ever claimed it was "ok" that crit and elemental mods exist. I did not say they were ok, in fact I despise current crit and elemental damage mods because they too add power but little to no gameplay, to the detriment of choice elsewhere. My point was that +damage and +multishot mods are even more clear-cut in how bad they are for the game because they are even more mandatory, and have even less strategy to them. In an ideal world, I'd like to get rid of elemental damage mods, rework crit and status, etc., but in the much shorter-term, there are still workable steps that can be taken, is my point.

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

to make matters more interesting, there are situations on Melee Weapons where the Base Damage Mod gets pushed out due to needing room for other Mods. while i would agree it is difficult for this situation to be created, it can nonetheless because of how many even more 'mandatory' Mods Melee Weapons have in the first place.

... where? What does this justify when even you admit this is an extremely niche case that needs to be forced?

9 hours ago, taiiat said:

which is also funny then, i didn't even think about - so if Base Damage Mods are no good, what of with Melee Weapons where 90% of Melee Weapons should have Blood Rush Equipped, and 100% of Melee Weapons should have Condition Overload Equipped? i'm sure there's some sort of lame excuse as to why that is suddenly ok instead. because double standards are such a great love in this world.

Coming from whom? You're not going to see me justify those mods, and I don't think anyone else has been doing that either.

 

[taiiat]

3 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

-snip-

so yes, the 'solution' being suggested, as i said from the start is.... "remove all Damage Mods". so what is going to be the end goal? removing enough Mods from the game so that there aren't more than 8 Mods you would ever want to put on a Weapon anyways? then we'd have some real PrImE Mod Loadout variety, wouldn't we. right.
because that's the only way you really change anything if that's the way things are seen......

[Jin_Lightning]

The way I feel about damage mods is to be frank, I don't like them. I think about it this way: On weapons, we only have 7 mod slots to play with, because one of them is taken up by the flat damage mod. I can think of 20 weapons off the top of my head that would become so much more fun to use, if I just had that one more slot available.

Though I don't know how to solve the problem, one idea I (and probably other people had) is to have the weapon damage increase with the weapon, until at Rank 30 it has the damage it would have with max Serration, Hornet Strike and the other flat damage mods for their respective weapon type.

I see the counterpoint of it takes away from a type of progression, and that's true. But honestly, there's so many other progression models in Warframe, that I think we can loose a minor one.There's other mods, Mastery Rank, Syndicates, Nightwave, leveling and Forma, completing the Starchart, Prime Frames and Weapons, quests, codex completion, and others that I can't think of right now, all better forms of game progression.

I personally think that doing way with these mods would be good in the long run.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Jin_Lightning
Fixed typos, because I have no thumbs...

[Teridax68]

26 minutes ago, taiiat said:

so yes, the 'solution' being suggested, as i said from the start is.... "remove all Damage Mods". so what is going to be the end goal? removing enough Mods from the game so that there aren't more than 8 Mods you would ever want to put on a Weapon anyways? then we'd have some real PrImE Mod Loadout variety, wouldn't we. right.
because that's the only way you really change anything if that's the way things are seen......

... no? The goal here isn't to remove literally every mod in the game, and it's ridiculous to pretend that that would be the case. The goal is to remove mods that do not positively contribute to gameplay, and instead pave the way for mods that do, for example with the set mods presented for the upcoming Jupiter rework. In the current state of affairs, those mods are unlikely to be used because they are too situational, and do not multiply stats quite as effectively as most of the mods we have now. Without those mandatory, zero-gameplay mods, they could become much more viable, and would thereby encourage more interesting playstyles.

[taiiat]

6 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

... no? The goal here isn't to remove literally every mod in the game, and it's ridiculous to pretend that that would be the case. The goal is to remove mods that do not positively contribute to gameplay, and instead pave the way for mods that do, for example with the set mods presented for the upcoming Jupiter rework. In the current state of affairs, those mods are unlikely to be used because they are too situational, and do not multiply stats quite as effectively as most of the mods we have now. Without those mandatory, zero-gameplay mods, they could become much more viable, and would thereby encourage more interesting playstyles.

that's not the argument these complaints make though. they make the complaint of that they don't like that __ Mod(s) are too prevalent and widely used and therefore should be removed or integrated.
but ofcourse, we'd be doing that until we were completely out of Mods.

[LascarCapable]

Thread cleaned from a few inflamatory posts.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

that's not the argument these complaints make though. they make the complaint of that they don't like that __ Mod(s) are too prevalent and widely used and therefore should be removed or integrated.
but ofcourse, we'd be doing that until we were completely out of Mods.

Where? Who is saying this? Where are they doing this for mods beyond the ones we discussed? Why even bother attempting this kind of slippery slope argument when we don't even seem to be disagreeing? If your problem is with people applying this argument to all mods regardless of circumstance, then by all means, let's work together to establish a proper distinction between mods that add to gameplay and mods that don't, and promote the former while advocating to remove the latter. As it stands, however, your position so far appears to be opposing any sort of removal of mods, regardless of justification, a position even you apparently don't believe in.

[Steel_Rook]

13 hours ago, taiiat said:

thank you for regurgitating a bunch of off topic numbers in order for you to effectively say 'i agree' through your actions. the solution isn't to make Mods even more obfuscated and complicated like you're aiming for - but to reduce the values on all Damage Mods. Mods shouldn't be dramatically Multiplying the total Damage on their own. and far, far, far more than just Base Damage and Multi-Shot Mods currently do that. let us not mistake how the 99% Mods their Weapons as the complete mathematical truth.

OK, you have me confused here. You saw "we agree" yet you reject my proposal. You claim my proposal makes mods "more obfuscated and complicated" when the exact opposite is true. "All damage buffs are additive" is substantially simpler on the average end user than "base damage mods are additive, then multiplicative with elemental damage mods which are additive with each other, also elemental damage mods are based on base damage but physical damage mods are based on their specific damage type, and they're additive with elemental damage mods." Treating all sources of bonus damage with the same unified mechanic removes the need to keep track of which damage mod is what kind, drastically simplifying weapon building.

Additionally, what other buffs are multiplicative in this way? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Adaptation, and I have a LOT of problems with that particular mod's implementation. But besides that, what "99 of mods" are you referring to an what does "their weapons" mean in this context?

And with all of this aside, I maintain that making all mods additive is a good way to reduce the spread of possible weapon damage values and ward against future power creep to some extent. Drastically cascading weapon damage with even basic slotting is one of the leading causes of poor balance in this game, and curbing that - even at the cost of a substantial nerf - would help substantially.

[CaffeineTanuki]

On 2019-03-05 at 1:16 AM, Ceadeus said:

Why have all of these mods from flat damage to multishot not just been removed and added back into the weapons as a base damage increase?

So you want to let new players run around, able to one-shot everything up to the 3rd planet? You want to give the Opticor the ability to delete literally anything from existence with a single blast?

This idea would break the game. There are hindrances on the weapons for a reason. Having these flat-damage increase mods be put into base would allow the Tigris Prime to reach damage values of over 100K per shot without a riven. Now imagine that with a riven, and you have something like 300k per shot. 

Another of your points:

On 2019-03-05 at 1:16 AM, Ceadeus said:

We could have so much more build diversity if 4 of our 8 mod slots weren't already assigned to mandatory mods that are never swapped out until a new flat out better mandatory mod takes its place (Prime Pressure Point).

There are, at most, 3 mods on any one weapon that, according to you, are "mandatory". That combination is Lethal Torrent, Barrel Diffusion, and Hornet Strike. For Primary weapons, it's only 2: Serration and Split Chamber, or Primed/Point Blank and Hell's Chamber if you're using a shotgun.

And for melee, its only one mod! Primed/Pressure Point! Yes, a lot of people use Primed/Fury, but you really don't need it to keep your damage output the same in most cases, especially if you're not using your melee weapon for anything other than a few hits here and there to take care of stragglers.

Also, to de-bunk your claim, there are several weapon builds that I use on a regular basis at high level that don't use the multishot mods.

The whole point of mods is to build off of a weapon's strengths. Hell, I could make a pretty decent weapon combo with the Dex Furis and pretty much any decent melee for a classic Applicator/Condition Overload build without any kind of damage/multishot. There is plenty of mod diversity.

Edit: One last thing, the way you talk about this game makes it sound like its main player-base is kids. It's not. About 97% of the people I play with are either in college or have graduated. Games for people this age don't care about people who want to make their guns do something different than everyone else.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Skyward_Knight

[taiiat]

13 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

then by all means, let's work together to establish a proper distinction between mods that add to gameplay and mods that don't, and promote the former while advocating to remove the latter. As it stands, however, your position so far appears to be opposing any sort of removal of mods, regardless of justification, a position even you apparently don't believe in.

which entails removing far more than just one type of Mod. the only core Mods that could even remotely be acceptable then, is Elementals(and even then they're standing right on the edge). all Multi-Shot, Crit, and generic Damage Mods must die. all Final Multipliers that aren't Anti-Faction must die and Anti-Faction probably must die too. 
sure, we'd have space for some of those new generic Stat + Utility Stat Mods. but those also have generic Stats that you'd put on everything anyways, so those have to die before they're even born.
i'm just not into acknowledging that most Mods are problematic, but then applying that in a double standards way where some are ok, and some are not. 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :v

and so.... a practical solution is adjusting what we already have, as far as i'm concerned. because deleting any one particular Mod Type, gains hardly any benefit for the work required to adjust the results to compensate for it. and so in such a case, it's a similar amount of work to adjust the Mods we already have / introduce more interesting ones as alternatives, and the results are far more effective. it's just a better prospective for efficiency.

11 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

You claim my proposal makes mods "more obfuscated and complicated" when the exact opposite is true. "All damage buffs are additive" is substantially simpler on the average end user than "base damage mods are additive, then multiplicative with elemental damage mods which are additive with each other, also elemental damage mods are based on base damage but physical damage mods are based on their specific damage type, and they're additive with elemental damage mods." Treating all sources of bonus damage with the same unified mechanic removes the need to keep track of which damage mod is what kind, drastically simplifying weapon building.

But besides that, what "99 of mods" are you referring to an what does "their weapons" mean in this context?

unless you're going to change the Descriptions of Mods to match making them Additive to everything else, it's going to be far worse than now. because to make all Mods that affect Damage in any way Additive...... well now literally every Mod is Serration. and applies the same Bonus type as it.
i'm glad we made Modding so much more deep and interesting in one fell swoop. can't have diversity problems if there's only one Mod in the game but repeated 500 times.
you're probably going to disagree (for.... some reason), but it's mathematically impossible for 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 == N to not be the same thing repeated 8 times. if everything adds together, it's all literally the same Mod.
that is to say, you can't add Elemental Damage or modify Crit Stats "Additively to Base Damage". the only way to do that, is to make it the same as Base Damage. otherwise, it is automatically Multiplicative to Base Damage in all forms.

i'm actually not sure. i probably made a typo there, but reading it back i don't know what i was trying to say. we'll just ignore that part.

[Dark_RRiderr]

I just hope they dont do something like this:

2 mods on your weapon, one with +260% damage on with 60 % damage, only the highest is counting and the one with 60 % damage is not stacking. If that would happen it would seriously cause me to quit.

Dont see so much of a big deal with the current system, and why changing a system that works?

The problem i see are mods like "less recoil" or other mods i dont really use because i would loose firepower, fire rate, reload speed ect.

These mods like only giving less recoil and such could actually use a little buff, like that its not the only effect they give, maybe adding slightly more crit chance for example would make this something to actually consider...

 

Got the bad feeling if they would get rid of those mods they could secretly nerf most of our guns (or maybe not even noticing that they do) if they just auto scale them. Plus little bit unfair for everyone that spend so much time leveling those things up if it was just all for nothing and everyone now starting is having a maxed out gun damage wise about the serration mod for example. Imagine people starting and having that much damage on the first missions already.... making things boringly easy (and earth is already extremly easy and boring on the beginning)

Dont even want to imagine the nightmares of what they could introduce as replacement system for this...

No sorry, im not for this idea of removing this mods.

 

Instead, the idea of having some mixed up mods like little bit less firepower on your main damage mod but for that having some attack speed together with it on one mod is maybe for some weapons usefull and a change. (Or crit chance and less damage, but we already got a corrupted mod like that, just maybe this time some kind of "corrupted serration", less firepower then the regular one for a higher firerate then even speedtrigger would give, or crit chance or whatever)

[Teridax68]

8 hours ago, taiiat said:

which entails removing far more than just one type of Mod. the only core Mods that could even remotely be acceptable then, is Elementals(and even then they're standing right on the edge). all Multi-Shot, Crit, and generic Damage Mods must die. all Final Multipliers that aren't Anti-Faction must die and Anti-Faction probably must die too. 
sure, we'd have space for some of those new generic Stat + Utility Stat Mods. but those also have generic Stats that you'd put on everything anyways, so those have to die before they're even born.
i'm just not into acknowledging that most Mods are problematic, but then applying that in a double standards way where some are ok, and some are not. 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :v

Okay sure, let's aim for that then. It is not a double standard to establish a priority order to these things, however, even if you do believe that these mods should all be removed. There is literally no reason to frame this kind of change as all-or nothing, which is why it is perfectly fine to want to push for the prioritization of removing, say, pure +damage mods first, and then consider multishot, elemental damage, crit, etc. Removing these types of mods incrementally would still be of net benefit to the game, too, so calling people hypocrites for not wanting to throw out dozens of mods in one go really only makes sense when armchair designing on the forums.

8 hours ago, taiiat said:

and so.... a practical solution is adjusting what we already have, as far as i'm concerned. because deleting any one particular Mod Type, gains hardly any benefit for the work required to adjust the results to compensate for it. and so in such a case, it's a similar amount of work to adjust the Mods we already have / introduce more interesting ones as alternatives, and the results are far more effective. it's just a better prospective for efficiency.

I disagree completely, because even removing one mandatory mod would open up a slot for something new and potentially more interesting. Even if another mod becomes mandatory instead, at the very least it would shake up the meta, and provide us more information on mandatory mods than what we previously knew. Also, DE is already working to introduce new mods to the game on a constant basis, as noted by the set mods we saw on recent dev streams. Rejecting all of this under the excuse that "it's work" frames DE as lazy when they are anything but, pretends they can't do work they do all the time (especially now with the updates we've been receiving), and I suspect ultimately comes from a personal refusal to do the work of adapting to a new environment, more than anything else.

 

[taiiat]

19 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

because even removing one mandatory mod would open up a slot for something new and potentially more interesting.

opening up one Slot leaves room for putting the next step down most effective Mod there instead until the end of time, just the same.
you've just aluded to your goal "shake things up". balance, and making interesting choices, should never be based on the goal of 'shaking things up'. change for the sake of change is a very hostile way to approach Game Development.

and why at any opportunity i use League of Legends as an example of an apalling Game Development strategy that is openly targeting changing things for the sake of changing things, so that everything is constantly different, but never balanced at all because having to actually balance and understand their game is bypassed by intentionally making a few things very Overpowered but moving what holds that title around on a regular basis.
just deplorable.

22 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Rejecting all of this under the excuse that "it's work" frames DE as lazy when they are anything but, pretends they can't do work they do all the time (especially now with the updates we've been receiving), and I suspect ultimately comes from a personal refusal to do the work of adapting to a new environment, more than anything else.

rejecting an insufficient solution for the time it takes to implement it, is in the interests of the people that would actually have to do the work, rather. if the money and time involved with doing it, doesn't really get you anywhere, this is not a practical solution. especially if a solution that hits more of the bullet points that Players all for the most part agree on at the same time is... also something that could be done instead.

i guarantee i am a harder working person than you are. and am always willing to seek out more work to do, provided it achieves something useful. but that doesn't mean i would do something in a very inefficient way when i already know a more efficient way to achieve the same goal.

[Klokwerkaos]

For everyone still having a tantrum about damage mods, DE is not removing them.

See Amalgum mods.

On the positive side, they are just for you!  They let you have some damage and utility.

Releasing a new damage mod set should hopefully explain that they aren't going away anytime soon.

[Teridax68]

41 minutes ago, taiiat said:

opening up one Slot leaves room for putting the next step down most effective Mod there instead until the end of time, just the same.
you've just aluded to your goal "shake things up". balance, and making interesting choices, should never be based on the goal of 'shaking things up'. change for the sake of change is a very hostile way to approach Game Development.

Again, you are presuming that there is an infinite number of mandatory mods in the game, which is patently false. Shaking things up is a good thing when the net result is positive, too, which is why we have events, for example, and as said already in anticipation of the very same knee-jerk response you repeated here, it isn't just "change for the sake of change" when it leads towards a meaningful, targeted improvement.

41 minutes ago, taiiat said:

and why at any opportunity i use League of Legends as an example of an apalling Game Development strategy that is openly targeting changing things for the sake of changing things, so that everything is constantly different, but never balanced at all because having to actually balance and understand their game is bypassed by intentionally making a few things very Overpowered but moving what holds that title around on a regular basis.
just deplorable.

I wholly agree, but because League's method of shaking things up is detrimental to the game, with its changes making the game less balanced, less stable, and less enjoyable. Literally no part of what has been discussed regarding Warframe suggests this same method.

41 minutes ago, taiiat said:

rejecting an insufficient solution for the time it takes to implement it, is in the interests of the people that would actually have to do the work, rather. if the money and time involved with doing it, doesn't really get you anywhere, this is not a practical solution. especially if a solution that hits more of the bullet points that Players all for the most part agree on at the same time is... also something that could be done instead.

Insufficient by whose standards? How much time and money are we talking about here? How are you gauging the impact? Again, all of these vague statements seem to all just mask the fact that you are personally opposed to any sort of change to damage mods, and want your opinion to come across as more objective or factual than it actually is.

41 minutes ago, taiiat said:

i guarantee i am a harder working person than you are. and am always willing to seek out more work to do, provided it achieves something useful. but that doesn't mean i would do something in a very inefficient way when i already know a more efficient way to achieve the same goal.

Oh, you guarantee it, do you? That is... cute, not to mention dubious given the above. As it stands, though, you haven't proposed anything concrete, you've just mostly said the same thing a great deal many times in opposition to some pretty reasonable and workable suggestions. Tell me, what concrete suggestions do you have? What work have you put into any sort of plan on the matter?

[Teljaxx]

A long time a go, I suggested removing the base damage increase mods, and instead having the damage of the weapon increase as you level it up, like Warframe stats. Back then this would have been easy, because there was only one pure damage increase mod per category. So for example, they could have just removed Pressure Point, and given all melee weapons a 120% damage boost at rank 30. But now with all the extra stuff like Augur pact and the new Amalgams, this would be far more complicated. And because of that, I seriously doubt this will ever happen, even though I still think it should.

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

that is to say, you can't add Elemental Damage or modify Crit Stats "Additively to Base Damage". the only way to do that, is to make it the same as Base Damage. otherwise, it is automatically Multiplicative to Base Damage in all forms.

My reaction to reading this line was "That's... What? No... What are you talking about?" I deliberately omitted a line to the effect of "you clearly don't understand what I'm saying" from my previous post in an effort to be polite, but I'm starting to suspect that you legitimately either don't understand how the system works or don't understand what I'm saying. This is "the sky is blue because ducks are white" level of reasoning there. Let me try explaining it one last time, then.

A weapon has a hidden "base damage" stat. All base damage mods are added together and applied to that base damage, which is then broken down into physical components, or else converted into an elemental damage type for some weapons. All damage mods of the same type are then added together, multiplied by the MODDED base damage and added as the corresponding damage type. Physical damage types are an exception, as they seem to use the unmodded physical damage component they correspond with. My proposal is pretty simple - instead of calculating elemental damage over MODDED base damage, calculate it over UNMODDED base damage. Simple as that.

Health, armour and shields already work like this. Let's take an average Warframe's health - say Excalibur. He has 100 base health, 300 by level 30. Vitality adds 440% base damage, but that only brings up Excalibur's health up to 100*(1 + 2 + 4.4) = 740 health, not 1*(1 + 2)*(1 + 4.4) = 1620. Similarly, though my Inaros has 5280 health, adding 90% bonus health via Physique doesn't give me 10 320 health, but rather just 5775, instead. This is why I asked you for examples of the "99% of all mods" which work like damage does, because I genuinely can't think of any besides Adaptation. I'd argue the opposite - that the majority of buffs in the game are additive, and only damage is really multiplicative in this way.

There's literally no polite way to say this, but... Please try to learn the systems and the mathematics behind them before trying to argue the points, or at least try to listen to what's being presented to you. Because what you're doing is essentially guessing, and it's making the discussion really frikkin' hard.

[taiiat]

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Again, you are presuming that there is an infinite number of mandatory mods in the game, which is patently false. Shaking things up is a good thing when the net result is positive, too, which is why we have events, for example, and as said already in anticipation of the very same knee-jerk response you repeated here, it isn't just "change for the sake of change" when it leads towards a meaningful, targeted improvement.

Tell me, what concrete suggestions do you have? 

well, there isn't an infinite number, since there's a finite number of Damage Mods. but removing any one Damage Mod from the game, does just mean the next most powerful replaces it.
because that's the point of the Modding system, to weigh choices and pick the strongest ones. so that's what people do.
the only way to get somewhere without reducing the strength of all Damage Mods, is to make separate categories. to force Players to use a lower number of Damage Mods. but that's also pretty massively disruptive to play and would necessitate updating a spreadsheet of all Weaponry to reflect the new landscape and adjust the Stats of some Weapons to compensate (the ones that lost significantly more than most).

i've made it very clear what the simple avenue to a resolution is. reducing the value of Damage Mods so the difference between no Mods and 8 Mods isn't 50-1000x Damage. Archwing Mods were a prime example of that in play, before they were strangely buffed. almost every single Archwing Weapon preferred a different Mod Loadout. it was quite excellent.

12 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

A weapon has a hidden "base damage" stat.

All base damage mods are added together and applied to that base damage, which is then broken down into physical components, or else converted into an elemental damage type for some weapons. All damage mods of the same type are then added together, multiplied by the MODDED base damage and added as the corresponding damage type.
My proposal is pretty simple - instead of calculating elemental damage over MODDED base damage, calculate it over UNMODDED base damage. Simple as that.

Health, armour and shields already work like this.

the majority of buffs in the game are additive, and only damage is really multiplicative in this way.

hidden stats is a great way to make the numbers in a game perform in a predictable manner. i think we have more than enough hidden stats as it is.

that isn't making all Damage Mods Additive. it only sortof is. the end result would still be Multiplicative due to the nature of Damage in this game.
not to mention the sweeping spreadsheet changes needed of increasing the Stats of all Weapons to compensate for doing that (dividing Elemental Damage dramatically, and making Physical Damage a larger component of your final Damage). it's great for Crit Slash Weapons, that won't care, but less abusive, nor normal Weapons, will have their total Damage dramatically divided.
but since Crit Slash is already the ultimate Weapon anyways, and will be barely if any affected by your plan, i'll just keep using those, i guess. since they'd only get better than they are already.

EHP Mods do work that way yes... but it doesn't really matter whether they do or not there, because the values are determined from a known value that they calculate against. and there aren't other types of EHP Mods that work in completely different ways that exponentially Multiply off of them. well, except for Armor and Health calculating against each other, i guess.

sure, most of everything in the game is Additive to itself. because, ofcourse it is. but almost everything is Multiplicative to other types of Bonuses. and that can't be changed.
which is exactly why reducing the values on all Damage Mods (to be crystal clear that means Base Damage, Multi-Shot, Elemental, Crit, Channeling, Anti-Faction/Final Multiplier....) is so much more effective at reaching the goal.
not to mention that it doesn't fire nukes against some types of Weapons while making only minor changes to others. it affects everything in the game equally, which is a much more practical prospect. since the goal is to shave a few zeroes off the end of all Weapon Damage, not to buff or nerf certain types of Weapons.

[Tarak]

What it boils down to is that everything is balanced around them, and the enemy leveling system as it relates to the health/armor/shield system has gotten blown so ridiculously out of proportion that removing of re-balancing them would mean that the entire game's level system, all enemies, health/shield/armor systems and everything else that touches or gets touched by damage would need re-balanced.

Mind you I think this is badly needed, but it's so much work that It's not likely to ever happen.

[bibmobello]

On 2019-03-07 at 11:13 PM, Skyward_Knight said:

So you want to let new players run around, able to one-shot everything up to the 3rd planet? You want to give the Opticor the ability to delete literally anything from existence with a single blast?

This idea would break the game. There are hindrances on the weapons for a reason. Having these flat-damage increase mods be put into base would allow the Tigris Prime to reach damage values of over 100K per shot without a riven. Now imagine that with a riven, and you have something like 300k per shot. 

Another of your points:

There are, at most, 3 mods on any one weapon that, according to you, are "mandatory". That combination is Lethal Torrent, Barrel Diffusion, and Hornet Strike. For Primary weapons, it's only 2: Serration and Split Chamber, or Primed/Point Blank and Hell's Chamber if you're using a shotgun.

And for melee, its only one mod! Primed/Pressure Point! Yes, a lot of people use Primed/Fury, but you really don't need it to keep your damage output the same in most cases, especially if you're not using your melee weapon for anything other than a few hits here and there to take care of stragglers.

Also, to de-bunk your claim, there are several weapon builds that I use on a regular basis at high level that don't use the multishot mods.

The whole point of mods is to build off of a weapon's strengths. Hell, I could make a pretty decent weapon combo with the Dex Furis and pretty much any decent melee for a classic Applicator/Condition Overload build without any kind of damage/multishot. There is plenty of mod diversity.

Edit: One last thing, the way you talk about this game makes it sound like its main player-base is kids. It's not. About 97% of the people I play with are either in college or have graduated. Games for people this age don't care about people who want to make their guns do something different than everyone else.

I don't think now we have a different situation... You have neewbies trying to kill everything with a unmodded pangolin sword around the map(in a way similar to the  Benny Hill show...), then you have a ML26 in your team destroying everything pressing just 4...