DE Pre-Nerfing ALL Future Rivens to be UNUSABLE, and How to Fix Rivens

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

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going forward, all new weapons will be released with the minimum Riven disposition of 0.5. For The Deadlock Protocol, this includes the dispositions on newly added primary kitguns, in addition to regular weapons -DE Connor: Riven Disposition Procedure for New Weapons

Now Connor claims this is because "player feedback" was negative when DE "balanced" rivens people invested time, kuva, and platinum into by nerfing them to be unusable

So to "fix" that, DE decided all rivens will come 'pre-nerfed' and unusable out of the gate. This will discourage plat sales and largely decrease any interest in the riven system going forward... "balanced"

Connor is aware how bad of a move this is.

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This change leads us directly to another common piece of player feedback: weapons with very low dispositions are sometimes not worth equipping unless you get a very good roll, and if a weapon is way off of where it should be disposition-wise, it can take several waves of changes for it to reach an appropriate power level. 

And according to him, DE is raising the amount they selectively buff rivens from 0.1 to 0.2. That means an unusable new riven at 0.5 will be buffed to also unusable 0.7 in several months.

Connor also further invalidated his own logic by admitting

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we planned to give new weapons a disposition of 1 (the “average”), or matching the lowest member of the weapon family if it already had a disposition lower than 1.

So that means if 1.0 is "average"... anything less than that is below average (0.9), poor (0.7), or unusable (0.5)

Also that means if Riven buffs only happen once every few months, it will take a YEAR minimum for a new weapon to reach "Average" disposition!

Now there are several ways to actually fix rivens, that dont involve massive nerfs

• Remove disposition - originally rivens were all the same dispo of 1.0, and things were much better
• Remove stat variance - if all stat rolls were standardized (for example a crit chance roll would always be 120%) this would eliminate these so called "power spikes" and also remove the need to buy slots with platinum "due to server issues with riven stat variance"
• Replace numeric stats with exilus/augment type abilities - completely revamp rivens to go from adding flat percent buffs to DPS, to having unique exotic effects based on the riven type. Shotgun rivens could roll things like "30% chance to instant reload on hit" "every 4th shot stuns and opens to finishers", Rifle rivens could roll "heal on headshots" "double magazine on empty", Pistols could roll "30% chance lifesteal on hits" "double movement speed on kill", melee could roll "chance to turn invisible on kill" "pull enemies on hit"
• Or you know, stop basing all future weapon riven nerfs on outliers like Kuva Bramma
• Rivens should never be based on "popularity" - that makes for a system that punishes players for using whats best and disrespects player investment
• While we're on topic - an entire Sortie's worth of 6000 kuva for one single 3500 roll is awful, especially when theres no way to "lock-in" a specific stat when rerolling

DE - Fix rivens, or simply admit failure and remove them with compensation. But nerfing them into oblivion will only drop player interest in them, and further decrease overall platinum sales and profits. Feels bad for players, will feel worse for shareholders

[lukinu_u]

il y a 11 minutes, (PS4)True_Reclaimer a dit :

And according to him, DE is raising the amount they selectively buff rivens from 0.1 to 0.2. That means an unusable new riven at 0.5 will be buffed to also unusable 0.7 in several months.

They are increasing the buff from about 0.1-0.2 to higher value to make the buff over time faster and more significant.
You probably misread "In the past, we’ve only changed Riven dispositions by up to 0.2 at a time" as "increasing the changing value to 0.2", which is a lot different.

The idea here is to check how popular and usable a new weapon is without riven and rapidely buff rivens for said riven if it's needed, rather than nerfing the riven is the weapon is overpopular to later buff when when they realise the weapon is not good anymore without riven.

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

4 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

They are increasing the buff from about 0.1-0.2 to higher value to make the buff over time faster and more significant.
You probably misread "In the past, we’ve only changed Riven dispositions by up to 0.2 at a time" as "increasing the changing value to 0.2", which is a lot different.

The idea here is to check how popular and usable a new weapon is without riven and rapidely buff rivens for said riven if it's needed, rather than nerfing the riven is the weapon is overpopular to later buff when when they realise the weapon is not good anymore without riven.

But majority of the past buffs were LESS than 0.1 

Acceltra: 0.8->0.7

Astilla: 1.1->1.15

Battacor: 1->1.05

Baza: 1->1.05
Baza Prime: 1->0.95

Boar: 1.4->1.45

Boltor: 1.2->1.25
Telos Boltor: 1.1->1.15
Boltor Prime: 1.1->1.15

Braton: 1.3->1.35

 

So thats good now they will increase it from a max of .2 to a max of .3 but still only buff by .1 as I described

[Tyreaus]

A few nitpicks:

14 minutes ago, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

And according to him, DE is raising the amount they selectively buff rivens from 0.1 to 0.2. That means an unusable new riven at 0.5 will be buffed to also unusable 0.7 in several months.

Connor says that "In the past, we’ve only changed Riven dispositions by up to 0.2 at a time", then adds that Prime Access will buff Rivens by greater amounts when warranted (and doesn't give a specific number). So that 0.5-0.7 is what we get now (and what we'll keep getting with nerfs, as he points out). What we get in those cases is stated to be more, but by how much remains unspecified.

Also, the phrasing that this "extra boost" is limited to Prime Access doesn't preclude more frequent buffs. It does mean those more massive buffs are going to be rare, but we could still see frequent, smaller Riven disposition changes.

18 minutes ago, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

Now there are several ways to actually fix rivens, that dont involve massive nerfs

I would say to calculate riven stats post-modding, or on weapon base stats, so that Rivens even of lower dispositions are acceptable. IMO, it's one of the easier, less stomp-on-people's-toes fixes.

Given the goal is to make weaker / less popular (they are working off both metrics now IIRC) weapons perform up to par, removing dispositions wouldn't really help. Not to mention people with Rivens above 1.0 would get the short end of the stick. Others have said to set it to 5/5 for this particular reason.

It would be nice to have exilus / augment sort of features to Rivens, but that also runs the risk of balking at current player investment. I.e., if you did that, what would you do for the Rivens people have? If they're added to the pool, that seems perfectly acceptable, but it also doesn't really fix the issues brought up by the other stats.

30 minutes ago, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

further decrease overall platinum sales and profits.

Important to keep in mind is that in the Riven system only Riven slots are Platinum sinks. The massive amounts of Platinum some Rivens can fetch aren't actually exhausted on those Rivens.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I'll say it again. If a weapon's worth solely depends on its riven, is it a good weapon at all? If your worth as a gamer also depends on rivens, can you call yourself a good player at all, as well?

The purpose of rivens is to bring some life back to underused weapons. If you had a high disposition riven for a meta weapon and it got inevitably nerfed because of the "all rivs start at 3 disp" rule, then it's mostly on you.

If all rivens start at a lower disposition and are buffed from there you can both avoid player dissatisfaction by investing time and plat on said rivens, as well as prevent meta weapons from having too high dispositions.

The change is very much welcome by me. Then again, I only put rivens on the weapons I love the most. If disposition becomes too low I swap the riven by another mod and put it back again once the disposition raises again. Because I'll still use the weapon regardless of it having a riven or not. I never understood all the rage and obsession about them, to be honest. Some of these suggestions would also negate the very purpose of rivens.

Edited June 9, 2020 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

16 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

A few nitpicks:

Connor says that "In the past, we’ve only changed Riven dispositions by up to 0.2 at a time", then adds that Prime Access will buff Rivens by greater amounts when warranted (and doesn't give a specific number). So that 0.5-0.7 is what we get now (and what we'll keep getting with nerfs, as he points out). What we get in those cases is stated to be more, but by how much remains unspecified.

Also, the phrasing that this "extra boost" is limited to Prime Access doesn't preclude more frequent buffs. It does mean those more massive buffs are going to be rare, but we could still see frequent, smaller Riven disposition changes.

I would say to calculate riven stats post-modding, or on weapon base stats, so that Rivens even of lower dispositions are acceptable. IMO, it's one of the easier, less stomp-on-people's-toes fixes.

Given the goal is to make weaker / less popular (they are working off both metrics now IIRC) weapons perform up to par, removing dispositions wouldn't really help. Not to mention people with Rivens above 1.0 would get the short end of the stick. Others have said to set it to 5/5 for this particular reason.

It would be nice to have exilus / augment sort of features to Rivens, but that also runs the risk of balking at current player investment. I.e., if you did that, what would you do for the Rivens people have? If they're added to the pool, that seems perfectly acceptable, but it also doesn't really fix the issues brought up by the other stats.

Important to keep in mind is that in the Riven system only Riven slots are Platinum sinks. The massive amounts of Platinum some Rivens can fetch aren't actually exhausted on those Rivens.

You make a lot of great points

One nitpick though, 

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The massive amounts of Platinum some Rivens can fetch aren't actually exhausted on those Rivens.

Only purchased plat can be traded, while free plat can be used for slots, therefore DE recieved payment for that traded plat before it was traded. Without rivens then people would have noting to buy plat for trading massive amounts, and can subsist on free plat/free slots

Edited June 9, 2020 by (PS4)True_Reclaimer
typo

[Hixlysss]

Except...if the weapon doesn't need a riven. Remember the riven's were created specifically to make the under used/weaker weapons better further in the game. As most new weapons that get released tend to be better or as good as previous weapons to 'encourage' plat sales so people buy the new best stuff.

Honestly this is a welcome change as it means new weapon riven's won't immediately have a 1k+ price tag attached to them just cause it's new. The whole riven economy IMO is a problem, specifically because it's inflated so high, with these rivens being sold for 50$+ worth of plat. This brings up the problem that DE is now stuck in a hard place as if they significantly nerf a weapons dispo people complain because "Muh money" when it was completely the communities fault.

It has also been stated before that the game is constantly changing, while DE tries to be mindful of their community members and their investments, the Riven trade has woefully unbalanced things as some of the most highly priced items traded for. As such these changes are needed so DE can properly balance the weapons as they need too.

[Tyreaus]

1 minute ago, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

Only purchased plat can be traded, while free plat can be used for slots, therefore DE recieved payment for that traded plat before it was traded. Without rivens then people would have noting to buy plat for trading massive amounts, and can get buy on free plat/free slots

I only mean to clear up the possible misconception of "DE must be raking in the cash with Rivens selling for thousands of plat!" Much of that plat can be recycled, so the actual amounts purchased are probably a lot less than appearances might denote.

[Drachnyn]

vor 1 Minute schrieb Hixlysss:

"Muh money" when it was completely the communities fault.

I agree with the rest of what you said but I disagree that it's completely the community's fault. Introducing rivens in the first place is on DE themselves.

[Hixlysss]

3 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

I agree with the rest of what you said but I disagree that it's completely the community's fault. Introducing rivens in the first place is on DE themselves.

Semantics. DE also created the trading system, t here for it's technically their fault this is a problem in the first place. 

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

6 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

I only mean to clear up the possible misconception of "DE must be raking in the cash with Rivens selling for thousands of plat!" Much of that plat can be recycled, so the actual amounts purchased are probably a lot less than appearances might denote.

Only purchased plat can be traded. So DE received payment prior to the trade, recycled or not. Rivens push Prime Access sales up as well.

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

Just now, Hixlysss said:

DE also created the trading system, t here for it's technically their fault this is a problem in the first place

DE messed up making rivens tradeable

I remember trading 1.0 when you can only trade unranked duplicate normal mods, not even prime parts or anything else

Now in 2020 we can sell lootboxes and slaves (liches)

[Hixlysss]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

DE messed up making rivens tradeable

I remember trading 1.0 when you can only trade unranked duplicate normal mods, not even prime parts or anything else

Now in 2020 we can sell lootboxes and slaves (liches)

Yeah, slave trading...I have mixed feelings on. Like, there is the moral thing of we are doing literal slave trading, but mechanically it's kinda needed to sorta enforce people to play the content.

[lukinu_u]

Il y a 3 heures, (PS4)True_Reclaimer a dit :

So thats good now they will increase it from a max of .2 to a max of .3 but still only buff by .1 as I described

Well, they never said it would be a max of .3, they said they would increase the max over .2, which mean it could be up to 1 or ever more.
The idea is to start at 0.5 (the minimum) and increase the disposition later if needed, and it could be a really big amound if necessary. So, a weapon could go from 0.5 to 1.5 in a single updateif it really need.

At least that's what I understood.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

As long as they don’t ruin the dispo of my existing rivens I’m fine.

[(XBOX)ALTBOULI]

Seems to me like a first step in shifting away from rivens all together. I suspect this will be a very gradual process 

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

As long as they don’t ruin the dispo of my existing rivens I’m fine.

Well thats coming too, all "popular" rivens are getting nerfed in the June balance pass, just like all the other times

Just now, (XB1)ALTBOULI said:

Seems to me like a first step in shifting away from rivens all together. I suspect this will be a very gradual process 

Yeah it seems like it doesnt it? DE is stubborn and refuses to admit failures, they prefer to drag them out to the point of kicking a dead horse then suddenly remove them when enough players finally give up - like with Solar Rail Conflicts and Raids. Conclave is next on the chopping block

[Skaleek]

17 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Also, the phrasing that this "extra boost" is limited to Prime Access doesn't preclude more frequent buffs.

No, but DE's track record does. Update frequency of game systems has always trended less often, not more often.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Skaleek

[DoomFruit]

The game has massive systemic issues which cannot be fixed by something as simple as riven disposition.

Balance in this game is completely whacked. Frame abilities slipped their leash the moment corrupted mods came into being (overextended, fleeting expertise, narrow minded, etc.), completely lost it when zenurik was made available and boosted up even more when primed and umbral mods fell into our inventories. To "counter" that, we got the wonderful knee-jerk response of nullicancer which also had the effect of S#&$ting all over any weapon that wasn't a bullet hose and removing the last part of "you're special warriors from a bygone age with weird and wonderful unexplained powers which can turn the tide of a battle" by adding "...but you can't use them on these things, or those things, or these other things, and it won't do much against this thing".

Weapon power creep was bad enough already, but then we had the glorified slot machines known as rivens - not only did this break the ability for someone to make a build and then share it with anyone else, but any attempt at balancing weapons got kicked out the window when you couldn't even count on what mods were available.

Honestly, the entire thing needs to be ripped down and remade from scratch. Put in a cleanly defined maximum for both ally and enemy capabilities. Explicitly design a balance between factions and weapon types, and make it actually make sense (why, exactly, does toxin, gas or viral do anything at all to robots?, why is gas different from toxin, how the hell are slash procs happening if I have shields up, etc.) Build around that. Think very long and very hard before exceeding it in any capacity or form.

Archwing, interestingly enough, actually did that - none of the mods from one mode carried over to the other (except for aura mods), rivens didn't exist, everything was a fresh start and could be balanced cleanly... but sadly, it too succumbed to power creep from railjack intrinsics and suffered a riven infection in the end (plus, it still had the odd damage types from the base game).

This only gets harder to do as more and more pieces of gear get added to the pile. Even if the vast majority of it is just crap which gets 30'd and never looked at again.

Edited June 10, 2020 by DoomFruit

[Malziel]

Have you considered, perhaps, merely not gambling instead?

[Kaizal]

On 2020-06-10 at 1:54 PM, Malziel said:

Have you considered, perhaps, merely not gambling instead?

Have you considered, that the fact that sinking in a large amount of money in a particular item in the game is a gamble speaks poorly of the game. And that the whole point of the forums is to help fixed the game?

[(PSN)caoshen0625]

4 hours ago, Kaizal said:

Have you considered, that the fact that sinking in a large amount of money in a particular item in the game is a gamble speaks poorly of the game. And that the whole point of the forums is to help fixed the game?

To be fair "do not participate" also speaks volume too.....So yall are on the same side

[Kaizal]

4 hours ago, (PS4)caoshen0625 said:

To be fair "do not participate" also speaks volume too.....So yall are on the same side

I never put a dime into a riven, but i think its a S#&$ty system that resembles a casino, and the design makes it so every purchase feels like a bet, this is incredibly toxic to some people, so i'd rather rivens don't even be in the game if they are gonna work like this.

[Traumtulpe]

On 2020-06-09 at 9:57 PM, (PS4)True_Reclaimer said:

This will discourage plat sales and largely decrease any interest in the riven system going forward

Good. If a new weapon needs a riven to be good, DE needs to do a better job at balancing. Every single time a new weapon came out that was BIS (without riven), people went crazy on the rivens, only for DE to slowly but surely reduce it's disposition to nothing (and sometimes nerf the weapon itself on top).

There was nothing good about receiving a new, 10x overpowered, soon to be nerfed, weapon every few months.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Traumtulpe

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

On 2020-06-10 at 12:54 PM, Malziel said:

Have you considered, perhaps, merely not gambling instead?

 

On 2020-06-12 at 2:35 AM, Kaizal said:

Have you considered, that the fact that sinking in a large amount of money in a particular item in the game is a gamble speaks poorly of the game. And that the whole point of the forums is to help fixed the game?

 

On 2020-06-12 at 6:45 AM, (PS4)caoshen0625 said:

To be fair "do not participate" also speaks volume too.....So yall are on the same side

 

On 2020-06-12 at 11:40 AM, Kaizal said:

I never put a dime into a riven, but i think its a S#&$ty system that resembles a casino, and the design makes it so every purchase feels like a bet, this is incredibly toxic to some people, so i'd rather rivens don't even be in the game if they are gonna work like this.

At least all sides agree rivens are gambling, and gambling is bad = rivens are bad.

And since DE made rivens and put RNG into everything = DE is bad, and Warframe = gambling