DE: Let us use mods at a reduced level, even if they have been upgraded

[Sentinel-14]

From a quality of life perspective this is a no-brainer: Mods absolutely should be built this way. It may require that the entire system be overhauled to make it work but it fits within Warframe's theme of 'play your way.' And those who think it won't be done because it's too much work, they've already overhauled the Mods system once: no reason they can't do it again. They may not want to, or have the time, but it is something they are very much capable of doing. The old way was gods-awful: Mods 2.0 is far better.

How things are right now:
Right now it seems mods are stored in the database as individual entities. I suspect that each mod, of each rank, is a separate database entry.  Unranked Serration is Item: Serration0, rank 1 is Item:Serration1, etc... This is how they're able to tell you that you have 426 unranked Ammo Case mods and it makes it easy to deliver mods to your inventory when you pick up a new one, because it just increases the quantity of unranked mod entry by 1. 

How to change it:
To develop it where we are allowed to rank/de-rank them at will to suit our builds would require completely rebuilding the mod system to recognize only each mod as an individual, with the ranking slider built into the mod's database entry itself, rather than recognizing each mod at each rank individually. I'm not a game developer. I have no idea how difficult it would be to actually make this happen, but the theory of it seems relatively simple. Let's use Serration as the example. The database has an item called Serration, with appropriate information on it. It's a rifle mod, so "If: Weapon = Rifle, Then: mod equips; Else: Mod does not equip". The Mod has a table attached to it exactly as you see in the wiki. "If: Rank = 0, then Effect = +15% and Cost = 4". "If: Rank = 9, then Effect = +150% and Cost = 13", etc... The entry, that single database item, is built to understand that as you change the appropriate rank on the mod, up or down, the stats change with it.

The problems with changing it:
If you were to change the system to make it where you could rank them up or down at will (after appropriate endo expenditure to unlock the higher rank), how does the game know how many of a mod you have? If you have your Serration mod set to unranked because it's how it fits in your build, but it's actually be unlocked to max, how does the game resolve giving you another Serration as a random drop? Does that one have to be unlocked too, or do you get it automatically unlocked because you've already done it? I don't know,Im not a game dev: that's beyond my understanding.

Reasons for leaving things alone.
Another reason to leave the system as it is now, from DE's perspective, is that it prolongs the grind. I have a single Virulent Scourge that I purposely keep unranked so that I have maximum flexibility with it. I'd rather have it fully-ranked, but that minimizes how much I can use it. The only solution is to grind Void for the chance to fight Corrupted Vor and hope that he drops one. Either I grind for them, or I pay someone some plat for the time they spent grinding for them. Either way, the grind is prolonged. If the system were changed to allow ranking/deranking at will, the grind would end as soon as you had every mod you wanted.  Unless you wanted another one to put on a companion, I guess.... The point is, DE needs the grind prolonged in order to keep people playing. If there is no carrot to chase, there's no reason to play.

So while I agree that the system should be changed to allow ranking at will, because it's more player-friendly, I also understand that it's not dev-friendly and is probably unlikely to happen.

[(PSN)yo_rookiEH]

yea i always thought having to have multiples of a single mod annoying. u should be able to use any lvl UP TO ur highest endo sink. like the plus minus above. n i say annoying mainly cause when ur changin frames or sentinels quick while in party then u go to leave arsenal it says "u cant have Xmod on 2 diff things"...so u gotta chg it to the unused EXACT same mod...yea just dumb. i understand the way its set up n is what it is but its more a QoL thing imo than a big like $ issue etc. good topic n feedback this thread.

[IamLoco]

It would already help if they could introduce a solution for 10 rank mods like 10rank rare mods, amalgam, umbra, primed and rivens.

So that they don´t need to store all those duplicates as individuals for commons and uncommons. Although I doubt this is neccessary in the first place,

[White_Matter]

20 hours ago, IamLoco said:

DE: I would love to upgrade some of those primed mods to their maximum level - but too often I don´t do that because this would mean that I cannot use them on a dozen frames, weapons or companions after the upgrade. Because the upgraded versions would exceed the mod capacity of these.

The current solution is: Either forma the frame/weapon OR get a duplicate of that mod and level that up to the fitting degree.

I think neither of those solutions is player friendly.

I would rather suggest or recommend a solution where we can use any mod at any level UP TO THE MAXIMUM LEVEL that we´ve upgraded that mod to.

So let´s say I upgrade a Primed Continuity to level 10, but this would exceed the mod capacity of my Banshee, which uses that mod at level 9 - then Banshee should still be able to use this mod at level 9, although it has the upgrade to lvl 10.

The current system doesn´t encourage upgrading mods at all, it´s an obstruction.

The more frames / weapons we have, the more strenuous the upgrade of a certain mod becomes.

100% with this.

 

[woisen]

i think its not that often you need it, and when you do this from top to buttom, its coming with a lot of changes.

for example, when you just do a rank up and down for a specific mod, this wouldn't change mutch, becourse its very unhandy to set a mod rank and rebuild everytime. so in then end i still have multiple mods and i dont see way i should max rank mods to downrank some of them again, when every rankup doubles the endo cost.

What you really want is to adjust the rank of a mod for a specific build. this also means we need to get ride of duplucates, so that you have one instance of a mod with a max rank on your account. this also means you have to change a lot of the mission rewards, for example the replay value of derelict missions will hard drop. also mod drops should then dynamicly change to endo drops, this is also something im not think is great (items always a better drop then currencies).

i dont say that it wouldn't be cool, but i can live with it how it is. and i would prefer a unpolar forma and a pre build option in simulacrum as more build options instead. then in the end we all want to get the max out of our gear and not a half ranked something build. so i can undersand De that they dont want to invest a lot of time only for a cool feature. I also think that this is more a problem for beginners then for veterans and maybe i have a different view on this then newer players. 

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

The database solution is "easy" from my viewpoint, and does not require recoding how mods work entirely.

It's not a matter of making each mod stored individually or really any of the grim reasons people say it will never happen. (and I've posted this before)

Current mods know how high they've been ranked up. That's basic mod stuff. All people want to do here, is "underclock" and apply that ranked mod at a lower rank. Since this will be a per frame and per loadout decision, the current rank of the already-ranked-mod would be stored in the loadout specific to that underclocking, not in the mod itself. The same fully ranked mod could then be used at mulitple levels in multiple builds, without expanding the mod data at all, and just keeping it tied to the loadouts where the underclocking is required.

 

[IamLoco]

1 hour ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

The database solution is "easy" from my viewpoint, and does not require recoding how mods work entirely.

It's not a matter of making each mod stored individually or really any of the grim reasons people say it will never happen. (and I've posted this before)

Current mods know how high they've been ranked up. That's basic mod stuff. All people want to do here, is "underclock" and apply that ranked mod at a lower rank. Since this will be a per frame and per loadout decision, the current rank of the already-ranked-mod would be stored in the loadout specific to that underclocking, not in the mod itself. The same fully ranked mod could then be used at mulitple levels in multiple builds, without expanding the mod data at all, and just keeping it tied to the loadouts where the underclocking is required.

 

you hit the nail right on the head here.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Another benefit to Underclocking like this, is when applying forma... you could underclock all your mods, and KEEP YOUR BUILD EQUIPPED... instead of getting everything removed, and needing a notepad or screenshot to remember what you had going!

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

To be fair, this is DE we are talking about. They keep repeating the same mistakes they fixed earlier. Take Umbral mods as an example. DE added an alternative method to reacquire quests items from Simaris after years of asking, yet we still cannot acquire a second set of Umbral mods from him. Not only would this be a significant Endo sink, but it would offer way more build customization.

Edited February 8, 2020 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[Siegecraft]

nothing can be done all this year and they r still using  way to make grind bigger and bigger  look ant the recent update railjack they wanted to make it grind that will atleast take 6months so they cant go and say there is content but player found a loop hole and maxed out in weeks then they got tensed and changed it so fast hours of gring in  single mission to not even get 1k resources which u need 10/16k to repair every thing and the new endo and mod  and named different avoinoic. ]

[(XBOX)DShinShoryuken]

Yeah.....

Had a big thing here to say and somehow my phone deleted it.

Basically.....it's how a real card game works (Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, etc). We don't have a single card that can be in all decks at the same time....same with mods. You want different levels....get a mod for each one. 

That is the collector side of me.  I am sti trying to find all the broken mods x 3 each

[Currilicious]

This impacts player spending so I doubt it will come to pass. Don't get me wrong, I welcome it too since I keep multiple copies of certain mods to do exactly that. But in the long run, it is cumbersome. I wouldn't be holding my breath on this one.

[(NSW)Sniperfox47]

17 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

The database solution is "easy" from my viewpoint, and does not require recoding how mods work entirely.

It's not a matter of making each mod stored individually or really any of the grim reasons people say it will never happen. (and I've posted this before)

Current mods know how high they've been ranked up. That's basic mod stuff. All people want to do here, is "underclock" and apply that ranked mod at a lower rank. Since this will be a per frame and per loadout decision, the current rank of the already-ranked-mod would be stored in the loadout specific to that underclocking, not in the mod itself. The same fully ranked mod could then be used at mulitple levels in multiple builds, without expanding the mod data at all, and just keeping it tied to the loadouts where the underclocking is required.

 

That database solution isn't "easy" at all. It would require a complete overhaul and reimplementation of their storage database. It would also drastically increase the storage demands for things like loadouts.

 

Currently each loadout doesn't store any info about the mods themselves, they merely store a list of references to the items in your inventory. This is the reason why upgrading a mod upgrades it on your builds too, because the build doesn't store info about that mod, but rather just a pointer to the already existing info. When that info changes, so too does the loadout info. The checks as to whether an upgrade would break any loadouts is likewise as simple as tracing those references back and testing the changes on each loadout.

 

Your new system would mean not only needing to change the database to have multiple duplicates of mod data, but would also require any system that tracks mod loadouts to be updated to use the new storage system, and would also require any code that relies on that relationship to be totally overhauled (eg. the mod upgrade process, the trade system, companion loadouts, etc.)

 

I really wish more people would go out and learn how software like this is developed, because sometimes a solution that seems simple by intuition isn't. The above poster who pointed out the "where was this photo taken" vs "what is in this photo" example above hit the nail on the head. Intuitively with the latter you just look at the photo and are like "oh that's obviously a bird" but that's not something you can even do with code. On the other hand the former is intuitively quite hard "umm those buildings look Greek so maybe this is in Greece?" but in code is very easy because there's invisible metadata that says exactly where the photo was taken.

Edited February 8, 2020 by (NSW)Sniperfox47

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I've coded... I do game design, and you're making things too complicated in your head. I don't know it it's on purpose or what. Some of your objections about "dramatically" inflating storage demands and assumptions about how mods are currently handled are just right out of left field.

You talk as if having insider knowledge of how the programming is done currently, and I'm highly doubting that. I personally don't have clear knowledge of how they coded it. I recall only one post talking about how Mods are coded, and it was a little backwards thinking about it, but does not impact my suggestion negatively, and is what informed my suggestion as a basis.

 

 

[Toppien]

meh, i jut farm for duplicates then rank each one differently, no biggie