New primes suck for long time players

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

The combination of weak Primes and all weapons starting at .5 dispo really sucks for long time players.

This doesn't happen with every new Prime, but it happens more and more the longer you play.

The experience goes something like...

- I loved the Tenora back when I first got it.

- I got a good riven for it and grinded/rolled it better.

- But it's still underpowered and has fallen by the way.

- New Tenora Prime announced! Exciting 😀

- It comes out and I get it and...

- It's a slight improvement on the base weapon, but not with my riven. 😞

This feels like a slap in the face - DE don't want riven price inflation and don't want power creep, I get it, but it sucks when a new variant just isn't any better than the old one.

It takes something that would draw me back in to the game (exciting new weapon) to something that drives me away (troll! It's just the same or worse, basically a skin).

Maybe it will be fixed with the next riven dispo round. Troll again! No it won't. Apparently the Tenora Prime somehow justifies being .5 dispo.

Or, you know, they just don't care.

I've talked about the Tenora Prime here, but the Astilla Prime is the same story. Most new primes are the same story.

DE, here's how this affects you: I can't remember the last time I thought a Prime Access was worth buying. I've stopped buying them. Not because I can't afford it, not because I wouldn't buy it if there was something I wanted.

No, I don't buy it because, even when one of my top all time weapons gets primed and I'd love a version of it that works in the Steel Path, I know it will be mediocre.

Here's a guide: if the base weapon outperforms a brand new Prime variant with a decent riven then your new Prime is a waste of development time and underpowered. Make primes significant upgrades.

That or just sell them as skins with the Prime Accessories pack. It will save us the Forma.

 

 

 

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Apparently the Tenora Prime somehow justifies being .5 dispo.

I'm 99% certain this is just a mistake or oversight.  The question is, will DE fix it before the next prime access?

As far as the underlying issue goes, one approach is  to make primes more of an improvement over the base versions through better stat increases and gimmicks.  Meaning dispo is less of an issue.  The trade off would be fewer dispo increases afterwards.

[Loza03]

Whilst I sympathise with the situation, I think the problem is how Riven mods work. There doesn't seem to be any way to really make them work properly.

They've historically been ineffective at bringing up 'bad' weapons because of how mods and stats work, and usually just make already overpowered weapons more overpowered. Otherwise there's problems like this. If you change them often, players don't trade them or rely on them, if you don't then players latch onto weapons solely because they become OP with a riven mod (and oh goodness, when that finally changes).

And it's not like making primes significant upgrades is a free pass either. DE knows that making weapons too powerful out the gate is worse than too weak out the gate, every time. They've learned that good thanks to the Catchmoon and the Bramma, and probably a bunch of other big examples I can't remember just now.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

2 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Apparently the Tenora Prime somehow justifies being .5 dispo.

I'm 99% certain this is just a mistake or oversight.  The question is, will DE fix it before the next prime access?

Based on what? The Pandero is on the buff list. 

I rather suspect riven dispo changes are arbitrary, but at the very least someone manually had to intervene in order for a brand new weapon to stay low.

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

The trade off would be fewer dispo increases afterwards.

I'm good with that 🙂

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

I think the problem is how Riven mods work

Yes, but that's a much bigger problem. I still think Primes need to be significant upgrades.

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

And it's not like making primes significant upgrades is a free pass either. DE knows that making weapons too powerful out the gate is worse than too weak out the gate, every time

You say that, but I think this is the wrong way round. New weapons need to be something worth getting or what's the point? This is doubly true of Primes, as we've got the base version already.

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

They've learned that good thanks to the Catchmoon and the Bramma, and probably a bunch of other big examples I can't remember just now

They haven't, as those are still meta. Kuva Nukor and Bramma have been the stagnant meta since they launched the liches way back before Covid. Those set a bar that DE haven't rolled back and haven't tried to match since.

They f-ed up and made the Bramma OP is not a defence of every weaksauce prime since.

[Loza03]

11 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

They haven't, as those are still meta. Kuva Nukor and Bramma have been the stagnant meta since they launched the liches way back before Covid. Those set a bar that DE haven't rolled back and haven't tried to match since.

They f-ed up and made the Bramma OP is not a defence of every weaksauce prime since.

It's not, it's more of a 'DE, we need a statsquish or something, this meta is getting ridiculous'

 

I mean, seriously, DE's current options for making new weapons popular are to make it better than the current stuff, which means all the content in the game basically pointless since these weapons already curb-stomp the whole game, or what they're doing now, wherein new primes or weapons get a lukewarm reaction. Warframe needs a balance pass or a statsquish or something, players and enemies alike.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

I mean, seriously, DE's current options for making new weapons popular are to make it better than the current stuff

For Primes, yes. The clue is in the name. Tenora Prime should be significantly more powerful than the base Tenora, and this should be true of all "Prime" weapons. 

And the Tenora is a mid-range weapon, it doesn't even make it past Sortie levels without a riven. Making the Prime variant work in current high end content without a riven is not a big ask.

Yes, that means power creep. More players are high MR every day, but there are no weapons past about MR14. 

You need power creep in a game like Warframe. I've been playing this for years, if the same things were challenging as back in 2014 I probably would have stopped ages ago. Add Sorties, add Arbitrations, add Liches, add Railjack, add Steel Path, keep going.

And keep adding new weapons to match.

New stuff, so we have something to come back for.

[VoidArkhangel]

I believe the Riven system is the problem here, if there was none at all they wouldnt mind throwing more op weapons.

[DrivaMain]

The 1/5 change is a good decision. It allows DE to not balance new weapons on Riven Mods. Riven Mods are meant for off meta unpopular weapons and it should stay that way. DE probably doesn’t want another catchmoon or Bramma incident, so they are playing the safe route here.

[Tiltskillet]

14 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

16 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

17 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Apparently the Tenora Prime somehow justifies being .5 dispo.

I'm 99% certain this is just a mistake or oversight.  The question is, will DE fix it before the next prime access?

Based on what?

Occam's Razor, or at least that's what I tell myself.  I can't speak to Tenora P's overall  popularity, but it's significantly worse as a weapon than several other, reasonably popular weapons that did get dispo buffs.  I mean, say what you want about DE's sense of balance nuances, but I'm pretty sure they can tell the difference in effectiveness between Bubonico and Tenora P.

 

14 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

I rather suspect riven dispo changes are arbitrary, but at the very least someone manually had to intervene in order for a brand new weapon to stay low.

Is there a reason you'd presume so?  I'd think the opposite:  dispo stays the same unless someone manually changes it.  (And apparently they have to change at least two things: one so it shows up in the UI; another so that it actually impacts riven affixes correctly.  Witness the times one has changed but not the other until it's bugfixed.)

Spoiler

I love the notion though that they have to go through multitudes of weapons and pull levers for each one to -keep them- from changing dispo every few months.   It's so farcical I almost hope it's true. 😄

 

[Loza03]

16 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

For Primes, yes. The clue is in the name. Tenora Prime should be significantly more powerful than the base Tenora, and this should be true of all "Prime" weapons. 

And the Tenora is a mid-range weapon, it doesn't even make it past Sortie levels without a riven. Making the Prime variant work in current high end content without a riven is not a big ask.

Yes, that means power creep. More players are high MR every day, but there are no weapons past about MR14. 

You need power creep in a game like Warframe. I've been playing this for years, if the same things were challenging as back in 2014 I probably would have stopped ages ago. Add Sorties, add Arbitrations, add Liches, add Railjack, add Steel Path, keep going.

And keep adding new weapons to match.

New stuff, so we have something to come back for.

Primes ultimately are the same things as other weapons. They're still a part of the sandbox, they're still a part of the game, and are thus beholden to the same rules and restrictions. And the issue is, Warframe doesn't have any sort of levelling system or system that facilitates infinite power creep. A lot of stuff has a hard cap. Mainly, player health and ability damage aren't based on a universal stat like Outriders or Path of Exile or something. Warframe works on the Dungeons and Dragons philosophy of levelling and item progression, where it's more tools, not just the same tools but better. 

Therefore, power creep means the replacement of old tools, and that can't be done infinitely, because that means that players are going to abandon playstyles. Warframe's issue is that the pursuit of power creep has ablated playstyles, meaningful gameplay decisions and avenues of development. I mean, remember when shotguns were the hotness - in particular, the Tigris Prime - as well as the Ignis Wraith? A single-target weapon was considered on par, and often much better than an AoE nuking weapon.

 

That's why I say Warframe needs a statsquish.

[RazerXPrime]

Solution: 

Buff all weapons base stats and remove Riven Mods from the game. The more I hear people discuss Riven Mods the more it's becoming apparant that these things are unhealthy to Warframe.

I don't even care if it angers the idiot that spent 5K on a Riven Mod. Because you know. Case in point.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

11 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

The 1/5 change is a good decision. It allows DE to not balance new weapons on Riven Mods. Riven Mods are meant for off meta unpopular weapons and it should stay that way. 

I'm fine with this, but I propose the following rule:

Prime with no riven should ALWAYS be better than the base variant with a 5-pip-dispo god-roll.

As if the Prime isn't objectively better than the base build I already have then don't fu**ing ask me for money for it. Sell it as a skin, but even calling it "prime" is disingenuous.

10 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Is there a reason you'd presume so

Yes. DE have said several times that dispo is based on stats. They take the stats and apply (with some tweaks).

When they nerf it's not them, it's the stats, they say. 

For the Tenora to not get a buff either it's really popular (like Bramma popular) or they manually decided this gun shouldn't get upgraded.

Sure, they might have just forgotten about but then a) why haven't they fixed it? and b) that would be really incompetent.

I mean, it could be they just missed it and chose not to hotfix the oversight, but it seems less likely to me than they deliberately didn't buff it for undisclosed reasons.

Maybe whoever is determined to keep vacuum on sentinels and sentinels made out of paper thinks the Tenora is way overpowered?

7 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Therefore, power creep means the replacement of old tools, and that can't be done infinitely, because that means that players are going to abandon playstyles

You say that like it isn't the exact situation Warframe's been in for years. 

CC frames have fallen by the wayside (remember ID Loki?). Most support frames too (remember when you needed EV Trin?). In fact any frame without scaling damage, scaling survivability, or weapon buffing of some kind is increasingly redundant.

There's MR in guns, and MR8 was once max, now it's MR14. We need MR20, MR25 and up weapons for players that have done everything and want to play the newer, more damage-resistant content without just resorting to melee.

My MR12 Tenora or Astilla is useless on the Steel Path, is it too much to expect a Tenora Prime or Astilla Prime to be that step up in power?

[Proscriptor]

rivens weren't made for relatively popular weapons like tenora. the fact that tenora gets to have rivens too is just a side effect. 

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

Rivens haven't served their original purpose for a long time, so why not focus on balancing weapons instead?

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 minutes ago, Proscriptor said:

rivens weren't made for relatively popular weapons like tenora.

The base Tenora has a riven disposition of 1.1, which means relatively unpopular but not MR fodder.

Practically the Tenora is a gun that just about makes it to Sorties with a decent riven. Steel Path enemies take most of a clip or multiple charged headshots (which are a little tricky to pull off due to the charge up needing some timing).

When I was MR12 it was my favourite gun, but I haven't used it in years.

Rivens were made to bring unpopular weapons back, Prime should be the 'prime' version of a weapon.

Weak Primes suck.

[Proscriptor]

Despite Tenora having an average disposition, among assault rifles it's one of better liked by players, and one of the few which you can actually see used in missions. 

Tenora is more than Steel Path capable, like all hybrid rifles with the standard HM Viral build. 

Tenora Prime has absurdly good stats, and the only reason why it isn't *the* single very best assault rifle is that it lacks the innate elemental damage of the Kuva assault rifles. 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

3 hours ago, Proscriptor said:

Tenora Prime has absurdly good stats

It's MR14, it's supposed to.

And it doesn't. Good crit and status, but extremely low base damage means you're all about the fire rate and the crit isn't quite good enough without a crit-chance riven.

3 hours ago, Proscriptor said:

Tenora is more than Steel Path capable, like all hybrid rifles with the standard HM Viral build

Yes HM+V is the only build, but no, not Steel Path 'capable' unless you mean relying on abilities to CC/immobilise targets while you put most of a clip into them or line up multiple charged headshots.

With a really good riven it gets to Sortie-viable but only if that riven is crit and can get that HM slashes up to the point of adding up to decent damage.

3 hours ago, Proscriptor said:

Tenora Prime has absurdly good stats

It doesn't, and that's not even my point.

My crit riven on the base Tenora puts it above the Tenora Prime in every stat except magazine size. 

If you don't have a riven the Prime variant is a slight upgrade 

If you do have a riven it isn't.

For a Prime to be something I'd give DE money for (or want to grind for) Prime needs to be an upgrade, pure and simple, on base.

If you don't want to make it that powerful because you're somehow worried about balance in this game then fine, don't ask me to pay for it and don't pollute the relic RNG pool with its parts.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

Some prime weapons have a tendency to be underwhelming, which isn't exclusive to Octavia and Gara's weapons. We have the occasional really cool upgrades, like Corinth Prime, Zhuge Prime, Zakti Prime, or Pyrana Prime, but most of the time we don't get anything too fantastic. I agree that these prime upgrades could be statistically better than they currently are (not to the level of "prime should be better than my god roll riven'd base version"), but I'd prefer having interesting changes to the gun itself.

Tenora's alternate fire could have lost the charge time completely, and instead become a powerful single shot rifle with a lower rate of fire than the machine gun primary fire.

Astilla could've gotten heavy projectile drop in exchange for higher direct hit damage and larger explosion radius, or innate heat damage to match Gara's own use of molten glass.

Pandero could have gotten increased ammo efficiency on the alternate fire, allowing you to fire more shots when you dump the magazine.

Volnus could have gotten a guaranteed slash proc on heavy attacks or melee slams, to give the impression that hits are so powerful that glass shards are chipping off the hammer into enemies.

Sure, there are the bonuses for playing Octavia/Gara and using their signature weapons, but Gara's bonuses are boring, and Octavia, being Octavia, doesn't get to use them very well.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Tenora's alternate fire could have lost the charge time completely

That would have been good. Instead it's somehow 5x slower to charge but only 15% more damage.

16 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Astilla could've gotten heavy projectile drop in exchange for higher direct hit damage and larger explosion radius,

I would have been happy with basic 2x crit damage and bigger explosion radius.

But if you were going to give it a buff it needs innate Ammo Mutation is a must. The Astilla eats ammo and shogun drops in packs of 10 (vs 60 for rifles).

16 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

We have the occasional really cool upgrades

Yeah, the primes with extra quirks are the best ones.

[DoomFruit]

Honestly, I'd rather that rivens just get nuked entirely. Having mods with highly variable stats like that is going to butcher any attempt at balance, because you can't rely on the players having or not having them. Right now, there's only the devil's choice of balancing against the best possible outcome (which ruins it for those who don't have those perfect rolls) or the worst possible outcome (which makes it OP).

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

3 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

Having mods with highly variable stats like that is going to butcher any attempt at balance

Nobody cares about balance. Nobody plays Conclave, balance doesn't really matter unless it's so skewed that the meta goes stale (basically only one choice of weapon).

4 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

balancing against the best possible outcome (which ruins it for those who don't have those perfect rolls

Which is why they shouldn't. I have over 100 rivens and probably fewer than 5 perfect rolls. 

Don't balance for rivens, just make the primes an objective step better than rivens rolls can make a base gun.

4 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

worst possible outcome (which makes it OP).

I don't think a new gun being OP is a particularly bad outcome, and certainly not the worst. New OP guns (at the very least) disrupt the meta and give you something new worth playing with.

I don't think "the latest prime guns always being the best guns" is good either, but for any of these, Tenora, Astilla, etc - they're wayy off meta. The Tenora Prime could be way better than the Tenora and it still wouldn't be close to the best rapid fire rifle, let alone able to compete with the worst possible Zaw.

 

[DoomFruit]

19 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

I don't think a new gun being OP is a particularly bad outcome

I was talking in terms of riven roll outcome - best possible riven roll vs. worst possible riven roll.

[Leqesai]

On 2021-05-26 at 10:25 PM, DrivaMain said:

The 1/5 change is a good decision. It allows DE to not balance new weapons on Riven Mods. Riven Mods are meant for off meta unpopular weapons and it should stay that way. DE probably doesn’t want another catchmoon or Bramma incident, so they are playing the safe route here.

Agreed.

It also lowers the potential for people ripping players off when a new weapon is released. Anyone actually looking to use a riven will be less incentivized due to crappy riven stats. 

Also, rivens were designed to make crappy weapons useful. They weren't designed to make good weapons godly.

If the new weapon isnt very good then the disposition will grow... i dont see the issue here nor do i, as a player with every weapon in their arsenal, feel that new prime weapons are in any way negatively affected by this. If you have a riven that makes the base variant good then that is great for you. It doesnt have any bearing as to whether or not the prime is viable. If the weapon is decent then it doesnt need a riven and if it is crap a riven may not save it (panthera prime i am looking at you). 

Gara's prime weapons are fine as prime weapons. Not exceptional but certainly better than the base variants and able to be star chart + sortie viable without rivens.

[(PSN)SergioMApt]

On 2021-05-27 at 6:25 AM, DrivaMain said:

The 1/5 change is a good decision. It allows DE to not balance new weapons on Riven Mods. Riven Mods are meant for off meta unpopular weapons and it should stay that way. DE probably doesn’t want another catchmoon or Bramma incident, so they are playing the safe route here.

I thought rivens were created to make every weapon like a Bramma or a Catchmoon... that is, to make every weapon FUN!

[Loza03]

4 hours ago, (PSN)Councillor_S-MA said:

I thought rivens were created to make every weapon like a Bramma or a Catchmoon... that is, to make every weapon FUN!

So, here's a question:

Why are/were Bramma and Catchmoon fun? Or, more specifically, why are they fun when other weapons aren't?