Allow for Warframe universal polarity mod slots by consuming duplicate warframes

[Tennoludus]

I have e.g. Mag Prime.

I want 1 build with 4x Naramon, 4x Madurai all 8 forma'd

I want 2nd build with 4x Madurai, 2x Zenurik, 2x Vazarin all 8 forma'd

I'd need to farm a 2nd Mag Prime, 1 frame for each build

You already gave us Aura Forma. Before that ppl probably had multiple frames with different aura slot polarities.

 

I would like to suggest to allow consuming duplicate warframes to create a universal polarity mod slot on a warframe.

So I have my Mag Prime, at rank 30.

I buy/farm a 2nd Mag Prime

I go Arsenal > Actions > Polarization

I see the usual forma to select, but I can also select the 2nd Mag Prime

I select 2nd Mag Prime: "Are you sure you want to install MAG PRIME?" Ok

I select the mod slot I want universal polarity for.

 

its not something new. I could achieve the same thing by keeping the duplicate frame, 1 frame each for each build.

but its makes list of frames one owns a lot larger/messier.

would give veteran players who are tweaking for every bit of capacity on a variety of builds for frame something to grind

 

could should exclude umbra, aura (remains something special)

normal forma retain their usefulness, they're lot faster to farm, also

maybe consume duplicate frame + a normal forma as well

should include exilus+normal mod slots

could be MR gated like Helminth

could be limited to Prime frames (though a few non-primed frame players might want to have that as well)

maybe consumed frame needs to be 30

maybe consume 2 (or more) frames (plz dont :))

would increase demand for Primes for players who already have them, spending plat or playing=farming

would not be some special quasi-non-existing reward like aura/umbra forma

 

if I wanted 8+1 universal mod polarities, thats a total of 9 primes to farm... that's a lot to play/buy.

 

maybe same principle could be applied to other forma-able stuff like weapons, companions, archwing, ...

[Kaiune]

A whole dup frame would be crazy expensive for the problem you presented. Id say 4 forma plus resources would work You can only build 1 forma at a time so the time investment would be similar and each forma would represent each normal polarity. But I totally agree with the need for a universal polarity for some frames who can do very different builds that dont line up on polarity needs.

[Warah]

So you want warframe to become gacha game?

[TheLexiConArtist]

No. We don't need uni-polarities, we just need better control of the polarities we unlock.

The polarisation system needs an overhaul in general, it's old and outdated, hasn't been accurate to its stated function of "improving flexibility" ever since we started getting Primed mods (and of course, the extra-burden Exilus slot which is nigh-unusable if you don't shackle yourself to the build).

Polarisation should affect the item rather than directly affecting the slots ON the item. Let the player use the 'move polarities' screen to mix and match their item's unlocked Polarities - to use them or not use them however necessary for their build.

That way you remove all 'waste' from the system - you only get to unlock more flexibility, you never undo a previous investment because now there's better Umbral mods, for example. Each forma (including Umbral, which uni-polarity solutions can't coexist with) is still valued exactly the same, crucial for DE's business needs as Forma bundles are probably fairly high on their plat sink list. In fact, players would be inclined to use more forma on their items because it will never be a totally wasted investment or limit their future builds.

[IncuBB]

I don't see a problem with making uni-forma (lol) as platinum-only item in the store.
I think it's a fair deal.

[Tennoludus]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb Kaiune:

A whole dup frame would be crazy expensive for the problem you presented

Whats the going rate for a non vaulted prime? ~60p? Aura forma is 80p? not that big of a difference. Vaulted primes are a different story ofc.

vor 8 Stunden schrieb Warah:

So you want warframe to become gacha game?

in what way? you buy or farm a frame as usual, and like you using normal frames for helminth now, you could use them for uni polarity. warframe is not "becoming" anything it already isn't.

vor 4 Stunden schrieb TheLexiConArtist:

...

i just want to make use of the mod system as it is right now. Warframes as a "resource" where added with Helminth. Kuva weapons are a "resource" with valence transfer. Railjack weapons the same. Sure DE and a majority of ppl might want to overhaul, then thats nice as well.

vor einer Stunde schrieb IncuBB:

I don't see a problem with making uni-forma (lol) as platinum-only item in the store.
I think it's a fair deal.

increasing the need for plat and the need to act on warframe.market or similar platforms to sell your prime loot or rivens, instead of having a use for them yourself as well. Mhm i dont like it.

 

My post originated from the simple fact that while farming for helminth warframe duplicates, i could not do a built for Mag Prime due to the forma / polarity / capacity problems.

I wanted to make use of stuff I get when I play the game, like primes / frames / weapons apart from only selling on market.

I wanted to have more built options granted by an uni polarity

I wanted a reason to play the game like re-farming Helminth frames, killing Tyl Regor a gazillion times for 6 Equinox blueprints (GIVE ME EQUINOX DAY BP ALREADY!)

I thought about concepts already in the game, like Kuva weapon valence transfer, Warframes as a resource for Helminth

Combined this thoughts, and posted this topic, without being too much invested into this idea.

[Warah]

Quote

9 hours ago, Tennoludus said:

in what way?

 

Well have you played gacha games before? You collect one same character to make that character stronger.  Your idea sounds exactly like that just without mtx involved

[(NSW)BalticBarbarian]

The "sacrifice another frame" idea will not work for DE for financial reasons: most people will be doing it with prime frames, and DE do not get as much profit from people getting prime frames: you can only really buy most prime frames from other players. And doing so does not take plat out of circulation - which is the point at which DE are really getting a profit.

I think universal polarity for normal mod slots should happen, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it. The most feasible idea I've heard for this is to make it require multiples of normal forma: 1 forma for the first polarity, 2 to add a second, 3 to add a third, etc. So to make a universal polarity slot you'd need 1+2+3+4=10 forma (15 on companions). That's quite expensive for the players, but that will encourage forma purchases (which makes DE money). And you don't have to make every slot universal (although some might) - in most cases you only really need 1-2 mod slots to have 2 polarities in order to fit most viable builds.

Being able to buy a universal forma from the market would be nice, but the price point would have to be fairly high, which would cause backlash. It would have to be significantly more expensive than Aura forma (80p when buying one, 50p each when buying a 3-pack). So it would have to cost at least 100p each (say 200p for 3-pack) - and that sounds like a very high price for a consumable.

[cittran]

On 2020-10-07 at 3:03 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

No. We don't need uni-polarities, we just need better control of the polarities we unlock.

The polarisation system needs an overhaul in general, it's old and outdated, hasn't been accurate to its stated function of "improving flexibility" ever since we started getting Primed mods (and of course, the extra-burden Exilus slot which is nigh-unusable if you don't shackle yourself to the build).

Polarisation should affect the item rather than directly affecting the slots ON the item. Let the player use the 'move polarities' screen to mix and match their item's unlocked Polarities - to use them or not use them however necessary for their build.

That way you remove all 'waste' from the system - you only get to unlock more flexibility, you never undo a previous investment because now there's better Umbral mods, for example. Each forma (including Umbral, which uni-polarity solutions can't coexist with) is still valued exactly the same, crucial for DE's business needs as Forma bundles are probably fairly high on their plat sink list. In fact, players would be inclined to use more forma on their items because it will never be a totally wasted investment or limit their future builds.

To expand on this idea with a more specific example:

If you invest 1 forma into something, you can polarize any slot you've unlocked (so no exilus without the adapter), with any polarity you wish. (Umbral I'd say requires a deeper discussion, but good enough for now.)

This polarization could be

• Removing an existing polarity from a slot (de-polarizing a slot)
• Changing the polarity of a polarized slot
• Polarizing a non-polarized slot

For each forma you invest into a warframe/weapon/companion/vehicle, you gain one additional "polarization point" (I can't think of a more catchy name, so that's acceptable).

Any polarities which are included on the item do not contribute to these polarization points -- they can be changed with those points, if you wish, but they do not give you free reign to immediately change the polarization of other slots by 'sacrificing' those included polarizations.
(Note: this point here is something which came to mind first, but I could see arguments for both sides of this viewpoint, so I'd leave it open to discussion.)

 

To continue this idea:

If you invested 4 forma into a warframe which started with 2 Madurai-polarized regular slots and 1 Naramon-polarized aura slot, you would have four "polarization points" which could be allocated however you wanted for the different configurations. This would allow for a range of polarized slots from 0-7, with any polarity you wanted.

 

As TheLexiConArtist explained, this would mean going from the current system of forma:

• You are allowed to modify the order of polarized slots, but you are not allowed to change the number or type of polarized slots after they have been selected during the process of adding a forma, without adding another forma to the item. This system works fairly well, and has been a pretty strong component of this game for quite a while. However, as pointed out, it could be better, and it could be made better in a way which is fairly simple in concept. (No idea how the coding process would be, though.)

To this system of forma:

• You are allowed to modify the order of polarized slots, you are allowed to change the number or type of "actively polarized slots" once a forma has been invested into an item. It would not be "universal polarity" in the sense of "this one slot can work for any mod polarity", like an Aura Forma, but instead it would be "you can modify the polarity of any of these slots to any type you wish, as long as you have 'polarization points' remaining to use".

As an idea, it's a fairly small modification with a sizeable impact. As a system, it would make build configuration options vastly more flexible, and would likely encourage people to use more forma, as there would be no downside to doing so on an item you plan to keep.

 

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call that suggestion a perfect fix, but it would be a very, very nice QoL improvement that I honestly cannot think of any further improvements for.

[Tennoludus]

I still like the idea of giving, well, "normal" frames more use, e.g. by using them as resource for uni polarity.

E.g. Wisp.

How often have u gone Ropalolyst? Well Wiki says ~9 runs expected to get all Wisp. A couple more to get her a 2nd time for Helminth. Then you have no reason to go there again, except for the rare Nightwave (or Sortie?)

DE made a new boss, model, scripted and all, but there is no incentive to do this content more often?

Compare that to how often u run Fissure? for Forma, for Prime drops for Baru/sell on market?

Adding this new uni forma to market just makes Fissure running even more dominant...

Not saying that Ropalolyst is better than Fissure run, and i dont know Wisp enough to tell if she would need uni-polarity

But at least when I log in, I can like say "do I do a Fissure today to built a daily forma, or do I farm a boss for uni-polarity"

Otherwise its only "I need plat, lets go fissure"

Also they could lock it to Steel Path, and maybe make only the Frame drops from Steel Path bosses usable for uni-polarity. Implying that the normal Steel Path farmed frame could be used for its prime variant as well.

As a player I'm not interested whats makes DE money. I'm interested in what makes me play the game, and hopefully a lot of diverse content and not only the 10% content that are Fissures/plat makers.

[cittran]

21 minutes ago, Tennoludus said:

I still like the idea of giving, well, "normal" frames more use, e.g. by using them as resource for uni polarity.

E.g. Wisp.

How often have u gone Ropalolyst? Well Wiki says ~9 runs expected to get all Wisp. A couple more to get her a 2nd time for Helminth. Then you have no reason to go there again, except for the rare Nightwave (or Sortie?)

DE made a new boss, model, scripted and all, but there is no incentive to do this content more often?

Compare that to how often u run Fissure? for Forma, for Prime drops for Baru/sell on market?

Adding this new uni forma to market just makes Fissure running even more dominant...

Not saying that Ropalolyst is better than Fissure run, and i dont know Wisp enough to tell if she would need uni-polarity

But at least when I log in, I can like say "do I do a Fissure today to built a daily forma, or do I farm a boss for uni-polarity"

Otherwise its only "I need plat, lets go fissure"

Also they could lock it to Steel Path, and maybe make only the Frame drops from Steel Path bosses usable for uni-polarity. Implying that the normal Steel Path farmed frame could be used for its prime variant as well.

As a player I'm not interested whats makes DE money. I'm interested in what makes me play the game, and hopefully a lot of diverse content and not only the 10% content that are Fissures/plat makers.

Hm.
Y'know, as much as I don't really care about Steel Path on a personal level, I could actually accept it being a way to get Umbra Forma. I'd prefer Simaris, but I'll take what I can get.

As for bosses, I kind of wish you got markers/tokens/trophies (w/e) for killing them that could then be turned-in for their drops, somehow, but I realize that would defeat the purpose of having lore for many of the bosses, which makes that idea a bit tougher than just "a hard sell".

Honestly, requiring extra copies of a frame to get these slots seems like not only an overkill idea for DE to have to work on, it also sounds like something that players would hate for certain frames.
Some frames come to mind which would be easy -- those are the ones which you get from the Tenno Lab research in a Clan Dojo: Volt, Zephyr, Banshee
Many frames would be boss farms, a few would be farms for syndicate standing.
Some frames would be somewhat easy, like Oberon, considering all his parts drop from Eximus enemies from every single faction.
Some frames come to mind which would be difficult -- like Chroma, who requires parts from other frames to build his parts, so you'd need to farm those too; Protea, who has fairly low droprates for all her parts via Granum Void

And some frames come to mind which would be the ones that players would hate with a vengeance -- like Grendel, Vauban, or Equinox
Of these 3 frames, Grendel would be the most challenging, but would be at the very least reliably obtainable. The missions for each of his parts have a 100% droprate for the designated part, and you can run keyshares. They're challenging missions, but there is literally no RNG to the rewards.
Vauban, unfortunately, requires Nightwave credits to obtain, and each of his pieces is 25 credits. Not super-expensive, but it would add-up.
Equinox, though? Equinox would ignite some absolute rage. Regular Equinox doesn't have 3 parts and a blueprint. She has 8 parts and a blueprint, and all of the parts drop from one boss; she also requires a fully-built forma to build her regular version, and each half of her requires a full 84 hours to build (though they can be built simultaneously, if you're extremely lucky with the parts you get), with another 72 hours on top of that for her 'combined' blueprint. A grand total of 6 days, 12 hours, per copy. Even if you wanted 'only' 2 of those universal polarity slots, that is absolutely nuts.

I get where you're coming from, idea-wise, but going that route, there are some mechanics already in-place which would require either a heavy overhaul, or be completely trashed-on by the massive grind increase. And neither of those is a good thing.

[TheLexiConArtist]

6 hours ago, cittran said:

To expand on this idea with a more specific example:

If you invest 1 forma into something, you can polarize any slot you've unlocked (so no exilus without the adapter), with any polarity you wish. (Umbral I'd say requires a deeper discussion, but good enough for now.)

It's a suggestion I pushed some years ago, but unfortunately the forums appear to have been wiped of old content since the redesign.

Luckily I still have the old-as-heck example I made kicking around, so here's a quick re-summary of the Polarity Bank concept from way before Umbra was even a thing (but would still work perfectly well, the game would simply ask for Umbra Forma to increment your bank of available Umbral polarities).

The goal was also to minimise the data/work load, so I should point out the 'standard' slot banks are storable two to a single byte (4-bit 'nibbles') which allows 0-15 available polarities for each - this still works out even with our shiny new Necramechs having 0-12 slots!

'Special case' slots like auras, exilus and stances I slated to work as a 1-byte bitmask of unlocked polarities the player can use - we still maintain the rule that these aren't interchangeable with the everyday slots. Only Exilus really still requires that, unless and until we get unipolarity for Exilus (DE please)

Spoiler

Forma invested: 4 standard Forma, 0 special forma

Polarities available:

Aura: Naramon (innate, in use); Madurai (unlocked, not in use)

Exilus: Naramon (unlocked, not in use)

Standard:
--Madurai (Y): 1 available (0 innate, 1 unlocked), 1 in use
--Naramon (-): 1 available (1 innate, 0 unlocked), 1 in use
--Vazarin (D): 1 available (1 innate, 0 unlocked), 1 in use
--Zenurik (=) : 1 available (0 innate, 1 unlocked), 0 in use
--Unairu: 0 available (0 innate, 0 unlocked), 0 in use (no standard mods currently use this, but could in the future due to the system's increased flexibility)

Umbral polarity, as it happens, made that speculative accommodation of Unairu as a normal-use polarity quite prescient. A whole new contender for the build's polarisation, but with the current system they do rather dictate builds forever once installed, due to having a very specific set of mod statistics you can fit in them.

[Cyanil]

On 2020-10-08 at 3:05 PM, cittran said:

If you invested 4 forma into a warframe which started with 2 Madurai-polarized regular slots and 1 Naramon-polarized aura slot, you would have four "polarization points" which could be allocated however you wanted for the different configurations. This would allow for a range of polarized slots from 0-7, with any polarity you wanted.

I really like this idea. Especially since the mod configs could possibly have different mod polarizations. I know I'd forma a bunch more if this was the case.

[Flawlessjtz]

Make a new Forma that allows you to swap polarities without releveling. Make it above Umbra and designed for endgame.  8 of these and you can just swap them whenever you want. The Ultima Forma.

[cittran]

Hard pass on a new forma, for me.
We already have enough of them (regular, aura, stance, umbra), and the forma system itself has been in a position -- for quite a while now -- where a rework would improve it.

On top of that, improving the entire forma system would make people across the entire playerbase more likely to use it, rather than just people who have already invested a lot of time into increasing their MR.

[fr4gb4ll]

On 2020-10-07 at 9:03 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

No. We don't need uni-polarities, we just need better control of the polarities we unlock.

The polarisation system needs an overhaul in general, it's old and outdated, hasn't been accurate to its stated function of "improving flexibility" ever since we started getting Primed mods (and of course, the extra-burden Exilus slot which is nigh-unusable if you don't shackle yourself to the build).

Polarisation should affect the item rather than directly affecting the slots ON the item. Let the player use the 'move polarities' screen to mix and match their item's unlocked Polarities - to use them or not use them however necessary for their build.

That way you remove all 'waste' from the system - you only get to unlock more flexibility, you never undo a previous investment because now there's better Umbral mods, for example. Each forma (including Umbral, which uni-polarity solutions can't coexist with) is still valued exactly the same, crucial for DE's business needs as Forma bundles are probably fairly high on their plat sink list. In fact, players would be inclined to use more forma on their items because it will never be a totally wasted investment or limit their future builds.

i think that's the best solution for most problems with the aged system. idk if DE could profit from it or not (i didn't bought any forma for years, i just build them every day and that's enough to have about 100 build formas at hand - and not much much more to use them on atm ^^) but it sure prevents much aggravation when DE changes either weapons/frame/etc or the more fundamental ways of the damage mechanics. and yes, i'm sure people would use more formas, especially in frames (for more starting energy due to spare-capacity) if they could just switch the polarity type like they can with the positions of polarized slots. me, i never used duplicates of frames or weapons just for flexibility and i'm sure that most player does neither so - therefore it shouldn't result in the users buying less slots and/or prime stuff.

[BahamutKaiser]

One or two universal polarities might be nice, but we have a forma system, and it doesn't need to be replaced with a duplicate system just to qualify your interest.