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My 2 Credits On The New Mod System


Zeful
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I've been thinking on the general complaints with the new mod system and the update, so here is my assessment of it and how I think some problems should be fixed.

The Problem

The new mod system was implemented as a way of removing the status quo of play where certain mods had so much power that they were so widely used and largely invalidated the old paradigm of enemy design, requiring more and more health, making such mods mandatory and reinforcing the system further. However in altering the system, it was also decided to remove the skill trees and the small leveling bonuses they gave to make the percentage mods more and more powerful. Because of this, an item’s level is irrelevant outside of providing energy for mods; a rank 0 item performs exactly the same as it’s rank 30 version with no mods.

Coupled with the exorbitant fusion costs for using anything other than duplicates or common cores, and the random nature of of mod acquisition, this results in some content becoming impossible without specific mods that can require hours of grinding to obtain and even more to fully power up to get better mods. This is untenable, as it will make progress too heavily luck dependants.

What would you change?

To fix this I suggest 4 immediate changes. Give every player a common shield mod at the start of the game. Standardize all fusion costs to the card you are improving, not what you are using to improve it (excepting duplicates). Introduce a card section to the market and make some packs cost credits (or introduce mod packs that just cost credits), and give us the ability to buy specific common and uncommon cards at sensible prices compared to other game items you can buy.

The first is easy, giving the players a common shield mod will give them an immediate way to strengthen their defenses without having luck which is a major complaint about the new system. Early on it will render some choice to the players, but later on, when defenses are expected by the game system to be higher, it will be much cheaper to keep slotted at all times. It will also be a sign of good faith, as development of the player’s avatar is all but a requirement to keep players playing in the early game. The only other ways to address this would be to make the first mission guaranteed to drop a shield mod early in the game, or provide intrinsic scaling in terms of health, shield, and energy to each frame on each rank or every other rank.

The second is a major source of contention with the new system. With costs for “rare” “high level” fusion cores being so high, especially in comparison to how much of a boost they apply to a card, it is more efficient, and thus better, to use multiple lower level cores. This seems to be minorly addressed with the 3/20 hotfix, but the costs are still very high, which seems to imply that fusing duplicates, which is much cheaper, are supposed to be a major source of upgrading your mods. By fixing the upgrade cost to the mod being enhanced, and not what you are enhancing with, rare mods are more desirable to use in most situations rather than commons being more desirable outside of topping off mods cheaply. In the exception mentioned earlier, duplicates should still receive a small discount, making them the most desirable, but not necessary to the advancement of the mod. This would also allow mod costs to scale as they rank up without seeming like a punishment for getting better. This would also allow you to price upgrading abilities differently from upgrading other mods that could be used to discourage pumping abilities without the other stats to support them as well as introduce a credit sink that isn’t too discouraging to the player.

Let’s make some assumptions about how this could work. We have three categories of mod, 3 rank, 5 rank, and 10 rank mods. If we want the start and end prices to be the same, say 500 credits from unranked to rank 1 and 3500 credits from the penultimate level to the ultimate level per item used in the fusion, and we divide that out we get something looking like this:

3-rank mod costs per rank per item:

500, 1500, 2500, 3500

5-rank mod costs per rank per item:

500, 1100, 1700, 2300, 2900, 3500

10-rank mod costs per rank per item:

500, 800, 1100, 1400, 1700, 2000, 2300, 2600, 2900, 3200, 3500

Which certainly looks more reasonable than what is currently how it works, and will do quite a bit to thin out the credits of the veteran players without necessarily bankrupting newer or casual players who won’t necessarily gain the raw materials to enhance their mods quickly enough to mass enhance.

The third and fourth are issues of availability. Some mods should logically always be available to the player, as they are the ones that will be generally responsible for making players stick around. Things like shields and health, magazine size, damage, fire rate/attack speed, critical hit chance and crit damage. These will be the first things many new players will want to max as it can drastically increase their ability to deal with increasing challenges you throw at them, while still giving them flexibility to learn their playstyle. While increasing the availability of mod packs to all players, not just paying players, will give players that want to get duplicates a much better chance at them without needing to grind old areas as well as introducing a new credit sink that players can feel like they are winning something. This would of course require buffing the platinum packs so that they are more competitive against the credit packs. I recommend boosting those packs card numbers to 9 or 12 making the 5 card packs “economy” sized for the free to play players as well as fit more into the pricing of TCG booster packs in terms of card/cost ratios.

With these four changes I feel that the major issues that impair the fun of some players have been remedied without necessarily abandoning the system or rebuilding it again from the ground up.

TL;DR: Read the paragraph under "What would you change?".

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Very reasonable post, but apparently DE doesn't want Fusion Cores to be good. It's actually really shady what they did.

DE: "Don't worry guys, in Update 7 your mods will be awesome, don't sell them!"

Playerbase: "Ok DE! We'll just hang onto our mods, worst case scenario we can still sell them for as much credits as we used to, right?'

DE: "Ummm yea...."

Update 7 Hits

*Fusion Cores are horrible at upgrading gear due to it costing a ton of credits and can only be sold at 20% of the original price*

Playerbase: "WTF? Now we have no credits and upgrading anything with these useless cores costs an insane amount of credits!"

DE: "Ohh don't worry guys, you can now buy credits with platinum! PAY TO WIN BABY HAHAHAHAHAHAH!

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Description of a fusion core:

1) takes up the place of a mod

2) useless alone

3) costs a lot to fuse

4) replacement for what used to be valuable in terms of credit

Really? Just remove it all together and refund us through credits.

OR make it MUCH MUCH cheaper to fuse and less common as a drop. So it would be considered as a "cheap" upgrade for mods, because they are supposed to be universal energy, not a mod drop heavily limited by credits without even being a direct gameplay addition.

It would also make old player feel like they received a fair trade.

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Very reasonable post, but apparently DE doesn't want Fusion Cores to be good. It's actually really shady what they did.

*Fusion Cores are horrible at upgrading gear due to it costing a ton of credits and can only be sold at 20% of the original price*

i dont agree

the fusion cores gives far more exp to rank up the mod and of course it has to be expesive to do it i totaly agree or what else credits will be useless again and the players will be gods again they are trying to make a fun game and a game that you dont get tired playing 20 hours of it they want to make something that people will play and yes will support by buying platinum,you are "hunter " dude

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