~riven rework suggestion. Refinement! (warning, long read)

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

Okay i know i don't always have THE best ideas and more often than not i'll just complain and do nothing particularly useful when it comes to something that's just incredibly dumb or ridiculous in this game but hear me out on this one.  the developers have in many many ways over the years done a lot to try and avoid letting this game become pay to win, but with the restrictive nature of complete RNG dependence on riven mods, that's really what they've finally boiled down to. you either reroll it and win the lottery or you pay to be the elite top 0.00001% of people with the "best" mod in existence for that weapon. now i'm sure a lot of people who've forked over a fortune for a "perfect" version of the mod they want for their favorite or simply already OP weapon, we have to agree that the system as a whole is pretty much unfair for everybody involved and could use a lot of work. so here i sit  having literally spent thousands of plat on mods, been lucky on a couple of them, sure, they could be better, but what if we gave people a reason to push to MR20?  what if we actually took the unrefined and currently existing riven system into account and worked with it so that there was SOME rng, but in the end a ton of work you could do to take that not so great riven mod and put some good hard effort into MAKING it perfect? go back to forging our tools instead of letting them forge us?

~Premise~ Teshin has seen us fumbling about with these riven mods, he's impressed with what we've made due with and being someone who has some experience with kuva, he decides to set us up with a short quest on which we find a few parts on missions in the kuva fortress for a refining station on the liset. let's say it's just an offshoot of the relic refinement station, an upgrade that allows us to take a full-random unrefined riven mod and turn it into something truly special, built for our personal playstyle and what we think that weapon needs to be... not only good... but absolutely fantastic.

~things to keep in mind~
currently, riven mods have absolutely everything about them randomized inside a certain set of parameters. Refinement would grant players freedom from much of the incredibly random nature of rivens as a whole, but through hard work and dedication

there are 4 groups of riven mods. (2+), (2+/1-). (3+), and (3+/1-) the ones with a negative stat will typically cause a bit of a push, raising the positive numbers fairly significantly, but in the refinement process, you can't change the negative or randomize it once it's locked in, so you will want to make sure that you have the right negative stat (or none if you so choose) on your random mod before you begin refining it.

Refinement would have a mastery rank lock of 20.  you work hard to get there, you work hard once you get there to bring your favorite weapon from the trash heap to the most beautiful level of refinement and perfection you can imagine.

currently if you're buying a riven mod from another player, you're paying for someone's 1 in several billion chance of an excellent roll for a certain weapon, after refinement, you are basically paying for someone's dedication, hard work and sense of knowledge about that weapon. they put in that much work to get the best out of it, they probably knew what they were doing... and if you know the weapon like you think you do, you'll recognize the work they put into it and decide whether or not you think they were right.

you of course cannot change a stat on an unrefined mod to one that is already on it. however you can select the option to keep it locked in, then after refining it in, reinforcing it.

~execution/method~
-The quest- okay, so you've just hit MR20 or you've been there a while and logged in on patch day. you get a message from teshin asking you to come see him on the relay, he has decided you've reached a level of mastery that perhaps you're ready to further your pursuit of perfection. he mentions that he's been watching you and your use of riven mods and thinks that you and they could be so much more if you're willing to put in the work and that he knows of a device that would work in tandem with the relic refinement station on your liset, an upgrade that would allow you to take a purely random riven and allow youto shape it to your will.
you do a spy mission on the kuva fortress to find a blueprint, then a series of 4 missions , seeking parts for this machine. upon completion, teshin informs you that you may have a long path ahead of you, but you're on your way to perfection.
cue you completing the refinement station upgrade and going to give it a test drive.

~your upgraded refinement station~
opening up your refinement station, you see that it has 2 tabs, one large one to the left labeled orokin relics, which brings you back to your old relic refinement station, on the right you'll see "Riven Mod Refinement"  clicking that one opens up a menu that displays every riven mod you own and only the riven mods. selecting one riven mod will give you 2 options at the top of the screen. "shape" and "reinforce"

~shaping your riven mod~ if your riven mod is at its maximum rank, shaping your mod allows you to select an existing stat and either choose to "refine" it, resetting that stat to its minimum roll range and locking it in... or you can select "change" letting you select a stat from a list excluding all other pre-existing stats on the riven mod and changes that stat from what it is to the selected stat as its minimum potential roll value if it were random.
shaping may change the name of your riven mod based on its stat cues.

~reinforcing your riven mod~ consumes kuva and allows you to select a refined or changed stat and raise it from its minimum range towards its maximum range using a 10 level system that costs more kuva to raise the selected stat from its minimum range to its maximum (so if a riven of a certain disposition had odds of a stat from range 80-100% of a stat, you would start at 80 and reinforce your way to 100 through 10 levels of kuva expenditure per stat)

~notes in regards to refinement, shaping and reinforcing~
- kuva cost per rank of reinforcement should be set in such a way that completely maxing all stats on the mod would be equivalent to rerolling a riven mod about 80-100 times. difficult, but not impossible
- shaping requires that the mod is max rank (endo-wise) and would reset it to unranked much like a forma does to a weapon. (the trip to your idea of perfection is long and arduous, but guaranteed)
- riven dispositions are kept in mind, being what determines the minimum and maxim possible stat value for a stat on a refined riven.
- shaping and refining would not change the polarity of the mod nor the weapon it is meant to be used on.
-shaping or refining an unrefined riven mod changes its mastery lock from whatever random number it is to 20, removes the reroll counter(if it's been refined reroll count no longer affects anything so isn't worth keeping track of) and from this point forward it can only be traded between players who are MR20 or higher at a 250000 credit tax.

~thoughts~
the goal of this is to set a goal of players to reach MR 20 and for players who have dedicated themselves this far along to choose weapons they enjoy and refine their way to their ideal degree of perfection. hard work for good rewards which can be circumvented by plat via the miracle of the game's market setting a value to a person's hard work and choice of stats for a particular weapon instead of arbitrary stats for arbitrary values and impossible odds. in the end the best riven mods will be crafted by the players who love their weapons and know them best.
giving players a reason to hit MR20 gives perhaps a bit more interest in even finding and leveling old weapons they've missed, seeking out prime weapons they forgot existed, just to get that extra mastery and pave the road to perfection. i may have repeated myself in some parts along the way, but it's getting late, i'm getting tired and i hope many of you approve of my suggestion.

any suggestions or thoughts of your own? feel free to add to it or pick it apart. i know what i've suggested would be a lot of work for multiple perfect mods, but with a guarantee of eventual success that fits your personal preference be worth it?

~after post-thoughts in response to commentary.~ (edit)
yeah the mastery rank suggestion might be a little high and in retrospect the equivalent of 100 rerolls to perfect ONE mod might be a bit much, but i don't think 60 reroll equivalent would be.
there really should be additional sources for kuva though... perhaps in smaller amounts on uncommon resource nodes on the kuva fortress, an entry in the amount of maybe 10k-15k on sorties and the occasional alert that offers double the usual rate of a normal kuva syphone for a normal level mission wouldn't be bad... but if there's one thing i would really like to see go, it's kuva missions lighting up on boss missions with recurring resource costs to encounter them for example kela de thaym and now ambulas. having to farm boss unlock materials just so you can go back to farming kuva is kinda ridiculous.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Fullmetal_Underpants
had some after-thoughts

[Xardis]

Sounds good.

[Glitch_Kitten]

Everything sounds great except for the expected kuva cost, I can barely summon the motivation to farm more than 5000 kuva let alone 360,000, So I feel a change to kuva acquisition would be warrented (that being said, I feel kuva acquisition should be changed regardless of this idea)

[flameblastguardian]

No one would waste time to implement a system for only mr20+ players. 

[(XBOX)DShinShoryuken]

Cool idea.

With some refinement and retool, this could work for some. 

Good effort to get it done and posted on the forums. Hope some that enjoy the rivens gives some feedback to get this more improved. 

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

15 hours ago, flameblastguardian said:

No one would waste time to implement a system for only mr20+ players. 

hardly, mr20 is now pretty easy to get to with consideration to the sheer number of available weapons and warframes, if there were a reason to get there, there would be a lot more people up in 20-21 and the point here is to give players incentive to get into the higher ranks with something to do once you get there. i mean you still have absolutelyrandom quality riven mods until you reach that point, which can be worth a bit of work, but the pressure to reroll a GOOD riven in favor of even better stats until you've rerolled it 300+ times would be gone because you could just work your way to MR20 and have a guaranteed, if difficulty and grindy way to earn your vision of a perfect one-of mod.

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

16 hours ago, Glitch_Kitten said:

Everything sounds great except for the expected kuva cost, I can barely summon the motivation to farm more than 5000 kuva let alone 360,000, So I feel a change to kuva acquisition would be warrented (that being said, I feel kuva acquisition should be changed regardless of this idea)

perhaps, but in the end you get a riven that has all the stats you want fairly early in the process by comparison to how things are now with the exception of excessively good luck. would the grind from minimum to maximum stat not feel worth it in the long run? think of it this way... when you started playing or even now depending on what it is, how long did you sit on a mod that had the stats you wanted, but couldn't be bothered to quite max-rank it from 8 or 9 right up to 10'th rank?  it would be like that, except instead of endo or once upon a time~ cores...  you'd have kuva as a resource for ranking up individual stat magnitude on a 2-3 stat mod. you'd be picking away at it in the long term, but have a perfectly serviceable mod no matter how you looked at it. where i do agree with you is that i do think that there needs to be additional ways of getting kuva.   it would be nice to see 5, 10 and 15000 kuva alerts and perhaps a 12000 kuva reward in the sortie table. i would love to see it replace lenses, then have standard quality lenses become reusable blueprints in the tenno or orokin lab.

[Glitch_Kitten]

Quote

perhaps, but in the end you get a riven that has all the stats you want fairly early in the process by comparison to how things are now with the exception of excessively good luck. would the grind from minimum to maximum stat not feel worth it in the long run? think of it this way... when you started playing or even now depending on what it is, how long did you sit on a mod that had the stats you wanted, but couldn't be bothered to quite max-rank it from 8 or 9 right up to 10'th rank?  it would be like that, except instead of endo or once upon a time~ cores...  you'd have kuva as a resource for ranking up individual stat magnitude on a 2-3 stat mod. you'd be picking away at it in the long term, but have a perfectly serviceable mod no matter how you looked at it. where i do agree with you is that i do think that there needs to be additional ways of getting kuva.   it would be nice to see 5, 10 and 15000 kuva alerts and perhaps a 12000 kuva reward in the sortie table. i would love to see it replace lenses, then have standard quality lenses become reusable blueprints in the tenno or orokin lab.

No I wouldn't honestly, because that's still 80-100 missions that have an uninteresting gameplay loop that I absolutely loathe, I don't think it's really comparible to when my mods were sitting at 9, because gaining the fusion cores (and subsequently endo) over time and was more a passive thing from every single mission I played, I still had motivation to get them to 10 because I knew it was in the realm of possibility. You can make the argument that I need 'dedication' to see these mods to their full potential, but if dedication entails sitting down and doing something I extremely dislike for hours on end for several days/weeks/months in a game of instant gratification, sorry but I like many others would just go back to buying rivens, wasting 1000s of plat on peoples 'dedication' instead of their 1 in a million roll. 

Furthermore, this is for ONE(1) riven, 90 kuva siphons per riven? I have well over 30 weapons I enjoy using and would like to see super powered with a riven, something like this would only perpetuate the endless kuva grind.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Glitch_Kitten

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

3 minutes ago, Glitch_Kitten said:

No I wouldn't honestly, because that's still 80-100 missions that have an uninteresting gameplay loop that I absolutely loathe, I don't think it's really comparible to when my mods were sitting at 9, because gaining the fusion cores (and subsequently endo) over time and was more a passive thing from every single mission I played, I still had motivation to get them to 10 because I knew it was in the realm of possibility. You can make the argument that I need 'dedication' to see these mods to their full potential, but if dedication entails sitting down and doing something I extremely dislike for hours on end for several days/weeks/months in a game of instant gratification, sorry but I like many others would just go back to buying rivens, wasting 1000s of plat on peoples 'dedication' instead of their 1 in a million roll. 

Furthermore, this is for ONE(1) riven, 90 kuva siphons per riven? I have well over 30 weapons I enjoy using and would like to see super powered with a riven, something like this would only perpetuate the endless kuva grind.

valid points. though again it'd be nice to actually see more sources of kuva by this point. even as a drop on kuva fortress missions.

[flameblastguardian]

6 hours ago, Fullmetal_Underpants said:

hardly, mr20 is now pretty easy to get to with consideration to the sheer number of available weapons and warframes, if there were a reason to get there, there would be a lot more people up in 20-21 and the point here is to give players incentive to get into the higher ranks with something to do once you get there. i mean you still have absolutelyrandom quality riven mods until you reach that point, which can be worth a bit of work, but the pressure to reroll a GOOD riven in favor of even better stats until you've rerolled it 300+ times would be gone because you could just work your way to MR20 and have a guaranteed, if difficulty and grindy way to earn your vision of a perfect one-of mod.

The player base for mr20+ is so small that it would be better off for DE to spend the time on other things rather than making a whole system just for it. In fact, DE has not developed anything that requires players to get higher than mr16. This is their way of designing the game and its a efficient way to run the business by developing content that is available to everyone. They would be better off by making new warframes, new quests, or new skins so they can actually make money from it. A system for just mr20+ would not make that much profit since its only available to a small portion of people. 

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

7 hours ago, flameblastguardian said:

The player base for mr20+ is so small that it would be better off for DE to spend the time on other things rather than making a whole system just for it. In fact, DE has not developed anything that requires players to get higher than mr16. This is their way of designing the game and its a efficient way to run the business by developing content that is available to everyone. They would be better off by making new warframes, new quests, or new skins so they can actually make money from it. A system for just mr20+ would not make that much profit since its only available to a small portion of people. 

honestly thought the percentage would be significantly higher based on pickup groups while running kuva missions myself. more often than not there's at least one mr20+ player and over half of who i run into in there are 15 or higher.  so maybe the mr lock on this should be 17-18.  again you want it to be high, but not unreachable for the slightly above average player.

[Nasair]

I'd rather the Rivens where just set mods, or each Riven had a point system for where you want them (think RPG characters when you level up).
MR20 is too high.

[Gravitus123]

Didnt even read the thing but any riven rework is a good thing so have a like 

[MartianGHunter]

Good ideas Mr rank might be a bit too high but I'm Mr18 only reason I haven't got to 20 is because I have zero incentive too so this may be a good incentive. Kuva cost I feel is a bit extreme and could be reduced make system less of do 100 Kuva siphons to get one mod to perfection maybe 30 - 40 siphons worth of siphons would be more reasonable but otherwise love the idea good job.

[Mudfam]

I currently have 600'000 kuva and I won't touch it, because I have the absolute certainty that if I spent it all I would not get anything worthwhile. I know this because I've spent a few million kuva without getting anything useful.

Grinding ad infinitum to see a incredibly dumb RNG system spew the most idiotic stat combinations at you as if mocking your efforts is the most unrewarding and gnerally horrible game experience I have ever encountered by far.

This whole putting countless hours of effort into a lottery with silly odds absolutely has to go. It's like ranking a primed mod having a 0.00001% chance to succeed, with a lucky few having ranked primed mods and the others just seeing their hard earned endo go down the toilet. It's quite simply disgusting.

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

5 hours ago, Mudfam said:

I currently have 600'000 kuva and I won't touch it, because I have the absolute certainty that if I spent it all I would not get anything worthwhile. I know this because I've spent a few million kuva without getting anything useful.

Grinding ad infinitum to see a incredibly dumb RNG system spew the most idiotic stat combinations at you as if mocking your efforts is the most unrewarding and gnerally horrible game experience I have ever encountered by far.

This whole putting countless hours of effort into a lottery with silly odds absolutely has to go. It's like ranking a primed mod having a 0.00001% chance to succeed, with a lucky few having ranked primed mods and the others just seeing their hard earned endo go down the toilet. It's quite simply disgusting.

you should see my sonicor mod, its best roll to date was heat, electric and -ammo max.  70 rolls.

 

[Mudfam]

11 hours ago, Fullmetal_Underpants said:

you should see my sonicor mod, its best roll to date was heat, electric and -ammo max.  70 rolls.

The pain is real. I have a mod with 200+ rolls on it, and others for the same weapon with many rolls. None of these are worth using, they are now worth less than they were when I bought them unrolled (that is, nothing at all). I am still using the initial (0 roll) stats on one of the mods I bought because it's much better than anything I ever got in my 400+ rolls for that particular weapon.

There's all these people who don't understand how common this BS is (I know equally frustrated friends / clannies), they got some lucky rolls and think that's just how things work, or maybe rolled a good riven for a weapon where everything from status to critical is great, which is comparatively easy to do. They think people asking for a change want "perfect" rivens, when really all we want is to not just get endlessly slapped in the face for our massive time investment and effort.

So yeah, believe it or not, it is indeed quite possible to get combinations faction damage and other useless stats or terrible negatives 100s of times in a row, and see hundreds of hous of farming going completely wasted. This is unacceptable.

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

52 minutes ago, Mudfam said:

The pain is real. I have a mod with 200+ rolls on it, and others for the same weapon with many rolls. None of these are worth using, they are now worth less than they were when I bought them unrolled (that is, nothing at all). I am still using the initial (0 roll) stats on one of the mods I bought because it's much better than anything I ever got in my 400+ rolls for that particular weapon.

There's all these people who don't understand how common this BS is (I know equally frustrated friends / clannies), they got some lucky rolls and think that's just how things work, or maybe rolled a good riven for a weapon where everything from status to critical is great, which is comparatively easy to do. They think people asking for a change want "perfect" rivens, when really all we want is to not just get endlessly slapped in the face for our massive time investment and effort.

So yeah, believe it or not, it is indeed quite possible to get combinations faction damage and other useless stats or terrible negatives 100s of times in a row, and see hundreds of hous of farming going completely wasted. This is unacceptable.

on the upside that 200 roll mod is probably worth about 50k endo if you dissolve it.

 

[Iccotak]

Rivens yet another incomplete and experimental feature.
How about the Developers make solid core gameplay before they add yet another partially created feature? 

I don't even use Rivens because it is blatantly obvious that they are there to push the damage system and experiment.

Polish, Polish, Polish, Polish, and Polish some more before you add more features.