Aggregated List of Issues with Rivens

[Rxanadu]

I've been looking for an aggregated list of issues in regards to Rivens - a controversial addition to Warframe (among many) which most players have agreed is one of - if not, the - most broken feature in Warframe. However, all I was able to cobble together were a few half-hour long video rants and a plethora of forum posts (myself included) proposing solutions to Rivens with a very little understanding of the full breadth of the issue - which ultimately devolved into name-calling. This post is here provide said aforementioned aggregated list of Riven mods as of late. If you have any additional issues to mention or if I missed anything (which I'm assuming I have), please feel free to add to the discussion in a respectable and productive manner.

Below is a list of common issues most players seemed to have with Rivens as of late:

• Riven rolls are far too unpredictable to get good rolls for any of the weapons which have Rivens available for them
• Most Riven rolls for high Disposition weapons (i.e. low-tier weapons) flat-out don't perform one of the most anticipated features of Riven mods - to allow low-tier and non-meta weapons effective use in high-level missions (e.g. Sorties, ESO, open-world bounties and boss fights)
• Gathering Kuva for use in Riven re-rolls is tiresome and time-consuming
• Increases in Kuva required for Riven re-rolls innately discourage players from interacting with the re-roll mechanic, regardless of reaching a Kuva cap after 10 re-rolls
• The max amount of Kuva required to re-roll Rivens (currently 3,500 as of this initial writing) is immensely despised by players due to lengths at which players are required to acquire Kuva
• Kuva can only be acquired during gameplay in a consistent and significant manner via Kuva floods or Kuva Survival  - all other forms of acquiring Kuva are either far too infrequent (e.g. Sortie rewards, Nightwave standing rewards, Gift of the Lotus rewards) or so insignificant most experienced players don't bother to acquire (e.g. open-world bounty rewards, Kuva siphon mission rewards)
• Unveiling Rivens is an unnecessarily cumbersome struggle due to the nature of how Riven Challenges are generated
• Riven Challenges vary from inconsequential to absurdly difficult to complete
• No other way of unveiling Rivens exists other than to complete Riven Challenges
• Riven Slots discourage experimentation with Rivens due to the harsh limit on allowed Rivens within a player's inventory
• Acquiring Rivens beyond the inventory limit restricts access to Sorties or acquiring more Rivens from any other means (e.g. Gift of the Lotus alert rewards, trading)
• Riven Transmuters are a band-aid on the aforementioned Riven limit, forcing players to sacrifice 4 of their Rivens (veiled or unveiled) in order to acquire a new veiled Riven mod while also freeing up space for 3 new Rivens
• If players use 4 of the same Riven mod type using a Riven Transmuter, the veiled Riven will be of the same type; otherwise, the veiled Riven mod will be of a random Riven type
• Riven Transmuters are an expendable (i.e. cannot be reused) resources acquired by defeating an Eidolon Hydrolyst, the most difficult of 3 Eidolon fights players have to complete consecutively within the same session in order to acquire
• Players have 4 ways to make space for additional Riven mods in their inventory - dissolving them for Endo; sacrificing 4 mods and a Riven Transmuter to acquire a veiled Riven mod; trading Rivens via in-game Trade options (e.g. Trade chat, Maroo's Bazaar, Dojo Trading posts); or acquiring 3 new Riven slots via the in-game Market for 60 pieces of Platinum (up to a max of 90 Riven slots)
• *The (possible) cited reason for Riven Slots' inclusion - the amount of possible Rivens being generated takes a heavy toll on server space - seems contrived and confusing for people who have played other loot-based games
• Rivens - due to their rarity, coveted stats and lack of understanding among non-veteran players - have created a hostile Trading environment where hostile players prey on uninformed players to acquire Rivens for far below their perceived price only to resell them for higher than said perceived price
• Potential Riven stats, value and combination of stats are difficult to ascertain without either substantial research or using third-party resources (e.g. Semlar's Riven Calculator)
• Riven mods are extremely hard to come by within basic gameplay and only have three sources for acquisition - Sortie rewards, rare Gift of the Lotus alert rewards, and Arbitration rewards (only Archgun Rivens are rewarded with this method)
• Riven Disposition is an overall disaster due to the nature of applying equal Disposition to higher-tiered variant of weapons with high disposition (e.g. Sicarus Prime (MR 14) has the same Disposition as its weaker variant Sicarus (MR 3))
• Riven Disposition can only be seen in-game via the Upgrade menu for individual weapons and only if players have a Riven mod for said weapon, preventing many players from discovering the possible chance of acquiring a Riven for particular weapons

*The reason has been mentioned in a few videos I've seen but never properly cited, so don't take it as gospel truth

[Voltage]

For me, the issue with the Riven system is not the rolling mechanics or anything like that, it's the Kuva acquisition speed. The amount of time it takes you to get 3500 Kuva is always the same and unrewarding for what happens when you roll something. There is no way to speed up how much Kuva you can accumulate other than a Resource Booster, or a lucky Smeeta buff. If Kuva farming was made interesting and was rewarding compared to how Riven cycles work, it would be a lot more enjoyable to invest in the system. The randomness of rolls still makes Rivens unique and interesting, but farming Kuva is a chore. You should feel compelled to push a weapon with a Riven Mod, not one-shotting Sortie enemies with a larger number than before.

Your point on the hostile trading environment exists for any item in the game. Uninformed players will always allow informed players to make flips. The only reason players complain about Riven Mods more often is because getting a Vauban Prime set for nothing will only net you 300-350 Platinum compared to a Riven Mod which can grant you thousands. There is no way to really fix this.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Voltage

[80think08]

You know I would love too see a change in the Riven system, which also will not make them obsolete.
I dont have much hope left though, that DE will ever come to care about any of it, in regard to the abundance of posts about Rivens, that have already been made. 

Still I pretty much agree to your list, maybe except to the one with the Riven challenge, which I personally never came to really worry about.
I think the main issue is that Rivens creates a great amount of ingame platinum as capital, of which DE profits in some way or another. The same probably applies to the limitations in Riven slot capacity and also the amount you have to pay for for one addtional slot. DE seems to hold to any possible way to increase the flow and in game capita of platinum and is also very, very anxious about changing any already implied method about it.
I personally cannot remember of one thing that DE has done to change already existing market strategies (there sure is one and someone will tell me). We still have timers for every gameplay element ingame and while some are also meant for longetivity in gameplay, some for short term gameplay, like Formas, Catalysts and so on, are simply meant to promote your spending.

[TehGrief]

On 2019-05-05 at 11:56 PM, Rxanadu said:

Most Riven rolls for high Disposition weapons (i.e. low-tier weapons) flat-out don't perform one of the most anticipated features of Riven mods - to allow low-tier and non-meta weapons effective use in high-level missions (e.g. Sorties, ESO, open-world bounties and boss fights)

I believe that if the disposition scale was increased from [1-5] to [1-10] it would allow more space for the flexibility between the rivens. Lower-tiered weapons could scale higher and higher-tiered rivens would be slightly scaled down. 

I continue to believe that if this is truly a system intended to balance out weaker weapons with what are considered "end-game meta" then the difference MUST be greater.

On 2019-05-05 at 11:56 PM, Rxanadu said:

Riven Challenges vary from inconsequential to absurdly difficult to complete

There are certainly some challenges that should be removed - there are a great deal of them that simply don't work as they are worded.

On 2019-05-05 at 11:56 PM, Rxanadu said:

• Riven Slots discourage experimentation with Rivens due to the harsh limit on allowed Rivens within a player's inventory
• Acquiring Rivens beyond the inventory limit restricts access to Sorties or acquiring more Rivens from any other means (e.g. Gift of the Lotus alert rewards, trading)
• Riven Transmuters are a band-aid on the aforementioned Riven limit, forcing players to sacrifice 4 of their Rivens (veiled or unveiled) in order to acquire a new veiled Riven mod while also freeing up space for 3 new Rivens
• If players use 4 of the same Riven mod type using a Riven Transmuter, the veiled Riven will be of the same type; otherwise, the veiled Riven mod will be of a random Riven type
• Riven Transmuters are an expendable (i.e. cannot be reused) resources acquired by defeating an Eidolon Hydrolyst, the most difficult of 3 Eidolon fights players have to complete consecutively within the same session in order to acquire
• Players have 4 ways to make space for additional Riven mods in their inventory - dissolving them for Endo; sacrificing 4 mods and a Riven Transmuter to acquire a veiled Riven mod; trading Rivens via in-game Trade options (e.g. Trade chat, Maroo's Bazaar, Dojo Trading posts); or acquiring 3 new Riven slots via the in-game Market for 60 pieces of Platinum (up to a max of 90 Riven slots)

This would have to be my biggest concern with Riven mods. Riven transmuters are only dropped from the Eidolon Hydrolyst which means that even slightly more adept players will likely reach their riven cap long before they even have access to the fight.

I think if the community had more access to Riven Transmuters there would be a much healthier market for them. The ability to more consistently re-roll rivens would keep the objectively bad rivens out of the game while providing opportunity for much more reasonable rivens to become available - more quantity means rarity decreases alongside cost.

I've seen a couple suggestions in other threads about making Riven Transmuters purchasable from the in-game market - this isn't a bad idea. I think adding Riven Transmuters to the drop table of the other two eidolons isn't a bad idea either. I believe that making Riven Transmuters at least trade-able would significantly resolve a big portion of the issue.

Additionally, even the concept of adding a Riven Transmuter Blueprint (a reusable blueprint for crafting Riven Transmuters) to the drop table of the Eidolon Hydrolyst would give more opportunity for veteran players to continue the grind - first obtaining the rare blueprint, secondly making and trading Riven Transmuters to other players. 

Either way... this is something that needs to be addressed. 

[sir_deadlock]

Don't forget my personal grip. There are very few reasonable areas to remind a player that they have hit or are over capacity for riven slots:

1. When the player attempts to trade for more rivens.
2. When the player enters the riven screen in the greater mods inventory menu.
3. One time per day when the player logs in.

The player should not be restricted from sorties. Rather, riven drops should be restricted. Failing that, whatever RNG provides should either skip over rivens, or the riven should be instantly dissolved if the player decides they don't want to buy more slots at that exact moment.