Leveling, Progression, Damage, And The Current Mod System.

[Tempera]

Okay. There's a fair bit to cover in this topic, but I'll try and be as succint as possible so people don't tl;dr it.

 

So. Leveling.

 

What is the point of a leveling system?

Well, mostly it's to provide the players with a sense of progression, as well as to continually increase the power of the player to allow them to deal with the more complex strategies required later in the game.

 

The current system doesn't handle this very well. The progression in the game is provided by mods, and you have to level your weapons just to be able to use the progression you have created so far.

 

Warframes are a bit different, as they get slight health, shield or energy increases on level-up. While that's slightly more useful than the weapon system's current nothing, it's not very much. And honestly, it's the laziest thing to give to armour as it increases.

 

Instead, the progression in the game is provided by mods. Mods increase the damage your weapons deal, the utility of your weapons, the amount of ammo you can carry, etc.

 

So. What's the point of all this?

 

Well, I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat; I'm advocating for the nerfing of Serration, Point Blank, Hornet Strike, and Pressure Point. I'm also advocating for the nerfing of Redirection, Vitality, and Flow.

 

But wait, I cry. Don't lynch me yet! I'm still talking! It's rude to lynch people while they're talking, you know.

 

Instead, I'm advocating for something a bit more classic: Increase the damage value of weapons on level-up, and increase the health, shields and energy value of Warframes on level-up.

 

Silly Tempera, you say. Warframes already get increased health, shields and energy at level-up. What's changing?

 

Well, those values should change pretty harshly. In fact, the base value of a Warframe's health at Rank 30 should be... hm. Let's say, I don't know, 80% of the health that Warframe would have now if it had a max-rank Vitality mod equipped.

 

The same goes for weapons. The damage of a weapon should increase to, I don't know, say 70% of the damage a weapon would currently have if it had its max-rank weapon damage mod attached, when that mod is at Rank 30.

 

But this doesn't change progression at all! one might cry. Progression still comes largely from mods!

 

Well, that's not quite true. While a large value of progression still comes from mods, due to the utility of mods, developers now have a much more stable value to work from. Instead of having damage values ranging from, I don't know, 20-53 per bullet on a Braton, depending on the rank of the Serration equipped, the developers could count on people having a stable 43 damage per bullet on Pluto (where you would be expected to have max or near-max rank weapons and Warframes equipped).

 

Mods, therefore, become more about utility. You might still have damage mods, but instead of reaching insane values like +165% damage, they would probably cap off around +20% damage. Same with Redirection, Vitality, and Flow.

 

This would then allow people to customize their loadout by the utility of their mods, rather than to increase the base damage of their weapons or the survivability/awesomeness of their powers of their Warframes.

 

... Let the lynching begin.

[Shion963]

Weapons stat increases was done away getting into U7, and was one thing that they didn't even mention about when Warframe scaling stats was re-implemented Post U7. So I guess the devs thought scaling stats were good for Warframes, but doesn't extend to weapons.

 

Personally I'd love it if just one stat scales with rank, to give the sense of the weapon getting better, without it being Too Good (to the point that you didn't even need to think about trying other weapons out). Plus this way you don't have to change anything with mod stat scaling.

 

Braton could get a Damage scaling, Grakata could have crit chance scaling, such and such.

[Tempera]

Weapons stat increases was done away getting into U7, and was one thing that they didn't even mention about when Warframe scaling stats was re-implemented Post U7. So I guess the devs thought scaling stats were good for Warframes, but doesn't extend to weapons.

I do know that. I just disagree with the devs on that point.

 

Braton could get a Damage scaling, Grakata could have crit chance scaling, such and such.

In large part, I'm banking on increasing damage only so that Serration and the like can be nerfed to hell and back. This allows for a much more consistent power scale, instead of being all like, "Well, I'm at Pluto now- S#&$, I don't have Serration. Time to go back and grind."

[Aure7]

current mod system keeps me interested in this game. I am 100% AGAINST this mess you wrote and yes I've read it all. Unlike in other games, here progression of individual items is very fast, no point for weapons getting increased damage over their rank because you level up them so quickly anywhere. And also formaing would be destroyed.

And there's already long term goal and progression with mods you've talked about. They all have insanely high rank caps so it will take lots of time to fuse them to the max.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Aure7

[Shion963]

In large part, I'm banking on increasing damage only so that Serration and the like can be nerfed to hell and back. This allows for a much more consistent power scale, instead of being all like, "Well, I'm at Pluto now- S#&$, I don't have Serration. Time to go back and grind."

Or they could first 'fix' (if the stupid hike isn't intentional) the ridiculous resistance scaling on enemies that makes non-AI weapons be piddleshi- at higher levels.

[MJ12]

I fully support this suggestion, because it'd make damage mods something other than 'must-haves', and it'd mean you'd have a reason to use other mods.

 

For example, Speed Trigger is objectively suboptimal on all but a few guns compared to Serration. With this setup, Speed Trigger is now an interesting tradeoff. It gives you a significantly higher DPS boost than Serration for any weapon but massively reduces your weapon's endurance.

 

The odd man out here is Multishot, which I propose a change as follows:

 

Rifle and Pistol Multishot add +1 projectile per rank but decrease the weapon's per-shot damage, thus creating an increased, more reliable amount of damage but reducing the peaks. For example, the multishot values could be like this:

 

Rank 0: +1 Projectile, Damage x 0.55 (1.1x base damage)

Rank 1: +2 Projectiles, Damage x 0.4 (1.2x base damage)

Rank 2: +3 Projectiles, Damage x 0.33 (1.33x base damage)

Rank 3: +4 Projectiles, Damage x 0.28 (1.4x base damage)

Rank 4: +5 Projectiles, Damage x 0.25 (1.5x base damage)

Rank 5: +6 Projectiles, Damage x 0.23 (1.6x base damage)

 

Very low damage guns may have interesting issues with rounding, but this means Multishot is a transformative mod instead of a pure +damage mod. It turns your gun into a shotgun. Alternatively, it'd be a slightly slower scale of reduced damage (to the equivalent of +20% or even 25% damage/level) with decreasing accuracy, meaning that it turns any weapon into a less-accurate but more powerful shotgun, with reduced range but massively increased impact. The fact that it gives a fixed +1 projectile/level is important here because otherwise it'd be just a damage mod by another name or it'd be immensely unreliable and have issues due to that. However, that's exactly how I have shotgun multishot working so I might want to think of another way to do it.

 

Shotgun Multishot? I believe it should work as-is, but each +20% multishot should come with -accuracy, making shotgun multishot absolutely brutal at close-range (it's called "Hell's Chamber") but only add moderate damage increases at anything but point-blank.

[MJ12]

current mod system keeps me interested in this game. I am 100% AGAINST this mess you wrote and yes I've read it all. Unlike in other games here progression of individual items are very fast, no point for weapons getting increased damage over their rank because you level up them so quickly anywhere. And also formaing would be destroyed.

 

So because you wouldn't need to shove 5000000 mods into your Serration/Hornet Strike/Redirection/Vitality to max them out to get into super high level content without dying you'd stop playing the game? Seriously? That's silly. Because the net result of that is just that you don't need to spend ages and ages farming one of them up to decent levels to play content past Earth. That's it.

 

And 'formaing would be destroyed' because... people would suddenly not want increases in combat capability no matter how small? Seriously? Maybe now you'd forma a weapon with anything other than 2xV 2x= (Multishot, Damage, Armor Piercing, Elemental) because, say, you might actually want to prioritize Puncture or I don't know, Reload Speed + Ammo Capacity. No, if anything Formaing will be given a new lease on life because it's more varied and interesting now. You can make weapons actually personalized.

[Aure7]

So because you wouldn't need to shove 5000000 mods into your Serration/Hornet Strike/Redirection/Vitality to max them out to get into super high level content without dying you'd stop playing the game? Seriously? That's silly. Because the net result of that is just that you don't need to spend ages and ages farming one of them up to decent levels to play content past Earth. That's it.

 

And 'formaing would be destroyed' because... people would suddenly not want increases in combat capability no matter how small? Seriously? Maybe now you'd forma a weapon with anything other than 2xV 2x= (Multishot, Damage, Armor Piercing, Elemental) because, say, you might actually want to prioritize Puncture or I don't know, Reload Speed + Ammo Capacity. No, if anything Formaing will be given a new lease on life because it's more varied and interesting now. You can make weapons actually personalized.

I do want that formas would personalize weapons and I am not one of those (Multishot, Damage, Armor Piercing, Elemental) guys you're talking about. I just think there's a fine balance in amount of mods you usually need, mod slots and capacity. And WTF is that first paragraph all about. Go do a potato alert or buy one, or stop soloing everything. (Maybe you don't know how to fuse mods?) There's barely any effort to play past earth, my friend was playing past earth in his first days and had fun. I don't even have any of the damage mods maxed and I have no problem playing in any of the missions, or void. It just gets challenging in a fun way.

If you need to spend ages and ages farming one of those mods to play content past Earth then BOY YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG xD

 

Edited August 6, 2013 by Aure7

[Tempera]

current mod system keeps me interested in this game. I am 100% AGAINST this mess you wrote and yes I've read it all. Unlike in other games, here progression of individual items is very fast, no point for weapons getting increased damage over their rank because you level up them so quickly anywhere. And also formaing would be destroyed.

The progression of individual items seems very fast, but that's only because you're doing only like, 10% of the work in actually leveling the weapons.

 

After that, you have to begin the long, slow process of finding and upgrading the various damage mods. Serration and such are absolutely vital, as you'll find yourself dealing little damage to enemies Level 40 or higher without it, and the various elemental damages are damn important up until endgame too. Then you get to the endgame and begin the process all over again, trying to find Multishot mods. Hooray! Long, grindy, inconsistent progression values that serve only to pad the game out!

 

Or they could first 'fix' (if the stupid hike isn't intentional) the ridiculous resistance scaling on enemies that makes non-AI weapons be piddleshi- at higher levels.

That works to make damage values relative to enemy health values more sane, but it doesn't do much to fix the inconsistencies in the damage values the developers can expect people to have at various levels.

 

Currently, people can end up at Pluto with anything from weapons with no damage mods at all to, technically, +165% base damage + 90% fire damage +90% ice damage +60% AP damage +90% electric damage.

 

It's incredibly unlikely that anyone will have maxed out all those mods by the time they arrive at Pluto, but that just makes things worse. The devs can't count on players having any form of consistency in their damage output- player's damage can range from the base value to like five times that amount or more.

 

What I'm suggesting is to make damage values (and health, shield and energy values) more consistent, so that people who are at, I dunno, Earth, with average Level 20 gear will find a challenge appropriate to someone with average Level 20 gear, instead of worrying about if people have a Redirection and Vitality mod or not, and thus having to err in one direction and making damage either too high for some people or too low for others.

 

I'm also proposing to move away from "standard" sets of gear, wherein you'll almost always load up a gun with its base damage mod and at least AP damage, and towards looking at every other mod available. So instead of permanently taking up 14 mod energy with Serration (or 7 with polarities), you are instead able to fill up those 14 points of mod energy with something you probably don't use now like, I dunno, Eagle Eye, or Metal Auger.

 

That last point isn't as helpful right now, but it will probably help a lot in the future when further mods are released.

[xenapan]

So basically you want base damage upped so anyone can have the equivalent of a maxed out serration/hornet strike.

 

Right. Then you nerf the mods so they are worthless.

 

So... tell me exactly... why are DE going to even consider going back to the system they left in pre U7? From what I recall it was because maxing out weapons/frames was too damn easy(and still is) Not to mention it would totally screw up the way damage scales since the effects are multiplicative on elementals and multishot. plus, weapon mods designed to max out at certain damage thresholds would be totally messed up. If they implemented this, they might as well just buff enemies another 5-15 levels per planet.

[Tempera]

So... tell me exactly... why are DE going to even consider going back to the system they left in pre U7?

Because, quite simply, the system they've changed to is even worse.

 

It leads to a schizophrenic level of progression over the course of the game. As I noted... in the post directly above your own, players can currently have from, well... 20 damage per bullet on a Braton, to 225 damage per bullet on a Braton, with an additional 90% chance to fire another bullet for the same damage, for an effective 427 damage per shot. That's a variation of 407 damage per shot.

 

Consider just the Serration mod. You can level it ten times. That's a whole bloody lot of variation in the damage a player could be dealing with just a Braton, due purely to one mod.

 

Have Serration at just Rank 9 equates to only 215 damage per bullet, for 408 damage. Have Serration at Rank 5, Stormbringer at Rank 2, and Hellfire at Rank 4, and you're dealing only 83 damage a bullet.

 

That's wildly inconsistent, and there's no given loadout a player can be expected to have by the time they get to a given planet due to the RNG system of mod drops.

 

Thus, DE cannot design levels/planets based on what they expect players to have by this point. Which leads to a lot of inconcistency and annoyance on the part of people with bad luck, as they're forced to go back to lower level planets and grind until they get a Serration and Hellfire or whatever.

[cataclysm2]

but levelling serration (or anything past rank 8) is hard as balls and is a major dump for both excess duplicates of mods AND the only credit-sink in the game. 

 

I have to say, i personally like the mod system as it seems quite logical for me. Why would the dmg of a weapon increase purely because you used it a bit? If you change the ammo of a gun for example then it's dmg would go up (armour piercing or explosive rounds etc). The only thing that would increase by using a weapon lots would be the accuracy of it. Increasing a guns dmg based on how long you've used it is preposterous imo.  

 

Ultimately, levelling a weapon still has a point -- to unlock mod slots.

[Tempera]

but levelling serration (or anything past rank 8) is hard as balls and is a major dump for both excess duplicates of mods AND the only credit-sink in the game. 

That is half of why Serration is a problem. That's the primary source of the inconsistency- it takes so goddamned much to increase Serration up a rank past like Rank 4, especially for players who can't farm Xini and the like. That, and how random/annoying the drops for damage-increasing mods gets.

 

I have to say, i personally like the mod system as it seems quite logical for me. Why would the dmg of a weapon increase purely because you used it a bit?

Why can you suddenly change the ammo type of your weapon just because you used it a bit?

[Aure7]

That is half of why Serration is a problem. That's the primary source of the inconsistency- it takes so goddamned much to increase Serration up a rank past like Rank 4, especially for players who can't farm Xini and the like. That, and how random/annoying the drops for damage-increasing mods gets.

 

Why can you suddenly change the ammo type of your weapon just because you used it a bit?

I seriously do not understand what you're talking about. Leveling mods is easy and has allways been so, in fact it used to be harder when fusion core drop rates were lower. And FINALLY I don't need to farm anywhere to level up my serration, i can simply fuse random sentinel mods and cores (which i get anywhere anyway) into it and credis are not are not a problem either.

[cataclysm2]

That is half of why Serration is a problem. That's the primary source of the inconsistency- it takes so goddamned much to increase Serration up a rank past like Rank 4, especially for players who can't farm Xini and the like. That, and how random/annoying the drops for damage-increasing mods gets.

Veteran players (i say veteran players but i really mean anybody that isn't a newbie levelling their first frame and weapons...  so i guess i mean players in the mid to late game) need something to progress as well. If we didn't have the humongous requirements for serration/hornet strike/redirection/etc then non-newbie players would have nowhere to unload all their duplicates of crap mods they don't want. There's also no other thing in the game that gobbles up all the excess credits players will have either. 

 

 

Why can you suddenly change the ammo type of your weapon just because you used it a bit?

Well you are only talking about one part of the mod system there. Mods and mod slots are interlinked. To me, the idea is that as u use the weapon, u find the mods to upgrade it from your enemies. For gameplay reasons, there is a restriction of mod slots per level of the gun but the overriding idea is that you use mods to increase a weapons stats and imo that works far better in the longterm because DE can put out new mods for you to consider using. 

[MDaen]

My only issue with the mod system right now is that too many of the effects are required for high level play.

 

I -cannot- function at an optimal level on a T3 mission of any kind using a rifle that lacks serration and split chamber. I mean, it's -possible-, but horribly inefficient and ridiculously time consuming. Considering that we're not just talented warriors, but now also (with the introduction of the dojo and research abilities) scientists and engineers, I have to wonder why we haven't started just making weapons with these features built into them. How many tenno have to decide their gun works better when it deals +120% damage and fires 2-3 bullets a shot before we start developing weapons that don't need to be "customized" to do so?

 

I don't deny the value of the mod system and I don't want to see it nerfed, exactly. However, the idea behind a mod system should be to allow me to modify my gun so that it suits my play style or my warframe's abilities a little bit more thoroughly. Instead, the current mod system is primarily a means for optimizing the raw damage output of whatever weapon I've chosen. After the necessary mods have been installed to allow me to kill level 100+ enemies effectively, I count myself fortunate if I have two empty mod slots for convenience mods like improved reload speed. I would prefer to see mods that -change- the nature of the damage I deal to allow me to bypass various defenses, rather than simply 7 different mods that increase the brute power of my weapon. Mod selection should involve some combination of strategy and personal preference; not simply be a question of mathematics, in which I select the mods that yield the highest base numbers.

[RealityMachina]

 

Veteran players (i say veteran players but i really mean anybody that isn't a newbie levelling their first frame and weapons...  so i guess i mean players in the mid to late game) need something to progress as well. If we didn't have the humongous requirements for serration/hornet strike/redirection/etc then non-newbie players would have nowhere to unload all their duplicates of crap mods they don't want. There's also no other thing in the game that gobbles up all the excess credits players will have either. 

You realize one of the aims about this proposed change is to make is so that said "crap mods" are no longer considered crap since one no longer really has to worry about whether their equipment can handle the unfun parts of the game anymore?

 

Though this sort of thing really should come with some sort of massive revamp of the high end content general so it stops being unfun. :/

Edited August 6, 2013 by RealityMachina

[Tempera]

 

Veteran players (i say veteran players but i really mean anybody that isn't a newbie levelling their first frame and weapons...  so i guess i mean players in the mid to late game) need something to progress as well. If we didn't have the humongous requirements for serration/hornet strike/redirection/etc then non-newbie players would have nowhere to unload all their duplicates of crap mods they don't want. There's also no other thing in the game that gobbles up all the excess credits players will have either. 

I will direct you to RealityMachina's post.

 

You realize one of the aims about this proposed change is to make is so that said "crap mods" are no longer considered crap since one no longer really has to worry about whether their equipment can handle the unfun parts of the game anymore?

The change would probably equate to, well... no longer farming for mods and credits, because it's not super difficult to find any given mod.

 

You would then be using mods that actually, I dunno. Modify your weapons to fit different playstyles, I guess.

 

Instead of loading up on Serration/Hellfire/Stormbringer/Cryo Rounds/Piercing Hit and having maybe three slots left over to stick mods in, you would now have eight mod slots that you can load up on to do things besides deal additional damage, like pierce through objects, carry additional ammo, reload faster, zoom in better, reduce recoil, and the like.

 

... Of course, this assumes that elemental mods are similarly changed so that they don't deal significant direct damage based off of base damage as they do currently. I just realized that I hadn't added that to the OP. I'll have to make another thread for that sometime, I guess.

 

Though this sort of thing really should come with some sort of massive revamp of the high end content general so it stops being unfun. :/

Ideally, content like this would come with an overhaul of the endgame content so that you have something to actually do. But I digress.

[BenHoliday]

My only issue with the mod system right now is that too many of the effects are required for high level play.

 

I -cannot- function at an optimal level on a T3 mission of any kind using a rifle that lacks serration and split chamber.

 

So what you're saying is, you don't know how to farm defense missions to get the mods you lack. There's a list somewhere of which mods are rewards for which defense missions, so if you're looking for Serration or Split Chamber you'll know what faction you want to fight to get it.

 

And don't come back saying "I can't do those without serration etc. etc." because Kunai exist, as do frames with abilities that can be more useful than any weapon (Frost against Grineer/Corpus or Vauban against Infested, just two examples.)

 

The problem with your "solution" is this: if it is implemented then we won't need damage mods at all. Why bother maxing Serration if it only gives me 20% more damage? For that matter, why bother with ANY damage mods at all, same reason (Exceptions: rank 0 elemental mods where appropriate.) Your "solution" simply takes damage mods, and replaces them with utility mods, because effects like reload speed, fire rate, and mag size will then be "must-haves" instead. You wouldn't be changing the system to "let" people modify their guns to suit their style, you'd just be changing which mods are the best.

Edited August 6, 2013 by BenHoliday

[RealityMachina]

So what you're saying is, you don't know how to farm defense missions to get the mods you lack

I think he's talking about Void T3 missions man.

 

The epitome of unfun endgame content that's only fun if you spent hours and hours and hours and hours of farming defense missions and gotten lucky with the RNG in getting the right mods you need to make the unfun endgame content at least not take too long when you finally do them.

[Tempera]

The problem with your "solution" is this: if it is implemented then we won't need damage mods at all. Why bother maxing Serration if it only gives me 20% more damage? For that matter, why bother with ANY damage mods at all, same reason

That is the point of this thread, yes.

 

Your "solution" simply takes damage mods, and replaces them with utility mods, because effects like reload speed, fire rate, and mag size will then be "must-haves" instead. You wouldn't be changing the system to "let" people modify their guns to suit their style, you'd just be changing which mods are the best.

That is certainly a worry.

 

It's not impossible to overcome, though. Take the Multishot solution MJ12 proposed, and do something similar: Sacrifice weapon accuracy in order to increase firing rate, or sacrifice total ammo capacity to increase magazine capacity. The benefits would still outweigh the sacrifice, but it no longer becomes automatically better.

 

That's not the only answer to the problem, but it's one answer, and it's the first one I thought of.

[cataclysm2]

Flat damage increasing mods only feel mandatory atm because of the way end game content is currently tweaked - ie, the only way enemies are made harder is their level is increased and therefore their armour and hit points are increased. 

 

The change that needs to happen is to move away from this model at end game. DE has begun to introduce more challenging enemies at higher levels and this is a step in the right direction but what ultimately needs to happen is that the AI needs to get better at attacking you at higher levels. Level 200 enemies are as dumb as level 1 enemies. I haven't seen a grenade thrown at me in a long, LONG time. They do not cover-fire and move as a team. They do not suppress and flank. Snipers never seek high vantage points. Heavy machine gunners do nothing but mill around with all their friends at ground level and only fire when there's a gap. Enemies mindlessly walk in to bastille even though it's captured 100 of their friends in front of their eyes - why don't they wait for it to drop then attack en-mass? What if grunts threw grenades that penetrated snowglobe/bastille at a certain level? That would seriously change up defence games. 

 

I appreciate that "smart" AI is insanely hard to program but i would hope it's a goal of DE's to get there and that what we have at the moment is just a placeholder. The only genuinely smart AI i've ever come across in a shooter game were the marines from half-life 1 and the conflicts that had you pitched against a squad of marines were by far the most exciting in that game. Almost all games think it's enough for the AI to hide behind cover when confronted by the player and leave it there. That's not good enough for a game which focuses on multiplayer co-op PVE. 

 

It is not a fault of the mod system. Tempera's "solution" in the OP ultimately solves nothing, it just reduces the damage ceiling of players and makes it far more static. 

[MDaen]

What I'm saying is, I have the mods I need, but I feel like needing a mod to give me a necessary boost to deal damage with a non armor ignoring weapon doesn't feel like I'm modifying the weapon at all. It feels like something we would have simply installed when we first crafted it.

 

I'm not asking that Serration or any other damage mod be nerfed into obscurity; I am asking that it be less a "required" mod. If, instead of "damage +120%" serration was, "10% per rank of the damage this weapon deals is instead Serrated Blade damage", it would alter the damage the weapon did against specific enemy types, allowing a weapon that is normally terrible against a heavy grineer without 6 different +dmg mods to function effectively, while allowing other mod slots to be used for less damage focused mods to further alter the weapon's functionality. And mods that increased damage by 20% when maxed, or added additional sources of damage up to 15% or 20%, would still give a player looking to simply maximize their dps output a considerable damage advantage over a player who has chosen to optimize for a more support or utility oriented role on the team.

 

You are incorrect that my solution replaces one "must have" with another. A properly crafted system will always have mods that are more advantageous than others for the situations they were crafted for. But the present system makes it a necessity to modify primarily for the highest damage output possible, and makes the other mods disadvantageous by comparison. What I'm calling for is to put damage mods more in line with the other mods, so that 20% increased damage and 20% increased fire rate will typically equate to roughly the same damage output. You might opt for a weapon that deals +15% additional frost damage, and slows enemies on impact, while I opt for a mod that makes my shots deal only frost damage (with no damage boost), also slows enemies on impact, and has a 5% chance to freeze the enemy solid, removing them from the fight for a second or two and increasing the damage they take from non-frost damage sources. A move away from the current reliance on straight damage mods also opens up room for a larger number of more unique mods, that could offer any number of additional functions that are beyond what I've considered.

 

My opinion is simply that if damage boosts are the only way to build a weapon to make it viable, then the damage should just be baked into the weapon, because the mod system is already broken. Either give players options (for real) or remove the illusion and find a more constructive way to force us to spend our credits.

Edited August 6, 2013 by MDaen

[cataclysm2]

You realize one of the aims about this proposed change is to make is so that said "crap mods" are no longer considered crap since one no longer really has to worry about whether their equipment can handle the unfun parts of the game anymore?

By crap mods i mean duplicates of ones you have already maxed (particularly ability mods that u get in droves), or mods for frames/weapons u don't have or wont use and mods that do not suit your weapon (for example, crit % and crit dmg mods for a gun that has 2.5% base crit chance are useless)

[Tempera]

It is not a fault of the mod system. Tempera's "solution" in the OP ultimately solves nothing, it just reduces the damage ceiling of players and makes it far more static. 

Okay, yes. That's the entire point of the thread, and it's weird that this objection keeps cropping up. So. Let's try asking a question!

 

How much health do you think enemies should have, as the game stands right now?

 

That's a bit broad, so let's narrow it down some.

 

How much health should an Ancient Healer have in Venus?

 

How much health should an Ancient Healer have in Jupiter?

 

How much health should an Ancient Healer have in Ceres?

 

How much health should an Ancient Healer have in Pluto?

 

Now, let's ask. How much damage does the average player deal?

 

Again, that's a bit broad, so let's narrow it down.

 

How much damage can the average player deal in Venus?

 

How much damage can the average player deal in Jupiter?

 

How much damage can the average player deal in Ceres?

 

How much damage can the average player deal in Pluto?

 

The two topics are related. If you can't give a good, accurate measure for the second list of questions- within the realms of, I dunno, 30-40 DPS, although that's just a throwaway figure that is not at all accurate- then you won't be able to decide what health value to give to the enemies therein. Err too much on the high end, and lower-power players will be forced to go back and grind, which kills the game for many; and err too much on the low end, and you'll bore high-power players.

 

I'm not asking that Serration or any other damage mod be nerfed into obscurity; I am asking that it be less a "required" mod. If, instead of "damage +120%" serration was, "10% per rank of the damage this weapon deals is instead Serrated Blade damage", it would alter the damage the weapon did against specific enemy types, allowing a weapon that is normally terrible against a heavy grineer without 6 different +dmg mods to function effectively, while allowing other mod slots to be used for less damage focused mods to further alter the weapon's functionality. And mods that increased damage by 20% when maxed, or added additional sources of damage up to 15% or 20%, would still give a player looking to simply maximize their dps output a considerable damage advantage over a player who has chosen to optimize for a more support or utility oriented role on the team.

That's... the sort of thing I was looking at when making this thread. I wouldn't use those particular examples, but that was the mindset I was using.

 

By crap mods i mean duplicates of ones you have already maxed (particularly ability mods that u get in droves), or mods for frames/weapons u don't have or wont use and mods that do not suit your weapon (for example, crit % and crit dmg mods for a gun that has 2.5% base crit chance are useless)

 

An easy, off-the-top-of-my-head solution is to add something to the end-of-mission screen. A small box you can tick that says "sell this mod when I close the screen", with an option to auto-sell mods unless you deliberately uncheck the box of a particular mod.

 

That does give players more credits, but it solves the problem of having too many "useless" mods.

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That said!

 

I do recognize that I didn't address one of the core problems; that is, that as the game currently stands, reducing the power levels as such would render late-game content entirely unplayable.

 

If this idea, or something similar, were to be implemented, then it would of course have to come with a rebalancing of enemy values. Health, armour, shields, and resistances of all enemies would have to be completely rebalanced to take into account the much lower average damage of weapons.

 

I apologize if that was causing anyone any hesitation on the idea.