Riven ciphers: fixing the wrong problem.

[Drasiel]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's standard DE response to issues. Instead of addressing problems, let's just give players an expensive way to skip it entirely.

riven challenges are kind of a hard issue to address due the playerbase's wide spread of skill, determination, or willingness to waste their own time. An item to skip challenges is probably the most elegant solution for this issue because the other option is removing challenges which the harder core of the community will start screeching about as if they were pterodactyls being murdered. Granted it doesn't affect what people consider the other issues with rivens but riven challenges that suck have been a recurring feedback item as well.

[quxier]

21 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

The only people who might buy this are those players relatively new to rivens, who struggle with unveiling but haven't spent more than a few hundred thousand Kuva yet, and it's a bit of a con on them.

However, how many players like that are on the Steel Path?

This. I wonder how many challenges are "harder" for someone who can farm SP "thingies".

For me Riven cipher would help if it would be obtainable from <= 100 level missions. For example Sorties' enemies could drop "riven cipher resource" (or it could be guaranteed for completing each challenge). Something pre-Eidolon...

[Drasiel]

1 minute ago, quxier said:

This. I wonder how many challenges are "harder" for someone who can farm SP "thingies".

For me Riven cipher would help if it would be obtainable from <= 100 level missions. For example Sorties' enemies could drop "riven cipher resource" (or it could be guaranteed for completing each challenge). Something pre-Eidolon...

Sp isn't mechanically hard it's numbers hard. You have the right gear and right builds and it's easy. A number of riven challenges are mechanically hard, requiring speed and precision. You know what challenge I can't complete no matter how hard I try? the catch a fish, kill a dude and mine a rock within 10 seconds challenge. It's too much stuff too quickly for my crippled self to handle. Know what I can do though? solo steel path nodes.

[quxier]

50 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Sp isn't mechanically hard it's numbers hard. You have the right gear and right builds and it's easy. A number of riven challenges are mechanically hard, requiring speed and precision. You know what challenge I can't complete no matter how hard I try? the catch a fish, kill a dude and mine a rock within 10 seconds challenge. It's too much stuff too quickly for my crippled self to handle. Know what I can do though? solo steel path nodes.

The same probably applies to lot of riven challenges.

As for fish it's 30 seconds. I haven't got it yet but it seems easy:

ps. of course there might be a bug(s) like "spinning rod" or almost no mining gems/metal/whatever.

 

I think only flying Dargyns require precision (no AOE weapon as fair I can see... unless I'm missing something).

 

[Drasiel]

47 minutes ago, quxier said:

The same probably applies to lot of riven challenges.

As for fish it's 30 seconds. I haven't got it yet but it seems easy:

ps. of course there might be a bug(s) like "spinning rod" or almost no mining gems/metal/whatever.

 

I think only flying Dargyns require precision (no AOE weapon as fair I can see... unless I'm missing something).

 

I'm glad it seems easy to you but you've kind of missed the point. Skill and ability level vary widely mechanically difficult challenges are a hard stopping point for a lot of people, especially people with disabilities.  For us the sp grind is the easier and more attainable solution than just getting a "dead riven" because we can't complete the challenge. You were wondering who the people were who would prefer the sp grind, well I'm one of them, that was the point.

[Hobie-wan]

On 2021-05-03 at 4:31 PM, DrivaMain said:

I want Riven Ciphers to reveal the riven for a weapon you want.

That would probably make the balance of riven disposition even more chaotic as people constantly chased a new meta and then DE stomped the disposition of those weapons down the next rebalance. Meta slaves would be shooting themselves in the foot and casual players would would probably be even more confused why 1 of their 5 rivens they own changed so much suddenly.

8 hours ago, Spoldozer said:

I got a freaking riven that was "Collect 14 Syndicate Medallions without tripping an alarm." Do you know HOW hard that is to complete?

Use a frame that can be invisible and stay that way the entire mission. Choosing the right type of mission to unveil it on. Having the correct tool for the job and using it is often part of the challenge.

[Lutesque]

7 hours ago, Drasiel said:

Sp isn't mechanically hard it's numbers hard. You have the right gear and right builds and it's easy. A number of riven challenges are mechanically hard, requiring speed and precision. You know what challenge I can't complete no matter how hard I try? the catch a fish, kill a dude and mine a rock within 10 seconds challenge. It's too much stuff too quickly for my crippled self to handle. Know what I can do though? solo steel path nodes.

Oh that challenge.... That just requires abit of Planning ... Since Ivara is my Pocket Warframe I have plenty of time to plan that challenge in a way that makes it Manageable.

5 hours ago, Drasiel said:

I'm glad it seems easy to you but you've kind of missed the point. Skill and ability level vary widely mechanically difficult challenges are a hard stopping point for a lot of people, especially people with disabilities. 

That's why Sekiro never really caught on with Dark Souls Fans... It's much harder to beat with knowledge..... Not impossible.... But it's straight forward about how it wants to challenge you.....

 

[Hobie-wan]

7 hours ago, Drasiel said:

You know what challenge I can't complete no matter how hard I try? the catch a fish, kill a dude and mine a rock within 10 seconds challenge.

The easiest place to do this is in the plains at the geyser lake. There are always fish there any time of day, no hotspot needed and there are always mining nodes on the rocks around the cave entrance.

Kill the enemies there, or perhaps incapacitate them. Look around the cave entrance so you know where there's a mining node. Maybe even put a waypoint on it, but do not mine it yet. Go stand on the rock in the middle of the water close to the cave entrance and do your fishing. Take your time since that's the most RNG and tricky bit to get done.  As soon as you catch a fish, go mine the node. You don't even have to do a good job mining as you'll get something. Assuming you have the Fortuna mining tool, just zap the dots and immediately 'fail' to get it done in the least amount of time. If you still need the kill at this point either take out the Grineer you incapacitated at the lake, or run/fly south along the hill to the camp with the drilling machine and the sniper tower and take enemies out there.

The challenge should be 30 seconds or whatnot, not 10 seconds.

[DrivaMain]

1 hour ago, Hobie-wan said:

That would probably make the balance of riven disposition even more chaotic as people constantly chased a new meta and then DE stomped the disposition of those weapons down the next rebalance. Meta slaves would be shooting themselves in the foot and casual players would would probably be even more confused why 1 of their 5 rivens they own changed so much suddenly.

They don't use popularity as the only balance measure for riven dispositions. They also use actual weapon testing to determine it too. It's also a good thing that meta weapons will reach 1/5 quickly. Rivens are in fact for off meta weapons, not meta weapons.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

All I wanted was to be able to re-roll the challenges themselves with a small amount of kuva.

[Oorel]

So much could be done for Rivens, its disappointing that this is what they decide to put out.

Its not a system I hate but it certainly hates me that's for sure.

[Lutesque]

1 hour ago, Oorel said:

So much could be done for Rivens, its disappointing that this is what they decide to put out.

Its not a system I hate but it certainly hates me that's for sure.

When DE sees all of people's complaints about Rivens... This is their Reaction:

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

17 hours ago, quxier said:

For me Riven cipher would help if it would be obtainable from <= 100 level missions.

Yes, riven ciphers might be useful for MR8 players who've just unlocked sorties.

They aren't available to those players though. They're Steel Path only. If you have Steel Essence you're going to spend it on Kuva to roll rivens long before you spend it on ciphers to unlock them.

17 hours ago, Drasiel said:

You know what challenge I can't complete no matter how hard I try? the catch a fish, kill a dude and mine a rock within 10 seconds challenge

These are easy. Take either a stealth or just plain tanky frame to the Plains of Eidolon and head left to the nearby lake. Don't kill any enemies, there's usually at least 3-5 or so around the lake. There's a cave on the far side that always has minerals around the entrance. There's always fish in the lake.

Bring Oculus or fish dye. Bring the Solaris mining laser as you can immediately move off the spot and still get the resource (just less off it, which still counts).

If you spend Steel Essence to skip this process (which takes maybe a minute) then you've been conned. The best Steel Essence farms (with a booster) now can barely get more than 1 per minute (unless you get very very lucky with Smeeta Charm) and this new shop item will cost more than 1.

15 hours ago, Drasiel said:

For us the sp grind is the easier and more attainable

I really doubt that, but OK - how many Steel Essence would you pay to skip these rivens? 5? 10? 50? 150?

My bet would be on 10-20, making one unveiling worth about 20 minutes of Steel Path intensive farming (with booster, Smeeta, etc) or about an hour or two just playing alerts at a normal rate.

Or I could just go on YouTube for 5 mins, find out how to easily cheese the challenge and then be able to unlock the riven by actively going and doing something new.

[George_PPS]

If you don't this idea, don't use it. This is a new OPTION. You can and may be enjoying doing all of these challenges, but not all are like you. I personally do all challenges myself but it's understandable that some will find certain challenges too hard to want to skip them. The idea of Riven ciphers is fine. 

[Drasiel]

9 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Yes, riven ciphers might be useful for MR8 players who've just unlocked sorties.

They aren't available to those players though. They're Steel Path only. If you have Steel Essence you're going to spend it on Kuva to roll rivens long before you spend it on ciphers to unlock them.

These are easy. Take either a stealth or just plain tanky frame to the Plains of Eidolon and head left to the nearby lake. Don't kill any enemies, there's usually at least 3-5 or so around the lake. There's a cave on the far side that always has minerals around the entrance. There's always fish in the lake.

Bring Oculus or fish dye. Bring the Solaris mining laser as you can immediately move off the spot and still get the resource (just less off it, which still counts).

If you spend Steel Essence to skip this process (which takes maybe a minute) then you've been conned. The best Steel Essence farms (with a booster) now can barely get more than 1 per minute (unless you get very very lucky with Smeeta Charm) and this new shop item will cost more than 1.

I really doubt that, but OK - how many Steel Essence would you pay to skip these rivens? 5? 10? 50? 150?

My bet would be on 10-20, making one unveiling worth about 20 minutes of Steel Path intensive farming (with booster, Smeeta, etc) or about an hour or two just playing alerts at a normal rate.

Or I could just go on YouTube for 5 mins, find out how to easily cheese the challenge and then be able to unlock the riven by actively going and doing something new.

10 steel essence is all 3 dailies and one accolyte kill. Or 3 rounds of infested steel path defense with a booster. That's way easier and faster than some riven challenges for me. 

I appreciate y'all offering me advice on how to do the riven challenge I physically struggle with but I'm  still probably going to use riven cyphers if they're cheap enough. It's really not worth the struggle and frustration on my end for a mod that 90% of the time isn't something I'd use. :) 

[ShortCat]

16 hours ago, George_PPS said:

If you don't this idea, don't use it. This is a new OPTION.

"Don't [...] it, don't [...] it" is not an argument and humanity would advance at 10x pace if people understood it. A "new OPTION" does not prevent it from just being bad, while somebody used resources, time and server space to implement it.

Lastly, eating undercooked bats is just an option, if you don't like it, don't eat it. Duh.

[Teridax68]

In my opinion, the only potentially redeeming features to Riven mods was that one had to go through some kind of challenge to unveil them. The challenge wasn't necessarily always difficult, and sometimes it was annoying, but at least it was some little piece of gameplay to what is otherwise just an in-game slot machine. Riven Ciphers thus erode what was possibly the one good thing about the whole system, and make it purely a matter of grinding resources and rolling for random stats.

With this in mind, I agree fully with the OP that Riven Ciphers are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, for a game system that is rife with a whole lot of other, far more glaring problems. Putting aside the fundamental issue of Rivens still being a half-baked system made to get players to pay exorbitant amounts of Platinum on the false promise of power creep, one problem most of us can agree on is that rolling Rivens is a complete crapshoot: the stat table is loaded with junk stats, the windows for certain stat values are so terribly set one can easily end up with a Riven that nullifies one's damage output, and it's completely impossible to orient one's Riven mod towards a certain direction. Many players would likely be more than happy to spend their Steel Essence on an item that locked in a stat on their Riven, so that they'd get to keep it and its value when rolling, but ciphers don't really seem to do anything players can already do far more easily.

[George_PPS]

14 hours ago, ShortCat said:

"Don't [...] it, don't [...] it" is not an argument and humanity would advance at 10x pace if people understood it. A "new OPTION" does not prevent it from just being bad, while somebody used resources, time and server space to implement it.

Lastly, eating undercooked bats is just an option, if you don't like it, don't eat it. Duh.

Use a real and logical argument. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. 

[deothor]

On 2021-05-03 at 8:08 PM, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Yeah, unlocking rivens can be a pain, but it's always something we can do. There's some build or ability or something to help kill 6 dargryns with a bow while sliding or whatever. It's a problem we solve with gameplay.

I always liked there are multiple solutions to unlock a riven. Be it a mission choice, weapon or frame. Or even the way you play.

Some rivens are pure bs to unlock and i'd love DE to change 'em to be less painful, but i'd never want them to just give us cheatcode to just unlock them. I guess DE tries to boost the riven&platinum market abit, as it got stale, maybe.

 

@Spoldozer That's when you pick a infested mission, which has no alarms, Or 1-room defense mission (pick without activating and quit). Multiple solutions.

[Tesseract7777]

On 2021-05-03 at 11:08 AM, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

In the recent DevStream it was announced that Riven Ciphers would be coming to the Steel Path shop, and these will let you unveil a riven without doing the challenge.

Who asked for this? Seriously? You saw all the feedback on here about rivens and thought that's what we wanted?

Yeah, unlocking rivens can be a pain, but it's always something we can do. There's some build or ability or something to help kill 6 dargryns with a bow while sliding or whatever. It's a problem we solve with gameplay.

Meanwhile rolling rivens sucks. It's a casino/gambling activity (all pray to RNGsus) that you grind for. We need something for us MR30, 100+ rivens players to want to play the game for. Let us lock a stat, or guarantee the next roll has a particular stat, or excludes a stat. Sure, lock that riven from ever being traded if that's what you're worried about.

With Riven Ciphers you've made it possible to skip the bit of rivens that can be fun, but have done nothing to skip the bit that's a tedious Kuva grind or the awful dice roll part.

How many of these do you think Teshin is ever going to sell? How many players are grinding Steel Path and would pick this over Umbra Forma or just more Kuva?

 

I think you are wrong.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of problems with rivens still, and I would love to just see them shoved out the nearest airlock entirely along with every one I own with no compensation for it, but....

This is actually going to be quite a popular item, and nothing you are saying has ANYTHING at all to do WHATSOEVER with what the real point of these are. 

The whole point of riven ciphers is to give a once a week short cut to players who could, but don't feel like doing, certain riven challenges, while given an evergreen sink for steel essence.

Other problems with rivens are independent of that and have absolutely zero to do with this at all, so don't conflate them, they aren't similar, they aren't connected, so you are being silly. 

I could do any riven challenge, there are some I DON'T FEEL LIKE doing. That's the point of a riven cipher. I'm not going to do things that aren't fun to me. That's counter to the point of video games. 

[Tesseract7777]

21 hours ago, ShortCat said:

"Don't [...] it, don't [...] it" is not an argument and humanity would advance at 10x pace if people understood it. A "new OPTION" does not prevent it from just being bad, while somebody used resources, time and server space to implement it.

Lastly, eating undercooked bats is just an option, if you don't like it, don't eat it. Duh.

Bad analogy, and a dishonest argument on its face. 

There is nothing bad about it. It's an option for people to once a week skip past riven challenges they find particularly irritating instead of just dissolving or trading it. 

If people having an extra options makes you angry, or upset, I suggest you examine your own conscience and what your actual motivations are. Why do you think it is so bad? Why you are you getting so emotional you are posting such obviously false and illogical analogies about bats? It doesn't hurt you. It's just another option. 

[ShortCat]

9 hours ago, George_PPS said:

Use a real and logical argument. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. 

2 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Bad analogy, and a dishonest argument on its face. 

There is nothing bad about it. It's an option for people to once a week skip past riven challenges they find particularly irritating instead of just dissolving or trading it. 

If people having an extra options makes you angry, or upset, I suggest you examine your own conscience and what your actual motivations are. Why do you think it is so bad? Why you are you getting so emotional you are posting such obviously false and illogical analogies about bats? It doesn't hurt you. It's just another option. 

The most applicable analogy under current circumstances: somebody choose a (bad) option, which you particulare did completely ignore, yet the consequences did very much affect you in the end. There is nothing illogical, bad or more so dishonest here. "Don't [...] it, don't [...] it" is not an argument.

[DoomFruit]

On 2021-05-04 at 8:43 PM, quxier said:

I think only flying Dargyns require precision (no AOE weapon as fair I can see... unless I'm missing something).

Flying Dargyns need an archwing and an Attica or Zhuge. Just fly right up to it and shoot it in the bum with your fully automatic "bow". No target leading or accuracy needed.

Incidentally, I have exactly zero use for riven ciphers. I've got something like 50 veiled rivens because I all the weapons I care about, I already have a riven for. Anything with even the slightest annoyance just gets thrown in the trash bin and turned into endo. The only reason I even open new ones is because my inventory is full and they're worth slightly more when recycled if they're open.

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

On 2021-05-03 at 11:21 AM, Omega-ZX said:

I would buy it. Because i hate the stupid "def no hit on target".

Do-able with either Frost or Gara. Use an Infested defence map (i.e., Akkad)

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

On 2021-05-03 at 11:48 AM, Leqesai said:

Nyx can trivialize these missions btw. Using her 4 with the augment you can just stand on the objective and pass the mission reqs without much issue.

I do agree with you that it can be an annoying challenge though.

TBH the worst is the "kill X dargyn pilots before they hit the ground while sliding" that I recently rolled. There are a few ways to cheese this as well but trying to do it legit? What a PITA.

That's one challenge that's annoying, although I've found a Sobek with Acid Shells will do the "Kill Dargyn Pilot Before They Hit the Ground" part (I still wish pilots who spawn on the ground then board and take off should count....)