Baked-in Mods?

[Venatorio]

Was curious as to what others would think on this topic: What are your opinions on having some mods baked into every weapon? For clarity: there are a number of mods that just go onto EVERY weapon, and a lot of mods that are extremely likely to go on every weapon.

 

There’s a great deal of mods that open more interesting, unique builds for weapons, but that requires sacrificing efficiency/effectiveness. The advent of the new Amalgam mods accentuates this problem. So what if, for example:

 - All primaries, secondaries, and melee weapons had their respective base damage increased by (whatever % is given by serration/hornet strike/etc.)

 - Primaries and secondaries get (split chamber/hells chamber/etc) multishot built-in

 - Melee weapon’s give you the option to either have more range or more attack speed, at %’s equal to their respective (primed?) mods, like a toggle option in the Arsenal that you can swap as you like.

 - all weapons get to toggle between either a critical rate or status rate boost, replacing... the base crit mods and some sorta status equivalent. Kind of hard to justify this one because all people use are the dual-stat mods for status chance (cuz the base status chance mods are just not good)

 

I have absolutely no idea how to handle primed vs not primed mods, nor the potential sunk-endo costs this system would create. However, I at least would very much enjoy having an extra, like, 2 slots on all my weapons to use non-meta mods.

 

cuz let’s be real. When we get new crit weapons, you already know what 6-7, sometimes even all 8 of your mods are going to be.

 

What do you all think? Do you think the current mod system is fine? Would you like more mod slots and capacity, or baked-in free mods?

Edited June 18, 2019 by Venatorio

[Fishyflakes]

I do love me some primed power creep 👼👌

[DeadVoid118]

Yeah, the problem currently is that all the mods that go on to almost any weapon are the same six, and a toss-up for the last two between maybe three sets. Baking these 'required' mods into the weapons might help, but we'd have to replace the mods with something else. All the elemental mods would have to be convert damage instead of add, and so on. Even then, everyone would just add firerate and magazine capacity/reload speed because dps. It's more of a band-aid than anything to just add the required mods built-in because there are plenty of mods to replace them that are slightly worse.

A lot of mods would have to be re-done to make it effective, by preventing actual (large) increases in DPS. So, say, you increase firerate but decrease damage for a certain mod, or increase damage while decreasing firerate. Mods that change usability for each player rather than simply adding damage, keeping DPS overall (about) the same. At least, that would be how I would design it.

[Venatorio]

Lol yea. Part of me wants to just say “add 2 more slots and add like 18 capacity, but Meta Mods A through M can’t go in those slots.” Kinda like utility-only slots if that makes sense?

[WhiteMarker]

5 minutes ago, Venatorio said:

What do you all think? Do you think the current mod system is fine? Would you like more mod slots and capacity, or baked-in free mods?

No, the current system is not fine.
No, your idea won't solve this issue.

If we were to remove the currently "mandatory" mods and add their effects to the weapons, what will happen then? Exactly, people will just go for the next "mandatory" mods.
If we don't have to mod for damage and multishot anymore, we will just go for reload-speed, clip size, maximum ammo etc. Because these mods are indirectly offering more DPS, and that's what people are going for.
So instead of having to use Serration on each rifle, we will then have to go for Primed Fast Hands.
So basically nothing will change. Aside from that fact that we will get even stronger, and the enemies just stay the same...

If we were to change the mod system, then we would have to redo it from the base. Scrap all mods, everything, and build it again from scratch.

[(PSN)Sable_King]

Nah, not mods. Honestly, we just need more weapons that operate differently from eachother. You don't need 6 shotguns that are only really different in their fire rate, damage, and magazine size. That said, that's more of an oldschool issue since they're doing better on that front now. Weapons with gummicks that allow them to synergize well in different sutuations are my bread and butter , as long as the cost isn't inability to use them at all at higher level play.

[trst]

Realistically it wouldn't change anything.

Look at all the mods you can't currently fit into a weapon build and honestly ask which ones you would slot in if you could. People always say it's for using whatever utility or QoL mod they can't normally use but eventually people are just going to slot another crit, status, or elemental mod into the weapon.

Remove Serration and suddenly mods that aren't normally used that add situational damage like Bladed Rounds, Motus Setup, another dual-stat status, or a 90% element mod that was left out in favor of more status chance just get put on in their place.

And most of the mods that are considered utility like reload speed, capacity, or in some cases punch-through and fire rate all do increase sustained and/or burst dps of a weapon.

 

Ultimately removing "mandatory" mods will just result in us making new mods into mandatory ones. Also powercreep is still a real issue and either removing mandatory mods or adding a exilus-like slot for weapons will all add onto the growing issue.

Edited June 18, 2019 by trst

[Mez999]

“Baked-in” mods in the method you express is simply a buff for all weapons. 

Weapons already have differences in the various aspects that mods boost, so buffing everything would only make things stronger and you’ll be left with the same issue. 

The only method that I've seen which may work is having a utility mod slot that only allows mods from a certain class. However as most mods will, in some way, impact on DPS, it would be hard to determine exactly what a utility mod would be. 

[AlphaPHENIX]

5 hours ago, WhiteMarker said:

If we were to change the mod system, then we would have to redo it from the base. Scrap all mods, everything, and build it again from scratch.

And this is precisely what should be done, but of course, DE has ''more important'' things to do.

Edited June 18, 2019 by AlphaPHENIX

[(PSN)boilerhogbc]

Ammo drum and anything with status duration.

[trst]

1 hour ago, AlphaPHENIX said:

And this precisely what should be done, but of course, DE has ''more important'' things to do.

Reconstructing the entire modding system from the ground up is something that would take them years to finish based on how long it's been taking 2/3.0s to be released.

Considering they have to continuously make new content to retain players an update of that scope may never happen.

[Riger82]

3 hours ago, Venatorio said:

Lol yea. Part of me wants to just say “add 2 more slots and add like 18 capacity, but Meta Mods A through M can’t go in those slots.” Kinda like utility-only slots if that makes sense?

Something like a frame's exilus slot?

 Sounds interesting. That would also give an actual spot to add some of the 'silly' mods like the flower or expanding mods to weapons without making them more useless. Or the mods that only expand blast radius, for example.

What about an item like the exilus adapter that opens up a 9th and/or 10th mod slot for those extras? It would give players more build possibilities, as well as give us more to grind for and/or pay plat for.

They could make mods specifically for those, as well as use mods that no one uses. Like status duration, flight speed, etc. I would love to be able to have a concealed explosives type mod for my guns, for instance. Making bullets have a chance to explode for a secondary aoe.

Edited June 18, 2019 by Riger82

[Lutesque]

This is exactly what DAMAGE 3.0 was suppose to be...

Still waiting for it.... 

[AlphaPHENIX]

2 hours ago, trst said:

Reconstructing the entire modding system from the ground up is something that would take them years to finish based on how long it's been taking 2/3.0s to be released.

Considering they have to continuously make new content to retain players an update of that scope may never happen.

Ya, but it needs to. Unless everyone is fine with having't the game's balance broken for the rest of it's life time.

[SilentMobius]

7 hours ago, Venatorio said:

Was curious as to what others would think on this topic: What are your opinions on having some mods baked into every weapon?

Sorry, No

People forget that the mod system is not just for "variation" it's also a form of progression. You have got that mod, you have had the credits and endo to get it to max rank, you have the forma and maybe even prime mods to optimise further.

That is all progression, mods are common to all weapons and as you get more MR they provide a minimum-level-of-power that can be applied to a fresh forma or even new weapons.

"Baking in" mods sidesteps all that, either giving power where the player hasn't earned it (if they don't have the mods yet) or if the "Baked in" mods level with the weapon rank it makes re-ranking that weapon harder and much of it's power dissapears when not max rank, where in the current system those with the progression complete have less of a power drop, making the weapon more viable even when unranked.

Progression is important and the mod system pulls double duty. A "mandatory" mod isn't a wasted mod, it's a representation of your gear progress.

 

Edited June 18, 2019 by SilentMobius

[Mdhe]

58 minutes ago, SilentMobius said:

Sorry, No

People forget that the mod system is not just for "variation" it's also a form of progression. You have got that mod, you have had the credits and endo to get it to max rank, you have the forma and maybe even prime mods to optimise further.

That is all progression, mods are common to all weapons and as you get more MR they provide a minimum-level-of-power that can be applied to a fresh forma or even new weapons.

"Baking in" mods sidesteps all that, either giving power where the player hasn't earned it (if they don't have the mods yet) or if the "Baked in" mods level with the weapon rank it makes re-ranking that weapon harder and much of it's power dissapears when not max rank, where in the current system those with the progression complete have less of a power drop, making the weapon more viable even when unranked. 

Progression is important and the mod system pulls double duty. A "mandatory" mod isn't a wasted mod, it's a representation of your gear progress.

 

Right, except that all that is terrible and should go away. What you've described--the random-drop-objects-as-progression, the endo and credit grind required to reach even a basic level of combat effectiveness, the necessity to grind endless weapons to slightly mitigate the pain of grinding even more weapons--is part of the problem.

DE needs to take a hard look at what they want mods to be. Are they really a system for customisation, meant to make your weapon unique amongst all others? Or are they just a standard RPG levelling system with extra steps? If they're intended to be the second one, fine, but in that case Warframe intentionally has one of the most obtuse and grind-heavy levelling systems in modern gaming. But if they were intended to be the first one, then as other people have said, the mod system needs a ground-up rework including but not limited to the baking-in of vital stats that literally every gun in a category will use. I could accept a lot of different directions from there; personally, I'd like all weapons to look a little more like Kitguns, in that you have opposed stats which you can choose to min-max or balance. More special effect mods, like Napalm Grenades and Sharpshooter, would also be really cool.

Fact of the matter is, the mod system we have is boring and favours the well-established over the newbies to an exclusionary degree. These are problems. We shouldn't hold on to something boring just because it's the way things have always been; some of Warframe's best features have required totally destroying the preceding structure. Mods 2.0 could easily be the next Parkour 2.0, if we let go of our elitism and let stuff be awesome.

EDIT: To be clear I'm not saying DOWN WITH PROGRESSION, ALL PROGRESSION MUST GO, but there are already other, better forms of progression in this game than Mods and MR gating.

Edited June 19, 2019 by Mdhe

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

9 hours ago, Venatorio said:

Was curious as to what others would think on this topic: What are your opinions on having some mods baked into every weapon? For clarity: there are a number of mods that just go onto EVERY weapon, and a lot of mods that are extremely likely to go on every weapon.

 

There’s a great deal of mods that open more interesting, unique builds for weapons, but that requires sacrificing efficiency/effectiveness. The advent of the new Amalgam mods accentuates this problem. So what if, for example:

 - All primaries, secondaries, and melee weapons had their respective base damage increased by (whatever % is given by serration/hornet strike/etc.)

 - Primaries and secondaries get (split chamber/hells chamber/etc) multishot built-in

 - Melee weapon’s give you the option to either have more range or more attack speed, at %’s equal to their respective (primed?) mods, like a toggle option in the Arsenal that you can swap as you like.

 - all weapons get to toggle between either a critical rate or status rate boost, replacing... the base crit mods and some sorta status equivalent. Kind of hard to justify this one because all people use are the dual-stat mods for status chance (cuz the base status chance mods are just not good)

 

I have absolutely no idea how to handle primed vs not primed mods, nor the potential sunk-endo costs this system would create. However, I at least would very much enjoy having an extra, like, 2 slots on all my weapons to use non-meta mods.

 

cuz let’s be real. When we get new crit weapons, you already know what 6-7, sometimes even all 8 of your mods are going to be.

 

What do you all think? Do you think the current mod system is fine? Would you like more mod slots and capacity, or baked-in free mods?

This idea was covered by the devs about 3 years ago. They got so much negative feedback it was never mentioned again.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I wish Syndicate Mods baked in with the use of XP bar..for example....you use this power so many times and when the bar completely fills up after so many countless kills on the enemy it gives you the option to burn it into the actual power designation so you can free that mod slot up while retaining the Syndicate's modified changes...

[Sir_Carl]

Eh, I don't think so.

I wish we have some sort of exilus slot on weapons and we can put multishot, unique, or whatever mods you think deserves to be in an exilus slot (maybe rivens).

[0_The_F00l]

Hmmm, I have seen quite a few of these now, I think its time to do some number crunching and suggest a mod rework in feedback. 

Will need to identify which mods are considered mandatory and how and if they can actually be baked in, what would be the overall impact to existing gameplay, will it be easier, harder or more or less the same? 

How will primed mods affect things on top? 

 

*grabs excel sheet*

[nslay]

11 hours ago, WhiteMarker said:

No, the current system is not fine.
No, your idea won't solve this issue.

If we were to remove the currently "mandatory" mods and add their effects to the weapons, what will happen then? Exactly, people will just go for the next "mandatory" mods.
If we don't have to mod for damage and multishot anymore, we will just go for reload-speed, clip size, maximum ammo etc. Because these mods are indirectly offering more DPS, and that's what people are going for.
So instead of having to use Serration on each rifle, we will then have to go for Primed Fast Hands.
So basically nothing will change. Aside from that fact that we will get even stronger, and the enemies just stay the same...

If we were to change the mod system, then we would have to redo it from the base. Scrap all mods, everything, and build it again from scratch.

Any mod system will have this problem for precisely the same reason as illustrated by your example. A handful of mods will always be clearly better. Tear down the system and rebuild all you want, you will still face this problem.

Conjecture: Trying to make an interesting mod system where all mods have equal contribution to your weapon's effectiveness is impossible. If everyone could slot any 8 mods and be as effective as someone else with 8 different mods, I dare say that these mods are either all the same or have no real effect. How boring... It's the same with weapons... if all weapons could do the same damage and kill as effectively as any other, everyone would effectively be using the same weapons with different skins and names. How utterly boring...

Any interesting system is going to suffer this problem. A handful of mods or weapons or whatever will be better than others.

This problem is widespread in these types of games. There are certain weapon attributes/stats in all the Diablo series games that are clearly better than others. Everyone tries to get gear with only those rolls. Guess what? That's the mod problem you just pointed out, but for Diablo! From what I can tell, both DE and Blizzard have tried to make mods (or gear attributes/stats in Diablo) more interesting by adding utility effects. Utility effects are probably very hard to balance given that their effect on damage/survivability are difficult to quantify! For example, there's an Amulet in Diablo 3 (The Ess of Johan) that has a legendary attribute that has a chance to pull enemies into your attacks. How does that translate to balancing numbers like DPS? Clearly you will do more DPS if all the enemies within a large radius are magically pulled into the center of your attacks. Is this a 2x increase over not having the amulet? A 3x increase? What is this increase as a function of proc chance/rate or attack speed? Maybe it's less damage because some other amulet offers more damage? How exactly do you balance this? I don't think Blizzard knows and these utility legendary items are pretty tame because if they proc too often, some of them would be OP for some builds! So, in the case of The Ess of Johan, it doesn't proc very often... DE has recently added set mods with utility effects in Gas City updates. There are also lots of utility set mods from PoE and Orb Vallis. DE has also added special weapon and warframe augments to try to add utility/extra effects to make mods more interesting. I wager they have to make many of these effects tame because they have no idea how to balance them either... And guess what? I see people really only use individual set mods because those mods by themselves are powerful... nobody really cares about the utility effects of many of these sets (and you should be somewhat thankful because Diablo 3 has the opposite problem where set effects are substantially more powerful than any other combination of items and thus everyone largely uses only sets).

I'd be happy to be wrong! If there is a Damage 3.0 as mentioned in some responses, I think it will be more of the same problem in a different form.

[SilentMobius]

12 hours ago, Mdhe said:

Right, except that all that is terrible and should go away. What you've described--the random-drop-objects-as-progression, the endo and credit grind required to reach even a basic level of combat effectiveness, the necessity to grind endless weapons to slightly mitigate the pain of grinding even more weapons--is part of the problem.

It's barely a step removed from the progression of any other prgression-based MMO. The only way it differs is that it provides a base level of power when we switch to different weapons in concert with the base capacity which is a tremendiously good idea, making the lateral progression of MR much less frustrating.

So no, it's a great idea and it should very much stay.

12 hours ago, Mdhe said:

DE needs to take a hard look at what they want mods to be. Are they really a system for customisation, meant to make your weapon unique amongst all others? Or are they just a standard RPG levelling system with extra steps?

It's both, and that's great, it's only if you have a strange blank spot that disables your ability to consider two things at the same time that it's an issue.

Baking-in of anything simply invalidate masses of progression and makes the refinement of the time curve for mid to late game even worse. It dis-incentivizes lateral progression and basically turns Warframe into a generic Asian-ish Grind MMO

Plenty of players share your opinion, thankfully DE know what you do not: Y'all don't have a clue what you want.

This is just just Dunning-Kruger armchair game design.

[Mr.SpookSpook]

If they added an Exilus-like slot for weapons I'd be happy...

Only utility mods could go into that like range, mag cap, ammo max, status dura, att speed/fire rate, etc..

[SenorClipClop]

Iirc, someone on the devstream mentioned an idea of antiquating the raw Damage mods and migrating that damage into a weapon based on its current rank (ie, starts at base when unranked, hits base+serration at max rank, as serration would no longer exist). I can see that working nicely. I don't see that happening anytime soon, though.

I've always thought that Multishot could be balanced -- well, maybe not completely balanced, but a step in the right direction -- if those extra shots consumed ammo. They'd still increase your DPS, but they'd wreck your ammo economy as a trade-off. But free extra instances of the shot fired is far too powerful not to put on everything.

[SenorClipClop]

3 hours ago, Mr.SpookSpook said:

att speed/fire rate

A boost to this stat is not utility, as it sharply increases a weapon's DPS.