Serration Needs To Be Removed

[Tyrian3k]

Based on the current game model, it would be more likely that DE would add different versions of Serration with the same name. For example: Marksman's Serration grants 200% damage on headshots, but 125% damage on everything else. Gunner's Serration adds 100% reload speed, 100% Ammo Mutation and 125% damage, or what have you. You could only ever use 1 "Serration" class mod at a time.

This would allow DE to add even more accursed rank 10 mods for us to grind, while also giving us choice and customization. Hell, make it a Primed mod and triple the resource dump.

 

I can see the concept work, but not by adding bonuses that we already have. Unless of course we allow those to stack multiplicatively with the mods that already add those bonuses (e.g. reload).

 

 

Well, i will explain you your situation, let's say someone asks for the removal of Corrosive damage, because that guy wants to use Magnetic damage, but he can't because Corrosive damage is a must-have in a certain build.

 

By the way, you said that we all use these 3 mods, Heavy Caliber, Serration and Split Chamber, let me tell you that you were wrong, i don't use Heavy Caliber on my Dread, and it's working fine.

 

You still use Serration and Split Chamber on every build, though.

[Archistopheles]

I can see the concept work, but not by adding bonuses that we already have. Unless of course we allow those to stack multiplicatively with the mods that already add those bonuses (e.g. reload).

Of course they would, and I'm also not suggesting those as mods to be taken seriously. I only wanted to illustrate the concept.

[xRufus7x]

a person can have a maxed serration in the first minute of playing by trading for a legenday core

They would also need a substantial amount of credits to use said core. It would be easier to just buy a maxed serration, but that would still require a descent amount of credits. And as is, most people are not willing to drop large amounts of platinum that early in the game. I agree that something should be done about serration, but tacking on the damage to weapon leveling is in no way the solution unless it is one part of a complete overhaul.

Edited January 27, 2015 by xRufus7x

[Blatantfool]

The reason why people will slot more elemental mods is unrelated to Serration and comes from the fact that most other mods like reload, clip size etc. are underpowered in comparison. Give players a mod that can double their clip size and they may just do it. Give them one that halves their reload and they may also use it.

 

Another problem is that stacking damage is too effective. If you for example mod radiation, you're effective against Grineer, but on top of that you can use viral which is also effective against the same faction. If viral was heavily ineffective against them, you could still use it to deal more damage, but this path gives diminishing returns.

 

 No. It is not purely because those mods are underpowered. It is more about how they simply can't save you when it comes down to fighting enemies who kill you in no time flat.

 

 No amount of shields, health or armor ends up meaning anything at all in the long term in Warframe. Enemy stats will surpass even the tankiest it is possible to be. That is a fact.

 

 So in order to hang with the scary baddies we need to drive our kill times downwards since we can't do much to drive their killtime upwards. All of our current meta revolves around this. Even the cheap tactics you'll hear players dream up that allows them to farm without leaving a chance for the enemy to kill them properly are part of this.

 

 You'd slot another damage mod because damage mods are what will have the most drastic effect on kill time. Reload, ammo capacity, punch through. These effects are secondary - some even tertiary - because they wont help you kill fast enough.

 

 This is inescapable. It also means that fixing weapons balance BEFORE addressing enemy scaling will be a rough, ugly process. It may even drive people away from playing if done in the wrong order. 

 

 Do it one way and you'll have nerfed the everloving S#&$ out of every player in the game. Do it the other and you simply start the process of diversifying the mods system.

 

 Both are gonna have to happen someday. The enemy part needs to come first.

 

you might as well just remove all mods that don't say deals damage in the description then, just get barebones. it might as well be the same thing

 

 Or, you know, we could be asking DE to do things in a way that'd actually improve the game instead of being childish about the nature of the problem here. Don't be this way. It's not that you are wrong. It is that there is more to it then just lashing out at the damage meta.

 

 If DE were to smooth the enemy stats scaling out it'd possible to finally remove Serration and have it improve things instead of worsen them.

 

 How would that work? Luckily Archistopheles saved me the trouble of typing it:

 

Based on the current game model, it would be more likely that DE would add different versions of Serration with the same name. For example: Marksman's Serration grants 200% damage on headshots, but 125% damage on everything else. Gunner's Serration adds 100% reload speed, 100% Ammo Mutation and 125% damage, or what have you. You could only ever use 1 "Serration" class mod at a time.

This would allow DE to add even more accursed rank 10 mods for us to grind, while also giving us choice and customization. Hell, make it a Primed mod and triple the resource dump.

 

 If we were to assume DE actually solves the problems with players being forced to rely on having as much damage as possible to drive down kill times on higher level foes then it'd be possible for the type of mods Archistopheles mentions here to be a purely positive thing.

[Tyrian3k]

 No. It is not purely because those mods are underpowered. It is more about how they simply can't save you when it comes down to fighting enemies who kill you in no time flat.

 

 No amount of shields, health or armor ends up meaning anything at all in the long term in Warframe. Enemy stats will surpass even the tankiest it is possible to be. That is a fact.

 

 So in order to hang with the scary baddies we need to drive our kill times downwards since we can't do much to drive their killtime upwards. All of our current meta revolves around this. Even the cheap tactics you'll hear players dream up that allows them to farm without leaving a chance for the enemy to kill them properly are part of this.

 

 You'd slot another damage mod because damage mods are what will have the most drastic effect on kill time. Reload, ammo capacity, punch through. These effects are secondary - some even tertiary - because they wont help you kill fast enough.

 

 This is inescapable. It also means that fixing weapons balance BEFORE addressing enemy scaling will be a rough, ugly process. It may even drive people away from playing if done in the wrong order. 

 

 Do it one way and you'll have nerfed the everloving S#&$ out of every player in the game. Do it the other and you simply start the process of diversifying the mods system.

 

 Both are gonna have to happen someday. The enemy part needs to come first.

 

 

 Or, you know, we could be asking DE to do things in a way that'd actually improve the game instead of being childish about the nature of the problem here. Don't be this way. It's not that you are wrong. It is that there is more to it then just lashing out at the damage meta.

 

 If DE were to smooth the enemy stats scaling out it'd possible to finally remove Serration and have it improve things instead of worsen them.

 

 How would that work? Luckily Archistopheles saved me the trouble of typing it:

 

 

 If we were to assume DE actually solves the problems with players being forced to rely on having as much damage as possible to drive down kill times on higher level foes then it'd be possible for the type of mods Archistopheles mentions here to be a purely positive thing.

 

In other words: The current endless missions are at fault for players modding according to infinite scaling. Maybe DE should consider a cap on endless modes to not allow survivals to last more than 1 h or defense to not go past wave 60.

[Blatantfool]

In other words: The current endless missions are at fault for players modding according to infinite scaling. Maybe DE should consider a cap on endless modes to not allow survivals to last more than 1 h or defense to not go past wave 60.

 

 It goes further than endless missions though currently that is the way you'd see this sort of situation.

 

 But missions aren't going to be like Earth forever. They can't even just be like Pluto forever. Why not clear things up in that case.

 

 It's possible for enemies to scale all the way up to level 9k+. It'd be more interesting if the game used that fact some instead of scaling being so steep that enemies are already insane as low as 150.

 

 The true benefit of fixing it however is in making the part of the broken weapon balance players currently need to farm the hardest content no longer a necessity.

 

 A cap on endless modes defeats the point of there being endless modes. That's probably not a good enough solution.

[Tyrian3k]

 It goes further than endless missions though currently that is the way you'd see this sort of situation.

 

 But missions aren't going to be like Earth forever. They can't even just be like Pluto forever. Why not clear things up in that case.

 

 It's possible for enemies to scale all the way up to level 9k+. It'd be more interesting if the game used that fact some instead of scaling being so steep that enemies are already insane as low as 150.

 

 The true benefit of fixing it however is in making the part of the broken weapon balance players currently need to farm the hardest content no longer a necessity.

 

 A cap on endless modes defeats the point of there being endless modes. That's probably not a good enough solution.

 

 

So you want to suggest that enemies are just a scaled up less in infinite missions in order to defeat the reason for players requiring to mod for damage only to be able to defeat enemies of that level?

 

It might work for elemental mods to be replaced by other mods, if players don't want to go as far as they possibly can, but players will still use Serration and Split Chamber on every build since they give the largest benefit with the lowest cost in terms of used slots. Serration, Split Chamber with two elemental damage mods will always be better than 4 elemental damage mods or whatever else you want to use.

 

The thing is that players already mod for maximum damage to do non-endless stuff like mobile defenses on Ceres, so I think that the chances of seeing players stop doing it for endless modes are slim, even if the scaling of enemies is reduced.

[Dio_Brando]

more customization is good, less is bad. the enemy scaling needs to be removed. its time to mix things up alittle. when DE removed the ability slots it opened up room for experimentation. Now its time for weapons. serration, heavy caliber, and secondary and melee damage mods. 

[Blatantfool]

So you want to suggest that enemies are just a scaled up less in infinite missions in order to defeat the reason for players requiring to mod for damage only to be able to defeat enemies of that level?

It might work for elemental mods to be replaced by other mods, if players don't want to go as far as they possibly can, but players will still use Serration and Split Chamber on every build since they give the largest benefit with the lowest cost in terms of used slots. Serration, Split Chamber with two elemental damage mods will always be better than 4 elemental damage mods or whatever else you want to use.

The thing is that players already mod for maximum damage to do non-endless stuff like mobile defenses on Ceres, so I think that the chances of seeing players stop doing it for endless modes are slim, even if the scaling of enemies is reduced.

Just to be super clear, that way you don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

The way I see it if scaling is a smoother upwards curve that means that player damage no longer has to be insanely high in order for us to get by.

Which means that damage mods can ALL receive across the board rebalancing and nondamage mods that truly are just way underpowered can get brought up to speed. Basically a final fine tuning where you can really start to knock the ugliness of the DPScannon meta askew so it shares the stage some with other stuff.

So like Archistopheles said - how DE once mentioned the idea that maybe Serration would be split into several mods that all buff damage in a specific sense like '+% when shooting an enemy from behind' or '+% to headshots' or '+% to unaware enemies' and so on and so forth. In the current climate of balance among enemies in-game those situational damage mods would be a hinderance. With a smoother scaling curve it'd be much better.

I think the best way to think about what I'm speaking of here is as a 'Massive toning down' across the board. Players need to deal too much damage against enemies whose stats get too high too quickly. It puts everything that doesn't prioritize offense or damage negation on the back burner not just in our Weapons mod slots but also in Warframe skills and even play styles to a certain extent.

We need it all to come down some. Down to a more sensible level. Both in our own builds and in the enemy variety. It needs to take longer for enemies to be hitting so hard that armor no longer matters as a stat. It needs to take longer before damaging skills and mid-tier weaponry become virtually useless against the meat wall horde. Once that is achieved weapons can be normalized easily based on this new, smoother progression of difficulty so that we're not just all one shotting literally everything. Things can fit together more comfortably and there will be room for more variety in builds with the new freedom.

more customization is good, less is bad. the enemy scaling needs to be removed. its time to mix things up alittle. when DE removed the ability slots it opened up room for experimentation. Now its time for weapons. serration, heavy caliber, and secondary and melee damage mods.

We need the enemy scaling. Without it Warframe would have no difficulty of any kind to speak of.

But right now the scaling is quite steep. Like I said before - enemies CAN be up to level 9k+ in Warframe. They CAN be. However enemies reach a point where most normal players would simply stop having fun somewhere between levels 100-200. They get too strong too fast.

Gotta smooth out the curve in our foes so that it becomes both easy and painless to smooth out the kinks in our weapons.

[Dio_Brando]

one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that with the insane damage primary weapons pump out, it really makes secondaries and melee weapons quite useless. my akmagnus cannot deal nearly the same damage as a soma or boltor prime, or even a tiberon. they are supposed to be guns right? and melee should be a effective  tool as well, but unless your invisible your not dealing enough damage on high levels. 

[Blatantfool]

one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that with the insane damage primary weapons pump out, it really makes secondaries and melee weapons quite useless. my akmagnus cannot deal nearly the same damage as a soma or boltor prime, or even a tiberon. they are supposed to be guns right? and melee should be a effective  tool as well, but unless your invisible your not dealing enough damage on high levels. 

 

 That'd also clear up a lot if DE smoothed out enemy progression as the levels climb upwards. 

 

 Every weapon has a point where you start meeting enemies beefy enough that you can't chew through them quite fast enough to be worthwhile considering the number of enemies you typically fight at once.

 

 Pistols and Melee simply meet their ceiling faster. It's for various reasons. How faster they fire. The kind of ammo you have in stock. Their base damages.

 

 In the case of melee specifically it is the fact that you have to get up to point blank in order to spit out damage in the first place and while blocking is cute it ain't quite viable - you can't block and swing at the same time and even if you did block you can't block much.

[Tyrian3k]

one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that with the insane damage primary weapons pump out, it really makes secondaries and melee weapons quite useless. my akmagnus cannot deal nearly the same damage as a soma or boltor prime, or even a tiberon. they are supposed to be guns right? and melee should be a effective  tool as well, but unless your invisible your not dealing enough damage on high levels. 

 

The weapons with the highest damage output are secondaries like Vaykor Marelok, Brakk, Synoid Gammacor etc.

[Blatantfool]

The weapons with the highest damage output are secondaries like Vaykor Marelok, Brakk, Synoid Gammacor etc.

 

 Yeah, though there has always been one or two insane secondary standouts so it's not too surprising.

 

 Back in the day it was Acrid. Now it's the Synoid Gammacor.

[Dio_Brando]

 Yeah, though there has always been one or two insane secondary standouts so it's not too surprising.

 

 Back in the day it was Acrid. Now it's the Synoid Gammacor.

 

The weapons with the highest damage output are secondaries like Vaykor Marelok, Brakk, Synoid Gammacor etc.

and the rest?

[AM-Bunny]

While I agree with the sentiment of this thread, OP's idea would not solve the problem. Remove Serration and make its damage bonus inherent? You'll just end up stacking Split Chamber, Heavy Cal, Element Mods, and everything else in the game that increases your DPS. It's not like you'll suddenly say "wow, I have all these extra slots, with nothing to fill them but utility mods like Fast Hands". DPS will always be king, and this is a problem that runs much deeper than simply removing Serration.

[Blatantfool]

and the rest?

 

 Same fate as a lot of the primary weapons. Doomed to suffer from their low hanging ceiling.

 

 It absolutely needs fixing. That's one of the reason I loom threads like this and try to bring up the enemy scaling stuff. It all serves the purpose of trying to get people talking about balance as a whole instead of trying to find a solution in just changing weapons in our current tangled mess.

[WolfieV]

There about a hundred topics on this everyday. Considering this change would effect every weapon, most other mods and every player; how do you think they can test this and find a balanced approach to do so. It would take an insane amount of resources, and if done wrong could render the game difficult to play. Now they could use those resources on developing more challenging content more mods.

[Dio_Brando]

 Same fate as a lot of the primary weapons. Doomed to suffer from their low hanging ceiling.

 

 It absolutely needs fixing. That's one of the reason I loom threads like this and try to bring up the enemy scaling stuff. It all serves the purpose of trying to get people talking about balance as a whole instead of trying to find a solution in just changing weapons in our current tangled mess.

your a moderator, why cant you just ask DE themselves

[Tyrian3k]

your a moderator, why cant you just ask DE themselves

He can do that just as much as you can by sending one of them a PM. Being a moderator doesn't mean that he's actually able to get a much closer connection to the devs.

At least that's what I heard from another mod who was asked something similar.

[Dio_Brando]

He can do that just as much as you can by sending one of them a PM. Being a moderator doesn't mean that he's actually able to get a much closer connection to the devs.

At least that's what I heard from another mod who was asked something similar.

These forums are the equivalent of TF2's community workshop. so much potential, so many great ideas that are never implemented.

[Cryhunter059]

How does removing serration change that much? "Ooh look, I have one less mod to put on my weapon, now I can put another elemental and have even more broken damage." So yeah....no, I like my serration just the way it is: balancing a weapon's damage and utility. 

[Dio_Brando]

How does removing serration change that much? "Ooh look, I have one less mod to put on my weapon, now I can put another elemental and have even more broken damage." So yeah....no, I like my serration just the way it is: balancing a weapon's damage and utility. 

why are people so narrow minded. "i cant use serration, so i use elemental. i cant use elemental so i use serration". the point is these things limit creativity. 

[Blatantfool]

your a moderator, why cant you just ask DE themselves

 

 The likeliness I'd get an answer is probably very similar to the likeliness you would or the next guy or the guy after that. 

 

 That is why instead of spending time trying to do that I instead spend time talking in threads like this about the topics important to me. Just like everyone else.

[Boondorl]

I feel like I should give my two cents on the topic since this is under heated discussion right now with DE.

 

One of the most common arguments I see against Serration being removed is the fact that people will always minmax their builds. Yes, this is a truth that can't be ignored, and I agree. What they're missing, however, is the current gap that exists between builds. I'll go a bit more in depth.

 

Let's say we have three builds using our current system:

 

-Build A, which is pure damage (Serration, Heavy Cal., Split Chamber, elements)

 

-Build B, which is mixed (Serration, Split Chamber, 1 elemental combo, 4 utility)

 

-Build C, which is pure utility (all utility mods)

 

Currently, enemies seem most reasonably scaled around build B, which is fair enough. The problem we have with this current system is the massive gaps in scaling for A and C. Taking build A into a high level area (level 40) will result in enemies seeming too weak and easy, while for build C fighting enemies at this level would be nearly impossible. Enemies aren't balanced properly for either as DE tries to keep the game challenging for every build. Given the differences in damage output, this is pretty much a lost cause.

 

Now let's remove base damage mods replacing it with +% damage per level, change the functionality of Split Chamber to consume an extra shot, and rework elemental mods to convert base damage. We will now flock to two main builds:

 

-Build A is mixed (elements, Split Chamber, utility)

 

-Build B is pure utility (all utility mods)

 

As you can see, given elements and SC would no longer give straight DPS, the damage output gap is no longer massive, and makes every build viable alongside making enemies much easier to scale as we no longer have to account for 8, or even 4, damage mods.

 

The benefit in the end is allowing players to utilize all 8 slots as they please reasonably (keyword), and make enemy scaling far easier to manage as all guns will have predictably similar outputs. As for crit weapons, removing +% crit damage is enough as it follows the same idea as +% damage. Unlike base damage, however, crit damage would not need to increase per level as it already scales off base damage.

 

TL;DR Minmaxing will never disappear, but removing damage mods will bridge the gap between damage output in utility builds and also make it easier for DE to scale enemies.

[zoboso]

-snip-

 

 

I think that making multi-shot mods increase ammo consumption is a great idea, however it does not affect DPS (or TTK which is what DPS gives a convenient indicator for measuring.) therefore the only thing increasing the ammo consumption should do is force players to hunt for ammo more often (like launcher's post ammo nerf).