Thoughts on System Design: Mods

This is a carry-over from another thread (filters & sorting) discussing whether or not the design of the mod system itself is ok as is or should be re-tooled. I'm firmly in the camp of, "This system is bad and needs a rework." My main reasons:
  1. The design is confused and inconsistent - Either a system should be designed to encourage mod swapping, or it should encourage static placement. This system seems to be trying to do both. The gates to swapping are low (low cost, no barriers, systems like loadouts exist to assist in mass swapping). This design encourages mod swapping player behavior.

    However, the complexity and number of mod combinations available to players, the number of heroes in the game with their own unique mod needs, and the lack of features like quick-swap is a design that suggests an intent to limit or even prohibit mod swapping player behavior. CG has also evidently previously stated they wanted players to favor keeping mods over swapping. Good game design is consistent and should facilitate player behavior that reflects the intent of whatever that design is. The current design accomplishes neither of those things.
  2. Unmanageable at scale -- As this game continues to add new heroes to the game, old characters and their mods become outdated, or players may want to continuously refresh where their existing mods are allocated (especially given the gated farming structure that severely limits players' ability to farm up new good mods consistently). Every new hero in the game adds a minimum of 6 new mods a player (who's interested in using that hero) needs to acquire in order to maintain their current roster as well as be able to bring in the new hero. Scalability, by definition, means a system can function just as well whether at large or small scales. If you're a new player who joins this game when it has 30 heroes, your experience of the mod management system is significantly different than that of a new player who joins this game when there are 200 heroes. That is not an example of a scalable system.
  3. Lack of true customization options - The sheer size of the matrix of possibilities in the mod system suggests a plethora of customization options, but in practice, every hero has a specific set of stat requirements needed to capitalize on their kit's strengths, which renders the vast majority of possible mods virtually useless, unless you simply don't pay attention to (or don't care about) utilizing each character correctly. Mods do not change a hero's ability to perform well in one given way vs. another; they simply enhance a hero's ability to perform, period. So either you have bad mods, average mods, good mods, or god mods, but none of this is actual customization, just power enhancement. I don't understand the point of having a highly complex mod system in the first place if it's not actually providing anything other than enhancing player power. If the primary benefit is purely turning a stock character into a god character, it serves the players (especially newer players) far better to introduce a system with fewer choices, fewer possibilities of trash, and less confusion overall.
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