The current state of Rivens (From a collectors standpoint)

[-Minibeave-]

I've been playing Warframe since about 2014, and nothing got me more hooked on the game than the Riven system. It gives us a while new layer of customization for our weapons, and it also encourages some weapon setups that wouldn't be otherwise possible without the Riven system.

 

The recent rollout of disposition adjustments hurt most of my collection, which frankly damages my urge to play Warframe, as rolling/trading/buying Rivens was really the only thing that kept me coming back for the past two years or so. Now this isn't a post to complain about the nerfs, but to discuss the state of Rivens, and some possible changes DE could implement to make Rivens more universally accessable, and a lot more user friendly. 

There are a few things I would like to address before I make my proposition. 

1. RNG based mechanics aren't typically that fun.

Personally, I've rolled many Rivens well past the 100 rolls marks, as I'm sure many of us have. A dozen or so times over rolled Rivens with amazing statlines, but negatives that outright kill the Riven. These moments are heartbreaking. All of the "perfect" Rivens in my collection have been purchased with platinum made from selling lesser Rivens in order to get the stats I'm after. 

2. Putting hours and hours of grinding and getting nearly nothing for your work doesn't make me want to keep playing. 

In this case, farming 500k kuva over a double resource weekend, and rolling nothing but craptastic Rivens over and over reminds me of why I quit play Black Desert Online. Putting in so much work, only to have it rely on the toss of the dice, isn't a healthy game mechanic. 

3. The current state of the Riven market seems to be collapsing. People don't seem to be rolling anything other than the new weapons, or the basic "meta weapons" such as the Rubico. 

As a collector/roller/seller I've noticed prices are in a steep decline. That alone isn't a problem, I personally like to see Rivens become more available for the common player. The issue that this does present is that people like myself who could potentially make thousands of platinum in a given week, are now making considerably less platinum, which in turn reduces our incentive to continue injecting quality riven rolls into the economy. This may not be the case, but in my opinion, this will in time decrease the quality of Rivens as less and less people have enough incentive to roll a riven 100+ times in order to get a quality riven. 

 

Now that I've outlined some issues that I'm seeing, let me get to my proposition.

 

Each statlines of any given weapon, or maybe weapon type, can be extracted from a given riven. Say you roll a riven, and you get +Zoom/-Recoil/+Damage. Let is extract the +Damage stat line in order to combine it with other extracted stats in order to configure our own desired Rivens. 

Keep the RNG element of which stats, and how high the percentage is. So you could extract an S+ rated damage from a mostly useless riven and put it to better use. 

One issue this may present is a loss in platinum transactions from people getting better Rivens more easily, my remedy to that would be to make these stat lines tradable, and give them a graded rank, similarly to how we rank stat percentages currently. Like WTS S+ Rifle Damage stat extract, etc. 

In my opinion these changes would reinvigorate the trading economy, and open the kiva floodgates to many players who previously had no interest in rolling Rivens due to the immense time investment vs reward. This would give players more customization, as well as a lot more to look forward to in building the strenght of their collections. 

 

I'd love to hear any thoughts on this, or any changes you would personally like to see to the Riven system. 

Personally with the current state of them, with nerfs to the collection I've tediously worked my ass off for over a two year span, I don't have a lot of interest in playing. But if changes like this were implemented, I'd probably play everyday. 

Thanks Tenno, happy hunting. 

[Walkampf]

vor 16 Minuten schrieb -Minibeave-:

The recent rollout of disposition adjustments hurt most of my collection, which frankly damages my urge to play Warframe, as rolling/trading/buying Rivens was really the only thing that kept me coming back for the past two years or so.

Well, the rivens are rebalanced for a good reason. They very clearly explained their reasoning and it's as sound as it can be with a broken system like rivens.

And as somebody who really dislikes the entirety of the riven system, sooooo.....

every riven collecter who leaves the game is a good thing form my point of view.

A few more and DE might be willing to work on an actual system instead of these glorified lootboxes.

[-Minibeave-]

I understand why they nerfed them, and as I stated in my post, this isn't meant to be a discussion about the nerfs. 

What changes to the Riven system would you like to see, in order to better your overall Warframe experience? What is this "actual system" in your eyes? 

Please keep this thread productive 

Edited May 31, 2019 by -Minibeave-

[Voltage]

22 minutes ago, -Minibeave- said:

3. The current state of the Riven market seems to be collapsing. People don't seem to be rolling anything other than the new weapons, or the basic "meta weapons" such as the Rubico. 

This heavily varies with perspective and standards for what you want out of the system. I feel the market is being saturated with Rubico etc, but Riven Mods that look really good cost quite a lot compared to the past.

[Walkampf]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb -Minibeave-:

What changes to the Riven system would you like to see, in order to better your overall Warframe experience?

Outright removal.

As I said, they ARE lootboxes. Even worse, lootboxes with tradable content, similar to counterstrikes boxes, which have people pay ridiculous prices for skins.

[Rhalick0]

Rivens should die. I hope everybody stop rolling rivens so DE cant make any more plat selling boosters and people buying rivens. Then they will maybe do some actual weapon balancing

[-Minibeave-]

2 minutes ago, hackedraptor said:

Rivens should die. I hope everybody stop rolling rivens so DE cant make any more plat selling boosters and people buying rivens. Then they will maybe do some actual weapon balancing

At this point I'm mostly inclined to agree with you. The only thing right now that I see of major value to me in the riven system is to drastically change how a weapon performs. As in, I can get a -Puncture opticor riven to make it a Gas monster. Or make a shotgun such as the kohm a 100% status weapon. It adds diversity to the game, which is what I value the most out of the riven system.

[Rhalick0]

5 minutes ago, -Minibeave- said:

At this point I'm mostly inclined to agree with you. The only thing right now that I see of major value to me in the riven system is to drastically change how a weapon performs. As in, I can get a -Puncture opticor riven to make it a Gas monster. Or make a shotgun such as the kohm a 100% status weapon. It adds diversity to the game, which is what I value the most out of the riven system.

Thats more proof of the hamper rivens have put on the weapon system. Without them the devs would actually make mods/arcanes other stuff for this type of plays. They can easily make a +fr -imp/punc and similar mods. But now we are stuck with this pathetic RNG to make decent use of weapons.

[-Minibeave-]

1 minute ago, hackedraptor said:

Thats more proof of the hamper rivens have put on the weapon system. Without them the devs would actually make mods/arcanes other stuff for this type of plays. They can easily make a +fr -imp/punc and similar mods. But now we are stuck with this pathetic RNG to make decent use of weapons.

I would love to see introductions of mods like that, or a general rework of the impact/puncture/slash system in general. I know that's been in talks for like, a year now? There are bigger issues than Rivens. I guess I'm just attached to the Rivens that I enjoy. There does need to be greater change in the game. 

[trst]

The only thing I'd like to see out of the system is that they continue to shift dispositions and that their internal "ranking" for the minimum dispositions ends up functional.

Bad weapons will always be bad but I'd say the ideal situation with Riven balance is where they make most weapons on par with eachother with similar Rivens. That way the system is less about unnecessary min-max powercreep and more about expanding the amount of viable weapons into end-game and endurance content.

 

But in the balance of the current system where already good weapons are made ridiculous with Rivens I could never support stat locking. With the current balance and difficulty issues the game already has adding more good to godly Rivens into the system can only make it worse. As well as increasing the amount of drama that can occur after these Rivens end up with their dispositions nerfed anyways.

[Dhrekr]

1 hour ago, -Minibeave- said:

In my opinion these changes would reinvigorate the trading economy, and open the kiva floodgates to many players who previously had no interest in rolling Rivens due to the immense time investment vs reward. This would give players more customization, as well as a lot more to look forward to in building the strenght of their collections. 

Whut? No.

Being able to extract stats would mean that within two weeks the market will be flooded with S+ damage and S+ multishot stat extracts. Within a month, the price of these extracts will have been ground into the floor.

 

I am actually rather amazed at the lifetime of the Riven market - it has lasted years and still generates lots of trade, although mostly in new weapons - but the reason is obvious: it is hard to get "perfect" rolls, which means there aren't  (relatively) many "perfect" rolls and that producing a "perfect" roll requires a relatively long time. Hence the market takes a long time to saturate (if it ever really does).

Your solution makes it much, much easier to saturate the market. No matter how you spin it, the point where the market saturates is the moment when revenue drops to meaninglessness.

 

And that's why your idea won't be made into a thing.

[Voltage]

If you keep increasing your standards for Rivens, you will always find a way to stay below the cap. 🙂 

[Genesix6]

You forgot to mention of kuva survival scales

[Psykhe27]

Or they could make kuva gains scaleable and make kuva survival not a survive for 1 hr-and-leave bore fest.

[Marvelous_A]

As long as you stay out of the Rubico cancer rivens are fun and stuff. The only change it needs is higher capacity.

From what I've seen in the market it's basically "Rubico or trash" mentality.

[SenorClipClop]

12 hours ago, -Minibeave- said:

RNG based mechanics aren't typically that fun.

That's pretty subjective and I personally disagree. Randomness in a game breeds creative opportunism. If I know that Y will happen every time I do X, doing X is less appealing for me because I know the outcome. But if I do X and sometimes Z happens, that's when I have to turn my brain on and change up my course of action.

That's more in terms of gameplay, though. In terms of Riven Mod RNG, I've sure had some lousy rolls which would have been awesome but for one abysmal negative, but I've had enough nice rolls that I'm happy with my collection of heavy-hitting mods. The thing that makes me not tear out my hair with these is that I accept it's incredibly unlikely that I'll land them "god rolls", recognize that they aren't necessary for playing WF successfully, and recognize that the stress of playing toward that end would outweigh the fun I have from not doing that. So I don't do it. That's why I have a Kogake Riven with -137% Range, which I still use in missions. This is where we can get back into creative opportunism: how do I make a decent build around a negative range Kogake, and is it worth a Primed Reach for the benefits of the Riven? It's a weird build but was fun to math out and make.

At the end of the day, getting that top 0.1% roll is not going to make so huge a difference as to justify sacrificing my fun for an intense grind. At least for me, anyways. I'll still throw in Kuva when I feel like it, and when I get a really good roll I'll treasure it, but my causal-ish approach means that good RNG means good luck, not the end of product of using up my free time doing something I wouldn't enjoy.

Edited June 1, 2019 by SenorClipClop

[(PSN)alexismartinez14]

Like you said, the ability to change specific stats on a riven. Perhaps add a rare item that can allow you to do this. Sort of like a legendary core. This would lower ridiculous riven prices, but it wouldn't fix this riven issue folk have. The community focuses on what is popular, if rivens were removed then trade chat would find something else to deem valuable. Rivens are a good and bad thing, they flood the market, but at least they are a good plat sink, DE has to sell plat somehow.

[Xzorn]

12 hours ago, Walkampf said:

Even worse, lootboxes with tradable content, similar to counterstrikes boxes, which have people pay ridiculous prices for skins.

 

Even, Even worse.

Most loot box systems have a secondary currency when you get something you already own so you can buy what you want.

Because there's no fail safe system, though unlikely it's possible to roll for the rest of your life and never get the stats you want.

[FlusteredFerret]

14 hours ago, -Minibeave- said:

as rolling/trading/buying Rivens was really the only thing that kept me coming back for the past two years or so.

If thats true you need to find a new game to play.

Rivens are a TINY part of the game and are meant to be rare, hard to obtain and exactly as random as they are.

If you don't like any of that, then you should probably give up on Warframe.

 

[Chaincat]

I'm honestly sick of seeing "godly" 10k+ plat rivens. Rivens should be more saturated than they are, I think. Or outright removed. They're a system that means DE doesn't have to rebalance weapons directly, even if the weapons that most need rivens are fundamentally broken or so far behind the current power curve it's not even funny.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Chaincat

[DrBorris]

It is almost like not having Rivens be better balanced and more user-friendly has led to them being an item with only a niche appeal...

Who could have ever seen that coming...

 

Maybe if Rivens weren't such a slot machine more people would be willing/wanting to partake in the trade economy, so you could argue that while making Rivens "easier" would decrease the plat-per Riven price, it would increase the the amount being sold and increase the amount of platinum being shuffled through the economy.

Nah, probably just best to be cautious and keep Rivens a vanity item out of reach of the majority of the player-base. 

Edited June 1, 2019 by DrBorris

[k05h]

Rivens are multilayered slot machines. A chance of a drop of unveiled rivens, a random unveiling with the challenge and finally the reolling of stats. The last part really turns the normal high action gameplay into a slot machine zombie creator where your interaction is reduced to "press here to reroll". This system takes full advantage of the fact that some people are susceptible to gaming addiction. - From that point of view I would love to see the system gone.

The same goes for my inner collector who enjoy to get every mod the game has to offer. Rivens totally messed that up. I since have learned to live with only those mods that I really need. I no longer care for a complete collection. 

While I would love to see rivens gone I know that they will stay. They are an easy fix to make older guns more usable. A better fix would be a real upgrade systems or more mods like the amalgam weapons mods but that would require way more work for DE.

[(PSN)xtharbadx]

Funny how people value rivens so much to the point of paying thousands, on a game that is so brain dead easy already without any Riven.

 

[George_PPS]

17 hours ago, -Minibeave- said:

I understand why they nerfed them, and as I stated in my post, this isn't meant to be a discussion about the nerfs. 

What changes to the Riven system would you like to see, in order to better your overall Warframe experience? What is this "actual system" in your eyes? 

Please keep this thread productive 

I am also a Riven roller/trader/collector. It’s one activity I do the most as well. I have also farmed a lot of Kuva and rolled thousands of rolls. 

The truth is that most players don’t have what we have and they are simply envious. Those who don’t have them but cant get them easily  want the system to be gone. Those who like Rivens but do not want to farm Kuva to get good/god rolls want good Rivens cheap, really cheap. All their arguments can be resolved by asking them if they are given god tier rivens for free, would they either sell them as cheap as they say how Rivens should be or just dissolve them into Endos. 100% of them will either keep them or trade them at the proper market values. 100% of them.

I agree with many of your points  I will repay later. 

Edited June 1, 2019 by George_PPS

[George_PPS]

4 hours ago, Chaincat said:

I'm honestly sick of seeing "godly" 10k+ plat rivens. Rivens should be more saturated than they are, I think. Or outright removed. They're a system that means DE doesn't have to rebalance weapons directly, even if the weapons that most need rivens are fundamentally broken or so far behind the current power curve it's not even funny.

How much would you sell such a Riven worth 10K? It’s not yours. How does it make you sick? I will happily to take all your Rivens for free since you think Rivens are worthless. Msg me in game for the fair trade.