Why can't you just... buff old weapons?

[Cyandana]

Digital Extreme's always has and always will favor creating new content to fix their old content rather than fixing the old content itself.

There is more money, and much more carrot on the stick that way.

[Zookes]

Must think, how can 1 mod help old weapons become useful?
With the riven, I do not understand any players thinking like "yes, I will pay 100p to other players in trade for this slightly better Barrel Diffusion / Serration for the Hind because I hate using this weapon."

Alternatively, any players thinking like "I am happy to have this riven mod for Panthera, a weapon I immediately threw away after mastering it despite being an avid collector and having many surplus weapon slots, and I am happy to spend thousands of kuva to re-roll it to some level of decency that will allow the weapon to operate as well as a low-level melee."

This thinking makes no sense to me.

Burston Prime having even help from Arbiters mods, it is a less desirable rifle compared to Soma for all cases. New riven mods do not change this.

I think maybe DE will see usage stats showing brief interest in old weapons before returning completely to old meta, and rivens for non-meta weapons like Panthera and Hind being still ignored. Low power is only part of the reason for such weapons collecting dust, they have often small sustained DPS and bad gimmicks also that mods do not fix without sacrificing so much to make them uncompetitive. 1 mod cannot help this.
 

A solution I think:

Riven mods gain a new function to unlock more slots for stronger disposition weapons!
Equip with faint disposition, no new slots and only the mod stats with penalty.
With neutral, 1 new slot opens and also the riven mod stats.
With strong, 2 slots and also the mod stats with bonus.

The new slots opened this way can be customized to any polarity without forma. Removing the riven mod removes the temporary slots and ejects mods.

So I think this becomes the weapon aura slot. Popular weapons do not have this, and this makes the less-used weapons more powerful. This makes also the riven mod appealing even with masochistic reroll costs, as even bad stats do not matter so much when it is free to equip.
 

Edited November 22, 2016 by Zookes

[Azamagon]

I can see -A- point with Rivens: It leaves a sense of progression (even if that is flawed in execution), while still allowing us to use the low tier stuff later on again through these mods.

But the execution (again) of the Rivens is not done well. There is WAY too much RNG involved, for example.

Further, some weapons could still need some QoL-tweaks and numerical buffs. Take the Panthera for example. It has no crits (which is fine), but that comes at the beneift of things like low rate of fire, low status, slow projectile primary, horribly ammo efficient primary, short range secondary continous mechanics being horrible... oh wait... >_>
Yeah, it needs lots of stuff to be rewarding. Higher damage, less ammo-costly primary, more RoF, innate slash procs on both firemodes etc. Make its lack of crit and relatively difficult-to-use nature feel WORTHWHILE, before even considering bandaiding it with Rivens. I've really tried, but it cannot be saved :/

[xXDeadsinxX]

Riven mods are bandaid mods indeed. Why not just buff the old weapons or do damage 3.0 without this new system of bandaid mods. I know Damage 3.0 is going to be difficult to do of course but why bring this bandaid system? I don't get DE's logic at this point.

[Souldrainr]

Because flat buffs won't make them $$$$$

[Kainosh]

On 15.11.2016 at 9:13 AM, AdunSaveMe said:

Rivens are meant to get us to use old weapons, or bring them up to a higher level. Why is this necessary? Buffing those weapons and fixing some of the creep that happened over the years would have done that. This is a bandaid.

"You can expect to see more powerful Rivens for less used weapons and vice versa". Why is this necessary? Now balance on those weapons will be based in rivens, rather than the weapons themselves. Am I the only one who sees this as silly?

I agree....But buffing old weapons will not fix "mandatory mod" problem...and overall Mod disbalance.    You know...most secondaries require Multishot and Hornet to be any good, bullet hoses especially.   You surely can use Ammo mutation mod + firerate mod....But this combo will not double ammo efficiency and damage output like Multishot does.

Just with Lethal torrent + Barrel diffusion you get ~290% ammo efficiency, increased burst damage, higher firerate, and more bullets per clip...Man, this is plain bs.

This sht started faaar before Rivens arrived...right with Serration, HS and Pressure point.   Bandaid mods because weapons lack base damage (exactly why You want em buffed).

 

 But man, buffing old weapons will result in relatively balanced stats across all weapons...That means early planet enemy lvl also have to increase. Then enemies will also be almost of same level.   That means there will be no need in damage increasing mods.  They will have to be like Conclave mods, trading base damage for elemental and such ....

Im not sayin its a bad thing...Its actually good.  But many people were against Conclave balance in PvE.

And that is exactly why DE cant simply buff old weapons.

[DreamsmithJane]

To answer the title question, that runs the risk of weapons being pigeonholed. At least Rivens stand a chance of shoe-horning more weapons into the meta in interesting and perhaps unexpected ways, rather than allowing them to be just objectively better or worse than other weapons in the same category. If you give them a straight buff, either they will replace the current meta, or they still won't be used.

This is basically intended to address the kind of player who always asks "what is the best _____?" and then uses that as much as possible, and to give them an incentive to try something else, but not necessarily the same something else as the next person. What Rivens accomplish is to blur the lines between good and not-so-good weapons, and make the choice far less obvious for those who default to the most efficient and effective option. A straight buff might shuffle things around a bit, but it would not create a long-term expansion of (the perception of) viable choices the way Rivens do.