Limited Mod Slots Is Affecting The Fun Of Modding Creativity.

[Niryco]

These days what limits modding isn't the mod points rather the mod slots. With forma and aura/stance cards modding points becomes almost limitless along with the addition of multi stat mods which in general cost lesser mod points to equip. However the limits to modding now is mod slots and as much as the common build is a full out elemental damage, pure press 3/4, highest damage, most critical chance, etc etc build, i am quite disheartened that the repercussions of this is even greater to those who wish to experiment on "fun" builds.

 

The fact is simple, limitations on mod slots need to go because it cannot in anyway "balance" weapons. The purpose of mod slots is to balance builds so that they don't become so overpowered, so that content would be tamed and players would not feel "unchallenged". However optimized builds will always display overkill stats whether slots or points are limited because people can calculate what is the best way to get the highest DPS, DPH etc etc to override the system. However what these limitations truly pose is a restriction on fun with rules that are strictly speaking for the purpose of balance. Right now i am trying to build my gorgon to fire slowly but with high impact + Blast damage, a nice over penetration and a slightly higher crit chance so that it replicates the effects of a HMG and to an extent, somewhat like those in Destiny.

 

But the fact is that i can't calculate my way out of this modding process. Because to get the modding process right requires me to test out the mods and get the feel for what is the slowed down fire rate i really desire, damage and the other stats which would be desired to be high or low and whether i should sacrifice all my accuracy.

 

However to get this build done i would to sacrifice certain aspects of the gun that i was looking for due to the limited mod slots. To get over penetration i would go with metal auger, to get my increased damage it would be serration + heavy caliber + split chamber. To get the blast i would go with fire dual stat mod and the normal ice mod. To lower the fire rate i would get a vile precision and a slightly levelled critical delay. 8 mod slots gone but i have other mods that are missing, like hammershot or a simple eagle eye for a tad more accurate shooting on my part. Even point strike is missing and a critical damage mod. If i were to take away critical delay to get point strike in, the fire rate would be not right.  Also i am missing a steady hand to counter the effects of the accuracy lost of a -100% recoil. I don't even have a high impact damage but a moderate blast and impact which i have choosen to forgone.

 

So in the end my build would have to cut many corners without getting the fun of what was intended and to be able to carry it wherever i want to go. I thoroughly enjoy the whole modding process as it does engage your ability to create extremely funny guns or even cool ones. However if a fun or even ingenious build cannot be fully realised because the mod slots is in place and which is crippling build creativity and thus not challenging players, then the modding system just seems to have failed its purpose.

 

TL:DR and conclusion

I believe modding with all the possibility and unique cards is to endorse both fun and challenge to any and all players alike. Optimized builds will always take out all the challenge for any players and there is no way to balance it unless you prevent optimization which is entirely impossible as people always optimize to get the best results that they desires. However with every attempt and method tried to limit them, what is truly being limited is player creativity and their willingness to explore all the other mods with what possible weapon designs they can get. So please can there be a way to get around the mod slots limitation because interesting builds cannot be fully realized with all these limitations going around, what is being forced around is mostly optimized builds and that is what majority of the players who don't represent the forums actually does.

 

I hope you can agree, thank you.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Jacate

[Tulzscha]

Thread title edited for clarity and moved to the proper section.

[Niryco]

Thread title edited for clarity and moved to the proper section.

But it is not just for weapons only, it is all items, even with the case of my Ash build or melee weapons, and sentiel modding. The example is indeed focused on one part of the game but if i were to include all examples the thread would be extremely lengthy.

[DoomsDayDan]

I wonder, what if every single weapon and warframe and sentinel in the game just straight up got two extra slots?

[darthdart]

They'll never add more mod slots. You ask too much of a weapon if 8 cannot possibly be enough.

[Niryco]

I wonder, what if every single weapon and warframe and sentinel in the game just straight up got two extra slots?

Man modding would be very boring and most weapon builds would just have damage mods. Sentiels would have support mods for those stealthing and a attack build for loud people. Warframes would be further relegated to their stereotypes because that is the only effective way to use the limited slots. No one would love modding at all.

 

They'll never add more mod slots. You ask too much of a weapon if 8 cannot possibly be enough.

Yea i do ask too much because 8 limits the full extent of creativity. I can still build many and many seas of builds but if i can't build one that is atleast desired for fun then modding has become an optimization process rather than customization process.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Jacate

[DoomsDayDan]

I'm with you on adding more slots, and for people going 'nuh thats too op' there's still the limiter of an energy pool of 30/60

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

I'm with you on adding more slots, and for people going 'nuh thats too op' there's still the limiter of an energy pool of 30/60

Finally! I'll be able to 8 forma weapons! XD

[Niryco]

Finally! I'll be able to 8 forma weapons! XD

i too want to find a use for Forma once in awhile, not to mention more stars!

[Methanoid]

i wouldnt say the mod slots restrict the weapon variety its more like the default stats of a lot of weapons are uncreative and nearly copy/paste low grade stats which various mods have utterly no impact on.  (status/crit)

[Tulzscha]

But it is not just for weapons only, it is all items, even with the case of my Ash build or melee weapons, and sentiel modding. The example is indeed focused on one part of the game but if i were to include all examples the thread would be extremely lengthy.

 

Noted - Moved to the proper section, the sequel. :)

[Niryco]

i wouldnt say the mod slots restrict the weapon variety its more like the default stats of a lot of weapons are uncreative and nearly copy/paste low grade stats which various mods have utterly no impact on.  (status/crit)

although i would be inclined to agree and since modding deals in percentage, it is mostly just optimizing good stats which is uncreative, however i would still put faith if mod slots are changed inherently then we can't utilize all the mods and possibly overcome the percentage issue.

 

Noted - Moved to the proper section, the sequel. :)

Thank you, much waited coming soon is now in =D

[Methanoid]

I wonder, what if every single weapon and warframe and sentinel in the game just straight up got two extra slots?

 

all wed do is expand the rainbow and stuff more elements in it because theres still nothing worth fitting other than that.

[Kappatalist]

8 seriously isn't enough for you?  It sounds like you want Marty Stu weaponry - perfect in every regard, when the whole point of limiting the mod cards is to force sacrifice.  Isolate a weapon's best statistics, and buttress them with mods, using any leftover slots to patch up any significant flaws.

 

If you want the real problem, it's the issue of dominant strategy mods which needs to be fixed.  Damage and Split Chamber are the Nash equilibrium.  You will never NOT bring them.  Damage mods need to add only, perhaps, 5% per level, and Multishot needs to cause double recoil or consume two rounds or something like that.  Elemental mods are pretty common too, and also disgustingly powerful.  I don't even really have a problem with mod stacking, because if the mods themselves weren't overpowered, the system as a whole would benefit.

[AdunSaveMe]

Well-written post, thought I'd add my little input;

 

Balance is a thing. I'm thinking the current amount was chosen for a reason, but I dunno... The point is to have a limit. Otherwise there'd be no point. You'd never have to sacrifice slots or think about loadouts, just dump what you've got.

 

I believe one of the upcoming features is 'focus'. Kind of like an extra boost your affinity goes to, an end-game, prestige-like feature.

 

What if getting enough of those to a certain level earned you an extra mod slot on that warframe or weapon?

Edited June 27, 2014 by AdunSaveMe

[Inquisitioner]

They should bring back the old modding system and expand upon it. That'd be great..

[Niryco]

all wed do is expand the rainbow and stuff more elements in it because theres still nothing worth fitting other than that.

There is, just that you probably haven't considered it yet like lower recoil, fast firing guns, eagle eye zoom, giving guns the chance to crit more often, etc etc.

 

8 seriously isn't enough for you?  It sounds like you want Marty Stu weaponry - perfect in every regard, when the whole point of limiting the mod cards is to force sacrifice.  Isolate a weapon's best statistics, and buttress them with mods, using any leftover slots to patch up any significant flaws.

 

If you want the real problem, it's the issue of dominant strategy mods which needs to be fixed.  Damage and Split Chamber are the Nash equilibrium.  You will never NOT bring them.  Damage mods need to add only, perhaps, 5% per level, and Multishot needs to cause double recoil or consume two rounds or something like that.  Elemental mods are pretty common too, and also disgustingly powerful.  I don't even really have a problem with mod stacking, because if the mods themselves weren't overpowered, the system as a whole would benefit.

I don't want Marty Stu weaponary, i want Marty Stu MODDING OPTIONS! Furthermore as i pointed out when building optimized builds there is no sacrifice because all they care is for mods with the highest damage/highest crit chance/ highest status chance, etc etc. Also what you say is better, isolate a weapon's best statistics and what comes after is what i want, because how would you cover up flaws in a weapon?

The current fashion is to make certain stats overpowered. However if you can have a greater number of mod slots or even unlimited, then you start to see some creativity. Because it is as simple as it goes people want security and sureness of what they are doing before exploring what options truly exist. If in the first right no one is already exploring then what is the point of making a mod system in the first place? There would be no need to build a system that allows customization if everyone is just going to optimize builds and this would overall be at the cost of players who want customized weapons.

 

The dominant strategy mod is just optimized modding. You can all it whatever you want but as i said you can never work around it. To work around it is like saying people should not live off staple food but learn to customize the food they eat so everyone eats something unique. You can't do that because people either want rice/potato/bread/casava, etc etc. The reason is dominant is because it is a must to survive higher levels. There is no it is because it is overpowered, mod stacking for more overkill, or other way around it as it is done this way to survive. We are after all products of a universe where everything is done in near perfect optimization and it is inherent in our minds to do the same, nature does it this way so that it can survive.

 

Even if you make all those most become like vile precision, heavy caliber or critial delays, people would still use them without cause because as much as it goes a dead enemy is the best defence, it is best for survival. Damage will always rule because it is the bread and butter, you cannot change that fact unless you can kill an enemy without direct damage. Warframes are also build around what is the best for survival, many stereotype warframes into so that optimization is made easier. There is no way around optimization, every action against it just reduces its overall effectiveness, but in the end you will never push people away from it because there is no other way, it is the most basic postulate anyone can even begin to understand as it works universally. Without damage it is almost impossible to kill with a weapon, without health/shield/energy or power a warframe would be useless, without mods sentinels are just cosmetics and useless.

 

All the limiting and stopping of optimization is just being plain silly, even in the past when a skill tree was there people still optimized endlessly because there was endless optimization options. So in the end what can stop optimization is the options or mod cards, their total overall effectiveness. Once people reach their peak usefulness that is when they really start exploring what else can be done, when they find something better they would move on to re-optimize what they found which is even better or more creative. That is the fact plain and simple. All these other limits just hurts customization, it hurts people who are ready to explore now, and most of all it hurts the true creativity of all players both you and me.

[VDeorsum]

+1 OP

[notionphil]

 

So please can there be a way to get around the mod slots limitation because interesting builds cannot be fully realized with all these limitations going around, what is being forced around is mostly optimized builds and that is what majority of the players who don't represent the forums actually does.

 

I hope you can agree, thank you.

 

Nope, cannot agree.

 

The more mod slots you provide, the MORE similar everyone's build becomes because they have room to stack all useful mods.

 

Right now, you have to make sacrifices in DPS to add things like punchthrough,better recoil, firestorm (aoe size), mag size etc. If we had no mod limits, you'd just add ALL of those things and we'd all have +mag + clip -recoil on every gun. Same build for each player.

 

The reason why there's not enough build diversity is simply that the damage mods are TOO powerful in comparison to the utility provided by the non-damage mods

 

The only ways to fix this problem are:

 

1) Reduce damage from dmg mods

2) Make utility mods more effective

3) Create new utility mods that have bonus damage (aka firestorm)

 

Giving more mod slots will NOT fix the problem. People will just put all useful mods on their weapon. Choice enables creativity, not the ability to use everything at once.

[Renegade343]

The only ways to fix this problem are:

 

1) Reduce damage from dmg mods

2) Make utility mods more effective

3) Create new utility mods that have bonus damage (aka firestorm)

Solution 1 is the most viable choice. 

 

Solution 2 will still have the problem of too much damage on weaponry, allowing them to clear the room without much skill. 

 

Solution 3 just dilutes the mod table, and people are still going to choose damage mods if these new utility mods are weaker than the damage mods. 

[Methanoid]

There is, just that you probably haven't considered it yet like lower recoil, fast firing guns, eagle eye zoom, giving guns the chance to crit more often, etc etc.

 

the base stats of every weapon determines what we fit, theres no "clever creative fittings" all we can ever do is maximise whats already a plus to a bigger plus, you wouldnt add crit mods to a weapon that has innate low crit because its not worth it over raw elemental damage mods, again same with lower recoil, nothing i use needs lower recoil, i can manage just fine manually, if you had meant accuracy increase mods (which dont exist) i'd agree.

 

in your example rate of fire mods, yeah if you want to hose your ammo then yeah youd need that spare other slot to be an ammo mutator if you havent already got it, but again even now if i want faster rof i already mod for it now anyways so i dont need 2 extra slots to change my mind.

 

doesnt matter what mods you mention, everyone thats sane would just stack more elemental damage on their fave weapons, nothing else yields better results.

[notionphil]

 

doesnt matter what mods you mention, everyone thats sane would just stack more elemental damage on their fave weapons, nothing else yields better results.

 

This is almost true.

 

With the massive DPS of weapons these days, and the increasing trend towards DE making high level mobs have more dmg and less HP....increasing DPS is really met with diminishing returns.

 

If you use any 10K+ DPS weapon and forma it a few times, you'll end up one-shotting (or one bursting) everything with only serration multishot and 1 or 2 elements.

 

Yes, people continue to stack elements out of ignorance/habit, but in general once you get 2 eles on a weapon of that power, adding MOAR DPS than that is overkill.

 

Adding clipsize, recoil reduction etc will likely improve TTK (and pleasure of use) more than an addl 10-15% dmg at that time.

 

The problem is that this doesn't apply to many weapons, only top tier. Also that it's only true if you're not in late, late wave content.

[4MostlyHarmless2]

 

The only ways to fix this problem are:

 

1) Reduce damage from dmg mods

2) Make utility mods more effective

3) Create new utility mods that have bonus damage (aka firestorm)

 

 

Yes please, especially the first. 

[Methanoid]

This is almost true.

 

With the massive DPS of weapons these days, and the increasing trend towards DE making high level mobs have more dmg and less HP....increasing DPS is really met with diminishing returns.

 

If you use any 10K+ DPS weapon and forma it a few times, you'll end up one-shotting (or one bursting) everything with only serration multishot and 1 or 2 elements.

 

Yes, people continue to stack elements out of ignorance/habit, but in general once you get 2 eles on a weapon of that power, adding MOAR DPS than that is overkill.

 

Adding clipsize, recoil reduction etc will likely improve TTK (and pleasure of use) more than an addl 10-15% dmg at that time.

 

The problem is that this doesn't apply to many weapons, only top tier. Also that it's only true if you're not in late, late wave content.

 

clip size, recoil etc would work but only on weapons that have issues as standard and require "ungimping", problem with most of those is that even when you try to ungimp them their still poor performing weapons.

 

and yeah the powerful/op weapons that we have pretty much dont need the quickfix mods they manage well enough with just stacking elements, again the biggest culprit for this is the copy/paste nature of many "useless" weapons, a lot are FAR too similar in spec/stats on the low end of useful.

[Niryco]

Nope, cannot agree.

 

The more mod slots you provide, the MORE similar everyone's build becomes because they have room to stack all useful mods.

 

Right now, you have to make sacrifices in DPS to add things like punchthrough,better recoil, firestorm (aoe size), mag size etc. If we had no mod limits, you'd just add ALL of those things and we'd all have +mag + clip -recoil on every gun. Same build for each player.

 

The reason why there's not enough build diversity is simply that the damage mods are TOO powerful in comparison to the utility provided by the non-damage mods

 

The only ways to fix this problem are:

 

1) Reduce damage from dmg mods

2) Make utility mods more effective

3) Create new utility mods that have bonus damage (aka firestorm)

 

Giving more mod slots will NOT fix the problem. People will just put all useful mods on their weapon. Choice enables creativity, not the ability to use everything at once.

i have already thrown away my split chamber mod on the build after i made this post because as much as it was awesome it was not needed. So after fully revising i am adding the impact damage mod. As i said if you give people more and more slot but different mods you would start to see deviation, it does not work the other way around.

 

Here is an analogy, you tell me if you see two poor and two rich families, which families would have the highest chance of being more different from one another? The rich ones of course. Two poor families can only make do with what they have so they cannot in any way go against the best way to get the job done, they believe education is the only way to make a secure and good living in the future. But what about our rich families? Some believe in giving money away, others believe education is not important but connections, others feel you must chase your passion, the list is endless. Hell the more money you have, the more things that you can buy would give rise to very different types of people. Have you ever seen the number of stereotypes of people who are rich? The only one that comes to mind are snobs.

 

Now think of every snob, oddly enough they are always different, they just act the same because they all have their basics money. So they all choose to deviate however they want to stay cool after that, they stand out and although they do try to act superior, that is what happens when you have the ability to do so. You try that with a poor guy and see where do they end up? That poor person is going to run such an extreme risk he/she rather just ditch mods that would seem promising for a mod that has credibility.

 

It is like what i said above as a reply to Kappalist, if you keep limiting all of the people's options then they are going to keep making optimized builds which are generally the same because everyone is forced to be poor. If you give everyone the opportunity to be rich, then you will start seeing diversity. Furthermore mods would start having even more trading value because the fact is simple since you can put say all the mods on your weapon wouldn't everyone want one? I can tell you that is the mindset alot of people would attempt to adopt and that is when they would come to realise you can't fully fulfil that outcome. Why? Alot of the benefits you get is going to be removed by the corruption mods and there are some disadvantages that you cannot counteract with corruption mods on. Furthermore people would choose certain elements over others because the fact is simple we can only have at most 2 to 3 elements on a weapon at one time and no more.

 

Not to mention you would take a long time + alot of forma's to get your favourite weapon. Think about this in a long term perspective for awhile, who would benefit? DE because more and more players would start grinding their favourite gun to accommodate all the mods and become god weapons. We would see a rise in void game play to get forma, people start asking for more forma. Plat trading would increase and more people become mod collectors. Now let's not forget everyone wants god weapons, but how long do players have to play if they have to keep formaing just to say one weapon or warframe? Think about all those warframe mods, hell do you want to forma and put all of them on? You can try and i am sure it is going to take one really hell of a long &#! time and everyone would have the incentive to play. Survivals can last longer, DE can include more rotation pools, hell you just increased the possible longevity of the game just by removing this one simple system.

 

What are the cons? Well DE has to implement stronger content, current mobs can't handle the raise..... or could they? Could they in survival and endless defense? Well with all this potential i am really digressing.

 

In the end i want to end off with choice does not enable creativity. It enables higher levels of optimization which people call creative when your optimization beats those of the current build. That is a different sort of creativity to the ability to experiment limitlessly, that creativity has lead to breakthroughs in all fields on life. If all artist or scientist are limited by options you would see no innovation no creative heart, because their lives are hard, don't you ever mix the concept of limitation leads to creativity and imagination, it would be creativity and imagination allows us to breaks all our limitations and then work to remove those limitations because in the end there is hardly any limitations in this world. Limitations only evolve in the mind, you think when isaac newton discovered gravity that he had a choices? He just did it and there was no choice forced upon him. Many creative insight are derived not when choices are enforced on you, it is only derived when there is nothing to choose except to truly explore the limitless world that is out for all of us to enjoy.