Improper Affinity Distribution for Operators (and their Amps)

[Voltage]

Operator Affinity currently distributes as follows:

Quote

• Kills with Operator abilities: All Affinity goes to the Operator's equipped Amp when possible.^[2]

• Kill with Amp: 100% of Affinity goes to the killing Amp.

• Shared Affinity from allied Tenno kills: When within 50 meters of an ally (200 meters while using a Fosfor, 250 meters in Landscape missions) when they kill an enemy, you gain the same total Affinity. The Affinity is distributed by 25% for the Operator, 37.5% for the Amp, and 37.5% for their unused melee slot.

  • Because only Operator Amps can gain Affinity, the 25% gained for the Operator and the 37.5% for their unused melee slot is lost resulting in only 37.5% of shared Affinity being earned for the Amp.

• No Amp equipped: Affinity is lost.

  • Only Operator Amps gain Affinity and not the Operator themselves.

Source: Warframe Wiki (edited just before making this post by me as I had to test each scenario to verify the bug and parts of the Wiki entry were worded incorrectly or wrong/outdated).

The highlighted sections are the parts I am reporting on specifically.

Lost Affinity from Operators themselves:

Operators earn Affinity through Distribution similar to a Warframe, but they cannot actually benefit from Affinity. They do not have levels/ranks, and they cannot equip a Focus Lens themselves. To solve this bug of Affinity being lost, I am proposing 2 solutions (first being more beneficial to the game, second being acceptable):

1. Selected Focus Schools install the equivalent of a Lua Lens of that school to your Operator so you can earn Focus Points while playing in Operator mode. This would be both a buff for people still farming Focus and a bug fix at the same time.
   • This would also allow DE to revert the change made to Operator Affinity distribution for Operator ability kills for consistency and it would check out.
     • "Killing enemies with Operator abilities (Void Blast, Void Dash) will now grant the kill Affinity to the equipped Amp when possible."
2.  Change to a unique distribution formula so all Affinity (100%) is distributed to the equipped Amp. If no Amp is equipped, Affinity is lost.
   • A similar change was made for Operator abilities as quoted above in Plains of Eidolon Remaster: Update 24.6.0.

Lost Affinity from unused melee slot:

I am posting this because of this topic/interview:

Sources: YouTube, Bilibili Video, Bilibili Transcript

English Transcript from Thread/Video that concerns this bug report:

9 hours ago, jxtichi012 said:

Question 7:

Will Operators have melee amplifiers or weapon systems similar to Warframes?

Pablo:

They will not, We actually recently removed melee from operators. They used to have a little...Void blast, I forgot the name for a moment, we removed that, and now when you press melee, you switch to your warframe and attack with melee.

We are adding a little bit more depth to the apps, we are revisiting a few of the choices that we made with apps in the past, and trying to add a little bit more of... a little bit more decision making for you guys, a little more customization. So we are looking at that, but we don't want... basically we don't want the operator to play the same as a warframe, because then what is the point of having both, right?

So we want you to feel one way when you're playing with your warframe and then when you switch to your operator, it should feel distinct in a way. So that's why we don't really want to have like a one-to-one match of how the gear works for your operator and for your warframe.

Currently players lose 62.5% of shared Affinity due to the 25% from Operators being lost as mentioned prior and 37.5% being lost to an unused melee slot (37.5% is half of 75%, and the game thinks Operators have two weapons equipped [possibly because Drifter has Rumblejack equipped during The New War quest?], resulting in your Amp earning half of that 75% shared Affinity).

Given Pablo gave a firm no on the matter of Operator melee weapons, this bug should definitely be fixed (alongside Operators not receiving Affinity) to both fix a bug and buff Amp leveling with shared Affinity. I have 2 proposed solutions for this based on the earlier propositions I made to Operator Affinity (again, first being more beneficial to the game, second being acceptable):

If solution 1 is implemented:

• 25% of shared Affinity would go to the Operator (converted to Focus Points at the rate of a Lua Lens to the selected Focus School) and 75% Affinity would go to the equipped Amp. If no Amp is equipped, the player would gain 100% shared Affinity converted at a rate of a Lua Lens to the selected Focus School.

If solution 2 is implemented:

• All shared Affinity (100%) would be distributed to the equipped Amp. If no Amp is equipped, Affinity is lost.

Hopefully this can be fixed. 😄