Riven rerolling: a disappointment and a setback in warframe

[(PSN)NicolaiBM]

First of, let me make it clear, despite warframes many issues, I love playing warframe. If need be, I'd happily post each an every issue I think the game have, if it leads to a productive debate with the development team in DE. Among all off these issues, the biggest one off them all I see, is the riven rerolling system. Also, let me apologize in advance for the formatting, I'm using a phone to make posts.

Rivens, I think as a concept they have potential to have amazing value to the game, both content and progression in mind here. Right now it feels like more basic lottery and it's really discouraging to bother with the recycling system. There can be too much rng and I believe rivens fall in to that category.

DE themselves describe a journey to the perfect riven, but I fail to see that journey, only a road of countless disappointing stops at the rerolling station, before going back to grinding with less incentive to do so, after having spent 100.000 kuva on a riven with nothing to show for, apart from a soul crushing number in the corner of the riven, displaying your number of failed visits to the rerolling system.

A way to make this a more encouraging and rewarding effort, lets have a look how many other games tackles rerolling of gear, my example will be The Division, as I think they have an very good system coming out with their latest patch. The jouney to the perfect gear in The Division starts with crafting the gear and getting that 1 item with 3 out of 4 stats you are happy with. Next you go and reroll that 1 stat, at a greater cost, until you got the stats you're looking for, finally at an even greater cost, you optimize those stats to their maximum value and by the time you have your perfect piece of gear, you've gone through multiple steps where you've felt you've made progress, you've felt your hours of grinding is paying off and have gotten an incentive to carry on. This is a journey to that perfect piece of gear.

My suggestion to DE on how to apply this to warframe is, let us be able to lock in stats on our rivens, at a increased cycling cost or for a highish amount of kuva or endo. Let us optimize our rivens, at a high amount of kuva or endo cost. It would make it a journey of encouraging progression.

What I think is a setback about rivens is, relics got introduced because we spent all our time in the void, if we want that perfect riven, we spend all our time in kuva missions, and while the missions is changing, there's very little difference between spending 90% of our time in the void and spending 90% of our time in kuva missions, at least in my opinion.

With the release of Plains of Eidolon coming up, I believe it would free up a handful of devs to make a new rerolling mechanic and I truely hope there's enough support for this suggestion, that it will make it to the game. Especially since I would love to actually play on the plains, happy with my rivens, instead of running free with my rivens just sitting back at the ship or being stuck farming for more kuva.

[Volinus7]

RNG is the matter of courtesy.

Diablo II has first time drop rates for every boss.

Diablo III and hearthstone has pity timer.

Cosmic break has drop algorithm to guarantee gold prize once in awhile. 

 

Btw...You shouldn't misunderstand the system designed to extort playtime and money beyond regular bar filling experiences in Warframe by exploiting your gambling tendency.

 

Edited October 9, 2017 by Volinus7

[SandSquash]

I doubt DE would take on a rerolling system like Division, while i understand your pain and agree the rerolling system is pretty disappointing we have a closer chance of them increasing Kuva drop numbers than allowing "stat locking". I've seen opticor rivens rolls 600+ times and I'm sure there are weapons with higher numbers out there but thats just how RNG is.

Sometimes its good to you and sometimes its bad.

A great motivator when cycling your riven is listen to Limp bizkit - keep rollin

[xXDeadsinxX]

I may be the minority on this one and will likely get hate for this, but DE just needs to get rid of the entire riven system. It's unbalanced and the RNG is just atrocious to get certain stats that you want or for the weapon you want. However, you can buy them for platinum or trade for them. Although, most people like to get rivens for weapons that are unused by the whole community or bad weapons in general that they would like to use again. 

DE have stated numerous times that they've added the riven system to make older weapons get more popular or have better stats, which doesn't really make much sense since they could've just buffed the older and non-popular weapons instead of adding the system. 

But sadly, DE is going to keep it in the game. A new rolling mechanic would be nice though.

[ashrah]

current riven system is pretty bad  regardless u roll good or bad...its money grab  silly prices u can see in trade 3k.4k.5k...and there are ppl who will defend rivens cz they most likelly selling them 

[ZoneDymo]

25 minutes ago, ashrah said:

current riven system is pretty bad  regardless u roll good or bad...its money grab  silly prices u can see in trade 3k.4k.5k...and there are ppl who will defend rivens cz they most likelly selling them 

Well thats the free market for ya, welcome to the real world.
If I want to ask 300.000 plat for a Vitality mod I can do that, nobody would buy it but thats not anyones problem by my own assuming I want to sell it.

If people are willing to pay that for it then there ya go.
If you think that is crazy expensive and sell yours for 50p then that is your decision.

As for Rivens as a concept,
1. you dont have to do Rivens, its entirely optional and up to you whether or not you want to dive into it, if the RNG is too much then do not bother and buy them from players who do bother with it, same for just about anything else in this game.
2. if Rivens were made easier it becomes less and less "special" when you get a good one.

But I do agree that perhaps the costs of re-rolling does get a bit too high.

I also think OP's suggestion about a stat by stat system is not a bad one, I would enjoy it more.

On the subject that we spend all our time now in Kuva missions, well I dont personally but I think DE did say that Kuva would be added to sorties.

Edited October 5, 2017 by ZoneDymo

[(PSN)NicolaiBM]

43 minutes ago, ZoneDymo said:

You dont have to do Rivens, its entirely optional and up to you whether or not you want to dive into it, if the RNG is too much then do not bother and buy them from players who do bother with it, same for just about anything else in this game.

While that is true, it still is the only well needed buff for some of the lesser used weapons in the game. Weapons that would fall off way before the meta weapons in this game. You can argue they aren't needed, but they do offer diversity in your gameplay, if you know how to "fix" an issue with a weapon, eg reload speed on a Sobek.

1 hour ago, ZoneDymo said:

On the subject that we spend all our time now in Kuva missions, well I dont personally but I think DE did say that Kuva would be added to sorties.

That is a terrible solution, getting kuva from sorties would be just a kick in the unmentionables. I wouldn't care if I got 100 million kuva at the same drop chance at legendary cores, I would feel more ripped off than after getting 7 Anasa sculptures in a row (DE are you reading this and listening? No sculptures in sorties.).

2 hours ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

I may be the minority on this one and will likely get hate for this, but DE just needs to get rid of the entire riven system. It's unbalanced and the RNG is just atrocious to get certain stats that you want or for the weapon you want. However, you can buy them for platinum or trade for them.

I completely agree, in their current form rivens should be removed. They offer non off the initial description DE used on them and all they do is split the community in to haves and have nots. But as a concept they have potential. Give them new stats found no where else in the game, stats like a percentage armor and shield bypass, we already have that in the form of slash procs. Stats like headshot multiplier, making shotguns shoot slugs or have less spread, make arrows track their targets. That would be interesting.

While I agree on the imbalance, I do think the disposition method is a good way to give a bigger buff to weaker weapons, granted while it works of popularity, it's not done right, but the potential is certainly there.

 

[rmac306]

1 hour ago, ZoneDymo said:

1. you dont have to do Rivens, its entirely optional and up to you whether or not you want to dive into it, if the RNG is too much then do not bother and buy them from players who do bother with it, same for just about anything else in this game.
2. if Rivens were made easier it becomes less and less "special" when you get a good one.
 

This is bullS#&$.

System was INVENTED so you could use old "now-irrelevant-but-cool" weapons.
It should NOT really be something special. Should not be a chore, considering DE themselves (as i imagine any other game maker out there) would want their game to have diversity.

This does not happen, and as a Plus, creates another level of power creep for the already god tier weapons.

[Jobistober]

2 hours ago, ZoneDymo said:

As for Rivens as a concept,
1. you dont have to do Rivens, its entirely optional and up to you whether or not you want to dive into it, if the RNG is too much then do not bother and buy them from players who do bother with it, same for just about anything else in this game.
2. if Rivens were made easier it becomes less and less "special" when you get a good one.

Can we stop using this "Then don't use it" as an excuse to turn a blind eye to systems and mechanics that clearly need improvement?

I actually do refuse to use Rivens and any related missions/mechanics because of how ridiculous the RNG and lottery system is, but that doesn't mean I ignore the problems that I believe the system has.

I would participate in the acquiring and rerolling of Rivens if 1) stats were lockable, 2) we could transmute for Rivens, 3) rivens were untradable after being rolled 4) and there were a couple other ways to get them.

[Acersecomic]

God I hate rerolling rivens -.- There's a guy in my clan who has a whole fton of barely rolled rivens with insane stats, meanwhile I can't roll a good one in 30 rolls....

We need better ways of aquiring Kuva, because that will also drop the prices on rivens... let's be honest, riven prices are getting out of hand.... 20 to 100 euros in value per riven? (yes I sold a riven for a 1000, and I could have sold it for a lot more if I was a greedy p.....)

Edited October 5, 2017 by Acersecomic

[TaylorsContraction]

Preach brother, preach. The problem is rivens have no progression, after 150 rolls on my gram, after over 200 rolls on various vectis rivens, and 20, 30, 50 rolls on other weapons, never get the stata I'm after. There's no progression, just pure RNG. There have been great suggestions that would add progression into the system, ie after 100 rolls you can lock in one stat at the cost of higher kuva for rolling. Right now it's madness, but also the only thing to do in the game for end game players. Still the grind is insane, Korean mmo level insane.

[ashrah]

4 hours ago, ZoneDymo said:

Well thats the free market for ya, welcome to the real world.
If I want to ask 300.000 plat for a Vitality mod I can do that, nobody would buy it but thats not anyones problem by my own assuming I want to sell it.

If people are willing to pay that for it then there ya go.
If you think that is crazy expensive and sell yours for 50p then that is your decision.

As for Rivens as a concept,
1. you dont have to do Rivens, its entirely optional and up to you whether or not you want to dive into it, if the RNG is too much then do not bother and buy them from players who do bother with it, same for just about anything else in this game.
2. if Rivens were made easier it becomes less and less "special" when you get a good one.

But I do agree that perhaps the costs of re-rolling does get a bit too high.

I also think OP's suggestion about a stat by stat system is not a bad one, I would enjoy it more.

On the subject that we spend all our time now in Kuva missions, well I dont personally but I think DE did say that Kuva would be added to sorties.

at least they can add kuva in  common drop on all missions so u can at least re roll without need to spent weeks farming for kuva  its get boring and ppl get burnout from mindless farm

[ZoneDymo]

2 hours ago, Jobistober said:

Can we stop using this "Then don't use it" as an excuse to turn a blind eye to systems and mechanics that clearly need improvement?

I actually do refuse to use Rivens and any related missions/mechanics because of how ridiculous the RNG and lottery system is, but that doesn't mean I ignore the problems that I believe the system has.

I would participate in the acquiring and rerolling of Rivens if 1) stats were lockable, 2) we could transmute for Rivens, 3) rivens were untradable after being rolled 4) and there were a couple other ways to get them.

I totally agree that the "dont like dont use it" argument is often used wrongly.
Like if you have a problem with the Atterax Maiming Strike meta, as there not using it still means others around you do so you are still affected.

But with Rivens... yeah its a chore, you got to work for what you want, just like with everything in this game.
If you dont want to do that, then... dont, you dont have to use Rivens, you are not locked in any way from any content by not using Rivens, you can just ignore them.

But I did say that OP's suggestion of locking one stat and unlocking the rest is a fun/better sounding system.

[Almagnus1]

IMO, all rivens should start out with a single stat, and low MR, and all improvements on the riven should be mostly done with Kuva.

• We should be able to increase the MR requirement of the riven using Kuva
• Mod rank should still be increased with credits/endo
• Additional stat slots can be added with Kuva
• Stats are rerolled per slot, and we get a choice of five new stats to choose from, again using Kuva.  Price is determined by number of rerolls and the slot you're rolling on.
• The polarity of the Riven should be changeable with Forma (but only if it's at max mod rank, and will reset the mod rank back to zero)

Those changes would make rivens a lot more bearable, as we're still using RNG, but it's better constrained so it's not as disheartening as the current system.

[radastir]

10 hours ago, (PS4)NicolaiBM said:

My suggestion to DE on how to apply this to warframe is, let us be able to lock in stats on our rivens

 

 

That is actually a great idea - you have my vote!

[(PSN)Double991]

I've given up on rivens for some time now. The good thing is that they aren't necessary.

[(PSN)NicolaiBM]

After making this post, I've been thinking even more about it and had a chat about it with a couple of friends, they pointed something out about the market for rivens: the prices for a dream roll would drop. While this might be true, it's still a free market, so I believe the base price for a riven would go up aswell. Let me explain.

While it's a minority of players who get the fantastic rolls, they can set the price high when going to sell rivens, because the rivens is so good, it's unlikely anyone else will get as good stats and compete to get the prices down, this way holding them artificially high. This also comes at the cost, each player is unlikely to produce more truely great rivens anytime soon, which results in a half baked riven that's harder to sell and goes for a fraction of the price, if it goes at all.

On the opposite end of the scale, unrolled rivens represents an extremely small chance of anyone getting the roll they truely want for their riven, it represents a path of frustrations and grind with no feeling of accomplishment. If the system of riven rerolling where to change, unrolled rivens would no longer represents a chance, but a guarantee, for someone willing to put in the time and effort. It would represent a path of accomplishment and satisfaction over the results of the labour put in. This guarantee I believe would raise the base value of amy given riven.

The argument that it would make us run out of things to do, well that depends on the price of the rerolling if such a system would be implemented. It's no longer unreasonable to farm for a week, for a player to reroll that riven and end up with the riven he really wants. Yes, you can still get lucky and get the exact stats you want first try, how ever unlikely, the chance does exist. But assuming the resources needed would take a week to collect, for the casual player, there's 300 weapons or so in the game, so the same amount of rivens, that's "something to do" for 6 YEARS. Let that sink in for a moment, then add in, with new weapons, frames, quests and scanable items being added, we're set for with content.

Another benefit of this system would be, there's going to be little need to change the current system of farming kuve, so we will still be taken all over the star chart, not just sitting in a corner with nekros. The need for a change would be to add variation.

I do believe all of this will benefit Warframe hugely, as it would possibly get a greater part of the community interested in rivens, it would allow for players to feel satisfaction and accomplishment over rivens and have a sense of progression, rather than frustrations and feeling lucky.

[Mudfam]

I farm kuva simply because I have literally nothing else left to do, but I've given up hope of ever getting a good roll. I don't roll anymore, just horde kuva, and when I have something else to do I'll stop entirely.

I've put over 400 rolls (almost 1.5 mil kuva) into rivens for one weapon, almost that on others - I got nothing, literally not a single roll worth using, or capable of redeeming the weapon so I might actually use it. I've had some rare luck too, but the bad cases have left me dreading the prospect of trying again. It's just wasted plat and time.

You might think these are extreme cases, but they're not. For many weapons the odds of a worthwhile roll are in the high 1000's, 400 rolls is just nothing. Of course many weapons benefit from a broad range of crit, status etc. or don't really need a riven to fix them anyway, getting a worthwhile roll for these is much, much easier.

Rivens buff already good weapons with solid base stats. They can't save really bad weapons, or the odds of getting the kind of roll that would are so astronomically low that it's practically impossible. They also don't allow you to build weapons according to your design, which is for me a big appeal of Warframe, it's just pot luck buffs. I've had some good rolls, but something I wanted? Never.

Allowing some targeted progression in rivens would fix most of these problems, we could work towards something meaningful for weapons with fewer viable stats, and we could feel we're going somewhere instead of bloodying our nose against an insurmountable RNG wall. The grind should be real, slow, but yet progressive, not just a slot machine. Some sense that eventually you'll hit that 100th roll or whatever and be able to finally lock your first stat. Yay...

Would this crash the riven market? Of course not, perhaps the opposite. Good rolls still need a huge investment, and as it is the demand for good rivens far outweighs the supply. The kind of rivens people are willing to spend anything at all on are so rare that they are priced beyond most potential buyers' reach. Most everything else is trash no one will touch. Even after all this time It's a very stagnant market with few actual transactions of rolled rivens made, and only for a small selection of weapons as no one rolls rivens for the others.

[-Temp0-]

On 05.10.2017 at 11:19 PM, rmac306 said:

This is bullS#&$.

System was INVENTED so you could use old "now-irrelevant-but-cool" weapons.

Problem is. It failed on that.

Because most stats are multiplicative. And even if you have a solid riven for shtty weapon like with +250% damage it means nothing because 0*250 will still be 0.

Edited October 9, 2017 by -Temp0-

[Almagnus1]

21 minutes ago, Mudfam said:

Rivens buff already good weapons with solid base stats. They can't save really bad weapons, or the odds of getting the kind of roll that would are so astronomically low that it's practically impossible. They also don't allow you to build weapons according to your design, which is for me a big appeal of Warframe, it's just pot luck buffs. I've had some good rolls, but something I wanted? Never.

I think part of this perception is the undervaluing of multi-shot and the overvaluing of crit chance/crit damage - as you REALLY have to compare the Rivens in warframe-builder.com in order to get a feel for whether or not a new roll is better than the current Riven as what we think are good stats and what are actually good stats can be two VERY different things.  For example, multishot is the stat that makes the vanilla Hek actually worth using, as you get it from Hell's Chamber and from Scattered Justice for a total of +320% multishot.

I managed to acquire a Damage/Multishot/Reload time for the Dera Vandal, and it's able to jack it's status chance up high enough that the weapon isn't complete garbage, and as I'm still adding mods back onto it after bascially plating the weapon in forma, it's doing alright in 30-40 bracket using only 5 mod slots (still adding on elemental mods), even though both the Dera and Dera Vandal are garbage weapons.

That said, every single Riven that I have that I'm using is one that I've bought for platinum, as that's been a far more time efficient way to go - which includes Rivens for the Daikyu, Vectis, Dera, and Javlok among others that I'm probably spacing.  DE needs to fix this as it's more time efficient for me to sell any Rivens I find as veiled, and then go searching for Rivens I want to play with - especially some of the ones that are actually beneficial that people are ignoring.

[Mudfam]

4 hours ago, Almagnus1 said:

I think part of this perception is the undervaluing of multi-shot and the overvaluing of crit chance/crit damage - as you REALLY have to compare the Rivens in warframe-builder.com in order to get a feel for whether or not a new roll is better than the current Riven as what we think are good stats and what are actually good stats can be two VERY different things.  For example, multishot is the stat that makes the vanilla Hek actually worth using, as you get it from Hell's Chamber and from Scattered Justice for a total of +320% multishot.

I managed to acquire a Damage/Multishot/Reload time for the Dera Vandal, and it's able to jack it's status chance up high enough that the weapon isn't complete garbage, and as I'm still adding mods back onto it after bascially plating the weapon in forma, it's doing alright in 30-40 bracket using only 5 mod slots (still adding on elemental mods), even though both the Dera and Dera Vandal are garbage weapons.

That said, every single Riven that I have that I'm using is one that I've bought for platinum, as that's been a far more time efficient way to go - which includes Rivens for the Daikyu, Vectis, Dera, and Javlok among others that I'm probably spacing.  DE needs to fix this as it's more time efficient for me to sell any Rivens I find as veiled, and then go searching for Rivens I want to play with - especially some of the ones that are actually beneficial that people are ignoring.

Oh, before I even start rolling a riven I will figure out what values I might be able to get on each stat, how they can affect the weapon with different builds, how it might interact with arcanes, synergise with frames and abilities, everything.

Still, the main issue is with relatively underpowered weapons that don't benefit from a broader range of stats such as crit and status, this pretty much narrows it down to damage + multishot and occasionally things like reload speed or -recoil which can greatly improve the effectiveness of certain weapons without just adding more damage. I believe there's nearly 300'000 possible rolls, having more viable combinations increases your chances of a good roll exponentially.

Basically all the rivens I use are also bought, but most of the weapons I'd like to riven up aren't all that popular and finding someone selling good rivens for them is extremely difficult, let alone something fairly specific I might want in my build. I'm not the only one looking for these, but there's not many people investing in rolling them because most people who roll rivens seem to be interested in making plat. There's no real market here, and personal investment is hopelessly futile.

[InDueTime-EN-]

It's only bad if you want the perfect roll. If you are willing to settle to one good stat and one meh, then there would be no issues. I agree that sometimes RNG can be an &#!.

I have 3 dread rivens all with impact stats. I rolled only the 1st one coz I want to sell the others and that freaking impact was almost there all the time. I got to maybe 35 rolls to get an acceptable stat. However, aside from that, my other rives were quite easy to roll and none of them forced me to go higher that 15 to have nice stats. 

On 10/5/2017 at 10:10 PM, xXDeadsinxX said:

I may be the minority on this one and will likely get hate for this, but DE just needs to get rid of the entire riven system.

It is creating some toxicity in the game, but in my opinion rivens are optional. If I'm gonna be using weapons, its not because I have rivens for them. If I do get rivens for uncommon weapons, I would use them for fun from time to time but i would still go back to my old reliable. I switch my primary weapon sets when new weapons come out or when I realize something about a weapon, but rivens have never been a factor to that. 

I just got back to using Strun because it goes really well with condition overload, I don't have a strun riven nor do I use a melee weapon with a riven.

[ScribbleClash]

On 5.10.2017 at 5:26 PM, (PS4)NicolaiBM said:

On 5.10.2017 at 3:10 PM, xXDeadsinxX said:

I may be the minority on this one and will likely get hate for this, but DE just needs to get rid of the entire riven system. It's unbalanced and the RNG is just atrocious to get certain stats that you want or for the weapon you want. However, you can buy them for platinum or trade for them.

I completely agree, in their current form rivens should be removed. They offer non off the initial description DE used on them and all they do is split the community in to haves and have nots. But as a concept they have potential. Give them new stats found no where else in the game, stats like a percentage armor and shield bypass, we already have that in the form of slash procs. Stats like headshot multiplier, making shotguns shoot slugs or have less spread, make arrows track their targets. That would be interesting.

While I agree on the imbalance, I do think the disposition method is a good way to give a bigger buff to weaker weapons, granted while it works of popularity, it's not done right, but the potential is certainly there.

If it really is a minority, I am part of being opposed to Rivens. I expected them to be more akin to augments, making weapons work in different ways rather than just flat statboosters designed to encourage mindless grinding. In other words: Rivens aren't fun nor engaging.

I also do not think they should be considered as an option to balance weapons. Weapons should've gotten damage 3.0 and gotten levelling, potentially offering the option to adjust weapons to apropriate power levels over the course of the game.
Instead we got an excuse to avoid balancing from now on, because Rivens. Not making rivens stay at their strength if a weapon becomes overused and therefor drops in disposition just makes this whole system worse.

[(PSN)NicolaiBM]

On 10/10/2017 at 7:40 AM, InDueTime-EN- said:

It's only bad if you want the perfect roll. If you are willing to settle to one good stat and one meh, then there would be no issues. I agree that sometimes RNG can be an &#!.

While that might be the case with the popular weapons, it's far from the case with the lesser used weapons. Such weapons as a base to build on, usually have so bad stats, they're pointless to get anything but damage, multishot and reload speed for.

Remember how boltor prime used to work, with armor bypass? Well not anymore, and I do not understand the decision to ever change that, because it was a fun and interesting way of going about a build, now tho, no armor bypass and no status chance to deal with the armor anyway.

On 10/10/2017 at 7:40 AM, InDueTime-EN- said:

It is creating some toxicity in the game, but in my opinion rivens are optional. If I'm gonna be using weapons, its not because I have rivens for them. If I do get rivens for uncommon weapons, I would use them for fun from time to time but i would still go back to my old reliable. I switch my primary weapon sets when new weapons come out or when I realize something about a weapon, but rivens have never been a factor to that. 

Not just some toxicity, it's creating even more elitism in the community. But your point about going back to your old reliable weapons, that is my point about rivens not working in the first place. You're still playing with the popular weapons and while they're strong and reliable, they're also getting extremely boring at this point. Same weapons day in ans day out, give me a break that's just boring.