Riven mods don't serve the intended function and should not be entirely randomized

[FlightDream]

I'm sure that this will get a lot of backlash, but I really feel like the riven system is working against what it was intended for.

There's 2 reasons why rivens exist. The first reason is as a "buff" for underused weapons because the playerbase tends to only use the strongest weapons and not even give the "semi good" weapons a glance. The second reason is as endgame content for players so they can grind for better stats on a weapon.

With the first reason is in my opinion the most important one. Today I got an insanely good riven for the Orvius weapon, which has a dispo of 5 (1.35x). This riven adds cc, initial combo, toxin and -range to it, which is what the weapon needs, and now I can proc red crits with it. It isn't room nuking OP, but I am having fun with it, and thanks to the riven, and in my opinion, solely due to the riven it can keep up to an extent with the higher level gameplay.

This is how rivens are ought to be and what their purpose was supposed to be. Underused weapons can be used again because the rivens compensate for the lack of innate stats. But it also has a problem. The only reason I had this riven was due to luck. I did not cycle it, I just got it when I unveiled it. If it did not have the good stats when I unveiled it then I wouldn't have even considered using it, and I'd have moved on to a riven on a better weapon.

Making the stats on a riven randomized is counterproductive. Getting the stats you want on a riven is an extremely long time consuming process that requires a ton of kuva, and even then you are not guaranteed to get what you want. There is absolutely no reason for anybody to even consider this time investment on a subpar weapon. If I am going to spend weeks grinding kuva and cycling the riven, it's going to be on a good weapon. 

Rivens have become a luxury instead, to bring out just that extra bit of potential damage from an already top-tier weapon. The disposition makes no sense here either. Everybody's going to wait till they get a riven on a good weapon and roll that. 

In my opinion, DE should double down on one of these points. Is the purpose of rivens to compensate sub-par weapons with stats that they innately lack? Let us "hold" a stat at the cost of kuva when cycling, or let us choose the stats at the cost of more kuva. Is the purpose of rivens to be an end-game luxury? Then remove the disposition and give all rivens the same multiplier. 

Right now rivens have the worst of both. The expensive, long lasting and not even guaranteed grind, and the low bonus it provides. 

[PublikDomain]

Yeah, if Rivens are supposed to encourage me to revisit my arsenal... Kinda hard to do that when I can't get a Riven for the weapon I actually have an interest in revisiting.

If I'm expected to go on the "journey to the perfect roll"... Kinda hard to do that when said "journey" is just blindly stumbling around until I get tired of it and settle for stats I don't really want.

Rivens are just mods. They're just stats. They ought to be as commonplace and accessible in builds as potatoes or Forma or Arcanes, not some rare, expensive outlier. Tokenizing Veiled Rivens was a great step for Riven QoL, and we need more of stuff like that. Deterministic Unveiling, Stat Locking, Riven Valence. There's a lot that could be improved.

[Tyreaus]

17 minutes ago, FlightDream said:

Is the purpose of rivens to be an end-game luxury? Then remove the disposition and give all rivens the same multiplier. 

While I tend to agree with the thought behind the thread, this is a bit iffy.

We have had AoE nerfs recently, so there is a matter of some weapons hitting a sort of "design cap" on power and efficacy. But other weapons, like the Braton or the Stug, are in no danger of hitting that cap any time soon. They've got wiggle room; some other weapons don't.

If we discarded dispositions, we would either see that design cap easily broken by those top tier weapons—let's be real, the damage system is frayed enough as it is—or see Rivens across the board neutered to keep the top performers under the cap. The former may see further nerfs to base weapons in response, which I doubt anyone would like, and the latter seems to break the Riven system as a whole. Neither seems to be terribly beneficial, especially to those who aren't in the Riven business. (E.g. me.)

Personally, I lean more toward something like "locking stats, but locked Rivens can't be traded". It keeps some market value for high-value rolls, even adding value to mid-value rolls, furthering the end-game purpose of Rivens. But it also enables Rivens to act as buffs to underused weapons. In a sense, it takes the two purposes that don't play well together and erects a wall between them.

[Synpai]

It's nice to see newer players pick up the same sentiment that echoed into the background after so many players basically stopped screaming about the system. We kinda had to accept that DE has probably acknowledged the flaws in the Ribben (I know how I'm spelling it) system and simply hasn't had time nor the opportunity to even fathom prioritizing it.

 

A majority of players (those not making platinum banks exploiting players) have brought up a ton of Ribben QOL sentiments:

• Stat Locking
• Weapon Progression (I.e: I want to chose what weapon to invest in...why make it RNG)
• Removing percentage based stats (I.e: really bad weapons are going to stay really bad because it doesn't matter how much %damage you add to the stug, i's not going to suddenly perform like the Kompressa with a fraction of the investment)

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

1 hour ago, FlightDream said:

Making the stats on a riven randomized is counterproductive. Getting the stats you want on a riven is an extremely long time consuming process that requires a ton of kuva, and even then you are not guaranteed to get what you want. There is absolutely no reason for anybody to even consider this time investment on a subpar weapon. If I am going to spend weeks grinding kuva and cycling the riven, it's going to be on a good weapon. 

Its supposed to be a resource thats endlessly needed for those with nothing better to do. It also serves as a reward that DE can give to players in large amounts for exclusive events to make the events a bit more satisfying to participate in. It even makes them a little bit of money as people purchase them for plat, even if they buy it from traded plat thats more traded plat that wont go to desired things like slots and cosmetics, so that still means DE makes money.

All without having to spend time and money working on new resources and create new gear for those resources to be useful for. 

It works out quite well for us and especially DE

1 hour ago, FlightDream said:

The disposition makes no sense here either. Everybody's going to wait till they get a riven on a good weapon and roll that. 

Eh, i see many doing it on weapons they simply like too. I know i do

29 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Personally, I lean more toward something like "locking stats, but locked Rivens can't be traded". It keeps some market value for high-value rolls, even adding value to mid-value rolls, furthering the end-game purpose of Rivens. But it also enables Rivens to act as buffs to underused weapons. In a sense, it takes the two purposes that don't play well together and erects a wall between them.

Why i follow this mans, genuis! If you ever get into game design and release anything hit me up to play it 

The stat locking cost should be REALLY high though to keep those prices semi up high. Cause if not well no one will buy the rivens cause they can just stat lock their own

Also maybe the higher the disposition, the less the cost of riven stat locking?

[Xylena_Lazarow]

Virgin 3000p cc/cd/ms god roll

vs

Chad 30p punch/reload/tox mod compression roll

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

You can keep asking, but don't expect changes anytime soon. They've rightfully said no multiple times. 

But I'll go ahead and counter some arguments since I'm seeing false narratives:

"not even give the "semi good" weapons a glance"

You made the claim so you need to say what a "semi good" weapon is or this is plain false.

What are you basing this on? I use rivens for all kinds of weapons that aren't even new or that good. Even if a weapon's usage stats are 2%.....that's 2% of approximately 45,000 players which is not a small number. That's still thousands of players.

Next we have this point:

"Underused weapons can be used again because the rivens compensate for the lack of innate stats."

No one should be holding an old weapon meant to be replaced to the standard of Steel Path endurance. You can use many rivenless weapons and/or subpar rivens for most of the game's content.

It is true that a high dispo riven can make up for a weapon's short comings....but what is also true is that you have a multitude of ways to also compensate for a weapons shortcomings via arcanes, warframe abilities, specters, Operators, the helminth and most recently shards. All these tools stack and can easily let you make up for a a weapon's short comings.  

"Is the purpose of rivens to be an end-game luxury? Then remove the disposition and give all rivens the same multiplier."

Dispositions are where they are because the players shot themselves in the foot and complained that their rivens were being nerfed. Do you want you Orvius riven nerfed if it becomes popular again? Yes or no? 

Ultimately, rivens are just a bonus to play around with. No one is guaranteed anything, and if you want something really bad, use plat or enjoy your journey playing the game until you get lucky, because you do not need godrolls to play the game.

Rolling even useable stats for a riven is not time consuming or difficult. The issue is some players expecting the best rarest rolls just because they think they deserve them. It's supposed to be random.

[Graavarg]

What we REALLY need is a riven slot for every unique weapon (type) in our Arsenal, locked to that weapon.

That way we could make EVERY weapon shine, without the slots only being used to stock up rivens for trading. Anyone interested in tinkering with weapons in general would get a sh*tload of content, without taking anything away from the metas.

Without those slots (of which the absolute majority should be limited to specific weapon types) any other changes will ONLY serve the current uses of rivens, which is mostly about improving already über-strong weapons further.

[Pakaku]

Rivens don't stop serving their purpose just because you get unlucky rolls. They still follow weapon dispositions, which are still usually in favour of unpopular weapons.

I'd say the biggest hindrance is how slow it is to get any disposition changes in either direction. There are new weapons that clearly underperform, but still start at 1 on release and only get nudged a bit every time the dispositions get updated.

[RobWasHere]

I tried to come up with something to lessen the riven rng tied to semi-endgame replayable activity:

Yes, I stole it from hack & slash games, but they work well there and can work well here as well.

[B.P.Emma]

as an aside, the worst of all is disposition, and predominately the reason ill never touch rivens. sure it might take infinite time to get your dream riven (or more accurately a couple hundred plat lol, who truly has the patience to wait that long) but even then you arent safe, because come next patch your perfect riven might arbitrarily be nerfed (or buffed in the case of the single riven i use on tenet tetra) based on how good its determined to be at that given moment

id literally rather rivens not exist for guns theyre set to be arbitrarily nerfed on… 

[FlightDream]

2 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

You can keep asking, but don't expect changes anytime soon. They've rightfully said no multiple times. 

But I'll go ahead and counter some arguments since I'm seeing false narratives:

"not even give the "semi good" weapons a glance"

You made the claim so you need to say what a "semi good" weapon is or this is plain false.

What are you basing this on? I use rivens for all kinds of weapons that aren't even new or that good. Even if a weapon's usage stats are 2%.....that's 2% of approximately 45,000 players which is not a small number. That's still thousands of players.

Next we have this point:

"Underused weapons can be used again because the rivens compensate for the lack of innate stats."

No one should be holding an old weapon meant to be replaced to the standard of Steel Path endurance. You can use many rivenless weapons and/or subpar rivens for most of the game's content.

It is true that a high dispo riven can make up for a weapon's short comings....but what is also true is that you have a multitude of ways to also compensate for a weapons shortcomings via arcanes, warframe abilities, specters, Operators, the helminth and most recently shards. All these tools stack and can easily let you make up for a a weapon's short comings.  

"Is the purpose of rivens to be an end-game luxury? Then remove the disposition and give all rivens the same multiplier."

Dispositions are where they are because the players shot themselves in the foot and complained that their rivens were being nerfed. Do you want you Orvius riven nerfed if it becomes popular again? Yes or no? 

Ultimately, rivens are just a bonus to play around with. No one is guaranteed anything, and if you want something really bad, use plat or enjoy your journey playing the game until you get lucky, because you do not need godrolls to play the game.

Rolling even useable stats for a riven is not time consuming or difficult. The issue is some players expecting the best rarest rolls just because they think they deserve them. It's supposed to be random.

Sure, I'll bite.

When I say that "the playerbase tends to only use the strongest weapons and not even give the "semi good" weapons a glance", it is hyperbolic. I don't believe that players don't even glance at them, the message I was conveying was that the players tend to pick the strongest weapons when they have the choice of which weapon to choose, and with the time investment required for rivens it'd make sense for players to only spend this time on the best weapons they have. With "semi good" I am talking about a weapon that's decent but not top-tier. Make of that what you will.

I am basing it on the statistics DE released. (Warframe: 2021 Stats). The weapons at the top are all either "top tier" weapons(ignis, bramma, acceltra, zarr, rubico) or starter weapons / early game weapons that a lot of newer players get (mk1 weapons, dread, boltor). There's a clear preference in what weapons people actually use. People want the strong aoe weapons, and that's understandable.

There's simply no incentive for players to use weapons that are not top tier. Rivens do not fix that, and riven disposition does not change it either. Players would still rather have a godroll riven their strongest weapon that barely improves by it than another interesting weapon with a low dispo.  That is my criticism. The time investment is not worth it on a riven for a weapon that is not as strong as the top weapons that exist.

"Do you want you Orvius riven nerfed if it becomes popular again? Yes or no? ". To answer it, yeah, if it becomes popular, go ahead and nerf the disposition. I am confident in that it won't get nerfed because players are not incentivised to try it out. They instead want the glaive prime and are willing to pay 400 plat for a glaive riven that is unrolled. Nevermind the fact that the orvius is fun as hell to use, it has a unique mechanic that traps enemies and can deal out enough damage to kill on the steel path. 

I'm sure there's plenty of players who'd love to try the Orvius with my riven out too. The problem is that they will likely never have this chance, so instead they go for a statistically objectively better weapon that's similar, hence why there's such a huge disparity.

The ultimate point I was making was that either the rivens function as compensation to get players to use weapons that are not in the meta, or they function as luxury, making disposition pointless. The disposition's goal is to promote underused weapons, it currently fails at it. DE could embrace the luxury aspect and double down on them being luxury mods, or they could make cycling the stats less of a time investment and subsequently make other weapons more accessible at higher levels.

I want to use weapons that are not meta, but the investment is not worth it. I don't care about the market, I just like using fun weapons. If a weapon can't keep up on the level I want to play at then either I have to intentionally play on a lower difficulty or use a weapon that is better.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, FlightDream said:

Sure, I'll bite.

When I say that "the playerbase tends to only use the strongest weapons and not even give the "semi good" weapons a glance", it is hyperbolic. I don't believe that players don't even glance at them, the message I was conveying was that the players tend to pick the strongest weapons when they have the choice of which weapon to choose, and with the time investment required for rivens it'd make sense for players to only spend this time on the best weapons they have. With "semi good" I am talking about a weapon that's decent but not top-tier. Make of that what you will.

I am basing it on the statistics DE released. (Warframe: 2021 Stats). The weapons at the top are all either "top tier" weapons(ignis, bramma, acceltra, zarr, rubico) or starter weapons / early game weapons that a lot of newer players get (mk1 weapons, dread, boltor). There's a clear preference in what weapons people actually use. People want the strong aoe weapons, and that's understandable.

There's simply no incentive for players to use weapons that are not top tier. Rivens do not fix that, and riven disposition does not change it either. Players would still rather have a godroll riven their strongest weapon that barely improves by it than another interesting weapon with a low dispo.  That is my criticism. The time investment is not worth it on a riven for a weapon that is not as strong as the top weapons that exist.

"Do you want you Orvius riven nerfed if it becomes popular again? Yes or no? ". To answer it, yeah, if it becomes popular, go ahead and nerf the disposition. I am confident in that it won't get nerfed because players are not incentivised to try it out. They instead want the glaive prime and are willing to pay 400 plat for a glaive riven that is unrolled. Nevermind the fact that the orvius is fun as hell to use, it has a unique mechanic that traps enemies and can deal out enough damage to kill on the steel path. 

I'm sure there's plenty of players who'd love to try the Orvius with my riven out too. The problem is that they will likely never have this chance, so instead they go for a statistically objectively better weapon that's similar, hence why there's such a huge disparity.

The ultimate point I was making was that either the rivens function as compensation to get players to use weapons that are not in the meta, or they function as luxury, making disposition pointless. The disposition's goal is to promote underused weapons, it currently fails at it. DE could embrace the luxury aspect and double down on them being luxury mods, or they could make cycling the stats less of a time investment and subsequently make other weapons more accessible at higher levels.

I want to use weapons that are not meta, but the investment is not worth it. I don't care about the market, I just like using fun weapons. If a weapon can't keep up on the level I want to play at then either I have to intentionally play on a lower difficulty or use a weapon that is better.

Everyone has different incentives and time investments. 

I know it seems hard to believe, but people do actually use the Harpak and Karak and sub par weapons with average rivens. The fun is in seeing what you get and using it. That's why I have 4 rivens of the same weapon with multiple copies of the weapon to have fun making different builds. 

And the fact that some weapons are mostly used is more of a reason to not implement stat locking, as we're just gonna have people making god rolls for AOE weapons which will result in more nerfs and more angry people.

I was there for the backlash. Just because you as an individual think it's ok to nerf people's rivens doesn't mean they're ok with it.

What specific level and missions are you referring to that you can't use your orvius? Because most players really are not doing 6 hour steel path runs. And those that are should rightfully be adjusting their arsenal to do this. 

If you want to casually take an orvius into a 6 hour steel path run that's your decision that you made.

[FlightDream]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Everyone has different incentives and time investments. 

I know it seems hard to believe, but people do actually use the Harpak and Karak and sub par weapons with average rivens. The fun is in seeing what you get and using it. That's why I have 4 rivens of the same weapon with multiple copies of the weapon to have fun making different builds. 

And the fact that some weapons are mostly used is more of a reason to not implement stat locking, as we're just gonna have people making god rolls for AOE weapons which will result in more nerfs and more angry people.

I was there for the backlash. Just because you as an individual think it's ok to nerf people's rivens doesn't mean they're ok with it.

What specific level and missions are you referring to that you can't use your orvius? Because most players really are not doing 6 hour steel path runs. And those that are should rightfully be adjusting their arsenal to do this. 

If you want to casually take an orvius into a 6 hour steel path run that's your decision that you made.

Yes, it's fun to see what you get, but that's not what I was talking about. 

Both the Harpak and Karak are indeed used, but only 0.08% and 0.04% respectively. Again, this is explained by the fact that there is no incentive to use them when there are way better alternatives.

The element of disposition is to favor largely unused weapons over used weapons. People wanting the best stats is pretty much universal. People would want a god roll for any weapon, and especially if they'd want to make it compete with the better weapons. Hence the "compensation" part of disposition. The only difference is that the grind will not be as tedious and you won't have to spend 3k plat to make your already busted weapon slightly better. 

If the purpose of rivens are a luxury then keeping the disposition is pointless. The disposition is to get people to encourage people to use unused guns and to discourage from sticking to the meta. 

And no, I am not doing 6 hour steel path runs. I'm talking about star chart SP. The difference between the glaive prime and orvius is huge. With the exact same setup on the glaive minus the riven it still deals more damage than the orvius. With this riven I can proc red crits and finally deal competent damage. 

The point I'm making is that the hassle to get a riven that lets me use fun weapons is way too large. I'm way better off spinning the riven lottery over and over again on a weapon that's innately better than a weapon with a way better alternative. If the purpose of rivens is to compensate underused weapons, then they should be more accessible. The accessibility part is required for when you want to revitalize the usage of unused weapons. If the purpose is as a luxury, like archon shards are, then they should be universal. Disposition's function is encouraging unused weapons, discouraging meta weapons, and in practice it does not fulfil it's purpose.

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, FlightDream said:

Yes, it's fun to see what you get, but that's not what I was talking about. 

Both the Harpak and Karak are indeed used, but only 0.08% and 0.04% respectively. Again, this is explained by the fact that there is no incentive to use them when there are way better alternatives.

The element of disposition is to favor largely unused weapons over used weapons. People wanting the best stats is pretty much universal. People would want a god roll for any weapon, and especially if they'd want to make it compete with the better weapons. Hence the "compensation" part of disposition. The only difference is that the grind will not be as tedious and you won't have to spend 3k plat to make your already busted weapon slightly better. 

If the purpose of rivens are a luxury then keeping the disposition is pointless. The disposition is to get people to encourage people to use unused guns and to discourage from sticking to the meta. 

And no, I am not doing 6 hour steel path runs. I'm talking about star chart SP. The difference between the glaive prime and orvius is huge. With the exact same setup on the glaive minus the riven it still deals more damage than the orvius. With this riven I can proc red crits and finally deal competent damage. 

The point I'm making is that the hassle to get a riven that lets me use fun weapons is way too large. I'm way better off spinning the riven lottery over and over again on a weapon that's innately better than a weapon with a way better alternative. If the purpose of rivens is to compensate underused weapons, then they should be more accessible. The accessibility part is required for when you want to revitalize the usage of unused weapons. If the purpose is as a luxury, like archon shards are, then they should be universal. Disposition's function is encouraging unused weapons, discouraging meta weapons, and in practice it does not fulfil it's purpose.

 

So the riven actually did its job....you just admitted the riven system fulfilled its purpose. You used a riven to make a subpar weapon more competent due to its high dispo.Your gripe is that you just want easy god rolls for future endeavors.

You're claiming acquiring kuva and rolling for a perfect roll is some arduous task when its just your expectations that are not aligned with their purpose. You even admitted you got a good roll just by unveiling, so you didn't even waste any time or kuva... You could have rolled that riven maybe 30 times and still got something decent. Some players pass up good rolls because it's not perfect, and that's their fault for not understanding modding or mechanics.

The game has made it increasingly easier over time to acquire kuva.

Do I need to list all the ways you can now get kuva? Some people aren't aware, so knowing may help you realize how easy it is...like DE recently adding kuva to Palladino for 10 slivers.

If you can't afford a resource booster then I'd reccomend looking up ways to make plat instead. It's really easy.

 

[Graavarg]

10 hours ago, FlightDream said:

There's simply no incentive for players to use weapons that are not top tier. Rivens do not fix that, and riven disposition does not change it either. Players would still rather have a godroll riven their strongest weapon that barely improves by it than another interesting weapon with a low dispo.  That is my criticism. The time investment is not worth it on a riven for a weapon that is not as strong as the top weapons that exist.

You are not totally wrong, but you could have put it as "a lot of players", instead of inferring that your argument cover all players. There are also players that likes tinkering with the multitude of odd weapons available in Warframe. The core of that group consists of players having cleared all content they are interested in and with no reason left to play Warframe, so they turn to the "sandbox diversity" for content. When you "clear" the game there isn't all that much left: cosmetics, friends, a few interesting missions, some new content (which generally is cleared in a day), trading (which gets old fast) and playing around with "builds" (warframes, weapons and full setups). Most of that content resides in the weapons (even numerically), but you really a need a riven to play around with and to push a weapon's stats past the standard modding limit.

Rivens are basically used for three things:

1. Adding more power + going for maximum power (meta) => a very limited number of weapons
2. Trading for plat => the players willing to pay a lot all belong to group 1 => a very limited number of weapons
3. Making (almost) all weapons interesting => the stated original purpose

What is so strange is that it is only the original purpose (3) that has been hard-locked by DE, by setting an arbitrary riven cap. The "power trip" use is limited by RNG and player effort (collecting kuva and rolling rivens), and trading is basically unlimited (or you could say it limits itself, according to pseudo-"free market rules").

The interplay between these three main riven uses results in most rivens applicable for tinkering with the weapons (group 3) are generally considered "worthless" by power-trippers and traders, and are commonly destroyed or transmuted, and disappear from the game. The other main interplay is between "power" and "plat value", a sort of pseudo-economic function of rarity and power vs customer base (not everyone is willing to play 2k for a digital "power card").

Your suggestion does very little for solving the problems linked to the original purpose of rivens, and just adds to some of the problems on the money-power axis (in a "pouring petrol on the fire"-way). However, if riven slots were actually linked to specific weapons and every weapon in a player's arsenal could have it's own riven, that same suggestion would neatly split into two: it would make tinkering with all those weapons easier and it would make the power- and/or plat-focused "god-rolling" easier. But without these two interfering with each other (as they currently do).

[FlightDream]

3 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

So the riven actually did its job....you just admitted the riven system fulfilled its purpose. You used a riven to make a subpar weapon more competent due to its high dispo.Your gripe is that you just want easy god rolls for future endeavors.

You're claiming acquiring kuva and rolling for a perfect roll is some arduous task when its just your expectations that are not aligned with their purpose. You even admitted you got a good roll just by unveiling, so you didn't even waste any time or kuva... You could have rolled that riven maybe 30 times and still got something decent. Some players pass up good rolls because it's not perfect, and that's their fault for not understanding modding or mechanics.

The game has made it increasingly easier over time to acquire kuva.

Do I need to list all the ways you can now get kuva? Some people aren't aware, so knowing may help you realize how easy it is...like DE recently adding kuva to Palladino for 10 slivers.

If you can't afford a resource booster then I'd reccomend looking up ways to make plat instead. It's really easy.

 

Jesus Christ you are dishonest xD 

I said that that rivens do function their purpose when you get a roll good enough to compensate for the innate lack. The problem is that this is "when", and the vast majority of players do not get a riven good enough to bring subpar weapons to use. Again, look at the statistics. Players rarely, if at all use weapons that are not in the meta. Players are way more likely to just pull out a bramma, zarr or ignis instead.

The RNG aspect is what makes it so tedious. I got incredibly lucky on the orvius riven, had the stats been different then I wouldn't have had any incentive to use it when the glaive prime already exists. The probability of getting it is way too small, and like the majority of players, I'd spend the kuva on rivens for weapons that are already innately good instead. I've spent hundreds of rolls on rivens already, because RNG is involved there is no guarantee of getting the right stats on a weapon I need.

When the purpose is to get players to use the weapons more, it requires accessibility. Being able to lock a stat still includes  some sort of process. but a statistically speaking much more bearable one.

Rifles for instance have 24 possible stats. Rivens can have 2-3 positives and 0-1 negatives. The probability of you getting 2 desired positives is 0.181% AKA 552 rolls. And this is ignoring the possibility of getting a negative that ruins the riven, not having a negative to boost the desired positive stats and not having a third positive that can help. 

If we can lock a stat, this becomes MUCH more bearable. We can roll until 2 of stats are desired positives, and statistically speaking it'd bring down the rolls needed on average from 552 to 47, or 1,916,950 kuva vs  149,450 kuva.

This time investment is way too much for players when a better alternative already exists. This is why you don't see players using weapons like the Harpak or Karak very often. With the result being that underused weapons don't get used, therefore due to accessibility the riven system does not serve it's intended function. 

[Frendh]

I think the system is good the way it is. Rivens are a bonus. If you want the extra damage then work for it. You can do all content without rivens.  Tridolons on steel path included.

150k kuva is dirt cheap(too cheap) for a riven with the desired roll.  Use the better alternative then if the time investment is too much for you.  All content is not meant to be suitable for everyone.

Also, rivens are becoming "better" over time. Because the pool of weapons keep increasing at constant rate while the playerbase does not.