Riven re-rolls are slot machines and I find it troubling

[(PSN)ElementalLeaf]

23 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

How is that not a viable solution?

Oh geez, where to begin.

For one, that defeats the entire purpose of rivens. They might as well be any other mod then. What makes rivens unique is that they are RNG-based and can have different stats as a result. With the opportunity for variance, comes the opportunity for that variance to be good or bad.

Saying "I want the variance, but I want it to be god roll only" is just childish and stupid.

25 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

because relying on RNG has NOTHING to do with being creative whatsoever

Actually it does. You rely on RNG to give you the roll, and then you get creative with the rolls as they apply to your weapon. If you're seeking "god roll only" rolls, then that's your own fault. My Supra Riven has neither multishot not damage buff, but it does add a faster reload and faster fire speed, which I then augmented with another further fire rate mod, and added punch-through for added emphasis, and now it absolutely shreds and I love it. The room for creativity is there, you're just choosing to throw a tantrum over it instead of acknowledge it^{, probably because you got bad rolls and now you want to cry about it when you see other people with good rolls, or you wanted that shiny god tier riven but someone charged you too much for it, amirite?} As far as I'm concerned, DE did exactly what they set out to do, which was allow people to be creative in their weapon selection. I now have a Flux Rifle I use more than the Simulor for sorties, and I bring a mutalist cernos to level 100 Kuva flood missions. Would have NEVER done that before the introduction of rivens. 

28 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

it allows you to use most, if not all, weapons on higher level play.

Rivens already do that. You just have to get a good roll first. Either grind your way through it, or use real money to take a shortcut and make the process faster. Kinda like you do with LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME ALREADY. Don't want to grind you way through it and get the proper rolls on the weapon you want? Then you can buy it from someone else for whatever price they charge. Don't want to do that either? Tough. DE already gave you the same options they present for everything else in this game though.

31 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

How is this a BAD thing?

And we cycle back to the first thing I said

[Azamagon]

On 2017-03-12 at 6:45 PM, (PS4)ElementalLeaf said:

Oh geez, where to begin.

1) For one, that defeats the entire purpose of rivens. They might as well be any other mod then. What makes rivens unique is that they are RNG-based and can have different stats as a result. With the opportunity for variance, comes the opportunity for that variance to be good or bad.

Saying "I want the variance, but I want it to be god roll only" is just childish and stupid.

2) Actually it does. You rely on RNG to give you the roll, and then you get creative with the rolls as they apply to your weapon. If you're seeking "god roll only" rolls, then that's your own fault. My Supra Riven has neither multishot not damage buff, but it does add a faster reload and faster fire speed, which I then augmented with another further fire rate mod, and added punch-through for added emphasis, and now it absolutely shreds and I love it. The room for creativity is there, you're just choosing to throw a tantrum over it instead of acknowledge it^{, probably because you got bad rolls and now you want to cry about it when you see other people with good rolls, or you wanted that shiny god tier riven but someone charged you too much for it, amirite?} As far as I'm concerned, DE did exactly what they set out to do, which was allow people to be creative in their weapon selection. I now have a Flux Rifle I use more than the Simulor for sorties, and I bring a mutalist cernos to level 100 Kuva flood missions. Would have NEVER done that before the introduction of rivens. 

3) Rivens already do that. You just have to get a good roll first. Either grind your way through it, or use real money to take a shortcut and make the process faster. Kinda like you do with LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME ALREADY. Don't want to grind you way through it and get the proper rolls on the weapon you want? Then you can buy it from someone else for whatever price they charge. Don't want to do that either? Tough. DE already gave you the same options they present for everything else in this game though.

And we cycle back to the first thing I said

Oh geez, where to begin, indeed...

Before we start, check my first post in this thread (it's the first reply in the thread). That's the gist of how I'd like to tweak Rivens, more or less.
Back to your response:

So, removing most of the RNG from Rivens would defeat their purpose, eh?

1) The purpose of Rivens are to spice up old weapons. To make them useful again without the need of tampering with the weapons themselves, to allow for both a tiering and sidegrade system to coexist. It's a brilliant idea really.
HOWEVER, if the main PURPOSE of Rivens was that they are all about 100% RNG (Note; I'm not oppposed to SOME of the RNG, as you can tell from my first post in this thread), then that'd mean they'd just be intended malicious content (exactly as the OP is trying to claim with their gambling-esque nature) all with DE trying to milk money via plat etc.

About the RNG itself;
First - Yes, RNG is partly what makes Rivens unique. But their strong multistat function is the more important part of Rivens. The pure RNG is actually more of a hindrance to their functional purpose of spicing up old weapons.

Second - Just because something is unique, doesn't mean it's good. Case in point: Some Riven rolls can make your gun completely worthless. So much for spicing up your old weapon, eh?

About variety:
If we could customize our Riven mods, how would that reduce variety? Sure, many would go for damagebuilds (hence why I suggested all the stuff I said in my first post, so there would still be some variety and choice, remember that please). But many people, myself included, don't want pure damage in their Riven mods either.
In fact, if you could customize the Rivens, especially if it was CHEAP to do so, people would probably be way more likely to actually get playful with silly stats, to play around with their Rivens' stats, rather than just always going for a "metabuild". You know, actual CREATIVITY, to HAVE FUN in this game, to feel we have a reachable goal when we farm Kuva, rather than what it is now; to have a tedious WORK to get even halfway to what we'd like to test out.
I'd even dare to say that the complete reliance on RNG on the given stats means that people are MORE prone to wanna use them with "meta"stats, because why settle for something less than "great", when it takes so much luck, time and/or money to even get something decent by constant retrying with the rerolls? Especially on weak weapons who could need all the power they could get to even get somewhat viable. You know, those weapons which the Rivens were mainly aimed for?

For example, the Supra Riven that you have right now, which you like, what if you wanna try out something different with it? Are you gonna reroll it hundreds of times to try out new stats? What if you really don't like any of the new stats and you wanna go back to your first liked roll? You're either out of luck, or you'd rather have to get a NEW Riven for Supra from the start to play with THAT Riven, so it's gonna cost you something greatly (time and/or money), whichever way you look at it.

Don't be blinded: Their RNG-nature is just a monetary win on DE's side, and something that hinders real choices (or rather, forces fake choices) on the player's side.

Also, the fact that we can get BAD variety makes Rivens do the OPPOSITE of their main purpose...

2) And I still can't wrap my head around how can believe that RNG = Creative.
No, the words you should tie to the Rivens' RNG are either Complacency, Gambling or Surrender. You are forced to either deal with what you get, for good or for bad (complacency), or you are forced to do tons of rerolls and/or grind Sorties daily (gambling), or just sell that pile of dung (surrender). None of that is letting out our creativity whatsoever.
EDIT: The only "creative" thing about the RNG I can sort of agreed with, is when the stats seem workable enough to warrant you / makes your curious enough to try them out, making your eyes open and say "hey, this is actually useful/fun!". I guess that is what you're trying to say?
Needless to say, I personally don't need that push, I try that out myself with the regular non-RNG mods quite frequently. But I certainly would try out a whole bunch of silly stuff with Rivens if I could customize my Rivens, especially so if it was cheaper in Kuva-costs. So, yeah, I personally don't need the all RNG-stats to "push me" to try new things out. But maybe others do? *shrugs*

Also you said: "Would have NEVER done that before the introduction of rivens."
Yeah, so? I'm not opposed to Rivens as a general idea, I'm just very opposed to their RNG^99. If you got a Flux Rifle riven, and could customize it freely, you'd STILL be able to use it like you are now, you know? Just, you wouldn't had to reroll a couple of dozen times until you got lucky enough to make it worthwhile. You could go straight to making it fun and useful however YOU wanted it to. No luck needed. And you could try out multiple new things for it too, if you feel like experimenting with creative builds, without needing to buy a new one / reroll an unknown amount of times.

3) Rivens already do that? Only if you are lucky, stubborn or rich.
And no, Rivens do NOT work like any other mod in this game. Other mods you either grind for it or buy it, yes, but then when you get it, you level it up and then you are done. But with Rivens, even after you have acquired it, you can potentially spend your entirely life rerolling it and still not get something decent out of it. And that could hold true for just -ONE- Riven.
 

My point is, in short:
I like Rivens, as an idea. But I hate their excessive RNG, and would like the RNG to be toned down heavily, so they don't cater to just  the lucky, rich or insanely stubborn people, I rather want them to cater to anyone that wants to spice up a particular weapon (mainly old ones).

Edited March 14, 2017 by Azamagon

[ChuckMaverick]

One thing I'd really like to see is rivens getting their own unique polarity, or if they have to use existing polarities for some reason just have them all use the same one.

Having to re-forma your weapon just because you re-rolled your riven actively discourages players from trying out quirky rolls, it would be much better if you could just forma a slot once and then be able to use the riven there as you re-roll it, instead of waiting for a 'perfect' roll before knowing which polarity to apply.

[Voltage]

From the get-go of rivens, The first thing I thought of was CSGO crates. This system is a lottery, and I try not to use it. What is annoying is that as an "end game" player you are not forced to use it, but are encouraged too. I hated rivens from day 1, but you just have to accept they exist.

Warframe had no lottery system unlike 99% of titles these days, but they chose this path. 

Lottery systems in video games have been shown time and time again to be easy money for developers because of what gambling does to the brain. Sad that warframe has come to this.

[SilvaDreams]

3 hours ago, --Q--Voltage said:

From the get-go of rivens, The first thing I thought of was CSGO crates. This system is a lottery, and I try not to use it. What is annoying is that as an "end game" player you are not forced to use it, but are encouraged too. I hated rivens from day 1, but you just have to accept they exist.

Warframe had no lottery system unlike 99% of titles these days, but they chose this path. 

Lottery systems in video games have been shown time and time again to be easy money for developers because of what gambling does to the brain. Sad that warframe has come to this.

Except there is no lottery system.

All those other games you have to pay real money.

With Rivens it is purely using in-game resources which are relatively easy to obtain and there is no risk vs reward. It's just reward.

But hey if you lack the basic mental fortitude to resist constantly re-rolling them 24/7 then you are in the same lot who can't resist every infomercial they see and end up with tons of junk from HSN

[CoffeeMonster42]

3 hours ago, --Q--Voltage said:

From the get-go of rivens, The first thing I thought of was CSGO crates. This system is a lottery, and I try not to use it. What is annoying is that as an "end game" player you are not forced to use it, but are encouraged too. I hated rivens from day 1, but you just have to accept they exist.

Warframe had no lottery system unlike 99% of titles these days, but they chose this path. 

Lottery systems in video games have been shown time and time again to be easy money for developers because of what gambling does to the brain. Sad that warframe has come to this.

CSGO crates are just cosmetic items though, rivens actually affect game play.

[ThorienKELL]

As if you were born yesterday. Vast majority of grinding type games such as diablo or warframe have some sort of random chance drop stats mechanics, it has been so for decades and sky hasn't fallen yet. I don't understand this obsession with rivens from people that dislike them, as if someone's forcing you to use them.

 

[JalakBali]

21 minutes ago, ThorienKELL said:

As if you were born yesterday. Vast majority of grinding type games such as diablo or warframe have some sort of random chance drop stats mechanics, it has been so for decades and sky hasn't fallen yet. I don't understand this obsession with rivens from people that dislike them, as if someone's forcing you to use them.

 

It kind of is. And it's a good thing. Players are paying top plat for "god" rivens but this is only because they're sheep and only look for what others already discovered: damage, crit chance, crit damage, multishot, etc etc. Rivens' randomness would sometimes make you go "oh god, why do I get reload speed... wait, hmmm, now I can have crazy reload speed, how would this play out I wonder, let me 5 forma this terrible weapon..." and then we get variety. Yes, the RNG is terrible and merciless but without it, most of the playerbase would be using the same things (Spamulor Mirage and macro Boltace, anyone?) because that's the meta flavor of the month.

 

On a side note, this slot machine is also keeping the hardcore players "happy" because chasing this dragon is way more grindy that even endless void towers of old.

[SilvaDreams]

11 minutes ago, JalakBali said:

It kind of is. And it's a good thing. Players are paying top plat for "god" rivens but this is only because they're sheep and only look for what others already discovered: damage, crit chance, crit damage, multishot, etc etc. Rivens' randomness would sometimes make you go "oh god, why do I get reload speed... wait, hmmm, now I can have crazy reload speed, how would this play out I wonder, let me 5 forma this terrible weapon..." and then we get variety. Yes, the RNG is terrible and merciless but without it, most of the playerbase would be using the same things (Spamulor Mirage and macro Boltace, anyone?) because that's the meta flavor of the month.

 

On a side note, this slot machine is also keeping the hardcore players "happy" because chasing this dragon is way more grindy that even endless void towers of old.

And not all of us veterans really care about them, sure sometimes we get a riven for a not so great weapon and go "Lol, what silly fun can I have today!?" Which is me when I randomly rolled this Ignis riven. With the release of the Ignis Wraith I might actually grill it a few times more to find a better combo (Because holy crap the zoom!)

(And yes RNG hates me, all 6 of my Rivens since their launch)

Edited March 15, 2017 by SilvaDreams

[Voltage]

5 hours ago, PrwnStar42 said:

CSGO crates are just cosmetic items though, rivens actually affect game play.

That is true, it just reminded me of that type of system. I guess it could be more like COD Supply Drops or something.

[SeaUrchins]

On ‎11‎/‎02‎/‎2017 at 6:04 AM, Volinus7 said:

Working as intended 

 

The best graphic representation of the riven system I have ever seen U_U

[(PSN)Silverback73]

On February 10, 2017 at 6:59 PM, k05h said:

I have been seeing rivens in the trading post that go for 1000-2500 plat. I can barely imagine how someone feels that sells for these prices. This price also shows other players that they have to get into the rng of daily sortie, the dedicated farming of kuva and the re-rolling over and over again until they hit the god-riven jackpot.

I have friends with real life gambling addictions. And everything about rivens reminds of that. Rivens do use the same mechanics as slot machines do. When you insert more money in the form of paid boosters you can do more re-rolls in a shorter amount of time because you get more kuva. After each re-roll you wait for the plat jackpot instead of the money jackpot on slot machines. And doing this over and over again does count as conditioning for your brain the same way as slot machines. From what I see there is only short way from here to real life gambling addiction.
 
I think the whole mechanic of rivens does push the wrong buttons for those that are susceptible for gambling. Warframe was a game for completionists and collectors before we had rivens. Now I feel it turns into a very unhealthy direction.

Realize that the entire game is an RnG slot machine fantasy clothed in beautiful, addictive completionist colors and game mechanics. 

Now that Morpheus has enlightened you to the red pill/blue pill choice, you cannot be upset if you choose to still dive down the rabbi t hole to see how deep it goes.

 

Edited March 15, 2017 by (PS4)Silverback73

[Ghogiel]

17 hours ago, Azamagon said:

1) The purpose of Rivens are to spice up old weapons. To make them useful again without the need of tampering with the weapons themselves, to allow for both a tiering and sidegrade system to coexist. It's a brilliant idea really.
HOWEVER, if the main PURPOSE of Rivens was that they are all about 100% RNG (Note; I'm not oppposed to SOME of the RNG, as you can tell from my first post in this thread), then that'd mean they'd just be intended malicious content (exactly as the OP is trying to claim with their gambling-esque nature) all with DE trying to milk money via plat etc.

 

It's both.

I'm sure many people do not want to come to terms with the fact this is a F2P, and it's entirely intentional that the RNG on rivens is the way it is. They have people designing systems to take advantage of player trends, habits and psychology. to be addictive, to be like gambling, to entice people to part with their money. It's the name of the game and DE is doing it like every single other F2P out there.

It's not unheard of by F2P developers to even be affecting RNG in real time for certain buckets of players based on their past purchase history or other metrics. It's just not an accident it's like RNG heaven and they cost a bomb in plat for one that hits the stat jackpot.

Oh and a side order of helping older content to be more relevant again.

DE are probably looking at plat trading and kuva farming metrics see objectively it's a success and people are buying into it

[Justice_Ember]

Is no one going to mention the "Disposition" of rivens? Honestly, instead of 3 tiers I'd prefer to see 4 or 5, so that "Popular" or "Meta" weapons really got the very least of bonuses and "Unpopular" ones got the whole set. 

I'd be up for something like Strong = All Bonuses, Neutral = 2 Bonuses and Faint = 1 Bonus. Of course for this to work we'd need to see 4 stats Rivens all the time reducing the RNG significantly.

 

[Ghogiel]

Disposition is already a fairly granular scale. The weak/neutral/strong term attached to them just gives an indicator where abouts the weapon sits on that scale and is not a strict tier per say where all neutrals are equal for example.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Ghogiel

[MirageKnight]

18 hours ago, Azamagon said:

1) The purpose of Rivens are to spice up old weapons.

Then why are there Rivens for newer weapons as well? If Rivens were TRULY intended to spice up old weapons, you wouldn't be able to get Rivens for newer weapons, yet you clearly can. Yes, Rivens can potentially buff older weapons, if RNGesus happens to be kind to you, but they can also buff already overpowered weapons and once again leave older weapons in the dust. Also, older / underpowered weapons are still lackluster. Rivens are just another mod (albeit heavily randomized) that you slot in. This resolves the situation...how exactly?

So no, the real purpose of Rivens is not to spice up old weapons. Rather, Rivens exist for the sole purpose of getting players to grind and spend plat, while pretending to offer a solution to the issue of underpowered weapons. It can also be argued that Rivens serve as a handy excuse for DE to pretty much abandon work on Damage 3.0 and address power creep. Rivens are nothing more than a monetizing bandaid solution that actually adds to power creep.

Enjoy your snake oil kids. And my hat's off to DE for how brilliantly they marketed said snake oil to the point where almost everyone has bought into it and how said people do nothing but talk about it and how it's magically helped their ailing weapons.

Well played. *slow clap*

Me? I poured my first bottle down the sink the moment I realized what the real ingredients were, what the product actually does, and what you have to go through to get it. Unlike a lot of you, I don't believe the hype and I'm certainly not buying into it.

[--RV--D4VE-]

On 12.02.2017 at 2:00 AM, xXx_mtv_xXx said:

Inb4 they add random boxes for plat

too much vurfeis :x

[-Akeva-Banshee-]

RIVENS CANT FIX ALL WEAPONS! *Cough* Lato Prime *Cough*

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

18 minutes ago, --RV--D4VE- said:

too much vurfeis :x

Yeah lol I'm sure they will get there eventually XD

"Market forces dictate that you need to evolve or die" 

[ChuckMaverick]

24 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

Then why are there Rivens for newer weapons as well? If Rivens were TRULY intended to spice up old weapons, you wouldn't be able to get Rivens for newer weapons, yet you clearly can. Yes, Rivens can potentially buff older weapons, if RNGesus happens to be kind to you, but they can also buff already overpowered weapons and once again leave older weapons in the dust. Also, older / underpowered weapons are still lackluster. Rivens are just another mod (albeit heavily randomized) that you slot in. This resolves the situation...how exactly?

Because riven disposition ensures that the buffs for less popular (not older) weapons are significantly better than the buffs more popular weapons get.

It's quite a clever, self-balancing system, really.

[-Akeva-Banshee-]

~snip~

Edited March 15, 2017 by -Akeva-Banshee-

[Atekron]

On 11.02.2017 at 5:04 AM, Volinus7 said:

Working as intended 

 

What armour your Hamster is wearing?

[Azamagon]

1 hour ago, MirageKnight said:

Then why are there Rivens for newer weapons as well? If Rivens were TRULY intended to spice up old weapons, you wouldn't be able to get Rivens for newer weapons, yet you clearly can. Yes, Rivens can potentially buff older weapons, if RNGesus happens to be kind to you, but they can also buff already overpowered weapons and once again leave older weapons in the dust. Also, older / underpowered weapons are still lackluster. Rivens are just another mod (albeit heavily randomized) that you slot in. This resolves the situation...how exactly?

So no, the real purpose of Rivens is not to spice up old weapons. Rather, Rivens exist for the sole purpose of getting players to grind and spend plat, while pretending to offer a solution to the issue of underpowered weapons. It can also be argued that Rivens serve as a handy excuse for DE to pretty much abandon work on Damage 3.0 and address power creep. Rivens are nothing more than a monetizing bandaid solution that actually adds to power creep.

Enjoy your snake oil kids. And my hat's off to DE for how brilliantly they marketed said snake oil to the point where almost everyone has bought into it and how said people do nothing but talk about it and how it's magically helped their ailing weapons.

Well played. *slow clap*

Me? I poured my first bottle down the sink the moment I realized what the real ingredients were, what the product actually does, and what you have to go through to get it. Unlike a lot of you, I don't believe the hype and I'm certainly not buying into it.

Well, for your first paragraph, i was gonna answer with 3 things:

1) Your second paragraph :P I know they have done it as a monetary benefit. It's quite obvious, otherwise they wouldn't be so heavily RNG-based.

2) Well, it's DE's sense of "balancing" we are talking about here... (I'll leave it at that)

3) That said, while I still despise the heavy RNG-nature of Rivens, as well as them being a cop-out in regards to Damage 3.0 etc, I STILL think they are, as an idea, a very smart way to implement a system which allows for both a tiering and sidegrade style of balancing. If Rivens were refined (which means, a LOT of work, mainly on reducing their RNG), I'd actually like them.

34 minutes ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Because riven disposition ensures that the buffs for less popular (not older) weapons are significantly better than the buffs more popular weapons get.

It's quite a clever, self-balancing system, really.

Disposition does indeed help a lot. But some weapons are beyond redemption, even with Rivens. Believe me, I've tried SO hard to make the Panthera highly sortie-viable. It is a fruitless endeavour, I can tell you that much.

Some weapons, those that were already midtier or low-end-of-hightier, like Secura Penta, Latron Prime/Wraith etc, for those weapons, the Rivens (when you have good stats on them ofc) are working quite well in high-end Sortie-content.

[Justice_Ember]

1 hour ago, ChuckMaverick said:

Because riven disposition ensures that the buffs for less popular (not older) weapons are significantly better than the buffs more popular weapons get.

It's quite a clever, self-balancing system, really.

I believe that any improvement to Rivens should be done through Disposition.

 

44 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

Disposition does indeed help a lot. But some weapons are beyond redemption, even with Rivens. Believe me, I've tried SO hard to make the Panthera highly sortie-viable. It is a fruitless endeavour, I can tell you that much.

Some weapons, those that were already midtier or low-end-of-hightier, like Secura Penta, Latron Prime/Wraith etc, for those weapons, the Rivens (when you have good stats on them ofc) are working quite well in high-end Sortie-content.

The Panthera is a weapon I already liked before Rivens and had a lot of Formas on it, after Rivens got my hands on one for it and Oh boi it shreds enemies now, even a lvl 100 Corrupted Juggernaut got destroyed by it. So the Panthera not being Sortie-viable is hard to believe, sorry.

[SerionSerian]

Well....

i like riven mods. also the strong random factor.

i would like only 2 small changes for now.

 

more different dispositions. some weapons now get with the strong disposition a huge buff to the already strong stats. not that i dont like it. but also some "weak disposition" get strong stats. may 7 or 9 dispositions for finetuning. some older weapons are still totally useless (who wonder, that are lowlevel-weapons. may it should be still like that).

second thing...may its my imagination. but it feels like strong disposition rivens need much more rolls to get anything useful. if that is mathematically the case, may reduce the reroll costs for stronger dispositions. just a little bit from step to step. like 3500 weak to 3000 normal to 2500 strong. i sure like to have random things to try out. it should be still like farming. but not that much that we cant play with another rivens cause of kuvacosts.

 

sry for my crap english. i hope its possible to read.