Prisms add nothing to the game...

[mortal zephyr]

...so long as numbers are a thing

Hear me out, what is the big compromise you need to make when making a build? What even is making a build in soulframe?

Totems and Runes are independent from virtues, and they're what changes weapons the most.

Arts are also independent from virtues, and are also the second most important point to any build. (Untill you have enough points to max out a tree)

Armor is an afterthought, especially with transmog

Weapons of split virtue are only limited on the early game, as late game even going the extreme opposite, such as going full grace on a courage/spirit weapon still allows you to reach the requirements.

Prisms does not create any build. They're a step in making one that to me just makes the process more time consuming to no tangible benefit. It is a puzzle with no reward.

Here's how every one of my builds are made:

Pick a weapon I want to play.
Pick the pact I want to play them with.

Then I do some micromanagement between prism, amulet and pact to reach the requirements for my weapon in the most efficient way possible

Then i dump the rest of my virtues into either grace if i want to prioritize weapons (unless magic, to which i dump spirit), or whichever arcanic i want to favor

Lastly i grab whichever armor gives me the best value

The exact same way it was with pre prisms. But now i have to juggle more than one factor in reaching requirements

Posted early to avoid letter cap

Point i'm making is that the only way for virtue prisms to add anything positive in terms of buildcrafting is if they have no numbers

Have them be "least favored", "balanced" and "most favored"

Mora's beast would be "most favored" for courage and "least favored" for the other two. Oro's ranger would be "balanced" for spirit and grace and "least favored" for courage

Dont even need the names, just make it intuitive

The distribution in the prism is what you have most of.

If a weapon has any pips on a given virtue, least favored gives damage equivalent to reaching the requirement, balanced gives damage equivalent to somewhere in the middle, and most favored gives the damage cap for that psrticular pip

Or even less complicate!

Pips enable a weapon and damage is defined by the weapon's level

Its just that keeping numbers alongside prisms just serve to give us alternate ways of min maxing them.

If you remove numbers, prisms can be given full authority over virtue, pacts can have more points and more insteresting nodes instead of needing to round virtues out, and talismans can be turned into something more meaningful like being the "player passive" slot

[hollow path]

+1 or 100% or what ever
I mentioned this problem before they ever came out but prisms are kinda just... nothing right now. They are not fun or interesting for build crafting and are as you pointed out just there for making sure numbers are correct

There are imo 2 solutions to this
-Make Virtues less burdomsom to change either through meaning or requirements or going to the system that was teased at one point of a matrix to reallocate
-Add something to prisms so they are different not just in allocation such as a passive skill or bonus so that they can release more prisms with similar allocations

I think in part too just remove requirements from gear, it serves no purpose other than to make us fiddle and tweek numbers that barely change anything. Just less friction to this part of the game because it doesnt seem to really have a lot of meaning espiecally the more you level up

[untold dock]

I feel like what you're describing is more a symptom of the various progressions systems being developed at different points and therefore not being very coherent on the whole rather than a problem caused by virtue prisms. Like even if we reverted to the manual allocation (which I really do not want to go back to personally), skill trees and totems would still be entirely disconnected from one's virtue build. I think the solution to this problem would be to integrate all these disparate systems better so that there's more meaningful playstyle decisions being made by selecting a specific prism to build from.

[hollow dirge]

That I can agree with. There isn’t enough unified purpose and connection with the systems. If there was more of this, a lot of these issues would go away.

However, I also feel that the purpose of the prism of guiding making builds doesn’t necessarily work especially with wylds. With wyld pacts you have enough virtue points across the board to trivialize the prism system

Speaking as a paragon founder

I don’t know if freely allocating points would necessarily be better, but I think the virtue system does need improvements

[bronze raft]

True

Systems do not have much coherence

[hollow dirge]

I also think that this system tends to break down in the endgame

Since you have enough stuff to circumvent it and bend it to your will

[bronze raft]

Yeah prism get pretty optional late game

However I do prefer prisms to what we have previously and they’ve got potential.

[hollow dirge]

That I can see, I just think they need something more as well

[bronze raft]

I just think it might be hard to remove numbers in the backend because computers love numbers

[hollow dirge]

That too

And gamers also love big numbers

[bronze raft]

For sure, a gimick/passive

Maybe

[hollow dirge]

Or some bonus for picking one over another

[bronze raft]

Yes, one of the main reasons I stuck with warframe

[hollow dirge]

I also think this is more of an issue with scaling and requirements

[bronze raft]

And the number reduction might ruffle some feathers with the technical sub community. Soulframe hides its values to appear more natural

[hollow dirge]

True

I don’t mind that but other people will for sure

[bronze raft]

Yeah

Scaling is weird and random

[hollow dirge]

A lot of this also might be helped by the player having a clear understanding of how all this works

It’s rather obfuscated rn

That right there is Soulframe’s biggest issue right now

[bronze raft]

Yeah 100%

[hollow dirge]

I get keeping aspects of the game mysterious but mechanics like this should not be one of them

[untold dock]

Don't get me wrong, prisms do still feel very much like a first pass to me and I do think they need some work to be what I envision them to be as a finalized element in the game. But as it relates to this topic, I think thinks like Wylds and endgame breaking virtues was still present under the previous system. I think the way forward would be to evaluate how to balance things better between them rather than look at prisms as the cause.

[hollow dirge]

True

I think it’s multiple smaller issues making a larger one

And the lack of player information on the mechanics is the biggest problem of those to me

[untold dock]

Yeah things feel a bit patchwork right now. Hopefully some of the big swings Steve mentioned at the start of the year help address it.

[hollow dirge]

For sure

[prime basalt]

Also, the alternative to Prisms is just virtue +/- buttons or sliders for manual allocation. It's the same thing, one just has a cheeky little interface and one is just what basically every other game does 🤷‍♂️

[hollow dirge]

Also true

[mortal zephyr]

point i'm making is that prisms as a concept are antithetical to number.
Steve said he wanted the game to be less about hyper optimization and exact numbers and testing builds, and more about playing and feeling the flow of the game

the whole idea and identity behind prisms are that they're meant to cut away the min maxing micromanagement of plus minuses you had to do with stat allocation

yet it just decentralized the problem, cause now i have to juggle the 3 virtues between prism, talisman and pact

i love them as a concept, i defended the early idea of meditations with teeth and nails, and i still see a lot of potential for it, but the numbers gotta go

[mortal zephyr]

they're in a rough spot right now
totems will be reworked next preludes, Combat Arts are already set for a rework for a while now. so they wont touch those concepts to make them fit the prisms, and wont touch the prisms to work with them

[mortal zephyr]

numbers on the back end can go up to 6 though.

[bronze raft]

Then I guess you could make it work. But often simple one digit numbers aren’t enough to model everything

[untold dock]

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "prisms as a concept are antithetical to number". Steve saying he doesn't want the game to be all about exact numbers still leaves room for numbers to be important. If numbers are done away with entirely it would just make an already fairly arcane system even more esoteric to the average player.

[mortal zephyr]

its just that it being number based opens for more stuff to interact with it, like Bravada, pact upgrades and talismans

which make the system even more complicated than the counterpart

remove the numbers and prisms become enablers. weapon has grace, run a grace for max damage, run a split grace for okay damage. Weapon is split, run the split for max damage, run a specific virtue for okay damage

it open pact trees to be more varied, it open talismans for more important feats like passive effects, it allows for buildcrafting to also be more straightforward

[prime basalt]

Tbh, other than the slight clunky nature of Prisms (mainly because you can't see any numbers until you actually equip one), I don't really see the drawback compared to sliders/manual assignments for Virtues? Prisms just trade some manual control for faster allocation. You either take a few seconds to do some basic math and change one or two things, or you take a few seconds to reset Virtues and manually click the + button until you get what you want.

Devs have already shared their desire to make Prisms more "impactful" on builds, so we can assume at some point they'll expand their role and perhaps add more unique functions, which is something they can't do with sliders/buttons. And if/when they do that, the current beef of "Prisms add nothing" goes away?

[mortal zephyr]

I'm not saying the old one is better, i'm saying prisms didn't accomplish what steve set them out to do. It decentralized stat distribution whereas before you would start and finish it in the stat allocation section

I'm saying keeping to numbers only complicate things, when i could just slot a prism and have it enable any weapon attuned to it, and have said weapon's damage depend solely on the level (and joineries once they figure that out)

[untold dock]

Just personally speaking this sounds overly simplified and I know I would get bored with a system like this very quickly.

I enjoy the friction of having to look at what matches my virtue distribution and make decisions based on what pact/weapon combo I want to make work

[mortal zephyr]

I mean, that aspect would be the same, but you wouldnt have instances where even with the dedicated prism you cant equip something without resetting your pact arts and changing your amulet

Prisms do not offer a compromise, it is a puzzle to let you equip what you want

[untold dock]

I'm saying those aspects are part of what I like. I enjoy fine tuning with talismans and pact arts and honestly I wish there was more customizations available in those categories.

[mortal zephyr]

Fair enough i guess

I much rather we had more meaningful choices overall

A sword differed from another, an armor piece had a reason to be used even with lower overall stats etc

[untold dock]

I definitely agree on that point.

[calm field]

I talked at length about my love for the prisms in the last thread that wanted to be rid of them

I think they're unique, and they feel really nice within the worldbuilding

That said, I also wouldn't mind if they were reworked in some way to make them significantly more impactful to our builds, so long as they stay what they are

If anything, I'd almost prefer if our entire Grace/Spirit/Courage number came from the prism

Make it important, like the prism is core to being an envoy, the magic crystal through which the powers that be imbue us with their own strength

[fluid kestrel]

+1, i also want to add that virtues are still problematic bc virtues dont necessarily boost their related ability. and some abilities dont need any virtue to fully function (Osceldas Bestone against bosses, fixed at x1.2 dmg boost and 5second duration neither scaling with courage) or they scale better with other virtues (Duelos Flintlock deals more dmg on grace when hitting headshots, Bravada uses "main stat x0.25 + spirit x0.1, so shifting into spirit gives you less boosted main stat for yourself). i also dont feel incentives for courage for extra hp or spirit for cooldown reduction if enemies usually dont survive one proper rotation with min maxed weapon dmg.
so right now prisms only exist to do a small puzzle of "how do i get exactly X points in this virtue to meet my weapons requirement without wasting stats". manual allocation would make this way easier and faster.
i like the idea of what prisms could be, i like how they look, i like the vibe. but what they do is irrelevant for matters of build diversity

[fluid kestrel]

the armor problem would be so easy to solve with set bonuses

[mortal zephyr]

I dont think set bonuses are the way... I already wear full sets all the time. Armor is an after thought, you slot in the one that gives you most defense on your given stat spread

Which is 9 out of 10 a full set

Set bonuses would just further push this idea

[fluid kestrel]

But you want incentive to use armor with lower stats? A unique set bonus could do that

[twilit torrent]

I'm not sure prisms are the problem(since all they do is automatically allocate numbers), and they're confusing enough with those numbers, so I don't think doing away with the numbers would help either. I feel like it used to be more straightforward what they affected, but now I can swap prisms around to try and make weapons affinity work(and I don't really see why some affinities are the way they are when the weapons do exactly the same thing, like some secondary short swords that are grace and spirit, or grace and courage, but they do the same thing). And then we have armours that give different stats depending on the virtue we have, but when you wear different pacts you get different results. And then there's totems. Everything is very confusing for me right now. I think if the virtues are supposed to define play styles, the weapons and armours should reflect that, but as it is, the only difference between one virtue and another is which gear we can equip and how much damage we do.
Like others have pointed out, the different systems don't really communicate with each other, and things are unclear, confusing, and sometimes irrelevant.

[calm field]

Okay, I've done some thinking on the prisms cuz its on my mind, and I wonder if this might not make people more satisfied

So far, I've heard a lot of complaints about the simplicity of direct stat allocation, vs the relatively minor impact that some folks feel prisms have, and talks of numbers vs theme, and intensity vs variety

I think I may have a solution that might make people more happy

give me some time here to lay it all out, then maybe tell me what yall think?

So, Prisms are basically a triskellion (minus the circle) yeah?

And each is associated with a virtue. Currently prisms cover a spectrum of one or two Virtues, with it being lit up somewhere, and that changes your allocation of base stats, kinda like so

Currently that leaves room for about 10 distinct prisms (that vary significantly anyways)

In a theoretical rework of prisms, I think I would reduce this to 7. Just one for each pure virtue, one each for a mix of any two colors, and one singular prism that is equally distributed

When you equip one, it would determine your entire stat allocation, Frames would have stat boosts fully removed, in favor of 3 unique abilities where the boosts currently are on their trees.

Instead, when you equip one of the now 7 prisms (also a lovely magic number), that'd give you the entire stat allocation, fully determining what equipment you can use and what scales best

To compromise this an equipped prism would have its own tree, ome that boosts your scaling with certain weapon types, or any equipment that favors that Virtue really, and a few unique abilities of its own, allowing for a boost to variety in build types.

For example, a pure Grace prism like shown here might boost the fire rate of a bow, or damage dealt by attacks on unaware foes or what have you, and instead of in your Frame, the extra boost to a Virtue would be found in the prism itself, and supplemented by Talismans if any extra points are still needed for a piece of equipment

It stays thematically strong, makes the prism deeply impactful, and allows for build variety, leaving Stats pretty much entirely to the prism, and core abilities mostly to the frame

Whats more, it'd allow people to feel like they're really getting the most out of what they choose, whether they go all in on a single Virtue, or choose to spead across them

Okay, thats the pitch. What do yall think?

[stark karma]

System gets simplified while allowing room for growth and variation as well as also being something that devs could implement and then potentially never have to touch again. Not bad; it might not be the kind of system I prefer, but I'll take that kind of system over what we have now.

+1 to that and +1 to the OP

[mortal zephyr]

Honestly +1

Anything to centralize virtue distribution back to the virtue section of the menu

I suggested once having pact upgrades branch off into the 3 virtues, and unlocking an upgrade would essentially be like opening a gate. Then, based on your virtue points, it would activate the nodes you've opened in the pact tree

So even if you change your prism, you dont need to redistribute points in the pact tree