wait a minute... did DE choose the wrong system for Riven disposition?

[TARINunit9]

A little history to explain what I mean by this question

November 11th, 2016. Riven mods are introduced to the world of Warframe

November 18th, 2016. Riven disposition is added to Riven mods. Weapons that are more popular with the fanbase will have weaker Rivens. This change is explicitly intended to, in the words of Rebecca, "reflect our desire to give new life to ‘discarded’ weapons in a unique way, and not increase the power of the top tier ones". It is intended to buff weaker weapons without increasing power creep on stronger ones

February 9th, 2018. DE updates almost every gun in the game, bringing weaker weapons up to a higher standard of power. At the same time, weapons were given new or increased Mastery Rank requirements, the idea being to keep new players from immediately jumping to the top of the power tree and skipping hundreds of weapons, turning said weapons into mere mastery fodder and an obligation rather than a collection. This, in effect, provides weapons with an objective level of superiority/inferiority. It confirms that some weapons, even ones divorced from the Prime collections, are just inherently better than others

However, Riven disposition changes are based on total use by the playerbase. This results in a yearly, and very vitriolic pattern by the players: weapons that are popular create popular Rivens. Players optimize these Rivens, spending time and resources to do so. The Rivens are then nerfed via disposition changes. This causes much vitriol among the players who invested those resources, feeling they were now devalued if not outright wasted. What's more, the more popular weapons fail to become less entrenched in their popularity. What's more, new weapons are added with their disposition automatically set to 1.0 -- but new primes and new kuvas intended to be more powerful than their default counterparts, leading to cases where popular weapons with low disposition are suddenly given stronger Rivens that are quite literally predestined to tank straight down again in the next disposition update.

This at long last brings me to my question:

Should Riven disposition just be prefixed to the weapon's mastery rank? If DE have already created an objective measure of a weapon's tier, should DE bother with another, separate metric for Rivens? Should Kuva Bramma, a weapon with MR15 that was intended to be the new hotness with amazing power and splash damage, just slapped with a lower disposition ahead of time on its February launch? Instead of given a disposition of 1.0 that was just guaranteed to drop to 0.8 the following April?

Or was this a shower thought I should have let wash away with the soap suds?

[Chewarette]

Rivens are a mistake anyway. They are trying to base the stats on the weapon's popularity without thinking about all the parameters. For example the last change was done during Scarlet Spear so Paracesis took a hard hit in its disposition, but outside of Sentient missions I barely ever see anyone using it.

Rivens are a complete failure, from their creation to their latest updates. A whole mess of a system that DE doesn't seem to find a solution to. From extra-RNG, to tediousness, to balancing nightmares.

Let them die honestly. This disposition thing doesn't make sense at all, and I'm pretty sure it never helped the "less popular" weapons. It just helped the Tier A weapons (the not-meta-but-still-great weapons) which have a great disposition.

[Hello]

The best part is variants having different dispositions don't show to people buying a riven. Think they're getting, let's say +213% damage. Only to put it on some variant and it be like +120% damage.

Rivens are a mistake and you touched on the main reason why I quit using them. The game got so much more enjoyable the day I dumped this trash. Not like we need rivens anyways, weapons do just fine without them.

I don't use or keep rivens anymore. Got sick of farming days and weeks for a useless resource, only to play a slot machine 1-150+ times. Then seeing all of the days and weeks of farming go to waste for said riven after dispo changes every 3 months. 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by --Brandt--

[(PSN)poloslash18]

Riven mods are a failed system.

The toxicity it brings to the trading community, the fact that you can't farm kuva efficiently without a booster and the amount of RNG is the trinity of despair for me with this system.

[Chicken-Biryani]

8 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

For example the last change was done during Scarlet Spear so Paracesis took a hard hit in its disposition, but outside of Sentient missions I barely ever see anyone using it.

That's a very good and thought provoking point. 

[(PSN)poloslash18]

(deleted)

Edited May 22, 2020 by (PS4)poloslash18

[Hello]

1 minute ago, (PS4)poloslash18 said:

That's a mistake my friend. On the button right corner in the "Fits in" category, you can change the weapon to its variant (if you have it) and the riven will show the stats of the lower disposition.

Thanks for the correction on that, never paid attention to that. However, it might not be an obvious thing. At least given the posts I see occasionally of people buying a riven and not understanding why the stats are different.

[anarchy753]

It shouldn't be a different system, it should just be adjusted more frequently, like monthly, possibly in a more automated way. That would account for popularity based on short-term factors.

The goal of them is great, but they still bump OP weapons to even stronger points so that's always an issue, but the least used weapons should still gain the greatest buff.

If you choose to invest a tonne of time and effort into a mod that you know could be nerfed because it's for the same weapon everyone and their dog are using, that's your problem.

[AltairFerenc]

only old weapons should be able to have a riven imo, and dispo should be permanent determined with its age nad power combined, changed every year because it's getting older and power creeped even more.

[(NSW)Greybones]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @TARINunit9 🤔 

Got no answer to your questions, but personally I’m glad to take what you’ve said as food for thought. There’s some info in the OP that I wasn’t aware of, so that’s cool

[DrivaMain]

We're too late on removal. That will create a huge ingame economy crisis because people are already too invested on it. What we can do is try Trim down the RNG aspect of rivens. I can think of a few ways

1. Riven Stat Locking

2. Some way to get a riven for the weapon YOU want.

3. A Way to get what type of weapon riven YOU want.

 

[Xaero]

6 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

We're too late on removal. That will create a huge ingame economy crisis because people are already too invested on it. What we can do is try Trim down the RNG aspect of rivens. I can think of a few ways

1. Riven Stat Locking

2. Some way to get a riven for the weapon YOU want.

3. A Way to get what type of weapon riven YOU want.

 

This would probably be the best solution.

[trst]

As they had already stated disposition changes are based both on popularity and performance. However popularity is a valid metric for determining the real value of a weapon because more powerful weapons are more popular. People can say they use weapons like the Catchmoon or Bramma because they're fun but if you were cut their damage and CC/SC in half suddenly far fewer people would be finding them "fun".

But the whole idea seems to be in effort to ensure that dispositions will reflect the regularly changing meta. Sniper rifles for instance ranged from niche to dumpster fire until people found how great they were for Eidolons. But if Eidolons were never made or were made in a way where sniper rifles weren't good you can be sure that most of them would be sitting at near max dispositions.

And if popularity wasn't accounted for at all then we could end up in situations where the meta adjusts to some new weapon or types of builds that happen to include weapons with near/max dispositions. At which point to maintain any semblance of balance DE would need to manually adjust dispositions for these weapons anyways which would cause far more drama as it can no longer be "blamed" on a purely data-driven system.

 

Now none of this is to say that the system is perfect in any way nor that it doesn't need changes. But balancing via popularity does have its merits.

[BDMblue]

I think it’s messes up by the power of T5 rivens. They need to be outrageously powerful. 2 should be better then just a normal mod. 3 should be 1.5 mods 4 should be 3 mods and 5 should be 6 mods of power.

Right now 5 is 2.5 about. And the guns that have 5 star rivens are still bad with them.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Yes they did. Sniper rifles keep seeing a nerf to their dispo because they’re practically mandatory for Tricaps whether they have a riven or not. Punishing players over the games own design is bad.

[RamonLLLL]

3 hours ago, Chewarette said:

Rivens are a mistake

 

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

I dont have a real opinion on the matter. I started playing Aug 2019 so whatever happens with rivens I wont care. 

Like has been said, the games so easy with a basic loadout; with primed mods anyways if you wanted to go higher levels. 

Rivens do add variety and flavor though. Each build is basically 60/60, damage, crit, elemental etc. So the opportunity to turn 2 mod slots into 1 is enticing. 

I've been able to make a lot of plat with rivens, which allowed me to buy multiple Tennogens and random stuff I've always wanted in the game since I was new lol.

But....I had to keep myself in check because I was already getting into the loop of farming kuva just to roll it away in 3mins, then go farm more kuva.

I got what I wanted for now and I'm gonna take a break and slow down, because I've been up late just for kuva and that's not what I wanted lol.

But the journey was fun. 80% of my builds have near OP rivens and I can enjoy what I've worked for. Just my 2 cents.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

3 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

We're too late on removal. That will create a huge ingame economy crisis because people are already too invested on it. What we can do is try Trim down the RNG aspect of rivens. I can think of a few ways

1. Riven Stat Locking

2. Some way to get a riven for the weapon YOU want.

3. A Way to get what type of weapon riven YOU want.

 

I think that's the only real option now without creating chaos.

They could just flat out make every dispo 1 number, but I just randomly thought of that with no insight, so I have no idea if it's a good idea or not.

[SneakyErvin]

It is a bad system, the whole popularity thing makes it so.

At first glance it might look OK since it will naturally have the intended effect i.e seeing poor performance weapons being more used thanks to rivens that make them worthwhile. But then after time it will turn and instead those weapons will suddenly see lower and lower dispositions since they see more and more use. The system doesnt tell us why they see more use, just that they do.

Say a really poor weapon with the highest possible dispo starts seeing slightly more use than a great weapon with bottom dispo. That doesnt mean the poor weapon is better due to the riven, it may just mean it is close to or the same as the great weapon but more appealing for other reasons.

For example, if Tonbo would be equally good to a Kripath polearm when both have a riven. I would personally use the Tonbo because it looks better, since it looks like a weapon and not just a meatstick. If more and more people would follow, then soon the Tonbo would fall behind the Kripath, even though the two are identically the same in performance.

It would have been better if DE reviewed all weapons and gave them a static dispo that made all weapons near equally viable.

[HoustonDragon]

5 hours ago, Chewarette said:

Rivens are a mistake anyway. They are trying to base the stats on the weapon's popularity without thinking about all the parameters. For example the last change was done during Scarlet Spear so Paracesis took a hard hit in its disposition, but outside of Sentient missions I barely ever see anyone using it.

It's such a clunky weapon, even with speed stacked. I wish we could have picked what weapon type to actually build from the blueprint

[DrBorris]

Rivens are no longer solely based on usage. DE now takes a more hands on role and primarily uses usage to clue them int what needs to be looked at.

Quote

We are also making one slight change based on feedback from our last Workshop: past Disposition changes have been primarily based on weapon usage stats, where more popular weapons received lower Dispositions, and vice versa. These numbers were adjusted by hand where we deemed appropriate, but players have suggested we should take it one step further - going forward, we have compiled our own internal ranking of weapon power levels, which will be referenced in addition to usage stats to reach our final numbers. As further tweaks bring us closer to “ideal” Disposition numbers, changes should become less drastic, reinforced by our internal rankings providing a solid baseline.

In addition, while the weapon re-balance was great, and MR is a better representation of power than it was, MR is still a pretty bad way to judge power.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, HoustonDragon said:

It's such a clunky weapon, even with speed stacked. I wish we could have picked what weapon type to actually build from the blueprint

Currently it is my favorite melee with a CD+AS riven on it. Coupled with naramon, berserker, blood rush, weeping wounds, CO, viral and primed reach it just decimates things. Though If I was able to chose which weapon type to turn it into now it would have probably been a Tonfa or Nikana.

[Voltage]

Disposition was never a good idea. Riven Mods would be much better if all weapons had the same stat range.

[Aldain]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

At first glance it might look OK since it will naturally have the intended effect i.e seeing poor performance weapons being more used thanks to rivens that make them worthwhile.

There are some weapons that it can't even do that for, the percentage based bonuses are overwhelmingly biased towards weapons that already have decent stats at a minimum.

If there is a weapon that has questionable usability in the first place. Look at the Burston series, the prime variant literally only does 6 more base damage than the normal one, its best stat is status at 30%, and this is an MR12 weapon. Despite the 5 dispo on both neither weapon can be salvaged in a realistic way, turning a burst weapon into a status hose makes little tactical sense and even 300% damage won't make 36(108 total, but each bullet is hit by DR separately) damage useful.

Rivens can't salvage some weapons as the system was intended, this is due to the percent based system of modding and how bad/mediocre stats on any weapon can't be saved by tripling them, strong weapons meanwhile STILL benefit even at lower dispositions because of being able to stick 3 positive stats that even with lower increases will eclipse weaker weapons by virtue of simple math; +300% on a weapon that deals 20 per bullet is still out shined by +90% on something that does 55 per bullet.

Having fixed stats will literally only benefit stronger weapons, the entire "Riven system was a mistake" meme is true solely because it failed to replace actual balance for weapons and instead created the exact opposite which only pushed weaker weapons further down because their base stats can't use several of the enhancements the same weapon others can.

[SneakyErvin]

31 minutes ago, Aldain said:

There are some weapons that it can't even do that for, the percentage based bonuses are overwhelmingly biased towards weapons that already have decent stats at a minimum.

If there is a weapon that has questionable usability in the first place. Look at the Burston series, the prime variant literally only does 6 more base damage than the normal one, its best stat is status at 30%, and this is an MR12 weapon. Despite the 5 dispo on both neither weapon can be salvaged in a realistic way, turning a burst weapon into a status hose makes little tactical sense and even 300% damage won't make 36(108 total, but each bullet is hit by DR separately) damage useful.

Rivens can't salvage some weapons as the system was intended, this is due to the percent based system of modding and how bad/mediocre stats on any weapon can't be saved by tripling them, strong weapons meanwhile STILL benefit even at lower dispositions because of being able to stick 3 positive stats that even with lower increases will eclipse weaker weapons by virtue of simple math; +300% on a weapon that deals 20 per bullet is still out shined by +90% on something that does 55 per bullet.

Having fixed stats will literally only benefit stronger weapons, the entire "Riven system was a mistake" meme is true solely because it failed to replace actual balance for weapons and instead created the exact opposite which only pushed weaker weapons further down because their base stats can't use several of the enhancements the same weapon others can.

Yeah, several weak weapons need to be adjusted and the whole up and down of riven dispo needs to go away. Tweak weapons to perform appropriately for their MR then let riven bridge the MR gap instead, so a MR5 with a riven is as good as a MR15 with a riven. That would given them an endgame worth and it would bring about alot of diversity in gearing.