A Different Approach To Viewing This "everyone Has The Same Mod Issue"

[Niryco]

Currently the key complaint about the mod system is that "utility mods are simply ignored and you have boring damage/staple mods that everyone has. Everyone has the same build!"

 

Point 1: The main point, Mod system is not the issue, it is the mobs and what DE has done so far to help improve this.

Thus i want to raise the main point that maybe the issue is not within the mod system, rather the focus on enemies and how the function as a whole. As of late DE has been trying to add more interesting enemies all with different weaknesses so that our builds and creative thinking gets more challenged. This has led to certain elemental builds starting to show prominence over others when accounting for these new enemies such as the prosecutors or even the playing a corpus mission rather than a grineer mission. In each of these varying examples, elemental builds start to slowly become even more situational as time goes by and which i applaud DE's effort. Even as of now people are still debating off in the wiki of a perfect elemental build and many different conclusions have been arrived to deal with all sorts of problem, and that magnetic has a questionable spot within the whole elemental situational context.

 

Point 2: Common weakness amongst enemy factions simplifies the equation of fighting them, while re playability contributes to perfecting builds which are pretty much 100% identical.And one important question to ask yourself, is it because perfection can only come in one form as many of us know it?

Despite this praise of effort to DE, what I want to discuss is the predictability of these situations that inevitably forces out similar builds by all players. As much as these attempts to force builds to be more varied i can say their success is simply limited because of how predictable mission especially enemy set ups tend to be. The reason to this is that all factions each possess their own set of common weaknesses, grineer to corrosive and puncture, Corpus is magnetic and impact(maybe some slash) and Infested viral,CC and slash. All these premise of a common weakness sets up nicely for typical builds. Another example of a game that fall into this catergory is borderlands 2 when trying to down bosses in the fastest time. Thus this common weakness becomes emphasized with re playability till builds become optimized to the point that everyone carries the same thing, simply because it is the most effective weapon to deal with all the problems both common mobs to special ones.

 

Point 3: Specific enemy's at certain locations only serve to further specific builds, and re playability through grinding in most cases simply again perfects builds.

Also to add onto this predictability, only certain planets have certain types of enemies which are in a constant replay. Furthermore as a follow up to the previous point, as only more of a certain enemy exist within a given planet and that a whole faction shares one and same weakness, accounting for the majority spawning enemy would therefore lead to more common builds. Not to mention how the common enemies within each faction just refresh from planet to planet with only one big difference which is being health. With increased health, they can deal out more damage, they can also pose larger threats to the player and at the same time still share the same weakness as the previous iterations which are 100% the same. So the only effective counter is to increase your damage output so to reduce time enemies are alive, and thus damage builds prevail in all matter and realities.

 

Point 4: Must read on why sponge factor plays a big role in influencing builds and that reward factors simply means more damage = better. Hard to simplify in my opinion, also nice graph inside =3

Let us also factor in mission types such as endless survival or endless defense and one would realize something, builds also accommodate the one and only pressing issue of enemies within these game modes, which is constant rising health and so tremendous damage is established to override this constant increase in health. A sample graph to illustrate what this means.

This graph above is largely using imaginary values, and so it acts as a rough approximation. However it can be seen as the health of enemies increase exponentially over time, our damage stays ever so constant. If you want to compare a guy with serration against a guy without serration you can see that a simple mod that boost your damage by 165% allows you to stay an estimated 10 minutes longer based on the graph alone, which means even better rewards and even 2 more reward cycles for survival. The same goes for defense or inception. Although fingers would love to point it at how one serration mod can grant you 10 minutes worth of survival time, the focus however i would like to bring is that the view is seen from the wrong lens. Instead it should be viewed that it is because of this 10 minutes of extra time to survive that we have serration equipped, not the other way around. The reason to this is because serration is needed to combat rising health of mobs effectively, barring all other resistance types. Thus we can see that it is because we get more rewards out of equipping serration that not having it, therefore it justifies that we should equip it and consider it a staple.

 

Also from a personal point of view, wouldn't a build that is effective for endless survival or defense be 110% overkill for shorter missions that don't see a consistent rise in enemy levels? I guess we can all come to the same conclusion about that one.

 

Point 5: How sponge factor and damage factor is the mobs only way of growth when they level.

This comes to the next point nicely too, in endless mission types or even going to higher level planets, mobs simply don't rise in challenge, they rise by sponge and damage factors. As much as it sounds the same as the previous point, the main issue here isn't how serration is needed, rather the simple fact goes is that serration is forced as there is nothing else players can combat physically but sponge factor. Thus we would always be the green line no matter how much more we invest into our builds, because there is not way it can increase in their potential effectiveness, except highly desirable utility skills which serves as another praise of attempt by DE.

 

Point 6: Mobs are constantly being reused from start to finish (mercury to pluto) so little innovation is needed or even skill to create builds to combat enemies as early as mercury.

The final point that i would like to put across before i start digressing, and which is simply a repeat of the previous point in a more specific case, mobs are re-used too much even on planets further away. Think about it, you have a grineer lancer in mercury which is level 1 and the same looking and weapon wielding grineer lancer at pluto is level 20 with 1000 times the health with 300 times the damage. However the enemies are the same common mob. They do not have any enhance characteristics over the simple fact they have increased damage and sponge factors. The focus here isn't that mobs are dumb, rather you fight the same types over and over again with just different numbers to health and damage. That is thus why builds also equip the same loadout as the person did when they left mercury, what enemy variety is there or tactical variety for the need to even change builds? Also not trying to over step the second point i made about planets only having one specific enemy type that are unique, both of these points both fall under the same prey which is re playability kills their challenge when players learn to counter them as their spawns never ever vary.

 

Point 7: Achilles heels so far is great, but there might be complications, just saying.

A little insight on even how achilles heels can serve to be a hindrance when players bring the wrong builds by choice which makes the game to be much more frustrating due to not tackling common weaknesses. The prosecutor is a clear and clean example, but if the weakness is so extreme to the point of an actual Achilles heels and the strength of Achilles himself which again resonates in the prosecutor, well there would be those who are unhappy because now bring the wrong build wasn't a choice, rather it was forced upon them by chance.

 

Bullet points for TL:DR (Lazy!)

 

- main flaw about similar builds maybe an issue that does not come from the mod system itself, rather the focus on enemies and how the function as a whole.

 

- Enemies with common weaknesses allow for specific builds without much thought, re playability refines these builds till everyone has the perfect set up.

 

- Specific enemy types in certain locations also provides to specific builds too, and yet again re playability allows for these builds to be perfected.

 

- Builds combat the most simple issue in the game, common mobs act as sponges as they increase in level. (more of this is evaluated in full and i advice you read point 4. Simplifying it would only derive half the full picture and thus is not fruitful to discussion.

 

- Common enemy types don't experience increase in behaviour, but only increase sponge and damage factor from plane to planet, overall leading to zero need to innovate builds to counter any mob variety even just after mercury.

 

- Singular/achilles heels weaknesses presents itself right now as an almost perfect and balance outcome to all this, however it is just the micro version of the whole picture and largely would force unhappiness on players due to the mystery of the challenge presented, which is a gripe that DE has to balance.

 

- Done, now tell me how you feel.

 

What opinions do you have to share about this other pov? Do you agree that the fault is within the how the enemies function as a whole that causes the downfall of the modding system, or do you disagree to this whole notion and that the fault lies within the modding system? Please discuss below.

 

[Llyssa]

As it's been noted, there's not much identicalness amongst builds unless someone looks up "what's the best build" and uses that.

 

No matter what you do, there will always be people who do that, so there will always be "more common" builds.

 

I'm quite certain my builds aren't used by many people at all, just by what they comment about how much forma they need for something---most of my builds use surprisingly little(or none!), and they're sitting there talking about how they think the 5th or 6th forma is all they need to get it working "properly". o.0

[Mountain_Dew_Camacho]

only way to force enemy-specific builds is immunities, or heavy resistance to X damage type

 

eg. if one simply could not slash or electrocute damage any corpus, we'd have to adapt and have a corpus loadout.  

or if one simply could not cause any damage to grineer with puncture or fire....  

infested should be immune to all toxic and magenetic (sry saryn) etc.

 

like with most games, resistances are overcome by pure force right now.

 

what i'd like to see is the ability to re-select your loadout as long as you are near the insertion point and within 5 minutes of game start.  sometimes what we face is a surprise cuz forgot.

[Niryco]

As it's been noted, there's not much identicalness amongst builds unless someone looks up "what's the best build" and uses that.

 

No matter what you do, there will always be people who do that, so there will always be "more common" builds.

 

I'm quite certain my builds aren't used by many people at all, just by what they comment about how much forma they need for something---most of my builds use surprisingly little(or none!), and they're sitting there talking about how they think the 5th or 6th forma is all they need to get it working "properly". o.0

We can say there isn't alot of identical builds, but still the prevalence of builds with certain characteristics, such as why damage mods is so prevalent is because they reward us more than having it on without having them on. Also i don't think if mobs were given a more randomized spawn with even sparse similarity in weakness would we start getting similar builds.

 

only way to force enemy-specific builds is immunities, or heavy resistance to X damage type

 

eg. if one simply could not slash or electrocute damage any corpus, we'd have to adapt and have a corpus loadout.  

or if one simply could not cause any damage to grineer with puncture or fire....  

infested should be immune to all toxic and magenetic (sry saryn) etc.

 

like with most games, resistances are overcome by pure force right now.

 

what i'd like to see is the ability to re-select your loadout as long as you are near the insertion point and within 5 minutes of game start.  sometimes what we face is a surprise cuz forgot.

Well there are other ways than immunities. Even mobs that become weaker to certain types of damage, so lesser emphasis is placed purely on base damage. Or say procs can only damage mobs.

 

Well there is many ways to view it, maybe even mobs lose health only when they stumble and fall. There is a surprising amount of things that can be done, even simple or stupid as it sounds. I feel some unexpectedness in missions are good, this way players would be forced to build differently.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Jacate

[Llyssa]

What is your actual point? Lots of text, but you don't quite get to a point.

 

It's been noted that they actually improved the AI, and people complained that it was "dumber", because running for cover when you see the unholy death gods bust in your locker room(good idea!) doesn't matter when said death gods can plant you in 1/2 a second, before you reach cover, so, to said UDG, it just looks like you failed to pose any challenge at all while you reacted stupidly(despite the brilliant strategy that was occupying your brain moments before hot space plasma was).

[(PSN)da-link-went-1]

I think op's tl;dr is tl, dr...

[SilverHazzes]

From my point of view the biggest issue is to being forced to use certain builds only damage focused at certain levels leaving utility mods unused lots of times. Lately I figured out somethings:

 

-As a community, players who make videos, argue in the Wiki and such have heavy impact on how the other players build and choose their weapons. Lots of the public builds are mostly focused in damage and only a few focus in something that can be more interesting and fun, sinergizing your gear. So at the end I got mad of the damage focusing and I only use two elemental damage mods and end up putting utility because is funnier and sometimes it helps you killing more enemies, lots of people will waste the killing multiple enemies capability of a weapon with punch trough mods for one more elemental damage mod.

 

-When you are not using the ''right'' build or gear there is something in your mind constantly saying to you that you shuould use what everybody knows its shure worthy so at the end you won´t use your brain to get better builds ore different playstyles because you are obsesed with top damage public builds.

 

-I think mobs distribution is fine but, like it was said in the last Devstream, factions develop lots of weapons they actually don´t use in battle and giving that weapons to certain enemies at higher levels will increase the variety in game fighting and will give you more progression feeling when you approach to higher level missions because it doesn´t only get more difficult in terms of sponge and damage dealing, it will get different and that would be funnier.

[TheGuy08]

If we are honest "Meta" is not a big problem here. Many player rock the same mods to a degree but the vast difference between say a Nyx build and Rhino should be enough evidence that build diversity is not really an issue. If you consider the weapons, the frame, the sentinels and the variety you will find many different builds. Now there are some mods that are highly favored form damage but in most aces you can build as you like. There is no optimized frame build for most frames.

 

I think the real issue is that utility mods simply do not hold the weight of many of the most commonly used ones (looking at you redirection). 

[ndantony]

I love the mod system and love to play WF for that. To me the mod system is just another version of skill system in other games, like the secret world or even skyrim, etc. The variation of mods allow greater customization that is unique to WF. It was so awesome to see Steve, in the last devstream, shot down that ridiculous complain about the mod system. Too much of shallow thinking and assumption. And Steve's response was priceless. However, for those players who denying the system and refuse using mods or complaining about them, op and what's not, with the new pvp system coming out, I would like to see you in the arena so I can learn a thing or two from you.

[(PSN)andyb_b5]

The major improvement I'd like to see with the mod system is to allow the players to switch between their A/B/C load outs in the middle of an instance. Even with cooldowns it allows you to be more reactive.

[Babellon]

The major improvement I'd like to see with the mod system is to allow the players to switch between their A/B/C load outs in the middle of an instance. Even with cooldowns it allows you to be more reactive.

I agree, being able to switch loadouts in mid-fight would be a serious asset. I would love to customize my builds to the factions much more closely than I do, and I do not do it because I am unable to switch out on the fly when needed. I don't see the point of a/b/c build option on the menu when we cannot use it in a viable way. 

 

The mods thing, I don't know, seems to me a lot of people will ignore various things simply because some other people said x/y/z works better than a/b/c mods. How ever as much as that may be true, in some cases, we tend to treat some things as though they are mandatory to play the game, and well, that is simply wrong. For  general game play, and all the way up to pluto, you can build any number of ways, power builds, no power build, utility, refined, doesnt matter, the fixation with certain mods and the exclusion of others is primarily in the mindset of the person  building the frame in my opinion. Fact is, they are all optional.

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[MageMeat]

Ultimately, though one may build for utility over damage, at the end of the day, things still have to die.

So, the few solutions to that problem are:

-Build primarily for damage (though with the recent event mods that provide status and elemental damage, this may be partially averted)

-Rely on other teammates to pump out the damage while one applies whatever his/her utility can do

 

This goes for both Warframe and weapon builds, but Warframe builds are actually much more diverse in comparison to the basically guaranteed (damage mod)+(multishot)+(elements) you see on weapons.

[ThunderZsolt]

We can say there isn't alot of identical builds, but still the prevalence of builds with certain characteristics, such as why damage mods is so prevalent is because they reward us more than having it on without having them on. Also i don't think if mobs were given a more randomized spawn with even sparse similarity in weakness would we start getting similar builds.

 

Well there are other ways than immunities. Even mobs that become weaker to certain types of damage, so lesser emphasis is placed purely on base damage. Or say procs can only damage mobs.

 

Well there is many ways to view it, maybe even mobs lose health only when they stumble and fall. There is a surprising amount of things that can be done, even simple or stupid as it sounds. I feel some unexpectedness in missions are good, this way players would be forced to build differently.

 

+1 to this. also, special strengths/weaknesses only add to the gameplay, when you face multiple types at the same time.

looking at the base factions:

 

grineer is the most interesting, because the medium units have ferrite armor, while the bosses and heavy units (except heavy gunner) have alloy armor. also, there are the prosecutors, which literally force to bring specific gear to fight them. but, when facing grineer most people just focus on taking down heavy units, and use pure base damage to go through the ferrite armor

 

the weaknesses of the corpus is also based on a good idea, that they have shields and health, so you have to fight both flesh, and robotic health. but because they have more shields than health (except ospreys), people bring magnetic, which is best against shields, and also use toxic because it bypasses shields (could use gas, but that's not so good). i know that some people bring a secondary with pure electric damage to fight ospreys, which is a step in the right direction

 

the infested... well, they are the infested. corrosive for the ancients, and basically anything to the lights, because they die fast anyway

 

the most disappointing is the void. corrosive all the way. the corpus mobs have no armor, so they are easy to kill, and all corrupted grineer are weak to the corrosive, and the ancients too. WHY ARE NO CORRUPTED BOMBER? or just basically any unit, that is highly RESISTANT to corrosive damage, and still poses a threat that should be taken out quickly.

 

there are 4 tenno in the squad, with 4 primaries, 4 secondaries and 4 melee weapons. all with the same elemental damage mods. Having different weaknesses should force each tenno to mod his/her weapons to a specific enemy type, so as a team, they could deal easily with any enemy, but fail when alone.

when soloing a faction node, you could mod your primary/secondary/melee differently, brute force through low level voids, and why would you do high level void missions alone?

 

We already see this kind of variety between the frames in high level missions (nobody starts a T4surv with 4 lokis), but i think forcing different weapon builds would add a lot to the teamplay, and maybe we'd even see puncture/impact/slash mods on primary weapons

 

 

TL,DR: we have 3 base and 10 elemental damage types, yet we only need 1 or 2 at any time, so i'm not surprised that everybody uses the same build.

[Llyssa]

This "one build" theory is interesting, but I keep out-damaging you guys by miles, so clearly, my build is the "best damage build", and you're not using it.

 

I use almost none of the "must have" mods, so I really do wonder what you guys are doing.