Why Nothing Bad Could Come From Removing (Or Changing) Damage Mods.

[bl4ckhunter]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

 

 

except they can still grab one of the few powerful shotguns existing (namely kohm, drakgoon, hek with syndacate mod, boar prime, not including the phage as it's rank 6) and do t4 missions with no particular difficulties with a forgiving frame, actually the only things that really serve as a barrier between new players that have got informations on forum and or wikia and veterans is whether or not they have corrupted mods and potatos, with a good potatoed weapon and narrow minded/fleeting expertise anything can be done in reasonable terms.

[LtZefar]

I kept reading past this bit, but only for politeness. Wish you'd shown the same amount of politeness and thought about the obvious answers before asking for them. 

 

So you're not gonna comment any point?

Like

Critical weapons?

Can a level 1 weapon deal with T4 content now that we have no damage mods? If we have damage mods what makes you think they wouldn't be mandatory?

How powerful should the skills be?

Would they always be powerful?

What about progression?

 

For me the obvious answers is, everything would break.

[Innocent_Flower]

So you're not gonna comment any point?

Like

Critical weapons?

Can a level 1 weapon deal with T4 content now that we have no damage mods? If we have damage mods what makes you think they wouldn't be mandatory?

How powerful should the skills be?

Would they always be powerful?

What about progression?

 

For me the obvious answers is, everything would break.

- Rebalance crit weapons. Plus; Will the crits be so bad were straight damage mods taken? 

 

- Probably not, maybe yes; It'd be something extremely challenging; Like playing a game on impossible difficulty. You'd be able to increase how much damage a weapon does, but not by a huge amount, and through method's that aren't just +base damage. You also have to keep in mind that some weapons are just flat-out better than others. 

 

- It's only really damage skills that get affected; This'd probably be a good thing actually; Damage skills currently don't scale. With such a change damage abilities wouldn't need to scale. They'd be easier to ballance (get your ember out!)

 

- (can't tell if that's an extension of a question or a question on it's own) 

 

- Progression is currently a number based system where the player does more numbers to an enemy with higher numbers (though occasionaly a player does very high numbers to an enemy with very low numbers because scaling is fubar; therin lies the problem) If progression was about getting more mods that improve or add new mechanics to a weapon (without causing instant-death) then players who have progressed could play alongside players who haven't without being OP but still being much more awesome.  

[LtZefar]

- Rebalance crit weapons. Plus; Will the crits be so bad were straight damage mods taken? 

 

- Probably not, maybe yes; It'd be something extremely challenging; Like playing a game on impossible difficulty. You'd be able to increase how much damage a weapon does, but not by a huge amount, and through method's that aren't just +base damage. You also have to keep in mind that some weapons are just flat-out better than others. 

 

- It's only really damage skills that get affected; This'd probably be a good thing actually; Damage skills currently don't scale. With such a change damage abilities wouldn't need to scale. They'd be easier to ballance (get your ember out!)

 

- (can't tell if that's an extension of a question or a question on it's own) 

 

- Progression is currently a number based system where the player does more numbers to an enemy with higher numbers (though occasionaly a player does very high numbers to an enemy with very low numbers because scaling is fubar; therin lies the problem) If progression was about getting more mods that improve or add new mechanics to a weapon (without causing instant-death) then players who have progressed could play alongside players who haven't without being OP but still being much more awesome.  

 

-How would you rebalance crit weapons? They'd deal at least double damage on crit and would instantly be better than anything else in the game. If Crit weapons don't deal double damage what effect would they have? Ignore defense? That'd still be better than normal weapons.

 

So all in all Crit weapons would not be able to fit into this at all in any way or shape.

 

- But if you can't boost the damage by a lot then any weapon at level 1 should be able to deal with high ranked content. Because if you have to rely on mods it wouldn't be a choice anymore and will just make those mods mandatory. So we're back into the false sense of choice once again.

 

- Then a skill like Iron Skin would make you immortal for quite some time. Because you can't just keep buffing enemy damage and health when your weapons are pathetically weak.

But a skill like Molecular Prime would most likely keep killing the enemy way into 1 hour mark because if weapons can't increase that much in damage you can't just double or triple the enemy health.

Also why would I bother with Ember Prime when Excalibur and Nova would be by far the best Nuke frames in the game. Hey maybe even Rhino will shine again with spamming 4.

 

- Progression is about collecting everything and ranking it up. Serration is a heavy time sink for people who found it early. I still haven't maxed mine because most of my weapons are now based around it being costing 12 points.

But in the start I couldn't just go to the end planet with my weak weapons because I was limited by the damage mods. Even when I got the damage mods I still had to Forma my weapon a few times to deal with the last bit of content easier.

 

With your progression I doubt I would even need a Forma to deal with T4 content now that weapons barely get any bonus damage. Even if they where to get it, I'm sure I would be able to slot them in with 30 points or less. But if there was a mod that is needed like maybe multi shot or bullets ricochet between enemies then those mods would be mandatory mods. 

 

There would be no sense of progression through the game because you don't get more powerful. Your weapon might do different things but that is not really progression it's just variation.

 

You can't have scaling enemies and no damage mods. You just can't. As it breaks apart too quickly.

[Innocent_Flower]

You can't have scaling enemies and no damage mods. You just can't. As it breaks apart too quickly.

- Don't have enemies scale by getting better health and Armour then. Simple. They could scale in other ways. 

[ThePredicament]

If we remove all the damage components of mods (including elementals and Multishot), and use conditional damage mods instead, there won't. Playstyles will be more important. Right now, when weapons can be modded to do 70X the DPS of a DPS build over a non-DPS one, of course that's optimal. Without that, however, there won't be an optimal build.

Believe me there will be. For example, changing elemental mods into status mods? Any elemental mods that adds damage or perma stuns in any fashion. Faster reload/Faster rate of fire (which are also DPS factors), Punch Through. That's already most of the mods right there. The problem with being able to modify guns is that some aspects are just much more important than others, and having an optimum build is just the path of least resistance.

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Believe me there will be. For example, changing elemental mods into status mods? Any elemental mods that adds damage or perma stuns in any fashion. Faster reload/Faster rate of fire (which are also DPS factors), Punch Through. That's already most of the mods right there. The problem with being able to modify guns is that some aspects are just much more important than others, and having an optimum build is just the path of least resistance.

Fire rate's the only one I could see having this effect, and so I'd increase the cost. Punch through has a high cost, so I'm less concerned about it becoming overbearing. And believe me, other games don't have the super DPS problem. Sure, there'd be DPS obsessive people still, and that's okay. People who mod for other things wouldn't necessarily be dead weight to their teams.

[LtZefar]

- Don't have enemies scale by getting better health and Armour then. Simple. They could scale in other ways. 

What would you scale?

Accuracy? Reaction speed? You don't have much to change when you remove health, damage and armor ratings.

Maybe more enemies but where will the limit be? Also would it matter? 4 Excalibur spamming their ulti would just be ridiculous.

 

Fire rate's the only one I could see having this effect, and so I'd increase the cost. Punch through has a high cost, so I'm less concerned about it becoming overbearing. And believe me, other games don't have the super DPS problem. Sure, there'd be DPS obsessive people still, and that's okay. People who mod for other things wouldn't necessarily be dead weight to their teams.

 

Punch through high cost won't be an issue. We now lost plenty of high cost mods so we got a lot of extra room to use. Not to mention I think it use the same polarity as 90% element mods. But that would just turn into a mandatory mod because it lets you hit more people with one bullet.

 

As for other games not having DPS problems. That's because they don't reward players at all and make skills go up with mere 1-5% at most. Which is the most boring and unrewarding way to make someone level up.

 

 

People who mod for other things wouldn't necessarily be dead weight to their teams.

Thing is if you remove damage mods then there is only one way to mod your weapon and it wouldn't matter if you're MR1 or 18 anymore. You can do anything you want as nothing scales anymore.

[Innocent_Flower]

What would you scale?

Accuracy? Reaction speed? You don't have much to change when you remove health, damage and armor ratings.

Maybe more enemies but where will the limit be? Also would it matter? 4 Excalibur spamming their ulti would just be ridiculous.

Number of enemies. 

Unlock the abilities of enemies (No grenade, grenade, accurate grenades, special grenades on the basic lancer for instance)

Enemies increase the use of their abilities. 

Unlock certain ai paterns that are more challenging.

Unlock new enemies.  

Increase the ratio of elite/special enemies.  

Reload speed. 

Movement speed (slightly)

Spawn more often in dangerous combinations. 

 

 

and the answer to that final nitpick would be: try to balance radial javelin. Nothing to do with serration; It's still a problem with or without. 

Edited January 19, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

What would you scale?

Accuracy? Reaction speed? You don't have much to change when you remove health, damage and armor ratings.

Maybe more enemies but where will the limit be? Also would it matter? 4 Excalibur spamming their ulti would just be ridiculous.

 

 

Punch through high cost won't be an issue. We now lost plenty of high cost mods so we got a lot of extra room to use. Not to mention I think it use the same polarity as 90% element mods. But that would just turn into a mandatory mod because it lets you hit more people with one bullet.

 

As for other games not having DPS problems. That's because they don't reward players at all and make skills go up with mere 1-5% at most. Which is the most boring and unrewarding way to make someone level up.

 

 

Thing is if you remove damage mods then there is only one way to mod your weapon and it wouldn't matter if you're MR1 or 18 anymore. You can do anything you want as nothing scales anymore.

Are you trying to argue that if damage were removed we'd have less options, yet we can "do anything you want." That makes no sense.