devtrackers.gg
Greetings Tenno!
With the upcoming release of The Deadlock Protocol, we wanted to outline some further changes we are making to the Riven disposition process in response to player feedback.
When we introduced separate dispositions for each weapon variant back in November 2019, we planned to give new weapons a disposition of 1 (the “average”), or matching the lowest member of the weapon family if it already had a disposition lower than 1. Unfortunately, this meant that powerful new weapons (like the Kuva Lich collection) might have Rivens that start too strong, forcing reductions in accordance with our balance methodology.
In order to prevent this situation, we will be changing this policy: going forward, all new weapons will be released with the minimum Riven disposition of 0.5. For The Deadlock Protocol, this includes the dispositions on newly added primary kitguns, in addition to regular weapons (secondary kitgun dispositions will remain as-is.)
This more conservative approach will give us a fair chance to see how powerful and popular a weapon is on its own, before giving them access to potentially game-changing Rivens with higher dispositions. We may have an idea of how popular certain weapons will be, but under this new system, waiting a few months for players to integrate the weapon into their arsenals will give us a much clearer picture, without ever having to start high and backtrack.
This change leads us directly to another common piece of player feedback: weapons with very low dispositions are sometimes not worth equipping unless you get a very good roll, and if a weapon is way off of where it should be disposition-wise, it can take several waves of changes for it to reach an appropriate power level.
That’s why we’re also revising another aspect of our process: In the past, we’ve only changed Riven dispositions by up to 0.2 at a time. Since new weapons are starting from the very bottom, Prime Access balance passes will increase dispositions on newer weapons by larger values, when warranted. Disposition decreases will still be limited to small incremental changes, but with these new procedures, decreases should be far less common.
Thanks to everyone for understanding, as we make changes to help make the Riven balancing procedure a more positive experience - literally!