Solutions to alleviate the Forma'ing and ranking up grind

[MykilSockbat]

Good day fellow Tennos

Have you felt it frustrating and a tedious waste of time that EVERY time you add Forma to a weapon, you need to rank it up from 0 to max rank, over and over again each time?

Why can it not be made similar to the gilding system, so that when you install a forma it makes it so that you only need to rank it up again one time and after that formas can be installed and changed freely with no restrictions. It should give the option to change polarities as well in case you messed up a polarity slot or to change builds easily. The ranking up system for weapons feels like a tedious waste of time and its made especially worse with Kuva and Tenet weapons. We already spent the resources and waited a whole 24 hours to make one forma, why punish the players further by having to rank it up every time to get the right build for a weapon? It also keeps players from engaging the content they want to play as it takes a few hours to go through the whole ranking up process which usually involves having to play Sanctuary Onslaught or Hydron missions over and over, its not fun and I think it would be a huge QoL upgrade to change the forma-ing and ranking-up process. I wanted to tackle the Sanctum this past weekend but I couldn't because the weapons I wanted to maximize for it were not ready and the whole forma-ing process was the limiting factor. It just takes too long and feels like that time that could have been spent better on other content within the game.

ALTERNATIVELY, if the above does not make sense for the devs to implement, what about a reducing-scale system. For example, the first forma installed will take away 100% capacity, the second forma 80% capacity and so on up to a limit of 5 formas (so 20% capacity for each forma) which would still significantly speed-up the process at least, especially with Kuva and Tenet weapons as it is a requirement to add 5 formas to obtain the mastery rank XP. Normal weapons should also then give the mastery XP after the first forma, not just when you rank it up normally the first time. After the first 5 formas, the weapon should be considered fully 'mastered' and additional formas installed should come with no penalty plus players should be able to change polarities freely as needed for different builds. 'Mastering' weapons should not be so tedious and keep players from investing their hard-earned forma to tackle other areas of the game.

Also, can Kuva thralls please give more requiem murmurs for each one killed, make them tankier and do more damage if need be, it just takes sooo much longer than the Sister's hounds to get the requiem murmurs needed to figure out the parazon combinations.

What do y'all think of the above suggestions?

[Traumtulpe]

There's two things DE wants from you; Money and time.

By your proposal, DE might make more money (because presumably people would use more Forma), but they would definitely get less of your time. Big companies employ people specifically to do the math on issues like this (based on assumptions that may or may not correlate with reality), meaning there is little chance for players to have any influence by making well meaning suggestions.

Edited September 9 by Traumtulpe

[TeaHands]

Call of Duty and Mass Effect 3 Multi-player must have broken my brain or something because I really enjoy resetting to Rank 0 and grinding back up to Max again.

[MykilSockbat]

@Traumtulpe Time is the most important commodity we have and hence why I felt the need to post the topic. I am a middle-aged guy who dearly loves the game with all its quirks and bugs but I don't have that much free time to play it, and when I do, I don't want to be wasting that time just ranking up weapons to try out the builds I have in mind. There is too much to do in the game already and there is realistically not enough time to get to it all. Wishful thinking that the devs would implement something like this but I had to at least try.

@TeaHands Never played the multi-player in those two but I am sure they did not have over 350 weapons to rank-up and master (unless I'm grossly mistaken).

[quxier]

13 minutes ago, MykilSockbat said:

EVERY time you add Forma to a weapon, you need to rank it up from 0 to max rank

Well, that's not true. After formaing you start with MR. I'm at LR3. I'm not sure if kuva/sister/mechs use past 30 ranks but normal frames/weapons are usable after formaing.

MR is imho nice way to incentivize people to rank up. Maybe reduce it like exp limit. For example you start with 10 rank (so all abilities at least on rank 0/1 is active) + MR.

10 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

There's two things DE wants from you; Money and time.

and soul

Just now, MykilSockbat said:

Time is the most important commodity we have and hence why I felt the need to post the topic. I am a middle-aged guy who dearly loves the game with all its quirks and bugs but I don't have that much free time to play it, and when I do, I don't want to be wasting that time just ranking up weapons to try out the builds I have in mind. There is too much to do in the game already and there is realistically not enough time to get to it all. Wishful thinking that the devs would implement something like this but I had to at least try.

That's why they give you boosters & forma for money. I guess you can max few weapons in few minutes. That's not a lot.

[MykilSockbat]

@quxier Thanks for the comment. Yeah I forgot about the base mod capacity that ranks up as your profile ranks up, my apologies. Just looking for ways to streamline the process to make it smoother and less time-consuming.

Guess I will need to start buying affinity boosters more, keep forgetting about those on the market.

[quxier]

7 minutes ago, MykilSockbat said:

@quxier Thanks for the comment. Yeah I forgot about the base mod capacity that ranks up as your profile ranks up, my apologies. Just looking for ways to streamline the process to make it smoother and less time-consuming.

Guess I will need to start buying affinity boosters more, keep forgetting about those on the market.

Except few stuff like Mechs or K-drive where you cannot just spawn everywhere, there are few ways to do it.

First, booster helps but are not necessary. You can get it from daily logins or Duviri (maybe some Sortie & stuff but I don't remember).

ESO is good but you can go for some survival in SP (lot of enemies, exp isn't that higher). Omnia fissures SP are pretty nice (if teamamtes are close). You get prime parts, some Steel essence and pretty good exp. Sure, it's not for all people.

The other method is just equip weapon and use something else while playing with team. You get exp just by playing game normally. This is the best way as you are not forcing yourself (assuming that you play other stuff).

Of course it's fine and dandy if you don't want it maxed now. If that's the case then yeah, it can be little problematic. There is stuff like E/DA (elite deep archimedea) where you have 3 weapons/frames from each category. You could forma them. However I find it forced and it's "on you". If you wanted to do it then do it. I personally find this system bad so I don't engage it too much (I don't forma stuff for E/DA).

Other, softer cases is where you want to try some builds (now) I would say different approach. Let us test polarities & stuff in simulacrum. Sure, you would still have to max it (few times) but you would have at least almost sure if builds works for you or not. It would especially help in case of newer players.

 

[C11H22O1]

35 minutes ago, MykilSockbat said:

Guess I will need to start buying affinity boosters more, keep forgetting about those on the market.

That's exactly the point, they want it to be a bit tedious to make people that don't feel like spending too much time leveling to spend money.

Though I don't believe it's necessary to buy a booster even if it helps a lot to have it, stuff like hydron and ESO can level up your stuff pretty quick.

[MykilSockbat]

Thanks for the comments guys. I do the sorties most of the time but rarely get an affinity booster. Usually would do relic cracking or ESO/Hydron runs however the problem is just that doing ESO/Hydron runs back-to-back to get weapons maxed out quick gets old real quick (and takes time) but its the only way without a booster.

I do understand that the system in its current state is to force players to spend more time (or fork out money), it was just wishful thinking that it could be changed somehow to be a little less tedious.

@quxier 'Except few stuff like Mechs or K-drive where you cannot just spawn everywhere, there are few ways to do it.' Yes these taken even more to rank up!

'Let us test polarities & stuff in simulacrum. Sure, you would still have to max it (few times) but you would have at least almost sure if builds works for you or not. It would especially help in case of newer players.' Yes I agree this is a great suggestion!

[trst]

Ranking things up takes 5-10 minutes of gameplay, taking longer is your own choice. Also it seems very strange to call an hour at most a "tedious waste of time" when looking at the difference between a zero Forma budget build and a maxed out five Forma one.

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

Well, that's not true. After formaing you start with MR. I'm at LR3. I'm not sure if kuva/sister/mechs use past 30 ranks but normal frames/weapons are usable after formaing.

The weapon keeps its Capacity but the Level still drops to zero. This is an important distinction if you want to add multiple Forma, because even at MR30+ when the weapon stays at full Capacity, you still can't use another Forma until the level reaches 30 again 

[zThulsaDoomz]

Hate to break it to you, but grinding is literally the foundation of any looter shooter.

I understand where you're coming from though

[(PSN)Unstar]

5 hours ago, MykilSockbat said:

Have you felt it frustrating and a tedious waste of time that EVERY time you add Forma to a weapon, you need to rank it up from 0 to max rank, over and over again each time?

Honestly, no.  When I have a weapon I'm excited for, the process of leveling it up feels fun.  Hop into Elite Sanctuary Onslaught and just kill a bunch of dudes while staying in close proximity to the Saryns.  It's usually pretty fast, and it's something I only do when leveling, and it's an activity I find enjoyable.  Plus affinity boost events and login rewards are common enough that you can rank even faster if that's your things.

That said, I only build and forma things that I think I'll like and use.  I can imagine how if someone thought they needed to max out every weapon they owned that it would quickly feel like a chore.