Operator 3.0 Part 3: Focusing on Customization

[DrBorris]

The Goal: Make a platform for creating your own Focus loadout that still encourages players to specialize their Operators.

Breaking away from the past walls of text, this part of the rework relies heavily on visual aids.

The Foundation

The above replaces the current UI that comes up under the "Focus" part of Operator customization.

• The Left side panel is basically just a condensed version of our current Focus trees. You unlock and upgrade Focus Ways in much the same way we do now. The major change is that this is not what determines the Focus Ways you have equipped.
  • Cycle between the Focus schools by selecting the icon on the top.
  • The Focus school open on the left side has no impact on your Operator.
• The larger right side side area is where you equip the Focus Ways you unlocked on the left.
  • Circular slots can have any Focus Way from any Focus school equipped, including Waybounds.
  • Hexagonal slots can only have Waybounds equipped.
    • Unlike the circular slots these slots must be purchased with an Eidolon Shard in a similar way to how Waybounds are unlocked now.
  • Only Focus Ways/Waybounds equipped somewhere in the right panel have an effect on your Operator.
• Upgrading your Way capacity is basically the same as it is now. Equipping Ways on the right tree consume from your pool and your pool can be upgraded with Focus points.

All Focus Ways now scale off of a single “strength” stat. Duration, damage, debuff power, and etcetera. At least one stat of every Way/Waybound will increase if the strength of that Way is increased.

Equipping a Way in a slot closer to the center will increase the Strength of that Way. The centermost circle gives 50% more strength, the next outer ring of slots (three circular and three hexagonal) get a 25% increase to strength, and all of the outermost slots have no base increase to strength.

 

The Twist

If Ways from the same school are connected by a line the strength of all connected Ways have their strength increased by 5% per connected Way.

Imagine every slot is filled with a Way from one of the five Focus trees. Different colors represent a group of Ways of a certain school. For example the slots outlined in orange are all Madurai, the slots outlined in yellow are all Unairu, etcetera.

• The Ways in the green group have their Strength increased by an additional 25%.
• The Ways in the yellow group have their strength increased by an additional 15%.
• The Ways in the blue group have their strength increased by an additional 20%.
• The Ways in the orange group have their strength increased by an additional 40%.

As a note, both the yellow and blue groups could be the same Focus school. However because they are not connected they are not buffing each other's strength. The bonus strength is based on connections, not the total amount of Ways equipped.

The connection strength bonus is additive with the strength bonus for being closer to the center. In the example above the center slot would have a total strength bonus of 90%.

 

Unlock Progression

To ease new players into Focus customization, have the full tree unlock over time with the completion of quests.

 

Reworking Ways

It is fair to assume that most if not all Ways would need an adjustment. In addition, the increased amount of possible active Ways would want there to be more Ways added to the schools...

I'm not going to go there. It is the big idea of this concept that I want to be the main takeaway, getting dirty in the specifics of reworking what we have and adding new abilities will just bog down the post. Furthermore, if DE does by some miracle actually do something similar to this suggestion then they probably wouldn't care much for my specific suggestions and do their own thing. While I love theory crafting and coming up with very detailed reworks, in this case I want to show a bit of restraint and leave it up to the imagination.

Let's all just suspend our disbelief for a second and assume that all of the trees are full of reworked/new Focus Ways that are well implemented to work with this proposal. The big picture is what matters, let's focus on that.

 

As it stands Focus is a horrible system for player expression. All players are sectioned off into one of five groups and within each group only vertical progression exists. Your Operator is not your Operator, it is just one of the five options available. Giving the option to mix and match Ways from different schools gives the opportunity to have your Operator be custom to the way you want to play.

The connection system makes it so creating your Focus build isn’t just picking the best Ways available, it encourages focusing (heh) your build into a specialization while still allowing for ultimate combination. It adds build depth and a new way to build-craft in a way that I believe would be intuitive to use. Just making more Focus Ways able to be used cross-tree doesn’t make the Focus system more interesting, it just band-aids imbalances within the Focus schools.

 

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.
• https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1192190-operator-30-part-1-focus-point-acquisition-a-minimum-wage/

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”.

[(PSN)Deeceem]

Interesting. Reminds me of the Final Fantasy X level system or more recently Path of Exile. That's not a bad thing in either case. I imagined a similar idea for Warframe augments (a bit more towards Diablo 3 runes) to finally get rid of them from the modding menu. Good ideas!

[DrBorris]

8 hours ago, (PS4)Deeceem said:

Interesting. Reminds me of the Final Fantasy X level system or more recently Path of Exile. That's not a bad thing in either case. I imagined a similar idea for Warframe augments (a bit more towards Diablo 3 runes) to finally get rid of them from the modding menu. Good ideas!

The original inspiration for this actuality came from Witcher 3's ability customization. It is mostly unrecognizable now, but I have been slowly chipping away at this for almost three years now.