Mandatory Mods - Still Hasn't Been Fixed 3+ Years Later

[Grav_Starstrider]

To Summarize/TLDR;

The Problem: DRASTICALLY different performance from minmaxed and casually modded weapons, reducing effective or incentive of unique choices. (Nobody ever drops Hornet Strike or Serration for any other mod, unless they're intentionally handicapping themselves)

The Solution: Make the majority of weapon damage innate to the weapon and/or to a dedicated slot, and decrease exponential synergies between different damage types (change from "damage x multishot x crit x elementalDMG" to "damage + crit + elemental damage)

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Serration, Hornet Strike, and (Primed/Sacrificial) Pressure Point are just as mandatory for damage output as ever, while eating up one of our precious few weapon mod slots and limited capacity. The same few mod slots every time, on every weapon, if you don't want to DRASTICALLY nerf and handicap yourself. And the extreme discrepancy in effectiveness of meta builds and casual builds make balancing a nightmare for DE, as they have to decide whether they make content require 18 forma across your loadout, with niche and expensive and effective mods, to make it difficult for min-maxers, and impossible for casuals, or if they make content that's a cakewalk for vets and minmaxers, and is only mildly challenging to casuals or newbies.

To solve that, we need to close the gap between meta and casual modded builds, which I'd suggest fixing via the following:
Give weapons an "Aura"-like mod slot for their primary damage mods. Decouple Multishot from being a damage-improving mod, creating a different (but softer) meta, changing Multishot mods from being another method of additive damage, to being a mod that turns guns into shotgun-like weapons, dividing the weapon damage across a larger number of pellets and wider spread. The purpose of this reworked multishot mechanic would be that you use it to increase or equalize the chance of enemies being hit by a critical or status proc, so that a 50% status/critical weapon isn't an all or nothing coin toss for afflicting a critical or status.

Making Multishot no longer a component of raw damage output will drastically reduce the exponential synergy between Multishot, Damage, Critical Damage, and Elemental Damage mods. We could further decouple the different damage types from each other, by making the non-primary damage mods (augur pact, rivens, etc) only scale up the base weapon damage values, and not factor into changing the elemental damage or crit damage values. Obviously, this would RADICALLY nerf the damage output of weapons. So I'd simply recommend that you scale up all weapon's base damage by a proportionate amount, or the damage increase provided by the Aura-Slotted main Damage mod would be increased, or both.

DE can work out the numbers, so that the pre-MM(mandatorymodding) meta builds provide as much damage output as the post-MM changes cause them to output. Decoupling all of the different damage options from each other, however, will drastically improve build variety, as the damage is more innate to the weapons or the main Damage mods, reducing how punishing it would be to choose options that aren't "meta", and making fewer forma necessary overall, and leaving more un-polarized slots, so that you aren't as locked into a singular build. It would make modding turn into a far more additive process, than a multiplicative process. It's absurd to see really meta builds lose half of their damage output, or more, by changing any one of their current mods.

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Yes, a new "meta" will form, I get how that works, there's always a meta. There's just a degree to which it is or isn't restrictive based on how punishing it is or isn't to deviate from. Siphoning a ton of the damage away to the damage mods and making the damage options additively -rather than multiplicatively- stacking will just close the gap between the current meta and non-meta options, making mods a way of modifying your combat approach, rather than being what utterly and completely dictates your combat effectiveness. Making one primary damage mod that has it's own slot, rather than having two that take up normal slots, will drastically reduce how tight the modding meta is.

Note: The "Damage Slot" doesn't have to be polarized, and can be unpolarizable for the guns, since we of course don't need to have 28 bonus capacity. I'd make them give 0 capacity at rank 0, and 10 at rank 10, neat and tidily giving us back just about the average amount of capacity that the exilus mod slot addition squeezes us for. We can also turn the universal "mandatory mod" of Pressure Point into a Damage Slot mod as well. They can decide how they want to adjust the values of Sacrificial and Primed Pressure Point. Ideally they give us back a forma per madurai-polarized weapon in that case as recompense for the shakeup.

I would be thrilled to have 1 or 2 more effective slots opened up on every weapon, and not feel the need to polarize everything 6 times to fit everything I want on my weapons, and to be punished less for trying fun conditional mods, that currently bring down your DPS compared to other options. Let me know what you think! Assume DE crunches the numbers and makes sure your super-meta build does almost the exact same amount of damage, just punishes you less for dropping one of the DPS mods for a more fun mod.

[TheGrimCorsair]

It's not a bug or anything in need of fixing.

They're a major part of player progression, and a way to allow players to carry that progression to new guns instead of having to start over from zero with every new weapon you pop out of the Foundry.

This is all just a solution in search of a problem.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

Melee has already solved this problem with the changes to Condition Overload. Since Condition Overload is additive with Pressure Point, there is a compelling choice between the two. Melee has some considerable diversity with combo builds, heavy attack builds, combo+heavy attack builds with Zenurik combo efficiency and actually useful utility mods. Healing Return or Primed Reach? Zenurik or Naramon? This is in contrast to guns where there is a general consensus for an optimal build.

Guns just need the same alternatives.

We already got Amalgam Serration, but that isn't enough.

Competition for Serration:

Misspent Stores: +330% Damage, -330% Damage on Hit for 2 Seconds

Riddled Mass: +50% Damage per stack of 

Steel Cored: +250% Damage, -200% Critical Damage

Surcharged Condition: +80% Damage per status type

Possibly useful D polarity gun mods:

Salvaged Souls: On kill: 50% chance to drop energy orb

Nutrient Slurry: On kill: 50% chance to drop health orb

Juggernaut Adrenaline: On kill: +250 armor for 10 seconds, caps at 2500

Though I agree the multiplicative nature of stats is the root of Warframe's scaling issue. When stats are multiplicative with each other, all enemies either feel like paper or sponges when you are a multiplier below or over. They could make more stats additive, where elemental mods only scale off of your unmodded base damage and mutli-shot simply adds extra weaker pellets that don't scale off your modded base damage. In that way, multi-shot is more for extra status procs instead of damage and base damage mods would skew your proc pool towards IPS.

Still, don't forget that star chart progression is balanced around you ranking up your base damage overtime. 

 

[DoomFruit]

8 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Melee has already solved this problem with the changes to Condition Overload. Since Condition Overload is additive with Pressure Point, there is a compelling choice between the two.

Not really. If the weapon has any decent status chance, you use Condition Overload. Full stop.

Primed Pressure Point = 165% damage

Condition Overload: 120% damage per proc type. If you get even 2 procs on the target, you're now dealing 1.45x the damage of a maxed out primed pressure point.

[TheLexiConArtist]

10 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Guns just need the same alternatives.

We already got Amalgam Serration, but that isn't enough.

Competition for Serration:

Steel Cored: +250% Damage, -200% Critical Damage

I see what you're going for here, but it's probably better to axe crit chance than crit damage. Otherwise you run into 0-damage issues. Those occasional crits on your 5% chance weapon aren't just neutered to the 'same' damage as the non-crits, they're actively duds. If an ally brings in Harrow or an Adarza Kavat, for example, you'd get your weapon made nearly non-functional by their buffs.

Unless DE were to implement a 1.0x hard lower limit on crit multiplier, that is.

[Sharkgoblin]

i know the solution to this problem

just make another serration and call it serration 2

so now you can easily drop one of your serrations without gimping yourself

i know i know my brain is too big and my iq 200

[Proscriptor]

On 2020-10-07 at 8:57 PM, Sharkgoblin said:

i know the solution to this problem

just make another serration and call it serration 2

so now you can easily drop one of your serrations without gimping yourself

i know i know my brain is too big and my iq 200

this already exists

"serration 2" is called heavy caliber (on some weapons the accuracy penalty is negligible), or +dmg on riven

  

On 2020-10-07 at 2:21 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

Let me know what you think! 

you opened the jubilar millionth thread about the catastrophic idea of removing serration based on debunked points on the so-called mandatory mods

[motorfirebox]

I think the best way to approach mandatory mods is to make a bunch more versions of those mods with different effects and bonuses, and only allow one of them to be equipped on any weapon. E.g. a bunch of different versions of Serration, with slightly (5-20 percentage points) higher or lower primary damage values, and conditions like "+60% damage while airborne" or "+75% crit chance on headshots", etc etc etc. Multishot mods might reworked into new versions of base damage mods, e.g. Split Chamber is a Serration mod that has lower base damage but adds a bunch of mutlishot.

[Grav_Starstrider]

16 hours ago, TheGrimCorsair said:

It's not a bug or anything in need of fixing.

They're a major part of player progression, and a way to allow players to carry that progression to new guns instead of having to start over from zero with every new weapon you pop out of the Foundry.

This is all just a solution in search of a problem.

There would still be damage associated with a bunch of the mods, and the cross-gun progression of damage being preserved would still be there. Since the exact same main damage mods would still exist. They'd just be in their own slot, and give a small amount of capacity, instead of eating capacity and slot on every single weapon that you intend to seriously deal damage with.

13 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Melee has already solved this problem with the changes to Condition Overload

-snipped-

Though I agree the multiplicative nature of stats is the root of Warframe's scaling issue. When stats are multiplicative with each other, all enemies either feel like paper or sponges when you are a multiplier below or over. They could make more stats additive, where elemental mods only scale off of your unmodded base damage and mutli-shot simply adds extra weaker pellets that don't scale off your modded base damage. In that way, multi-shot is more for extra status procs instead of damage and base damage mods would skew your proc pool towards IPS.

Still, don't forget that star chart progression is balanced around you ranking up your base damage overtime. 

 

You're right, Melee is *far* more forgiving and flexible with varieties of options. STILL has 1 slot nigh-universally used for damage, which is why I wanted to give it the same damage-slot treatment, even if it doesn't need much else. To handle the damage slot taking the place of the stance slot for capacity-giving, I'd probably recommend DE lower the capacity of them, but make them drain instead of give capacity. It'd make for some interesting choices, and help make up for the discrepancy in the current capacity costs (and proposed capacity-giving) of the Pressure mods compared to the stance mods.

I like your suggestions for making Multishot just a *separate* additive damage, instead of making it do no additional damage at all. And yeah, the sponge vs paper due to the multiplicative nature is exactly why I'm suggesting the extremes be brought closer together, with baseline buffs to everything via the buffed Damage mod.

How do my suggestions make star chart progression less tied to your progress ranking up your base damage mods?

5 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

Not really. If the weapon has any decent status chance, you use Condition Overload. Full stop.

I remember there being a lot of hubbub over the "new meta" being Condition Overload and Blood Rush on Nikanas, when Melee 2.5-2.999 dropped, so it's possible that there's still room for tweaking how the different damage options for melee interact. The way I see it though, the current design makes it make way more sense to go all in on crit stats and combo efficiency/duration and heavy attacks, or to just go for sheer status with CO. I try and avoid the super-tedious min-maxing, so I don't know every specific interaction, neat breakdown of CO! Is there much reason to *not* use both PP and CO?

 

2 hours ago, Traubenzuckr said:

you opened the jubilar millionth thread about the catastrophic idea of removing serration based on debunked points on the so-called mandatory mods

Debunked??? When do you not use Serration or Hornet Strike? When do you not use Split Chamber? One or two specific weapons? Or on a specific Warframe (Navigator Ivara, I guess? Marked for Death's 1-damage-input-derived AoE)? We only have 8 slots, and one of them is practically always the same mod, for primaries and secondaries each. And yeah, I'm going to make a thread for every problem I perceive that I strongly feel about, that DE hasn't fixed yet, despite acknowledging as a problem themselves in multiple devstreams over the last several months and years :V

59 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

I think the best way to approach mandatory mods is to make a bunch more versions of those mods with different effects and bonuses, and only allow one of them to be equipped on any weapon. E.g. a bunch of different versions of Serration, with slightly (5-20 percentage points) higher or lower primary damage values, and conditions like "+60% damage while airborne" or "+75% crit chance on headshots", etc etc etc. Multishot mods might reworked into new versions of base damage mods, e.g. Split Chamber is a Serration mod that has lower base damage but adds a bunch of mutlishot.

They... Already have a lot of mod categories to deal with. Let's not suggest exploding it up to 500 different shooting-weapon-types that each have their own versions of mods. Lots of weapons already have unique effects, and they occasionally release new weapon-specific mods, such as the syndicate mods, or the new mods that "Father" from Deimos carries. I'd rather they fix the fundamental problems with the balance of the existing mods, than introduce a whole new slew of a million variables. Also, for weapon-specific altered values for things... Rivens exist. Can roll until you have your plus damage or plus crit on slide attack and such.

[DoomFruit]

9 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Is there much reason to *not* use both PP and CO

Mod slots. There are the 3 mandatory mods (damage of some type, range, attack speed). I consider Shattering Impact to be another mandatory mod, so that's 4 taken up. Next are the elementals. Status weapons get viral/electric (for increased damage plus stunlocking on targets that I hit), crit weapons get corrosive/cold (slash-based) or radiation/cold (puncture-based weapons) for a universally effective damage spread. Those are another 3 slots taken. That's 1 slot left.

Only on an absolute pure status weapon would I have space to put in the other damage mod. On a hybrid weapon, that other slot going to be sacrificial steel (I don't like blood rush, I want it at full power on the first hit or if the disposition isn't pathetic, a riven mod which lets me stick crit damage in there somewhere.

Glaives have it even worse due to needing glaive-specific mods, but I haven't used on in more than a year now due to how badly butchered they are in melee 2.9.

[ArcKnight9202]

I was thinking about this recently, actually. Since certain mods are basically mandatory, and mods of all types are mandatory on guns, why not just roll it all together?

What I mean is basically like this:
Serration - 165% damage(I think, don't shoot me)
-or-
Ammo Drum - +35% damage and bonus ammunition capacity
Terminal Velocity - +25% damage and faster Projectile speed
Split Chamber - +5% damage and +90% multishot
etc.

All these values given are examples only.

The catch here is that all the other mods can stack up together but not with Serration itself. They are mutually exclusive groups. This way, if you still want to rock Serration, you can. If you want to run a weird setup with some less popular mods, you can do that, too. These values also increase based on the mods levels so you won't get the maximum values unless the mod is completely leveled up, as with anything else.

I imagine the cumulative mod damage would be lower to avoid invalidating Serration? I don't sleep well so if this sounds appealing to anyone else, feel free to add to it. In that same vein, if it's bad and I don't realize it, go ahead and poke holes in it. I was just thinking that this would somewhat solve the mandatory mod problems.

[(XBOX)Kuhl MC]

The won't ever change the system now, they had the chance 5 years ago (there was a very interesting post about this topic a few days ago, referring to dev stream 32) and let it pass. Also, these mandatory mods increase the amount of Forma you need on a weapon, so they won't cut off their own revenue...

[Proscriptor]

14 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

...

Debunked??? ...

 

[Grav_Starstrider]

11 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

Mod slots. There are the 3 mandatory mods (damage of some type, range, attack speed). I consider Shattering Impact to be another mandatory mod, so that's 4 taken up. Next are the elementals. Status weapons get viral/electric (for increased damage plus stunlocking on targets that I hit), crit weapons get corrosive/cold (slash-based) or radiation/cold (puncture-based weapons) for a universally effective damage spread. Those are another 3 slots taken. That's 1 slot left.

Only on an absolute pure status weapon would I have space to put in the other damage mod. On a hybrid weapon, that other slot going to be sacrificial steel (I don't like blood rush, I want it at full power on the first hit or if the disposition isn't pathetic, a riven mod which lets me stick crit damage in there somewhere.

Glaives have it even worse due to needing glaive-specific mods, but I haven't used on in more than a year now due to how badly butchered they are in melee 2.9.

Not every weapon demands more reach or speed, and lots of people use Corrosive or Heat in lieu of Shattering Impact, so I feel like you might be slightly overstating how "mandatory" people find those mods. But that is a point. Range is almost universally at least a "why not" option on anything that isn't a stealth-oriented build on like, daggers and the skiajati or something. And you have a point with type-specific mods, such as how you most likely want one of the glaive-specific mods, or the dagger's Covert Lethality, and such. When these mods are sooooooo good and effective, or are the reasons you're using the weapon class, it becomes a non-choice. If it's a non-choice, DE should be doing more to make things innate across the board, like how they took the Itzal's blink, that made it overshadow all of the other Archwings for utility/convenience, and gave it to all of the Archwings. Maybe they should give weapons a biiiiit more innate range, and then nerf the range mods by a small amount. And/or increase the attack speeds by a smidge, and nerf the speed mods accordingly. That way there's less pressure to stack LOTS of speed and range onto almost every melee weapon. But it sounds like we both agree that most people feel almost overwhelmingly pressured to use one thing or another. And the outcome of modding isn't transparent enough to know how effective your setup is, without using one of the websites like warframe builder, that calculates the approximate real DPS of the weapon. So, making the Damage slot, and making it the majority of where your damage comes from, would help make the lack of transparency slightly less of an issue.

12 hours ago, ArcKnight9202 said:

I was thinking about this recently, actually. Since certain mods are basically mandatory, and mods of all types are mandatory on guns, why not just roll it all together?

-snip-

I guess that's a possible answer, but it'd require a lot more different and specific mods, or a rework of a bunch of existing mods, in a way that kinda invalidates the.... Special-ness of the dual-stat nightmare mods and such, and steps on some of the Amalgam mod's toes. Granted, we have some new multi-stat-buffing mods from recent updates, but still.

You're right that upgraded versions of trash mods would be more competitive and more likely to be chosen. I would still pick my recommendation of a damage slot though, because I would prefer they close the gap between trash and the two stand-out mandatory mods, rather than them having to majorly rework every single trash mod. Them de-coupling the different damage types, in my suggestion, while buffing the base damage (either of the weapon, or of the Damage mod), would require very little numerical adjustments across the rest of the board.

9 hours ago, (XB1)Kuhl MC said:

The won't ever change the system now, they had the chance 5 years ago (there was a very interesting post about this topic a few days ago, referring to dev stream 32) and let it pass. Also, these mandatory mods increase the amount of Forma you need on a weapon, so they won't cut off their own revenue...

They increased their revenue by adding another slot that introduced more cost, the Exilus slot :V They removed a revenue-system when they removed the pet appearance plat-slot-machine. They aren't opposed to making their game better (I hope). They have tons of monetization in the game, that new players can buy into over the years, if they make the base gameplay compelling enough to draw new players in and keep them.

7 hours ago, Traubenzuckr said:

 

 You've missed one of the entire main points I was making, if you think that post is a counterpoint. If they decouple the different damage types from each other, so that they only scale off of the base damage of the weapon, or off of the Damage-mod-adjusted damage of the weapon, rather than multiplying each other's damage outputs, it would significantly decrease the pressure and incentive to go all-in on damage after damage after damage mod. Because most of the damage would be in the Damage Slot. I prefaced this whole thing by acknowledging that people will always develop a meta, or a tier list. I don't expect DE to make literally every mod equally viable and tempting, somehow. My suggestions are intended to lessen the gap between the meta and non-meta, by putting most of the damage into a single mod that isn't one of our limited 8(+1) mod slots. As it stands currently, if your weapon is crit, it's outright imbecilic or handicapping, to choose anything other than base damage, multishot, crit chance, crit damage, and elemental damage, of some sort. You remove any of those options, and you have absolutely neutered your damage output, on 99% of crit weapons. I had a decently meta-built Vectis Prime. Replacing any of it's mods with literally anything other than what I'd chosen, were going to halve the damage output, or worse. That kind of pressure to use a meta build is ridiculous. 1 out of 8 mods being a non-optimal-for-damage-mod shouldn't halve or quarter your damage output. It should maybe decrease it by 1/8th. Not by 1/2 per each non-(current-)meta mod you use.

[Proscriptor]

scaling up base damage means scaling only base damage types, effectively turning +damage into +physical damage in most cases

that's... terrible

[Grav_Starstrider]

2 hours ago, Traubenzuckr said:

that's... terrible

Why would it be so terrible? Assuming DE balances it so that the improved base damage (or base damage mod) makes your build as effective against what you currently use it for.

[Proscriptor]

imagine you want to do corrosive - why would you slot the "+base damage" mod when you can slot another elec or toxin mod to get more corrosive?

on the other hand, imagine you want to do HM with viral - why would ever not slot the "+base damage" mod (regardless of whether it applies to bonus elemental damage) when this bonus is what applies to bleed procs?

ultimately, the builds haven't become more varied

[Grav_Starstrider]

1 minute ago, Traubenzuckr said:

ultimately, the builds haven't become more varied

I think the builds would become drastically less punishing to make less damage-focused. Y'all always come out the woodwork to screech "META WILL REMAIIIIIIN", but making multishot significantly less relevant to boosting damage output, and reducing the push to equip only damage mods by making them additive instead of multiplicative, will make it decrease how punishing it is for people who aren't slaves to the meta, to use non-meta mod configurations. If they make Multishot barely, or no longer, a damage mod, and give Damage it's own slot, then we've at least bumped the meta down two notches. Are you seriously telling me that the current 9th and 10th mods on the "modding tierlist" or that overwhelmingly better than the 11th and onwards? To the degree that your main damage and multishot mods are so foundational?

[Proscriptor]

let's remove multishot out of the picture because it's clearly been made useless under your precepts

everyone will slot another elemental mod

because unlike multishot, it will provide a damage increase and it will objectively be the best choice

no increase in build variety

in fact it's a decrease in bonus variety because you'll be filling half the slots with the same type of bonus - elemental damage

[Grav_Starstrider]

16 minutes ago, Traubenzuckr said:

everyone will slot another elemental mod

Wrong :V

Only meta tryhards will. I can (hopefully) trust that DE would make sure the TTK for the most "meta" builds would stay the same. The rest of us will enjoy having a little bit more fun trading out at least one, maybe two, mods out, for fun gameplay-changing options or quality of life mods, if they make it less punishing than halving or quartering our damage output.

[Proscriptor]

everyone just wants to do more damage and their weapons to be good. calling people tryhards based their desire to do more damage is completely misguided

[Grav_Starstrider]

1 minute ago, Traubenzuckr said:

everyone just wants to do more damage and their weapons to be good. calling people tryhards based their desire to do more damage is completely misguided

Dude. I'm recommending they tweak the main damage mods and multishot and damage calculations so that the TTK (time to kill) remains the same. We're not even talking about changing the final numbers for you and people like you. You'd be doing the same amount of damage. The only difference here, is that if they make more of the damage calculations additive instead of multiplicative, it'll be less punishing to opt out of using all 8 mod slots for raw DPS output. You can still opt in and get the same TTK in this scenario. What are you arguing against here?

[Proscriptor]

4 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

you and people like you.

we are the best people

you and people like you only like to disparage other players calling them "tryhards" while airing out various irrational grievances about systems they don't understand

[Grav_Starstrider]

1 minute ago, Traubenzuckr said:

we are the best people

Hmmm. And you oh so logically refuted my points, so-called best person :V

If the damage numbers are the same, and your TTK remains the same, what would you lose from these proposed changes, other than your sense of superiority from getting 90% of the damage dealt in your mission completion screen?

[Proscriptor]

7 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Hmmm. And you oh so logically refuted my points, so-called best person :V

If the damage numbers are the same, and your TTK remains the same, what would you lose from these proposed changes, other than your sense of superiority from getting 90% of the damage dealt in your mission completion screen?

yes i refuted your claim to greater build diversity by proving that elemental damage will be stacked instead of the then-defunct damage and multishot bonuses 

instead of trying to counter that you simply called me a tryhard

a rather tryhard move on your behalf