Thoughts And Suggestions On Damage, Mandatory Mods And Ammo Economy

[Playford]

With the recent comments from the devs on how the damage/multishot mods are getting a second look I would like to give my opinion on the matter, this is something that I care deeply about and have made topics about it in the past, this being the 3rd. Beware, it's a wall of text and there is no TL;DR.

 

Let's get started.

 

There are three major issue with weapons and weapon modding:

- The pursuit of DPS and pointless mods

- Ammo economy is all over the place

- No build variety and a lack of interesting mods

 

Let me address these one by one, first focusing on DPS and how entire chunks of everyone's mod collection is worthless, because that is by far the biggest and most complicated issue.

 

 

The pursuit of DPS and pointless mods

Modding weapons right now boils down to one question: "Does adding this mod increase my DPS?" because that’s the only thing that matters. Damage 2.0 was conceived to stop people from using Rainbow Builds, but in my opinion it merely created Rainbow Builds 2.0.

There are some weapons that need slightly different builds focusing more on status chance, or need ammo mutation mods to make up for their ammo inefficiency, but in the end, you will still be predominantly adding damage mods to increase your DPS, either by adding elemental mods or crit mods (or both).

 

There is an entire section of the mod collection that is useless because they have no effect on DPS or they don’t add enough of it to be worthwhile making build variety is almost nonexistent. To be specific, I’m talking about IPS mods, regular status mods and some other utility mods.

For a time I thought the best solution to be simply buffing those mods into usefulness by increasing their numbers or changing their scaling. I slowly realized the flaw in this. Instead of adding more options for modding, it simply added more mods to increase DPS further.

 

How to fix this?

 

After some thought and suggestions from other people, the best solution I’ve come to is that mods that increase damage without drawbacks shouldn’t exist.

 

What do I mean by that?

 

I mean that elemental mods and IPS mods should be changed not to increase damage, but change a percentage of base damage into the corresponding damage type.

(I gave my best to format this, but the forum bbcode isn’t cooperating, if someone can inform me how to do tables, please do)

 

Example:

Burston has 30 base damage evenly spread out:

Impact:     10

Puncture: 10

Slash:      10

 

Adding max rank Rupture should change 30% of non-impact damage into impact, so the new stats for Burston are:

Impact:     16

Puncture:  7

Slash:       7

 

Of course elemental mods would need to be rescaled completely because their 90% stat is just too big, my suggestion is to change them to change 4% base damage per rank meaning that at max rank they would change 24% base damage (nightmare and other dual stat mods should also be modified, unless I’m mistaken they all go up to rank 3 so 5% per rank, maximum 20% seems fine), so that adding a maxed Hellfire to Burston would make the stats:

Impact:     7.6

Puncture: 7.6

Slash:      7.6

Heat:       7.2

 

When damage modifying mods are added, physical mods should be applied first, then elemental ones, so that adding both Rupture and Hellfire would make the new stats:

Impact:     12.1

Puncture: 5.3

Slash:      5.3

Heat:       7.2

 

Some will point out that this also makes elemental mods useless on weapons that use the same element, to use the fire example yet again, fire mods would be pointless on Ignis.

I honestly don’t consider that very important, let me remind you, currently all IPS mods are worthless on pure elemental damage weapons because of the way they scale.

If they are changed so they can actually add IPS damage to pure elemental weapons that would actually increase the number of mods they can use. And if people are going to complain about realism and immersion, let me remind you, our lasers can be modified to shoot viruses.

Realism and immersion has its place, for Warframe that place is out the airlock.

 

With this type of control over damage distribution weapons can be modded in multiple ways;

- Evenly spread out IPS damage for general purpose builds

- Focus on one damage type versus a specific health type

- Or add and combine elemental damage for further specialization versus a specific health type

 

One problem I can think of is that stacking various elemental mods would make the damage percentages go a bit wonky, I can think of multiple solutions (this isn’t a balancing measure, more of a programming one to prevent bugs, we have enough of those):

 

Solution #1

Allow only one elemental mod per damage type, meaning:

You can combine Hellfire and Cryo Rounds for blast damage, but can’t combine Hellfire and Wildfire for extra fire damage.

 

Solution #2

Limit elemental mods to maximum of four, meaning:

If you stack multiple mods of the same element, you get fewer other elements to put in.

Example:if you put in three fire mods (Hellfire, Wildfire, Thermite Rounds), you can add only one other elemental mod.

 

Personally, I prefer solution #2

 

For this example I used the rifle impact mod, it’s stats are just there for the sake of an example, while shotgun IPS mods have the same stats, pistol versions got up to 60% and for some reason melee go up to 90%. In this version of the damage system their stats should be revised, I think the rifle/shotgun version stats are a good baseline.

As for event IPS mods, I'm not sure what to do with them, maybe change them to function like the dual stat ones, changing damage and adding status chance, or maybe so that they convert 100% of base damage to their damage type while being incompatible with other IPS mods.

 

I know I’m going to encounter really strong resistance on my next point, and this is something that’s been brought up in the past.

I really think we should get rid of base damage boosting mods: Serration, Point Blank, Hornet Strike and Pressure Point (their corrupted counterparts and multishot mods I will be talking about later), they are mandatory on every single build and in effect we don’t have 8 slots to mod with, but 7.

Instead of using them, weapon base damage should increase as the weapon ranks up, much like warframes get stats as they rank up, my suggestion being 20% every 3 ranks for 200% bonus damage at max rank, obviously nearly all weapons would need to be rebalanced.

 

Of course, because we lose a lot of our damage output because the change to elemental damage mods, enemy scaling and stats should also be revised. I don’t know the formula, so I can’t make any good suggestions, people more knowledgeable than me can comment on that.

 

Some people might not like losing some very major mods from their collection, and that is perfectly understandable, I myself have multiple copies of Serration and Hornet Strike at various ranks, the thought of losing them after all that effort put into them makes me sad, but I also don’t like that while modding my weapons I have to cycle through tons worthless mods that I’m never going to use.

 

If DE ever decides to remove these mods, compensating people with appropriate amounts of Arcane/Ancinet Cores should be sufficient.

Primed Point Blank and other prime mods? No idea, Legendary Cores maybe?

 

One of the benefits of this is that it “normalizes” DPS for each weapon. The design team knows from day one how a weapon will scale and what the default damage output will be at all stages with all players, making balancing that weapon around other attributes, such as ammo capacity, fire rate, projectile speed, etc. easier.

 

One last mod group that needs talking about are the regular status mods.

They are worthless in any damage/mod system, and need to be buffed to the point they are useful and not a waste of UI space.

Rifle Aptitude, Sure Shot and Melee Prowess all add 15% (Shotgun Savvy is the only exception, giving 30%) bonus status chance at their max rank, which is the same amount as the dual stat mods at their base rank.

Not only that, but Sure Shot and Melee Prowess cost 7 points at their max rank, while Rifle Aptitude and Shotgun Savvy cost 9 point at their max rank. The dual stat mods make them completely and utterly obsolete.

 

My suggestion for for their new stats:

Rank   Cost   Status chance bonus

0          6         40%

1          7         80%

2          8         120%

3          9         160%

4         10        200%

5         11        240%

 

Atleast this way when you give us the D (har har) on weapons that slot has more than one viable mod for it.

 

Now, lets turn our attention to the very few mods left that can increase DPS, them being the corrupted, multishot, firerate and crit mods. Firerate I will talk about in the ammo economy part, crit mods are a bit more complicated and I will suggest solutions in the third part.

 

Corrupted base damage mods are fine if their drawbacks are significant enough.

I would suggest these changes:

- Vicious Spread and Spoiled Strike are changed to have 10 ranks like Heavy Caliber and Magnum Force

- They only get 5% damage bonus per rank, 55% at max rank

- Their effect on accuracy and recoil would need to be tweaked, I can't suggest numbers because for the life of me I have no idea how "accuracy" works (did hear some rather fascinating rumours though)

 

In interest of balance and to prevent beam weapons from dominating everything, their effect on accuracy should either be in absolute amounts or these mods should not be compatible with weapons that have no recoil and spread.

 

As for multishot, I like what was proposed in the devstream, extra bullets consuming extra ammo. The only change I would make is for both rifle and pistol versions using the same scaling as the shotgun version.

 

 

Ammo economy is all over the place

Now, lets focus on something that should be less controversial and far simpler to adress, ammo economy.

 

At the moment it's all over the place. Some weapons have practically infinite ammo with how efficient they are (Latron), but then there are others that even with tight trigger discipline and careful aim have ammo problems (almost every automatic secondary).

Some time ago (I think it was on a devstream) it was stated that the ammo system is limited because of engine limitations. Considering how DE owns the engine and has access to the source code, that's hardly a setback.

 

What the ammo system needs to improve in my opinion is the following:

 

Ammo pickups should be percentage based, going as far as different weapons having different percentage multipliers.

With this system it’s possible to individually modify each weapons ammo economy without affecting its damage per bullet.

 

Another thing that is important regarding ammo economy is spare ammo. 540 spare bullets on the Latron series is far too many, that same amount on some automatics is too little, Soma Prime with its expanded ammo pool is a step in the right direction, we need more varied spare ammo pools.

 

It would also be nice to see a greater variety in which weapon types use what ammo type.

Marelok is a stated in-game to be a cut down Grinlok, yet Grinlok uses rifle ammo while Marelok uses pistol ammo. Why? They should both use rifle ammo.

Grakata on the other hand doesn’t feel right using rifle ammo and in my opinion should be switched over to pistol ammo, which would make it consistent with the Twin Grakata.

This is what I mean by variety of ammo usage, weapons using different ammo types regardless of their status as primary or secondary.

 

To prevent the weirdness we have right now with some secondaries limiting primary ammo, primary and secondary weapons should have their own separate ammo pools, even though they are using the same ammo type.

 

Regarding firerate, as a damage boost it balances itself out, shooting more bullets also means wasting more bullets, both on misses and on already dead enemies. Other than tweaking a weapons ammo economy not much can be, or should be, done with people shooting faster.

 

 

No build variety and a lack of interesting mods

Third and final part. Sadly I have no definitive solution to prevent people just stacking crit mods. My only suggestion is to introduce brand new mods that provide alternatives to modding for damage, those alternative being situational damage boosts, utility and such.

 

Here are a few examples:

(These are examples just for the sake examples, don't take them too seriously)

Melee weapons:

- Phantasm: attacks have a chance of creating autonomus holographic decoys that distract enemies (decoys move around and distract enemies on their own, but deal no damage and have no collision hitbox).

- Repeated Strikes: gain bonus damage when attacking the same enemy repeatedly, attacking a new enemy resets the bonus.

- Crippling Weakness: deal bonus damage the less % hp your enemy has.

- Crippling Fear: critical hits that kill causes nearby enemies to become terrified.

- Nothing Wasted: overkill damage is stored and used on the next attack. Kinda hard to put this one into words, but here's an example, enemy has 5 hp, you kill it with an attack that deals 20 damage, that extra 15 damage is stored and used on the next attack.

- Pickpocket: melee finishers generate extra loot (basically a single target Desecrate).

- Essence Theft: after killing an Eximus temporarily gain its aura.

- Great Riposte: when resisting a knockdown attack (either by blocking or by knockdown resistance mods) perform a melee strike that hits all enemies in range and does bonus damage.

 

Ranged weapons:

- Rigged Magazine: after reloading, drop the used magazine which acts as a stun grenade, dealing little damage but stunning in an area that increases in size the more rounds were in the magazine at the time of reload (unused ammo is lost).

- Shock and Awe: while shooting, enemies in a small radius around the shooter are staggered, enemies in a larger radius have their accuracy reduced (not compatible with noise reduction mods, not usable on weapons that are silent by default, such as bows, doesn't work with Hushed Invisibility).

- Focus Fire: if you fire a long enough burst, reload faster (only usable on fully automatic weapons).

- Headhunter: headshots give a (temporary) stacking buff to damage, bodyshots deal the extra damage but reset stacks to 0.

- Shrapnel: physical damage procs affects all enemies in a radius around the primary target.

 

Like I said, some of these add damage, but in their case that extra damage situational or has to be earned.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Playford

[jordanforever]

I like your dedication on this, hopefully the DE will see this post. I hope they'll do a little rework on arcane enchants

[hammerheathen]

I like a lot of the points you come up with.

Personally I'd love to see a lot more build variety. But weapons need to be rebalanced in general, and ultimately it's going to have a drastic effect on gameplay. I see this as a positive things. I'd ultimately like to see every weapon viable and unique in every tileset without having to just stack damage on it to make it work. A novel idea, but a Lato just isn't gonna knockout a level 40 heavy without some shenanigans on the side.

The pace of warfame has grown up around how quickly we put things down with a variety of things, I'd love to see combat a bit more gritty. This isn't to say I don't like it how it is. But frankly too much of a change would make it in essence an entirely new game.

Some of the ultimate nature of the problem is endless missions. Not that people stay too long (though honestly drop tables currently encourage it heftily). But that the scaling doesn't change from a non-endless mission. I'd like to see stronger enemies in static missions where you have to think tactically to complete your objective, while in defense and survival it started on the lower side (comparitively) and ramped up past the base scale.

Some of the changes can make combat more dynamic, and I agree the base damage mods like serration and such need to go and become innate. I believe they always should have been that way. Or if things really get shuffled around, the idea of them being completely unnecessary.

Ultimately though I think we all (DE included) need to tread very careful so as not to isolate new players or veterans. A lot of time and effort has the potential to get thrown away here. While money spent can be regained, time spent can't. When over 1,000 hours, or 2 or 3 at that has been put into a game, there's only so much you can change at once without making everything crash down

[(PSN)Ninja_Reaper_916]

I believe there needs to be tiers of weapons the whole all weapons should viable thing is a bad idea for progression that lato should not be as viable as that lex prime just my opinion

Edited September 10, 2015 by (PS4)Ninja_Reaper_916

[Drufo]

You summed up all the ideas i saw on the forum in one post, and I agree with all of them. After all, part of that system is already in the Conclave (the damage conversion mods, in particular), so it's not impossible to extend it to PvE, the only problem is the enemy scaling, as you said. It would be a lot of work, but in the end the game would become more polished and balaced, imo

[hammerheathen]

 

I believe there needs to be tiers of weapons the whole all weapons should viable thing is a bad idea for progression that lato should not be as viable as that lex prime just my opinion

 

I was making a point about Lato, I do agree though. I think that weapon tiers should be clear, and unique weapons set into their own class (ignis and torid come to mind). They are very situational at best, but provide some utility with a lot of work. However many who support the idea of tiered weaponry classify both as "Trash" tier. The former because of it's low damage and lack of scaling, the latter because of it's extreme combat niche and unreliability.

[MumblesMcphatty]

So if weapon damage should scale with levelling the weapon - what happens to the little progression we have?

Hornet Strike and Serration are sizable time and resource investments to a new player. The notion of it hurting build diversity only comes into the minds of veteran players who've been maxed out awhile and are growing bored.

Are you suggesting that ranking a weapon to 30 should be extended by orders of magnitude? Subsequently making mastery grind and Forma use an even more lengthy chore than it is now.

Or are you implying that weeks/months of investment into the game simply be dumped altogether?

The first is inherently bad for players - though it may well sell more boosters - so it's good for DE. It will certainly make the the current issues with Draco grinding even more apparent.

The second will be a huge knock on player retention over time - at least as things stand now. Aside from the starchart (which has very little incentive to clear) - the standard damage mods are the main progression for players starting out.

[Playford]

So if weapon damage should scale with levelling the weapon - what happens to the little progression we have?

You progress by finding new mods that make your weapon do new things, you level them, combine them into different builds, experiment and find something that you find fun, enjoyable and goes with your playstyle.

 

Hornet Strike and Serration are sizable time and resource investments to a new player. The notion of it hurting build diversity only comes into the minds of veteran players who've been maxed out awhile and are growing bored.

I've been playing since closed beta, of course I'm bored with modding my weapons in the exact same way since Mods 2.0 came out.

 

Are you suggesting that ranking a weapon to 30 should be extended by orders of magnitude? Subsequently making mastery grind and Forma use an even more lengthy chore than it is now.

No? When did I suggest that?

 

Or are you implying that weeks/months of investment into the game simply be dumped altogether?

Weeks/months of investment have already been dumped. I have played for the past 2.5 years and 99% of the mods I collected during that time are never going to be used, they will just sit there in my inventory staring at me and praying for merciful death by transmutation.

 

The first is inherently bad for players - though it may well sell more boosters - so it's good for DE. It will certainly make the the current issues with Draco grinding even more apparent.

The second will be a huge knock on player retention over time - at least as things stand now. Aside from the starchart (which has very little incentive to clear) - the standard damage mods are the main progression for players starting out.

I have no idea where you are getting this releveling and Draco grinding stuff, never mentioned affinity gain.

 

As for the knock on effect. We already have it. It starts when you get Serration and Hornet Strike to max rank, and players figure out that weapon modding has almost no depth.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Playford

[MumblesMcphatty]

You seem to be missing the point of my questions - and only looking at it thru the eyes of a veteran. Which is understandable but doesn't really take in the whole picture.

You say that weapons should stat-up innately - and Serration etc be ditched.

The reason for Serration being the way it is - is centred on the hooking of new players. I recall being quite excited way back whenever I got it up a notch - it was one of the few solid progression aspects in evidence once I realised how fast it was to fully level a frame or weapon. It's also one of the few *dependable* progression aspects - since collecting mods is pure RNG.

What you propose simply disposes of this factor and does nothing to replace the (admittedly lacklustre) progression lost.

So - if they're removed - that progression - in terms of time spent - has to be transferred somewhere. This is an online F2P - time sink is the name of the business. The only solutions I can see - is that 0-30 would have to be increased exponentially to accommodate this change. Hence my mentioning issues of Forma and Affinity - and pointing out what a nightmare this could be if ranking up a weapon were to require weeks instead of hours.

You cannot simply ignore that possibility just because what you propose is more interesting to you - from your veteran perspective.

The knock on I refer to is that shortening these already weak progression aspects would see newer players stay for shorter time and leave sooner. More so if your proposal means all advancement or tweaking is RNG - as opposed to most like we have now.

I should also point out the knock on which you refer to at the end - clearly isn't true. You're still here after all - despite the poor modding versatility.

Please note I don't see the current iteration as AOK - I'm not saying changes don't need to happen. However - the idea of innate increasing weapon damage in order to free up a slot - doesn't ever think some of these aspects through. Which I've subsequently tried to point out. You cannot scrub time spent out of the equation in a F2P game - it's bad for business.

[Fifield]

After some thought and suggestions from other people, the best solution I’ve come to is that mods that increase damage without drawbacks shouldn’t exist.

 

Why?  You negated to mention why this was a good idea, yet it was the basis of most of your post.

[Playford]

Why?  You negated to mention why this was a good idea, yet it was the basis of most of your post.

The only thing that matters is DPS. As long as there are effective and reliable ways of increasing DPS, that's the only thing people are going to mod for. That also means that weapon modding has almost no depth or variety.

If increasing DPS also comes with some sort of trade off, people might be encouraged to try different builds.

[MumblesMcphatty]

If increasing DPS also comes with some sort of trade off, people might be encouraged to try different builds.

So you mean like Corrupted mods - and all the *different* builds they encourage ...

... Oh wait - that's not really how it turned out is it.

[Playford]

You seem to be missing the point of my questions - and only looking at it thru the eyes of a veteran. Which is understandable but doesn't really take in the whole picture.

You say that weapons should stat-up innately - and Serration etc be ditched.

The reason for Serration being the way it is - is centred on the hooking of new players. I recall being quite excited way back whenever I got it up a notch - it was one of the few solid progression aspects in evidence once I realised how fast it was to fully level a frame or weapon. It's also one of the few *dependable* progression aspects - since collecting mods is pure RNG.

What you propose simply disposes of this factor and does nothing to replace the (admittedly lacklustre) progression lost.

So - if they're removed - that progression - in terms of time spent - has to be transferred somewhere. This is an online F2P - time sink is the name of the business. The only solutions I can see - is that 0-30 would have to be increased exponentially to accommodate this change. Hence my mentioning issues of Forma and Affinity - and pointing out what a nightmare this could be if ranking up a weapon were to require weeks instead of hours.

You cannot simply ignore that possibility just because what you propose is more interesting to you - from your veteran perspective.

The knock on I refer to is that shortening these already weak progression aspects would see newer players stay for shorter time and leave sooner. More so if your proposal means all advancement or tweaking is RNG - as opposed to most like we have now.

I should also point out the knock on which you refer to at the end - clearly isn't true. You're still here after all - despite the poor modding versatility.

Please note I don't see the current iteration as AOK - I'm not saying changes don't need to happen. However - the idea of innate increasing weapon damage in order to free up a slot - doesn't ever think some of these aspects through. Which I've subsequently tried to point out. You cannot scrub time spent out of the equation in a F2P game - it's bad for business.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, getting Serration and the cores needed to rank it up is progression but not RNG?

Getting some other mod and ranking it up on the other hand is RNG and is not progression? I'm confused.

 

The progression doesn't have to be transferred elsewhere, we already have several other progression systems that can "take the load", such as the rest of the mod collection, building new weapons, building the dojo, researching clantech, filling out the codex and leveling syndicates.

 

As long as Forma exists rapidly releveling equipment will also exist, if there are to be any changes to the speed of leveling gear (which there shouldn't in my opinion) then DE needs to tackle Forma as a gameplay element but that is beyond the scope of this topic.

 

And yes, I'm still here in spite of the modding system, but it would be better if I was here because of it.

 

And I've stated in my OP that any progression lost can be compensated with Fusion Cores, it has happened multiple times in the past.

 

So you mean like Corrupted mods - and all the *different* builds they encourage ...

... Oh wait - that's not really how it turned out is it.

Their use varies from weapon to weapon because of inconsistent effect on accuracy. As suggested in the OP, the damage bonus should be less significant and their effect on accuracy changed so equipping it effects the ability to reliably deal that extra damage.

With the change to the ammo system and ammo economy of all weapons, missed shots would actually be enough to discourage people from running it on everything all the time.

[Lost_Cartographer]

If the expectation is for enemy scaling to be looked at in conjunction with mods, then why even have damage growth, either through mods like serration or simply built into a weapon in the first place?  I get that some people believe progression comes in the form of greater damage, but it isn't a rule, just a method many developers follow.  The notion of older content becoming obsolete content is also a growing stigma among gamers.  Fewer and fewer of them are oblivious to the fact that with each level, they're starting back at essentially square 1 when facing an enemy their level.  In the end, all they end up with are new abilities and are forced into a new location to keep acquiring new abilities.  That's all rising stats in both players and enemies amounts to.  SOME developers are starting to realize the folly in this approach as well - why limit content like that if in the end all the only real progression a player is really getting are more things to use against his foes?  Mods and ranks are this in a nutshell, barring the notorious examples like serration and elemental damage.  Some of the OP's mod suggestions are honestly ingenious in this regard.

 

Next, we have to recognize that right now enemy scaling only really becomes a problem in endless modes and it's only considered a problem because people make the false assumption that they should be able to go forever into an endless mode, when the very purpose of infinite scaling is to prevent precisely that.  So armor/health/damage scaling isn't broken, not by a long shot.  There could be a more enjoyable method(s) of applying pressure unto players, but rising health/armor/damage values are a reliable stand in.  

 

Looking at Halo: Reach's post credits(?) survival-esque battle, that started off with grunts and minor elites engaging the player, and built up to squads of golden zealots armed with plasma (grenade) launchers, beam (sniper) rifles and energy swords moving WAY faster than the player could even sprinting.  Unless you were playing on easy, chances are by that point you couldn't put them down fast enough to keep them off you.  So there was a mixture of rising health/damage and cheesier and cheesier weapon selections in use to bring the player down but it DID top out at a reasonable point without rendering the player's equipment totally obsolete.

 

In Warframe's terms, that's like starting a survival against butchers and lancers and ending it against Manic Bombards, flight happy Hellions, ballistae, and manics as your common enemies (good luck.)  Of course, these guys would only be a threat if the player couldn't put most or all of them down with 1-2 shots from their boltor prime.  DE can't fix enemy scaling and improve on the growing difficulty curve of endless modes if they don't rein in the absurd amount of damage a player can stack onto their weapons first.  Preferably, weapons don't simply grow in power.  The fewer  simple variables DE has to consider, the more accurate they can make enemy scaling.  When a Boltor Prime doesn't scale so wildly more powerful than the Braton Prime as it does now, then enemy scaling can be fitted around a healthier median.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Littleman88

[Playford]

I agree that leveling up increasing stats is a bit of a crutch on game design, but the sad truth is that people like big numbers. In my previous attempts to discuss this topic I've had comments from people that they didn't like my suggestions because the numbers would be smaller, and I can understand that to a degree.

 

I would prefer stat growth being minimal and difficulty being based on enemy composition and tactics, rather than it being a math problem, but let's focus on one issue at a time.

[Fifield]

The only thing that matters is DPS.

 

Not quite true else, we'd all run fire rate mods.

 

As long as there are effective and reliable ways of increasing DPS, that's the only thing people are going to mod for. That also means that weapon modding has almost no depth or variety.

 

There aren't many non-DPS mods on Primaries and Secondaries.  There's the zoom ones, the silence ones, the recoil ones, reload speed and the ammo/mags ones.  The mags ones are used.  On Secondaries, there's also the range ones which are also used

Melee isn't much better but does have things like Life Strike and Reach.

But you identified one other way of increasing mod variety (buffing unused non-DPS mods) and there's a third: eximus slots.  So my question was: Why this way?

Edited September 11, 2015 by Fifield

[Nineart]

I think the reason "The only thing matters is DPS." is how the damage is calculated.

Current damage reduction is done only in percentage, a division.

Just going for more damage increase DPS.

 

The solution i suggest is having subtraction along with a division.

 

lets assume there is a gun A(200dmg/shot, 1shot/sec, 200dps), and a gun B(15dmg/shot, 20shots/sec, 300dps).

With current system, gun B is def. better, no matter how you mod it, how high the target's armor is.

 

But if we had a target with 50% dmg reduction and 5 dmg reduction,

 

gun A:

dmg/shot= 200*.5 - 5 = 95

1shots/sec, 95dps 

 

gun B:

dmg/shot= 15*.5 - 5 = 2.5

20shots/sec, 50dps.

 

See how the numbers changed?

its a system where a gun with less dmg/shot do more dps to low armor targets, while

a gun with high dmg/shot do more dps to high armor targets.

 

This way, not all guns would go for damage mods, some guns would find more dmg/shot useless while some guns would find it mandatory.

 

There are issues with this, such as dmg/shot being less than numeric dmg reduction, causing 0 damage or how the numbers would work out.

not here to discuss that, but there are solutions as minimum dmg/shot in form of finisher damage and such.

[MumblesMcphatty]

I really can't help but feel you're being deliberately obtuse to avoid acknowledging flaws in your proposal. I do not mean "lost progression" in the sense of my time wasted - I could care less - I mean lost progression in the sense that Serration/Hornet Strike fill a specific role for the games longevity - and you have failed to accommodate that fact in your proposal.

Acquiring Serration and cores to rank it up may well be RNG - but it's not comparable to acquiring a wider range of mods to affect your weapon. Cores are everywhere - Serration is easily acquired early on. Whereas you can play for a year or more, clear the whole chart and never see some mods drop once - like myself and Rage for instance.

And yes - from DE's perspective - the time sink represented by R10 staple mods MUST be transferred somewhere. There has to be a substantial - and visible to the player - timegate to the players relative power in game.

None of what you listed is really an adequate replacement - I mean c'mon the Dojo, Syndicates?! Who you trying to fool here?

From a design perspective - The easiest way to accommodate the removal of R10 staple mods and this innate stat increase with weapon rank idea - together - is extending the amount of XP needed to make rank 30. Considering the necessary evils of freemiums - it could become quite a huge slog compared to now. Re levelling would not be so easy then, see?

Your attitude of, "Oh we'll just move that progression ... Somewhere else?" smacks of a bored and greedy player viewpoint, not one relevant to developers.

Regardless - overall - the idea of give & take mods isn't a bad one - but you're kidding yourself if you think that player attitudes won't eventually lead to the "best DPS" builds and another set of mandatory mods within the meta. In a game so centred around acquisition of bigger numbers rather than any real skill - it is inevitable.

None of your proposal can change that - it'd just be a bunch of work for the exact same results. Although it may actually be worse, since from the sounds of it - acquiring the right tools to be effective might turn out to be even harder than now.

[Nineart]

Agree with MumblesMcphatty

 

it would be like

 

this gun with these mods are for corpus!

this one is for grineer!

and this one is for infested!

 

anything else? never used.

[Playford]

Not quite true else, we'd all run fire rate mods.

 

 

There aren't many non-DPS mods on Primaries and Secondaries.  There's the zoom ones, the silence ones, the recoil ones, reload speed and the ammo/mags ones.  The mags ones are used.  On Secondaries, there's also the range ones which are also used

Melee isn't much better but does have things like Life Strike and Reach.

But you identified one other way of increasing mod variety (buffing unused non-DPS mods) and there's a third: eximus slots.  So my question was: Why this way?

We don't run regular firerate mods because elemental mods give more DPS, but even then Shred and Lethal Torrent are very popular, both giving firerate plus additional effects.

 

Mods that don't effect DPS are very rarely used because once you stack up base damage, multishot, elementals, nightmare mods and crit mods, there is no more room left for them.

 

And you have gotten to the root of the problem, modding for DPS is not just the most optimal way to play, it is the only way to play.

 

Exilus slots don't solve the issue, even if they were implemented on weapons, they are just one slot, the contents of the other 8 would remain identical meaning that build variety is just slightly less non-existent.

 

The point of my suggestion is to limit potential DPS and provide gameplay that doesn't consist of throwing numbers at the enemy until they run out of numbers.

 

 

[snip]

It seems that we have difference of opinion, you think that leveling Serration and Hornet Strike is crucial to the Warframe experience, I don't.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Playford

[Carl_Bar]

I've only skimmed the OP but had to respond to this.

 

I really can't help but feel you're being deliberately obtuse to avoid acknowledging flaws in your proposal. I do not mean "lost progression" in the sense of my time wasted - I could care less - I mean lost progression in the sense that Serration/Hornet Strike fill a specific role for the games longevity - and you have failed to accommodate that fact in your proposal.

 

So leveling mods other than serration isn't progression?

[Fifield]

We don't run regular firerate mods because elemental mods give more DPS

 

Only the first two, and the second only if you get the right damage type.  The third and fourth don't.  It would be worth running Speed Trigger or Viral Acceleration on non-Endless missions but we don't get enough configuration slots for that and it's not worth swapping mods for..  It's also better running Bane of Grineer than the 4th vs Grineer -- but you're only talking about 7% damage difference and again it's not worth swapping mods for.

 

Exilus slots don't solve the issue, even if they were implemented on weapons, they are just one slot, the contents of the other 8 would remain identical meaning that build variety is just slightly less non-existent.

 

DE could have as many exilus slots as they want.  I was thinking 6 normal, 2 exilus, because it's difficult to balance eg a reload speed mod with a damage mod.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Fifield

[Carl_Bar]

Ok @OP:

 

Regarding your elemental suggestion. I have similar idea's. But i see a simply way to leave the percentages unchanged.

 

Change base weapon damage to an invisible untyped damage type. Then each weapon get's innate puncture, slash, and impact percentage amounts.

 

To use the Braton as an example. iit would have 33%/33%/34.

 

Total amount of a given damage type is determined by the following formulae, (fire damage as an example):

 

Total Fire Damage = Base damage x Fire Damage Percentage (Relative).

 

Where:

 

Fire Damage (Relative) = Fire Damage (Absolute) x (100/(Fire Damage (Absolute) + Cold Damage (Absolute) + Toxin Damage (Absolute) + Electricity Damage (Absolute) + Impact Damage (Absolute) + Slash Damage (Absolute) + Puncture Damage (Absolute)))

 

 

To work an example. Braton with one +90% fire damage mod on it.

 

Fire Damage (Absolute) = 90%

Impact Damage (Absolute) = 33%

Puncture Damage (Absolute) = 33%

Slash Damage (Absolute)= 34%

 

So:

 

Fire Damage (Relative) =  90*(100/(90+33+33+34)) = 47%

 

So Total Fire Damage = 20* 0.47 = 9.47 fire damage

 

 

I'd also separate out the weapon level for the damage boost from the mod point/forma'ing level. Both would rise using XP. But you'd need a lot more XP for the damage one, can boost it with fusion cores, and it unaffected by and does not have to be maxed to forma.

[Carl_Bar]

Edit: Slightly ignore the above.

 

Formulae should be split in four with the above being used minus the elemental types first, the the same formulae with physical types substituted by elemental types and base damage substituted for the individual physical types for each of the next 3 iterations.

 

I can type it all out if you want to see it.

[Playford]

[snip]

I'll be honest, the equations you propose are difficult to understand at a glance and un-intuitive, quite often I see new players confused about the damage model even though it's relatively straightforward.

Complicating it even further would just make make newcomers even more confused.