Efficiency Is Inevitable; Why Removing Serration Won't Fix Anything

[Tulzscha]

General Discussion isn't the place for feedback threads, please read and understand:

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/318374-read-before-posting-threads-what-is-and-isnt-general-discussion/

 

Moved to the proper section.

[motorfirebox]

There will always be a best way to mod a particular gun. That doesn't mean there will always be a best way to mod every gun, which is where Serration is at right now.

 

Fast Hands is not always going to be the best option. If you have a weapon that already has a very low reload speed, then Fast Hands might not be the best use of your mod slot. You might be better off with something that increases status chance or crit chance, getting more overall damage out of fewer shots than you would with lower status/crit and more shots.

 

Honestly, I'd like to see Mods+Damage 3.0. Make using specific damage types against specific enemies more important. Make Serrration, if it still exists, cap out at 30% or so, so that there's a real choice between adding 30% overall damage versus 90% enemy-specific damage.

Edited January 18, 2015 by motorfirebox

[Vaskadar]

Zeropunctuation

[Jeetza]

If I had an extra mod slot because I wasn't forced to use Serration, most of my weapons would have a different mod per weapon as its replacement. Serration is not a choice; it is a requirement, and without it builds would be more varied if even just slightly.

Keep telling yourself that, but in reality you and EVERYONE ELSE will just fill that new slot with guess what? Another damage mod.

[sanj66]

I've always been a fan of removing Serration, Hornet Strike, and other base-damage mods (as well as multishot) simply because they are "mandatory" upgrades that work against the point of the modding system. I believe this to the point that I believe elemental mods shouldn't increase damage but only add elemental effects.  The way physical damage mods should also be different so as to modify the ratio of the different damage types and thus add flexibility.

 

Basically, as one can tell from the above-stated, simply removing Serration and such wouldn't fix things--it would take changing the entire damage system again along with the modding system because the problems are ultimately on a more fundamental level than an executionary level.

this will never work because then you wont be able to have more than 1 elemental combo, and also weapon damage variation would be restricted especially with new mob types etc being implement and variety of elemental combos wanting/needing to be used, this wont make more variety it will make less.

[sanj66]

I'll take a shot at that one.

 

1. Headshot

2. Bodyshot

3. Legshot

4. Arm shot

5. Multiple pellets on same shot(shotguns)

6. Shot in back

7. While unaware

8. Per shot without missing

9. Increased crit chance per shot without missing

10. Multiple enemies in a single shot

11. Shots on same enemy

12. Is targetting you.

13. Is not targetting you.

14. Increases the closer they are.

15. Increases the further away they are.

16. While airborne.

17. While on ground.

18. While wallrunning.

19. While wall clinging.

20. While crouched.

21. While sliding.

22. While above.

23. While below.

24. For duration after switching weapons.

25. While hip firing.

26. While aiming down sight.

27. While moving.

28. While enemy moving.

29. While standing still.

30. While enemy standing still.

31. While enemy cc'd.

32. While enemy in air/ragdolled.

33. While enemy knocked down.

34. After getting a headshot on that enemy.

35. For duration after getting a headshot.

36. After getting a crit on that enemy.

37. For duration after getting a crit.

38. After taking damage from that enemy.

39. You haven't taken damage from that enemy.

40. For a duration after taking damage.

41. For a duration after your shield runs out.

42. For a duration after your shield recharges.

43. After taking health damage.

44. While you have higher percent health.

45. While you have higher percent shields.

46. While you have lower percent health.

47. While you have lower percent shields.

48. While your shields are recharging.

49. While you have max energy.

50. While you have no energy.

51. Increases with enemy higher percent health.

52. Increases with enemy lower percent health.

 

Yeah I'll just stop there.

Also:

 

 

 

Yeah hit 40 easy too.

yes but the problem would arise again, where a huge % of these use would or more than likely would go to a specific number of conditions and then you end back up with the same problem as before, useless mods and mods considered staples to weapon type. weapon type also plays a big role in conditions as in lets say a sniper, most snipers work off of crit, you get double damage on crit head shots, obviously snipers will be based around damage on a head shot, and you reinvent the same problem, just more of them, it would become a staple for snipers, isnt that the exact thing that people who want serration removed complain about it being?

[sanj66]

There will always be a best way to mod a particular gun. That doesn't mean there will always be a best way to mod every gun, which is where Serration is at right now.

 

Fast Hands is not always going to be the best option. If you have a weapon that already has a very low reload speed, then Fast Hands might not be the best use of your mod slot. You might be better off with something that increases status chance or crit chance, getting more overall damage out of fewer shots than you would with lower status/crit and more shots.

 

Honestly, I'd like to see Mods+Damage 3.0. Make using specific damage types against specific enemies more important. Make Serrration, if it still exists, cap out at 30% or so, so that there's a real choice between adding 30% overall damage versus 90% enemy-specific damage.

and guess what you just created? a whole new staple mod, just multiple forms of them. weapon type isnt being considered in these arguments.

[00zau]

  I'll use my Sybaris as an example. If we remove the "must have" Serration and use the damage gain per level system, then i can use that extra slot in many ways:

 

  I can use Critical Delay for more reliable critical chance.

  Or I can use Fast Hand/P Fast Hand for more DPS.

  Or I can use Bane mod for more DPS against certain factions.

  Or I can use dual mods for elemental damage combos and more status chance.

  Or I can use Shred for punch through.

  Or I can use conditional damage/CC mod like head shot, back shot, legs shot, nuts shot, w/e shot when DE releases them.

  Or & or & or.

 

  A whole bunch of possibilities when we remove Serration and just let guns gain damage naturally. Eventually there will be alot of new interesting mods and that extra slot will enable a bunch of quacky builds.

Except one of those options will be 'da bess' and will be the only 'option' that 90% of players will use. If those mods were worth it, you'd be using them already instead of a 3rd or 4th elemental mod. We aren't. Almost every player will just slap another crit or damage mod on if they removed serration.

[RlGHTEOUSNESS]

  I'll use my Sybaris as an example. If we remove the "must have" Serration and use the damage gain per level system, then i can use that extra slot in many ways:

 

  I can use Critical Delay for more reliable critical chance.

  Or I can use Fast Hand/P Fast Hand for more DPS.

  Or I can use Bane mod for more DPS against certain factions.

  Or I can use dual mods for elemental damage combos and more status chance.

  Or I can use Shred for punch through.

  Or I can use conditional damage/CC mod like head shot, back shot, legs shot, nuts shot, w/e shot when DE releases them.

  Or & or & or.

 

  A whole bunch of possibilities when we remove Serration and just let guns gain damage naturally. Eventually there will be alot of new interesting mods and that extra slot will enable a bunch of quacky builds.

Right, you can already do that with the slots you have available after Serration and Split Chamber.  Why is one (or two) more slots magically going to make a difference?  Why not just add ten more slots and infinite points and then you can customize to your heart's content?

 

The more realistic point that OP is making, and it's an excellent one, is that min-maxers exist, DPS is a readily min maxable stat, and removing Serration doesn't prevent it.  There will always be optimal builds, so quit trying to pretend there won't be.

[motorfirebox]

and guess what you just created? a whole new staple mod, just multiple forms of them. weapon type isnt being considered in these arguments.

Er, no. What I've created are mods that are situationally effective. Yes, there will still be situations where one mod is the best mod. That's quite a bit different from one mod being the best in every situation.

 

 

Right, you can already do that with the slots you have available after Serration and Split Chamber.  Why is one (or two) more slots magically going to make a difference?  Why not just add ten more slots and infinite points and then you can customize to your heart's content?

 

The more realistic point that OP is making, and it's an excellent one, is that min-maxers exist, DPS is a readily min maxable stat, and removing Serration doesn't prevent it.  There will always be optimal builds, so quit trying to pretend there won't be.

 

Of course there will always be optimal builds. That's a completely different prospect from a single mod being a requirement for every optimal build.

 

 

yes but the problem would arise again, where a huge % of these use would or more than likely would go to a specific number of conditions and then you end back up with the same problem as before, useless mods and mods considered staples to weapon type. weapon type also plays a big role in conditions as in lets say a sniper, most snipers work off of crit, you get double damage on crit head shots, obviously snipers will be based around damage on a head shot, and you reinvent the same problem, just more of them, it would become a staple for snipers, isnt that the exact thing that people who want serration removed complain about it being?

 

Well, no. Some snipers are based around headshots. Others look at the nature of most mission types—a mob rush—and don't worry as much about getting headshots on most mobs. If I'm on Nyx, I might pick the "during CC" mod, because I expect to have Chaos up all the time. If I'm using an Immortal Valkyr build, the "after taking hp dmg" mod might appeal to me. That list, to me, looks pretty awesome, because there's no single one that is best in every situation for every loadout for every individual playstyle. This isn't WoW, where you can reasonably expect to be doing the same thing over and over again with only RNG providing variation in effect. Nearly every weapon shot (minus some standouts like the Amprex, etc.) is a skillshot on which any number of variables can come into play.

Edited January 19, 2015 by motorfirebox

[motorfirebox]

edit: dp 

 

Edited January 19, 2015 by motorfirebox

[Sword_Symphony]

All I see here is an excuse for End Game players to get Legendary Cores and sell them for plat. 

[DSpite]

Hold on a sec.

 

If this game was like some of the games that have a much more linear scaling of the bad guys, then a gun that starts at a damage of say, 100 points, and fully modded became 150 points, then people could decide where on that extra 1-50 damage points the usefulness on the "damage" part fits them best, and then also slot some utility if they wanted to. Payday 2 kind of does this.

 

However, here, the percentage increases from mods on guns scale in such a way that if you take a gun that has 8 damage mods, and replace 4 of those with 4 utility mods, the damage does not drop to 50% it drops to 20% or less. On top of that, enemies gradually get more EHP so they need more bullets to kill.

 

This gun can face enemies at low levels that will die with less then the damage output of one bullet, so taking a "burst" instead, at that scale, is not a big deal. But what this eventually causes is that one enemy will now take 5+ entire magazines to kill compared to a single one. Factor in reloading time and shields that can regenerate, and suddenly it's impossible to meaningfully kill anything.

 

Unless you compress the whole damage scale and enemy EHP scale down, I don't understand how this can be fixed. The fact we have Endless modes makes that worse because people keep calling that "the end game" and keep requesting even more damage output to go places the guns were never meant to even get to.

 

DE will not compress that scale unless it fits in with their vision of where WF needs to be. If, like Borderlands, they want to keep that scale fairly wide, they will tweak mods, yes, but not to an extent that it's a totally new combat system, I don't think.

[pavlo555]

what will happen to primed point blank though ? 

[Scryed]

The way I look at it ?

Letting weapons get stats via leveling is nice.

Getting the same potential damage without serration is FANTASTIC.

And lo and behold, we got a free mod slot !

Finally someone will put in a Primed Fast Hands !

 

But you know what will happen ?

People will put another damage modifier into their gun.

 

Weapons that previously did not have slots for a Bane / Shred like Soma for example (Serration, SC, HC, PS, VS, 3 elemental mods) will have an open slot to fit in.

 

Guess what happens ?

Moar DPS.

 

Will things change ?

Nope.

This right here it will be a endless perpetual cycle of the same thing over and over and those that think the changes are different are looking through rose tinted glasses.

[Gr33hn]

Give me raids, lore and more meaningful gameplay not this trivial S#&$.

 

Have my upvotes! I couldnt agree more!

[sanj66]

Er, no. What I've created are mods that are situationally effective. Yes, there will still be situations where one mod is the best mod. That's quite a bit different from one mod being the best in every situation.

 

 

 

Of course there will always be optimal builds. That's a completely different prospect from a single mod being a requirement for every optimal build.

 

 

 

Well, no. Some snipers are based around headshots. Others look at the nature of most mission types—a mob rush—and don't worry as much about getting headshots on most mobs. If I'm on Nyx, I might pick the "during CC" mod, because I expect to have Chaos up all the time. If I'm using an Immortal Valkyr build, the "after taking hp dmg" mod might appeal to me. That list, to me, looks pretty awesome, because there's no single one that is best in every situation for every loadout for every individual playstyle. This isn't WoW, where you can reasonably expect to be doing the same thing over and over again with only RNG providing variation in effect. Nearly every weapon shot (minus some standouts like the Amprex, etc.) is a skillshot on which any number of variables can come into play.

that statement alone means you do accept the fact that there will be newer staple mods, and generic builds, which is exactly what you are complaining about, so this solves nothing. also no, why would i put a during cc mod on a sniper? i get double crit damage on a head shot, plus an exponential damage increase due to my condition, that alone is greater than any damage during cc, its 2 exponential increases in damage, your point with valkyr guess what that makes? it makes a certain condition basically a staple if you are using valkyr, so again this solves nothing and changes nothing, all it does is produce more staples and more useless mods into the mod system.

[motorfirebox]

that statement alone means you do accept the fact that there will be newer staple mods, and generic builds, which is exactly what you are complaining about, so this solves nothing.

That's incorrect for the simple reason that you have to account for how much better the optimal build is than the runners up. If the optimal build does 100 DPS, but there are ten other builds that do 99 DPS, then it doesn't really matter if you use the optimal build or one of the ten competing builds. Right now, the optimal build is something on the order of 165% better than any other build can possibly be, due to a single mod. What if we changed things such that the optimal build was only 15% better than the second-best build? Then there'd be some choices involved, because 15% is a small enough gap that personal playstyle can conceivably make up for it.

 

 

also no, why would i put a during cc mod on a sniper? i get double crit damage on a head shot, plus an exponential damage increase due to my condition, that alone is greater than any damage during cc, its 2 exponential increases in damage, your point with valkyr guess what that makes? it makes a certain condition basically a staple if you are using valkyr, so again this solves nothing and changes nothing, all it does is produce more staples and more useless mods into the mod system.

This illustrates my point. You're saying the double damage on headshot mod is a must-have for snipers. You're also saying that the +dmg after taking hp damage is a must-have for Valkyr. What if you equip a sniper rifle on your Valkyr? Which is must-have?

 

If we replaced Serration with that list of 50-odd conditional mods, or even added Serration to the list (say the average conditional mod grants a maximum of +180% dmg, compared to maxxed Serration's 165%), there wouldn't be any absolute must-have staples. There might, depending, be a few staples for a select few weapons or even types of weapons, in which case it's just a matter of tweaking some numbers. Playstyle would be a much larger factor in mod choice than pure min-maxxing.

Edited January 21, 2015 by motorfirebox

[DSpite]

We only have one type of "mission" at the moment, and that involves killing things as fast as possible in order to get things done. Why would we mod guns for anything other then damage?

 

The only time we actually think about the guns is when Tactical Alerts are on.

 

Practically all fights happen at the 20-50 meter mark, and involve aiming at something and making it dead so it can't shoot back.

 

Until DE makes more custom missions, the only important factor is how large a number is coming out of the barrel every second.

[sanj66]

 

That's incorrect for the simple reason that you have to account for how much better the optimal build is than the runners up. If the optimal build does 100 DPS, but there are ten other builds that do 99 DPS, then it doesn't really matter if you use the optimal build or one of the ten competing builds. Right now, the optimal build is something on the order of 165% better than any other build can possibly be, due to a single mod. What if we changed things such that the optimal build was only 15% better than the second-best build? Then there'd be some choices involved, because 15% is a small enough gap that personal playstyle can conceivably make up for it.

 

 

You're proving my point. You're saying the double damage on headshot mod is a must-have for snipers. You're also saying that the +dmg after taking hp damage is a must-have for Valkyr. What if you equip a sniper rifle on your Valkyr? Which is must-have?

 

If we replaced Serration with that list of 50-odd conditional mods, or even added Serration to the list (say the average conditional mod grants a maximum of +180% dmg, compared to maxxed Serration's 165%), there wouldn't be any absolute must-have staples. There might, depending, be a few staples for a select few weapons or even types of weapons, in which case it's just a matter of tweaking some numbers. Playstyle would be a much larger factor in mod choice than pure min-maxxing.

 

this is wrong, why? why would i settle for 99 dps when i can have 100? which player would settle for that? they will go for the 100 dps, which is comprised of specific mods, aka another set of staple mods.

 

you dont seem to get the crit head shot mechanic, it is not a gun specific or mod specific mechanic, equipping a gun on valkyr still makes the crit on headshot the better mod, as i explained an exponential based on an exponential (crit dmg multiplier then multiplied on head shot) still making it better for a sniper to make head shot crit dmg a staple mod. this is not a 15% difference, the only way to get that is to bring out a conditional mod for either every single weapon for every single condition, or for every single stat bracket, so you would be looking at possibly 3 figure amount of new mods.

 

also play style still wont be that much of a factor, play style would be a huge factor if it were a weapon system say like blacklight, where i can take any gun frame and build it how i like, but here if i like an ar, i cant get it to hybrid with lets say a sniper or combat rifle, my play style is still limited by the weapon type and the weapon stats. so eliminating serration doesnt even bump play style that much, and is almost pointless, as you would still go for the best gun, with the best build as warframe is a game heavily based on numbers. so the argument of staples removal is just what you claim it to be a false choice, and play style with how weapons are and would be scaled down it still wont matter.

[taiiat]

reasonable balance can be achieved by having disparity between options from being so high.

 

Weapons gain at minimum a 55x Damage Output Multipler from no Mods to a full set of Mods.

instead of requiring Players have 55-110x more Damage due to some options being ridiculously better than others, we can make the disparities more reasonable.

 

so a Player could choose 8 Multishot Mods if you really wanted.

or if you wanted 8 Damage Mods for maximum basic Damage, you could.

Et Cetera.

 

the problem isn't that there's a setup that's N% better than the others.

the problem is that those setups are massively better than the others. which makes them objectively required.

for a random example, we have two Boltor's. one is massively better than the other, in every possible way. so then, there is no choice. one is atleast 7x better than the other. it's not that it's a different Playstyle, it's just a whole crapload better, in all ways.

 

 

again, the problem is not that something is like, 20% better. it's that some things are upwards of 700% better.

Players can completely ignore small disparities like that, it's not enough to invalidate their other choice that they'd rather have. some people will want every few percent they can get, and whatever, they can.

 

but what i've always heard from all kinds of people across this planet, is they talk the most about games that let them be whatever the hell they want to be, and play however they want to play, and not feel hampered.

they'll talk all day about this Playstyle that they love and find really effective. it's what they wanted, and they could have it. they didn't see something else and see that it blew their Playstyle out of the water, completely invalidating it.

 

 

a contrast example:

Mass Effect.

in the first game, Sniper Rifles were useless. most Heavy hitting Weapons were terrible. they overheated on basically every shot, they obviously shot slowly, cooled off slowly, and due to getting hit by anything shaking your camera a bit, could easily miss if a stray bullet came your way while aiming.

in contrast, Assault Rifles and other spray cannons were the only guns to use (Shotguns were okay but had some similar issues as Sniper Rifles, but to a lesser extent). why? they could shoot for a century without overheating, shot quickly, so having your aim shaken around didn't matter because you had a lot of follow up shots, and they cooled down faster.

 

so in that game, the problem was that one Archetype of Weapon was insanely objectively superior to the others. so insanely so, that other Archetypes of Weapons were almost unusable. you could almost W+M1 with an Assault Rifle, but with a Sniper Rifle you took probably 25x longer in each small engagement, spending most of your time waiting to be able to shoot.

oh, and the best part? Heavy hitting Weapons in Mass Effect didn't even do that much more Damage than Assault Rifles and other spammy guns. an Assault Rifle had probably 5x the DPS that a Sniper Rifle did, but the TTK of the Sniper Rifle (which is more important for that Archetype of Weapon obviously), was still very high.

[zoboso]

while players choose the most effective option, that option is not necessarily the best option for them.

[motorfirebox]

this is wrong, why? why would i settle for 99 dps when i can have 100? which player would settle for that? they will go for the 100 dps, which is comprised of specific mods, aka another set of staple mods.

 

...also play style still wont be that much of a factor, play style would be a huge factor if it were a weapon system say like blacklight, where i can take any gun frame and build it how i like, but here if i like an ar, i cant get it to hybrid with lets say a sniper or combat rifle, my play style is still limited by the weapon type and the weapon stats. so eliminating serration doesnt even bump play style that much, and is almost pointless, as you would still go for the best gun, with the best build as warframe is a game heavily based on numbers. so the argument of staples removal is just what you claim it to be a false choice, and play style with how weapons are and would be scaled down it still wont matter.

Playstyle is made up of a lot more factors than "what weapon and frame do I use". The reason I might choose a 99 DPS loadout over a 100 DPS loadout is because the 99 DPS loadout might better suit the way I use the weapons and frames I equip. Maybe the 99 DPS loadout uses mod #18 on the list. If I have a particular talent for landing shots while wallrunning, I might be able to get 110 DPS out of that 99 DPS build. But if you're less accurate than I am while wallrunning, then you'd probably either stick to the 100 DPS build or find one of the 99 DPS builds that fits your personal playstyle better.

 

you dont seem to get the crit head shot mechanic, it is not a gun specific or mod specific mechanic, equipping a gun on valkyr still makes the crit on headshot the better mod, as i explained an exponential based on an exponential (crit dmg multiplier then multiplied on head shot) still making it better for a sniper to make head shot crit dmg a staple mod. this is not a 15% difference, the only way to get that is to bring out a conditional mod for either every single weapon for every single condition, or for every single stat bracket, so you would be looking at possibly 3 figure amount of new mods.

Okay, if you're talking about adding a multiplier that comes into effect after all other multipliers, then yes, that's too powerful and shouldn't be added to the game. Why don't we talk about a more reasonable mods?

Edited January 21, 2015 by motorfirebox

[sanj66]

 

Playstyle is made up of a lot more factors than "what weapon and frame do I use". The reason I might choose a 99 DPS loadout over a 100 DPS loadout is because the 99 DPS loadout might better suit the way I use the weapons and frames I equip. Maybe the 99 DPS loadout uses mod #18 on the list. If I have a particular talent for landing shots while wallrunning, I might be able to get 110 DPS out of that 99 DPS build. But if you're less accurate than I am while wallrunning, then you'd probably either stick to the 100 DPS build or find one of the 99 DPS builds that fits your personal playstyle better.

 

Okay, if you're talking about adding a multiplier that comes into effect after all other multipliers, then yes, that's too powerful and shouldn't be added to the game. Why don't we talk about a more reasonable mods?

 

like i pointed out even with this play style is limited due to weapon type, you cannot put a crit on head shot mod on a penta or a non crit weapon, you wouldnt put a bonus on silent kills on a soma or something. that is why i used the example of blacklight, a poorly published game but the variety of gun types and how you go about it is a good idea. also like i pointed out on another thread the whole issue of staples i bigger than flat damage mods, crit mods are staples for crit weapons, if you get rid of those what would happen to crit weapons? playstyle in warframe is not limited really by mods but by the weapon type and its mechanics.

[motorfirebox]

I'm arguing for the removal or drastic alteration of Serration/Pressure Point/etc because every weapon has to have those mods in order to be effective. I'm not super concerned if people always use crit mods on crit weapons, because there are plenty of viable non-crit weapons to choose from. It might be interesting to have a number of different conditional crit mods, conditional status effect mods, and so on, but my primary concern is Serration and the rest.

 

Mods that are staples for given playstyles, or even given weapon types, aren't a huge problem. Mods that are staples for every weapon are a problem.

Edited January 21, 2015 by motorfirebox