The New Utility Mod Slot, It's Actually Backwards Thinking And A Band Aid Solution

[PookieNumnums]

They aren't immediate replacements because they go on first and affect them.

While I'm not completely against weapon level affecting damage the arguement arises that firing a gun more doesn't make it shoot harder so rank of affinity shouldn't affect output directly.

We are essentially putting technical modifications to the weapons which I acknowledge is silly being shared among weapons removed and reapplied at will.

Perhaps making weapons mods permanent, easier to fuse up, and increase the mod slots to whatever the capacity will hold when maxed and completely formad.

Slots would be an issue with that but meh plat can be earned in trade

If it's easier to rank mods the idea of losing mod progress with less cost and core refund a lot easier to stomach

This tho

[Sakatchi]

Player choice huh.

 

What if I choose to like the fact we're getting 9 out of the 10 original slots back?

 

Also your logic touched on the slippery slope of removing mods, so if you remove all the damage mods, people will use elements.

If you remove the elements, enemies get tougher cause no additional damge, and people will just use fire rate.

Remove fire rate, and you'll have even bulkier damage spounges, and youve managed to make the game more unbalanced in our oppisition's favor.

 

You could say "Those options should be in your gun to begin with". But how is a weapon that gets a built in serration, split chamber, heavy calabur, and 2 element combos, or fire rate, or crit any different from what we have now?

[motorfirebox]

I'm happy to see the new slot, but I actually agree with you. I'd much rather they completely reworked all the mods to offer actual choice. Get rid of no-brainer options like simple increased damage. Anything that offers a clear advantage should be either conditional or be offset by a negative. And make it a real negative, not one that is completely cancelled out by the advantage (looking at you, Fleeting Expertise).

[Temfist]

I've been a fan of the skill tree system for a long time, but only when the skills encourage you to play differently. I feel Mods are, to the same extent, just a more open ended skill tree. If things get better stats (which they shouldn't need in my opinion, I feel like level up systems are a generally bad mechanic in any game if they are used to prevent players from accessing harder content early on. Why does the same enemy need to be 3-4x more powerful in a different location when they are identical in every other regard? short answer, they don't need to be, and it's a dated system based on making the player "feel better" about progression in the easiest way possible, and doesn't actually benefit the game or it's mechanics in anyway,) they should only get better stats from an experience system.

 

Wasting skill tree slots/mod slots/whatever "limited resource slot" you have available for anything that you "need" to be able to function at the same level the content is demanding, is just needlessly making things more complex for the sake of "illusionary player choice". Skyrim, as well as almost every sandbox made by Bethesda in general, has this problem in spades. "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" for example, has the enemies level up with you, as well as having your "overall level", whether your level is due to combat prowess or otherwise, increase from every task that is a skill. Thus, you invest a lot of time raising your lockpick, speech and other utility skills, and find yourself hitting level 10, yet all the enemies in the game (now at level 10) are designed for fighting level 10 characters (ones that aren't pure utility at least), thus breaking your game utterly. This is not withstanding the fact that you only increase your level when you choose to "sleep in a bed", which you never need to do, so it is very possible that you might increase your skills endlessly and never actually level up, becoming infinitely stronger then all the games content (stuck at level 1 cause you won't sleep), but this is just one reason why I consider Oblivion a terrible game.

 

If you look at games with linear level design that don't have "level up systems", the game gets harder because it throws new things at you as you go while also giving you the standard feel of earlier content, thus you as a player learn and are now better, and can face new challenges in addition to the old ones. Devil May Cry, Every Metroidvania game (without level up systems) Action Adventure titles in general, many games use these design choices, and are FAR BETTER for it then if they had arbitrarily done a level up system to "make the player feel stronger".

 

Warframe however, is already pretty far down the metaphorical "Rabbit Hole" in terms of Meta Game, offering challenging/rewarding play and enemy mechanics with A.I., or anything to do with the mod/progression system in general.

 

I personally think this is the double edged sword that DE has contractually bound themselves too, "Update every Wednesday offering new content vs taking the time to make really well articulated design decisions", and maybe a lot of the problem with any form of power creep or clear direction comes from a lack of agreements between creative minds on how the game is and/or should be.

 

I love DE and this game, and will continue to support Warframe regardless due to how much they continue to invest into it. I also hope that they take the time in the future to reconsider their methods on offering solid rewarding gameplay instead of "band aid" fixes, but for now, Utility Slots in addition to other mod slots is certainly an "improvement", and I'll take it. I personally think that using Forma to "choose" polarity slots is a fairly unpolished "tacked on mechanic" as a band aid fix as well, and if they revisit the Mod System, I hope Forma become something that isn't just a placeholder to artificially extend the game that can also let you equip "higher level" mods for end game content, etc. I have confidence in them, I just hope that they are taking their time to look at the "long term" and not "what can we do right now to make people happy", cause I'm sticking around for the long term and the later leads to more problems if poorly implemented.

[Ninja-Kid]

WF Community: We want utility mod slots!!!

DE: OK! Here are utility mod slots!

WF Community: Utility mod slots are wrong!!!

DE: Dafuq?!

Edited July 26, 2015 by Ninja-Kid

[7grims]

Player choice huh.

 

What if I choose to like the fact we're getting 9 out of the 10 original slots back?

 

Also your logic touched on the slippery slope of removing mods, so if you remove all the damage mods, people will use elements.

If you remove the elements, enemies get tougher cause no additional damge, and people will just use fire rate.

Remove fire rate, and you'll have even bulkier damage spounges, and youve managed to make the game more unbalanced in our oppisition's favor.

 

You could say "Those options should be in your gun to begin with". But how is a weapon that gets a built in serration, split chamber, heavy calabur, and 2 element combos, or fire rate, or crit any different from what we have now?

 

That is an impossible task to perform... if it wasn't simply as re-balancing the gear to compensate for the removal of these mods.

DE couldn't possibly do anything like this... except they did when damage 2.0 came out.

But when removing mod X ppl will simply use mod Y, then plan in advance, since even we humble players have that hindsight.

[7grims]

-snip-

 

I have the same feeling bro, wouldn't waist my time in a tread or forums of a game I didn't care.

That's why I'm pushing and cornering DE to actually do the right thing, instead of pretending they are improving the game with only 1 mod slot, when the quantity ratio of utility vs essential mods is around 20 to 1. And because the mod system seems a concept for variety and diversity, but the current way it functions like a skill tree whit no space for non-essential mods.

[7grims]

WF Community: We want utility mod slots!!!

DE: OK! Here are utility mod slots!

WF Community: Utility mod slots are wrong!!!

DE: Dafuq?!

 

WF com: we want the serration problem resolved.

DE: we recognize the problem and admit it needs a solution.

1 mod slot for tons of utility mods, the eight remaining slots are for the usual mandatory mods, serration problematic band-aided.

 

WF com: we want both primes and regular to be equal and worth.

DE: here are some slight stat improvements for the primes, they are now superior.

WF com: we accept it and swallow it, because gold.

 

WF com: RNG is hell

DE: we cleaned and fixed the drop tables cof cof cof and inserted tons of non-prime reward fillers cof cof cof

WF com: wait... something feels odd... but lets celebrate anyway

[Ninja-Kid]

WF com: we want the serration problem resolved.

DE: we recognize the problem and admit it needs a solution.

1 mod slot for tons of utility mods, the eight remaining slots are for the usual mandatory mods, serration problematic band-aided.

WF com: we want both primes and regular to be equal and worth.

DE: here are some slight stat improvements for the primes, they are now superior.

WF com: we accept it and swallow it, because gold.

WF com: RNG is hell

DE: we cleaned and fixed the drop tables cof cof cof and inserted tons of non-prime reward fillers cof cof cof

WF com: wait... something feels odd... but lets celebrate anyway

WF com: When we finish a mission, the drop should ALWAYS be something I want!

DE: =.=

WF com: Everything should be craftable! Potatoes! Slots! Cosmetics!

DE: =.=

WF com: We should be able to buy everything for 1p! We should be able to sell everything for 100p!

DE: =.=

WF com: FREE PLAT!

DE: =.=

[Rorgal_Sina]

Some WF Com: We want the Serration problem to be solved!!!

Rest of the WF Com: DON'T NERF SERRATION HURRDURR!!!

DE: K.

[R34LM]

We're too powerful

 

I'm not complaining 

[Edgarhighman]

We originally had 10 slots. I formaed out less used skills for "utility" mods anyway ... power str, redir/vit w/e didn't fit because of the "skills" in the slots that were less important to my playstyle on each frame.

 

Now they're giving a "utility" slot or two back but they're really just undoing their originally muck up of removing 2 slots when making "all skills" available.

 

If we always kept the 10 slots.... .... .... This utility silliness wouldn't be here.

 

I am appreciative of the new slots, because ever since 2 were removed from the full 10... its been noticeably grievous when fully modded out. ESP when you build max pwr str + duration or w/e and cant use redir/vit/SF etc.

 

One thing about "the serration problematic"  is ... it was fun to slowly rank up my redirection the first time, and get more shields, and be able to delve deeper and longer into missions. Same with Serration. It was fun :) Now since they removed 2 slots at that time after I had most basic mods ranked up... I was like ... man I need those slots back I cant use what I want/need to make this character as needed. Everyone will play and mod differently, no one should be forced to use x, y, or z, in terms of builds. When players grief you wanting more slots as some frames dont use as many slots as others for their skill builds.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Edgarhighman

[(PSN)KaxMcc]

I don't think this is so much a band-aid as it is a step in the right direction. Of course, it would be ideal for the modding system to only be about customizing one's playstyle rather than stat buffs but I think that what we have now is actually a pretty interesting take on stat scaling. It's basically a variable leveling system that allows for some room for player error so players have to figure out  how to reach the maximum stat output with the options available to them.

 

Replacing it with a more standard stat scaling system where damage is gained through leveling and such would make weapons and such easier to balance for but would otherwise be pretty much the same thing without the player involvement.

 

So in that respect I think the current mod system is doing pretty well. What it doesn't do well is...well what it was intended to do. But, by adding additional slots specifically for utility mods it allows the current mod system and the "correct" mod system to exist side by side. The only two issues are the small number of utility slots and the fact that utility and necessity share the same capacity. But those can(hopefully) be ironed out in time.

 

But otherwise I think if DE starts making a slew of decent mods to accent this new utility slot we could eventually end up with two "mod" systems that work to achieve two separate goals effectively.

Edited July 26, 2015 by (PS4)KaxMcc

[(PSN)Stinja]

I still think the drain values do not reflect a mod's true worth, which is a good deal of the problem.

 

Personally, I think they should remove the ability to stack mods increasing the same stat: you can only have one Power strength mod, one Power range mod, one Duration, etc. <snip>

 

 

Example: you can have Barrel Diffusion or Lethal torrent equipped, but not both. 

 

I quite like this idea too.

 

A thought about elemental weapon mods would be so they do not increase damage, but adjust damage type and procs.

eg:  say i have a weapon with 100 damage:  50 is slash, 25 is impact 25 is piercing.

Putting on some fire mods would make it now do 50 fire, 25 slash, 12.5 impact, 12.5 piercing.

Likewise going Viral + Radiation might make it 30 Viral, 30 Rad, 20 slash, 10 impact, 10 piercing.

 

You'd be modding to get the effect you want, not for damage.

[Vargras]

Everyone will act like they hate the new system and that it's horrible and awful and how could DE ever do this to us?

 

Give it a week or two, and instead you'll have people questioning how they ever managed without the new utility slot.

[AlphaHorseman]

Everyone will act like they hate the new system and that it's horrible and awful and how could DE ever do this to us?

 

Give it a week or two, and instead you'll have people questioning how they ever managed without the new utility slot.

Bingo.

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

I disagree. People are already min-maxing. By giving use a utility slot they are actually giving us a real reason to use them and actually diversify. You never see utility slots outside of rush on min-maxed frames, especially after the release of corrupted mods.

[ShortCat]

OP, I support you on your one-man-war against the masses. +1

 

This is a feedback thread, if you demand suggestions, go into the proper forum section.

 

This new change is hyped so much for reviving utility mods, however if you think more about it, you will see some misconceptions.

 

1. This is not Utility mod buff, it is direct Frame buff. Existing mods are not changed, we will just get some new ones.

 

2. It will not result in more build diversity. Again, existing mods are not changed or buffed. There are few good mods and many bad mods. Utilityslot will not make bad mods more desirable or better, only penalise us less for equipping them. It will create another pool of mods where 3 mods are on top and are used by everyone.

If anything it will kill diversity. There are some Utilitymods that can compete for the modslot. This change will shift them into the new slot and make room for more Power XXX.

 

3. This change will rise the already insane power cap of our Warframes. It will affect some Frames more than others, regardless, it will make us all stronger. Here an example I have not seen so far: Natural Talent is Utilitymod and is core mod on every Trinity. Now we can mod it in the new slot and get one core slot for free. " You lose nothing, but gain everything ! "

 

This change may be the first step on the long and hard road to normalize the mods, we don't know, however it certainly feels clunky and half-backed right now.

[ZodiacShinryu]

This "problem" is brought up a lot and is almost always explicitly pinned on the mod system (even if some imply extra information).  Except this "problem" is only just part of an overall larger problem.  The problem isn't solely the mod system, the problem is the interaction between the mod system (player progression/scaling) and the environment (enemy progression/encounters/scaling, tileset design, etc.).

 

I find it hard to even try to imagine how a Mod 3.0 would look or if it could even fix the problems everyone thinks it would because ultimately you cant just change how player progression works without also looking at the rest of the game.  Meta and Min/Max-ing are terms for a reason.

 

DE could be super generous with a mod fix like say: "Essential" mods (vit/red/weapon dmg, etc.) would be reduced by 50% (or more) but all of those stats would be inherently gifted to all warframes and weapons as they level.  This fix would make those mods ultimately less essential by moving their effects to be innate and the mods could be tweaked to give the same values max when equipped as they currently are. 

Will this allow more mod diversity?  In my opinion, I don't think it would.

Why? Because the rest of the game didn't change... people are still going to equip these now reduced mods values to hold onto their max values.  What it will likely accomplish is make mid game more diverse and open but as it is now you can do whatever you want midgame anyway.

 

Ultimately my point is, no one forces you to use certain builds/mods because you make those builds based on the experience you want.  In any game, the closer you get to endgame the more likely everyone will make the same decisions because that is what the game demands of you.  If you want more options to how you tackle these situations the first thing that should be looked at IS NOT player progression but should actually be how the player interacts with the rest of the game (which in this case is enemy progression/scaling), if not at the same time.

[Xikiri]

This thread is a perfect example of how someone will take a good thing and make it a bad thing. *sigh*

I'm all for the new slot. I'm so very confused as to how someone would think this is a bandaid rather than an improvement.

[CTanGod]

Why is everyone wanting Mod system 3.0 when we could easily fix this ? Just make Redirection/Vitality/Serration/etc as natural frame/weapon progression with rank. Boom! now you have 1 free slot for every weapon and atleast 1 free slot for every frame. Done. No need for moding 3.0.

[Dillon_J]

no redirection vitality? sure.This would require a lot of balancing after removing though.  Personally i wouldn't like it though.  I'd say it'd be better if there was more of these so there actually is a choice.  So for example a mod that gives vitality and armor.  or one that gives health, armor and shields but at a lower rate etc. In short more "vigors"

 

But getting rid of serration wouldn't be easy. Almost every single weapon mod is a "serration" i.e. remove all damage mods. Okay now everyone will use fire rate mods.  Remove all of those, etc and all of a sudden everyone will only be using ammo drum and fast hands.

 

Also Elemental mods become an issue. Do you remove these and make it so you have to bring a weapon that does (insert damage type) for a fight?  That seems pretty limiting and all of a sudden it is foolish to bring anything but soma p, boltor p, etc.  So now throw half the weapons, or more,  in the garbage.

[R34LM]

Ultimately my point is, no one forces you to use certain builds/mods because you make those builds based on the experience you want.  In any game, the closer you get to endgame the more likely everyone will make the same decisions because that is what the game demands of you.

 

I'm messing around on Darksiders 2 and that's pretty much what happens there too. You, of course, have a choice between being a melee or magic oriented character, but you are still restricted to one of two sets of armor. Why? Because they have the best stats you need to compete against the endgame.

 

This entire issue about "mandatory" mods applies more to weapons than frames, because for weapons you see the same things. However, for frames, you can get a bit more variety because not everyone min-maxes. Sure, I do, but I am not everyone.

 

Personally, I like the addition of the new utility slot. It gives me a place to use Enemy Sense, which has been my crutch since I started playing the game over two years ago.

[7grims]

Ultimately my point is, no one forces you to use certain builds/mods because you make those builds based on the experience you want.  In any game, the closer you get to endgame the more likely everyone will make the same decisions because that is what the game demands of you.  If you want more options to how you tackle these situations the first thing that should be looked at IS NOT player progression but should actually be how the player interacts with the rest of the game (which in this case is enemy progression/scaling), if not at the same time.

 

There is a huge, giant thing that do forces you to the same mods and the same builds.

This humongous invisible force is called meta.

If you think its only you, or that any of your builds is original, you will get surprised.

Almost all the players, end up with the same builds, everyone ends up always and ever equipping those 10-15 mandatory mods.

Which leads to wonder, why there are so many mods? Why DE keeps making and releasing new mods?

If in the end we end up using the same old mods over and over.

The new slot is an opening to choice and diversity, but only in 1 slot out of the 8 we have, in comparison to the tons of mods that exist.

 

This problem is in the core of bad game development decisions, cause it isn't just mods that have this problem:

- its the weapons that are used to win mastery and then are trashed (in the name of a mastery system that doesn't have any purpose yet)

- its all the good weapons that you own that become irrelevant when a new superior weapon is released

- its any prime that comes out and makes its regular counter-part obsolete

- its that frame ppl use more then any other to beat the meta content.

Warframe is a game designed to have a diversity of gear, mods, tools to choose from, but it pins us under the menace of mission failure and non-efficient farming, which compromises us all to be meta or die at the shore.

[7grims]

I'm messing around on Darksiders 2 and that's pretty much what happens there too. You, of course, have a choice between being a melee or magic oriented character, but you are still restricted to one of two sets of armor. Why? Because they have the best stats you need to compete against the endgame.

 

You shouldn't make those kinds of comparisons so wildly.

Games like the ones you point out, give you a clear straight-line objective progression.

Warframe gives you several weapons, frames, mods, allot of tools to choose from, there is no gear for starters**, nor recommended gear of mid way progression, nor exclusive gear for advanced players. There is always and ever all the content to be used any time.

The existence of mandatory mods, and the existence of superior weapons that make all the rest inferior, is an error on the matrix, what most ppl call lack of balance.

 

*(since the mk1's aren't there facilitate an easy beginning, because they are bad)

*(the starter frames are meant to be equally worth in low to high end difficulty)