Universal Faction mod for the sake of convenience/QOL

[DarcnyssWolfe]

I request Universal Faction damage mods for each weapon category. They should be umbral mods and set to the base faction mod values (1.3x) so the are not so much powercreep as a QOL mod for the few/favored weapons that we already use faction mods in, but are tired of swapping mods/config on every time we change missions. Being at base mod values leaves them inferior to the primed, and making them umbral limits them from being just another staple damage mod. 

[Tiltskillet]

I'd like universal DoT multiplier mods, i.e., doing very roughly what banes do  but just for damage over time procs.  If we got those, they could get rid of the bane mods entirely for all I care, though both that and  true universal banes seem very unlikely to me.

[Zakkhar]

5 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

I'd like universal DoT multiplier mods

They will not double  dip the same way Faction mods do, makig them obsolete.

[Tiltskillet]

56 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

They will not double  dip the same way Faction mods do, makig them obsolete.

 I believe the technology now exists to figure out what 1.55 * 1.55 equals. That would be a starting point for determining  a  final bonus.  

[Zakkhar]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

That would be a starting point for determining  a  final bonus.  

I think the double dipping on DoTs is unintended mechanic and it most likely will be fixed should these mods be introduced.

[Tiltskillet]

46 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

I think the double dipping on DoTs is unintended mechanic and it most likely will be fixed should these mods be introduced.

If it is unintended, they've definitely been aware that it exists for a very long time.  Maybe I'm mixing it up with something else, but I think there was even an old post talking about it from one of the technical people there.  Maybe in regard to Roar.

In any case, if it was to be removed, whether it was called a nerf or a bugfix...that has no direct bearing on my desire for status damage mods.

[Arbitrary]

44 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

but I think there was even an old post talking about it from one of the technical people there.  Maybe in regard to Roar.

 

[Tiltskillet]

@Arbitrary, that's probably it.

[Redrigoth]

They say gas triple dips but I don't see how. Maybe it used to when it also had a toxin tick from the cloud but that is gone now so where is the triple?

I only see faction apply to the weapon hit and then to the gas cloud tick so that is a double dip on the cloud same as any other status effect. And on top of that, unlike other status effects, gas does not get any scaling from the elemental mods, only from base damage mods and crit.

Where is the triple dip and why is gas allegedly very strong? I know if you group enemies then each enemy's cloud will hit every other enemy but electricity does that too doesn't it? And this usually requires armor stripping or huge damage scaling.

[Tiltskillet]

27 minutes ago, Redrigoth said:

They say gas triple dips but I don't see how. Maybe it used to when it also had a toxin tick from the cloud but that is gone now so where is the triple?

Not sure who "they" is, but that sounds like it's referring to gas status when it inflicted toxin damage...and, for a while, triple dipped into the melee stealth multiplier.    Before my time, so I might have this garbled somewhat.  Anyway, about a century ago.

Gas status can, in effect, double dip on headshot damage bonuses, which only it and electric status can do.  They're also distinctive in being AoEs, so can take advantage of overlapping damage.  And the gas AoE is unique in potential area and lingering after target death.  It can be very, very, effective, but it's finicky and demands set up.

DE did refer in the dev workshop to gas double dipping with faction damage bonuses.  Which is true, but all the DoTs do so.   So it doesn't track as a reason to call it "extremely powerful", particularly when it has serious disadvantages the other DoTs don't.

[Zaghyr]

No.

It's not QOL it just defeats the purpose of Faction mods entirely, and if this would be added, then all of the faction mod mods should just be removed because they no longer have a purpose. And then this new 'Universal' Faction mod is just a blanket multiplier whose purpose in a build is exactly the same as Pressure Point, in which case, what the hell is the point of having it? And the DOT double dipping is not a good argument for it either, it just reinforces that we need better options for increasing Status Damage for status builds.

[Gaxxian]

No, that would make the regular Faction mods obsolete. BUT, a mod that only increases DoT dmg? That could be interesting.

[insanitybit]

I'm not sure why the argument "this would make faction mods obsolete" matters.

a) Lots of mods are strictly better than others, but the others aren't "obsolete" because the worse version is less accessible. Primed mods are the obvious example - Primed Flow is strictly better than Flow, but Flow is not obsolete because you can get it very quickly. A universal faction mod would be a great Teshin reward, possibly gated behind a login cap (ie: you can only buy from teshin after day 100, for 650 Steel Essence), leaving plenty of time (100 days + ~8 week rotations or whatever it would be) where the other faction mods are still of the same value. And, just like a primed mod, once you have the better mod you just forget about (or sell) the others.

b) If it required an umbral slot that would be a serious gate for most weapons, forcing you to use the faction-specific mod on many weapons until you get the umbral formas needed (or otherwise mod around it). But it would mean that, progressively, you would have fewer and fewer weapons that you need to think about switching the mods on.

So I don't buy the "it makes the current mods useless" - it wouldn't matter if it did and it doesn't anyway.

The other argument I've seen is that somehow it's good that switching is annoying, that's the "tradeoff". You do an annoying thing, you get a damage bonus. That seems... like a horrible way to build a game. You should do fun things and be rewarded. That's like... the entire premise of gaming.

I use faction mods, got no problem with faction mods. But this is a very obvious QoL win and I think it's as simple as making the mod reasonably difficult to attain (say by time gating it) and reasonably expensive to slot in (umbral).

[Pakaku]

This makes no sense at all. The whole point of the faction mods is that they are stronger against a specific faction. Making them universal would just make them yet another generic damage mod.

[insanitybit]

On 2024-06-06 at 4:43 PM, Pakaku said:

This makes no sense at all. The whole point of the faction mods is that they are stronger against a specific faction. Making them universal would just make them yet another generic damage mod.

You haven't justified why that's a good thing. Something can be "the point" and also not good. But, no, they would not be "another generic damage mod" because faction mods work in a different way than something like Serration does. Also, not every enemy is in a faction.

[Pakaku]

8 minutes ago, insanitybit said:

You haven't justified why that's a good thing. Something can be "the point" and also not good. But, no, they would not be "another generic damage mod" because faction mods work in a different way than something like Serration does. Also, not every enemy is in a faction.

The mods work differently because they double-dip. This is a bug but I imagine it's left as is because it balances out the drawback of only being faction-specific.

If you take away the wrong-faction penalty, what makes the mods stand out? Why have a mod that does exactly what Serration does, without actually being called Serration, and handled in a clumsier way with the unexplained double-dip mechanic.

We have plenty of instances where similar mods have drawbacks to the stronger mods to balance them out. Critical Delay is stronger than Point Strike, but nerfs your fire rate. Elemental-status mods are capped at a lower power percentage than the draw elemental damage mods. Umbral mods are very strong as a set, at the cost of very high drain and having their own unique polarity.

[insanitybit]

11 hours ago, Pakaku said:

If you take away the wrong-faction penalty, what makes the mods stand out? Why have a mod that does exactly what Serration does, without actually being called Serration, and handled in a clumsier way with the unexplained double-dip mechanic.

 

I don't know how you can say "does exactly what serration does" in the first half of a sentence and then "with the [...] double-dip mechanic" at the end. Faction mods obviously don't do what serration does, you say so yourself - "because they double dip". They are better than serration for enemies that are within a faction, which not all enemies are.

> We have plenty of instances where similar mods have drawbacks to the stronger mods to balance them out.

We have instances of the opposite, such as every primed mod. The only drawback, just like Umbral, is increased drain, which is exactly what has been proposed in this thread.

If your point is 'there needs to be a drawback', well, that is what is being proposed.

[Pakaku]

5 hours ago, insanitybit said:

I don't know how you can say "does exactly what serration does" in the first half of a sentence and then "with the [...] double-dip mechanic" at the end. Faction mods obviously don't do what serration does, you say so yourself - "because they double dip". They are better than serration for enemies that are within a faction, which not all enemies are.

A damage mod that does X amount of damage, and a mod that does two instances of Y damage, are still effectively the same thing. There is no functional difference besides a part of the math that isn't explained properly.

[insanitybit]

Okay, well,

a) I disagree. That's like saying that heat and toxin are the same because they both do damage. The "how" and "when" make a big difference. Again - double dipping and only applying to a subset of enemies (those in a faction) are substantial differences.

b) The rest of my post is pretty clear that even if you took for granted that they're actually the same thing it wouldn't matter at all.

Edited June 11 by insanitybit

[Merkranire]

More missions where we fight multiple factions at once would be appreciated; would give more reason for specialising in a faction, akin to how different enemies within the one faction are weak or resistant to different damage types and as a result weapons can enjoy more specialised roles and intertwined usage beyond their intrinsic attributes

[DarcnyssWolfe]

My issue is that (especially with the new nav loadout drop down) I just have multiple loadouts for weapons that actually use faction mods, making it just a (now less but still) inconvenience and (still) plat sink to change loadout to match faction. Having a universal faction damage mod would be completely irrelevant outside mixed faction missions (Crossfire only?) except it'd be more convenient for veteran player and a loss of plat to DE for the extra loadout slots.