Operator 3.0 Part 1: Focus Point Acquisition: A Minimum Wage

[DrBorris]

The Goal: Add a low time investment "minimum wage" of Focus that casual players can easily get every day. Also improve the experience of farming Focus with Lenses for those that want to go beyond the minimum wage.

Daily Challenges: A simple way to get a ‘minimum wage’

Focus daily challenges are generally not meant to be another task on our already immense to-do list, most of the Focus daily challenges should be things that you do passively through just playing the game. More challenges unlock as you progress through the big trilogy of story quests.

Focus acquired from daily challenges does not contribute towards your daily Focus cap.

• Post TSD
  • Daily Kill Challenges
    • Kill 50 Enemies: 1,000 Focus
    • Kill 100 Enemies: 3,000 Focus
    • Kill 500 Enemies: 6,000 Focus
    • Kill 1000 Enemies: 10,000 Focus
• Post TWW
  • Level 5 ‘Operator Only’ mission: 20,000 Focus
    • Double Affinity-to-Focus conversion during mission
  • Level 30 ‘Operator Only’ mission: 50,000 Focus
    • Triple Affinity-to-Focus conversion during mission
• Post Sacrifice
  • Daily Operator/Operator-Assisted Kill Challenges
    • Enemies who die after being hit by an Operator or any Operator ability (or of course straight-out killed by Operator)
    • Kill 10 Enemies: 2,000 Focus
    • Kill 20 Enemies: 6,000 Focus
    • Kill 50 Enemies: 12,000 Focus
    • Kill 100 Enemies: 20,000 Focus

This is a total of 130,000 Focus from daily challenges alone. The intent is that besides the daily ‘Operator Only’ missions that everything could be easily completed by just playing the game. Final values would probably need adjusting, however these daily challenges should be extremely generous as to get players invested into the Focus system.

 

Lens Rework: Streamlining directing Focus into schools

• Focus lenses are no longer school-specific, they all feed into a large central Focus pool.
  • Any Focus point earned could be spent on any Focus Way.
• Lens progression does not exist in the Foundry, it exists on the weapon/Warframe.
  • The base Focus lenses is equipped on any piece of equipment as it is now.
    • Increase the base Lens conversion ratio to 2% (from 1.25%)
  • The higher tiers of Focus lenses (Greater, Eidolon, Lua) are now upgrade modules that can be attached to a Lens after the Lenx is attached to an item. Only one of each type of upgrade can be equipped to any Lens. There are no prerequisites for instilling an upgrade, for example if you wish you could only equip a Lua Upgrade.
    • Greater Upgrade: +50% Focus from all Affinity sources
    • Eidolon Upgrade: +200% Focus from Sentients
    • Lua Upgrade: +500% Focus from Operator-assisted kills
    • (New) Convergence Upgrade: Double the Convergence multiplier.
  • Lens Upgrades are installed by clicking on the Focus Lens in the Arsenal UI. Having upgrades equipped is represented by pips on the Lens that currently just denote a Lens’s rank.
  • Upgrades can be safely removed from a Lens by spending 5 Somatic Fibers.
• Lenses equipped into Amps have different mechanics.
  • Operators have a base 5% Affinity-to-Focus conversion without the need for a Focus Lens or Amp.
  • Equipping a Lens on an Amp adds 2% to the conversion ratio.
  • Lens Upgrades can be equipped on Amp Lenses, upgrades cannot be equipped without a Lens. Lens Upgrades affect the total 7% Affinity-to-Focus conversion, not just the 2% from the Lens.
  • Only kills made by your Operator go towards your Operator's Focus conversion. Ally assists and objective affinity while in Operator do not go towards your Operator’s focus conversion, they instead are applied as though you were still in your Warframe. This is to prevent Operator affinity leaching from being the best way to farm Focus.

The hope is that by making Focus lenses universal the FOMO of equipping lenses to a wide variety of equipment would be lessened. Combined with the current high availability of base Focus lenses people will probably be far more likely to equip a Focus lens and thus will spend more time interacting with the Focus system. The Lens Upgrades would then be where you would have the opportunity to increase your investment into individual pieces of equipment.

 

For the sake of keeping the suggestions focused I have split up this rework into three parts. Each part can stand on its own although they come together to be greater than the sum of their parts.

Part 1: Focus Point Acquisition: A Minimum Wage

• Add a set of daily challenges that reward around 130,000 Focus for relatively simple tasks, most of which you will naturally complete just by playing normally. Also improve the experience of farming Focus with Lenses.

Part 2: Operator Movement/Abilities: A More Versatile Foundation

• Bring up Operator movement to the standard of fluidity Warframes have as well as expand/standardize base Operator abilities for integration with individual Focus Ways.
• https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1192391-operator-30-part-2-operator-movementabilities-a-more-versatile-foundation/

Part 3: Focusing on Customization

• Rather than select one Focus tree, mix and match different Focus Ways into a personalized build while retaining the concept of having one school be your “focus”.
• https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1192865-operator-30-part-3-focusing-on-customization/

Edited May 13, 2020 by DrBorris

[Zectico]

I really like the idea of having a shared focus pool instead of progress being locked to into individual focus schools. This change is a must-have.

 

I think operator movement is fine as is. Currently, Warframes are more maneuverable but Operators are actually faster due to Void Dash, made even stronger by Void Sprint. Since Void Dash defies gravity, Operators also have a much higher vertical reach than any Warframe parkour maneuvers too. The slide ability for operators really helps as well.

As for daily missions, I'm not really sure about how viable they would be against Eidolon hunts. Each full Eidolon hunt (with 3x captures) gives about 120,000 affinity and is not capped by the daily affinity limit. Eidolon hunts overall aren't too difficult to complete one of, even with standard equipment; a lot of the stigma around hunts is purely because of elitist gate keeping. Generally squads can get 2-3 full hunts every night, or up to 300,000 affinity in an hour.

[Loza03]

10 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Part 2: Operator Movement/Abilities: A More Versatile Foundation

• Bring up Operator movement to the standard of fluidity Warframes have as well as expand/standardize base Operator abilities for integration with individual Focus Ways.

Part 3: Focusing on Customization

• Rather than select one Focus tree, mix and match different Focus Ways into a personalized build while retaining the concept of having one school be your “focus”.

I've been working on some ideas of this of my own - specifically, expanding intrinsics into Operators as well. Idea being that Focus is currently pulling double duty as both a form of 'endgame' progression for Warframe as a whole, whilst also being the 'core' progression of Operators.

I feel like intrinsics fit as they're meant to be representative of getting more skilled in various fields of using the Railjack, and that fits with the theming of the Operator as a new power they have to hone on their own. That also takes the heat off of Focus, and offers an avenue for making more abilities for the Operator without sticking it into that system. It'd also allow for expansion of focus at the same time - keeping it as a kind of 'modifier'. For example, Intrinsics grant Operators a new power - say, an alternative to void blast that's an over-time push, rather than a single explosion - and then focus modifies it into a flamethrower attack for Madurai or a Medic/Mercy style healing beam for Vazarin.

I've got other ideas as well, if you're happy to hear them.

[DrBorris]

34 minutes ago, Zectico said:

I think operator movement is fine as is. Currently, Warframes are more maneuverable but Operators are actually faster due to Void Dash, made even stronger by Void Sprint. Since Void Dash defies gravity, Operators also have a much higher vertical reach than any Warframe parkour maneuvers too. The slide ability for operators really helps as well.

As for daily missions, I'm not really sure about how viable they would be against Eidolon hunts. Each full Eidolon hunt (with 3x captures) gives about 120,000 affinity and is not capped by the daily affinity limit. Eidolon hunts overall aren't too difficult to complete one of, even with standard equipment; a lot of the stigma around hunts is purely because of elitist gate keeping. Generally squads can get 2-3 full hunts every night, or up to 300,000 affinity in an hour.

There will be more about Operator movement in part 2, but the early TL;DR is that the intent is to make Operators feel more fluid. As someone addicted to Void Dash I am very aware of how powerful they are as movement tools, but even then it feels very jarring to lose out on some of the core movement tools Warframes have. Basically Operator movement should "feel" better, not necessarily "be" better.

The daily missions aren't aimed at people who hunt Eidolons. The daily missions are supposed to be extremely accessible to everyone. We may know how to make an Eidolon hunt easy but the average player will not even touch those things, especially newer players. On that note, new players need a way to get Focus. Most people are still very new when they complete TSD, they are far away from being able to reliably do either of the Focus farms (ESO and Eidolons). Furthermore, you have to go out of your way to do Eidolons. Especially when initially progressing through the game, or when you are just generally trying to grind for something, taking time to run Eidolons is a big ask.

The daily challenges are supposed to be easy things that anyone can do every day without much additional time investment. Eidolons still exist for those that want to further min/max, but as the title suggests the purpose of the daily challenges isn't for those that are investing a lot of time into the game, the daily challenges are supposed to be a baseline amount of Focus that most people will get every day as long as they play a bit.

 

17 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

I've been working on some ideas of this of my own - specifically, expanding intrinsics into Operators as well. Idea being that Focus is currently pulling double duty as both a form of 'endgame' progression for Warframe as a whole, whilst also being the 'core' progression of Operators.

I feel like intrinsics fit as they're meant to be representative of getting more skilled in various fields of using the Railjack, and that fits with the theming of the Operator as a new power they have to hone on their own. That also takes the heat off of Focus, and offers an avenue for making more abilities for the Operator without sticking it into that system. It'd also allow for expansion of focus at the same time - keeping it as a kind of 'modifier'. For example, Intrinsics grant Operators a new power - say, an alternative to void blast that's an over-time push, rather than a single explosion - and then focus modifies it into a flamethrower attack for Madurai or a Medic/Mercy style healing beam for Vazarin.

I've got other ideas as well, if you're happy to hear them.

I don't know if those ideas will work very well with what I have in the pipeline (I know it sounds crazy, but I have been slowly cracking at this full rework for two years now) but I would love to see your feedback when I get there. I'm always a big fan of new concepts coming from mashing two ideas together so I would love to get your input when part 3 gets posted.

Edited May 11, 2020 by DrBorris

[GKP_light]

Il y a 1 heure, DrBorris a dit :

Focus lenses are no longer school-specific, they all feed into a large central Focus pool.

• Any Focus point earned could be spent on any Focus Way.

i would prefer to keep the scool-specifique lentil, but make the lentil independent of the warframe/weapon.

as exemple, if i craft a Naramon edolon lentil, i can chose to gain point for Naramon, independently of the warframe or weapon that i use.

and if i have a Lua for Madurai, i can chose to gain points for Madurai, then come back to the edolon Naramon without any cost.

[Necrowakker]

I max out my 350+K focus in about an hour per day. and run 1-2 pub groups of tridolon hunts to get a bit more after i reach cap, 

its already very very easy to farm focus to your cap in the game.  it takes only a little preparation. and understanding on how Affinity works, and how Shared affinity affects your warframe. 


But basically. 

Put a lens on your frame of choice (preferably a frame that can kill quickly) and put a lens on your melee of choice. (again one that can kill quickly)   
remove other weapons. (as this takes away from the shared affinity) then run sactuary Onslaught, with a group of 4 to level 8 ( or beyond if the group wants it)

Don't do elite. too many people drop out after a round or 2, and you have to repeat round one again wasting alot of time. (finishing quest, loading in and out of instance etc)

a cheap setup with a equinox / saryn or volt.  (or any other frame that runs SO well) with Two Eidolon lenses,  I max my focus in about 1 hour.  (2-3 runs of SO) 

I'd do that alot faster if I had a team for ESO, but getting a focus farm team for ESO is rare. so i rather run pub on SO instead.

** what i mean by my post is,  the game does not need such a radical change in the way focus is earned. a better way to explain it to new members would be better.  as gaining focus is not hard. and you can farm other things in its place to sell for plat,  ( or level wepaons / frames / earn master points at the same time)

Edited May 12, 2020 by Necrowakker

[GKP_light]

il y a une heure, Necrowakker a dit :

I max out my 350+K focus in about an hour per day.

its already very very easy to farm focus to your cap in the game.  

and you need around 50 000 000 focus point to have everything.

so you need to do it near 150 day ; so 150 hours of farm.

(you would be faster in elite, even if all your team leave you. but it is still 100 hours of farm)

 

and a problem is that the set-up is not beginner-friendly at all.

(and it is explain nowhere in the game)

it would be better if the first lentil give more than the half of the Lua.

as exemple, 2.5% for the normal, 3% for the greater, 3.5% for the eidolon, and 4% for the Lua.

Edited May 12, 2020 by GKP_light

[Steel_Rook]

14 hours ago, Necrowakker said:

Put a lens on your frame of choice (preferably a frame that can kill quickly) and put a lens on your melee of choice. (again one that can kill quickly)   
remove other weapons. (as this takes away from the shared affinity) then run sactuary Onslaught, with a group of 4 to level 8 ( or beyond if the group wants it)

If you read the OP's proposal, it's not aimed at people who already do hardcore grinding. Yes, you can just grind ESO or SO and max out your Daily Cap in one run. I've done that in the past. However - and I can't stress this enough - #*!% Sanctuary Onslaught and everything it represents. If a game system is balanced around running the game's dullest, most reductive activity so fully divorced from any kind of theme or narrative objective that Simaris may as well break the fourth wall and chide us for grinding XP instead of playing the game, then that system is not designed well. I'm with the OP - less grindy means of gaining Focus would be very welcome.

 

On 2020-05-11 at 4:38 PM, DrBorris said:

Focus lenses are no longer school-specific, they all feed into a large central Focus pool.

• Any Focus point earned could be spent on any Focus Way.

That's... Actually really clever. In the past, I've proposed making lenses universal and giving people some way to "tag" a Focus School for progression like we can do with Syndicates. However, your proposal skips that entire song-and-dance by simply making Focus universal. Rather than splitting Focus between all of the Schools, we gain generic Focus into a single pool, with the ability to distribute it to whatever school we want to. I like that, and it's going to be my proposal moving forward. It just makes more sense to me.

 

On 2020-05-11 at 4:38 PM, DrBorris said:

The hope is that by making Focus lenses universal the FOMO of equipping lenses to a wide variety of equipment would be lessened. Combined with the current high availability of base Focus lenses people will probably be far more likely to equip a Focus lens and thus will spend more time interacting with the Focus system. The Lens Upgrades would then be where you would have the opportunity to increase your investment into individual pieces of equipment.

Agreed completely. The Focus Lens system honestly feels like a not-so-subtle attempt at P2W, by making us have to grind and re-grind our lenses, or else keep re-buying them with Plat. If it is, it's not working. Me personally, I'm only ever going to put lenses on a small handful of items - one Warframe, maybe 3-4 weapons and that's it. I do this, because I know I'm going to have trash them and start over next time I switch Focus Trees. Additionally, I'm trapped levelling up only a single focus tree, because swapping back-and-forth would require trashing A LOT of lenses. Might as well max out a tree, unbind all its waybounds, max out all its other abilities even though I never intend to use them, then trash my lenses and move on to the next tree.

By making lenses "universal" by virtue of all contributing to the same shared pool, it turns them into permanent upgrades to my gear. If that's the case, then I'm going to want to put lenses on LOTS of my weapons, even stuff I don't use a lot. Why? Because I might feel like using them, and I don't want to sacrifice my progression for the sake of having a bit of fun. If I didn't have to trash them eventually, I'd go ahead and stick lenses to my Arca Plasmor, my Kuva Kohm, my Lanka, my Prisma Gorgon, my Supra Vandal, etc. As it stands right now, that's too many weapons I use too rarely to bother shelling out the 80 sodding Plat for an Eidolon Lens for those things, and I sure as S#&$ ain't gonna' run low-level Cetus bounties so I can give myself unto RNGesus.

Give me permanent upgrades and I will invest a lot more specifically BECAUSE of their permanence. Yes, I know about the "sustainable rewards" hypocrisy, but here's the thing - "sustainable rewards" are unsustainable, because they trade in people's good will.

[DreadWarlock]

This changes are great overall, but there is one problem, with the shared pool it might be better to suggest a slight increase in the daily cap.

Anyway beyond the benefits you describe, this will also be great because it doesn't force you to use use very specific warframes. I've made several comments on this In-game, as one of the biggest problems in the game is how your warframe gains affinity.

This needs to be reworked. Caster Warframes Usually have a huge advantage in this aspect, meanwhile Damage warframes, Support and control warframe get a disappointingly low amount of affinity making it extremely hard to obtain focus or even to put forma on them, and this pretty much defeats the purpose of having a Lens system, because you'll only ever use those in a couple of warframes and gear.

What could be done is to allow weapons affected by buffs, or warframes affected by support abilities to gain the same affinity their weapons do, this would allow for a smoother experience for all warframes, and possibly allow for all warframes to be lens viable. It would also give a bigger importance tor the Affinity range, and discipline Hallway heroes who love leaving their teams to seek personal glory.

For support frames it would work this way, Whenever the players that recieved armor, utility or damage buffs, are withing the affinity area, their kills would replicate a portion of the affinity they gained and would be given to the support frame as if it were their own kills. Self damage bufffs, would give the same amount of affinity their weapons gained to their warframes.

Edited May 12, 2020 by DreadWarlock
Forgot to put a suggestion of my own

[Necrowakker]

well there is a operator rework in the works with a change and update to focus trees and ways, as scott stated as much in the group video a couple weeks ago. 

I doubt greatly these changes posted above would be considered, as it will make grinding focus too easy.  and too fast.  having the schools open, or even using your operator is not a main point or feature of the game. until it is DE will leave it. they made Railjack easier because the next few updates require its gameplay.  maybe in the duviri paradox we'll get some operator changes that will require a better look at focus gains.  but thats still a year away. 

I don't do hard core grinding.  its quite a casual side quest. ... I don't do Elite sanctuary because solo the gains are S#&$. everyone leaves after 2-3 rounds, unless you pre made a team looking to focus farm. regular sanctuary is quite a bit better,  people farming khora for example. so I have better luck getting groups to go to 8 round there more often, and even if they leave at that point, i can continue on round 9+ for the focus gains there, instead of soloing elite. 

I only find it a chore when people leave, lowering the amount of enemies. which is the reason i prefer normal sanctuary. its easy, and a little mindless. this is exactly what DE want in a game mode. where folk can sit back and relax with a beer(or beverage of choice) and play a game casually.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Love the enthusiasm, and I do think that the challenge missions for Operators are a nice thought.

I have one, significant stumbling black in the way of that, though. And it's DE themselves.

Because what they've done with the Focus system and with Operators has painted themselves into a corner. It's not our fault, it's theirs.

Focus is a system you can max out. Unlike your gear, which you can re-forma for builds, unlike your Arsenal, which they can expand at any time with new content, and unlike the Syndicates where the reason for their cap is to prevent players from buying multiples of things all the time for trade without grinding things like Medallions...

Unlike all of the other systems, Focus simply caps. You have everything. There is no further progress.

And did you know that before the invention of Eidolon lenses a person calculated that if there was no actual cap to the daily amounts you could get, they could use just the standard Banshee/Melee focus farm to max the 2.0 system (which required about 2x the Focus that the current 2.5 system does) in about 72 hours. Hours, not days, hours. After the new Lua Lens was invented, and the Focus 2.5 system, the estimate for using that method alone (with no Tridolon hunting to augment the gains) would be approximately 40 hours. Maybe less if they got lucky with the ESO cycles.

This is because all of those millions of Focus Affinity? Are actually a little too easy to get if you actually dedicate the time and meta methods to it.

I mean, that's almost exactly why I'd like those daily tasks, they're something that a player who wanted to non-meta their way through the system could do every day and grind up their Focus the 'right' way. Except that DE don't want you doing that at all. That's the exact opposite of what they want.

DE are time-gating us, forcing us to either wait the appropriate amount of time by doing daily farms, and only offering Eidolon farming as a method of bypassing that cap in the same way that Medallions are able to bypass Syndicate caps. They're even quite happy with players never actually meeting their daily caps in order for us to wait even longer.

Why? Because it's capped. And they do not want you hitting cap too quickly.

Of course, this wouldn't be that bad if. If the system granted better access to things that Warframes could not do and meant that building into a School would offer complementary or force-multiplicative play depending on your chosen style. If the system wasn't polarised around either gaining Energy, bypassing certain Melee mods, or Healing, with the damage/armour boosting coming in as only sometimes useful choices.

If...

DE's biggest problem with Focus is that they treated it like a levelling tech-tree, where you could achieve everything in there and max everything.

If the Focus system acted more like the Modding system, where you could achieve actual Builds, with some nodes working together and other nodes not, or with some nodes you choose blocking off the choice of other nodes. A system where you had to go and gain Focus in order to put on the equivalent of 'Forma' or... or actual 'Focus Lenses' that would increase your 'Focus Capacity' the way polarities do for modding. A system where there Waybounds for Health, Armour, Energy, Regen and Mobility, but then cross-branches for slotting Dash Abilities, Cloak Abilities, Blast abilities or even Beam abilities.

Maybe if you could slot either Vazarin Dash or Zenurik Dash (as in, one blocked off the other), but you could then select a secondary function like the Unairu Dash (drops Armour by 75%) or the Madurai Dash (draws a line of flames for damage) to combine it with.

Your blast could be Madurai's Fireball, but with the effects of Naramon's Disorienting/Disarming blast so that it could hit enemies at longer range and proc Confusion.

Levelling up each school would be like putting Endo into your Mods, and this would balance out the actual costs of the abilities too, so Void Cloak wouldn't suddenly drain extra energy for Madurai's blind when you drop it, or the abilities wouldn't cost more for better effects (which they currently do), you would have actual set abilities with set costs and variable effects based on your Build.

Players would have the actual 'modding' choice for their Operators and be able to pick builds that benefited their play style without being forced into DE's play style.

So... tl;dr

I like your ideas.

I don't think they're going to happen, though, without Focus getting changed into something that's more Warframe and less DE Railroading.