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Seperate Mod Slots from Upgrade Trees


MJ12
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Right now, mod slots are part of Warframe/Weapon/etc. upgrade trees. Warframes have anywhere from 9-13 upgrade positions taken up by mod slots, while Weapons have anywhere from 4 (pistols) to 7.

This allows for customization of Warframes to mitigate weaknesses or enhance strengths and lets you make use of those really cool Mods you have. This is good. What isn't good is how this interacts with Mod scaling. Until level 15 or so, you'll want to avoid putting any points into Mod Slots because mods are hilariously weak (+10% armor? +20 health? +15 shields?) and past that, you will want to unlock mod slots instead of actual focused upgrades. There is no actual 'choice' in the matter, because it's binary. Either mod slots are better or they aren't.

I suggest taking all that whitespace on the border of each Warframe tree and giving them an extra button and menu for mods instead of putting them on the upgrade tree. So you have "Appearance Customization", "Modifications", and "Skill Tree" for Warframes and "Modifications" and "Skill Tree" for weapons.

Warframes should probably all be balanced down to 10 or so mods, so they could unlock 1 slot at Level 1 and another slot every 3 levels (so 1-4-7-10-13-16-19-22-25-28). Weapons could keep their 4 (sidearms), 5 (longarms), 7 (melee) mods or get their mod numbers boosted a bit (especially if mod stacking is going to be nerfed, allowing people to install more mods instead of just making each one slightly better will get the same result but be more interesting). They could even unlock their full slots before level 20+ if so desired.

This would do more three things, all of them beneficial to the state of the game:

1. It would free up a significant portion of a Warframe or weapon upgrade tree for more stuff, such as additional passive skills, Ammo Max nodes, or whatever you think would be cool.

2. It would reduce complaints about Orokin Reactors/Catalysts because you're relatively more powerful without a supercharge (due to having your full complement of mods).

3. It would no longer create the false choice between Mod Slots and Upgrade Nodes, which is, right now, a complete no-brainer. This would allow for far more meaningful customization.

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So you want to make the game easier than it already is?

I want the game to have fewer newbie traps and unfun mechanics. If this happens to make the game easier? Well, good. The difficulty clearly wasn't coming from anything resembling a fun source of difficulty. You can then proceed to make the game harder from that baseline.

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So you want to make the game easier than it already is?

The current skill tree is hard to balance due to the fact that mod will always be better than regular upgrade node. No sane player will take a 50 shield capacity node over a mod slot which can be filled with 70-90 shield capacity.

The game is probably going to be easier this way since players no longer have to spend point on mod slots.More passives will create even more diverse builds among frames and that's a good thing dev should strive for. New game content with harder difficulty could be added in the future to take advantage of this change.

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The current skill tree is hard to balance due to the fact that mod will always be better than regular upgrade node. No sane player will take a 50 shield capacity node over a mod slot which can be filled with 70-90 shield capacity.

The game is probably going to be easier this way since players no longer have to spend point on mod slots.More passives will create even more diverse builds among frames and that's a good thing dev should strive for. New game content with harder difficulty could be added in the future to take advantage of this change.

Pretty much this.

The game shouldn't be hard because the players are really limited on what they can do with their build or their stats.

Instead they should be made with the potential for pretty insane power levels and the content should learn to challenge their ability to work their magic.

You shouldn't be made weaker because you game can't handle you. The game should be made better so you have to build to handle it. More power in the hands of the player means they can do some cleverer things with the difficulty and enemy varieties to counterbalance it.

Edited by Blatantfool
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The current skill tree is hard to balance due to the fact that mod will always be better than regular upgrade node. No sane player will take a 50 shield capacity node over a mod slot which can be filled with 70-90 shield capacity.

The game is probably going to be easier this way since players no longer have to spend point on mod slots.More passives will create even more diverse builds among frames and that's a good thing dev should strive for. New game content with harder difficulty could be added in the future to take advantage of this change.

Not only are mod slots better than the health and shield nodes, they also compete with the Skill nodes due to the things like power range increase, power duration increase, etc. Heck, changing mods produces more diverse builds and it's much more easier and cheaper.

Taking out the mod slots also makes balancing easier and more transparent since you don't have the number of mods slots, the mod slot positions and the mods themselves obscuring how each frame performs. Heck, it makes it easier to tweak the skill tree because no-one has to go for maximum mods possible.

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