[Questionnaire Results] How do you feel about Riven Mods?

[Jonas_T_acc]

I don't remember the exact wording of the "balance" question, but at the time it felt kind of wierd. Like if you get more power in this mostly easy game do you think it would affect balance positively or negatively? Well, it depends if you're doing Steel path or normal starchart, in Steel path it makes sense to use an unbalanced weapon vs unbalanced enemies while it doesn't matter at all on regular starchart or even in Sorties, it's just a fun addition to the game. So yeah, I answered 8 because it makes my Steel path experience more balanced and positive.

[Angwah]

Yeah, I fall in group of people who own a lot of rivens, use 'em, but, in their current implementation, still hate them and would rather see 'em leave the game .

The ridiculous RNG is not even my main gripe, though of course it is a large part of my distaste. No, what I dislike the most is that instead of closing the gap between good and bad weapons, they just widen it. That is just the opposite of what needs to happen! 

[Yamazuki]

1 hour ago, Angwah said:

Yeah, I fall in group of people who own a lot of rivens, use 'em, but, in their current implementation, still hate them and would rather see 'em leave the game .

The ridiculous RNG is not even my main gripe, though of course it is a large part of my distaste. No, what I dislike the most is that instead of closing the gap between good and bad weapons, they just widen it. That is just the opposite of what needs to happen! 

Rivens closing the gap between high tier and low tier weapons was obviously never DE's intentions, even if they said so. If that was ever the goal of Rivens, they would've needed a complete rework ages ago, in addition to weapons being rebalanced. Some weapons have abysmal stats, often intentional, to the point a riven won't even save them.

As to why I said some weapons are intentionally weak, they're weapons you get earlier on, and some of Warframe's "new" content are just existing weapons with higher stats and a slightly different appearance/recolor. Even some primed weapons are literally just weapon skins with upgraded stats attached to them.

The layers of RNG also makes getting usable rivens for low tier weapons pretty much annoying unless you buy them. I've used too much Kuva trying to get usable Rivens for weapons people don't care about, and I don't even care about having the absolute best rivens, and it's not like the reward is that great when it finally happens, because as said earlier, some weapons are bad to the point extra stats don't mean much. You would have to use these weapons with Warframes that provide massive dps boosts to get to do much.

To me, Rivens was just DE's lazy way of creating an end-game. They just copy and pasted what some other grindy games do, but managed to make it even worse.

[PhiThagRaid]

On 2021-01-14 at 4:45 PM, Yamazuki said:

Rivens closing the gap between high tier and low tier weapons was obviously never DE's intentions, even if they said so.

If that is the case, then they should be purged even faster than before.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

30 minutes ago, PhiThagRaid said:

If that is the case, then they should be purged even faster than before.

That's not the case, and they don't need to be purged. You can purge them from yourself if you'd like, though. 

[Zimzala]

"Riven Fever" is one of the most fascinating things about this community IMO.

The way some people think they are 'striking gold' with good Rivens and becoming 'rich' from Plat that has no real value, the way "Riven Fiver" somehow takes over the cognitive functions of players and makes them think not having the right Riven is a crime committed by DE, the comparison of RNG base rewards being somehow the 'end of the game', and the general lack of objectivity over a completely optional set of mods is just really entertaining, yet still sad, to behold. 

I guess some people just enjoy being upset, it seems to be the only logic based conclusion I can find, because it's all they look for - reasons to get mad and reasons to feel like DE 'took something' from them...

The Rivens I find to be a pretty normal game addition, but the angst around them I find to be really bizarre.

[Laston]

i keep trying to use the RNG ontop of RNG that is the riven system but ive kinda given up on the system after i tried spending afew 100k kuva on a riven and i got a fat load of nothing. Simply not worth the time invested especially when any rivens you have that are for decent weapons might get nerfed witch sucks even more when they can require such an insane ammount of time or luck because of the RNG...

just aint worth the time investment especially when they dont actually turn bad weapons good because it´s % increase like mods and 150% crit on a 5% crit weapons is still only 15% crit for example you aint saving that...

[Lutesque]

On 2021-01-14 at 4:45 PM, Yamazuki said:

Rivens closing the gap between high tier and low tier weapons was obviously never DE's intentions, even if they said so.

Luckily they didn't.....

Unfortunately Rivens also fail at the thing DE did say they wanted them to do...

On 2021-01-15 at 8:14 PM, Zimzala said:

"Riven Fever" is one of the most fascinating things about this community IMO.

It is ? 😮

 

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

not really surprised , rivens in the current setup isnt suited to do the task it was made for 

[--RV--WhiteWolf]

I traded a lot of rivens (400+) and I use rivens for every single weapon I equip outside of testing. 

Some notes:

• Even though I rerolled a huge amount, it's very rare that I use the rivens I get. Most of the time I sell them and buy the ones with the stats that fit my build. Buying a riven with the stats you want it's pretty much a given. How you farm plat it's up to you. 
• Riven disposition doesn't fix the problem for bad weapons. Riven disposition only answers / narrows down the requirements top tier weapons (the lower the disposition, the less available rolled stats are worth relative to the mod they are replacing)
• Disposition nerf for new weapons killed the riven market. Now it's even less attractive and even more risky to do riven trading / kuva farming. 

Due to amount of available weapons and rolls, the pool of results is to high. There should be a way to narrow things down (e.g. get weapons from a category / have a way to lock one of the stats ...etc). Example: 

• - After 20 rerolls you can lock one stat using Riven Silver. 
• - After 40 rerolls you can lock a second stat using Riven Silver 

It's still a lot of work but at least you improve your odds of getting something that fits. 

[Myscho]

Rivens was made for more money income than "give life to old and less used weapons" like they claim

[Hayrack]

It's been many Sorties since the last time I got rewarded a Riven mod. I got 7 of them, but they are for meme weapons, except Vectis one, which I replaced with Snipetron Vandal. So much RNG that excitement to get a desired riven by actually playing the game died very quickly.

[(PSN)AhkmanRa]

I've been having a lot of strong feelings about rivens; sometimes I jump for joy others I felt like quitting the game. I could express a lot of feelings both good and bad, but what I really think rivens need is more control. If I were designing rivens, I imagine a system like transmutation, but the transmutations aren't random; sacrifice 3-4 mods to get exactly what you want. This would also cost lots of kuva, like 100k+ plus some other resources. This would turn them into a grind instead of what is more like a gamble. 

But now we have them in their current system. Two other idea's I'd like: 1) is being able to spend a large amount of kuva (100k+, idc 1 millions kuva, and other resources) and be able to change one stat on a riven, whether it's changing a positive/negative, or adding a positive/negative, for the near perfect rolls that are actually just bad. I'd say this can only be done once per riven. 2) I want to be able to sacrifice a riven to transfer it's roll onto another weapon's riven, for when you get the perfect roll on the wrong weapon.

Ultimately, I want rivens to have some level of agency so that they feel more like a grind and less like a gamble.

[Teridax68]

I'm getting some slightly different takeaways than the OP on the data they posted:

• Over 60% of players don't use Rivens consistently... and that's in a sample population heavily slanted towards higher MRs. The total usage of Riven mods across the entire player population is therefore almost certainly even lower. Even if it weren't, this means more than half of all players don't particularly engage with the system.
• 63% of players have at best a neutral opinion on Rivens, and 23% dislike them severely, which suggests the system isn't especially popular to those who know of it.
• 65% of players rank the balance of Rivens at a 5 or below out of 10, which does not suggest an even spread at all. In fact, it seems like the overall consensus is that Rivens aren't balanced, particularly as the groups on the lower extreme of the scale far outnumber those on the higher end.

So effectively, the results suggest Rivens as a system seem to be a) not generally used by most of the playerbase, b) fairly unpopular, and c) not considered especially balanced. Key highlighted terms associate the system with grinding, plat, and RNG, all common complaints. I would be interested to see how this pairs up with DE's own internal statistics concerning Riven usage.