Why Rivens Suck, and an easy way to fix that

[Tesseract7777]

5 hours ago, Kaotyke said:

@Brinstar7777, @Fallen77, @Soy77, @Vaml77and @Tesseract7777

Are we finding the members of the 7th Company? 2 are still MIA...

Now I'm intrigued about the movie, sounds like it could be an entertaining comedy. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I'm just glad we'll be able to bypass challenges once Riven Ciphers come out. then I might actually start trying for an Archgun Riven again (specifically one for Kuva Ayanga or Grattler).

[DrivaMain]

I propose a counter proposal. Introduce a bad luck protection as a form of a milestone system. Let's say every 10 rivens unveiled your 10th unveil will be a guaranteed riven for the weapon you want. Every 100 rolls the 100th roll you can choose ONE stat you want on a riven, however the stat's value are still random. 

With this system implemented. You either do a very long grind or pay up. Will this hurt the market? A bit, yes, but you will realize with this change people will be more interested in rivens and causing a rise in demand.

[Voltage]

6 hours ago, XaelathRavenstorm said:

Rivens make the market go round. People who doesn't understand rivens do not have a lot of plat. Start buying and selling god tier rivens and I guarantee you that you'll understand why it's important to keep the market working.

This is a terrible take on the Riven Mods topic.

Sure, Rivens stimulate the economy, but there is no correlation between people who don't understand Rivens and Platinum wealth. Honestly with this take, you could argue most people who commit to trading Riven Mods actually lack understanding of modding mechanics because they do not spend as much time actually playing and understanding game mechanics with being solely committed to trading for an in-game currency that has no application outside of this ecosystem. 

As for the original topic: I don't believe there is anything better for the system than what we have now as far as weapon selection goes. Randomizing the weapon the Riven is for keeps a healthy amount of Rivens for all weapons in-game. The amount of rolls weapons get is then inflated based on weapon performance, availability, social media, and usage/player attention. Keeping randomized weapons is good, but influencing Rivens could still be on the table.

I don't agree with influencing which stats you roll as this would also feed into the same problem as letting you decide the weapon. However, having a means of manipulating (increasing OR decreasing) the magnitude of your positive and/or negative attributes and changing the mod polarity would be a healthy addition to the system.

Disposition could also be removed and players would have a healthier and more predictable relationship with their Riven inventory (their stats would not change outside of their control). Removing the Disposition mechanic would also barely affect the overall power ceiling of weapons. Innate weapon mechanics are what need to be balanced, not a Riven attribute multiplier. No Disposition reduces Kuva Nukor's high Critical Damage multiplier or its 0.75 chaining damage variable. You can seriously omit Riven Mods from weapon usage data. Players use Rivens on weapons because the weapon is already good, not because the weapon needs a Riven to perform well. A 0.50 Riven Disposition only accomplishes disappointment for new weapons from invested players in the Riven system and does not actually contribute to the level at which a weapon is appealing or compelling to use in the first place.

[Brinstar7777]

6 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

You all have several 7s in your name. 5 people are tagged, we need 2 more to make 7, thus completing the 7th company.

Well, given that I'm suddenly a part of this company, I'm gonna tag 2 potential members: (PSN)devinsmith7777 and (PSN)malicious_7777 

[Tesseract7777]

4 minutes ago, Brinstar7777 said:

Well, given that I'm suddenly a part of this company, I'm gonna tag 2 potential members: (PSN)devinsmith7777 and (PSN)malicious_7777 

Sevengers... Assemble! 

[Berzerkules]

Being able to choose what weapon you got a riven for would kill off meta and low/trash roll rivens. Any riven would essentially be an unrolled meta weapon or newly released weapon. Unveiled riven prices would spike because they might as well be an unrolled kronen or glaive riven. Meta weapon rivens would flood the market and off meta rivens would be non existent.

[Fallen77]

Le 12/05/2021 à 17:48, Brinstar7777 a dit :

Actually, I'm using the Dex Sybaris and Dex Dakra.

And so naturally you mentionned the akfuris in op, makes sense

[Brinstar7777]

3 minutes ago, Fallen77 said:

And so naturally you mentionned the akfuris in op, makes sense

I'm also using a Dex Afuris.

[Fallen77]

Le 14/05/2021 à 15:07, Brinstar7777 a dit :

I'm also using a Dex Afuris.

Oh ok, well unless you'd find the absolute most god of all god riven for this, it would have been a waste to invest any ressource into this gun, dex or not.

You could have gotten some nice stats out of the dex sybaris, but it is not a very practical weapon to use in today's state of things. Too many ennemies at once for a lever action rifle.

Dex dakra could indeed work very well, riven or not, that for sure you could invest into if you really like this weapon.

But overall, I'd say really don't mind rivens. If you can unveil one with minimum effort and are lucky to get a good one for a weapon you already have, awesome ! But otherwise you're not missing anything. You can easily tackle the entire game without touching rivens, and I insist, easily.

Also, letting you make rivens of specific weapons would turn rivens from "hey I got a small boost on that one weapon, neat !" to "you need to have a riven on every single ones of your weapon".

Felt I'd clarify now that I have time to properly answer.

[Venus-Venera]

Am 12.5.2021 um 15:00 schrieb Brinstar7777:

The idea of having to do something to unveil a riven is a nice touch, but the random factor is really freakin' annoying. My first riven mod i get is for the Zurge, a crossbow I had never ven heard of until now, and STILL don't plan to use. Given the sheer number of weapons, I highly doubt I'll get a mod for the Sybaris and Afuris at random.

Here's my proposal; have the riven mod match the weapon it's equipped to. Is that too much to ask?

Yes. more control. at the moment it is a waste of time. no matter if kuva farming or rives for useful weapons. here riven is mostly as good as normal mod. or even worse!

[SenorClipClop]

One major goal of Rivens (perhaps their biggest goal) is to encourage players to use weapons they might otherwise ignore, namely off-meta weapons. Let players pick exactly which weapons they get Rivens for and that principle kinda just goes out the window. The majority of players would just get Rivens for meta stuff, meaning either the gap between meta and off-meta gets wider or the devs have to get really screwy with Disposition levels.

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, SenorClipClop said:

One major goal of Rivens (perhaps their biggest goal) is to encourage players to use weapons they might otherwise ignore, namely off-meta weapons. Let players pick exactly which weapons they get Rivens for and that principle kinda just goes out the window. The majority of players would just get Rivens for meta stuff, meaning either the gap between meta and off-meta gets wider or the devs have to get really screwy with Disposition levels.

Rivens have never lived up to that goal; they failed that on day one with the outbreak of Tonkor and Soma Rivens. The majority of players already focus only on Rivens for meta stuff and the gap between meta and non-meta is wider than ever. Giving more control to players won't change that, but it would allow players who actually want to try Rivens for off-meta weapons a way to do so in a reasonable timeframe without having to buy them. There are a lot of non-meta weapons I'd like to try making a Riven for, but my chances of getting one on my own from the layers of acquisition RNG are slim to none and I'm sure as S#&$ not paying someone else just so I can goof around with a Paracyst.

[Aldain]

4 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Rivens have never lived up to that goal

Can confirm, I have a solid Daikyu riven and it does nothing to fix the fact that I'm using a Daikyu instead of literally anything else.

Seriously, we need weapon balancing, not Riven mods.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

10 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Rivens have never lived up to that goal

While I can only speak for myself and a small group of people, I can safely say that Rivens definitely encouraged me and a lot of my alliance members to try weapons we would never even consider before, and a lot of those weapons became favorites of ours (although we'd never use them without that riven). If I could choose what weapons I get rivens for, I'd never go out of my way to get a riven for Convectrix, Quanta, Panthera, Ocucor, or any other weapon that I didn't already enjoy, because that could be a waste.

Like many things in Warframe, the issue comes from the system being designed with a casual mindset, which leads to people with too much time on their hands getting frustrated when they can't rush the system. If you think about how to obtain Rivens, they're quite passive. You either get lucky in the daily Sortie, or you buy them with resources you passively acquire by playing certain modes. From what I can tell, Rivens are not supposed to be actively farmed, and are instead opened every so often when you get them. But if you really want to do so, you can buy veiled rivens for not that much platinum in trade chat. I'm not sure how the plat economy differs on PC, but I can spend an hour or two in trade chat flipping prime sets, and I'll have enough platinum to buy veiled rivens for each day of the week. Sure this takes some starting platinum, but if you're a newer player who's broke, you shouldn't be worrying about the riven system yet.

[PublikDomain]

2 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

I'm not sure how the plat economy differs on PC, but I can spend an hour or two in trade chat flipping prime sets, and I'll have enough platinum to buy veiled rivens for each day of the week.

That's my main gripe about "just trade for them". I'm not playing Warframe to have a second job, I'm playing to have fun. Trawling through Trade Chat flipping sets for hours at a time just to buy Rivens that I'll unveil for weapons I don't care about isn't exactly motivating... I want to play the game and DIY, I'm not going to pay anyone for anything unless I want to.

When you look at acquisition RNG from sorties it's like 2 weeks per type on average, and then when you look at unveiling RNG the odds are usually 1 in 100 or much worse. Those chances multiply together, so even doing your Sortie every day of the week if you're looking for a Riven for a specific weapon you want to play with means you've got odds that are 1 in 1,200 or worse. Yeah you can get an extra Riven once a week from slivers, but that doesn't help your odds all that much since the type you get is RNG too.

If I want to get a Riven for a Paracyst or a Kraken or a Daikyu, I can't in a reasonable timeframe. Spending a week or two getting a Riven for a weapon I'm interested in sounds reasonable to me, but spending years doesn't. The only reasonable choice is to pay people for them, which is just scuffed. And I don't have interest in using every single Riven I unveil, because I've already used all the weapons in the game and a lot of them just aren't my thing. I'm interested in only a small portion of weapons that I actually like, and I'm not interested in wasting my time and resources on weapons I'll never care about.

[Wolfdoggie]

Rivens are a double edged sword. I like them cuz they make my commonly used weapons landslides better. But then I hate them because they end up a requirement for some weapons and ofc RNG may not favor you. It makes me not often excited for new weapons because the weapons I did roll perfect rivens for become so intensely good that there is little reason to use anything else beyond MR. That's why I like Zaws/Kitguns the most cuz at least you can use their rivens on more than just 1 weapon and pick your stats.

on that note imagine if equipping Rivens always worked kinda like the unveiled version and just went by weapon type/category; shotgun, rifle, polearm, etc. :P

[Proscriptor]

On 2021-05-12 at 3:00 PM, Brinstar7777 said:

The idea of having to do something to unveil a riven is a nice touch, but the random factor is really freakin' annoying. My first riven mod i get is for the Zurge, a crossbow I had never ven heard of until now, and STILL don't plan to use. Given the sheer number of weapons, I highly doubt I'll get a mod for the Sybaris and Afuris at random.

Here's my proposal; have the riven mod match the weapon it's equipped to. Is that too much to ask?

the rivens were introduced to make you consider using "zurge". that's their actual design goal, not giving you an ability to augment your favorite weapons. 

[Aesthier]

On 2021-05-12 at 6:00 AM, Brinstar7777 said:

Why Rivens Suck, and an easy way to fix that

Remove them.

Bam Completed!

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

15 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

That's my main gripe about "just trade for them". I'm not playing Warframe to have a second job, I'm playing to have fun. Trawling through Trade Chat flipping sets for hours at a time just to buy Rivens that I'll unveil for weapons I don't care about isn't exactly motivating... I want to play the game and DIY, I'm not going to pay anyone for anything unless I want to.

Yes this option is only there if you want to rush through the Riven system. I do it, but I don't mind trade chat. If you're a casual player, getting them passively is a better idea, but you have to come to terms with it being a slow background grind. At the same time I don't recommend players ignore trade chat completely, since it's the most efficient way to actively access something like the Riven system.

 

15 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

I'm interested in only a small portion of weapons that I actually like, and I'm not interested in wasting my time and resources on weapons I'll never care about.

Then obviously the Riven system doesn't favor you, nor should it. It's a system designed for every weapon, not just the ones the player likes. If you care that much about getting a Riven for the weapon you want, you have to trade with people, and that's not really a bad thing. Remember that Rivens are just extra stats, so it's not unreasonable that you can live in a world where you don't have these Rivens. It just makes certain weapons more enjoyable to use in content that matters.

[SenorClipClop]

21 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Rivens have never lived up to that goal; they failed that on day one with the outbreak of Tonkor and Soma Rivens. The majority of players already focus only on Rivens for meta stuff and the gap between meta and non-meta is wider than ever. Giving more control to players won't change that, but it would allow players who actually want to try Rivens for off-meta weapons a way to do so in a reasonable timeframe without having to buy them. There are a lot of non-meta weapons I'd like to try making a Riven for, but my chances of getting one on my own from the layers of acquisition RNG are slim to none and I'm sure as S#&$ not paying someone else just so I can goof around with a Paracyst.

You make some good points. RNG for getting a Riven for a particular off-meta weapon is abysmal, but if the game let players just choose whichever weapons they got Rivens for, I think it'd do more harm than good. This would just skew meta and the devs would need to either leave the game even less balanced than it already is, or take a hammer to Riven dispositions and upset a lot of people.

I think the big problem with what you mention here is that really trading for Rivens doesn't seem to be a thing, only buying and selling them. (I've done so successfully a few times, but IME it's quite rare.) Some Rivens go for plat, which creates this general idea that "I deserve plat for any of my Rivens". If legit just trading Rivens were more of a thing, I'm sure we'd see more interest in the system.

By the way, I'm not huge into Rivens, but if there's a particular off-meta one you're after hit me up on PC! I'd be happy to trade if I have it and am not using it. I'm willing to part with any of my Fusilai, Kestrel, Kohmak, Prova, Mewan (zaw), Spectra, Sonicor and Stug Rivens in exchange for a Riven for a weapon I'm into. Feel free to PM me a list of stuff you're not using if one of mine catches your interest. No Paracyst ones yet, unfortunately.

[PublikDomain]

3 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

This would just skew meta and the devs would need to either leave the game even less balanced than it already is, or take a hammer to Riven dispositions and upset a lot of people.

Would this really be the case? Meta Rivens already exist en masse for anyone that wants them. I definitely don't hold a majority opinion about trade - most people seem to be fine with it. And DE already hammers Dispositions and upsets people when they need to. The meta weapons people are concerned about becoming even more popular should have a low Disposition and already do. If players had agency over their unveiling then DE would have to be more active and sensible about Disposition changes, yes, but that sounds like a good thing to me...

3 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

If legit just trading Rivens were more of a thing, I'm sure we'd see more interest in the system.

Some sort of take-a-Riven-leave-a-Riven system might help, sure, but if the process is Unveil a Riven → It's not what you want → Trade it for one you want then being able to pick the one you want from the start is kind of the same thing except a few steps shorter.

ETA: And fwiw, I don't specifically agree with OP's suggested implementation. I think you should be given a spread of Rivens when you unveil: one for the weapon and two random ones. Pick whichever you want. Then you can always get a Riven you can use, you can get a Riven for a specific weapon, and you can explore more random weapons.

7 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Yes this option is only there if you want to rush through the Riven system.

I don't really agree... The only other option aside from trade is to DIY, but the time involvement due to the layered RNG is so heavy that trade is the only reasonable option. It's not there if you want to rush through the Riven system, it's the only way to get through it at all without wasting a ton of time and effort.

7 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

It's a system designed for every weapon, not just the ones the player likes.

Unless you pay for them...? Which is kinda my point.

[Aldain]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

It just makes certain weapons more enjoyable to use in content that matters.

No Riven on Earth is going to make an Aklato enjoyable to use, and I have one that nearly gives +400% damage and 300% multishot.

So if the system "makes certain weapons more enjoyable to use in content that matters" then why does that contradict something you said a few sentences back?

8 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

It's a system designed for every weapon, not just the ones the player likes.

Is it designed for every weapon or only certain ones? Why are some weapons so bad that no amount of multipliers can dig their base stats out of the dumpster they reside in?

Most of all, why have we had the excuse of Riven mods making weaker weapons better for YEARS when even the recent Melee 3.0 stat changes showed that some weapons were so bad that no Riven in the known universe would have made anyone want to use them until DE actually gave some form of statistical parity among them?

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

No Riven on Earth is going to make an Aklato enjoyable to use, and I have one that nearly gives +400% damage and 300% multishot.

I never said it makes the weapon enjoyable, it just makes it more enjoyable. -2 is greater than -4, but they're still both negative numbers, but -2 is closer to being positive than -4 is. Enjoyment is subjective, but I'm sure you'd like your weapon to kill the enemies faster (not to be confused with killing them quickly), so generally speaking, boosting stats makes the weapon more enjoyable than it was before the riven, and that's enough for some people to have an interest in using the weapon.

And in the case that your weapon has a negative stat that makes the weapon less enjoyable, that's why Rivens can be rerolled.

13 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Most of all, why have we had the excuse of Riven mods making weaker weapons better for YEARS when even the recent Melee 3.0 stat changes showed that some weapons were so bad that no Riven in the known universe would have made anyone want to use them until DE actually gave some form of statistical parity among them?

Rivens shouldn't be an excuse for actually balancing weapons, I don't disagree there. But in the case of something like AkLato, some weapons shouldn't be brought up because they exist solely as easy to acquire weapons for new players, and there are usually direct statistical upgrades to those weapons, so their balance doesn't really matter (the upgrades should be balanced though). However, unique weapons that are underwhelming should be brought up, or at least given a better variant if one doesn't exist.

What we were originally talking about isn't how powerful the weapons with Rivens are, but whether Rivens make players want to revisit those weapons, or even add them to their rotation if they like them enough.

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

rivens suck because RNG