Polarising Qol Improvement - Futureproofing And Optionality

[TheLexiConArtist]

("<concept> 2.0" is so blasé.)

 

I'm not big on throwing Forma at things, that I'll be the first to admit. I scoff at people who claim that 4+ formas are required to use anything in endgame content... but even from this relatively outside perspective I can see a caveat in the system.

 

Since we got Damage 2.0, due to elemental combination priorities, we gained the ability to rearrange polarisations we had put on our equipment - stopping us being restricted in which elements we could make the most of due to particularly unhelpful polarities and the Left-To-Right, Row-By-Row order we were given, plus native weapon elements taking up residency on a theoretical third 'row' to be the last in any order.

 

So, why not expand on this to avoid extra re-forma drudgery? Nobody would enjoy having to relevel their weapon due to a balance change or new mod(s) that drastically change polarity needs. Consider a weapon maximised for elements before access to Element+Status mods; all those Naramon slots you might have polarised might now be better served being Madurai instead.

 

My suggestion is essentially simple:

 

Decouple the act of polarising from slots entirely.

 

Instead, give the player's item a bank of earned (and native) polarities that they can use any, all or none of in their current slots. Possibly even manageable per item loadout, although that might introduce too much extra data weight for the server.

 

Special slots (Exilus, Stance, Aura) may or may not still be restricted from sharing the same bank of polarities as regular slots depending on DE's taste. I'll assume they would still be considered special, not interchangeable with permitted mod polarities.

 

Behold my expert photochopping skills:

 

As you can see from this slapdash example, my Ivara has:

 

• Two options for Aura polarity, freely switchable without using another Forma and re-levelling

• One Exilus polarity (unused, as it currently houses a Madurai polarity Drift mod)

• One Madurai, one Naramon, and one Vazarin mod polarity all in use

• One Zenurik mod polarity (unused).

 

Just.. imagine it had the accurate number of stars (4). I forgot to copy in new ones for the theoretical amount of forma that would have been used for the number of polarities available.

 

So yes, this would essentially remove the "Mismatching Polarity" penalty on mod drain as you could just opt to not use the wrong polarity available to you. But to that, I say well, my speed nova Prime build didn't need three native Madurai polarities anyway.

[Noreus]

I feel that they should make it so you can "store" polarizations, just like you said. I think that, however, to make it balanced they need to only make that available after the weapon has over the amount of polarizations that it has space for. This would give people more incentive to forma their weapon more than needed, and make loadouts much more intriguing, as you can build the weapons in 3 different ways with different polarities.

 

+1

[SaucyTuckermax]

Like you said doing this would probably destroy the servers I'm sure. My solution is far more simple. after changing the polarity of a slot, you re-lvl to max rank (exactly how it is now) but then, you can now switch polarties only on the one slot you changed (or however many slots you changed) but can do as many slots as you have forma'd without having to re-lvl Here's example to make this easier to understand:

 

put 1 forma on a slot that hasn't been forma'd: Re-lvl to 30

put 1 forma on a different slot: Re-lvl to 30

 

Then you decide you want those 2 slots to be something different then what you forma'd them to be: Simple click and change, doesn't reset weapon to unranked. (Note: This will only work on slots you have applied a forma to. Not slots on weapons that came with a certain polarity on them)

 

This idea will make basically make it so once you change 1 slots polarity and re-lvl 1 time, it can then be changed to any polarity without having to re-lvl again.

Edited February 13, 2016 by SaucyTuckermax

[TheLexiConArtist]

Like you said doing this would probably destroy the servers I'm sure. My solution is far more simple. after changing the polarity of a slot, you re-lvl to max rank (exactly how it is now) but then, you can now switch polarties only on the one slot you changed (or however many slots you changed) but can do as many slots as you have forma'd without having to re-lvl Here's example to make this easier to understand:

 

put 1 forma on a slot that hasn't been forma'd: Re-lvl to 30

put 1 forma on a different slot: Re-lvl to 30

 

Then you decide you want those 2 slots to be something different then what you forma'd them to be: Simple click and change, doesn't reset weapon to unranked. (Note: This will only work on slots you have applied a forma to. Not slots on weapons that came with a certain polarity on them)

 

This idea will make basically make it so once you change 1 slots polarity and re-lvl 1 time, it can then be changed to any polarity without having to re-lvl again.

 

With regards to server load:

The basic idea would be low impact, in the order of a couple bytes per object; you could fit two mod-polarity counters per byte by splitting it into lower and upper 4 bits since you don't need more than values 0-15 each (0-8, but 9 rounded up to power of 2 requires 16), then a single byte per 'special' slot that has the available polarities as a bitmask.

 

A frame for example could take 1 byte for Aura, 1 byte for Exilus, and 3 bytes for mod slots (Madurai | Vazarin ; Naramon | Zenurik ; Unairu | nothing (theoretically for future mods, we don't have any Unairu mods except some stances)).

 

It's storing individual configurations for loadouts that magnifies the storage a bit; each slot would need its own bitmask to identify the polarity or lack of polarity (presumed current behaviour) which makes for 10 bytes per frame, but if different loadouts allowed different assigned polarities, that's tripled up to 30 which would become more strenuous applied to every item owned by every player.

 

 

Your alternative suggestion takes a little too much away from the current system, I think. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I try to keep my suggestions as close to existing concepts as possible. The least amount of reworking is the most likely to be picked up as a casually applied improvement.

 

Still, two Forma per polarity in my proposed system is probably enough for all but the tightest mod drain usage, I think, at roughly the same number of applied forma as yours would take to have all slots accounted for. Not much wouldn't fit in a combination of twos or blanks, once you've got your potato and aura in accordance. Although my idea theoretically goes up to 8 + <number of special slots> forma per polarity, what's the likelihood you'll be fitting 8 Zenurik mods with enough drain to need every one polarised?

[DSpite]

Too powerful as is.

 

If you are going to allow a system that allows this level of flexibility, the cost for doing do should be far more punishing.

 

Forma basically turns weapons into what MMO's would normally call "Artifacts". A few Forma make ANY weapon into a Star Chart trivializing wand you can just point into the general direction of enemies.

 

Honestly, a system that gives us Polarization flexibility only makes sense if the Star Chart and enemies get a MAJOR rework, so I'd rather wait to see what DE does with the new Star Chart first.

[TheLexiConArtist]

Too powerful as is.

 

If you are going to allow a system that allows this level of flexibility, the cost for doing do should be far more punishing.

 

Forma basically turns weapons into what MMO's would normally call "Artifacts". A few Forma make ANY weapon into a Star Chart trivializing wand you can just point into the general direction of enemies.

 

Honestly, a system that gives us Polarization flexibility only makes sense if the Star Chart and enemies get a MAJOR rework, so I'd rather wait to see what DE does with the new Star Chart first.

 

The cost of using Forma currently is punishing enough for Draco and its predecessors to exist. Remember that affinity farm is the symptom rather than the cause.

 

Whether or not things can become too powerful with the current system isn't really in question. Nothing about my suggestion increases the upper limit on player power. It's just the next logical quality of life step after being able to swap existing polarities between slots.

 

Really, the main draw I hoped would gain support for this is the fact that you don't have to worry about future balance changes or new mods. After you've spent so much time putting 6 forma onto something, wouldn't you feel cheated if you had to do it twice over again to alter something you've already put in the resources and time to earn the first time around, just because priorities changed? What if, arbitrary example, existing mods just so happened to have their polarities switched for consistency/balance/any other reason?

 

Zero power creep, low developer workload, fix some potential frustrations and wasted effort. Until the extreme ends of using this proposed system, it's nothing that couldn't exist already...and it might actually increase Forma usage (possibly purchases, even) since you'll never feel like you're 'locking yourself out' of anything by using it.

 

I can definitely say that I'd use forma on things more often if it was done this way. You never know when the next interesting mods are going to shake up builds.. Like the Shadow Debt mods in some cases.

Oh, and let's not forget they're looking to remove mandatory damage mods - all those Madurai polarised slots might not be so attractive when they do.

Edited February 14, 2016 by EDYinnit

[TheLexiConArtist]

Bumping this for some midday attention.