Dedicated Base Damage Slot request #28836

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

Just add this to the pile...

I think it's time to add a dedicated base damage mod slot for weapons.  Put it at the top like the Stance.  Everyone uses a base damage mod of some kind.  At this point we have might as well only have 7 slots to use, not 8.  That's what I'm trying to solve for...make all 8 slots useful and not redundant at the same time.  Create more build variety.

Or go the other direction.

Add a "flavor" slot up top.  Only for things that don't increase damage.  Does that mean damage, or dps?  Because if it's dps it would mean to exclude things like Shred or projectile speed increases.  Status duration mods...do they count?  

If you go the flavor route, I'd say just damage...no damage, elemental or otherwise, multishot, or crit increase.  But speed trigger, zoom increase, holstering....and Syndicate mods...yeah...those should be allowed, regardless of damage because...syndicate grind is life.  

Too many mods for us to only use the same 8 or 9 over and over.

[Aveax]

U dont need 2 use same mods over and over again if u dont want.

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

1 minute ago, Aveax said:

U dont need 2 use same mods over and over again if u dont want.

For the higher end game content, you will.  Let me know once you get there.

[Aveax]

Stop writing something that u know nithing about. For the records im mr27

[Loza03]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

For the higher end game content, you will.  Let me know once you get there.

Insulting people will get you nowhere.

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

Just now, Loza03 said:

Insulting people will get you nowhere.

Neither does posting on a message board, but yet, here we are.  

[HellVOps]

Sorry OP, but while I agree that something MUST be done with "meta" dmg mods in each build, I am far more concerned with the issue of armor scaling in higher levels.

[taiiat]

what about Multi-Shot? what about Elemental Mods (on 99.9% of Weapons)?
those are also in the same boat of always used.

your 'non Damage' Slot is already tainted, you want to put Damage in those Slots anyways. you rattled off a list of Damage Mods you want to be able to put into said Slot anyways.
which gives mixed signals, and makes it seem like you don't really have any problems with using Damage Mods a lot, since you're just asking for space to use more Damage Mods.

[Aveax]

39 minutes ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

Too many mods for us to only use the same 8 or 9 over and over.

Looks like u are not experienced if u use only 8-9 mods since there is plenty of builds for every type of weapon.
Lets looks at melee, Full status with CO, few hybrid builds, crit builds with elemental, full crits builds etc. (u just ignore them if u use 8 mods over and over again)
Primary looks similar. Status builds with double elementals, hybrid builds, hunter mumu builds with or without viral etc.

And u propose 2 add slot on top for utility/dmg and remove 1 normal slot from weapons. This wont even change anything in most weapons o.O bcs on every melee u use dmg or utility slot (like reach/drifting contanct etc), in primary it may change weapon from 8 into 7 (if attack speed etc count in that "dmg" slot bcs of dps) slots bcs most utility mod for primary are just not worth using. Ur example with +zoom mod, i would rather use 7 slots with less forma than forma weapon for + zoom

Sry if my gramma is not perfect

Edited April 9, 2019 by Aveax

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

20 minutes ago, Aveax said:

Looks like u are not experienced if u use only 8-9 mods since there is plenty of builds for every type of weapon.
Lets looks at melee, Full status with CO, few hybrid builds, crit builds with elemental, full crits builds etc. (u just ignore them if u use 8 mods over and over again)
Primary looks similar. Status builds with double elementals, hybrid builds, hunter mumu builds with or without viral etc.

And u propose 2 add slot on top for utility/dmg and remove 1 normal slot from weapons. This wont even change anything in most weapons o.O bcs on every melee u use dmg or utility slot (like reach/drifting contanct etc), in primary it may change weapon from 8 into 7 (if attack speed etc count in that "dmg" slot bcs of dps) slots bcs most utility mod for primary are just not worth using. Ur example with +zoom mod, i would rather use 7 slots with less forma than forma weapon for + zoom

Sry if my gramma is not perfect

Never feel the need to apologize for grammar or spelling in a language that is not your native tongue.  You delivered your message with no issues.

Now, as to whether I agree with said message is a completely different matter.

So for primaries...You're saying you wouldn't use:

Serration, Split Chamber, Vigilante Armaments -that's three on pretty much every weapon

Let's say its a crit build...Point Strike and Vital Sense...always

Let's say it's a status build, you're using one of 4 60/60 elemental mods or one of 4 straight 90% elemental mods.  Most folks roll with the elemental mods to save room and pump the status%.  And it's usually corrosive, radiation or viral.  So is it really all 8 or just 6?

Now, let's add in some Primed Bane mods/Heavy Caliber..

Outside of Speed trigger/shred/primed shred...what else is there?  Charged Chamber and critical delay for a vectis?  Deadly Sequence for Grinlok?

Hybrid builds will pull from pretty much the same pool.

So you're correct, it's not the same 8 or 9 for primaries, it's the same 12 to 15.  I stand corrected.

 

For Melee - well let's see

Pressure point/primed pressure point - reach/primed - drifitng contact/body count that's three on every build...

For crit it's berserker, blood rush - every time...maybe sacrificial pressure if you have room, true steel if not - maybe a gladiator mod

For CO you're going to run the same 8 mods pretty much every time.  All 4 60/60 mods so you can count blast as a 5th status affect, reach,. pressure point, body count, CO and that leaves ONE slot...for relentless combo.  Or is it berserker?  Or blood rush?

Let's say you run a hybrid.  I'ts pressure point, reach, 2 60/60's blood rush body count berserker, weeping wounds, and a whopping one mod of your choosing.

So you're correct, it's not the same 8 or 9 for melee, it's the same 10 or 12.  I stand corrected.

 

For secondaries it's even worse.  

Base damage mod,  2 multishot mods and lord help you if you have the two primed crit mods because most of the secondaries have high crit chances so why wouldn't you throw them on every build.  That's 5 mods on pretty much every build.  Leaves you with three for elemental damage...which will take you down to 1 for something else...oh wait...I forgot, there's Augur  Pact....and now you're done.  That's all 8.  Unless you want to swap something out for a a Primed Expel.

 

Which is all besides the point.

The point is that we all use a base damage mod of some kind.  It takes up space in every loadout.  It's as constant as logging into the server.  So it's not really an "option".  So maybe DE could figure out a way to make it so that base damage mods still work in the existing system and doesn't foil folks that spent plat on a primed this or that...but allows us more options in our builds...because that's the strength of warframe. 

Customization.  Personalization.  If everyone's using it, that's not personal is it?  That's my point.  The "how" isn't really all that important to me.  If DE wanted to make a a base damage arcane slot and convert the mods to ranked arcanes I could care less.  

In this case, I don't care about the journey, just the destination.

 

 

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

what about Multi-Shot? what about Elemental Mods (on 99.9% of Weapons)?
those are also in the same boat of always used.

Multishot needs to not exist in the first place. It's a roundabout way to buff damage, status and critical hit in one mod with no real downsides, effectively reducing the number of slots we have to play around with. Elemental Damage mods are FAR too strong for how they work. Far as I'm concerned, the entire elemental damage/status system can use an overhaul, where elemental mods shift some of the weapon's damage type to that element rather than ADDING damage. Same as Fortuna Operator Arcanes, broadly speaking.

You're making a "slippery slope" argument which doesn't work here. While you can in theory argue that for every mod given a dedicated slot, another will take its place, you cannot ignore the MASSIVE diminishing returns that mentality suffers. Base damage mods, elemental damage mods and multishot are the primary culprits, present in damn near every build. The more of those you curb, the less clear-cut and universal their replacements become.

Hypothetically, say we take base damage mods out of the game entirely. One could argue that rate of fire mods will replace them as those similarly increase DPS. And while SOME people might do that, rate of fire has a number of drawbacks from recoil control to aim spread to ammo management. You could go for more crit or elemental damage, but those have diminishing returns without the multiplicatively-stacking base damage buffs. And that's just one random example.

There's always going to be a "meta," but that in itself is not a problem. People are always going to copy what they perceive to work, whether it does or not. It's only a problem when the "meta" stops being a matter of preference or playstyle and becomes the statistically optimal solution to an optimisation problem. You're always going to get deviants who build opposite to most people. However, when specific builds are objectively more powerful, even people who build "by feel" will still gravitate towards them. Simple trial and error will gravitate towards what works and away from what doesn't. A system where a specific set of options always work better is a system with the illusion of choice.

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Multishot needs to not exist in the first place. It's a roundabout way to buff damage, status and critical hit in one mod with no real downsides, effectively reducing the number of slots we have to play around with. Elemental Damage mods are FAR too strong for how they work. Far as I'm concerned, the entire elemental damage/status system can use an overhaul, where elemental mods shift some of the weapon's damage type to that element rather than ADDING damage. Same as Fortuna Operator Arcanes, broadly speaking.

You're making a "slippery slope" argument which doesn't work here. While you can in theory argue that for every mod given a dedicated slot, another will take its place, you cannot ignore the MASSIVE diminishing returns that mentality suffers. Base damage mods, elemental damage mods and multishot are the primary culprits, present in damn near every build. The more of those you curb, the less clear-cut and universal their replacements become.

Hypothetically, say we take base damage mods out of the game entirely. One could argue that rate of fire mods will replace them as those similarly increase DPS. And while SOME people might do that, rate of fire has a number of drawbacks from recoil control to aim spread to ammo management. You could go for more crit or elemental damage, but those have diminishing returns without the multiplicatively-stacking base damage buffs. And that's just one random example.

There's always going to be a "meta," but that in itself is not a problem. People are always going to copy what they perceive to work, whether it does or not. It's only a problem when the "meta" stops being a matter of preference or playstyle and becomes the statistically optimal solution to an optimisation problem. You're always going to get deviants who build opposite to most people. However, when specific builds are objectively more powerful, even people who build "by feel" will still gravitate towards them. Simple trial and error will gravitate towards what works and away from what doesn't. A system where a specific set of options always work better is a system with the illusion of choice.

Yeeeeeeeah....Primed Pressure point is not a meta.  If you own it, it's in every build.  Base damage mods are not FOTM.  They are as constant as the sun coming up in the east.  They have always been with the game.  They are always a requirement in your loadout.

Which is, why I state again, it's end goal that matters to me.  Not the how.  DE has some savvy cats at the helm.  They can fix this problem, they just have to want to.

 

[Aveax]

2 hours ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

Never feel the need to apologize for grammar or spelling in a language that is not your native tongue.  You delivered your message with no issues.

Im the one who decide if i want 2 apologize or not
 

 

2 hours ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

Never feel the need to apologize for grammar or spelling in a language that is not your native tongue.  You delivered your message with no issues.

Now, as to whether I agree with said message is a completely different matter.

So for primaries...You're saying you wouldn't use:

Serration, Split Chamber, Vigilante Armaments -that's three on pretty much every weapon

Let's say its a crit build...Point Strike and Vital Sense...always

Let's say it's a status build, you're using one of 4 60/60 elemental mods or one of 4 straight 90% elemental mods.  Most folks roll with the elemental mods to save room and pump the status%.  And it's usually corrosive, radiation or viral.  So is it really all 8 or just 6?

Now, let's add in some Primed Bane mods/Heavy Caliber..

Outside of Speed trigger/shred/primed shred...what else is there?  Charged Chamber and critical delay for a vectis?  Deadly Sequence for Grinlok?

Hybrid builds will pull from pretty much the same pool.

So you're correct, it's not the same 8 or 9 for primaries, it's the same 12 to 15.  I stand corrected.

Serration, Split Chamber, Vigilante Armaments, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Ville Acceleration, Hunter Munition, Argon Scope, Shred/Primed Shred, Heavy Caliber, 4x Dmg mods, 4x 60/60 mods. Well its 18 rn and there is prob few more that are usefull.

2 hours ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

For Melee - well let's see

Pressure point/primed pressure point - reach/primed - drifitng contact/body count that's three on every build...

For crit it's berserker, blood rush - every time...maybe sacrificial pressure if you have room, true steel if not - maybe a gladiator mod

For CO you're going to run the same 8 mods pretty much every time.  All 4 60/60 mods so you can count blast as a 5th status affect, reach,. pressure point, body count, CO and that leaves ONE slot...for relentless combo.  Or is it berserker?  Or blood rush?

Let's say you run a hybrid.  I'ts pressure point, reach, 2 60/60's blood rush body count berserker, weeping wounds, and a whopping one mod of your choosing.

So you're correct, it's not the same 8 or 9 for melee, it's the same 10 or 12.  I stand corrected.

I wont point melee mods but there is min 17 usefull mods.

About secondary idk bcs i mostly dont use secondaries (thats why i didnt even mention them in prev post) (i use ~2-3 builds so it may be ~12-14 mods in total)

And ofc that there is some "mandatory" mods that are used in almost every builds. Is this any problem? o.O

As u can see u are incorrect again.
If u use less mods then its ur choice but that doesnt mean that there is only few usefull mods. U just limit ur choice.
 

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

5 hours ago, Aveax said:

Im the one who decide if i want 2 apologize or not
 

 

Serration, Split Chamber, Vigilante Armaments, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Ville Acceleration, Hunter Munition, Argon Scope, Shred/Primed Shred, Heavy Caliber, 4x Dmg mods, 4x 60/60 mods. Well its 18 rn and there is prob few more that are usefull.

I wont point melee mods but there is min 17 usefull mods.

About secondary idk bcs i mostly dont use secondaries (thats why i didnt even mention them in prev post) (i use ~2-3 builds so it may be ~12-14 mods in total)

And ofc that there is some "mandatory" mods that are used in almost every builds. Is this any problem? o.O

As u can see u are incorrect again.
If u use less mods then its ur choice but that doesnt mean that there is only few usefull mods. U just limit ur choice.
 

Look, forest for the trees, you're completely missing the point.  12 mods, 20 mods...there's over 90 mods for primary weapons....we use maybe 15% of them on a regular basis.

Does that seem right to you?  It doesn't seem right to me.  And that's my point.  Stop getting stuck in the weeds.  

[taiiat]

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

-snip-

which is why any real solution involves doing something like dividing the strength of all Damage Mods in the game by ~2-5x.

deleting Multi-Shot is even more work than Deleting Base Damage Bonuses, as all Crit and Status Stats must be redone around Weapons firing 1/2-1/3 as many average Projectiles.

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

It's only a problem when the "meta" stops being a matter of preference or playstyle and becomes the statistically optimal solution to an optimisation problem.

which, also won't change. Damage Numbers would go down by removing one type of Multiplier, but as you mentioned but decided against, it would end up just being replaced with the next most powerful overall Multiplier and it would stay there forever instead.

[Variks_Prime]

Flavor mod slot? So basically exilus mods for weapons? Phrase it as such and it might be more likely to be added. Honestly, these days, I think we could use 2 exilus slots on all items. For the mods that just aren't going to get used otherwise, from zoom to ammo capacity.

[Basalto]

DE should've done something about base damage mods ages and eons ago. The build variety is dead when I can't get stuff like reload speed and recoil reduction due to how I need to max my damage to always be ready for a content that never scales the player, but always the enemy.

 

10 hours ago, Aveax said:

U dont need 2 use same mods over and over again if u dont want.

A ridiculous answer to a genuine concern, but also not entirely false. I sure could swap my Vital Sense for a Split Chamber, after all. So many choices, so little time. I mean, you can always name me the two mods that affect total ammo and magazine size respectively, since the majority of the players probably already forgot they even existed, due to how overshadowed they get by S#&$ like this:

Spoiler

Would you swap that Infected Clip for Fast Hands, or that Point Strike for the godly Rifle Aptitude. If I gave you the option to go from a pile of S#&$ into a pile of S#&$ with diahrrea, it'd be pretty close to "just don't do it if you don't want lol". In the end, you'd still be in S#&$.

 

10 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Insulting people will get you nowhere.

And neither will dismissing important concerns over the game's mandatory mods with the crappy echo of "you don't have to use them if you don't want to". This concern has been brought way too many times and there's always that one person to just advise willingly crippling oneself. I guess people call it "shilling".

[Hellmaker2004]

8 hours ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

Yeeeeeeeah....Primed Pressure point is not a meta.  If you own it, it's in every build.

Primed Pressure point is not in every build, There are a lot of weapons where using the Two Umbra mods, Sacrificial Pressure and Sacrificial Steel give you a higher damage.

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

1 hour ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

Primed Pressure point is not in every build, There are a lot of weapons where using the Two Umbra mods, Sacrificial Pressure and Sacrificial Steel give you a higher damage.

You realize you're actually supporting my argument right?

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

which is why any real solution involves doing something like dividing the strength of all Damage Mods in the game by ~2-5x. 

Reducing the strength of damage mods accomplishes very little. The cause of damage creep is stacking multipliers, not the size of said multipliers. It's because base damage, elemental damage and critical damage are multiplicative with each other that you can get ridiculous situations like a weapon modded for *200 damage, all together. Make all sources of damage increase additive with each other and you cut substantially more damage out of the system without having to change any stats. If nerfs are your goal, anyway.

 

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

which, also won't change. Damage Numbers would go down by removing one type of Multiplier, but as you mentioned but decided against, it would end up just being replaced with the next most powerful overall Multiplier and it would stay there forever instead.

No it wouldn't, and you appear to have missed my point. Only a few of the options are statistically superior, with a great many others being subjectively, situationally or partially superior. While, yes, each individual player will default to "the next best thing," what that actually is begins to vary substantially the farther along you get. The goal of proper balance is not to make all choices equally viable or all options equally picked. It's to reduce the statistical significance of choices to the point where personal preference becomes of comparable measure to mathematical optimisation.

The slippery slope argument you're proposing really only holds for the first few steps where the optimisation problems are simple to see and solve. Once you get into more complex game mechanics (more complex than just getting the largest average number) such as weapon spread, magazine size, rate of fire, projectile flight speed, falloff distance, AoE range and so on is where playstyle, taste and sometimes even superstition begins to matter more than statistics, if for no reason other than statistical appraisals start getting harder to calculate and less broadly applicable.

Once you remove enough damage multipliers to move players into optimising the handling of their weapon rather than just its damage, there is no more "next best thing" because optimal weapon handling depends on the person handling it more than anything else.

[Basalto]

41 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

weapon spread, magazine size, rate of fire, projectile flight speed, falloff distance, AoE range and so on

I don't think we even got half of these, so there's that as a little objective for before setting builds around actual weapon handling instead of damage, which I personally would love.

[Alpha56]

They tried to remove mandatory mods (AKA % damage, % multishot, etc), but instead, they came back with riven mods. 

So...

+/- for the diversity of builds (but rivens can do that as well...)

- for powercreep (no endgame content yet)

We can already cheeze the game totally, this is Boring.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Alpha56

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, Basalto said:

I don't think we even got half of these, so there's that as a little objective for before setting builds around actual weapon handling instead of damage, which I personally would love.

We have mods which affect all of the stats I listed. Weapon spread might be the only one you could argue about, since it shows up only in Corrupted mods near as I can tell, but everything else has dedicated mods for it. Speaking purely for rifles, you have Magazine Wrap, Speed Trigger, Terminal Velocity and Firestorm which address those aspects. In fact, Terminal Velocity affects both projectile flight speed and falloff range on rifles with falloff. Sure, some of the stats on those are terrible, such as Magazine Wrap being just 30%, but that's a balance issue and in some cases stronger combo mods do exist.

And sure, weapon handling isn't a significant issue in Warframe... Largely because damage mods are statistically significantly more optimal in every situation, so nobody ever bothers to mod for weapon handling. Instead, people just end up ignoring weapons like the Dual Cestra over their high vertical recoil instead of building for it. Having come from a background in Payday 2, however, I'm of the opinion that a weapon-modding system designed around altering and enhancing aspects of weapon handling generally offers a lot more leeway for personal preference than one predominantly designed around altering damage. Some people are better at popping headshots, some people are better at controlling recoil, some prefer imprecise scatterguns they can fire while flying through the air and there's rarely an explicit "best" way to build a gun beyond what suits your skillset as a player and your preference for what kind of weapons to use.

And again - I'm not arguing that removing this or that mod is panacea for the game's modding system. Rather, I'm arguing that the more you shift away from player-independent statistics like damage, crit chance and status chance and closer to player-driven statistics like spread, recoil, magazine capacity, reload delay and so on, the less absolute the meta becomes. In fact, I'd argue that you need to go only about three or four steps down before you start seeing this. Standardise weapon damage and implement all additive damage buffs, thereby instituting natural diminishing returns. Get rid of multishot entirely, shift critical hits and status chance to guaranteed effects (crits for headshots). Shift elemental damage mods to convert damage rather than add it. Even as little as this makes "the next best thing" a nebulous concept.

[Basalto]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

We have mods which affect all of the stats I listed.

No, like, as actual stats listed on the weapon. You don't know how much recoil a weapon has until you bring it somewhere and shoot it, as opposed to the game having an actual listed recoil stat on the gun's stats. Same with spread, flight speed and AoE radius.

[Steel_Rook]

6 hours ago, Basalto said:

No, like, as actual stats listed on the weapon. You don't know how much recoil a weapon has until you bring it somewhere and shoot it, as opposed to the game having an actual listed recoil stat on the gun's stats. Same with spread, flight speed and AoE radius.

That's true. In fact, I'd argue that the player-facing weapon stats display is both badly insufficient, often misleading and occasionally straight-up wrong. The Status Chance display is an utter farce. The default layout has no means of depicting variable fire rates, multi-component attacks and other oddball design. We lack - as you said - basic information on how our weapon handles or what effect handling mods actually has.

But I see what you mean now, though. Balancing the mods system towards altering weapon handling and away from just tweaking damage would absolutely require far better display of said weapon handling. I don't understand why video game after video game keeps consistently failing to deliver usable weapon handling information to the player. From Payday 2 to The Division to Wildlands to Warframe, figuring out how your guns are supposed to work involves digging through wikis, asking on forums and doing the math yourself. Which is absurd.