Rivens - Intentions, problems and some suggestions

[Azamagon]

Rivens, as an idea, is great. It allows for weapon tiers/progression to stay, while ALSO allowing (to some degree) a sense of sidegrades.
Really, I find that idea really nice... but the execution for this, as we all know, is very flawed.

The 2 main problems with rivens:
1) RNG upon RNG upon RNG upon RNG...
Acquistion from Sorties, Mastery Rank requirement + how that affects the max power of the mod, Weapon Slot, Weapon Type, Number of stats chosen, Which stats are chosen, A negative stat or not, Values of each stat, Polarity.
ALL of those are randomized. I find the least problematic ones are Acquisition (to some degree), Weapon Slot+Type and Polarity, so I won't talk much about those in this thread. But everything else is just REALLY counterproductive to their intentions. Randomness to some degree is fine (hence why I don't mind the randomness of the weapon slot+type, nor the random polarity), but when the ENTIRE thing is dictated by RNG, it IS going to be a mess. And a mess Rivens certainly are.

2) Their intentions don't match reality, unless you are VERY lucky
The intentions are: Beef up lowpower weapons + Add more fun + Let us be creative.
Both beefing up lowpower weapons and adding more fun CAN certainly happen with Rivens, but the 100% reliance on RNG for this makes it very unlikely to happen.
Letting us be creative is NOT an option though, due to it all being RNG-based. We have ZERO control over the stats we get (besides going for an RNG reroll, which has NOTHING to do with "creativity" whatsoever).

So the intention of this thread is what?
To try and solve all of the above issues!

On to the ideas!

*** Mastery Rank
MR is no longer a set value on the mod, but the Riven's stats instead adjusts according to your personal MR.
Rivens still require a minimum of MR8 to equip, and the bonuses caps out at MR16.
Note: Negative effects do NOT scale at all, they remain as if you were MR8 at all times.

Why change it like this? Because, that otherwise means that anything that is not an MR16 Riven mod, will ALWAYS be considered unoptimal. Why should ANY Riven mod (for a weapon you like, that is), even be considered scrapworthy? And why should the potential of a weak weapon be hidden by this? It even goes against the purpose of bringing life to the weaker weaponry if you get a Riven with a very low MR. Thus, make the Riven SCALE with your MR instead!

*** Damage
Base damage is no longer part of the RNG bonuses, instead it is an additional guaranteed bonus on ANY Riven, independant from all the RNG (and is added ON TOP of all the current possible stats you can get, so a Riven which currently has max 4 stats on it, now it will have 5)
This damage bonus VERY highly depends on disposition (and your MR). At MR16, Tonkor would have like +10%, while something like the Lato would have +400% or more.
Base damage is also no longer part of possible negatives either.

The reason for adding damage as a seperate stat to Rivens is to make sure that it further fulfills one of the intentions; of bringing up weaker weapons to higher viability,
WITHOUT such extreme reliance on very lucky rolls. Sure, lucky rolls would still be a thing, but it won't dominate as hard anymore.

Also, of all stats, raw damage is arguably the most "boring" (but also among the most useful) stats to get. So completely eliminating a boring-but-useful stat from RNG seems like a very good idea, imo.

*** Values of any specific stat
No longer randomized. My suggestion is that a stat's value depends on the disposition of the weapon, your MR (scaling between MR8 and MR16) and the number of positives and negatives on the Riven, and also on what TYPES of positives and negatives chosen (more to the types later). If two people with the same Mastery Rank have each have a Riven with the same type of stats for the same weapon, their Rivens will be identical.
Note: The innate Base Damage bonus is not affected by more than the weapon's disposition and your MR.

So, that means, something like having only positive multishot and toxic damage will grant, say, 100% bonus each on X weapon. But if you then added to that Riven, say, reloadbonus on top of that, the bonuses of the multishot and the toxic damage will go down to maybe 85% or so. If you then add a penalty to all of this, say a penalty on recoil, then the multishot and toxic will all go up, maybe 100% again (and the reloadbonus would increase as well)

Here is what I thought how certain types of stats would alter the final values of all stats (And some changes to what cannot be negatives):

 

Very big alteration:
Multishot (Can never be a negative anymore, due to the issues it causes)
Critdamage

Big alteration:
Critchance
Elemental damage (Like now, can never be a negative)

Medium alteration:
Punchthrough (Like now, can never be a negative)
Status chance
Physical damage (Can only be a negative on weapons with base physical damage (and only with the physical damagetypes it has at a base))
Fire rate
Faction damage

Low alteration:
Status duration
Reloadspeed
Magazine size
Flight speed
Recoil

Tiny alteration:
Zoom
Ammo reserves

That means (have a quick look in the spoiler for reference), if you go with, say Multishot + Critdamage + Elemental, the power you get out from it might be decent, but the power/quality you could potentially get out from having say, Elemental + Firerate + Reloadspeed + Negative Status Chance would be MUCH higher (since Multishot and Critdamage have a much higher alteration of stats than Fire Rate and Reloadspeed has, not to mention that having negative Status Chance will further boost the stats of its positive values). Sure, the damage potential might not maybe be as high as the first mod, but the QoL it might provide could make it a superior choice on the right weapon.

*** Changes to some statmechanics
* Physical damage
If physical damage worked like elemental damage mods do (as in: based on the entirety of the basedamage, not just the specific physical damage), and not just for Rivens, but in general, it would accomplish several things:
1) Physical damage is no longer considered one of the worst damage modifications out there (bar some niches)
2) Variety and creative options. Even elemental weapons could deal physical damage (just as physical can deal elemental).
3) Getting random physical damage on Rivens is now not trash on elemental weapons, but it might even be something people WANT!

* Critdamage mods
(Note: This section is not super-important, but it could provide a bit more healthy balance in regards to critical hits)
Currently, critdamage mods modify both the critbonus AND your basedamage. This makes crit scale insanely well. But they can also be a dreadful stat if they occur as penalties, especially with -100% or more, on Rivens. Why? Because that means your random crits are now gonna randomly cause you to deal ZERO damage.
Hence this following idea:
The critdamage mods only modify the critbonus, but NOT your basedamage. In numbers, let's show what I mean:

Current system:
A weapon's critmultiplier is 2x
Vital Sense = Crits are now 4,4x (Due to being calculated as 2 * (1 + (1 * 1,2))
With -100% critdamage Riven mod = Crits are now 0x damage, as in you deal no damage at all (Due to being calculated as 2 * (1 + (1 * -1)))

Proposed system:
A weapon's critmultiplier is 2x
Vital Sense = Crits are now 3,2x (Due to being calculated as 1 + (1 + (1 * 1,2))
With -100% critdamage Riven mod = Crits are now 1x damage, as in you deal no BONUS damage, but you still at least deal normal damage. (Due to being calculated as 1 + (1 + (1 * -1)))

*** Sorting out some unusable stats
On some weapons, certain stats truly mean NOTHING (not just a tiny bit, but literally nothing). And that should not be possible (neither as a possible positive or negative stat)
Examples are:
Magazine size on weapons with no magazine (like regular Bows)
Critstats on weapons with no critical hits (like Seer, Panthera and Miter)
Flightspeed on hitscan weapons (this currently is a problem on, at least, a LOT of the pistol Rivens)

Things like that should simply NOT be possible.

*** Personal customization
Imo, one should have two options when you deal with how you want to alter the stats of Rivens:
-> RNG reroll (current system). Kuva costs remains the same (a lower cap wouldn't be bad, but eh *shrugs*)
or
-> Personal non-RNG customization of stats. Doing so allows you to change a Riven exactly as you want it, but doing this still counts as adding +1 reroll on the mod, and costs at least a static 2500 Kuva per stat changed to do.
Also, as now, you can have either 2 or 3 positives (note that the innate raw damagebonus does NOT count towards these positives!) and 1 optional negative stat. Adding/changing/removing a negative also costs Kuva
Further note, there is no cost (neither on rerolls or Kuva) until you actually complete the customization, so you can play around with the stats to see how they would affect the numbers and so on, without any worries.

This change still keeps RNG-rolls as a cheap way to get lucky, while the manual stat-changing allows ACTUAL creativity and fine-adjustments. The Kuva costs on manual changes should be high, due to the complete control you have over the changes you can get (and to give SOME incentive to use the RNG-reroll at least a couple of times before manually adjusting stats).

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

Edited January 3, 2017 by Azamagon
Spoilers don't work properly...

[Top_Kekkonen]

The main problem with rivens is that they exist.

[RideaTear]

For me Rivens are working great, I think they should just improve on the current system. For the first time in years I feel that I have use for the dozens of interesting but under powered weapons in the game. Normally I would have already gone on a hiatus until the next update. I'm still playing because riven mods are letting me experiment with weapons I've previously written off.

5 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Both beefing up lowpower weapons and adding more fun CAN certainly happen with Rivens, but the 100% reliance on RNG for this makes it very unlikely to happen.

On all of my Rivens I have had an acceptable role that dramatically boosts my dps/usability within 10 rolls. Problems arise when people want very specific combinations such as crit chance+crit damage since this combination + no/acceptable negative stats is rare. Often times this combination will not yield that much of a damage increase (if any) over say a crit chance+element roll which is more common in my experience.

A simple improvement to the current system would be to allow a stat of your choosing to be locked. That way when you roll the riven only the undesired stats will change. This would reduce some of the rng, and eliminate some frustrating rolls.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, it certainly needs improvements, I just see it as more of a good thing.

[Azamagon]

11 hours ago, Top_Kekkonen said:

The main problem with rivens is that they exist.

I can't agreed with that.

Like I already said in the OP: The intention is absolutely great (weapon-tiers, and thus progression, still exists, but rivens allows all weapons to become viable, putting them all up into possible sidegrade-territory. It pleases both crowds), but the execution is downright atrocious (RNG beyond RNG).

9 hours ago, RideaTear said:

1) For me Rivens are working great, I think they should just improve on the current system. For the first time in years I feel that I have use for the dozens of interesting but under powered weapons in the game. Normally I would have already gone on a hiatus until the next update. I'm still playing because riven mods are letting me experiment with weapons I've previously written off.

2) On all of my Rivens I have had an acceptable role that dramatically boosts my dps/usability within 10 rolls. Problems arise when people want very specific combinations such as crit chance+crit damage since this combination + no/acceptable negative stats is rare. Often times this combination will not yield that much of a damage increase (if any) over say a crit chance+element roll which is more common in my experience.

3) A simple improvement to the current system would be to allow a stat of your choosing to be locked. That way when you roll the riven only the undesired stats will change. This would reduce some of the rng, and eliminate some frustrating rolls.

4) I'm not saying the system is perfect, it certainly needs improvements, I just see it as more of a good thing.

1) For a few of mine, they are working great as well...

2) ... but it's because I bought them from the tradechat. My own all suck (they either got some useless stats on them, or niche stats I hate such as faction damage, or some have utility downgrades that ruin the weapons etc)
I want somewhat specific stats on mine, but still with a lot of leeway on certain stats. Yet I don't get anything even CLOSE to that... unless I find them on the tradechat.

Example:
I wanted, among many other weapons, my Latron Wraith to be good, but more importantly, to handle well. So, stats I was looking for:
1) Either 150% critchance (for guaranteed crits, as i really hate RNG), or raw damage (still RNG based, but higher potential).
2) Either magsize or reloadspeed (prefer the latter), so it can deal with mooks more easily.
3) Reduced recoil was a downright must, as it has some serious recoil.
4) Negative ammo-reserves or zoom (with the second one possibly even being an interesting "bonus") would be fine by me.

I got one with raw damage, reloadspeed, reduced recoil and reduced zoom (with the last one actually being both useful and fun!) . From the tradechat of course (since I didn't even get a Latron Riven from Sorties until like a week ago) And it's the most fun I've had with that weapon since a loooong time! It handles like a dream, while also having some respectful sortie-viable damage. I don't have punchthrough on it anymore (another stat I find tons of fun), but I can live without it.

That said: Good luck getting anything even CLOSE to those stats from RNG rolls on your own.

3) While that would be an improvement, you still have to rely on RNG. There is nothing "creative" about relying on RNG.

4) Saying the same. But Rivens really needs a LOT of improvements to truly fulfill their intentions.

Edited January 3, 2017 by Azamagon

[RideaTear]

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

I want somewhat specific stats on mine, but still with a lot of leeway on certain stats. Yet I don't get anything even CLOSE to that... unless I find them on the tradechat.

I do the same thing. Some of my mods have been:

Latron: 224 damage, -114 recoil (a bit overkill but that's okay), -29 zoom

Angstrom: 46 damage to grineer, 79 fire rate, 232 damage

Cernos: 165 crit chance, 104.2 cold, -23.1 mag capacity (doesn't do anything)

All of these have been within 10 rolls. RNG makes It hard to say whether I've been lucky or you've been unlucky. My friends seem to get similar rolls so I tend to think decent rolls are pretty common. I haven't felt the need to buy any riven mods from trade chat. How many rolls do you tend to go for until you give up? 

[-Fe-McHamm3rShot]

I really like the Riven system, I'm using and re-building weeps that I originally just thought of as mastery fodder.  I like to tinker with builds, these allow exactly that.

I am however going tired of RNGesus, he don't like me; I despise his stupid face.  So I'm forced to either farm Kuva until my pee-pee falls off, or sit in trade looking for a nice Riven to try.  Neither of which are deal-breaking, but if I could spend some Kuva to "lock-in" a stat or 3..

That would be ideal!!  DE << make it happen please for the love of all that is righteous, and good in the world.  

PS. O'Doyle Rules!!!

[-N7-Leonhart]

On 1/3/2017 at 2:52 AM, Azamagon said:

-snip-

Sure, it's difficult to get that perfect roll you speak of. It has happened to me like 2 times in 100 rolls to get a Visican or Satiata. But you don't need that perfect roll to say that Rivens are worth it. I had loads after loads of rolls with stuff like large amounts of damage, multishot, recoil reduction, crits. Even if the combination is not the perfect one I desired, the power they provide is genuine. And the best part is that you can work on them and improve them forever. 

For example, I saw this guy with a great Hek mod that he was using, and he rolled it a total of 102 times. And he was still not satisfied (lmao) and kept rolling it.

19 hours ago, Top_Kekkonen said:

The main problem with rivens is that they exist.

I really can't agree with that statement.

These days Riven are abundant and cheap, and for some weapons even the top tier rolls are very very cheap. If you invested at least a little bit of heart into this system, then surely you had some degree of reward that was worth the time invested.

[-N7-Leonhart]

33 minutes ago, -Fe-McHamm3rShot said:

I really like the Riven system, I'm using and re-building weeps that I originally just thought of as mastery fodder.  I like to tinker with builds, these allow exactly that.

I am however going tired of RNGesus, he don't like me; I despise his stupid face.  So I'm forced to either farm Kuva until my pee-pee falls off, or sit in trade looking for a nice Riven to try.  Neither of which are deal-breaking, but if I could spend some Kuva to "lock-in" a stat or 3..

That would be ideal!!  DE << make it happen please for the love of all that is righteous, and good in the world.  

PS. O'Doyle Rules!!!

Wouldn't that be a bit too good to be true? I see loads of perfect rolls everywhere as is. Even me, who has hardly any luck outside trading, had some really good rolls (even if not absolutely perfect). In a lot of cases, those "imperfect" Rivens would triple of quadruple the damage numbers on my weapons. I think it's silly and greedy to ask for an even more lenient system than this.

Edited January 4, 2017 by -BM-Leonhart

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I really like the concept of riven mods, just not the execution.

Getting them is a chore due to the RNG factor of actually getting one from a sortie, then the RNG of getting one for a weapon you care about ,then the RNG of having it roll good stats. Add tedious grind to acquire the kuva to reroll them, the grind for the endo required to max them, the grind to relevel old forgotten weapons up to five times to fit these expensive mods and all other key mods... And finally add the fact that you only get a finite amount of slots and you must pay after that...

I also feel the limited slots goes against the very idea of riven mods. You try to fix power discrepancies between weapons by introducing random, hard to get mods, but you make a system where you can only keep 15 of these , and there's 300+ weapons... Meaning everyone will hunt for the "top 15 weapon rivens"... Granted, disposition tried to adress that, but that still doesn't change the fact nobody wants to keep a deathcube gun or buzlok riven when they could be keeping a Tonkor or Simulor Riven.

[-Fe-McHamm3rShot]

18 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

Wouldn't that be a bit too good to be true? I see loads of perfect rolls everywhere as is. Even me, who has hardly any luck outside trading, had some really good rolls (even if not absolutely perfect). In a lot of cases, those "imperfect" Rivens would triple of quadruple the damage numbers on my weapons. I think it's silly and greedy to ask for an even more lenient system than this.

Okay, I can see that breaking the Riven system now that I think about it.. And eventually everyone would have "new meta" builds and the Rivens for them.  Then it's {blank} needs a nerf in about 20 threads each day.  And the salt would flow upon the land, and anger the Gods.

I would like instead; a better way to get Kuva in larger amounts.  Maybe like Kuva excavation missions..

SO That would be ideal!! DE << make this happen instead of the 1st thing I wanted to happen earlier, but now realize would probably not work and make salty babies everywhere, and stuff. 

[-N7-Leonhart]

1 minute ago, -Fe-McHamm3rShot said:

Okay, I can see that breaking the Riven system now that I think about it.. And eventually everyone would have "new meta" builds and the Rivens for them.  Then it's {blank} needs a nerf in about 20 threads each day.  And the salt would flow upon the land, and anger the Gods.

I would like instead; a better way to get Kuva in larger amounts.  Maybe like Kuva excavation missions..

SO That would be ideal!! DE << make this happen instead of the 1st thing I wanted to happen earlier, but now realize would probably not work and make salty babies everywhere, and stuff. 

Yep, you got the idea perfectly.

[RideaTear]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

I also feel the limited slots goes against the very idea of riven mods. You try to fix power discrepancies between weapons by introducing random, hard to get mods, but you make a system where you can only keep 15 of these , and there's 300+ weapons... Meaning everyone will hunt for the "top 15 weapon rivens"...

DE said the reason for the limited slots is because they have to store everyone's unique mods on their server and they take a lot of space. You can have up to a maximum of 60 riven mods. They might expand this cap in the future, but I honestly cant see myself having 60 weapons that I use regularly and want to keep.

Edited January 4, 2017 by RideaTear

[-N7-Leonhart]

28 minutes ago, RideaTear said:

DE said the reason for the limited slots is because they have to store everyone's unique mods on their server and they take a lot of space. You can have up to a maximum of 60 riven mods. They might expand this cap in the future, but I honestly cant see myself having 60 weapons that I use regularly and want to keep.

True enough. 15 was very limited and I got to it very early, but 60 is very comfortable, even if they were to add melee ones (not sure about that one though).

[k05h]

@Azamagon I have similar issues with riven mods. The main issue for me is the randomness of its stats. Thus making every mod (almost) unique.

Everything in warframe can be collected. And Warframe is the perfect place for completionists like me. MR23 can only be reached by leveling all weapons, using the simulacrum can only be done by scanning all enemies, getting a glimpse of lore from the cephalon fragments requires me to find all fragments, the two queens poem requires me to find all and scan all kuria statues ... you get the pattern.

And then came riven mods. I can never collect them all. I can never be sure that I have the best riven mod for the current weapon and the I have done enough re-rolls. 

Games like Borderland or Diablo have their core game mechanics build around rng stats. There weapons and items of all sorts have a very short life span. Everything is based around drop it when you found something better. But in Warframe it just makes no real sense to me. 

Edited January 4, 2017 by k05h

[Azamagon]

@-BM-Leonhart and @-Fe-McHamm3rShot

Why on earth are you promoting this mad RNG?!
Look at what you have said:

"Wouldn't that be a bit too good to be true? I see loads of perfect rolls everywhere as is"
You can't base that here is "plenty" of amazing Rivens out there on anecdotes. Then I could counter by saying: I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of Riven mods, maybe 1 or 2 are mods I'd like to buy.
Think about this: Ofc you are gonna see a bunch Rivens with great stats in the tradechat, as those are worth tons of plat. And even then, (anecdotes here) I've seen people calling (on a lot more than a few occasions) certain Riven "godlike", even though they can absolutely destroy the weapon in a really bad way (As in: No spare ammo, your crits will now deal 0 damage etc).
So no, having control over what stats you get is certainly NOT too good to be true, in fact, that would go along the lines of DE's own words, of "allowing us to be creative". Being stuck with stats and that you feel complacement to not wanna reroll it once again (which is completely understandable), is NOT creativity. That is you getting worn out and tired of the annoying RNG, nothing else.

" And the best part is that you can work on them and improve them forever."
That's not a GOOD thing... that's HORRIBLE and really SCARY, as it appeals to people's gambling senses (as are Rivens, in general, in their current state). Don't you hear how horrible that is?! You can have one mod... ONE mod... ONE! And it can be improved "lucked up" for an eternity! And Rivens are supposed to help out to make more than one weapon viable you know, not just one...

"These days Riven are abundant and cheap, and for some weapons even the top tier rolls are very very cheap. "
So, the fact that you pretty much HAVE to buy Riven mods is a healthy thought for you? (And I didn't even get into the whole acqusition problem in this thread!)

 

10 hours ago, k05h said:

@Azamagon I have similar issues with riven mods. The main issue for me is the randomness of its stats. Thus making every mod (almost) unique.

Everything in warframe can be collected. And Warframe is the perfect place for completionists like me. MR23 can only be reached by leveling all weapons, using the simulacrum can only be done by scanning all enemies, getting a glimpse of lore from the cephalon fragments requires me to find all fragments, the two queens poem requires me to find all and scan all kuria statues ... you get the pattern.

And then came riven mods. I can never collect them all. I can never be sure that I have the best riven mod for the current weapon and the I have done enough re-rolls. 

Games like Borderland or Diablo have their core game mechanics build around rng stats. There weapons and items of all sorts have a very short life span. Everything is based around drop it when you found something better. But in Warframe it just makes no real sense to me. 

Exactly. And it's not like there is a shortness of RNG already in Warframe, even with Rivens not counted.

With my propositions in the OP (especially with the MR-changes, non-RNG values and personal customization), having a single Riven for say, the Gorgon, should be enough for a collector to feel happy (in regards to collecting Gorgon Rivens that is), because he can customize it as he wants without worrying about RNG whatsoever. If someone else picks the same stats on their Gorgon Riven, and the players are of the same MR, their mods will have identical stats. That means, no Riven mod is truly unique, they are just incredibly FLEXIBLE.

And to me, that would be fine, as it still allows a lot of personality and individuality to how people wanna mod their guns, while also allowing people to beef up their favourite lowtier weapon, WITHOUT that annoying feeling like they had crappy luck beause "oh no, mine is only MR9, and the values I got were extra low on top of that, stupid RNG!". The current system is simply far too unfair in far too many ways. And I truly and utterly HATE that.

 

12 hours ago, RideaTear said:

DE said the reason for the limited slots is because they have to store everyone's unique mods on their server and they take a lot of space. You can have up to a maximum of 60 riven mods. They might expand this cap in the future, but I honestly cant see myself having 60 weapons that I use regularly and want to keep.

Part of their huge storage load is because of the extreme RNG involved in creating them (something that some of my suggestions in the OP would help reduce) AND due to poor programming (as was pointed out in their very own thread by some players who are also programmers).

That said, I don't mind the cap all too much myself. Just, don't be so bloody naive...

[-Fe-McHamm3rShot]

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

Why on earth are you promoting this mad RNG?!
Look at what you have said:

I was getting crazy bored before the Riven system came out, now I'm using *non meta* weapons on a regular bases that are fun to use again.

I don't mind the RNG one bit, if Kuva were a bit easier to obtain (in larger qty) then it would make rolling your Rivens a lot less painful.

I think they added the -negative attribute quality and disposition into the Rivens to curtail power creep.  I can see being able to manipulate these factors out as potentially problematic.

[Azamagon]

1 minute ago, -Fe-McHamm3rShot said:

1) I was getting crazy bored before the Riven system came out, now I'm using *non meta* weapons on a regular bases that are fun to use again.

2) I don't mind the RNG one bit, if Kuva were a bit easier to obtain (in larger qty) then it would make rolling your Rivens a lot less painful.

3) I think they added the -negative attribute quality and disposition into the Rivens to curtail power creep.  I can see being able to manipulate these factors out as potentially problematic.

1) And I haven't questioned that either (have you read my OP and responses)?

2) Solving the wrong problem... Imagine if costs were higher, but the costs goes to something you can CONTROL, I don't think people would mind that grind (because it would actually feel like progressing, rather than putting more cash into a slot machine)

3) Huh? I didn't propose those things to go away. Did you actually read the OP?

First: Disposition is not suggested to disappear, at all, that's a great mechanic to curtail power creep indeed. Where did you even get that idea from? Oo

Second: Being able to manipulate negatives, well, did you read in my OP, the section called "Values of any specific stat"? To put it simply:
If you have only positive stats on your weapon, then add a negative stat to it, it makes the positive stats even stronger (I think it actually works that way already, but that's just a gut feeling). And since you can no longer choose meaningless negative (or positive) stats, as mentioned in the section "Sorting out some unusable stats", it is actually a real choice wether you have a negative or not.
So, yeah, while you can manipulate the negative stat, it will always have good AND bad consequences doing so, wether you have a negative or not, so no worries there.

[Azamagon]

Bumping this as I think this is really important...

[ranks21]

riven should be 3 types and all universal.  universal rifle riven goes on any rifle or sniper or sentinel rifle >> pistol riven, >> shotgun riven. = players have the freedom to put it on anything they want but the catch would be to get the right combinations of stats they desire. this would make the kuva missions more viable than what it is  riven slots would sell even more than it's current rate. 

[FAZZWARFRAME]

Why not just kill off the riven concept and introduce another rank bar below all of the existing mods that will power them even further.  Make it so that to start ranking up the second bar of the mod you need to have the original rank bar max, and also, instead of using endo to rank up like the first bar, you use kuva to rank up the second bar. 

Ranking up the second bar will either not increase the mod cost or at a rate smaller than 1 point per rank, as I don't believe even a 8 polarity weapon can handle doubling the mod cost, minor problem though, just need to math it out properly to find the optimum point.

[Azamagon]

On 2017-01-06 at 0:19 AM, ranks21 said:

riven should be 3 types and all universal.  universal rifle riven goes on any rifle or sniper or sentinel rifle >> pistol riven, >> shotgun riven. = players have the freedom to put it on anything they want but the catch would be to get the right combinations of stats they desire. this would make the kuva missions more viable than what it is  riven slots would sell even more than it's current rate. 

You know... that wouldn't be too aweful (and dare I say, maybe even a tad too easy?). I mean, disposition would then fix how MUCH each weapon gets of these, only problem would be to know how beneficial they would for various weapons, in a quick manner. Disposition would then need to be displayed in actual numbers (something it should do REGARDLESS), instead of just faint/neutral/strong.
 

On 2017-01-06 at 1:56 AM, FAZZWARFRAME said:

Why not just kill off the riven concept and introduce another rank bar below all of the existing mods that will power them even further.  Make it so that to start ranking up the second bar of the mod you need to have the original rank bar max, and also, instead of using endo to rank up like the first bar, you use kuva to rank up the second bar. 

Ranking up the second bar will either not increase the mod cost or at a rate smaller than 1 point per rank, as I don't believe even a 8 polarity weapon can handle doubling the mod cost, minor problem though, just need to math it out properly to find the optimum point.

Ummm... how would that help lowtier weapons to get up to hightier weapons? I mean, that would benefit powerful weapons as much as weak weapons.

[Volinus7]

Riven gives dev an excuse to make wonky unbalanced weapon because they can just titrate weapon performance by riven after release instead of just buff/nerf. Players need to grind/buy weapon balance plus the weapon itself. It's a great idea indeed. 

Well good thing is "old DE" balanced contents for you and it's completely free no grinding involved.

[Tyrian3k]

On 7.1.2017 at 10:36 PM, Volinus7 said:

Riven gives dev an excuse to make wonky unbalanced weapon because they can just titrate weapon performance by riven after release instead of just buff/nerf. Players need to grind/buy weapon balance plus the weapon itself. It's a great idea indeed. 

Well good thing is "old DE" balanced contents for you and it's completely free no grinding involved.

It's not even balance. Some weapons like the Stug are still S#&amp;&#036;, because their mechanics don't allow them to be good, even if you have a Riven with over 400% increased damage.

Some weapons need mechanical changes to work properly, but those never happen.