My suggestion to solve the Riven mod RNG mess

[(XBOX)G R A V O C]

Hello there fellow Tenno, 

 

Riven mods are a really good idea on paper, but the way Riven mods were implemented into the game has not achieved the desired effect. The concept for Riven mods was that they were supposed to breath new life into existing weapons that aren't "meta". The reality is that people will not mess with Riven mods, unless they are really good mods, or are on mainstream weapons.

 

I have attributed this problem to four causes:

Cause 1.) Riven mods are restrictive. You only can hold 15 of them.

 

Cause 2.) Riven mods require a lot of time to get, unlock, and re-roll. From the perspective of a new player, you have to go through a huge chunk of the games content before you are eligible to start getting Riven's. Once you have your Riven, you have to complete a challenge to unlock it. Then once it's unlocked, you need to grind Kuva to re-roll it. Then you need to farm even more Kuva, and the cycle continues until you get lucky, or burn out. Then you have to grind Sorties every single day, just for a chance at a new Riven mod. The time investment compared to the reward is just not in a good sync. 

 

Cause 3.)  The RNG is really bad. Rough calculations of getting the perfect stats for your preferred weapon is up there with the chances of winning a mega lottery. Think about it this way - You go to the gas station to buy lottery tickets for the mega jackpot of 500 million. You are only allowed to buy 5 dollars worth of tickets, but you have to pay for each ticket individually, and each time you buy one, the next ticket becomes longer and harder to buy. Once you have all 5 tickets, you try to roll for the mega millions jackpot, and you end up winning 3 dollars. You spent a lot of time and energy, to lose money. While there is one lucky individual out there who got the jackpot, or in other words, a god tier Soma Riven. 

 

Cause 4.) The stats are really predictable and baseline. This means that without even testing the weapon, you'll know whether or not the Riven is good or bad, especially if its on something not mainstream, like the Flux Rifle. 

 

So now that I have my suspected causes out of the way, here comes my solution:

Solution to Cause 1.) Remove the Riven mod capacity, or have each mastery rank give 1 or 2 additional mod capacity. The point of Riven mods is to experiment and have variety. Only having 15 makes it so I feel the need to burn inferior Riven's in order to free space up for potentially better Riven's.

 

Solution to Cause 2.)Riven mods are an uncommon drop in Sorties, but you can only do them once per day. Meaning, you can go 15+ days without a Riven mod reward. Baro should sell an item, like the Stalker, Zanuka and G3 items, that greatly increase or guarantees the chance of a Riven mod from completing a Sortie. Have the Ducat and credit costs be really high or something. But make it so that players can mitigate the RNG to some degree. If someone is 15-30 days dry on a Riven mod reward, they aren't using the Riven system. The whole point of this system was to increase weapon variety use. Making it hard to do this defeats the purpose of stimulating variety. 

 

Solution to Cause 3.) This is probably the biggest suggestion here, and my personal favorite of everything I have suggested in this thread. Ready for it? Here we go. Every 5 times you re-roll a Riven mod, the riven mod gains the ability to lock a stat in that will stay through the re-roll. You can lock the weapon as well. You re-gain this ability every 5 re-rolls, meaning you can totally lock a Riven mod by the 20th re-roll. You can unlock these stats if you would like to re-roll them, but you'll have to re-roll them 5 times again in order to gain that ability. Locking a stat doesn't have to happen on the 5th re-roll. For example, lets say you re-roll 5 times and unlock your stat lock, but you don't like any of the stats. You re-roll again, and say on your 6th re-roll, you like the critical chance. You can use that lock from the 5th re-roll to lock in the critical chance stat. This greatly decreases the RNG involved, suddenly obtaining a great Riven mod is something that can be farmed for. The decrease in farm time, and the decrease in RNG also justifies the player spending time to create unique Riven mods for the non-mainstream weapons. Which is the whole point of the Riven system! 

 

Solution to Cause 4.) Add a 6th stat slot to Riven mods, that functions as a quote on quote "weapon exilus slot". Each weapon could have cool and quirky abilities that can be rolled for. For example, lets look at the Gorgon. You could get a Gorgon-only ability that for every headshot you do, it adds 2 bullets into your Gorgons clip. On top of this, they could also add general utility abilities that can be added onto every weapon. An example could be that on each critical hit, the weapon has a 10% chance of Vacuuming all loot to the Operator that is within a 15 or 20 meter radius. This gives DE a lot of room to be REALLY creative, since each weapon could have its own unique ability, that makes the Riven mods more unique than just stats. This would give people purpose to go build an infinite ammo headshot puncture Gorgon build, and so forth. 

 

I am a firm believer that Riven's can be a good thing for this game. Other successful MMO's that function almost entirely on RNG will offer some sort of way to bypass RNG. There needs to be a balance between luck and grind. Currently Riven's are balanced towards all luck with unrealistic amounts of grinding. I believe we can shift that to more controllable RNG, with a more realistic amount of grinding. 

 

Bonus suggestion: Once you've made the perfect Riven, odds are that some of the values aren't as strong as they could be, or not close to max. Players can use a Legendary Core to re-roll a Riven mod for free. The Legendary Core will re-roll the locked Riven stats only. If the stats roll lower than what is currently there, the stats will not change. But if the re-roll has higher stats than current, the stats will change to the higher stats. This provides another element of min/max and end game. This will also stimulate the economy, as you best believe people will be looking to spend big platinum on flawless or near-flawless Riven mods. If a Legendary Core is just too high of a requirement, can do it with like 50k or 100k Kuva. 

 

Thanks for reading! Please leave your comments and feedback. I would love to see if this is something the community wants and if its something we could push to change. 

Edited November 22, 2017 by (XB1)G R A V O C

[(XBOX)G R A V O C]

TL:DR 

1.) Increase Riven mod capacity

2.) Add an item with Baro Ki'Teer that greatly increase the chance or guarantees a Riven mod from a Sortie (consumed on Sortie completion, decently high Ducat and credit costs).

3.) Add the ability to lock a Riven stat every 5 re-rolls. Lock a stat you like, re-roll to keep that stat and change the other stats you don't like. Unlock an additional stat lock every 5 re-rolls Reduces RNG to a manageable level.

4.) Add an "Weapon Exilus slot" to Riven's. Each weapon will have its own special ability that can be rolled. Example Gorgon ability "Headshots add 2 additional rounds to the Gorgon clip". Add general weapon abilities and utilities to increase variety and make it more interesting than just stat increases. Example, "Critical hits grants a 10% chance of Vacuuming all loot within a 15-20 meter radius to the Operator". 

5.)Legendary Cores can be used to re-roll locked Riven stats. If the re-roll results in negative stat changes, that stat will remain the same. If the re-roll results in a positive increase, the stat will change. The core re-rolls all locked stats. A perfect and fully locked Riven can only result in the same or better for all stats with a Legendary Core. If a Legendary Core is just too high of a requirement, can do it with like 50k or 100k Kuva. 

Edited November 22, 2017 by (XB1)G R A V O C

[-Exenon-]

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)G R A V O C said:

Cause 1.) Riven mods are restrictive. You only can hold 15 of them.

You can hold up to 90 if you buy the slots.

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)G R A V O C said:

Cause 2.) Riven mods require a lot of time to get, unlock, and re-roll. From the perspective of a new player, you have to go through a huge chunk of the games content before you are eligible to start getting Riven's. Once you have your Riven, you have to complete a challenge to unlock it. Then once it's unlocked, you need to grind Kuva to re-roll it. Then you need to farm even more Kuva, and the cycle continues until you get lucky, or burn out. Then you have to grind Sorties every single day, just for a chance at a new Riven mod. The time investment compared to the reward is just not in a good sync. 

1st new players aren't supposed to be getting involved in riven mods. Riven mods are near end-game content. And if you don't want grind I really think this is not the game for you.

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)G R A V O C said:

Cause 3.)  The RNG is really bad. Rough calculations of getting the perfect stats for your preferred weapon is up there with the chances of winning a mega lottery. Think about it this way - You go to the gas station to buy lottery tickets for the mega jackpot of 500 million. You are only allowed to buy 5 dollars worth of tickets, but you have to pay for each ticket individually, and each time you buy one, the next ticket becomes longer and harder to buy. Once you have all 5 tickets, you try to roll for the mega millions jackpot, and you end up winning 3 dollars. You spent a lot of time and energy, to lose money. While there is one lucky individual out there who got the jackpot, or in other words, a god tier Soma Riven. 

Almost everything is this game is RNG based and Rivens are mild compared other content. Also most soma rivens are not that great, with its 1 star disposition a riven is barely worth taking up a mod slot.

7 hours ago, (Xbox One)G R A V O C said:

Cause 4.) The stats are really predictable and baseline. This means that without even testing the weapon, you'll know whether or not the Riven is good or bad, especially if its on something not mainstream, like the Flux Rifle. 

Of-course the stats are predictable. That's how the game is designed, it's the same with normal mods.

[(PSN)Ch1b1N1njaGam1ng]

I just want Weapon Rerolls

[TaylorsContraction]

I'm already in support of locking stats though every five rolls is too easy imo.

 

I also like the idea of using legendary cores to boost the numerical value of locked stats. Those things are rare, in fact I've never gotten one  :P.

[snarfbot]

Every 5 rolls is a bad solution because you may get a good roll on one stat in the intermediary rolls that you will be forced to waste to secure an additional locked stat so it would result in at least 5 wasted rolls and then some to get that lock. Instead how about 10k kuva for a completely new roll on a stat line, or to reroll the value of one stat. Let the user choose.

Edited November 23, 2017 by snarfbot