Kinda Spoilers Maybe(?) "The new sword" the good the bad and the unsettling.

[Oreades]

Firstly I'll start off by saying I'd have put this in Weapons but the issues that the new sword brings up are more general than just a "weapon" issue. 

The two things that it does aren't inherently bad (going to rank 40 and getting people to dump Forma into an item) however how it goes about doing those seem backwards and concerning. 

Firstly it holds out rank 40 until you have dumped 5 forma into it. Which on it's own might be a kinda interesting mechanic however it also withholds Masery XP until you have dumped said Forma into it. Which changes the dynamic from "I'm adding Forma because I actually like this weapon" to "I'm adding Forma because I won't get the Mastery otherwise". 

And I'm sure there are going to be the standard "But it makes sense because you haven't truly "mastered" it until it's reached it's full rank" which would be fine if they just wanted to make me grind it out to 40 but toss we've gone from 1 leveling rotation and the being able to decide IF we want to take it further to 6 leveling cycles just to get the MR. 

Part of the reason I bothered with this sword was because I still have 22hrs of research on the two Reinforcements weapons and I was spitting distance from MR25. Which is also probably why I noticed I was only getting a dribble of a few hundred Mastery XP per cycle. The first time I looked I had like 470~ XP remaining next cycle I had like 200something and then I had 87~ to level. Which look an awful lot like they just spread the MR you would normally get over those six cycles. Admittedly I didn't look at the initial push because I was expecting it to roll me over to 25 nor did I started looking around the second cycle. 

 

The Mod capacity is certainly nice but it goes above and beyond any current (that will be important) realistic requirement of the player base. Which suggests to me that we are staring down the barrel of some really expensive mods in the future that will undoubtedly require  "encourage" the players to undertake this strangely tedious application of getting to rank 40 again with future weapons. At least it doesn't seem like there would be a point in getting players to grind a weapon again and again and again and again and again and again just to leave them with like 30-40 unused mod points in their pool. Which is another concerning indication that this very well might become a standard. 

Then there is the fact that we have now had to Forma five of the eight slots, which leaves us with three unmodded slots presumptively for the upcoming 3 par Tau mod set that will undoubtably hopefully fit into it if all of us have managed to go blindly mod the correct polarities. Which gets me into a long standing issue I've had with the single polarity system that Warframe has embraced for all these years. A system that stifles experimentation and essentially enforces a meta because if you haven't polarized everything "perfectly" you have wasted not only the forma (be it time/money) but also your time in re-leveling that weapon as you now have to depolarize that incorrect polarity into the correct polarity. 

Which is going to take me down a rabbit hole of "we need a multi-polarity system" that encourages people to experiment and rewards them for every Forma invested into their gear. Not in the form of Power creep but in the form of being able to try out different builds. Where you add Forma not because the game is forcing you to by withholding Mastery XP if we don't but because you want try something out and not have it feel like it's wasting your time/effort if it doesn't pan out. Which is IMHO a lot of the reason people stick to the Meta.  

 

Anyhow not really sure where I'm going with this at this point, The Sword is kinda interesting but I really hope it's a one off and not an indication that the Devs are gearing up for Ultra Grind mode from here on out.  

[ReinAxefury]

I think they just made this as some kind of "gift" for founders, so they could reach mr26, so i assume it's just an exception that's not gonna happen again. But, if that wasn't the case and we see more weapons like this, i would be okay with it, as long as it's not frequent, like, 1 or 2 per year it's enough and i hope those included rank bonuses too, but more would be too much imo. About polarities, i like to think this extra mod capacity is there just so people can even equip mods in the wrong polarities, at least for now, but more primed mods are a posibility too.

[Xarteros]

I'm planning on testing whether or not you can forma one of your previously formad slots. Not sure if the weapon just requires 5 forma, or 5 actual polarities.

[Teshin_Dax]

There is no need for any complains. You NEED to forma it to get the mastery points and sentient bonus. You NEED to keep it because it will be important for the future…
Sooo.. most player wouldnt ever delete a weapon they have forma'd multiple times. And thats a good thing.. Because if the weapon would behave like any other, we would Maybe have the same issue where player are deleting it just like the ether dagger or cronus weapon

[Xarteros]

1 minute ago, ReinAxefury said:

I think they just made this as some kind of "gift" for founders, so they could reach mr26, so i assume it's just an exception that's not gonna happen again. But, if that wasn't the case and we see more weapons like this, i would be okay with it, as long as it's not frequent, like, 1 or 2 per year it's enough and i hope those included rank bonuses too, but more would be too much imo. About polarities, i like to think this extra mod capacity is there just so people can even equip mods in the wrong polarities, at least for now, but more primed mods are a posibility too.

I think OP is right, the extra capacity is there to let us make easier use of the Sacrifice mods, since we can't make Tau polarities ourselves.

[AEP8FlyBoy]

I don't think many more weapons (especially the 400+ ones we have) will ever have this sort of functionality.

But I also doubt this will be the last weapon we see with this special function.
Perhaps a series? Primary and Secondary and then nothing more.