[Riven Mods] Feedback and ideas

[Reifnir]

As the title says, although truth be told, I might as well call it "Why Riven mods don't and won't work and what are the alternatives". Wall of text warning!

 

Right. As far as I understand the concept, the Riven mods were brought to "breathe some life" into old and forgotten weapons. And to add a new layer of grind content since you'll want to acquire more of them. Unfortunately, they accomplished neither. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against revisiting the old weapons, quite the contrary. But here's the thing. As it probably has been already mentioned, an old weapon with a good Riven mod is (at best) on par with a popular "meta" weapon. Make that an "okayish" or "bad" Riven mod and we're looking at a waste of time, endo and inventory slot, nothing more. What's the point of using a Flux Rifle that requires finding a matching Riven Mod (which is a royal pain given the current Sortie reward system), heavy modding and polarizing to be on par with good out-of-the box rifles like Soma? That's right, none at all. Add to that the fact that a Riven mod can become a source of serious frustration given its random nature, is costly to fine-tune due to Kuva being involved and the resulting picture is as far away from "Cool, new system I wanna play with" as it gets. 

Another side of the problem is, some Riven Mods are only making the "meta" problem worse. As if Simulor Mirage or Tonkor <whatever> isn't bad enough, there are now mods like this or this in circulation that just scream "the rich get richer" Ahem. That is, "OP gets more OP" - which effectively nips any "good" changes to old weapons in the bud. 

And of course, there's icing on the cake - Riven Mods are subject to an atrocious, for a lack of better term, form of RNG. Doesn't take long browsing the forums to find instances of Riven Mods reducing weapon damage to ZERO. This isn't even funny. Now, Corrupted Mods for warframes with negative stats are one thing. They allow to fine-tune abilities to match specific situations - mainly because abilities have a multitude of purposes across warframes. Stealth, CC, damage, protection, mobility, buffs - thus making the corrupted mods viable. Weapons, on the other hand, have but ONE purpose - to kill stuff. And if the mod (Corrupted or Riven) is taking away too much damage potential it won't be popular regardless of what else it's capable of. It will be plain bad. Like, Vile Precision or Hollow Point bad. 

 

To summarize the above: Riven Mods are in dire need of rework. Not tweaks, not making some of the weapons get more benefits from them, but complete, "back to drawing board" kind of rework. Because tweaked or not, the best result ever for current Riven mods is making the neglected weapons on par with "meta" weapons after much hardship and banging your head against the RNG wall. Which is a frustrating, burnout-inducing experience. Thanks but no thanks.

 

 

 

Now, for the second part, the alternatives. 

 

 

The first one I already mentioned in one of the feedback topics earlier, so it'll be part copy-pasta here.

 

I'm under the assumption that at its core, Warframe is still a "Player VS Horde" game, right? Where players derive fun from killing hordes of enemies in various and inventive ways. So, while let's say Glaxion or Synapse with a good Riven mod is better than just plain old Glaxion/Synapse, it's still a bland and boring weapon on top of being an underpowered one.

Solution? Take a good, long look at how Diablo 3 legendaries work, then adapt it into Warframe mechanics. Acid Shells was a step in the right direction - Sobek suddenly found a FUN use in starchart missions, because hey, stuff we kill now chain-explodes making crowds melt! 

But that's one step. However, what if Riven Mods were an advanced, "legendary" form of weapon customization? Because when your weapon is doing +n% more damage or shoots m% faster... It's not fun. It's just more of the same. Especially when there's a "meta" weapon out there that is better still. Fun is teaching the proverbial old dog some impressive new tricks. How about EACH Riven mod not only increased the base stats like damage/crit/RoF but also granted a new "legendary property" to a weapon?

Some examples for such modifiers right off the bat:

Make Glaxion create a puddle of ice/freezing cloud on contact that deals Cold damage with a chance to proc. Or make enemies explode on kill, dealing low damage (we already have Acid Shells, right?) and freezing anyone in the blast with 80% chance. Or give it a 10% chance to deal 1000% increased damage to frozen/cold-procced enemies (you'll see a lot of Frost players with Glaxion after this). 

Make Synapse deal 1% more damage for every point of Energy your Warframe has. Or have a 20% chance to turn individual enemies into Lightning traps, Volt's ult style, that zap others in the vicinity. Or maybe restore 0.5% Energy on crit. 

Make Warframe-specific Rivens, even. Volt Prime is featured with a Latron on his icon? Add a Riven Latron mod that stops all other actions from depleting Volt's passive count and gives an Alt-Fire to Latron, which shoots an explosive shell dealing say, 300% of accumulated passive's damage. 

Does that sound a bit OP? Maybe. But... Don't be afraid to add crazy stuff to the game. You can always limit the Conclave availability for the sake of fair fights, but PvE has never been about fair. Horde slaying, remember? Right now, "difficult" in Warframe means cheesy, means "need to CC the hell out of it". Make it "crazy and fun", no one will complain. 

 

 

 

The other alternative that comes to mind is making Riven Mods radically change the weapon behavior. And I mean "holy Void, what the Hek just happened" radically, not another +145% damage. For example, they could do something along those lines:

Make Hind shoot Angstrum rockets in salvos of 5. Because why not.

Turn Simulor into a charge-fire weapon like Opticor, that spews a huge (think unmodded Vauban's Vortex) singularity blast that slowly travels the room, dragging enemies with it until finally exploding upon hitting a wall.

Make Paracyst alt-fire shoot infested spore traps that burrow into any surface and impale any enemy that comes close, Nezha's Divine Spears like. 

Turn Penta's grenades into Sapping Osprey-like mines (max 2 out?) that pulse Magnetic damage. 

Add Alt-Fire to Amprex that drops a stationary ball of lightning that zaps anything that gets close. Shooting a second ball within say, 10 meters of the previous one creates a lightning tether  between them, dragging them together until they collide and explode in a huge blast of shock damage. 

 

Again, this may sound crazy, but that's the thing about horde shooters/slashers - crazy means fun. It means players will be lining up to get these mods, to test them, to grin like madmen when they see what they can do. Sure, there will be a mountain of work involved to come up with enough Riven mods, implement them and then some more to balance them properly... But at least at the end of the day, no one will be able to say "I spent a week/month farming sorties for that new mod and got a piece of garbage that makes a worthless weapon even more worthless.".  Because this is what's happening right now and it's not something I'd like to experience ever again. 

Edited November 19, 2016 by Reifnir

[Zanchak]

Some of this is insane, which would be fun as opposed to how it is now, which isn't fun, even at all. Fun would be very much welcome so yeah, I hope they do something insane that isnt reliant on often tedious and/or ridiclous unlocks and grinding thats dependant on good or bad rng. It's disappointing after looking forward to this quest to be left feeling "unrewarded" (in so many ways not just these) for even bothering to do it. (kinda how sortie feels now being rewarded a riven mod yay) RNG hates me (Im not one of the lucky rich get richer people), these "mods" hate me even more than usual and are a waste of my time to bother with as they are now. As a side note, kuva being needed not only for these but in dojo research is another slap in the face for anyone who doesn't want to touch a thing to do with TWW.

More fun, yes please. Do all the things ^ :)

[Reifnir]

10 hours ago, Zanchak said:

It's disappointing after looking forward to this quest to be left feeling "unrewarded" (in so many ways not just these) for even bothering to do it.

Well, chances are, TWW will at least lay a foundation for something in the future. Like a focus system rework *cough*.

But yeah, for a large-caliber cinematic quest it left more questions than answers.

[Guest]

The quest itself was great, it's the core gameplay additions introduced by the quest that are lacking.  Rivens are garbage and are legitimately going to hurt the game if left unchanged.  Although the stated intention behind them is fantastic, their execution will never be able to achieve the stated goal.  There's no real reason to ever go to the kuva fortress.  Baby ninjas are an awkward gimmick that's strictly for an ignorable resource.  The new weapons are alright, some of them are good in their own way.  We waited almost a year for this...

[Reifnir]

Speaking of execution - I did every sortie from the day TWW got released and got exactly 0 (zero) Riven mods. 

This would be a good time to introduce a Sortie token system. A *really* good time.