Is Anyone Else In This Game Bothered That Modding Your Gun Is Almost Always About More Damage.

[-FrostByte-]

I don't care how effective you are with anything once you get past level 60 mobs.  The game isn't meant to be balanced at that level.  Once you get to obscenely high levels, you're extremely limited in how you can play.  Even so, status effects are not how most people do it.  They use warframe skills to control targets or make themselves invulnerable and, if they can, have the entire group put Corrosive Projection on.  (I guarantee your team benefits more from CC at that level than they ever will from that shotty...what frames are you running?)

 

Some frames are admittedly better at surviving than others, but that has no bearing on your mod selection.  You're able to do those missions solely because of what the frames provide...an unfettered amount of difficulty-neutralizing bonuses.

 

More to the point, during what DE considers "balanced" gameplay, I one-shot everything everywhere with every weapon.  Some balance...

 

volt nekros loki (invis duration build) and a trinity

 

and 97% of my pug matches go swell and everyone cooperates

 

the 3% is usually at events/potato alerts

 

and if you honestly hate everyone, play solo or premade with people you want

 

to me the community is very nice and team-oriented

[MrPie5]

teach me.

Granted, it does a fair bit of damage too.

http://goo.gl/NpQvdF

[Innocent_Flower]

Granted, it does a fair bit of damage too.

http://goo.gl/NpQvdF

alas, I don't have rime rounds. 

[AsuraKyu]

Well it's just a thing. Most games follow that maple story trend, and Warframe is no exception when I like back to the times before U9.  Damage 1.0 to me honestly looked way more fun to me. Now we just have bigger and bigger numbers which is just a cliche typical of most MMO's.

 

Could be worse though, it could be ESO.

[Macdermott]

This is especially bad in the infinite-gamemodes like survival or defence where I often find the first 30 minutes being too easy and everything after 45 too hard. Meaning I get a boring half hour till I get that significantly shorter fun-spot (after which I'm promptly chasing off to the extraction). 

 

 

True that...

[Xana_Skullsunder]

Modding for damage is pretty boring at the end of the day. I like to improve my favorite weapon's handling, but what's the point? It either has the DPS or it doesn't, and if it doesn't I can't use it.

[Vaze]

The game is supposed to be something of a space ninja style. Ninjas use skill and cunning tactics to overcome the enemy. Warframe ninjas use the strongest most powerful modded weapons to one shot everything. Not really a ninja style anymore. More like a running steel safe with a tank cannon. With inferno and corrosive rounds. Sure, you don't have to use any of them. But then bye-bye Pluto and T4. A real and exciting challenge is virtually non-existent. Always more and more damage. Devs should do a survey about what mods are placed on lvl30 weapons. 90% would be to increase dps and the rest would be probably reload speed and ammo mutation with a few other anomalies. Same with warframe mods. Health, shields, powers, sprint. Nothing else for a common mission.

I mean... why do I need to shoot 60 bolts into a face of a fleshy mutant before it dies? Or a grenade to the head does minuscule damage to the same type of enemy after 40 minutes of survival.

This game shouldn't be about damage. It should be about ninja stuff. The whole theme is about that. It needs "Warfare 2.0".

 

EDIT: Gotta keep up with all the other improvements. Not just put new stuff into the game and let the rest rot inside. Animations are one of the expired features. The focus on damage above all else is another.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Vaze

[geninrising]

Despite all this talk of what DE should do with mods there is no way to stop the "cookie cutter" builds due to the fact that said builds are OPTIMAL. What optimal means is that they are the most efficient build possible. That means best. What do all gamers strive for?? To have the best gear possible in their current circumstance. Therefore no matter what DE does people will always make cookie cutter builds. How bout you just build how you want to and try to just live with what you have. Note that I am all for diversity IF IT WORKS. Most people's idea of diversity does not really have the possibility of providing equal parts versatility and late game viability(and yes late game means 60+waves of defense or 60+ minutes in tier 4 content).

[DSpite]

One-shotting things always works best.

 

I dont care how long your freeze, knockdown, stun, confuse, [insert effect here] lasts.  In the end, the mob is still alive and when you run out of ammo, it can still kill you.

 

With a maximum damage scenario, it's dead.  Period.  End of discussion.

 

And guess what?  You get rewards/loot/xp for killing things.  You don't get rewards/loot/xp for CC-ing a target for 5 hours.  With how grind-y this game is getting, you're going to want the kills to pile up quickly.

 

The point is that properly designed enemies cannot be one shot.

 

In Borderlands 2 for the max level stuff, if you did not hit them with Slag weapons first, there was no way in hell other weapons would even hurt them.

If an enemy can kill you faster then you can, then extra control of some type is the only way to manage them.

 

If you are playing a game that lets you one shot everything then you are playing Insta-Gib Unreal Tournament, not a proper shooter.

 

Borderlands 2 is fun because you have to at least treat some units is special ways, and not "point gun, hold down trigger, as some have frontal armor that just bounces everything off, some can lob AoE stuff with perfect accuracy at long range and behind cover, and sometimes shooting one of them in the head actually makes things worse. Some can even gain levels if not killed fast enough and can level ABOVE your solo damage potential to take out.

 

So far in this game is mostly "point and shoot". Some variety would be most welcomed.

[xca0]

The game is supposed to be something of a space ninja style. Ninjas use skill and cunning tactics to overcome the enemy. Warframe ninjas use the strongest most powerful modded weapons to one shot everything. Not really a ninja style anymore. More like a running steel safe with a tank cannon. With inferno and corrosive rounds. Sure, you don't have to use any of them. But then bye-bye Pluto and T4. A real and exciting challenge is virtually non-existent. Always more and more damage. Devs should do a survey about what mods are placed on lvl30 weapons. 90% would be to increase dps and the rest would be probably reload speed and ammo mutation with a few other anomalies. Same with warframe mods. Health, shields, powers, sprint. Nothing else for a common mission.

I mean... why do I need to shoot 60 bolts into a face of a fleshy mutant before it dies? Or a grenade to the head does minuscule damage to the same type of enemy after 40 minutes of survival.

This game shouldn't be about damage. It should be about ninja stuff. The whole theme is about that. It needs "Warfare 2.0".

 

EDIT: Gotta keep up with all the other improvements. Not just put new stuff into the game and let the rest rot inside. Animations are one of the expired features. The focus on damage above all else is another.

 

Warframe seems to have ditched the space ninja theme already. At most, we are space samurai.

[Makya]

Warframe seems to have ditched the space ninja theme already. At most, we are space samurai.

When was it ever about being 'Ninjas'? There are only two Shinobi frames. Warframe Lore never describes them as Shinobi as well.

[onichomp]

 

It bothers me since Mods 2.0 was introduced. Current system does not provide room for any imagination. Every build is a damage build with very minor variations. DE did not even release a weapon, and I'm already know what will I put in it. Once you maxed Serration, Multishots out - you can safely forget about two slots. These mods can be just passive upgrades at this point.

 

Why not just go in that direction? Weapon damage could scale with lvl, and we could pick a perk(Punch Through, Bigger Magazine etc) say once in 10 levels. Then add some really interesting mods, like more headshot damage, extra damage if enemy is on lover ground etc.

 

i LOVE this idea

 

it does bother me how your inventory gets filled up with a bunch of trash mods that might be fun, if i actually had room for them. instead i have to focus purely on making sure my weapons can actually kill something. at least have some slots for damage purposes -maybe not raw damage, havent really fleshed that idea out i guess-, and then maybe some utility slots for something like hush.

 

this could be an awful idea maybe, anyway your idea is really good and i hope DE takes notice of it.

[Thaumatos]

 

volt nekros loki (invis duration build) and a trinity

 

and 97% of my pug matches go swell and everyone cooperates

 

the 3% is usually at events/potato alerts

 

and if you honestly hate everyone, play solo or premade with people you want

 

to me the community is very nice and team-oriented

1. You've got a perma-inviz build, a Nekros for easy life support pickups and heals, and a Trinity for DR and heals.  Volt is kinda the oddball there, but you basically went 2 hours with a team that only needs to kill 1/2 the encountered enemies in order to keep life support afloat and has massive amounts of healing.  That's why you were able to survive 2 hours.  Not because your shotty had heavy status effects.  Thank you for being candid.

 

2. The 97% of your pugs are not what I was referring to.  I was referring to the specific instance you mentioned where status effects supposedly helped more than damage.  I can solo about 97% of my pugs specifically based on how moronically powerful my weapons are.  That's not a dig on you, that's not self-praise, that's a simple fact.  Guns get way too strong with all the available damage mods.

 

3. Nobody said I hate everyone.  Not sure where that conclusion comes from.  I pug almost exclusively because its more fun to play with others...and I consider my "alliance" to be one big pug.

 

The point is that properly designed enemies cannot be one shot.

 

In Borderlands 2 for the max level stuff, if you did not hit them with Slag weapons first, there was no way in hell other weapons would even hurt them.

If an enemy can kill you faster then you can, then extra control of some type is the only way to manage them.

 

If you are playing a game that lets you one shot everything then you are playing Insta-Gib Unreal Tournament, not a proper shooter.

 

Borderlands 2 is fun because you have to at least treat some units is special ways, and not "point gun, hold down trigger, as some have frontal armor that just bounces everything off, some can lob AoE stuff with perfect accuracy at long range and behind cover, and sometimes shooting one of them in the head actually makes things worse. Some can even gain levels if not killed fast enough and can level ABOVE your solo damage potential to take out.

 

So far in this game is mostly "point and shoot". Some variety would be most welcomed.

 

Well what I was getting at was the point you're making here.  In Warframe, there really isn't any reason to do more than stack damage and trivialize content.  Sure the status effects are fun, but they don't help enough considering with or without them you're still able to blast the living hell out of 99.9% of anything remotely in your view distance.

 

Borderlands 2 was fun because there were few types of guns with a great many viable (<- key word) possibilities.  Warframe is the exact opposite.  Warframe is a great deal of individual weaponry with only a couple of ways to viably build each.  Sure there are a metric tonne of mods available, but most of them are UI ornaments that only the hardest of hardcore collection-enthusiastic players care about.

 

I'm just not sure that this game can make that drastic of a change at this point.  Damage needs to come down and guns need to have base effects that increase over rank-up.

 

Basically what I'm saying is that they need a combination of their previous system and their current mod system.  They completely scrapped one in favor of the other and now we're seeing the effects of fleshing out an incomplete and/or non-existent progression system.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

 

Just simple things like reducing the effectiveness/increasing the cost of +damage mods. Adding a cap of how much elemental you can put on a weapon. Increasing the effectiveness of mods that give us reload speed or bigger clip sizes, more range, less falloff, faster projectiles, special misc effects, windup changes, accuracy changes, sound changes, Bow specific mods, missile specific mods, sniper specific mods. Explosive specific mods. Downed player specific mods... This plus damage singlemindedness that we have is the reason why we don't have cool mods like "cluster explosives" or "leave area of damage under the explosion like a napalm/tar moa" or "bouncing projectiles" Because DE knows we won't use them in favour of just doing more damage. 

mething with numbers this wild. 

 

We have utterly useless mods like warm coat and intruder, and mostly useless ones like shocking touch. DE totes doesn't care about releasing useless mods.

 

While I agree with your initial premise ("mandatory damage mods shouldn't be mandatory"), I disagree firmly with nerfing them massively. That's not going to solve anything; people will always choose damage even if it's a mere 10% instead of the 160% of serration. (Example: In Mass Effect 3, each weapon can have two mods. The mod that almost every build runs with is the +damage one, even if their extended barrel is only level 1. Because moar damage.) Damage is fundamentally more useful in every situation than most effects, so people will *always* choose damage first and have other mods as an afterthought.

 

One solution I've seen to this issue is to make the current benefits from serration and split chamber come as level up rewards, similar to how warframes gain shields and health. This way utility mods like punchthrough and the like aren't competing with damage mods, and DE can even take a crack at balancing things when they *know* a gun can be reasonably assumed to have max DPS, instead of having to accomodate people who accidentally gimp themselves through not knowing how to build or not having all the mods they need for a given build.

 

 

 

Well it's just a thing. Most games follow that maple story trend, and Warframe is no exception when I like back to the times before U9.  Damage 1.0 to me honestly looked way more fun to me. Now we just have bigger and bigger numbers which is just a cliche typical of most MMO's.

 

 

Take it from someone who started playing during U7: Damage 1.0 was terrible. It had all of the downsides of our current system in that raw damage was king, as well as other downsides like how the only kind of damage worth anything was armor piercing because armor scaled such that literally every other element save toxin was useless and there was no real effective way to remove enemy armor. (Corrosive projection being bugged at the time).

 

You guys complain about cookie cutter builds now? At least now we have a different build for grineer, infested, and corpus. In damage 1.0, there was literally just two builds: Crit, or elemental, and absolutely no difference in how they played at all. It's not like now, where a radiation build gun plays differently than a corrosive or magnetic build one.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Cpl_Facehugger

[Thaumatos]

We have utterly useless mods like warm coat and intruder, and mostly useless ones like shocking touch. DE totes doesn't care about releasing useless mods.

 

While I agree with your initial premise ("mandatory damage mods shouldn't be mandatory"), I disagree firmly with nerfing them massively. That's not going to solve anything; people will always choose damage even if it's a mere 10% instead of the 160% of serration. (Example: In Mass Effect 3, each weapon can have two mods. The mod that almost every build runs with is the +damage one, even if their extended barrel is only level 1. Because moar damage.) Damage is fundamentally more useful in every situation than most effects, so people will *always* choose damage first and have other mods as an afterthought.

 

One solution I've seen to this issue is to make the current benefits from serration and split chamber come as level up rewards, similar to how warframes gain shields and health. This way utility mods like punchthrough and the like aren't competing with damage mods, and DE can even take a crack at balancing things when they *know* a gun can be reasonably assumed to have max DPS, instead of having to accomodate people who accidentally gimp themselves through not knowing how to build or not having all the mods they need for a given build.

 

 

 

 

 

Take it from someone who started playing during U7: Damage 1.0 was terrible. It had all of the downsides of our current system in that raw damage was king, as well as other downsides like how the only kind of damage worth anything was armor piercing because armor scaled such that literally every other element save toxin was useless and there was no real effective way to remove enemy armor. (Corrosive projection being bugged at the time).

 

You guys complain about cookie cutter builds now? At least now we have a different build for grineer, infested, and corpus. In damage 1.0, there was literally just two builds: Crit, or elemental, and absolutely no difference in how they played at all. It's not like now, where a radiation build gun plays differently than a corrosive or magnetic build one.

 

While I agree that damage being integrated instead of a "necessary customization choice" is a good thing, I also think overall damage needs to be decreased.  With the exception of a few abhorrent weapons, all guns can get obscenely high amounts of damage that trivializes any and all non-damage-oriented choices you can make with your builds.  Your gun freezes and my gun stuns...but who cares?  We both one-shot everything anyway.

 

As for the cookie cutter builds, I've been playing prior to damage 2.0 as well.  The only thing DE has really changed is the 'armor ignore' stat.  We still want "rainbow" builds on all of our stuff; now we just care about the order in which the rainbow is oriented, that's all.  Admittedly better than "damage 1.0", but not a significant enough change to warrant a whole lot of praise.

[Dromeos-Prime]

Here's my view on this:

 

     Let's say for example DE does remove Serration/Hornet Strike, make elementals not add damage & make multi-shot cost extra bullets. Then the question will just change from "Is any one else bothered that modding is always about more damage?" to "Is any one else bothered that modding is always about dealing damage faster?"

 

 Because if those main damage mods are gone people will just try to make guns reload & shoot faster and longer. Therefore damage mods will only be replaced by fire rate, reload speed and ammo mods.

 

 Because player will ALWAYS try to find the best/easiest/fastest way to kill enemies, that is a fact that will never change.

 

 

 

TL;DR: Removing old kings will only bring others to power.

Edited December 24, 2014 by reptillicus

[RawrWolfie]

I'm on the side of the OP in that I'd like more options.  Maximizing damage isn't a bad thing, but it'd be nice if there were comparable alternates, or even just fancy ways of dealing more damage.  I tried to come up with an idea based on the theory that 90% elementals, multishot, and heavy caliber were the largest offenders of vanilla builds.  I also tried to come up with an idea that didn't alter the current modding system (still alters enemies). I don't think "losing" a slot to serration is so terrible a concept, and being able to have differing levels of serration is a nice option compared to tying damage to level. Anyway, the general concept, centered on the idea that serration-likes largely control damage:

A retune in enemy stats to reflect new expected damage levels.
> A flat armor level. A level 45 and level 12 heavy gunner should have the same damage reduction %, since we have little ways to combat armor (corrosive proc, corrosive projection, abating link, and terrify for a complete list?)
> Exponentially scaling health to deal with synergetic damage gains experienced by tenno.
> Heavies are total bullet sponges, begging for high damage headshots, procs, obscene close range packed-pellets/bullets damage, combined fire, etc.
> Heavies/Elites spawn in a fixed ratio to mooks that does not change/plateaus as waves/survival minutes increase.

A change in multishot. As is, it basically serves as a straight multiplier to everything a gun does (unless its like an ogris with max heavy caliber). In order to give it more of a niche role:
> Projectiles/beams all proc the same
> Projectiles/beams have innate spread
> Decreases damage in such a way that with a fully modded serration & split chamber, both shots landing results in roughly +25% total damage dealt or some such.

Heavy Caliber
> Decrease in damage bonus (+99%?)
> Inaccuracy effect is added to the first shot, can basically expect to never land shot on the crosshair

Hellfire
> Converts 5/10/15/20/25/30% of weapon damage to heat. This damage increased by 7->42% (+12.6% total damage).
> Hellfire, Stormbringer, Cyro Rounds, Infected Clip results in 60% Radiation 40% Viral damage and +50.4% total damage.

Termite Rounds
> Converts 5/10/15/20/25/30% of weapon damage to heat. Status chance improved by 15->60%.

Rifle Aptitude
> Increases status chance by +20/40/60/80/100/120%
> Weapon with status chance over 100 can proc multiple damage types at once? Not tied to mod?

Piercing Hit
> Converts 5->30% of (physical?) damage into puncture damage. +10->60% status chance.

Bore
> Converts 5->30% of (physical?) damage into puncture damage. This damage increased by +7->42%.

Smite Grineer
> Removed, since only in the void are multiple factions encountered simultaneously. A no-fun, can't tell its there mod.

Secondaries/Melees would get a similar treatment. The elementals are still likely going to be prefered, due to the nature of armor type resistances. Hopefully though more situations like the corrupted Heavy Gunner versus the Corrupted Bombard arise, allowing players to specialize their damage type against only certain mobs of a faction. Even so, maybe the convenience/dps boosts from fast hands or eagle eye will begin to compete.

I calculate (do I even maths right?) that with these changes Serration/Hvy Cal/Split Chamber/4 elementals would deal ~2.4x the flat damage of a serration-only weapon with whatever inaccurate spread hvy+split would produce.
The same calculation with the current game-mods would yield ~12.1x the flat damage of a serration only weapon, easily outperforming other mods (except crit mods), and leaving room for a generic band-aid mod.

I have no idea if this would be a good way to go about things, it's just an idea. Butcher at will, I'm not smart enough to.

The rest is unrelated to this topic, just some random mods I thought of while doing this
> +accuracy
> projectiles gain flight speed and punch through over distance
> first status effect scored on an enemy per enemy is cold, all damage dealt from the bullet converted to cold damage.
> toxic, heat, lightning variants of above
> bonus damage on first trigger pull of shotgun per clip
> can heal/shield restore every X seconds from reloading
> stronger status effects (puncture reduces more damage, burn burns harder, etc)
> energy channel for primaries/secondaries
> enemy treated as -X armor

> while zoomed, gain a frontal shield effect

Thunderbolt Changes?
> damage based on weapon damage
> explosions can crit
> always explodes?
> attica syndicate mod?

Edited December 24, 2014 by RawrWolfie

[Innocent_Flower]

 Because if those main damage mods are gone people will just try to make guns reload & shoot faster and longer. Therefore damage mods will only be replaced by fire rate, reload speed and ammo mods.

Not saying "completely remove damage mods" but more "Make damage mods a choice that isn't always right" 

 

Reload and clip size don't always get along. 

Shooting faster is terrible for ammo consumption, so it's an interesting tradeoff

Ellements and effects, man. Elements and effects. 

Accuracy and spread. Two things both opposite and valuable. 

Utility mods on weapons like flght speed, more zoom, 

 

And customization has thus increased a thousand-fold. 

[Astrotrap]

"is anyone else bothered-"

 

NOPE!

 

*explosions*

Edited December 24, 2014 by Astrotrap

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Not saying "completely remove damage mods" but more "Make damage mods a choice that isn't always right" 

 

Reload and clip size don't always get along. 

Shooting faster is terrible for ammo consumption, so it's an interesting tradeoff

Ellements and effects, man. Elements and effects. 

Accuracy and spread. Two things both opposite and valuable. 

Utility mods on weapons like flght speed, more zoom, 

 

And customization has thus increased a thousand-fold. 

 

The problem is that a damage increase is almost always right in almost all cases. It can be a 5% increase or a 500% increase, more damage is more damage and players will always flock to more damage. Utility mods have to compete with killing the enemy faster, but they fundamentally can't so long as the comparison is there at all.

[RawrWolfie]

I would argue that utility mods can very much compete (as could "defensive" mods, like eagle eye).  A utility mod is superior in any scenario in which a damage increase is overkill or does not reduce time to kill (TTK hereafter).  A weapon that does 5 damage to a 10 HP target would need to deal double damage to reduce TTK, anything else is negligible in an 1-on-1 scenario.  If damage modding cannot achieve that level of moar dakka, perhaps status chance/magazine size is the way to go.  Punch through is a superior damage choice whenever it comes into play, but does not improve TTK of elite targets.  It trades single target efficiency for mob slaying and cover bypass.  Utility mods can optimize damage at various ranges, or expand the domain of viable targets (corrosive/viral procs, shield ignore, cover bypass, less recoil for range, etc).  Faster reloads can contribute to higher DPS, or lower the windows in which you are vulnerable. Even if a damage mod reduces TTK from 3 to 2 seconds, or 4 to 3, or whatever, maybe the bonus/QoL/ammo granted by non-damage mod X is a worthwhile tradeoff to player C.

Edited December 24, 2014 by RawrWolfie

[Tyrian3k]

I would argue that utility mods can very much compete (as could "defensive" mods, like eagle eye).  A utility mod is superior in any scenario in which a damage increase is overkill or does not reduce time to kill (TTK hereafter).  A weapon that does 5 damage to a 10 HP target would need to deal double damage to reduce TTK, anything else is negligible in an 1-on-1 scenario.  If damage modding cannot achieve that level of moar dakka, perhaps status chance/magazine size is the way to go.  Punch through is a superior damage choice whenever it comes into play, but does not improve TTK of elite targets.  It trades single target efficiency for mob slaying and cover bypass.  Utility mods can optimize damage at various ranges, or expand the domain of viable targets (corrosive/viral procs, shield ignore, cover bypass, less recoil for range, etc).  Faster reloads can contribute to higher DPS, or lower the windows in which you are vulnerable. Even if a damage mod reduces TTK from 3 to 2 seconds, or 4 to 3, or whatever, maybe the bonus/QoL/ammo granted by non-damage mod X is a worthwhile tradeoff to player C.

Problem is that where it matters, you always need more dakka (endless mode) since overkill ceases to be significant there. On regular missions, players just rip everything apart anyways, so you'll likely waste more time changing mods than you'd get back from having them. Also, reload and clip size mods aren't even remotely close to being powerful enough to actually have a significant impact. Also, the currently most powerful weapon barely needs to reload at all and at the same time has quite a low damage per shot, making overkill a very small issue.

Overkill only comes into play on weapons that are already in a comparably bad spot since they usually deal far more damage than most enemies outside of endless modes have life with a single shot (namely shotguns, snipers and bows).

There also is a mod that gives punch through and reduces your TTK at the same time (Shred), your argument becomes near obsolete since that mod turns out to be a win-win as well.

[AlphaHorseman]

Isn't that the beauty of the system though? To mod as you see fit? To make a weapon your own because that's what the system allows you to? Why limit other people's ability to do so? It is their choice to build as they would. If they go for more damage of a certain type, so be it! Why should they be curtailed in their customization just because you don't like that they can customize how they want to customize? It is their choice to play as they play, to build as they build, not yours. 

 

I am not saying that some of the points you said were, in my opinion, good, but some of them sound like you want to nerf mods just to make others seem more appealing. I would rather them buff mods people think are inadequate so that they can be comparable to other mods, rather than just considered and defaulted to the inventory. Bouncing bullets sounds fun, explosions that leave behind AOE sounds fun, different affects/characteristics on different weapons sounds fun. What doesn't sound fun is nerfing mods just because you think they're not supposed to be that way.

 

The beauty of the customization in this game is that we can build however we wish, whenever we wish it. Nerfing other mods to make the others look "worth it" isn't going to help in any way with that. If my serration was nerfed to the point where I consider extended magazine to be a palpable choice isn't something I'd find fun, it would be something I'd find annoying. I'd bet someone already finds that mod appealing, and they are allowed their freedom to put that mod on if they wish it. The rest of us don't have to go through that choice because it isn't one we'd make for ourselves, as we see it differently. But that's the best part, we can choose to mod how we wish, whenever we wish, with whatever we wish.

 

Nerfing mods and capping what kinds of mods we can put into our weapons would not help in any way with that. It would take away from the freedoms of customization that we have now, and would only hurt builds, rather than help diversify them. It would be better to buff mods that the player base considers inadequate, rather than hurt mods just because some people don't like the fact that I worked my butt off through forma, cores, and credits to make it as powerful as I want it to be and to tailor it as I wanted to.

 

We were allowed this freedom because it gives us the dynamics and diversity that we wanted, and though yes, I agree some more enemy diversity and interesting mechanics could be added to our weapons, somewhat like augments for powers or stances for melee, I would not agree to nerfing mods for the sake of "balance" or some semblance of making other mods more appealing because of it.

[Vallerian]

I have a fun-mode loadout and a try-hard mode loadout.
 

I enjoy myself with my fun loadout, but I obviously won't be modding my try-hard mode loadout with anything other than what's optimal, and in most cases it's damage - because that's what I want my weapon to do. I don't need no cheese-ball Utility Paris or something when I have my Warframe and my squad providing all the utility we need.

 

You could have fun and cheesy mods like Thunderbolt tuned to the point where they belong in the 'optimal' build, but then you're just back to square one where Thunderbolt is the must-have DPS boost.

 

Besides, there's already a fair amount of customization, whether it be building for crit/proc/elemental damage/straight damage/armor shred/AoE/ etc, but in the end a gun needs to be modded for what guns are designed to do, kill bad guys - and that's overwhelmingly accomplished by just doing more damage.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Vallerian

[Thaumatos]

Here's my view on this:

 

     Let's say for example DE does remove Serration/Hornet Strike, make elementals not add damage & make multi-shot cost extra bullets. Then the question will just change from "Is any one else bothered that modding is always about more damage?" to "Is any one else bothered that modding is always about dealing damage faster?"

 

 Because if those main damage mods are gone people will just try to make guns reload & shoot faster and longer. Therefore damage mods will only be replaced by fire rate, reload speed and ammo mods.

 

 Because player will ALWAYS try to find the best/easiest/fastest way to kill enemies, that is a fact that will never change.

 

 

 

TL;DR: Removing old kings will only bring others to power.

People will always try to maximize the effectiveness of their weapons.  That's fine.

 

What needs to change is how that is applied to each and every weapon.  If you build with mods 'A'-'I' and I use 'S'-'Z' on two different weapons, and we both achieve maximized damage output, that's a completely different situation than both of us using 'A'-'I'.  It's not fun when maximizing any weapon means using Serration, Split Chamber, Heavy Caliber, Storm Bringer, Infected Clip, High Voltage, Malignant Force, and Shred.  Sure you may swap one or two of them, but only to gain a different element for a different faction.

 

The only builds that can even remotely be considered different are 'crit' builds; and only because they require at least 2 mods to increase crit and make the build viable.  The rest of your 6 slots will be mix and match from the list above. 

 

Another problem that many people are not acknowledging is the sheer amount of damage output weapons have right now.  Regardless of how you feel about the current mod setup, the amount of damage almost all weapons can achieve is absurdly high.  Whether or not they change how mods work and/or remove/integrate certain mods, you have to agree that player damage is too high.  Otherwise nothing is really going to change.

 

 

I have a fun-mode loadout and a try-hard mode loadout.

 

I enjoy myself with my fun loadout, but I obviously won't be modding my try-hard mode loadout with anything other than what's optimal, and in most cases it's damage - because that's what I want my weapon to do. I don't need no cheese-ball Utility Paris or something when I have my Warframe and my squad providing all the utility we need.

 

You could have fun and cheesy mods like Thunderbolt tuned to the point where they belong in the 'optimal' build, but then you're just back to square one where Thunderbolt is the must-have DPS boost.

 

Besides, there's already a fair amount of customization, whether it be building for crit/proc/elemental damage/straight damage/armor shred/AoE/ etc, but in the end a gun needs to be modded for what guns are designed to do, kill bad guys - and that's overwhelmingly accomplished by just doing more damage.

 

This is the problem.  People are confusing 'optimization' with 'trivialization'.  No one is trying to get rid of optimum builds, but there needs to be a difference in what that means from weapon to weapon.

 

If none of the mods gave any additional damage, and all weapons had the same amount of damage potential, we'd be in the same boat we are now.

 

The beauty of the customization in this game is that we can build however we wish, whenever we wish it. Nerfing other mods to make the others look "worth it" isn't going to help in any way with that. If my serration was nerfed to the point where I consider extended magazine to be a palpable choice isn't something I'd find fun, it would be something I'd find annoying. I'd bet someone already finds that mod appealing, and they are allowed their freedom to put that mod on if they wish it. The rest of us don't have to go through that choice because it isn't one we'd make for ourselves, as we see it differently. But that's the best part, we can choose to mod how we wish, whenever we wish, with whatever we wish.

 

Nerfing mods and capping what kinds of mods we can put into our weapons would not help in any way with that. It would take away from the freedoms of customization that we have now, and would only hurt builds, rather than help diversify them. It would be better to buff mods that the player base considers inadequate, rather than hurt mods just because some people don't like the fact that I worked my butt off through forma, cores, and credits to make it as powerful as I want it to be and to tailor it as I wanted to.

 

We were allowed this freedom because it gives us the dynamics and diversity that we wanted, and though yes, I agree some more enemy diversity and interesting mechanics could be added to our weapons, somewhat like augments for powers or stances for melee, I would not agree to nerfing mods for the sake of "balance" or some semblance of making other mods more appealing because of it.

 

When increasing damage gives you a more effective situation than increasing magazine capacity, fire rate, and reload speed all at once, you're not "free to choose".

 

I can't stand the classic "buffs not nerfs" line.  Why?  It's illogical.  If we buffed all mob HP, all armor, and all other mods, and left damage the same, it'd look good to those people on the surface because they didn't see nerfs.  And that's all that would matter.  They would have DE work tirelessly to buff every other aspect in the game rather than nerf the one they like just to reach the exact same outcome, a comparative decrease in the effectiveness of their choice.

 

The sad part is, they wouldn't even see it as a nerf.  That's how detached the "buffs not nerfs" logic is.

 

It's like a "glass half empty or half full" argument.  If I poured water out of a glass to halfway, you'd say it was half empty.  If I filled it halfway, you'd say it was half full.  Either way, you're left with half a glass of water.  Now in the case of the above argument, it'd be like saying, "There isn't enough water in the half empty glasses, only the half full ones."  Logically that doesn't make a d@mn bit of sense.