[Proposal] Mods 2.5 - Crafting Dual-Stat Mods For Build-Variety

[MeduSalem]

Since some days I’ve been playing around with the thought about how it would be if we could craft our own Dual-Stat Mods aka “Nightmare-Mods” in a future release (not yet, because there are other problems that need more attention and too many features down the pipeline).

Warning: I spoilered out some of the in-depth thoughts so people don't have to read through a wall of text. There's no need to read all of it, but if you're interested feel free to do so, also if you've got a question or complain, try to figure out if it's already covered in one of my sections.
 

About the advantages

 

• Solves problems with capacity problems/not having enough mod-slots
• Creates more build-diversity
• Give more control over elemental combinations
• Give Auras more sense, because of having two of their Stats.
• Have all 4 Warframe-abilities equipped all time, without sacrificing any of them to max one specific (even more needed once the general purpose skills will be available!)
• There's a use for our ever-growing duplicates other than selling/trading/fusing away
• Rebalances some mod values to get rid of some ridiculous stats

 

About the conditions [important to read!]

 

• It being "recipe"-based so the Devs don't lose the control over the new madness created
• The mods have to have the same number of fusion ranks
• The mods have to have the same polarity
• The mods have to be of the same type for example only two rifle mods, but that’s obvious anyways
• If it's already a Dual-Stat mod, you can't combine/increase it any further with any Single/Dual-Stat counterpart!
• It costs a fortune to do it, because after all you're "slipstreaming” mods. Maybe also a “new” resource type or Forma to do it.
• Optional: Mods have to be maxed out and get reset once fused together
• Optional: The mods have to be the same rarity

 

About the limitations [important to read!]

 

Obviously there has to be a limit on how many mods with the same specific stat can be equipped at the same time to prevent exploiting. Otherwise everybody would use Multishot and more Multishot to make your rifles deadly Shotguns.

That shouldn’t be possible in any case, so for example something like Hellfire + Wildfire or Lethal Torrent + Barrel Diffusion equipped at the same time has to be forbidden to make the whole system work.

So for example either you have Hellfire and do loads of Fire damage or you have Magazine Warp and have more Bullets per Magazine or you have Wildfire and sacrifice a bit of both mods to have both stats. Same applies to Lethal Torrent + Barrel Diffusion.
 

That would apply to every other mod combination too! Don’t cry about it, as you will nearly double your mod capacity anyways, so you will get overpowered at some point. It just ends with this ever-growing stacking-stats-madness with ever-increasing fire-power and goes more for build-variety.
 

Also to consider some balancing the individual stats of the Dual-Stat mod get lowered to ⅔rd compared to their Single-Stat Counterparts. So either you have a strong Single-Stat mod or you have the best of both worlds, but at the cost of efficiency, but not both. The way the most Dual-Stat mods are tweaked already.

 

About the prerequisites

 

• Being able to change already polarized slots to a different polarity altogether, for example if you want to get rid of your V-polarity you can change it into a Bar-polarity. So in general this means you only have to forma a Weapon a maximum of 8 times (which is more than enough anyways) before you're able to have any polarity-configuration on your weapon that you desire. Don’t forget about 10 for Warframes and Sentinels.
• Being able to split up those Dual-Stat mods to their respective Single-Stat variants. I know there seems like no reason to do so at first, but I bet the problem would arise sooner or later, so I’d think about that in advance.
• DE implementing a system that creates a generic-mod-name depending on its originals, because obviously they can’t foresee every combination and hence give it a unique name. They can add unique names later on, when some combinations gained “popularity” - A case for Sheldon's tools!

 

About the Polarities

 

So I’ve already thought about the polarities. When both mods share the same polarity it’s obvious what the resulting polarity would be:
 

 

 But if there would be two different polarities involved:
 

 

Then there are several possible solutions about that arising problem:
 

• It depends on which mod you selected first when fusing. But that would create at least two versions of each Dual-Stat mod. That’s just not feasible, because it would pollute our mod collections and have no purpose at all.
• Dual-Stat mods with different original polarities could keep both of them, so you can slot them in either polarized slot, but that looks ugly and confusing.
• Creates a different or “new” polarity altogether
• Only mods with same polarities can be fused

 

I went with number 4 for what players can do and number 3 for what DE is allowed and encouraged to do. Reasoning:
 

• It’s much easier to implement, does give the player more variety, but not too much at the same time
• DE still has some room for intentional Dual-Stat mods that break the law, because you can’t obtain those by fusing, making them “rare”, “experimental” or “unstable” ones.

 

Those “unstable/experimental” ones (which would apply to most of the already available Dual-stat mods) could have a different “new” polarity that takes that unreliable piece of crap. For example I used the Nightmare skull (how ironic) as placeholder for now:
 

 

So for example with the V and Bar polarities it would create a nightmare-polarity:
 

 

About the Mod-costs

 

The mod-costs are definitely a problem that has to be solved during this process.

For example if you look at Wildfire... It would be made of Hellfire (costs 11) and Magazine Warp (costs 9), but the resulting Wildfire costs only 9.

I think it should cost 11 like Hellfire, also there are even more ridiculous Dual-Stat mods around for example shred and the new Poison/Status-Chance-Mods.

So the Mod-Cost of the Dual-Stat-Mod should be as high as the cost of the highest involved Single-Stat-Mod.
 

This creates another efficiency scheme, where people will try to fuse only mods with the same Mod-Costs, so they don't waste any potential. This offers a new min-max micromanagement for those who like it. Also that's the reason why a Dual-Stat mod should be split-able, because nobody wants to be punished for doing a wrong micromanagement.

 

About the Elementals + Combinations

 

For it to work I’d scrap the way elemental combinations are determined right now. If you want to have an elemental combination for example Corrosive, you’d take a 90% Toxin and 90% Electric mod and fuse them together to create an 60%+60%=120% Corrosive mod.

But if you’d put a Toxin and Electric mod separately on your weapon, then it deals 90% Toxin and 90% Electric each individually. The way it was before Damage 2.0.

Also there has to be a limitation on which of the elements can Proc, given an enemy has already a Proc on it, because otherwise it would lead to “frozen enemy is on fire” again. But that’s something that is implemented anyways in some sort, because what happens when 2 different players, one having Cold Damage, the other having Fire, shoot at the same enemy and casting a Proc at the same time? Fire and Cold? Or the one that came first?

What are the benefits:
 

• More control over how elementals combine and not forcefully combining base-elements
• More intuitive display of the result. You actually have a Corrosive mod and not relying on the buggy Arsenal Display to figure stuff out.
• More build varieties against the same faction, as of 11.5 the build diversity is sacrificed to give factions more diversity and depth.

 

Something that has to be discussed is the then arising Rainbow-Problem. So I don't know if it should be possible to have for example a Corrosive-Mod installed and at the same time a Toxin-Mod too. It also would defy the rule of not stacking stats.

 

About the Corrupted Mods

 

I’ve the opinion that the Corrupted Mods should be the only mods that are allowed to stack their stats with another already equipped mod.

This is for one major reason: They come with a trade-off, which may gain you bonus on one particular stat, but it diminishes the effect of another one. So that’s perfectly fair.

As suggested they could be even more punishing towards one specific stat, because of them being the only ones allowed to stack.

 

About the Rebalancing of Mods

 

Obviously some of the already existing mods have to be rebalanced, some changed to make it work.

For the most part the existing Dual-Stat mods have to “display” the Single-Stat variants they are built upon and to make the “⅔rd-calculation-rule” be more consistent, so they have to be raised or lowered depending on what seems more legit or has been discussed in other threads already.

To make elementals work, the Cold-Mods’ polarity has to be changed to the bar-type, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to use them with the other elementals. But that seems perfectly okay to me. Also I raised all of the elemental-mods’ values to 90%, because really… Why do they have to differ from each other?
 

I did the same with the Physical Damage mods, because… honestly they are screwed to say at least and no-one ever gives a second look about them because of their low stats and because nobody has free slots to use them anyways - and so they become a perfectly legit option, like the “poor-man’s” version of elementals.

 Also some changes about Blaze, because in my honest opinion I think it should reflect the rifle-version with additional mag capacity and not plain damage. Yeah I know this could be controversial for our shotgun-players (like I used to be myself in the past), but it seems somewhat legit.

Another part one can talk about is that damn Vigor-mod, because of obvious reasons - The stats of the Vigor mod are too low to be effective, so I raised them by a drastic amount to display ⅔rd of Vitality/Redirection.
 

I also changed some polarities to what I think fits them better and to compensate for changing the Cold-Mods to Bar-polarity.

 

There are still some mods missing, which should be changed in either Polarities or stats, but I dealt with the currently available Dual-Stat-Mods and their corresponding Single-Stat-Mods.

 

Suggested change lists

 

 

 

Common Questions

 

Why not adding more Mod-Slots instead?

 

Because it is a cheap-solution that won't work out eventually. I've done some calculation for that and it is proven to be worthless, because it is a fact that if you add more Mod-Slots the overall Capacity doesn't improve because it is capped at 60 with an added Catalysator. So for example:

9 Slots on a weapon each with a polarization. Most mods require 9 or 11 mod points when maxed out, some even more, some a little bit less. So say 6-7 mod points on each slot because of polarization... Makes at least 9 * 5 = 45, 9 * 6 = 54 or 9 * 7 = 63... See where this leads? After adding 2 more slots you'd hit the limit again.

It even gets uglier on Warframes with their already 10 Slots and will be in the future when they add more General purpose abilities every Frame is able to use.

Also it is already a pain to get 8 polarized Slots on an Item... And then you'd have to do even more, which is a complete waste of time and energy in my opinion - just another time-sink which literally adds nothing.
 

What this thread is not about

 

• Droptables: That’s a whole different topic, which has to be addressed, since some of the mods, especially Contagious Spread is nearly impossible to obtain other than through Transmutation. Some mods would have to be more common, others can be made more seldom.
• Armor-scaling and other elemental resistances, there are already various topics about them.
• Too easy endgame/enemies. That's also a whole different topic that DE needs to address anyways because otherwise players get bored to hell once they reached the point there's no real challenge anymore - a problem that some of the more experienced players already face.

Edited February 24, 2014 by MeduSalem

[immolator1001]

I think this is really cool (first time I saw fusion this is what I thought it was). But i feel like I would be able to make tons of combinations of multishot which would turn my rifle into a shotgun.

[MeduSalem]

But i feel like I would be able to make tons of combinations of multishot which would turn my rifle into a shotgun.

 

No! That's prevented, because you can have only one mod equipped that has multishot on it, otherwise it would totaly break every balance.

 

Sure now you can do that, but with the proposed system, there's an end to that madness of stacking stats. Then it really boils down to what's your personal taste.

Edited December 25, 2013 by MeduSalem

[lonelydrone]

nice post, however, people would just craft insanely OP mods, just like the ones you used to get in mods 1.0; here are some expamples:

 

- multishot + dmg (split chamber + serration)

- power efficiency + power strenght (streamline + focus)

 

This is why mods 2.0 was released, to prevent game becoming way too easy from OP mods.

Letting people create their own mods would create the very same problem mods 2.0 solved.

 

So for me it's a "NO, BUT THANK YOU."

Edited December 25, 2013 by lonelydrone

[MeduSalem]

nice post, however, people would just craft insanely OP mods, just like the ones you used to get in mods 1.0; here are some expamples:

 

- multishot + dmg (split chamber + serration)

- power efficiency + power strenght (streamline + focus)

 

This is why mods 2.0 was released, to prevent game becoming way too easy from OP mods.

Letting people create their own mods would create the very same problem mods 2.0 solved.

 

So for me it's a "NO, BUT THANK YOU."

 

Not really, if you read my thread carefully, than you would know that you couldn't combine mods with different polarities nor with different mod ranks. Cancels out Split Chamber + Serration and Streamline + Focus. But tell me you don't have both of them equipped on your weapons always. ^^

 

But I give you the credit that there would probably be other combinations that are too strong.

Edited December 25, 2013 by MeduSalem

[immolator1001]

No! That's prevented, because you can have only one mod equipped that has multishot on it, otherwise it would totaly break every balance.

 

Sure now you can do that, but with the proposed system, there's an end to that madness of stacking stats. Then it really boils down to what's your personal taste.

But you can equip more than 1 multishot now with pistols.

[MeduSalem]

But you can equip more than 1 multishot now with pistols.

 

After that you can't. But that's not the problem, because you get that many other combinations so you could more than make up for that few percent. And I'd rather rely on Dual-Stat mods that actually make sense, than some of already existing ones not making any sense at all.

 

Also it shouldn't mean you get the Dual-Stat mods like for free... They should hurt plenty in Credits... and maybe some new resource type which is required to fuse them (not implying that there should be more grind, because that's not what I want :P)

 

After all it's some sort of "slipstreaming" for mods, that shouldn't be easy to obtain.

Edited December 25, 2013 by MeduSalem

[TankHunter678]

No! That's prevented, because you can have only one mod equipped that has multishot on it, otherwise it would totaly break every balance.

 

Sure now you can do that, but with the proposed system, there's an end to that madness of stacking stats. Then it really boils down to what's your personal taste.

Then corrupted mods would have to be changed by this logic. As allowing them to stack stats would break the fundamental rule the new dual stat mod system creates: preventing the "madness" of stacking stats.

 

Further the dual stat fusion system would create a situation like this:

 

You merge Lethal Torrent with Barrel Diffusion, creating a mod with 72% Fire Rate and 240% multishot. A guaranteed 3 shot with a chance at 4 shot burst.

 

Why would this happen? Because unless you wipe everyone's mods then people will already have Lethal Torrent that they can fuse with Barrel Diffusion. As the idea currently does not put limits in place to prevent the dual stat mod from being "empowered" by fusing it with single stat mods to increase the strength of 1 of the stats.

 

Mmm Lethal Torrent with 144% Fire rate and 240% multishot on despair, nothing would live.

 

 

Also, something to think about: With this proposal a person could build a Grakata with 4-5 combined elemental combinations on it. With its status chance it would be the ultimate procing machine of death. All it would need after that is a Serration merged with Split Chamber, and a Rifle Ammo Mutation merged with Crit Damage.

 

As if you only increase the cost by half of the combined mods, then when it is a matching polarity slot it will only wind up being 8-9 mod points.

[MeduSalem]

Then corrupted mods would have to be changed by this logic. As allowing them to stack stats would break the fundamental rule the new dual stat mod system creates: preventing the "madness" of stacking stats.

 

Further the dual stat fusion system would create a situation like this:

 

You merge Lethal Torrent with Barrel Diffusion, creating a mod with 72% Fire Rate and 240% multishot. A guaranteed 3 shot with a chance at 4 shot burst.

 

Why would this happen? Because unless you wipe everyone's mods then people will already have Lethal Torrent that they can fuse with Barrel Diffusion. As the idea currently does not put limits in place to prevent the dual stat mod from being "empowered" by fusing it with single stat mods to increase the strength of 1 of the stats.

 

Mmm Lethal Torrent with 144% Fire rate and 240% multishot on despair, nothing would live.

 

 

Also, something to think about: With this proposal a person could build a Grakata with 4-5 combined elemental combinations on it. With its status chance it would be the ultimate procing machine of death. All it would need after that is a Serration merged with Split Chamber, and a Rifle Ammo Mutation merged with Crit Damage.

 

As if you only increase the cost by half of the combined mods, then when it is a matching polarity slot it will only wind up being 8-9 mod points.

 

Good points!

 

As I already mentioned in OP: The Corrupted mods could be left as they are, because they reduce the effect of some mods again, but one could tweak them further to make them even more punishing toward a specific stat. Would be probably fair to do so.

 

Lethal Torrent is already a dual-stat mod and would be rebalanced to represent Gunslinger+Barreldiffusion. So one can't upgrade it any further with the single-stats.

 

I think I mentioned on the elemental-section that I'm not sure about if it should be allowed to have more than one mod with a specific elemental on the weapon. Because it would be too imbalanced. So if you already had Corrosive on the weapon, then you can't add Toxin, nor Electric nor any other combination that requires any of those base elementals. You still could have only Blastrosive :P Or stick with basic elementals...

 

Also with the mod-points... We have 8 Mod-slots... Even with every slot polarised... It still would be 8*~9 = 72... so you are still limited.

Edited December 25, 2013 by MeduSalem

[HackShield]

if you fusion 2 mods the stats needs to get halfed like fusion fire and ice = 45% only and you cant have 1 stat more often that 3 times and mods like hornet serration get 1/4

[MeduSalem]

if you fusion 2 mods the stats needs to get halfed like fusion fire and ice = 45% only and you cant have 1 stat more often that 3 times and mods like hornet serration get 1/4

 

Already thought about that too, that if you combine them, then there's a "punishing" effect where the individual stats get lowered compared to their originals... But I thought it would be okay if I just increased the mod-costs. But I'll add it as an option.

Edited December 25, 2013 by MeduSalem

[LukeAura]

It would add depths to the current system, without necessarily making it that much more complex. And it makes formaing a little more profitable for everyone.  I'd suggest maybe that if two non matching polarities were to be fused together there could maybe be your 'new' fourth polarity type specifically as a catch all for all mismatched combinations. Which meant that a smart builder could forma the slot for that polarity if they wanted, and then make a plethora of mismatched mods to fill it no matter what kind of build they want to run. Or stick to simple combos of polarity to polarity and not have to worry so much about making room for the experimental type in all their builds. 

Do you think there could be an option to forma a slot in a single build instead of being put in to all three to help people make more diverse builds with your system? Perhaps at a reduced penalty, like resetting to level 20 instead of becoming unranked, to compensate for only technically getting one polarity slot. 
 

[dashashou]

seems to me that adding slots / slot groups  is a neater/ more soluble solution . 

[MeduSalem]

Do you think there could be an option to forma a slot in a single build instead of being put in to all three to help people make more diverse builds with your system? Perhaps at a reduced penalty, like resetting to level 20 instead of becoming unranked, to compensate for only technically getting one polarity slot.

 

You mean instead of changing an already polarized slot for free if you change your mind, that there's a reduced penalty where your weapon gets reset to rank 20?

 

seems to me that adding slots / slot groups  is a neater/ more soluble solution . 

 

Adding more slots may seem like a nice solution and I already thought about how it could work out, but you've to keep in mind that even with a Catalysator we're capped at modcapacity 60. So the more slots you have the more problematic it would become, even with full polarized slots you'd get troubles faster than with my proposal. For example:

 

9 Slots on a weapon each with a polarization. Most mods require 11 mod points when maxed out, some even more, some a little bit less. So say 6-7 mod points on each slot because of polarization... Makes at least 9 * 6 = 54 or 9 * 7 = 63...

 

So you'd hit the 60 modpoints after adding 1 or max 2 slots again... Which achieved... like nearly nothing? At least no build-variety, because on most weapons you'd simply add one more elemental and nothing else. :D

 

That would lead to another problem, in which case we would need something to increase our hardcoded modcapacity beyond 60... Something like a Super-Catalysator which raises modcapacity to 75 or 90 for example.

 

With the addition of new Dual-Stat mods the Dev's (at least it seems like they favour them right now) are going for the next few months it would become even more unbalanced if we had more modslots - even more unbalanced then my proposal the more Dual-Stat mods there are, because of some stacking with already existing ones, something I'd prevent in my system.

 

Maybe that's why the Dev's have no intention of raising mod-slots right now... Maybe they already see that problem coming.

Edited December 27, 2013 by MeduSalem

[MeduSalem]

• Made OP easier to read in general

Incorporated some user-feedback

Incorporated the thought of Dual-Stats having a trade-off in their stats compared to their Single-Stat-Counterparts

Added a generic Symbol for proposed Nightmare-Polarity

Updated for the new Dual-Stat Mods that came with the Cicero-Crisis

Updated the complete list of suggested Mod-changes

[Qynchou]

Its a cool idea, however what youre doing is just plainly expanding how many mods a player can equip. DE can do this by adding extra mod slots into warframes. 

 

I mean, people are just going to cherrypick the mods that are powerful right now and just combine those.

 

The only thing that forces you to customize i.e make choices is the mod capacity limit, and youre expanding it so youre kind of trivializing your main idea of custom builds.

[MeduSalem]

Its a cool idea, however what youre doing is just plainly expanding how many mods a player can equip. DE can do this by adding extra mod slots into warframes. 

 

I mean, people are just going to cherrypick the mods that are powerful right now and just combine those.

 

The only thing that forces you to customize i.e make choices is the mod capacity limit, and youre expanding it so youre kind of trivializing your main idea of custom builds.

 

Mod-Slots won't work - would be the cheap-solution. I've calculated it for another user some posts above... You'd hit the limit again soon after 2-3 slots so there's no benefit at all of adding more Slots because of the maximum Mod-Capacity of 60 with an added Catalysator and forma'ing every damn Slot (which would be even more painful the more Slots we had).

Edited February 10, 2014 by MeduSalem

[Qynchou]

Mod-Slots won't work - would be the cheap-solution. I've calculated it for another user some posts above... You'd hit the limit again soon after 2-3 slots so there's no benefit at all of adding more Slots because of the maximum Mod-Capacity of 60 with an added Catalysator and forma'ing every damn Slot (which would be even more painful the more Slots we had).

Youre missing my point. What youre doing is enabling players to have more mods equipped, thats not adding custom builds, thats expanding current cookie cutter builds into even less builds.

 

Right now If I have Rhino loadout with max shields/health/armor and Im missing power enhancing mods, with your system I'd be able to have it. That means I wont ever have to get any other mods, ever, because I'll be decked out in health/armor/shields/sprint speed/power range/power damage/efficiency.

 

If you want more custom builds with this idea, maybe mods would have to fuse into new ones (but then again new players wont have access to this customization because your system requires for both mods to be max). Then again DE could just straight up add new mods instead of having a new fusing system.

 

Problem isnt in the lack of mod capacity, its the lack of choices people have. Its either health or power damage.

[MeduSalem]

Youre missing my point. What youre doing is enabling players to have more mods equipped, thats not adding custom builds, thats expanding current cookie cutter builds into even less builds.

Right now If I have Rhino loadout with max shields/health/armor and Im missing power enhancing mods, with your system I'd be able to have it. That means I wont ever have to get any other mods, ever, because I'll be decked out in health/armor/shields/sprint speed/power range/power damage/efficiency.

If you want more custom builds with this idea, maybe mods would have to fuse into new ones (but then again new players wont have access to this customization because your system requires for both mods to be max). Then again DE could just straight up add new mods instead of having a new fusing system.

Problem isnt in the lack of mod capacity, its the lack of choices people have. Its either health or power damage.

I don't play Rhino as main, but to be honest I have most of the Powermods you state already on EVERY Warframe installed always, no matter what. With the exception being Steelfiber which is nearly to useless since they changed the way the damage reducing factor of Armor is calculated. Ok for sh*ts and giggles I throw it on Valkyr, Rhino and Frost, but it isn't really neccessary on the later 2 because (or any other Warframe) they already have over a thousand shield which I try not to waste. So I generally say it's wasted space at the moment which I tend to use for Power Damage like you state yourself.

Also the problem because of power-maxing is that I use only 2 Skills of 4 on the most Warframes because mostly the Ultimate and another Support-Skill will suffice. So I know exactly what you mean. I'm already min-maxing myself, but I feel myself forced to do so because otherwise you may not stand a chance against some enemytypes/levels and that lack of choice is to some extend corresponding to lack of mod-capacity and to another to the gameplay (which this thread isn't about) itself.

A point you missed out is that you are not able to create every possible combination in my proposal of those "must"-have mods yourself, because of mismatching polarities/ranks, so either you end up using the single-stat variant or you would use another Mod you never looked at. Also you can't have 2 mods of the same Stats anymore, which would free up additional space on each Warframe/Weapon and at some point there are no additional "Power/Damage" mods anymore one could add so that will be the corner for mods you always wanted to have but couldn't because of how you're forced to max your Defense/Offense.

 

I may be wrong about that since I didn't test every possible combination, but I think you get the point... If I find the time I might create some combinations and look at it. Then we will know if it helps to double the amount of stats you can have or if it doesn't. ^^

 

[edit]

Something I also nearly forgot about is that not every Warframe and every skill profits from every Power-Mod... Some don't affect anything when equipped. That's also something to consider. Same applies to Weapons.

[/edit]

Edited February 10, 2014 by MeduSalem

[Starender]

+1