Make Riven disposition adjust automatically

[Xarteros]

Some of my friends will hate me for suggesting this, but I still like the idea.

What I propose

I think all Riven Dispositions should be calculated weekly, fortnightly or at least monthly. To do this, I suggest all weapons be rated at the end of each calculating period by how much usage (determined by XP earned and kills gained, only when weapon is at max rank) each weapon gets. The weapons that occupy the 20% lowest in usage/kills would get 5/5 disposition, and it would scale that way up to the top 20% weapons getting 1/5 disposition. Edit: It has been suggested below that usage could be more fairly calculated by not including any XP/Kills gained when the given weapon has an unveiled Riven equipped.

The stats of all Riven mods would need to update to reflect any changes in the disposition of their relevant weapon. This is to prevent mods from being too overpowered or underpowered in light of shifts in the meta, nerfs, or buffs. This would follow the existing scaling system for Rivens with changing dispositions, but would be more frequent.

I'd recommend that instead of ranking weapons by category (Rifle, Shotgun, Melee etc.) they are ranked by their weapon slot (Primary, Secondary, Melee). This ensures that weapons are compared more thoroughly and fairly. EDIT: Thinking about it, it might even be more fair to rank all weapons regardless of category or slot. It would ensure that all weapons are balanced more equally against the others.

As an optional extra, different versions of a weapon could be ranked individually (like Gorgon vs Prisma Gorgon vs Gorgon Wraith) so that 'lesser' versions of a weapon get a higher disposition than the stronger versions of that weapon. This would allow users to make better use of previous versions of a weapon that have favourable stats or functions (like using Cernos instead of Cernos Prime, due to the awkward multishot spread of Cernos Prime)

How it would affect the game

This system would automatically adjust Rivens to a much more accurate view of the weapon's popularity. The overarching goal of Rivens was to provide a mechanism that makes less popular weapons more reasonable, and my suggested change would do exactly that. Excepting cases of drastic and unexpected nerfs/buffs, this would largely go by with minimal notice, as weapon popularity and usage tends to shift in slower trends, rather than frequent, sudden spikes.

This system also allows new weapons to be ranked fairly. Since the XP/Kills would only be counted when the weapon is at max rank, it won't factor in the waves of players who are simply leveling the weapon up for mastery, or putting a few forma in just to sit it aside. It would only record proper usage of the weapon, and thus would be the most fair way to assess how popular any given weapon is.

Why it needs changing

Currently, the slow rate at which Riven dispositions are adjusted leads to some really wild variance in Riven effectiveness. We have old top-tier weapons like Tonkor that get balanced or nerfed, and suddenly become less desirable, less useful, or otherwise less powerful. These changes would allow any and all weapons to be constantly rebalanced without DE needing to spend any extra time on it (beyond the time it would take to implement). This would also compensate for changes in warframe abilities, mission types or other aspects that alter the effectiveness of a weapon, whether it becomes better or worse.

It also means that low-mid tier weapons that get primed/prisma/wraith variants that are a direct upgrade to the base version are adjusted accordingly. As stated above in my proposal, DE could simply calculate different versions of a weapon independently, but having them update more regularly would be good enough.

I think that taking so long to update the rivens leads to a lot of player dissatisfaction, as players begin to buy/sell rivens for the new meta weapons at unreasonable prices, only for players to find out their mod gets nerfed when the disposition gets updated. Having it update more frequently would keep the prices from varying so crazily, whilst also offering the turnaround of previous meta weapons that become less frequently used.

Having the system be more frequent, as well as entirely automated, would mean there's less work for DE to manually step in and tweak dispositions here and there, and players get more regular updates to keep the Riven system alive.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Xarteros
Edits in Underline text

[Blade_Wolf_16]

I think the principal problem with this suggestion is that it might make top tier weapons completely broken for one week, then back to where they were or lower. 

If my Tenora, Stradavar, Sobek, Karak W, Dera V or any mid-tier weapon I enjoy gets the Dispostion of 1/5 for a full week while a Soma Prime, Tigris P, V Hek, etc. gets a 4/5-5/5 Disposition, I probably won't play for that full week.

I know it sounds drastic, but I know myself well enough to know that if my basic/mid-tier stuff with decent Rivens gets nerfed once in a while for a full week, I would probably stop playing until I'm not forced to choose between 6 weapons out of the ~40-60 that I own and invested Potatoes/Formas/Lenses/Plat(skins) in. 

I'm not a min-maxer, far from it. I've been playing with low/mid/top-tier stuff with basic builds for 3 years and I'm afraid that this proposition would only benefit top-tier weapons with weak Rivens. 

[Steel_Will]

5 minutes ago, Blade_Wolf_16 said:

I think the principal problem with this suggestion is that it might make top tier weapons completely broken for one week, then back to where they were or lower. 

If my Tenora, Stradavar, Sobek, Karak W, Dera V or any mid-tier weapon I enjoy gets the Dispostion of 1/5 for a full week while a Soma Prime, Tigris P, V Hek, etc. gets a 4/5-5/5 Disposition, I probably won't play for that full week.

I know it sounds drastic, but I know myself well enough to know that if my basic/mid-tier stuff with decent Rivens gets nerfed once in a while for a full week, I would probably stop playing until I'm not forced to choose between 6 weapons out of the ~40-60 that I own and invested Potatoes/Formas/Lenses/Plat(skins) in. 

I'm not a min-maxer, far from it. I've been playing with low/mid/top-tier stuff with basic builds for 3 years and I'm afraid that this proposition would only benefit top-tier weapons with weak Rivens. 

You could cap the swing to move no more than 1 point per adjustment period to avoid sudden extreme swings and over corrections. I'm sure you'd reach a fairly stable equilibrium for most weapons regardless. But adjusting less-used weapons to higher dispos and more-used weapons lower was exactly DE's original intent with rivens. And I think it does need to be automated because it's sure not happening manually and that's what's causing market/usage distortions. It's going to be unpopular and painful to upset what's become the status quo but there needs to be some serious readjustment. The Supra for example is rolling with a 4/5 compared to your Tenora's 3/5. The Tonkor at 1/5 with the Lenz at 3/5 is sadistic. The Synapse at 5/5 after its last rebalance is insane. And the Tiberon still at 5/5 is... honestly, I just don't have the words. 

And thank you Xarteros for posting this so I won't post the much less refined and much more rantish post I've been mulling making about this. 

[Dreddeth]

12 minutes ago, Steel_Will said:

cap the swing to move no more than 1 point per adjustment period to avoid sudden extreme swings and over corrections.

This, with the adjustment period set to... something forgiving, like two weeks. That way, the rise and fall is a more stable wave pattern as opposed to spikes and crashes, which would lead to instability of both stats/performance, and of Trade value, which is important because Trade is the only semi-reliable way to get a specific Riven.

 

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

The only problem I see with this is that some weapons (the Kohm comes to mind) are only popular because of their riven stats, namely the ability to get 100% status pre-multishot, or any other weapon-saving stat (fire rate on a Daikyu, etc.). The proposed system would have then swinging between ~ 2/5 and 5/5 as people use them while they're good and drop them while their bad.

[Gamma745]

10 minutes ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

The only problem I see with this is that some weapons (the Kohm comes to mind) are only popular because of their riven stats, namely the ability to get 100% status pre-multishot, or any other weapon-saving stat (fire rate on a Daikyu, etc.). The proposed system would have then swinging between ~ 2/5 and 5/5 as people use them while they're good and drop them while their bad.

Well, it could have an extra layer that usage with a Riven mod is not counted for the weapon popularity. I don't know how complicated it is to track something like that though.

[tCartmant]

54 minutes ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

The only problem I see with this is that some weapons (the Kohm comes to mind) are only popular because of their riven stats, namely the ability to get 100% status pre-multishot, or any other weapon-saving stat (fire rate on a Daikyu, etc.). The proposed system would have then swinging between ~ 2/5 and 5/5 as people use them while they're good and drop them while their bad.

I think with this you may be assuming a small sample size of a week. I think what could happen is even though its evaluated say monthly, the sample size could be 6-12 months.

These type of swings would be harder to happen but if a weapon slowly becomes popular or vise versa, the riven could be adjusted slowly automatically. 

[(PSN)lhbuch]

It could work in some cases, but not on others.

Take Scoliac for example. The weapon is only used because its high disposition allows an obscene range.

After  a week the disposition would drop and everybody would stop using the weapon. and then in the next week th disposition would be increased and everybody would be back and so on...

 

[Steel_Will]

1 hour ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

It could work in some cases, but not on others.

Take Scoliac for example. The weapon is only used because its high disposition allows an obscene range.

After  a week the disposition would drop and everybody would stop using the weapon. and then in the next week th disposition would be increased and everybody would be back and so on...

 

Average each additional cycle with the previous ones, restrict any swings to one point per cycle, there are plenty of other mathy ways to ensure this bogey man scenario doesn't happen.

And sure the Scoliac and some other weapons mentioned are Riven success stories, but this system can't work as intended when it's just left static and not adjusting to trends in weapon usage. DE's own words from when Rivens were introduced: 

On 11/14/2016 at 6:04 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Riven Mods were added to incentivize end-game players to revisit old weapons and to change up their play style. We’re all familiar with blazing through missions to the Extraction Point, but this system gives players new challenges that require them to test the creative limits of their Arsenal in their quest to Unveil their new Mods. Yes, meta weapons are in the selection pool, but Riven Mods are not needed to make this gear (like the Tonkor or Synoid Simulor) more powerful. What they can do is add an interesting buff to a comparatively underpowered weapon in order to encourage players to think outside of that meta box.

Weapon balance and usage has changed drastically since this but the Tonkor and Synoid Simular are both still saddled with their 1/5 dispos. And other remaining and emerging meta weapons are indeed being made all the more powerful from higher ones. And from when dispos were introduced: 

On 11/16/2016 at 7:30 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

- This modification will also affect existing Riven Mods to reflect our desire to give new life to ‘discarded’ weapons in a unique way, and not increase the power of the top tier ones.

DE needs to make Rivens do what they said they wanted them to do and they can't by neglecting to have them reflect ongoing changes in weapon strength and usage trends. 

[Xarteros]

On 4/24/2018 at 2:10 PM, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

The only problem I see with this is that some weapons (the Kohm comes to mind) are only popular because of their riven stats, namely the ability to get 100% status pre-multishot, or any other weapon-saving stat (fire rate on a Daikyu, etc.). The proposed system would have then swinging between ~ 2/5 and 5/5 as people use them while they're good and drop them while their bad.

Well with my idea, the bonuses and penalties of a Riven will remain the same, and only the specific values will vary. If you've got fire rate on a Daikyu, you'll still have most of it if the disposition drops by one. Don't forget though, it works the other way, so having a nice riven with 3/5 will only get better if that weapon sees less use and goes to 4/5

Plus, there are a LOT of weapons for each category of riven, so I'd say that it's really unlikely for anything to jump drastically even if calculated weekly, unless it becomes an uber meta through a buff/nerf. If it DOES become a sweeping meta, then by every right, it should be more rapidly adjusted.

On 4/24/2018 at 2:22 PM, Gamma745 said:

Well, it could have an extra layer that usage with a Riven mod is not counted for the weapon popularity. I don't know how complicated it is to track something like that though.

That's a good idea, if it's possible for DE to implement.

 

11 hours ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

It could work in some cases, but not on others.

Take Scoliac for example. The weapon is only used because its high disposition allows an obscene range.

After  a week the disposition would drop and everybody would stop using the weapon. and then in the next week th disposition would be increased and everybody would be back and so on...

 

I get where you're coming from, but you have to remember that it's not a question of going from 1/5 to 5/5 and back to 1/5. There are too many other weapons in the game for swings like that to be likely to happen. Scoliac gets amazing range because of its disposition, so it becomes more popular, dropping from 5/5 to 4/5, and then 3/5. If it's SO good that with 3/5, it still beats the competition and becomes a meta-tier weapon, the disposition deserves to drop further. If it's not good enough to warrant use at 3/5 then its popularity will drop down and it will probably range around the 4/5 mark on average.

Not only that, but even if a weapon DOES drop off in a bit of a cycle, it means you're pushed to try a different weapon entirely, which is the entire underlying purpose of Riven mods. The system I'm proposing works in all cases, because it balances itself out dynamically. It's not always going to be ideal for people who reach their 'perfect' stat goals (like 100% status pre multishot), but in the exact opposite side, it's going to work equally nicely for weapons becoming less popular. Don't ever forget how real the power creep is, there are so many great weapons locked away behind more modern metas, just waiting to have their riven disposition rebalanced.

I also understand that it might be nice to have 2-4 weeks before the rivens get adjusted, but just to put things in another perspective; the longer it takes for the adjustment to hit, the more variance there can be. Weekly updates means more frequent, but smaller-impact changes. Monthly (or longer) changes mean it's more likely for the market on certain rivens to grow bloated or overpriced, and leave people thoroughly dissatisfied when their meta weapon loses more points. Of course, if there was a limit on how many points a weapon could shift in a given adjustment period, that wouldn't be an issue either way, but I still have some reservations about the notion of limiting shifts to one step per period.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Xarteros

[Serialkillerwhale]

Also, if a weapon becomes meta because of it's riven dispostion and then overused because of it, doesn't that mean the entire concept has backfired?

[sixmille]

I think that we really need more frequent updates and some solid automation, because DE is simply not the best at maintaining all the new systems they keep piling up on top of the older ones. After a few months of uncertainty the system will find a new balance, there's no reason we'd see dramatic changes every month unless there are big balance changes. It's not black and white, weapons won't stopped being used because their disposition dropped by 1 point and won't become popular because they gained 1. That being said, I think it's far more important to get rid of DE's antiquated popularity data, the tonkor hasn't seen any use in years and it's time to move on, while the Tiberon is in pretty much every party nowadays due to the recent prime.

[tCartmant]

18 hours ago, Serialkillerwhale said:

Also, if a weapon becomes meta because of it's riven dispostion and then overused because of it, doesn't that mean the entire concept has backfired?

No because the riven disposition would go down and others would go up..