A take on multi-polarizing slots

[Kthal]

Lately, I have seen many requests for multi-polarity slots, and suggestions as to how to implement them. Being completely honest, most of them don't sit quite right with me, either leaning towards extreme RNG or being a little on the easy side. While I am in favour of multi-polarity slots, there are a few rules I feel it should stick to.

• A maximum of two polarities in a slot. Any more would make modding too brainless. Some limitations makes things interesting.
• Each polarity should use a Forma, and require the item be ranked from 0-30. Two polarities means two Forma used.
• There should be a moderate cost in addition to the usual Forma and time investment. It should be cheaper to polarize two slots once than one slot twice, albeit the same effort.
• Umbra polarities are special, and should not be able to be hybridized.
• A conflicting mod in a slot with two polarities should have a heavier penalty cost. Currently, putting a conflicting mod in a slot increases the drain by 25%. 0.25 drain rounds down, 0.5 or 0.75 drain rounds up. A conflict with double polarity should have double the penalty, +50% mod cost.

 

Walking through the process and costs I'd like to see for a dual-polarity:

Prerequisite step: Have a polarized slot in the piece of equipment with one of the two polarities you want on the slot. This can be a default polarity (but not Umbra), or one previously added via a Forma.

Step 1: Purchase a "Hybrid-Forma" blueprint from the Focus screen for 100,000 Focus points from any school. Purchase two "Polarity Shards" from the schools (Madurai, Naramon, Unairu, Vazarin, Zenurik) of the two polarities you want on the slot, costing 50,000 Focus points from each of their respective schools.

Step 2: At the Foundry, start crafting the Hybrid-Forma. Much like when starting an Eidolon Lens, select a Polarity Shard for each of the polarities you want to install. Aside from the Polarity Shards, the blueprint should require a Forma and a couple rare/uncommon resources, I'd suggest 2x Argon or 1x Nitain would be fair. After building, the Hybrid-Forma is now locked to two polarities.

Step 3: Go to install the locked Hybrid-Forma, overwriting a slot which already matches one of its polarities. For example, a Madurai-Naramon Forma would only be usable on existing Madurai or Naramon slots. Much like when using a regular Forma, the item being upgraded is reset to rank 0.

Step 3a: If you wish to overwrite a dual polarity, it can either be done using a regular Forma, which would overwrite the slot back to a single polarity, or by using another Hybrid-Forma with one polarity in common. Item still gets reset to rank 0 etc.

 

 

A minor issue with the Focus system is, once a player has fully unlocked the various trees, there are no sinks for further Focus points. Since the schools share the names of five polarities, it seems only fitting that they are somehow linked to the polarizing process, at least later in the game. I believe that my above suggestion fits with this quite nicely.

There are a number of points where this may be technically difficult to implement. An example of a significant change while maintaining the costs would be to do away with the Hybrid-Forma blueprint/build step altogether, instead just selecting any Polarity Shards (in this case costing 100,000 Focus each) to use while in the regular Forma screen. This may or may not play nicely with the UI.

As I've described it, this system does overlook hybrid Penjaga polarities. This could be remedied by adding Penjaga Shards to Simaris, Master Teasonai, a rare wildlife drop, or some other companion-related location.

Currently, there are no variant Forma. Adding variant Forma as above would likely prepare the inner workings of the game to allow for Umbra-Forma at a later date, post-New War.

 

TLDR:

Cost:

• 1 Forma per polarity (with associated leveling 0-30)
• 100,000 Focus from any school
• 50,000 Focus from each of the schools of the polarities being installed
• Some resources/Credits, the usual Foundry stuff

Restrictions:

• Maximum of two polarities per slot
• Umbra polarities cannot be hybridized

Penalty:

• Mismatched mods in a dual-polarity slot suffer double penalty, +50% mod cost instead of +25%

Benefits of suggested implementation:  

• Enables a renewable sink for Focus points after maxing out trees
• Opens the door for potential Umbra-Forma implementation at a later date

Edited September 15, 2018 by Kthal
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[BiancaRoughfin]

Not going to happen...

It would become too easy for players to make multiple builds in a single loadout window. I think it would be more reasonable for them to make something that unbinds the B and C loadout options from the A one, so these could be formed individually and differently from the first one.