Affinity assignation encourages idle play (spec. with Sanctuary)

[Undeceiver]

Couple things before I start. First, anyone is free to say whatever they want, but I personally don't want to sound as the usual "Omg this game is terrible fix your broken S#&$ you don't care about your game blablabla". If I thought the game was terrible, I wouldn't be playing it and definitely wouldn't be posting here a suggestion on how to improve it. I could go on for a while on the psychology of people who do do that, but this is not the place.

Second, I don't think the problem is with Sanctuary itself (I think there are other problems with Sanctuary, specially how host migration completely #*!%s it up, for which I already posted a post on the bug report forum). It's a problem with how affinity is split between weapons, warframe, and so on.

The situation: I have a weapon that I want to level up as quick as possible, and it's a weapon that, specially unlevelled, is not very keen to be used efficiently on missions that award lots of affinity: Sanctuary. For example, a bow.

The problem: The best way for me to level up my bow is to go into Sanctuary and literally do nothing. Why? Well, of course you always have to have a Warframe equipped so you'd think: Equip a Warframe that can kill with abilities and kill with that. For instance, Equinox. That's what I used to do, until I realized that's counterproductive. Every kill that I get with Equinox is a kill that doesn't give affinity to my bow. My Warframe is literally stealing the affinity from my bow. I'd very much rather just be idle and let other people in the squad get the kills, so that 75% of the affinity goes to the bow.

Now, some of you will try to say that what I ought to do is to get kills with the bow. You can get your hands dirty all you want trying to explain to me in detail how every weapon can be made useful (even when unlevelled, even with low mastery rank), or how there are missions which are also good for affinity besides Sanctuary. That's just missing the point. Of course you can level a bow (even unmodded) relatively quickly through other methods in this game, but by far the fastest one is idling in Sanctuary.

This is not currently so bad because other people will be levelling focus and there they want to get the kills and kill as much as possible. So when I'm in a squad with them, everyone is (more or less) happy, but it is still a really bad situation.

The (not) solution: What you really don't want to do is to change the way affinity works so that idling (or, equivalently, not doing much in the game at all) reduces the affinity you earn. This would make less advanced players super frustrated when they join a random squad with a guy destroying everything with a blink of their eyes, preventing them from earning any affinity. One of the things that are really good about this game is that there are close to no situations in which joining a random squad can have negative consequences compared to playing solo (for me, the only situations where I play solo are for stealth missions like spy and rescue because I'm paranoid and I don't trust people).

The (yes) solution: DE loves fixing problems by adding new weird items that do weird things. Relics was a way to address void missions being weird. Archwing launcher was a way to make moving in the plains less tedious. Rivens were a way to make more weapons interesting instead of people playing with only the same 4-5 weapons. Arcanes were a way to add little utility stuff so that more builds are viable. And I'm sure I missed some very important cases. And I think it's overall a good approach.

So do the same here. No need to change the way affinity is split by default, but add some sort of item, an "affinity sink" (I'm sure a much better name can be come up with), that you can install on an item making it absorb affinity from other items you have equipped. Ideally all affinity but if you want you can make it only partial (that may prevent the problem from fixing, though). Some things about this:

- Unlike catalysts, reactors, formas, lenses, you should be able to install and uninstall this item anytime you want. You want this for levelling the item. Once it's levelled, you should be able to remove it so that other items can get their affinity.

- To balance them out and make them consumable, they should instead for example have a certain amount of affinity they can absorb before becoming broken. That would encourage people actually farming them instead of getting one and using the same one forever.

- Hell, if you want to make the system interesting, you can even make different tiers of them (because DE loves making tiers of consumables), such that they have different maximum amounts of affinity to be absorbed before wearing off, or even such that they multiply the affinity they absorb by a small amount (I'd say in the range of the 10% extra would be a good point).

With this item in place, instead of idling, I would put it on my bow, equip a tough warframe with tough weapons on the other slots, and go give it my all in Sanctuary. Which is what makes sense.

Thoughts?

[Undeceiver]

Oh, I forgot to say. Since an item like this could in principle be used to replace 3 lenses by equipping only 1 lens and an "affinity sink" on the same item, I suggest that either:

- The item is considerably rarer than 3 lenses (don't really like this option).
- It does not work for items at max rank (so that no focus may be gained through them). I like this option a lot more.

[Zelmen]

I vote for even XP of EVERYTHING (pets included). Would remove this leeching BS.

[Oreades]

Or just make things stop stealing Affinity when not under the effect of an Focus whatever those things are called. Because once things hit 30 there is no point in them stealing Affinity when they're already max level outside of when a lens is actually active.

"But Oreades" someone says, "That makes it super easy for people to level one item"

Thing is when someone wants to power level one item they just take every other item off anyhow to curb the Affinity thievery. So it curbs that behavior by allowing them to bring a workable inventory along with their desired leveling McGuffin. 

"Bur Oreades" someone says again "Then they will use their other inventory items instead of the one they should be getting to know." 

Thing is when someone want's to power level one item, half the time they just don't do anything anyhow because of the way the Affinity split for their gear works and because their desired leveling target is so far below rank for the content that it's next to useless. 

Maybe give them a bit of extra bonus XP for actually using the thing? But at the end of the day I think it would make people far more likely actually participate in missions and at the absolute worst it wouldn't make them any less likely because they already don't.  

Edited November 19, 2019 by Oreades

[Hello]

All shared affinity has done was teach the co-op players to be a leech while set to public.

Personally I just level up in exterminate or spy missions (for pets/sentinels) since yeah being solo I can't be the leech that DE wants players to be. Although it would be nice to level up weapons and pets through frame kills even if it's a fraction of what the affinity would be if I used a weapon to kill. Would make the 8 forma pets and 5 forma kuva weapons more enjoyable. So I guess in this sense yeah an affinity sink type of thing is something I would like.

[Undeceiver]

19 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Or just make things stop stealing Affinity when not under the effect of an Focus whatever those things are called. Because once things hit 30 there is no point in them stealing Affinity when they're already max level outside of when a lens is actually active..  

Even that can be a problem. I for example have lenses in almost all the stuff that I use regularly. But sometimes I want to level an item, and while focus is nice, I want to level the item right now, not gain more focus. So forcing me to use rare items without a lens instead of the ones I really want to use is... meh.

[Zelmen]

7 minutes ago, Undeceiver said:

lens is actually active

Pretty sure Lens don't steal affinity, they just match a % of affinity gained.

[peterc3]

3 hours ago, Undeceiver said:

I'd very much rather just be idle and let other people in the squad get the kills, so that 75% of the affinity goes to the bow.

Or microscopically lengthen the time it takes to level it and play the bloody game. If you think this is an acceptable way to play with other people, that is entirely on you. DE can change the game but they can't fix players like you.

[Undeceiver]

16 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Or microscopically lengthen the time it takes to level it and play the bloody game. If you think this is an acceptable way to play with other people, that is entirely on you. DE can change the game but they can't fix players like you.

I mean, for the record, today is the first time I did it and only did it once. As I said, I don't see it as a huge issue. If I do it more, it's only so long as I don't feel it is gravely harming other players' experience, which I don't think it is right now, given that a lot of people (including myself in other situations) have genuine reasons to try to kill in Sanctuary.

But the point is, regardless of whether I, as an individual, or the playerbase, as a community, do this or they don't: The game should not encourage it.

There's a big difference between:

- A game having small bugs and exploits that some bad apples insist on clutching on.
- A game systematically encouraging a certain (harmful) type of play.

Oh, and by the way, it's not microscopically. If I go for kills in Sanctuary, I go Saryn and that means most of the time I get 60-90% of the kills (with Saryn). That means I get 10-40% of the affinity on the weapon that I'd get by idling. It definitely is not microscopically. Sure, I am getting focus at the same time, but when you have 10 weapons awaiting 4-5 formas each, taking 10 times longer to do it is slightly annoying.

And then you can say: Well don't go Saryn. Go something intermediate. But where's the point, then? What's the right level of "killing" that I should achieve? Should I just aim for 25% kills exactly, and hold myself if I'm getting more? It gets very confusing. Are you saying that the whole community should be aware of this and purposely aim for 25% kills in Sanctuary out of sheer respect for each other? That seems an awfully complicated and confusing way to overcome a flaw in the game design, don't you think? I'd very much rather they just changed the way affinity distribution works, tbh.

And while I'm not too pissed about you shaming me, I must say that it's a bit absurd that you do. If I liked leeching, do you think I'd spend the time to come here and post about why I dislike it and how I think it should be changed? If I just wanted the quick (and boring) ride, I would just do it, not suggest ways to discourage it...

Edited November 19, 2019 by Undeceiver