Rivens are unnecessary because there's a reason for weaker weapons...

[NeoRetro10K]

For some of us who have been playing for a few years now, we look back at the older weapons and wonder why we'd ever use them with the likes of the Sancti Tigris, Synoid Simulor, and Tonkor being in the game. According to the developers, Riven Mods were an attempt to get players to use some of the earlier-released weapons again due to the fact that older weapons tend to be weaker due to power creep. Arguably, this has failed, at least in its current iteration which still even allows modding of more powerful weapons, but further than that, I believe that trying to get veteran players to use older weapons was unnecessary in the first place, because the older weapons aren't for veterans.

Some of us veterans have forgotten what it was like to start at the beginning, before raising our Mastery Ranks. The more powerful weapons that we're used to are locked behind Mastery, and new players can't use them. This was intended to provide a sense of progression - a progression we as veterans have already made. However, I will admit that, as it stands now, the order of progression is a little out of whack.

By that, I mean that some weapons are allowed to be accessed by far too low a Mastery Rank in comparison to others - the Tonkor, for example, only requires MR5, whereas the Soma (another crit-based but decidedly more single-target weapon) requires MR6. This is incongruous with these weapons' existing power levels in relation to each other, and that's just one example.

Instead of buffing and/or nerfing weapons left and right, I think that the distribution of weapon unlocks ought to be balanced more according to Mastery Rank, as well as spread farther along the current range of available ranks. This would give more powerful weapons more reasonable restrictions, as well as give more meaning to Mastery by giving players something to look forward to over a long Warframe career. Of course, already-owned weapons would be grandfathered in to prevent the game from basically "stealing" a weapon back from someone who rightfully built or bought it under the old rules. New players might feel that it's unfair that older players could have those weapons at an earlier rank, but the game would also be boring to them if they could immediately get a Tonkor as early as MR5 and then just forget everything else, as they can now.

Edited December 6, 2016 by NeoRetro10K

[Don_T_Shoot]

What about weapons that you just like but can't use very effectively as you could in older versions of the game?  I love the Amprex and still use it from time to time.   But it's harder to make that choice to bring it on certain missions when I have a Vaykor Hek and a Tonkor sitting there with their demonically high damage capabilities and vastly superior ammo efficiencies.

My slumming weapon of choice is the Prisma Grakata, and it ain't too shabby as it is, but it would be so nice if it was juuuuuust a little better.

I'm not saying the Riven system is perfect but I find it interest enough to waste/spend time and effort on it.

[-JT-_-R3W1ND]

I don't know, there you find this.

Mastery was always for mastery. Just check a wiki.

I just can't imagine, how somebody will do something like " progression we as veterans have already made". And there is one word explain why. Forma. You need to put effort at every weapon you gonna to use. There is no sence to stop at low MR and use every mr-locked S#&$, while you can just rush for a high MR for a same time.

[hukurokuju5]

If there are the strong, there are the weak

if there is lulz, there is qq

[Xzorn]

Riven mods half work. There are weapons that get much better and are therefor viable again with RIven mods. Have you seen what Paracyst can do to a lvl 140 Napalm?

There are also weapons that will just never be good because of the limitations of the damage system. Impact / Puncture type weapons have to do nearly x4 the damage as a Slash / Toxic based equivalent in order to be competitive and nothing but Damage 3.0 will change that.

 

4 hours ago, Don_T_Shoot said:

My slumming weapon of choice is the Prisma Grakata, and it ain't too shabby as it is, but it would be so nice if it was juuuuuust a little better.

Prisma Grakata rivals Soma in DPS, with better armor shredding capacity. It simply lacks long range accuracy. This is without a Riven mod.

[xRufus7x]

There is a ton of weapons in Warframe with unique models and mechanics. It would be a real shame if only a handful of them got used regularly. This is what Riven mods aim to fix. 

[Xebov]

7 hours ago, NeoRetro10K said:

Some of us veterans have forgotten what it was like to start at the beginning, before raising our Mastery Ranks. The more powerful weapons that we're used to are locked behind Mastery, and new players can't use them.

I remember it very clearly how i started the game. I also remember that none of the weapons you mentioned where in existance at that time. The highest weapon back then was MR8 (now its MR13) and that MR was reached very fast.

 

7 hours ago, NeoRetro10K said:

Instead of buffing and/or nerfing weapons left and right, I think that the distribution of weapon unlocks ought to be balanced more according to Mastery Rank, as well as spread farther along the current range of available ranks. This would give more powerful weapons more reasonable restrictions, as well as give more meaning to Mastery by giving players something to look forward to over a long Warframe career.

We allow any player MR5+ to do TWW and with it gain access to Sorties which feature some of the highest enemies in the game. I hope you see where your idea is leading if you ignore the way access to content is handled.

 

I agree with you that the sorting of weapons is very bad, but instead of locking it away we should rather get some sort of balance into it to offer weapons to become actual choices instead of having a small number of weapons sitting in the top tier. If you believe it or not, for some weapons Rivens achieved exactly that. Some weapons just needed a kick to solve their issue, being pushed into the top tier in the process. Others however still remain beyond hope.

[Don_T_Shoot]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Riven mods half work. There are weapons that get much better and are therefor viable again with RIven mods. Have you seen what Paracyst can do to a lvl 140 Napalm?

There are also weapons that will just never be good because of the limitations of the damage system. Impact / Puncture type weapons have to do nearly x4 the damage as a Slash / Toxic based equivalent in order to be competitive and nothing but Damage 3.0 will change that.

 

Prisma Grakata rivals Soma in DPS, with better armor shredding capacity. It simply lacks long range accuracy. This is without a Riven mod.

I'd still pick Vaykor Hek or Tonkor over either if "stuff" is gonna get real.

[Xzorn]

7 minutes ago, Don_T_Shoot said:

I'd still pick Vaykor Hek or Tonkor over either if "stuff" is gonna get real.

 

Have you tried to use either of those weapons on a lvl 200+ armored Bombard?

Tonkor is a sad joke if you're trying to kill something with 98.9% mitigation, Vaykor is ok, but there's still better options.

There's still the subject of AoE Vs Single target and CPx4 but they're viable and in some ways better and I feel that's more of what this game needs. Paracyst and Prisma Grakata will destroy both of those weapons in single target kill rate on heavies and that's a perk worth considering in a meta group construction. Usually my team will have 1-2 AoE players and 1-2 single targets players with a mix here and there. You don't all want the same weapons.

I don't think I'd take Paracyst into a CPx4 group since it's still only like 35k Burst DPS as Viral against C.Flesh but Prisma Grakata is a candidate.

[Coaa]

I couldn't disagree more. Since they have been instated, I have gotten 8 total rivens via the quest and sorties. 3 of those were for current meta weapons which I promptly rerolled to good stats and banked hella plat on.

I then rerolled good ones of the oddball weapon ones, and used the plat to purchase a few for weapons I really wanted to take higher but couldn't before no matter how many primed mods I could slap on them.

I now went from maybe 4 weapons I would bring into sortie 3 tier of difficulty (or higher end survival and defense missions - even excavators) to around 12. Some of these weapons I haven't used in a very long time.

At the end of the day, the game is just a grind game - yes. But using the same frame and same weapon loadout for everything just makes the grind stale as heck. Rivens revitalizing some of my old favorites, and creating new favorites, has taken ALOT of the edge off with the monotony. Do they perform at tonkor levels? Hell no. I don't clear an entire group in a weapon click. But when I come against a bomber / heavy gunner or the likes, I can shred them down quickly and go on my way and am having a blast again.

[Cortanis]

11 hours ago, NeoRetro10K said:

Instead of buffing and/or nerfing weapons left and right, I think that the distribution of weapon unlocks ought to be balanced more according to Mastery Rank, as well as spread farther along the current range of available ranks. This would give more powerful weapons more reasonable restrictions, as well as give more meaning to Mastery by giving players something to look forward to over a long Warframe career. Of course, already-owned weapons would be grandfathered in to prevent the game from basically "stealing" a weapon back from someone who rightfully built or bought it under the old rules. New players might feel that it's unfair that older players could have those weapons at an earlier rank, but the game would also be boring to them if they could immediately get a Tonkor as early as MR5 and then just forget everything else, as they can now.

Edited 10 hours ago by NeoRetro10K

This would in all reality help the game in a lot of ways. Progression in the game is basically locked by what kind of dps you can do and how well you can survive. So the issue of survival capability vs damage is really what the progression amounts to. With the out of wack unlocks allowing for people to effectively unlock face wrecker 9000 weapons, it effectively allows the majority of players to just simply skip the progression in many ways. Once you start being able to wreck level 30+ grineer heavies on a whim, the rest of the cannon fodder simply doesn't have a reason to exist.

[lodoubt]

Not to mention that many of the newer, power creep'd weapons are not actually difficult to access. My weapons have gotten stronger as I've gone on, but that is because I've been playing a long time. A Tonkor has resource requirements which are fairly easy (Not trivial I admit, but each resource in it can be gained by average performance in one mission in an accessible low level area) and can be built at Mastery Rank 5. I would have been about MR14 or 15 when it was first introduced. I didn't subsequently build the thing until a while later and didn't immediately realise its potential because a) My own weapon mods weren't great and b) The community itself took a while to adopt it into the meta, very few people watched community discussions on weapon viability etc. back then. By the time I actually realised its relevance, I was at the point where I had some fairly strong equipment and tactics and had developed a disdain for stuff like the Amprex that trivialised missions, since I'm here to play a game, not a cookie clicker, ostensibly.

If I had immediately realised how ludicrous the Tonkor was off the bat, and it had been available to me at MR5 (admittedly, argon crystals weren't in the game when I was MR5), my Warframe experience would have been very, very different. At MR5 I was really struggling just to get to the bosses I wanted, to get parts for the frames I wanted, and I would have taken any advantage I could grasp to clear levels with. Would I have felt okay going back down to the other low mastery weapons after the Tonkor, with their general S#&$ty comparative performance? I probably would have had issues.

[Cortanis]

5 minutes ago, lodoubt said:

If I had immediately realised how ludicrous the Tonkor was off the bat, and it had been available to me at MR5 (admittedly, argon crystals weren't in the game when I was MR5), my Warframe experience would have been very, very different. At MR5 I was really struggling just to get to the bosses I wanted, to get parts for the frames I wanted, and I would have taken any advantage I could grasp to clear levels with. Would I have felt okay going back down to the other low mastery weapons after the Tonkor, with their general S#&$ty comparative performance? I probably would have had issues.

Been there. That was exactly what I did in my game though. I found favor back in the day with certain frames/weapon and combinations of that allowed for particularly nasty and efficient play. This was before things like the Tonkor mind you, but we still had quite a few that were notable at the time. This became even more the case after derelict was introduced and we got the corrupted mods. So I managed to plow my way through about 80% of the game on a handful of weapons and simply didn't care about using the other weapons in the game. So there I sat for at least a year or so at around MR14 simply because I didn't care. Finally, my ocd kicked in and I started working on completion around mid of last year. To go back and use what is really now garbage in a game that has been decidedly changed into something else that those weapons were never built for, was trying to say the least.

That's also were the xp caves came in. They were a godsend to the banging head on keyboard moments of being forced to use what are ill designed weapons from the get go in many cases. By no means should those weapons be really taken out beyond the entry level areas. Problem is... now their are so many of them to do and so little xp to be really had to deal with the required clearing that you really are forced to go to xp caves like Akkad just to get them out of the way. In no small part, game progression and xp in early game NEED to be sat down and really picked over so this isn't a constant case. Xp caves like what Draco was aren't the problem. It's the availability of being actually able to proceed naturally in the game to clear both early content and actually progress in your weapon unlocks as well.

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, Cortanis said:

Been there. That was exactly what I did in my game though. I found favor back in the day with certain frames/weapon and combinations of that allowed for particularly nasty and efficient play. This was before things like the Tonkor mind you, but we still had quite a few that were notable at the time. This became even more the case after derelict was introduced and we got the corrupted mods. So I managed to plow my way through about 80% of the game on a handful of weapons and simply didn't care about using the other weapons in the game. So there I sat for at least a year or so at around MR14 simply because I didn't care. Finally, my ocd kicked in and I started working on completion around mid of last year. To go back and use what is really now garbage in a game that has been decidedly changed into something else that those weapons were never built for, was trying to say the least.

 

People think I'm joking when I tell them MK1 Braton was one of the best weapons in the game.

There was a time when the accuracy of a weapon was valued.

[lodoubt]

6 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

People think I'm joking when I tell them MK1 Braton was one of the best weapons in the game.

There was a time when the accuracy of a weapon was valued.

Wasn't this because the damage 1.0 headshot multiplier was something nuts like 3x or something? I mean, you needed extra point damage wherever you could get it from back then, given that there were half as many enemies with (conservatively) twice the HP and damage.

I will say this, on a note related to the other posts though:
Now that I am at high MR, leveling crappy paper mache weapons is no longer a chore, having never used XP caves as a thing. Because as soon as I crack a weapon open now it is immediately not only at 22 mod energy (44 if I'm confident enough to burn a catalyst), but at 22 mod energy full of *good mods*, my damage progression has largely uncoupled itself from whatever weapon I'm actually using. As a result, whenever I crack open a new set of level 0 weapons, and forma a frame to go with them, I can immediately go and do say, any alerts *anywhere* on the starmap (Since in the presence of at least one pub supporting, any shortcomings in the freshly born loadout will be taken care of), and probably solo play through anywhere prior to Neptune. This isn't by any means the meat of the experience at my level, but it does stuff like get me the relics I need for the latest primes, lets me run throwaway Lith and Meso fissures for ducats, etc.

But in the past there were times that weapon performance in PvE was rebalanced, which set a precedent to me that this *could* be done. I feel like the base performance of weapons vs. improved counterparts or simply higher tier weapons should only be like, a factor of 2 or 3 different, as opposed to the 6 or 7 that it is right now (IMO mainly due to crit as a mechanic)

Edited December 7, 2016 by lodoubt

[DrBorris]

Ah, yes, because diversity is a bad thing.

 

No... diversity is what keeps games alive, if that is done through PvE, content drops, or whatever other thing a developer comes up with.

 

If a "veteran" can only use a select pool of weapons to do "veteran" stuff, they will get burnt out on the game just that much faster.

[ashrah]

riven mods are  nice...they improve all wepons...i was never used diriga before but now i use it all time...

[Xzorn]

37 minutes ago, lodoubt said:

-snip-

 

I don't recall a head-shot multiplier difference but it was more that you simply did no damage at all unless you hit the enemy in the head or had armor piercing. Enemies had massive armor around everything but their weak points.

MK1 Braton's 40 accuracy gave it pin point head-shots at any range and that was the most important thing back in the day. I remember doing 1's and 3's for damage if I didn't shoot them in the head. It was a lot more rewarding for good aim and punishing for spray n pray.

I remember trying a lot of other weapons but didn't like much else besides the Bolto pistol. Most of the other weapon just didn't have that head-shot accuracy the MK1 had.

I've never done an exp cave. I always go for something more overall efficient. Usually gives less exp but a lot more loot and through trading if I need to I spend the extra plat I earned on a booster and I'm better for it. The whole exp cave thing seems unwise to me. I actually don't even bother to farm new prime releases outside what relics drop in my usual spots. Like for Valkyr I just did Heiracon, got two Chassis, Sold one and bought the other pieces. The map rewards for those other keys is just garbage and I'm better off not doing it most the time.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Xzorn

[Othergrunty]

The way it looks to me, the creation of new weapons and how players are (intentionaly or by conincidence of development) encouraged to see them is quite problematic for the way new weapons are created for Warframe.

The basic problem is that every new weapon for Warframe is made from scratch and is a unique model. If those aren't used by players longer than it takes them to reach level 30 and discard them, the time and energy spend to make them can be considered wasted.

Most games in which players are encouraged to see their weapons as constantly disposable on the route to the "perfect" gear, recycle the same models over and over, only with different stats. Sometimes they just slap a different color and mark designation on it. Sometimes they have the game constantly assemble the weapons from different parts.

An example for the former is the original Mass Effect in which each weapon category only had 2 models each. These got different colors and a mark signature. An example for the later is Borderlands in which each manufactor has a set of parts which the game juggles around together with possible names and stats.

But not so in Warframe, except for the few "custom" variants (Vandal, Wraith, Prisma), each weapon has been made from scratch. The concept was drawn, the 3D model created and animations were made and/or assigned to it. Finaly Scott and co. had to sit down to give it fixed stats. They don't even have the benefit of being able to just straight up copy existing firearms.

DE is using a system to create new weapons for players, which would be better suited for a game with a limited weapon selection in which each is meant to shine. But the system of gear progression is better suited for a game in which you can create an endless amount of disposable weapons with limited or randomized models.

So the idea of giving these older weapons another reason to be used players would mean the energy and time used on creating them isn't as much wasted. Though there is also the financial factor, in that players who spend plat on buying these older weapons directly might feel better about having done so.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Othergrunty

[METAL_BAWKSES]

22 hours ago, xRufus7x said:

There is a ton of weapons in Warframe with unique models and mechanics. It would be a real shame if only a handful of them got used regularly. This is what Riven mods aim to fix. 

Exactly and Riven mods, that are not completely broken by negative stats, do just that. Hence the reason I'd kill for a good Riven mod for the Stradavar, Drakgoon and Pyrana.