Why can't we forma differently in different configurations?

[crazyjr]

I was looking at some builds and noticed, that you can run different mods on different configs for weapons or warframes. Since that is already in the game. Why can't we setup different configs with different polarities? IE for instance, if you have a frame and weapon, that use different setups, requiring different polarities. You'd have to run two different weapons/frames. Why can't we forma 1 config, instead of all three? That would add to the utility, of a warframe or weapon. I don't see, where the balance would be upset, if this was done, Other than people would not have to run two of everything to have two differing setups

if i'm missing some balance issue, please let me know, Otherwise it doesn't sound like a bad thing

Edited December 6, 2018 by crazyjr

[Voltage]

The utility you want would mean Warframes that use 2 different builds with the same polarities require double the Forma. Likewise, there is a work around, but it requires you to obtain an additional copy of that gear item. Multiple of a Warframe for example. It is clunky yes, but it accomplishes what you want, costs less Forma than your suggested post, and gives you more config slots to work with.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Voltage

[uxx0]

Because that way it would require you to put even more Forma into your gear. Most of the time you can fit all the builds anyway without having to change polarities. And in the rare cases where they don't you can just obtain another one of that weapon/gear, which amounts to almost the same thing you're suggesting.

[Oreades]

Personally what I would love to see is the ability to add multiple polarities to a single slot. 

It solves a lot of the issues with build stagnation, doesn't add any power creep to the game and generally rewards experimentation. Since every forma you add has value and there is no forced formaing like with the Paracesis (in that you can't get all the MR out unless you put in 5 forma), people would be adding Forma because they wanted to. Since IMHO the biggest issue with trying a new/different build is that if it doesn't work out, you just wasted that forma and need to re-forma back to the old build. So a lot of people just never bother. 

As far as how it would work, simple

• As long as there was one correct polarity in that slot you get the reduced cost bonus from whatever mod you attempt to apply
• However if there was no correct polarity on a polarized slot it would work just as it does now with a penalty increasing the cost
• The exception becomes Umbral mods for which my suggestion is to remove the penalty all together so regardless of the polarity (outside of Umbral) they never have a cost change. Which curbs the issue people have/will have by not punishing them for a polarity that they literally can't add to their builds anyhow. They just cost 16pts outside of an Umbral slot, the end. 

 

[ScribbleClash]

6 minutes ago, uxx0 said:

Because that way it would require you to put even more Forma into your gear.

Lets not lie to ourselves, this

6 minutes ago, uxx0 said:

And in the rare cases where they don't you can just obtain another one of that weapon/gear

is the actual reason. Crafting an additional weapon requires you to have more slots. Ultimately that means you need to buy more slots.

I'm still against the suggestion. You should just be able to add polarities on top of the ones you already have, ending up in a universal polarity if you get them all.

[uxx0]

56 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Personally what I would ?love to see is the ability to add multiple polarities to a single slot.  ?

That would actually be really neat. Or have some kind of special Forma for an universal polarity, which would have to be acquired from some endgame activity.

53 minutes ago, ScribbleClash said:

is the actual reason. Crafting an additional weapon requires you to have more slots. Ultimately that means you need to buy more slots.

Just for comparison: 2 weapon slots come for 12p, while 3 Forma come for 35p. You decide what's cheaper.

Edited December 6, 2018 by uxx0

[crazyjr]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

The utility you want would mean Warframes that use 2 different builds with the same polarities require double the Forma. Likewise, there is a work around, but it requires you to obtain an additional copy of that gear item. Multiple of a Warframe for example. It is clunky yes, but it accomplishes what you want, costs less Forma than your suggested post, and gives you more config slots to work with.

Double the forma? if you need two different setups and have to forma to get them, you are already using the forma, You are just dumping them, into two different warframes. you are technically using the same forma with double the warframes. with my idea you'd only need one warframe, but forma each config as you wish

Edited December 6, 2018 by crazyjr

[crazyjr]

14 minutes ago, uxx0 said:

That would actually be really neat. Or have some kind of special Forma for an universal polarity, which would have to be acquired from some endgame activity.

Just for comparison: 2 weapon slots come for 12p, while 3 Forma come for 35p. You decide what's cheaper.

You can get free and built formas, through the Plague Star event. Can you get free weapon and WF slots? Nope, BTW an extra WF slot is 20P. I got no problem putting the work in and can easily get formas free, alerts and the plague star have given me over 100 formas

Edited December 6, 2018 by crazyjr

[crazyjr]

1 hour ago, Oreades said:

Personally what I would love to see is the ability to add multiple polarities to a single slot. 

It solves a lot of the issues with build stagnation, doesn't add any power creep to the game and generally rewards experimentation. Since every forma you add has value and there is no forced formaing like with the Paracesis (in that you can't get all the MR out unless you put in 5 forma), people would be adding Forma because they wanted to. Since IMHO the biggest issue with trying a new/different build is that if it doesn't work out, you just wasted that forma and need to re-forma back to the old build. So a lot of people just never bother. 

As far as how it would work, simple

• As long as there was one correct polarity in that slot you get the reduced cost bonus from whatever mod you attempt to apply
• However if there was no correct polarity on a polarized slot it would work just as it does now with a penalty increasing the cost
• The exception becomes Umbral mods for which my suggestion is to remove the penalty all together so regardless of the polarity (outside of Umbral) they never have a cost change. Which curbs the issue people have/will have by not punishing them for a polarity that they literally can't add to their builds anyhow. They just cost 16pts outside of an Umbral slot, the end. 

 

I get why not a multiple polarity slot, My point is there are three configs, If i could forma each config different, it would make more sense than all three being the same forma build. to me that is pointless and redundant. You don't need 3 configs set up the same, to me it doesn't make sense

[Oreades]

5 minutes ago, crazyjr said:

I get why not a multiple polarity slot, My point is there are three configs, If i could forma each config different, it would make more sense than all three being the same forma build. to me that is pointless and redundant. You don't need 3 configs set up the same, to me it doesn't make sense

With the ability to add multiple polarities to a single slot you wouldn't need to change the polarity of anything, it would just work. 

Three configurations would still be very relevant because the important thing with the configurations isn't changing the polarities it's the ability to apply different mods to those slots.  

[crazyjr]

@Oreades, I was saying i understand why they would not, because you'd forma every slot with these and never run our of points. Honestly i got no trouble working for it, would just like the option to change only one config. In my eyes your idea is unbalanced because nobody would use the other forma, with my idea you can have the option to do as you need without spending on a slot you really do not need

Edited December 6, 2018 by crazyjr

[Oreades]

2 minutes ago, crazyjr said:

@Oreades, I was saying i understand why they would not, because you'd forma every slot with these and never run our of points. Honestly i got no trouble working for it, would just like the option to change only one config

And? you'd still be working for it with a multi polarity system. 

We already hit peak power with our builds, all the current system does after that is stifle diversity. Just changing the polarities individually across three different configurations does is leave you with three separate peak power builds. If you want to diverge from any one of those you end up right back where we are now being punished for trying something new. It really just kicks the can down the road a bit. 

[LuckyCharm]

On one hand I like the suggestion, but simply letting us change the polarity of mod slots for the ones you've forma'd on each of A,B,C would fix all issues I have with trying new builds out after investing heavily into say.. an umbral build on one of the slots. I get that formaing something is supposed to narrow your choices to expand your power, but it really just seems like an ancient limitation now that we have this many frames and weapons to pick from. (that and once you've done everything and can 1shot everything in game currently all that's left to you is just messing around with your builds and fashion)

[xX-Kuro-Xx]

+1 for multiple formas on the same slot

I'm a naive relatively new player, but I like the idea of being able to put multiple formas on the same slot. It doesn't seem like it really "hurts" anything, and it makes the forma progression potentially last longer, have more optimization choices, and be more complex. 

The most bang for the buck in the first 2-3 formas will clearly be to add a polarity to a slot that doesn't have one. However, after you fit the build you want, maybe the 4th forma would expand an existing slot with a second polarity, so you can use more flexible builds with the same weapon.

This would also be useful for the operator aura and eximus slots. 

It might also come in handy for existing polarities that just don't really match what you're doing right now. You could second-polarity over it, but still go back and use it one day.

Does it really "hurt" something by eliminating the constraint of a single forma setup? Not really. In a looter where you're basically trying to get everything and do everything, it just seems like more "everything".

From a "revenue" perspective, it seems like this encourages more forma spending, not less.. because now you can have a justifyable reason to have 8-12 formas on an item instead of 4-6.

Edited December 7, 2018 by xX-Kuro-Xx

[ScribbleClash]

7 hours ago, uxx0 said:

That would actually be really neat. Or have some kind of special Forma for an universal polarity, which would have to be acquired from some endgame activity.

Just for comparison: 2 weapon slots come for 12p, while 3 Forma come for 35p. You decide what's cheaper.

You can get formas for 0p. I say that is cheaper.

[Tiltskillet]

While it could be an incremental improvement on what we have now, tying polarity to configurations would feel like a wasted opportunity to me.  Multi-polarity would be so much more elegant of a solution, I'd really rather have that. 

I'd be surprised if it were a simple boost to the current forma system though.  I'd expect DE to use it as an opportunity for new progression, requiring something new  besides or instead of forma.  Which is fine. (Probably.) 

On top of that, I'd pay to get more configuration slots.  And I say that even though all of it together (plus additional appearance slots) might make my Nezha 2 and Nezha 3 feel a little superfluous.

[crazyjr]

6 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

While it could be an incremental improvement on what we have now, tying polarity to configurations would feel like a wasted opportunity to me.  Multi-polarity would be so much more elegant of a solution, I'd really rather have that. 

I'd be surprised if it were a simple boost to the current forma system though.  I'd expect DE to use it as an opportunity for new progression, requiring something new  besides or instead of forma.  Which is fine. (Probably.) 

On top of that, I'd pay to get more configuration slots.  And I say that even though all of it together (plus additional appearance slots) might make my Nezha 2 and Nezha 3 feel a little superfluous.

All i was saying, was having multiple polarity slots would ruin the power scaling, since it would ruin primed mods soon as any new unbral mods come out. Think about it, without a compromise or trade off, everyone would run top mods and basically destroy the game. At least with my idea, the balance is still in place. You can have different configs that make sense, yet there are still trade-offs from one to another. And all without needing a second Warframe or weapon, one nice neat package

Edited December 7, 2018 by crazyjr

[Tiltskillet]

5 hours ago, crazyjr said:

All i was saying, was having multiple polarity slots would ruin the power scaling, since it would ruin primed mods soon as any new unbral mods come out. Think about it, without a compromise or trade off, everyone would run top mods and basically destroy the game. At least with my idea, the balance is still in place. You can have different configs that make sense, yet there are still trade-offs from one to another. And all without needing a second Warframe or weapon, one nice neat package

As far as the traditional polarities go, I should clarify that I don't envision a 1-stop shop "superforma" giving all of them at once.  Instead, like Oreades proposed up thread, we should accrete polarities on a slot one at a time. So, V, V -, V - ), and so on. Up until you'd built up every one on every slot, you could still face the drawback of mismatched polarities.

We can, in effect, do the same thing now through the clumsy method of multiple Warframe copies.  So this can be QOL instead of powercreep.

You're right, umbra isnt as simple to integrate.   But I think that's because we're not seeing the complete system yet.  Even so, I can guess at some solutions.  Like, adding the ability to add umbra polarities...but on non-umbra frames those slots would only count as neutral for umbra mods.

I'm not saying your proposal, implemented correctly, wouldn't be a big improvement on what we have now.  Only that there's an option that better addresses a root problem, and I'd rather see DE work on solutions  than workarounds.

[crazyjr]

On 2018-12-07 at 2:07 PM, Tiltskillet said:

As far as the traditional polarities go, I should clarify that I don't envision a 1-stop shop "superforma" giving all of them at once.  Instead, like Oreades proposed up thread, we should accrete polarities on a slot one at a time. So, V, V -, V - ), and so on. Up until you'd built up every one on every slot, you could still face the drawback of mismatched polarities.

We can, in effect, do the same thing now through the clumsy method of multiple Warframe copies.  So this can be QOL instead of powercreep.

You're right, umbra isnt as simple to integrate.   But I think that's because we're not seeing the complete system yet.  Even so, I can guess at some solutions.  Like, adding the ability to add umbra polarities...but on non-umbra frames those slots would only count as neutral for umbra mods.

I'm not saying your proposal, implemented correctly, wouldn't be a big improvement on what we have now.  Only that there's an option that better addresses a root problem, and I'd rather see DE work on solutions  than workarounds.

Each polarity represents a different school, we have 5, Umbra is not a school and special in only Ex Umbra is the only one with them. So it is my belief, that umbra will never be a forma polarity.

 

Let me make sure, i understand your idea. Run a forma for a polarity, then run a different polarity, with another forma in the same slot and both be switchable? If that is what you propose, then that is just as much forma, as my idea proposes, And if it effects all three configs, then you still have the exact same problem, all three configs change as you change polarities. At least with mine, you can custom forma each config to what you'd like. Then you have two or maybe three configs that are very different but also maximized for the task you want to use it for.

My problem is not with polarity formas , it's that i can't decide if i forma 1 or all three configs

[(PSN)hazlett_40]

On 2018-12-06 at 5:22 PM, uxx0 said:

That would actually be really neat. Or have some kind of special Forma for an universal polarity, which would have to be acquired from some endgame activity.

Just for comparison: 2 weapon slots come for 12p, while 3 Forma come for 35p. You decide what's cheaper.

Or you can do relics for a forma blueprint for zero plat

[TimiPerson]

On 2018-12-06 at 3:19 PM, Voltage said:

The utility you want would mean Warframes that use 2 different builds with the same polarities require double the Forma. Likewise, there is a work around, but it requires you to obtain an additional copy of that gear item. Multiple of a Warframe for example. It is clunky yes, but it accomplishes what you want, costs less Forma than your suggested post, and gives you more config slots to work with.

Eh, tbh this is just wrong. If you have an expensive build then by making the build it gatekeeps you from making and using other builds. For example, I am here rn to see if there is a way. Why? Bc I want a Mirage build for both Hall of Mirrors, but also Prism. Both are very different and very expensive. Can I get both builds for less forma? No. If anything it costs double the forma AND I have to earn a second frame. It saves me literally 0 forma. A better "forma saving" system would act more like the Helminth abilities, where when you forma a slot you can CHOOSE to forma for all 3 configs, or just 1 or 2. Instead, I just am going to have 2 useless configs. What am I gonna put, mods that don't accomplish the task I want? With this example in mind, your reply contradicts itself. Am I spending less forma? Sure. But I'm not getting "more config slots to work with." If I want one I have to give up the other. (If I want "more config slots to work with" then I need to spend more forma PLUS buy another Warframe.) Is it clunky? Yes. But it also doesn't accomplish what he or I want and it costs more.

[(XBOX)Exoni Prime]

On 2023-06-21 at 4:09 PM, TimiPerson said:

Eh, tbh this is just wrong. If you have an expensive build then by making the build it gatekeeps you from making and using other builds. For example, I am here rn to see if there is a way. Why? Bc I want a Mirage build for both Hall of Mirrors, but also Prism. Both are very different and very expensive. Can I get both builds for less forma? No. If anything it costs double the forma AND I have to earn a second frame. It saves me literally 0 forma. A better "forma saving" system would act more like the Helminth abilities, where when you forma a slot you can CHOOSE to forma for all 3 configs, or just 1 or 2. Instead, I just am going to have 2 useless configs. What am I gonna put, mods that don't accomplish the task I want? With this example in mind, your reply contradicts itself. Am I spending less forma? Sure. But I'm not getting "more config slots to work with." If I want one I have to give up the other. (If I want "more config slots to work with" then I need to spend more forma PLUS buy another Warframe.) Is it clunky? Yes. But it also doesn't accomplish what he or I want and it costs more.

You don't have to buy the frame you can farm it completely free...generally you can rush the blueprints and potato it for much cheaper. So that argument is thrown out the window.

Your Argument is flawed in logic contradicted and proven to be wrong in one sentence. "Bc I want a Mirage build for both Hall of Mirrors, but also Prism. Both are very different and very expensive." You acknowledge both are built significantly differently and yet want both on the same build which is practically impossible to fit. 

Why it makes more sense to build an extra warframe entirely is because mathematically speaking you'd have more build variety for both setups. 6 and 6 sounds better than 3 and 3. Idk. Just me.

On top of the developers constantly making farming in this game a complete joke, there's this. Wowzers, makes my hard effort feel rewarded.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2023-06-21 at 9:09 PM, TimiPerson said:

Eh, tbh this is just wrong.

Interesting thread nekro...

Still, to point out; the main point of the argument isn't that you would waste more Forma on two different builds, it's that you would waste double the forma on two builds that require the same polarities.

So if you were building a Zephyr (like me!) for a no-Augment, max-range setup there's very little difference than one for a more balanced-stat Jet Stream or Target Fixation build. But, to put those two builds on, I would need to Forma two different Configs, doubling the amount of Forma I need to spend, and even wasting a second Aura Forma if I wanted to put one on.

This is the vast majority of the game, despite niche builds existing for many frames.

If you want to call out something that's genuinely wrong, call out Oreadas' claim that allowing multiple polarities in a single slot will eliminate build stagnation. It won't. People who don't change their builds still won't, and people that do change their builds still will. What it removes is DE's rolling progression of getting the Community to grind/buy more Forma whenever they release something new. Considering that the current situation is a bit of a revenue spinner for them, with thousands of players just skipping the build-times and buying Forma, every single time there's a new frame/Augment/change to Status or AoE/rework to frame or weapon... I don't think that idea is ever going to fly.

Still.

The Devs really have, honestly and truly, made the situation clear; They want you to farm a duplicate. Every time. There's dozens of things that players have asked for that is simply answered by 'farm a second one'. And that's the way they want it, even if a vocal part of the player base wants something different. Until DE invent a different way of getting thousands of players to jump through the hoops they want them to jump through, it won't change.