Hey De; In Response To "can We Get More Slots?" Question In Lstream16, A Proposal

[[DE]Momaw]

Right, so, in Livestream #16 they fielded a question from somebody about whether it might be possible to get more mod slots and the guys on the line seemed relatively okay with that idea. Not more capacity, more slots which is different.

 

And I got to thinking, y'know, I know a way we can have more ways to customize our frames AND address a few other things going on.    Basically, the idea is this: Attach mods to systems. What is a system? A system is your legs, or your armor plating, or shield generator, or some other component of your warframe.  Each system has at least one mod slot. So for your leg slot(s), permitted mods are things Rush, Quick Rest, or Acrobat; things that affect your mobility. Your shield generator slots could take Redirection and Quick Deflection while your armor plating could accept Steel Fiber and Insulation.

 

Still with me? Here's where it gets whacky:  abilities are systems. Your frame has a system called "Freeze" (I've been playing Frost lately), which has mod slots. This allows you to introduce a new line of mods which directly affect single abilities. So you might keep "Focus" as a means to boost the power of all mods, but also have "Amplifier", which is cheaper to mount and only affects the specific ability it's a mod of. This addresses two problems at once: Firstly many abilities not scaling at all well. Now you have another layer of control and expansion to boost the abilities you use the most. And secondly not all "buffs" are really buffs for all abilities simultaneously, like Trinity, who wants maximum duration on Blessing but minimum duration on Energy Vampire.  Now you don't have to compromise, you use a duration mod on one ability and not the other.

 

It's not limited to frames either. You can carry the same concept over to weapons.  Weapons have systems like trigger, receiver, magazine, barrel, or sighting, each with their own allowable mods.

 

Now, why would we want to have a bunch of limited-purpose slots instead of just a larger number of general purpose ones?  Because balance. I'll explain. Presently, most of the truly ludicrous things you can do with mods involve stacking multilpe mods that all do the same thing, or similar things, onto the same frame or the same weapon. But if you typify the mod slots, you can prevent that, and then rebalance the mods with the safe knowledge that players can't use any and all the best stuff at the same time. This allows mods to have more significant effects and ultimately leads to more meaningful decisions when it comes to what to add.

 

It also opens the door to varieties.  You have a Lato (Standard) pistol. It can accept 2 Trigger mods, 2 Magazine mods, and 2 Barrel mods.  It's nice enough, but what about this Lato (Marksman) pistol? It can accept 1 Trigger mod, 1 Magazine mod, 3 Barrel mods, and 1 Sighting mod. Which one suits your play style more, having the room to add more damage and precision, or room to add more firing rate and reload speed?   Same with frames. This version of Rhino has 3 armor plating slots for increased damage soaking, while that version of Rhino has only 2 armor plating slots but an extra power generator slot to make his abilities better.

 

Just to keep things real here, I'm sure you can also see the opportunity to monetize variants for very little additional dev cost.

[-Trinity]

TL;DR

 

OMG. YES. Rush mod for your legs. 

 

Redirection for your body. blah blah.... +1

Edited October 29, 2013 by AliciaTA

[Imhotekh]

That is an incredibly good idea, but it'll mess up a few builds big time, and forma will need recompensing as well. Not to mention re-balancing each weapon and frame a little to get the right balance of systems. It's still the best idea yet on what to do with the slot system though.

[ReiganCross]

Agreed... But i'm not sure if DE will have the wish to go that deep into customization...

[KijaJouteh]

Wait, lemme see if I understand this. In addition to the normal mod page (The one that you see when you press "Upgrade") You have 1-3 extra slots to put certain mods on. If so, that may be a bit overpowered. Correct me if i'm wrong, please.

Edited October 29, 2013 by KijaJouteh

[Zachles]

I think I got the gist of what you're saying...

 

I know that they've talked about not having ability mods anymore (Rhino will have all of his abilities without having to equip mods for them) so that frees up four spots right there.

[Kinperor]

That wasn't even the point of my question (Hi, I'm the guy who asked that question in LS#16).

 

I just wanted to know if we could get more customization out of our frames/weapons, a la Forma. 

[ReiganCross]

There's also the issue of assigning different polarity slots into the different system... And you know that DE loves to give some S#&$ty polarity to their frame, like Excal Prime with 2 Attack slot so he can have Focus and... Cntinuity -.-'

[NetSlayer]

Well  I think it needs to be broken down according to foundry,

Chip for helmet. Enhances sense abilities like blocking mods, intruder, thiefs wit etc

Chassis is your armor so all things to do with damage reaction and mobility in there.

Systems is entirely powers and power related.

 

[YourFriendlyNoggin]

It's a great idea(take all my +1s etc etc) but it might be too complicated of an overhaul for some players to grasp or appreciate. If there was some way to implement it in stages that would be ideal, like start with sentinels first to test the waters.

[xGryphus]

Something similar already showed up on this forum although less complex. All in all I like the idea but ability system mustn't be altered too much in case alternative abilities will be introduced some day.

I suggest something like this:
 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

where [A] are slots dedicated to abilities and [m] are slots for their mods. Also each column of [m] slots could be unlocked every 10 levels.

[taiiat]

oh boy. here we go. *deep breath*

 

let's not get out of hand. i would go for having a couple slots tailored just for certain classes of mods, so core mods, Utility mods, etc(so a mod slot for the core of your frame, and a mod slot for Utility - perfect to stick one of your survivability mods on, and Quick Rest or whatever is to your fancy).

no more than that is 'needed' IMO. especially if powers moving off of the mod group to separate slots means we'd get more slots out of that. though if that happened, 4 extra slots (assuming it'd be 4) would be far more than enough. two more mod slots on Warframes is all we 'need' atm, IMO.

 

i do REALLY like your different variations idea.... but i don't want to have 5 different types of each item in the game.

i would instead prefer a sort of 'skill tree' when you first level equipment to lv30, and can be changed using... a Forma?(would be choosing either change a single polarity, or have the option to wipe all of the slots and redo the skilltree - which would wipe any polarities added or changed from past Forma) at any time.

a sort of RPG type skilltree, basically you have X number of points to distribute, and you have skills to choose from, including Stock / Grip, Magazine, and Barrel. let's say, you have 3 points to distribute (somewhat random number). depending on how many points you distribute to each area, you would get more slots for each type of these things. a 'skill' having 0 points in it, would mean 0 slots of that type. having all 3 points in Magazine, would give you 3 slots for mods like, Ammo Drum, Fast Hands, Magazine Warp, Wildfire, etc.

 

this would mean moving a good portion of mods out of the general pool of polarities we have now, and instead, having them be tied to certain slot types, and can only be used in those slots. so you cannot use any ammunition or reload mods if you have 0 points distributed into Magazine.

same general story could be the case for frames and pets. specializing in how you want to use equipment, but at the same time, sort've locking yourself into those. and the general purpose mod slots would be for the mods that are more general, damage increases, Multishots, Crits, elementals, etc. 

 

 

I suggest something like this:
 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

 [A]-[m][m][m]

where [A] are slots dedicated to abilities and [m] are slots for their mods. Also each column of [m] slots could be unlocked every 10 levels.

i quite like this. i really do. 

[xGryphus]

oh boy. here we go. *deep breath*

 

let's not get out of hand. i would go for having a couple slots tailored just for certain classes of mods, so core mods, Utility mods, etc(so a mod slot for the core of your frame, and a mod slot for Utility - perfect to stick one of your survivability mods on, and Quick Rest or whatever is to your fancy).

no more than that is 'needed' IMO. especially if powers moving off of the mod group to separate slots means we'd get more slots out of that. though if that happened, 4 extra slots (assuming it'd be 4) would be far more than enough. two more mod slots on Warframes is all we 'need' atm, IMO.

 

i do REALLY like your different variations idea.... but i don't want to have 5 different types of each item in the game.

i would instead prefer a sort of 'skill tree' when you first level equipment to lv30, and can be changed using... a Forma?(would be choosing either change a single polarity, or have the option to wipe all of the slots and redo the skilltree - which would wipe any polarities added or changed from past Forma) at any time.

a sort of RPG type skilltree, basically you have X number of points to distribute, and you have skills to choose from, including Stock / Grip, Magazine, and Barrel. let's say, you have 3 points to distribute (somewhat random number). depending on how many points you distribute to each area, you would get more slots for each type of these things. a 'skill' having 0 points in it, would mean 0 slots of that type. having all 3 points in Magazine, would give you 3 slots for mods like, Ammo Drum, Fast Hands, Magazine Warp, Wildfire, etc.

 

this would mean moving a good portion of mods out of the general pool of polarities we have now, and instead, having them be tied to certain slot types, and can only be used in those slots. so you cannot use any ammunition or reload mods if you have 0 points distributed into Magazine.

same general story could be the case for frames and pets. specializing in how you want to use equipment, but at the same time, sort've locking yourself into those. and the general purpose mod slots would be for the mods that are more general, damage increases, Multishots, Crits, elementals, etc. 

 

 

i quite like this. i really do. 

This reminds me of old upgrade tree:

Back in the days before U7 frames and weapons received one point for every level to unlock different passive bonuses, powers and mod slots. By default a large sector of tree was locked and could be unlocked by supercharging. Although mods were merely a shadow of what we got now it was kind of a interesting concept.

Now imagine such a tree divided into four sectors: core (abilities), helmet, systems, chassis - each with different passive bonuses and slots for current mods - now this could be quite interesting.

[taiiat]

This reminds me of old upgrade tree:

it does indeed, doesn't it?

the old Mod system wasn't bad. it really wasn't. it WAS bad, all by itself. together with the mod system we have today, it could work. 

 

'course what i have in mind decides the number of extra mod slots for what group of mods you want, instead of choosing the miniscule perk upgrades.

 

man, i remember still q.q'ing about Lex even after having all of the RoF upgrades and having a high rarity RoF mod on it >.>

damn, that thing shot slow. it's fine nowadays though :p

and having nigh infinite shields... Warframe was so silly back then with Multiplicative Mods xD

 

nothing that's 'OP' nowadays even begins to compare to the level of OP everything had back then, lmao.

Edited October 29, 2013 by taiiat

[Chymos]

Not sure about modding specific warframe parts at this point, but I really like the idea of being able to mod individual abilities, and it wouldn't need to interfere with the current system.

[Sarkhon]

Right, so, in Livestream #16 they fielded a question from somebody about whether it might be possible to get more mod slots and the guys on the line seemed relatively okay with that idea. Not more capacity, more slots which is different.

 

And I got to thinking, y'know, I know a way we can have more ways to customize our frames AND address a few other things going on.    Basically, the idea is this: Attach mods to systems. What is a system? A system is your legs, or your armor plating, or shield generator, or some other component of your warframe.  Each system has at least one mod slot. So for your leg slot(s), permitted mods are things Rush, Quick Rest, or Acrobat; things that affect your mobility. Your shield generator slots could take Redirection and Quick Deflection while your armor plating could accept Steel Fiber and Insulation.

 

Still with me? Here's where it gets whacky:  abilities are systems. Your frame has a system called "Freeze" (I've been playing Frost lately), which has mod slots. This allows you to introduce a new line of mods which directly affect single abilities. So you might keep "Focus" as a means to boost the power of all mods, but also have "Amplifier", which is cheaper to mount and only affects the specific ability it's a mod of. This addresses two problems at once: Firstly many abilities not scaling at all well. Now you have another layer of control and expansion to boost the abilities you use the most. And secondly not all "buffs" are really buffs for all abilities simultaneously, like Trinity, who wants maximum duration on Blessing but minimum duration on Energy Vampire.  Now you don't have to compromise, you use a duration mod on one ability and not the other.

 

It's not limited to frames either. You can carry the same concept over to weapons.  Weapons have systems like trigger, receiver, magazine, barrel, or sighting, each with their own allowable mods.

 

Now, why would we want to have a bunch of limited-purpose slots instead of just a larger number of general purpose ones?  Because balance. I'll explain. Presently, most of the truly ludicrous things you can do with mods involve stacking multilpe mods that all do the same thing, or similar things, onto the same frame or the same weapon. But if you typify the mod slots, you can prevent that, and then rebalance the mods with the safe knowledge that players can't use any and all the best stuff at the same time. This allows mods to have more significant effects and ultimately leads to more meaningful decisions when it comes to what to add.

 

It also opens the door to varieties.  You have a Lato (Standard) pistol. It can accept 2 Trigger mods, 2 Magazine mods, and 2 Barrel mods.  It's nice enough, but what about this Lato (Marksman) pistol? It can accept 1 Trigger mod, 1 Magazine mod, 3 Barrel mods, and 1 Sighting mod. Which one suits your play style more, having the room to add more damage and precision, or room to add more firing rate and reload speed?   Same with frames. This version of Rhino has 3 armor plating slots for increased damage soaking, while that version of Rhino has only 2 armor plating slots but an extra power generator slot to make his abilities better.

 

Just to keep things real here, I'm sure you can also see the opportunity to monetize variants for very little additional dev cost.

Please oh, Dear me, please let this happen. If not this then something similar. I want my damn Frost back. T_T