On the weapon mod system...

[DawnBlossom]

Hi everyone! It's me again.

So, have any of you ever thought about how the mod system is meant to allow for the personalisation of your weapons? You know, make them work the way you want to? Well, if we haven't yet realised, there is at least one mod that you always need on almost every weapon - Serration, Hornet Strike, or Pressure Point. Straight up +damage. No questions asked. Very, very good mods, I'm not saying the mods themselves are bad. What I am saying, however, is that the idea of the mods is bad. There is no downside to them like Heavy Caliber has (although reducing accuracy can be useful to some weapons), hence there is almost no situation in which you wouldn't use these mods. The only time they're not really worth it is if you have a +300% damage Riven, because of diminishing returns.

What I'm suggesting is to give everyone a free mod slot - remove these mods from the game, and instead, have weapons' damage increase as they level up, up to 165% bonus damage at rank 30. If that's going to be too quick, perhaps scaling with mastery rank? Or having a separate mod slot/foundry section specifically for the damage mods? It would let us free up a mod slot to make a weapon we really love, and enable us to see the potential a weapon has without needing to waste a potato on it.

Also, while I'm at it, I just want to say - could we get a buff for Critical Delay please? 46% crit chance with such a large fire rate hit just seems pointless to me, unless it makes the difference between 100% crit and not, but that's extremely unlikely with how tiny the effect is. 

Am I the only one who thinks this way? Do you all like having a must-have mod?

Edited March 23, 2018 by NecroExplosion
Adapted for allowing for more long term progression

[tarfeef101]

I don't think anyone really like must-have mods, but it allows for more "progression" to be felt since a newer player would strive to rank up serration, primed pressure point, etc.

leveling a weapon is much easier/faster. It allows for the benefit to be felt later on in the game.

[DawnBlossom]

1 minute ago, tarfeef101 said:

leveling a weapon is much easier/faster. It allows for the benefit to be felt later on in the game.

That's a point, I guess - a separate mod slot for them then, just for them.

[tarfeef101]

Just now, NecroExplosion said:

That's a point, I guess - a separate mod slot for them then, just for them.

As much as I love the idea of having more flexibility in my mod setup, I don't think that'll happen. 

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

So, have any of you ever thought about how the mod system is meant to allow for the personalisation of your weapons?

Here it comes...

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

Well, if we haven't yet realised, there is at least one mod that you always need on almost every weapon

The antici...

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

Serration, Hornet Strike, or Pressure Point.

...pation.

You have come to the same conclusion that everyone has, a wrong conclusion, but an easy one given the pieces.

This doesn't solve anything, given the next thing to go into that, now empty, slot, is more damage. 

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

What I am saying, however, is that the idea of the mods is bad.

A mod that, based on how long you play the game, the more Endo and Credits you obtain, gets stronger?
The entire, current damage progression is tied to how much Endo and Credits you get. I can level a weapon to 30 in a few minutes. I can do that in early levels with a bit more difficulty, but nothing too drastic. This entirely upends the power curve from beginning to late game. Now a MR1 player has access to a fully ranked Serration on early planets. This is not nearly as easy as people seem to think it is.

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

Am I the only one who thinks this way? Do you all like having a must-have mod?

Try searching the forums.

[RagingReaper67]

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

perhaps scaling with mastery rank?

This is an idea I like. It would add another (and more meaningful) benefit to leveling MR. Granted, this would probably have to be addressed a bit differently for PvP as it would give higher MR players too much advantage.

[RagingReaper67]

3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Now a MR1 player has access to a fully ranked Serration on early planets. This is not nearly as easy as people seem to think it is.

I feel like a lot to do with mods isn't as easy as people seem to think it is. "Oh, just use Primed XYZ."....yea cuz primed mods are super simple to get. Or referencing rare mods as if everyone should just have one.

[DawnBlossom]

5 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

A mod that, based on how long you play the game, the more Endo and Credits you obtain, gets stronger?
The entire, current damage progression is tied to how much Endo and Credits you get. I can level a weapon to 30 in a few minutes. I can do that in early levels with a bit more difficulty, but nothing too drastic. This entirely upends the power curve from beginning to late game. Now a MR1 player has access to a fully ranked Serration on early planets. This is not nearly as easy as people seem to think it is.

What I am objecting to is their use of a slot, not the cost of levelling them. While, yes, you could put more damage in that slot, it would also make things like Primed Fast Hands feel like less of a waste of a slot, because you'd have a slot free to do what you liked with it. Opening up that slot for simply putting more damage on would also be a great aid for the weaker weapons in the game - an extra chance at redemption - so to speak.

Perhaps this could highlight another thing as well - most mods are simply damage increases, one way or another. Very few weapons have interesting mods, like the Tetra's bouncy bullets or something. Make things more unique, you know?

For me, at least Warframe, is not a very challenging game, and it hasn't ever been about the challenge. Opening up more opportunities to have fun in different and interesting ways is always going to get a yes from me.

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

Opening up that slot for simply putting more damage on would also be a great aid for the weaker weapons in the game

This just makes the strong weapons even stronger. This entire thing is a massive bit of power creep across the board. As it is, the suggestion is lazy and unimaginative and will do a lot more harm to the long term health of the game than waiting to find an actual solution or something closer to a better system.

[DawnBlossom]

1 minute ago, peterc3 said:

This just makes the strong weapons even stronger

Making strong weapons stronger isn't the end of the world though. If something is good, it's good. The fact is, "good enough" is, as it says on the tin, good enough. Yes, it makes strong weapons stronger, but it might make weak weapons viable. If you want to always use the most powerful weapons, you're very welcome to, but, personally, I'd prefer to have a weapon that's fun and interesting to use, more than the most powerful weapon possible.

I don't bother with anything higher than Sortie 3 really, so maybe I'm just not comparing to the same standards as you are, but yeah.

[NeithanDiniem]

1 hour ago, NecroExplosion said:

Making strong weapons stronger isn't the end of the world though. If something is good, it's good. The fact is, "good enough" is, as it says on the tin, good enough. Yes, it makes strong weapons stronger, but it might make weak weapons viable. If you want to always use the most powerful weapons, you're very welcome to, but, personally, I'd prefer to have a weapon that's fun and interesting to use, more than the most powerful weapon possible.

I don't bother with anything higher than Sortie 3 really, so maybe I'm just not comparing to the same standards as you are, but yeah.

I'd rather the weak weapons be adjusted from base to be appropriately strong for their rank in the weapon progression line, useless mods that have no point or reason to exist to be removed (I'm looking at you common baseline status chance mods that no one uses, not at you, Serration, which makes progression be something you earn through getting endo and credits and not forcing people to level weapons and frames instead), and Riven disposition be tied to the progression of the weapons rather than usage of the weapons. Weak weapons should be weak when you start and push you towards trying better weapons as you progress up the MR ranks, but the Rivens and the time you spend getting the mods to build better builds would allow you to return back to those weak weapons and use them. If you allow a weak weapon to remain strong through the entire playthrough of a player, they have no reason to expand out. Its bad design to make it where a player can never be pushed or challenged to change the way they play in order to experience more of the game. Making it entirely choice can allow players to be too lazy and unknowingly cripple their experience. The push shouldn't be a forced shove, as tying serration's "modless" integration into MR would cause, but it should be gentle to encourage players to chose where they want to grow their experience into next.

Edited March 23, 2018 by NeithanDiniem

[Xarteros]

Back in the old days, before we had mod cards, we had a tree.

A glorious tree.

'Mod capacity' was the number of nodes we could spend in the tree, and each node would contain base stats or a mod slot (mods were RNG back then, like one-stat rivens).

We need to add in both modding systems. Give us back a tree that lets us tweak the base stats for our weapons, and remove the core/mandatory mods like Damage and Multishot.

[NeithanDiniem]

9 minutes ago, Xarteros said:

Back in the old days, before we had mod cards, we had a tree.

A glorious tree.

'Mod capacity' was the number of nodes we could spend in the tree, and each node would contain base stats or a mod slot (mods were RNG back then, like one-stat rivens).

We need to add in both modding systems. Give us back a tree that lets us tweak the base stats for our weapons, and remove the core/mandatory mods like Damage and Multishot.

That might be quite cool actually... as long as the tree had branches and a limit to the number of active nodes, so as to force people to chose rather than "take everything"
It'd probably have to come with a fairly extensive mod rework as was originally concepted for damage 2.5, with changes to the way elemental and ips damage was added, useless or outclassed common mods being removed, etc

[RacerDelux]

Will give you guys a secret. Some weapons actually do better without the % damage mods. (Opticor is one)

Granted I think they are silly, and should have been removed a long time ago.

[LuckyCharm]

The entire mod system needs an overhaul if you ask me. Currently we're stacking multiplier on multiplier, mods giving more and more damage as primed mods come around, and enemies stay the same. I like seeing a swing of my sword do 300k as much as the next person but if the entire starchart gets taken out with a gun that hit's for 1000 or so, the 299k left over is just needless overkill other than a tool for measuring epeens. 

The lack of modding diversity is purely because it's most efficient to just stuff weapons with as much damage as possible, be it flat/crit or status. Sure you can add a utility mod or two for the ones that need it, but ultimately your cookie cutter builds are pretty similar to eachother because you're pretty much building the same gun the same way all the time. If elementals converted damage instead of adding it, then things might differ a little faction to faction, if ips mods changed the damage spread instead of adding damage it might get them used a lot more if other mods weren't adding damage. And if flat damage mods were added to the base weapon, then maybe we could get more trigger mods like argon scope etc. 

I'm sure DE could think of better things than me on the mod front, i just feel if damage wasn't the focus of modding but effects caused by actions in game was then things would get a lot more interesting. I'd love a "on headshot cause enemy to turn into a ghost that fights for you" mod or something rather than the damage focus.