Suggestion for the upcoming Mod Overhaul

[Grav_Starstrider]

tldr; Add consistency and clarity to modding options. Reduce clutter and completely ineffective/irrelevant mods. Reduce the meta of mandatory modding.

 

1) First and foremost to make modding clearer for newbies and experienced veterans alike: Don't show mods whose stats can't have any effect on the weapon.
 

Spoiler

If the mods can be adjusted to have an effect on the weapons they currently don't, by all means do so (such as allowing us to directly add Impact or Slash to weapons that don't have it, by having them add a percentage of the gun's overall damage, rather than only scaling up the existing IPS damage present already, or adding more bullet hitbox radius to non-AoE guns using Firestorm and Fulmination). But if the mods won't/can't have an applicable effect on the weapon, they just shouldn't show up as a selectable option at all. If a weapon doesn't have anything with a "radius" to be affected by Firestorm or Fulmination, or it doesn't have the specific (or any) IPS damage types, don't show these mods that ONLY grant what can't be added to that weapon. The Sonicor doesn't have any status or crit chance at all, flat 0%s, the arsenal should NOT offer critical chance or damage mods, or status chance mods, and it DEFINITELY shouldn't AUTOINSTALL these things that have no effect on the weapon at all!

2) Have a "Hide unranked duplicates" checkbox for modding to further reduce clutter.
 

Spoiler

It's exceedingly rare that the majority of players will actively want to equip something like a completely unranked Metal Augur or Split Chamber that costs 10 capacity to install. Or that we'll want to see things like unranked Crash Course, Fanged Fusillade, Firestorm, Shred, elemental damage mods, etc 6 capacity unranked mods, before we'll want to see the 5-capacity exilus mods like Aero Periphery, Agile Aim, Hush, Sinister Reach, etc.. And the only time we'll want to actively see the multitude of unranked mods that we already have ranked-up versions of, will be on weapons that we haven't fully finished ranking or forma'ing, and we want to cram just a little bit more effectiveness into it prior to finishing the build, with an under-ranked version of a mod that we have a fully ranked copy of. Mods are overwhelmingly commonly most capacity-effective at their max rank, people will nearly always choose a fully ranked status chance and damage mod like Malignant Force before they'll use a partially ranked Infected Clip. It's just unnecessary clutter, and giving us a toggle would give us the option to see the rarely used options anyways.

3) Add calculations for conditional effects to the damage preview window.
 

Spoiler

"On Aim", "After Kill", "On Headshot", etc. Such effects are in so many mods, but we're wholly dependent on either having the mathematical knowhow and grasp of scientific methods in order to determine exactly how some of these effect's bonuses are calculated (before or after certain other mods). Giving us checkboxes to see what the weapon would do on a standard headshot with the current loadout, or while aiming/zoomed, or while X mod's buff criteria has been met, or while the weapon's own unique buff is active (Pyrana Prime's ghostly double, Dual Toxocyst, etc). This would DRASTICALLY reduce how much of a Wiki-dependent game this is, when it comes to people striving to create effective builds.

4) Reduce how meta so many of the mods and mod combinations are.

Problem: Currently, many optimum builds of weapons will see a substantial drop in effectiveness if you trade any one mod in their optimal build out for any "Quality of Life" or Utility mods (like silencing mods, or ammo mutations, etc). In theory, with 8 standard mod slots, the "removal" of any one mod should only reduce your DP by around 1/8th. In examples I've constructed and observed (such as some Vectis Prime builds I've made), you instead lose over half of your damage with the removal of any of these one mods. This is because of the nature of how Damage multiplies Crit Damage multiplies Elemental Damage which is all multiplied by Multishot. If each type of mod approximately doubles your dps on average, then we're essentially seeing that they're collectively giving us exponential damage increases (2 to the power of X). With the implementation of the Galvanized Shot/Aptitude mods, this isn't even a mostly-crit-exclusive issue any more, either. And when damage changes exponentially in leaps and bounds, it's very easy to remain drastically underpowered, until you completely overshoot on one of your times-2's and start being overpowered for the enemy you're shooting/swinging at. And I bet DE's data on how often utility and quality of life (exilus) mods are utilized outside of the exilus slot is probably quite sad. Probably even more-so if we exclude obvious picks like Cautious Shot for AoE weapons, Vigilante Supplies for Crit or ammo-hungry weapons, Sinister Reach on beam weapons, and Hush in general as obviously more "useful" exilus mods than other options.

Any single, combination, or all of the following solutions could help alleviate this issue.

Solution 1: Put the "Modifier" back in "Mods".

Spoiler

Make them be what alters a weapon's behavior, first and foremost, more than they add DPS to the weapons. Make it be decisions to switch to a focus on one specific element's damage or status effects, rather than just adding damage in the form of that element. Many will rage at this suggestion, but it has to be said - Multishot should get converted into being a "become a shotgun" mod instead of a raw force multiplier.

Solution 2: Drastically decrease the numeric values of the meta damage mods currently in play.

Spoiler

Right now, if it was the only multishot installed on a weapon, Galvanized Chamber alone, at full stacks, would deal +230% more damage in additionally fired shots (for a total of 330% damage output). Nerfing the values by half would result in 115% bonus damage instead. That's still doubling your damage output with that one single mod though! And without touching a single enemy's health, shield, or armor value, we could maintain the same DPS:EHP balance that we have currently, by simply doubling the base damage values of every weapon. This would decrease the severity of reliance upon any given specific mods on the weapon, and make you feel the absence of any of one of the "meta" ones only about half as much as currently.

Solution 3) Preserve the value and experience of ranking up and using the main Damage mods of all weapon classes by making them occupy the equivalent of the melee "Stance" slot, or Warframe's "Aura" slot, instead of one of the current slots as a "Mandatory Mod".
 

Spoiler

The whole process of finding an undamaged Serration/PressurePoint/HornetStrike, and ranking it up, was pretty essential to the Warframe DPS experience, and the sense of progress and progression in the game, from having partially ranked damage mods, to fully ranked ones, to having primed ones (where applicable). However it also results in a COMPLETELY DEAD SLOT. You hardly ever will ever see anyone fail to use Serration, Hornet Strike, or Pressure Point on builds that aren't memes, or some kinda stat stick or other mechanic abuse. I vote we just remove the baseline capacity value, and approximately halve the number of increments for the baseline damage mods for each weapon class, and give them an assigned slot above the standard 8, the same way the normal Warframe modding screen is arranged, with the Aura and Eximus slots up top.
Giving players back a small amount of capacity (would be ~5 capacity in Serration's case, with the removal of the baseline 4 capacity and the halving of the remaining 10 levels' worth of capacity) would also alleviate the severe capacity shortage the addition of Exilus slots has caused as well. It also adds consistency to the shape/arrangement of the modding screens, having all of them have a capacity-additive baseline damage (or Warframe's aura) mod at the top alongside a QoL/Exilus mod (or Stance Mod in melee's case), with 8 "normal" mod slots available below, with 0-2 arcane slots to the right.
(Melee note: just split some of the damage from Pressure Point into the stance mods, and make the stance mods cost capacity instead of add it, so that there's clear incentive to use the stance mod despite the capacity drain, so that this isn't blatantly a straight buff to melee, just opening up the perpetually-used damage mod's slot up)
(On potentially making "Ranking" a more dynamic experience with weapons, consider making the "effectiveness of the Damage mod in the Damage Slot" scale based on the weapon's current rank. This way even mid-mission, you feel the power of the weapon improving from rank 0 to rank 30)

Solution 4) Relocate lots of lesser-used Exilus mods / Expand Parazon functionality.

Spoiler

TLDR; relocate some of the "Quality of Life" mods and non-meta Exilus mods (like some of the "move speed while aiming" or "zoom while gliding/sliding" or "holster speed" mods) to bonus slots in the Parazon modding screen.

Currently the Parazon allows us to fundamentally hack and rewrite our Lich/Sister enemies, and give us temporary buffs upon hack or mercy kills. Outside of Mercy buffs and Lich Hunting though, it doesn't offer us much. I'd love to see a few more slots added to the Parazon where otherwise less-used Utility and Quality of Life mods for Warframes and their Weapons could be installed. It minimum, it could be just 3 new slots, one for the Warframe, one for the Guns and one for Melee, or one for Primary and one for Secondary. Or as many as 6 slots could be added, and maybe the previously mentioned trio (or all 4) have dedicated slots, and there'd just be 3 (or 2) "free spaces" where you can add any 2 more Parazon or relocated Exilus mods (note, this obviously doesn't include the "best" exilus mods that could remain assigned to Warframes, like the Drift mods, or meta gun ones like the silencing mods or the Vigilante set exilus mods). Maybe another one or two more of the slots could be dedicated to relieving one or two of the other universally "mandatory" Quality of life mods - Fetch/Vacuum and Enemy/Loot Radar mods on our companions! Nobody wants to be flying blind with the mini-map, or running around manually running around and physically walking over every single piece of loot you wish to collect, but it's a bit painful to have to burn 2 mod slots between your Warframe and/or Companion in order to avoid those pains.

Some mods could be able to be installed in either these Parazon slots or also back in the original locations, or DE could create Parazon-specific equivalents to some of them so that people could double up on them if preferred.

This would help players universally resolve some sticking points they might hate across the entire game, and provide another place to choose some less-mandatory mods.

I hope DE and you guys like at least specific bits and pieces of these suggestions, please let me know if you have any constructive criticism or thoughts about them!

[Leqesai]

What "mod overhaul" are you talking about? Did I miss something in one of the dev streams/announcements or something?

[Grav_Starstrider]

3 hours ago, Leqesai said:

What "mod overhaul" are you talking about? Did I miss something in one of the dev streams/announcements or something?

They as-good-as said that they'd work on how modding worked on account of the near-overwhelming results from their survey a few months ago. Rebb said some stuff on a stream around then indicating that sentiment.

Spoiler

So What Happens Next?
Now that we have this information a few key things stick out to us.

• The Mod System could do with some TLC
• Players would like to see Trials come back, in addition to some more challenging end game content
• There are a variety of areas that we can explore for some QoL changes

I'm really curious if you have any major thoughts on my ideas. It's mostly just moving things around and replicating existing systems and behaviors and designs that are already in place, I just think they'd work out better with this arrangement and distribution. Maybe.

[Leqesai]

Ah. Thanks for sharing that.

It is my opinion that "as good as said" is not the same thing as "actually said" so I'd take this mod overhaul thing with a grain of salt.

They will probably do something but I wouldn't be surprised if this is 1-2 years out.

[Tiltskillet]

16 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

Ah. Thanks for sharing that.

It is my opinion that "as good as said" is not the same thing as "actually said" so I'd take this mod overhaul thing with a grain of salt.

They will probably do something but I wouldn't be surprised if this is 1-2 years out.

They'll do a mod overhaul sooner if they feel it makes it easier to integrate with and/or more appealing on phones.

 

5 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

If the mods can be adjusted to have an effect on the weapons they currently don't, by all means do so (such as allowing us to directly add Impact or Slash to weapons that don't have it, by having them add a percentage of the gun's overall damage, rather than only scaling up the existing IPS damage present already, or adding more bullet hitbox radius to non-AoE guns using Firestorm and Fulmination). But if the mods won't/can't have an applicable effect on the weapon, they just shouldn't show up as a selectable option at all. If a weapon doesn't have anything with a "radius" to be affected by Firestorm or Fulmination, or it doesn't have the specific (or any) IPS damage types, don't show these mods that ONLY grant what can't be added to that weapon. The Sonicor doesn't have any status or crit chance at all, flat 0%s, the arsenal should NOT offer critical chance or damage mods, or status chance mods, and it DEFINITELY shouldn't AUTOINSTALL these things that have no effect on the weapon at all!

DE used to do this. But it always seemed like they had to do it manually because when new weapons came out, some of them would still be eligible for nonsensical mods.   Like, there's no "keyword" system here like there is in some other games, where weapons have "AoE" or "Pure Elemental" tags or whatever.  So I think they just gave up on it.  Hopefully just backburnered until they can get a more automated system in place.

Sonicor has status and crit by the way, but on the explosion not the projectile.   The Arsenal is very confused by the Sonicor for some reason.   There are some other weapons with this issue too, like Castanas, although Sonicor longer than most.

[Grav_Starstrider]

 

8 hours ago, Leqesai said:

It is my opinion that "as good as said" is not the same thing as "actually said" so I'd take this mod overhaul thing with a grain of salt.

I remember Rebecca having a dialogue about it sometime after the survey went out, but I can't find it :( I think it was a prime time or devstream but idk which one.

7 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

They'll do a mod overhaul sooner if they feel it makes it easier to integrate with and/or more appealing on phones.

Oooh that's a perspective I didn't think of. Simplifications and streamlining wherever possible would be a big goal of pre-mobile prep-work!

8 hours ago, Leqesai said:

They will probably do something but I wouldn't be surprised if this is 1-2 years out.

"The Mod system could do with some TLC" and the upcoming Mobile version definitely inspires some amount of confidence that they might finally be willing to look into the "mandatory modding" problem, on top of other issues.

8 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

DE used to do this. But it always seemed like they had to do it manually because when new weapons came out, some of them would still be eligible for nonsensical mods.   Like, there's no "keyword" system here like there is in some other games, where weapons have "AoE" or "Pure Elemental" tags or whatever.  So I think they just gave up on it.  Hopefully just backburnered until they can get a more automated system in place.

Sonicor has status and crit by the way, but on the explosion not the projectile.   The Arsenal is very confused by the Sonicor for some reason.   There are some other weapons with this issue too, like Castanas, although Sonicor longer than most.

RIP to the first, interesting on the second. It looks VERY odd in the Arsenal. I'm still very thoroughly of the opinion that only mods that can potentially have an effect on the weapon should be shown, and then everything that CAN be put on the weapon should preview/show the altered stat (even if it was just stating that a hidden hitbox's "Hit Radius is Increased" for example).

 

Y'all are pretty quiet on the specifics I offered, haha, any thoughts on suggestions 1-4 and solutions 1-4, or pretty ambivalent about them?

[Daddy.bulbs]

If it is anything like these new eximus an thrax BS i quit o hell no will i suffer an be your guanine pig D.E . You get public test servers going . This is ridicules this update was so not balanced an just feels rushed an i mean really rushed.  

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

On 2022-05-01 at 7:19 PM, Grav_Starstrider said:

 

  Hide contents

If the mods can be adjusted to have an effect on the weapons they currently don't, by all means do so (such as allowing us to directly add Impact or Slash to weapons that don't have it, by having them add a percentage of the gun's overall damage, rather than only scaling up the existing IPS damage present already, or adding more bullet hitbox radius to non-AoE guns using Firestorm and Fulmination). But if the mods won't/can't have an applicable effect on the weapon, they just shouldn't show up as a selectable option at all. If a weapon doesn't have anything with a "radius" to be affected by Firestorm or Fulmination, or it doesn't have the specific (or any) IPS damage types, don't show these mods that ONLY grant what can't be added to that weapon. The Sonicor doesn't have any status or crit chance at all, flat 0%s, the arsenal should NOT offer critical chance or damage mods, or status chance mods, and it DEFINITELY shouldn't AUTOINSTALL these things that have no effect on the weapon at all!

On Elements:

Or conversely, give every single weapon an Elemental Efficiency stat <1, so elemental mods all scale from a fraction of a weapon's base damage just like IPS mods in order to tame the numbers a bit. Crit weapons could be given especially low Elemental Efficiency to compensate for being Crit viable.

Say a weapon has EE=0.4, so Elemental mods only scale off of 40% of a weapon's Base Damage. Have extra mods that increase a weapon's elemental efficiency. Give players the option to play around with proc priorities this way too. Viral/Slash builds that rely on status to defeat armor would want low EE for example.

Puncture procs could be changed so that in addition to the enemy damage debuff of -30 to 75%, weapons get +30 to 75% extra EE against "punctured" enemies. Puncture procs essentially "buff" elemental damage and increases chances of getting elemental procs. Puncture weapons want good EE for maximum Elemental Damage.

Give all weapons a Physical Efficiency stat too and have IPS mods work just like elemental ones. As IPS bonuses are +50% at best which are lower than the +75% that elements enjoy, weapons could have higher PE than EE on average.

AOE weapons could be given especially low PE and EE to compensate for being able to hit multiple targets. Have AOE decreasing mods that Buff PE and EE.

On Multi-shot:

All Multi-shot mods could be given a secondary negative stat that lowers EE. +90% Multi-shot comes with -30% EE. Why? Split pellets don't carry elemental energies as efficiently I guess. Great on the Tigris Series that want just a bit of Viral, but mostly Slash procs. Non-Slash shotguns might shy away from Multi-shot for something else, since damage increase isn't a strict 1.9x with EE penalty.

On Crits:

Crit Multipliers could be rolled into Headshot multipliers so they are one and the same. A headshot simply grants flat +100% Critical Chance, basically upgrading your Crit tier. In this way Crit damage is additive with Headshots instead of multiplicative like it is now. In this way, weapons with no Critical Chance can take advantage of Crit multipliers.

This would narrow the amount of multiplication going on making QoL a bit more competitive, (or bring a new age of Viral/Slash status weapons) but of course DE would have to rebalance enemy eHP across the board too. Or they can fiddle around some more with Damage Attenuation, random DR, high armor scaling and invincibility phases that they've been doing for every update so far. Mods aren't in a vacuum, the whole damage system and enemy scaling is a mess.

 

[Grav_Starstrider]

20 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Mods aren't in a vacuum, the whole damage system and enemy scaling is a mess.

Amen. I think the entire *game's* numbers need to be compressed and normalized, there's way too wide a range between newbie and expert content, and so much content that ends up being either a snooze fest or difficult as heck for different players.

Overall I think that's a neat thought on a way of decreasing how multiplicatively and collectively exponentially the mods increase the DPS on weapons. They might just be able to flat out multiply all of the weapons' base damage values to compensate for the lost exponential stacking.

I do think that there's very little variety in builds presently, so it'd be neat to see headshots and weak points actually have a synergy with ANY pinpoint accurate weapon's crit damage, that would justify the usage of crit damage mods on low crit chance weapons. As it stands you currently trend towards using both or neither.

[Karonuva]

I feel like something that would be a big help would be if there were dedicated mod slots for the generic base stat increases like Fiber, Intensify, Vitality, multishot/base damage, etc maybe some consolidated into an umbrella category so there's some give and take, so these necessary mods would essentially just act as a base skill tree. And then you have a few (maybe 8 still) slots for these more specialized playstyle mods (including perhaps elemental/faction dmg mods), it would open up customization and I feel might also make it more clear to new players that it's something they need to keep an eye out for if they see upgrade slots for damage/health specifically

[Grav_Starstrider]

On 2022-05-06 at 3:28 AM, Karonuva said:

I feel like something that would be a big help would be if there were dedicated mod slots for the generic base stat increases like Fiber, Intensify, Vitality, multishot/base damage, etc maybe some consolidated into an umbrella category so there's some give and take, so these necessary mods would essentially just act as a base skill tree. And then you have a few (maybe 8 still) slots for these more specialized playstyle mods (including perhaps elemental/faction dmg mods), it would open up customization and I feel might also make it more clear to new players that it's something they need to keep an eye out for if they see upgrade slots for damage/health specifically

With some Warframe's survivability coming from their abilities, and some of them synergistically stacking with other survivability methods and some of them not, I think allowing player choice to choose between stuff like CC immunity, DR/EHP, and their Abilities, is a good way to let players decide whether they're going for a glass cannon build, a tank build, or somewhere in between. When you segregate certain things to certain places, you will start seeing repetition in choices to a point that's silly. Also keep in mind that polarities are a thing, what's a survival slot on one build is a range mod on another.

Which brings me to both your and my own observation: Base Damage. Who DOESN'T equip Serration and Hornet Strike and Split Chamber and Barrel Diffusion onto their Rifle and Secondary, 99% of the time? I seriously believe we do need to give guns the equivalent of an Aura slot (without the squad-wide buffs), or Melee Stance slot. And to shuffle Melee Stances into being on an exilus-like slot and replacing them with a base damage slot. This would make the weapon modding screens consistent across the board, with a damage-defining mod slot up top, with a QoL or Flavor mod to the right of it (exilus/stance mods), with arcanes (if applicable) to the right of the whole mod selection, the same way the Warframe modding screen appears.
Having the Damage slot for all weapons would help shuffle the severity of mandatory modding by 1 less mod occupying the 8 slots, removing the most essential and mandatory mod from the selection pool. Player choice increases! Then they just need to rework multishot, imo, to be actual "Diffusion" instead of "Multiplication". Reduce the ludicrous multiplication x multiplication x multiplication exponential stacking we currently see. obv buff up the base damage mod or mod slot's efficacy or lower enemy EHP to compensate.
And I do think that having more slots of certain types on the Parazon that under-used exilus mods can be moved to or simultaneously available in both places would be good as well.

I just realized I'm mostly recapping my original points, lol, but yeah!

[CrownOfShadows]

Hmm.

1. Don't show mods that do nothing. Would love this. I noticed this happens with a few, but it would be lovely if it was standard.
2. Hiding unranked duplicates. Eh... wouldn't mind it, doesn't especially bother me though
3. Show real damage. Would also love this. I think there may be programming complexities that make it unlikely and some specific effects may not be possible to exactly pre-compute but overall it would be great.
4. Reduce meta. I think this asking for way too much, it would basically require re-balancing the entire system, all the weapons, all the enemies, everything. There will always be a meta, not everything can or should be equal, and people will always equip the best stuff. Is there an argument that some mods are just too mandatory? Yes, I think that's fair. But I don't think it's worth reworking the entire system to fix it. I think it would be more practical to ask for a third tier of mini-mod slots that have mandatory new polarities and a new suite of accompanying mini-mods that are more truly 'modifications' with minor effects so that you can tweak weapons outside the meta to your taste, but that's basically asking for a shower of new mods and rebalancing in-and-of-itself, and people will just optimize those the same way, only using the ones for damage. Eh... nevermind on that idea, lol.

[Grav_Starstrider]

On 2022-06-02 at 2:22 PM, CrownOfShadows said:

Hiding unranked duplicates. Eh... wouldn't mind it, doesn't especially bother me though

Where it personally bugs me is when the high-cost rank-0 mods are cluttering up my ability to clearly see lower-ranked options that are just as valid. Like when I see unranked spare Condition Overloads or Energy/Health Conversion at 10 drain before I see stuff like the dual-stat Elemental mods or the Drift mods.....

Oh here's a thought. "Show single highest ranked mods before duplicates" aka "Duplicates Last" checkbox, don't need them hidden, just shuffle them to the end after the first highest ranked copy of each mod you own, so that if you're low on capacity you just go there for the unranked version of the thing you'll make ranked after a Forma or two. It'd also more clearly expose when you have never given a mod an honest try, by it being shown unranked before you start seeing all of your partially ranked duplicate mods.

On 2022-06-02 at 2:22 PM, CrownOfShadows said:

Show real damage. Would also love this. I think there may be programming complexities that make it unlikely and some specific effects may not be possible to exactly pre-compute but overall it would be great.

Most of the online mod configuration builder preview tool things can do it..... It could/should just show the minimum and maximum possible damage (assuming direct hit with all pellets/strongest AoE, all "binary" bonuses like "while aiming" or "after headshot" ones, and before any resistances or armor or shields) before factoring in things like elemental procs and the other unaccounted for shifting variables of the game.

I'd hesitate to clutter the UI with too many numbers after suggesting this addition, so at the very least for Melee we could consider converting the numerical values of the special attacks to just being a multiplier of the base damage. So Skana's Base damage of 120 would see their 360 damage slam attack converted to just being a 3x multiplier. Less numerical overload.

And when I think about it, the Arsenal's damage display, if we're doing this, could be radically simplified for at-a-glance digestion by having this at the top. Having a min, max, and average damage output at the very top (per firing mode) would allow upcoming mobile players to have less need to fiddle through configurations and scroll through tons and tons of lines of stats that were changed by each mod they just replaced. Min-maxing players or users of more specific play styles (like Slam-attack centric or status-proc-centric or headshot-centric or air-attack-centric builds) could still see all of the more granular breakdowns of each item. It'd take out a lot of the guesswork and necessity of memorization of interactions and behaviors, for the more casual or math-uninclined players.

On 2022-06-02 at 2:22 PM, CrownOfShadows said:

Is there an argument that some mods are just too mandatory? Yes, I think that's fair

It's nearly universally most noticeably the primary Damage mod for essentially just about every single primary, secondary, and melee, right? The easiest thing to do would be to at least give us one mod slot back by giving us an Aura-like slot (but only applying to self, not squad) for Guns and Melee, which wouldn't be nearly as huge an overhaul as anything else, just gives us a slot back mostly.

They could make the slot unpolarizeable and restricted to Serration/Hornet-Strike/Point-Blank/Rubedo-Lined-Barrel and their variants. They could have their rank-0 "un-drain" be 0, and halve the number of Ranks (adjust to behave exactly as if it was being ranked by 2 ranks every upgrade, for costs and the effectiveness of the mod). For the 10-rank Serration, that'd mean at Rank 5 it'd be maxed out, and only giving us a measly 5 extra capacity (my 8-polarized-slot primaries with the unlocked Exilus slots will be appreciative of even that minor added capacity). This also would give low MR Tenno a free 5 capacity bonus from the start like they get with Aura mods on their Warframes, once they've maxed their Serration (& other main Damage mods) out, so that Polarizing things is marginally less painful (which might actually make people buy more Forma, since it feels like less of a hassle to use).

Also it'd just.... Make the 4 main modding screens just able to be more uniform, with 8 normal slots and 2 special slots each positioned over the other 8. With the left-ward one of the top two consistently granting a small amount of bonus capacity, and all others costing capacity, and with the top-most right slot being a "restricted" slot for an exclusive type of mod. All "Arcanes" simply hanging out to the right of the mods. Parallels! Consistent UI!

And I still believe the other 3 suggestions are valid too though. Especially de-synergizing Multishot from everything else (make it shot-gun'ify and dilute damage, not multiply) and making IPS and Elemental damages just based on base (or post-Serration/etc) damage values for the weapon. Those shouldn't actually be that many too-hard-to-change things about modding, afaik. Granted I'm not a developer and spaghetti code, but even so.

[Grav_Starstrider]

On 2022-05-04 at 8:58 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

On Elements:

Or conversely, give every single weapon an Elemental Efficiency stat <1, so elemental mods all scale from a fraction of a weapon's base damage just like IPS mods in order to tame the numbers a bit. Crit weapons could be given especially low Elemental Efficiency to compensate for being Crit viable.

Puncture procs could be changed so that in addition to the enemy damage debuff of -30 to 75%, weapons get +30 to 75% extra EE against "punctured" enemies. Puncture procs essentially "buff" elemental damage and increases chances of getting elemental procs. Puncture weapons want good EE for maximum Elemental Damage.

Give all weapons a Physical Efficiency stat too and have IPS mods work just like elemental ones. As IPS bonuses are +50% at best which are lower than the +75% that elements enjoy, weapons could have higher PE than EE on average.

AOE weapons could be given especially low PE and EE to compensate for being able to hit multiple targets. Have AOE decreasing mods that Buff PE and EE.

Never really responded to this more granularly, sorry XD

I personally think that this is adding way more complexity than is needed. imo they just need to make IPS and Elemental mods function the same, and make the procs and damage values all approximately as valuable as each other, just with different niches/purposes. They can both just stem from the same base (or base + Damage mods) value. After all, you can have a crit-centric low-status elemental weapon, and the inverse, a status-centric low-crit IPS weapon. You shouldn't be overly pushed into specifically and exclusively a specific meta or hybrid build per weapon based on this new dimension being added to how IPS and Elemental damage mods work. It's basically just that it's unfair, haha, how elements multiply based on total damage and IPS ONLY multiplies based on existing IPS. This'd probably shift the meta a bit, yes, we'd have to see what it does to the modding scene, it'd be a great PTS (public test server) subject. But it'd make modding simpler and make more sense, and help make it easier to juggle how effective or ineffective a buff or nerf to different IPS procs would be, since it'd basically turn all of the IPS into.... Essentially just more elements, I guess. After all. Crit affects Elemental and IPS damage the same way, Damage buffs both the same way, status chance affects them all the same way. Why not just make the IPS damage mods affect IPS on a weapon the exact same way Elemental damage mods do (minus the combining, haha).

On 2022-05-04 at 8:58 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

On Multi-shot:

All Multi-shot mods could be given a secondary negative stat that lowers EE. +90% Multi-shot comes with -30% EE. Why? Split pellets don't carry elemental energies as efficiently I guess. Great on the Tigris Series that want just a bit of Viral, but mostly Slash procs. Non-Slash shotguns might shy away from Multi-shot for something else, since damage increase isn't a strict 1.9x with EE penalty.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just make it be that it doesn't affect damage, or only adds a bit of damage, and mostly just splits all existing damage into more pellets (just shotgun'ifying things), than to add that other brand new statistic? Accuracy already exists too, so if Multishot changed to explicitly add both pellets and spread, there's already stats for those.

 

On 2022-05-04 at 8:58 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

On Crits:

Crit Multipliers could be rolled into Headshot multipliers so they are one and the same. A headshot simply grants flat +100% Critical Chance, basically upgrading your Crit tier. In this way Crit damage is additive with Headshots instead of multiplicative like it is now. In this way, weapons with no Critical Chance can take advantage of Crit multipliers.

I do like this concept, I feel like it could/should be how the Weak Points that aren't headshots should work too. So Crits are basically when a weapon luckily bypasses/pierces armor or a hollow-point explodes inside successfully instead of not, and hits what's crucial to life even moreso than the average shot would, and weak points and headshots are just automatically achieving that goal, so it's just a matter of how much further that shot wrecked that target. After all, a bullet going fully through or partially through a heart in a world full of sci-fi-era medical equipment and expertise is obviously still going to be debilitating in the extreme, but if a hollow-point shreds your heart to pieces... You'd probably be dead on the spot. So, yeah, that'd make sense!

 

On 2022-05-04 at 8:58 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

This would narrow the amount of multiplication going on making QoL a bit more competitive, (or bring a new age of Viral/Slash status weapons) but of course DE would have to rebalance enemy eHP across the board too.

Yeah this is my overall hope/desire/request. Compress the numbers by a good chunk. It's ridiculous when you don't actually know how much damage you're doing because too many numbers are flying across the screen, and they're so long that you don't know whether you just did a billion or trillion damage, but it doesn't seem to matter because SOME OF THE ENEMIES CAN STILL TANK IT (maybe not literally with trillions, but you know what I mean)