Thinking about rivens and power creep: have DE set themselves up to fail?

[TARINunit9]

Another round of Riven disposition changes, another round of inevitable nerfs to kitguns and whatever the strongest sniper rifle is. As I'm reading through the comments of Riven users asking our almighty [DE]ities why the gift of fire must be nerfed and non-Riven users laughing at what they perceive* to be a bunch of crybabies with no foresight, I start to wonder. Is it possible both stereotypical sides are missing the forest for some of the trees? Is this normal human debate, or is there a larger issue at play that keeps bringing the debate up?

Have DE accidentally set up the entire system up to fail?

(*Please don't take this as a meta-complaint about either side, I'm just exaggerating for an attempt at comedy)

It's no secret DE has almost no aversion to power creep in their game. This is the game where the one-of-a-kind War sword, carved from the bones of the Sentient Destroyer of Worlds, featuring a laser blade that even most Orokin couldn't manage to figure out, one that requires either a 1% drop from a 1% secret boss plus multiple other rare drops or shelling out $42 to acquire... is now beaten out by the mass-produced Galatine and Gram Primes. They simply see no problems with obsoleting old content in terms of base stats. But clearly, something is holding them back from letting old content obsolete entirely. Thus, they came up with Riven mods

The advertised idea behind Rivens is, that stronger weapons will have weaker Rivens, thus ensuring that older, weaker weapons still have enough merit to warrant playing around with. This has basically failed in practice, I think we can all agree; powerful weapons are so much more powerful, that anything short of a gross 200%/10% nerf ratio isn't enough to knock them off the top slot. Thus Riven rebalancing patches don't seem to change much of anything; the meta weapons (namely kitguns and Rubico Prime) will still be used all the time because multiplicative power growth is just that powerful

Then there's the player mentality regarding Rivens, and it's a mentality I certainly agree with in broad strokes (and I'll get to why in a minute). As anyone who uses them is aware, Rivens require a LOT of grind, with the length of grind further exacerbated by RNG. Thus when DE nerfs existing Rivens to try and say "hey, we made more weapons viable!" what the players hear is "all that hard work you put in is now worth less if not nothing." Players simply don't want to put in the obscene amount of time to experiment with dozens of Rivens for dozens of weapons, especially if most of them won't really help them stay on top of the power curve. So when the ones that ARE the top of the power curve are nerfed, with the under-the-curve Rivens nowhere near able to replace them, it feels like a net loss if not an absolute loss.

This aversion to losing our Rivens might not be so bad if it wasn't being actively exacerbated by another trend in Warframe: the constant rewarding of player preparation such that player skill becomes a near non-factor. If you have strong enough gear, it's near-impossible to lose regardless of competency. And if you have weak gear, victory becomes equally unreasonable regardless of skill, as enemies become bullet-sponges who shred you apart in the blink of an eye. I'm not saying this is inherently bad, it's been the norm of MMORPG games for decades, but I don't think it meshes well with the existing Riven system much at all -- because the game has trained us for six years that grinding to get more power is ABSOLUTE. Thus losing out "earned power" becomes instinctual despised.

And that last thought really seems to be my thesis for all of this. These systems, running fine on their own, seem to just bring the out the worst in each other when they were intended to solve each other. "Power creep would be mitigated by grindy rewards that would then be tweaked on DE's end with balance patches" instead turned into "grindy objects condition players to believe that they are natural power progression, only to be nerfed in balance patch that fails to actually combat the power creep, thus leading to hostility"

[Aldain]

The only ones who set themselves up for failure were people who missed/ignored that Riven dispositions were designed to change.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

Considering there was celebration at 120...I’d say the opposite.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

"The only ones who set themselves up for failure were people who missed/ignored that Riven dispositions were designed to change."

 

-Aldain

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

Also, you aren’t investing anything in your riven, you’re gambling.

[schilds]

30 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

he advertised idea behind Rivens is, that stronger weapons will have weaker Rivens

The advertised idea was that riven strength would be based on popularity.

 

And yes, they've set themselves up to fail. Rivens were always a bad idea, and the current set up is the least worst way it can work, believe it or not :-P.

Edited October 2, 2019 by schilds

[sleepychewbacca]

26 minutes ago, Aldain said:

The only ones who set themselves up for failure were people who missed/ignored that Riven dispositions were designed to change.

This pretty much sums up the entire debacle. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by sleepychewbacca

[nslay]

6 minutes ago, sleepychewbacca said:

This pretty much sums up the entire debacle. 

There's a debacle? Where?

[TARINunit9]

38 minutes ago, Aldain said:

The only ones who set themselves up for failure were people who missed/ignored that Riven dispositions were designed to change.

Again, as stated in the OP I think this is missing the forest for the trees. My theory is, they screwed up because the system taught them to screw up

[nslay]

56 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Another round of Riven disposition changes, another round of inevitable nerfs to kitguns and whatever the strongest sniper rifle is. As I'm reading through the comments of Riven users asking our almighty [DE]ities why the gift of fire must be nerfed and non-Riven users laughing at what they perceive* to be a bunch of crybabies with no foresight, I start to wonder. Is it possible both stereotypical sides are missing the forest for some of the trees? Is this normal human debate, or is there a larger issue at play that keeps bringing the debate up?

Have DE accidentally set up the entire system up to fail?

(*Please don't take this as a meta-complaint about either side, I'm just exaggerating for an attempt at comedy)

It's no secret DE has almost no aversion to power creep in their game. This is the game where the one-of-a-kind War sword, carved from the bones of the Sentient Destroyer of Worlds, featuring a laser blade that even most Orokin couldn't manage to figure out, one that requires either a 1% drop from a 1% secret boss plus multiple other rare drops or shelling out $42 to acquire... is now beaten out by the mass-produced Galatine and Gram Primes. They simply see no problems with obsoleting old content in terms of base stats. But clearly, something is holding them back from letting old content obsolete entirely. Thus, they came up with Riven mods

The advertised idea behind Rivens is, that stronger weapons will have weaker Rivens, thus ensuring that older, weaker weapons still have enough merit to warrant playing around with. This has basically failed in practice, I think we can all agree; powerful weapons are so much more powerful, that anything short of a gross 200%/10% nerf ratio isn't enough to knock them off the top slot. Thus Riven rebalancing patches don't seem to change much of anything; the meta weapons (namely kitguns and Rubico Prime) will still be used all the time because multiplicative power growth is just that powerful

Then there's the player mentality regarding Rivens, and it's a mentality I certainly agree with in broad strokes (and I'll get to why in a minute). As anyone who uses them is aware, Rivens require a LOT of grind, with the length of grind further exacerbated by RNG. Thus when DE nerfs existing Rivens to try and say "hey, we made more weapons viable!" what the players hear is "all that hard work you put in is now worth less if not nothing." Players simply don't want to put in the obscene amount of time to experiment with dozens of Rivens for dozens of weapons, especially if most of them won't really help them stay on top of the power curve. So when the ones that ARE the top of the power curve are nerfed, with the under-the-curve Rivens nowhere near able to replace them, it feels like a net loss if not an absolute loss.

This aversion to losing our Rivens might not be so bad if it wasn't being actively exacerbated by another trend in Warframe: the constant rewarding of player preparation such that player skill becomes a near non-factor. If you have strong enough gear, it's near-impossible to lose regardless of competency. And if you have weak gear, victory becomes equally unreasonable regardless of skill, as enemies become bullet-sponges who shred you apart in the blink of an eye. I'm not saying this is inherently bad, it's been the norm of MMORPG games for decades, but I don't think it meshes well with the existing Riven system much at all -- because the game has trained us for six years that grinding to get more power is ABSOLUTE. Thus losing out "earned power" becomes instinctual despised.

And that last thought really seems to be my thesis for all of this. These systems, running fine on their own, seem to just bring the out the worst in each other when they were intended to solve each other. "Power creep would be mitigated by grindy rewards that would then be tweaked on DE's end with balance patches" instead turned into "grindy objects condition players to believe that they are natural power progression, only to be nerfed in balance patch that fails to actually combat the power creep, thus leading to hostility"

I think the fuss is mostly generated by people who sell Rivens or who buy Rivens for exorbitant amounts of plat. If DE did anything wrong here, I honestly think it was allowing Rivens to be tradeable at all. They're not mandatory and they are supposed to add a little spice to your weapons for some extra fun... how hilarious these sell for hundreds to even thousands of plat.

As someone who a was lucky enough to get, for example, a Rubico Riven through Sorties, I honestly don't feel anything about the nerf. Though, I didn't pay thousands of plat for mine and I am not Riven flipper looking to sell it either. So, again, if you ask me, DE's mistake was allowing these heavily RNG-laden mods to be tradeable in the first place. Though, I could see someone who did some hardcore Kuva farming being annoyed. But hey, if Rivens were untradeable, they would essentially become worthless to players... there would be a lot less outrage.

So did DE set themselves up for failure? Yes... but not for any of the reasons above IMO. DE created a Riven economy where players shell out hundreds to thousands of plat. So when Rivens are rebalanced, of course players will feel ripped off and express outrage or even quit the game.

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

This aversion to losing our Rivens might not be so bad if it wasn't being actively exacerbated by another trend in Warframe: the constant rewarding of player preparation such that player skill becomes a near non-factor. If you have strong enough gear, it's near-impossible to lose regardless of competency

i'd say it's the other way round, that the game punishes Players that try to apply competence because you're supposed to just half-AFK through it via Stats.

[belanya]

il y a une heure, TARINunit9 a dit :

This aversion to losing our Rivens might not be so bad if it wasn't being actively exacerbated by another trend in Warframe: the constant rewarding of player preparation such that player skill becomes a near non-factor. If you have strong enough gear, it's near-impossible to lose regardless of competency. And if you have weak gear, victory becomes equally unreasonable regardless of skill, as enemies become bullet-sponges who shred you apart in the blink of an eye. I'm not saying this is inherently bad, it's been the norm of MMORPG games for decades, but I don't think it meshes well with the existing Riven system much at all -- because the game has trained us for six years that grinding to get more power is ABSOLUTE. Thus losing out "earned power" becomes instinctual despised.

You dont need riven to crush the entire game. The game balance is... Actually, there is no balance. So yeah the game is just about preparation and riven are pointless, this is just the +1 overkill that makes no difference.

 

And yeah overall, rivens are horribly designed. Kuva farming is a mess. And i mean, balance through popularity? Lmao what are people expecting from something like that?

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

The advertised idea behind Rivens is, that stronger weapons will have weaker Rivens

No, the advertised idea is less popular weapons will have stronger Rivens. 

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

"all that hard work you put in is now worth less if not nothing."

The exceptionally hard work of... getting Kuva and rolling the Riven. If you feel this was "hard work" worth crying over when the system, as outlined from the beginning, does what it says it does, that is entirely on the players.

13 minutes ago, taiiat said:

i'd say it's the other way round, that the game punishes Players that try to apply competence because you're supposed to just half-AFK through it via Stats.

The only competent players are those that throw a few rolls into a Riven and then get rid of them if they haven't gotten anything. Treating Rivens as something the devs don't treat them as is like getting angry at DE for introducing lore that contradicts your headcanon or fanfics.

[Jax_Cavalera]

1 hour ago, schilds said:

And yes, they've set themselves up to fail. Rivens were always a bad idea, and the current set up is the least worst way it can work, believe it or not :-P.

I believe we can do better: 

 

[sleepychewbacca]

59 minutes ago, nslay said:

There's a debacle? Where?

Wherever pops up a salty thread or the popcorn grabbing kind. 

[mikakor]

30 minutes ago, nslay said:

I think the fuss is mostly generated by people who sell Rivens or who buy Rivens for exorbitant amounts of plat.

nah pal, there's also the farmer in this.

Farming Kuva : takes a lot of time, for very little reward
Farming enough Kuva to roll a riven that actually went up to more than 10 roll ( don't give the crap of "throw it away. some people want to keep their riven... )
Rolling the riven : often results in pathetic stuff worthless of our time
and LASTLY, the god roll : you went through hours and hours of grind AND RNG, got blessed by all of RNGesus, RNGod, and Lootcifer, you're happy, you worked your way to the top of the riven you wanted.

DE : i'm about to nullify everything this man has worked for and render a big chunk of your farm worthless by cutting the power of this mod you farmed so much for.

----

DE is taking away value to something players pour a LOT of time into crafting into the perfect riven. again, if stat-locking was a thing, it would be... less bad. still bad, but less. also not affecting existing Riven.  but as of now, farming rivens and investing either time or plat in them is... pointless. because in three months, everything you worked towards can just go away because the devs decided to mess with your efforts. there is literally no point in doing the riven game, at least when you want to use them for yourself. it's only going to hurt you and you'll regret it after ward.

... Rivens are a #*!%ing mess and a mistake.

[TARINunit9]

47 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

The exceptionally hard work of... getting Kuva and rolling the Riven. If you feel this was "hard work" worth crying over when the system, as outlined from the beginning, does what it says it does, that is entirely on the players.

If you really think so little of Rivens you can just add "perceived" in front of every instance of "hard work" in my OP. I don't care, I feel no need to defend Rivens, I just feel it's distracting you into a debate I really have no stake in

[SolarDwagon]

I do agree, although not for any of the reasons you've actually put forward.
The problem with the Riven system is that it actually punishes newer players more for DE not getting riven balance correct at first glance. What do I mean by this? Simple-DE have made it so that existing Rivens do not change stats when disposition changes, but only when traded or rerolled. And even then I think the original roll stays at original strength but the new rolls scale.
Why do I think this is a bad thing? Because the people who put the luck/effort in to get damage/crit/crit Rubico rivens (as an example) when they were at 1.0 still have those exact same Rivens. Which means those players have a permanent edge that literally nothing can catch up. It also means that they're going to keep using those weapons, keeping their disposition lower than it should be. Now, for most content that isn't an issue, but as DE moves towards trying to create more challenging endgame content, this leaves them with a problem. You can balance for the currently achievable DPS, and watch those legacy riven owners make jokes out of it, or you can balance around the legacy rivens, and watch any player with current resources struggle or fail. While I understand the logic behind their decision, this is why the Riven system sets DE up for long term failure.
Note: I don't think this is going to result in the game dying. Just being less than it could be.

Edited October 2, 2019 by SolarDwagon

[Proslackernifty]

Wow that was a lot of fluff.  

[taiiat]

3 hours ago, peterc3 said:

The only competent players are those that throw a few rolls into a Riven and then get rid of them if they haven't gotten anything. Treating Rivens as something the devs don't treat them as is like getting angry at DE for introducing lore that contradicts your headcanon or fanfics.

that was not what we were talking about in that part of his Post.

[Teridax68]

I have to agree with the OP that at the heart of the Riven issue is a player mentality problem, one DE have brought about on their own: speaking of missing the forest for the trees, I think the devs have had a repeated problem of only focusing on short-term goals when it comes to delivering gameplay updates, which is why we're still being sold power creep, in spite of the fact that doing so has clearly had a detrimental effect to both the game's balance and the diversity of our arsenal. In an ideal world, we should be operating on some consistent benchmark for power that even new weapons should run by, but overall there does not appear to be any consistent reference used for balancing, which can be seen especially whenever a new enemy sub-faction gets introduced (e.g. the Corpus Elite Terra units). We would need a very large multiple of the current difference in stats for Riven mods to truly start equalizing power, and even then that may not be a desirable system to have.

I also think that DE set themselves up to fail with Riven mods as a mode of balance, because to a certain cynical extent, I suspect DE never intended for Riven mods to be a balancing tool in the first place: the mod system was released in a half-finished state during TWW and became immediately notorious for powercreeping already strong weapons, yet was also advertized first and foremost as a tradeable component. Even now, after yet another round of disposition nerfs, the Riven trade remains the most prominent part of player trading, with some selling for thousands of plat even today. We've all become well aware now of the concept of god Rivens, how they tend to favor already strong weapons, and how players end up routinely having their purchases devalued from one day to the next, yet here we still are.

While I hate Rivens and Riven trading, I don't really blame the people shelling over tons of plat for Rivens that get nerfed overnight, because there will always be some people who, regardless of rationality, will always have that urge to get the thing that makes them the most powerful, as that's an incentive the game gives us all. Unfortunately, DE's power creeping of the game has engineered what I'd consider a fairly toxic player mentality where players expect to continually increase in power, despite the fact that this also trivializes any attempt at challenge so many veterans crave. We hold onto whatever makes us stronger, and scream loudly at the mere suggestion to a nerf, especially if it's applied to a warframe. This puts DE in an even more difficult situation: in order to make the playerbase sustainably happy, they're going to have to eventually rein in our rampant power creep, yet that's going to make some players very unhappy in the short term, because we've grown to feel entitled to power creep. The Riven mod system is an accelerated, miniaturized version of this, as the rebalancing of Riven mods introduces continuous misery to many who participate in it, to the point where the market, while still strong, has nonetheless declined over time. While there are solutions to this (I personally think DE should just scrap Riven mods entirely and just rebalance weapons directly), there are no easy solutions, and that I think is why DE has chosen to keep to the safe, easy, short-term path for now, even though we are feeling the consequences of that more and more.

[Kaotyke]

We will get these kind of threads once a quarter of the year.

[k05h]

Rivens are late game gambling and DE always said that dispositions are prone to change. That is why you never completely rely or overinvest on rivens. 

If anything then riven changes encourage creative thinking in terms of late game builds. I totally dig the idea of underused weapons disposition getting stronger and overused weapons disposition getting weaker. Sticking to just one weapon gets stale over times and makes people believe blindely in builds without understanding them. 

I would love to see a regular riven disposition change every 2 months to keep people on their toes and to teach them not to believe in a random build video or random riven seller. That also makes keeping a collection of not so popular weapon rivens a great option. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by k05h

[Krenlik]

6 hours ago, mikakor said:

 

and LASTLY, the god roll : you went through hours and hours of grind AND RNG, got blessed by all of RNGesus, RNGod, and Lootcifer, you're happy, you worked your way to the top of the riven you wanted.

DE : i'm about to nullify everything this man has worked for and render a big chunk of your farm worthless by cutting the power of this mod you farmed so much for.

----

DE is taking away value to something players pour a LOT of time into crafting into the perfect riven. again, if stat-locking was a thing, it would be... less bad. still bad, but less. also not affecting existing Riven.  but as of now, farming rivens and investing either time or plat in them is... pointless. because in three months, everything you worked towards can just go away because the devs decided to mess with your efforts. there is literally no point in doing the riven game, at least when you want to use them for yourself. it's only going to hurt you and you'll regret it after ward.

... Rivens are a #*!%ing mess and a mistake.

You still have the best possible riven for that weapon.  It didn't "go away", the extent of the bonus went down somewhat.  Is that going to mean that you're not using the Catchmoon anymore?  Did you decide that a gold mod is better than your riven now?   Nope.

 

 

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Can we just change them to Amalagamods....But not junk stats... but actual fun variations..you know fun..it's what inspires kids to learn computer sciences and math....

 

 

LOL..I tried to keep straight face...