Convergence -- why its basically pacman

[Void.Soul]

So we got some changes to focus recently. Convergence, a new, pick-up based focus bonus systems was introduced. Before we get into discussing this new system let me just ask, am I the only one who half expected all the enemies to turn blue and start running away once you grabbed that first golden pellet? I want to be contructive here, but this system feels like straight up 80's coin-op game design.

The system was clearly designed to counter draco farming by encouraging players to move around to get decent focus. The only problem is this interferes with protecting objectives in interceptio, mobile defence, extraction, and defense misson types--and isn't really ideal a lot of the time anyway on high level missions if you have to seperate from your team and plunge through a horde of enemies to reach your convergence power up. Whatever, draco is still fastest even without convergence.

If the goal was to encourage people to earn focus in other ways then I don't think convergence currently addresses this 'problem'. It also doesn't make sense when you really think about it. I mean what is this thing, why does it appear randomly, and how does it help me gain focus? I know, its a game, it just does.

I still think that lenses were a bad idea. Players should be able to earn focus on any maxed frame or weapon. That way they won't feel locked into playing certain frames and if they are earning focus at a steady rate no matter what frame or weapon they play they may feel less inclined to look to draco as the go to source for focus. Lenses don't need to necessarily go away--they could still augment the amount of focus gained or they could do something different like give a small bonus to refresh time on the 5th ability. That way if you want to pay platinum and specialize on a particular frame, you can.

Also, I think the convergence system would work much better if the power up/honeycomb thing dropped from enemies as a pickup. The placing on it currently is largely inconvienient. It would be nice if the power-ups appeared somewhere near both the player as well as the enemies instead of a random empty hallway somewhere. It would be easier to grab one in the midst of battle if they dropped off the enemies you were slaying.

What do you guys think? Do you like convergence? Do you have some ideas on how to make it better? Do you feel like pacman when you chase down enemies as fast as you can after grabbing a convergence power-up? Is it just me?

[alexmach1]

I agree with you that Focus should just be earned from r30 items, and personally think we should be able to build up a pool of points to put into whatever we want rather than being funneled into a single specific ability tree. 

I think the main problem with focus is that DE is trying to stretch it out super hard for very meager bonuses(thousands of focus points for just 1 energy per second or 5% bonus armor?); I think smaller and more plentiful passives should be created that build up to much better passives later on, even if they're just things like +5% health/shields, +1% bonus power strength, 5 extra meters power range, etc. This will help new players get small bonuses more easily and feel more engaged with the system as they unlock more and more passives to get that big upgrade; as it is now, without draco it takes days to really put effort into earning a lot of standing to get just one upgrade, and it discourages regularly checking your focus because you'll always end up needing 24000 more focus or something. by having smaller and cheaper upgrades, it lets us progress at a natural pace without feeling like we need to farm focus just to benefit from our time.

They should also separate the power upgrades from the passive upgrades. I just want to upgrade my warframe without having some strange gimmick applied to my focus power ie large explosion that can corrosive proc myself, splitting my beam into 3 beams that do less damage, etc. It lets people focus on whether they want to take a more passive route or turn their focus ability into a utility rather than having to jumble together both at the same time.

I also think passives should always be active and not require activating your focus ability, as the cooldown can range from 180 seconds to 6 minutes; time where the mission will most likely be finished. Players might not even know they need to activate the focus ability to use the passives, as there is no in-game instruction to press 5 to use it at any point. 

[JalakBali]

Pretty sure the system is designed to discourage AFKers. If you think it's Pacman, then yeah, the entire game is Pacman. You have to run around and gobble energy balls and ammo.

 

My only problem is when the convergence ball spawned what seemed like close to your spot but actually 4 rooms over because you have to loop around the map.

[DiabolusUrsus]

27 minutes ago, JalakBali said:

Pretty sure the system is designed to discourage AFKers. If you think it's Pacman, then yeah, the entire game is Pacman. You have to run around and gobble energy balls and ammo.

My only problem is when the convergence ball spawned what seemed like close to your spot but actually 4 rooms over because you have to loop around the map.

DE already has some fairly steep penalties in place for AFK players, straight up to the point of them not getting rewards. Focus doesn't need to do that, and I think that trying to use it for that purpose harms its implementation overall. 

Convergence encourages people to continue competing for kills and ignore the objective in most cases, which is a bad thing. There's no reason why it needs to be a randomly spawning power-up. It would be better even if they made such a small change as simply having it trigger periodically for the player. 

Personally, I'd be in favor of an entirely new system for accumulating Focus - something akin to a Focus meter that builds up through successful gameplay and is depleted by things like knockdowns or falling into pits, where the player earns Focus more quickly while playing well. The activation of passives and actives could be tied to this meter as well, instead of arbitrary cooldowns, which would allow for a more dynamic iteration of Focus that doesn't necessitate using as few bonuses as possible to minimize the cooldown. 

[JalakBali]

When I say "AFKers" I do include people who run scripts to make it appear they're not AFK. DE's anti AFK system is too easily bypassed. You do notice that most "AFKers" are not exactly passive statue-like and run scripts as buffbots or Desecrate bots?

Sure, would be nice if Focus could reward those who play well. The problem is how to detect "playing well". You mentioned not getting "knockdowns or falling into pits" but these apply to the AFKers I mentioned above. So how to detect players who play "well" versus those who run as bots?

Also, I don't get how Convergence encourages people to compete for kills. Once you have it, all kills feed your Focus. The whole point of rushing to get it is so kills don't go to waste and you get a slice of the exp for Focus. The drawback I see from Convergence is that it encourages players to put lenses on all their gear because that is how affinity is shared from team kills.

[DiabolusUrsus]

24 minutes ago, JalakBali said:

When I say "AFKers" I do include people who run scripts to make it appear they're not AFK. DE's anti AFK system is too easily bypassed. You do notice that most "AFKers" are not exactly passive statue-like and run scripts as buffbots or Desecrate bots?

Sure, would be nice if Focus could reward those who play well. The problem is how to detect "playing well". You mentioned not getting "knockdowns or falling into pits" but these apply to the AFKers I mentioned above. So how to detect players who play "well" versus those who run as bots?

Also, I don't get how Convergence encourages people to compete for kills. Once you have it, all kills feed your Focus. The whole point of rushing to get it is so kills don't go to waste and you get a slice of the exp for Focus. The drawback I see from Convergence is that it encourages players to put lenses on all their gear because that is how affinity is shared from team kills.

This obsession with AFKers is unhealthy, and the game really shouldn't be run by their influence. 

"Playing well" is as simple as incremental benefits from contributing to mission success - inflicting damage, getting kills, using support abilities, reviving allies, completing objectives - and proportional penalties for not doing so well. Getting downed, getting knocked down or disarmed, etc. You get the idea. An AFKer with a script obviously isn't going to be doing much of that.

Well, as you mentioned... if people don't have lenses on all of their gear, they need to get kills to make the most of it. If the lens is on the Warframe, they need to get kills with abilities to make sure it gets the majority of the affinity. If they have the lens weapon, the same applies. There's no need to compete if you have lenses on ALL of your gear, but how many people have fully-equipped loadouts? While the challenge of needing to change up pacing and coordination in order to pick up Convergence boosts can be interesting, it really only applies to private groups of friends that are actually coordinated. I can really only see it causing problems in actual public games. 

If you want to attack AFKers, I think it's better make suggestions aimed at addressing the issue of AKFers specifically rather than appropriate actual game mechanics for that purpose. 

[YasaiTsume]

I find myself finally able to earn more than a handful of Focus for each mission, earning as much as 5000 ~ 10,000 per mission now.

Before, I would only earn about 2000 per mission, if I do not hog all the kills for myself.

I like Convergence. 

[absolutecondzero]

Do remember that the Focus system is still in Beta. When DE is going to tweak it, welp nobody knows but I do hope that the farm is easier and the different schools get balanced out so everyone could enjoy using different schools rather than the OP school

[DelialFallen]

I dislike Convergence personally.  I find it to detract too much from the Warframe experience.  By that I mean that chasing after golden spheres is more of a Harry Potter thing or a Pac-Man thing.  It's a bit too arcade-y for my tastes and looks like it would be more at home on the Obstacle Course than in missions themselves.

 

I give it two thumbs down and a pinky toe.

[Liminal]

10 hours ago, Gruppesechs said:

What do you guys think? Do you like convergence? Do you have some ideas on how to make it better?

I hate convergence. It feels out of place.
I want to shoot things and I want to shoot them at my own pace, I don't want to run over a glowing orb and have it put a timer on my screen. I don't want to feel that grabbing the orb right then was a bad move because now the wave is over and I will waste a lot of affinity.

IMO: remove convergence altoghether and increase affinity gains (maybe solo/shared affinity should change depending on how many players there are in a mission). Stop punishing players who play as intended because some exploit the game. Only try to stop the AFK-ing if you can do it without inconveniencing those that play the game normally.
 

[CrazyCatLad]

If convergence dropped from a slain enemy 10-15m from the player in the same room and on the same level of elevation, it'd be fine.

 

I really hate it as it is now.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Lanieu

[Vicious_Vipa]

11 hours ago, Gruppesechs said:

The system was clearly designed to counter draco farming by encouraging players to move around to get decent focus. 

I agree with most of your points. 

 

but if this point was true, then why is DRACO the only place in universe where the new convergence system does NOT suck so badly? 

[torint_man]

IMO, the best way to fix it is to have the orbs drop from an enemy. The enemy wouldn't be special, just have a mark on it when it spawns. This would prevent the issue of the orb spawning 100 meters away, as the orb would come to you.

[Ikusias]

Really hating the entire focus sistem at hte moment and convergence is the last failure DE inflicted us:

- it's disruptive in normal mission because as soon as it spawns there's a rush to get it, (public missions) ignoring the objective, it spawns ofthen very out of the path of the mission like a lure to keep the players away from the target;

- doesn't solve leeching and draco abuse;

- lore wise it makes no sense

[JalakBali]

18 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

This obsession with AFKers is unhealthy, and the game really shouldn't be run by their influence. 

I'm not the one with the obsession. DE is. And it *is* unhealthy if they let their game give out maximum benefit to people who bot instead of rewarding active players.

18 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

"Playing well" is as simple as incremental benefits from contributing to mission success - inflicting damage, getting kills, using support abilities, reviving allies, completing objectives - and proportional penalties for not doing so well. Getting downed, getting knocked down or disarmed, etc. You get the idea. An AFKer with a script obviously isn't going to be doing much of that.

You do realize those metrics will undoubtedly create even more hassle? Now you have to worry about some dumb Rhino who thought Iron Skin makes him immune to everything and charged that crowd of Eximus with his space katana because if he got downed and you couldn't revive him in time, you'd be graded as "bad player" or at the very least losing out on some rewards. Or a farm group set it up so they could revive a designated patsy over and over for maximum points. And as for inflicting damage, well, that's the same problem as selfish gameplay of hogging all the kills for Focus like you said before. Using support ability, that would be great if you're playing Nekros since you will always get top rank.  The average players would whine if the rewards are great since now they're "forced" to do all these things even if the vets couldn't gobble all of them up. If the rewards were too slim, then no one would care. Not so easy, is it?

18 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Well, as you mentioned... if people don't have lenses on all of their gear, they need to get kills to make the most of it. If the lens is on the Warframe, they need to get kills with abilities to make sure it gets the majority of the affinity. If they have the lens weapon, the same applies. There's no need to compete if you have lenses on ALL of your gear, but how many people have fully-equipped loadouts? While the challenge of needing to change up pacing and coordination in order to pick up Convergence boosts can be interesting, it really only applies to private groups of friends that are actually coordinated. I can really only see it causing problems in actual public games. 

I agree with this one and the solution is more about the acquisition and usage of lenses. I made a post somewhere else about making lenses easier to acquire or at least be removable so you could swap them to other gears.

18 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If you want to attack AFKers, I think it's better make suggestions aimed at addressing the issue of AKFers specifically rather than appropriate actual game mechanics for that purpose. 

Convergence is actually addressing this better than your previous solutions. The only problem with Convergence is where and how it is spawned. For instance, it could spawn closer to the objective as long as no player is at that exact spot, again, to curb bots. It should reward players who stick to the main plan. Make Convergence like a floaty orb instead of an item. So it could follow objectives that are moving.

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

I'd like them to scrap this honestly dumb convergence system before they patch it in on consoles. 

[-TSA-voodoo]

i like all of op´s statements.

Id like to add that id 2x- to 3x the current rate at which focus is gained.

hitting 45k after 5 hours of ext / mob def missions with all small lenses seems like not enugh.

There is no way i could hit cap without draco.

 

I really dont understand why DE made it such a complex mechanic...

Easy, unexploitable solution would have been a fixed amount of focus for every finished mission. Dependant on type/duration of cause.

done

 

focus like a boss, without worrying about it. That was the goal right?

 

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by voodoo-EGT-

[DiabolusUrsus]

3 hours ago, JalakBali said:

I'm not the one with the obsession. DE is. And it *is* unhealthy if they let their game give out maximum benefit to people who bot instead of rewarding active players.

DE could solve the AFK problem at any time with a simple in-game reputation system and give the community incentive to provide video evidence support and start handing out some bans. They could also limit the tendency of players to AFK by making the game more engaging and less repetitive. 

 

3 hours ago, JalakBali said:

You do realize those metrics will undoubtedly create even more hassle? Now you have to worry about some dumb Rhino who thought Iron Skin makes him immune to everything and charged that crowd of Eximus with his space katana because if he got downed and you couldn't revive him in time, you'd be graded as "bad player" or at the very least losing out on some rewards. Or a farm group set it up so they could revive a designated patsy over and over for maximum points. And as for inflicting damage, well, that's the same problem as selfish gameplay of hogging all the kills for Focus like you said before. Using support ability, that would be great if you're playing Nekros since you will always get top rank.  The average players would whine if the rewards are great since now they're "forced" to do all these things even if the vets couldn't gobble all of them up. If the rewards were too slim, then no one would care. Not so easy, is it?

Nope, you don't have to worry. The game should not penalize you for bad things that happen to other players, but it should reward you for assisting them. As for the rest of it... I think you're misunderstanding my suggestion. It's simply a meter - a multiplier, if you will, similar to the melee combo counter. You do well consistently, and you max out the meter and start earning Focus much quicker from all sources. You don't do so hot, and you gain Focus less quickly and need to work your way back up. It essentially makes Convergence dynamic, and should be built off a system of positive reinforcement.

3 hours ago, JalakBali said:

Convergence is actually addressing this better than your previous solutions. The only problem with Convergence is where and how it is spawned. For instance, it could spawn closer to the objective as long as no player is at that exact spot, again, to curb bots. It should reward players who stick to the main plan. Make Convergence like a floaty orb instead of an item. So it could follow objectives that are moving.

Except my goal was never to address the issue of AFKers, it was to address the issues I had with Convergence, which makes simply leaving it as-is unacceptable to me. The system I have proposed achieves the same effect as Convergence - AFK players will not gain boosts to Focus gains as they won't with Convergence, and it solves my issues with the clunkiness of having an arbitrary power-up for lack of a better idea. 

[MobyTheDuck]

How about they just bring back the original focus gain, so we can actually play the game and get focus instead of having leaving the objective to backtrack several rooms because the game spawned the orb in a room under us, but that is actually 10 rooms back?

You are pretty much forced to grab the darn things if you want to build focus, because that 1.25-1.75% conversion rate is WAY too low.

[vazerd68]

It doesn't even fix draco because it will spawn 50m away (5sec) at most.

The convergence still spawns too far, with backtracking.

and because the gain without it is non existent we have to get it if we want points....

Edited February 24, 2016 by vazerd68
typo

[MumblesMcphatty]

Honestly - hate Convergence with a fiery, burning passion. 

Focus and Primed mods is basically all I have to work on - I rarely group up - and although I'm not particularly concerned about maxing everything in a month or hitting daily caps - this new system is just plain annoying.

Forced to rush when I'd rather stealth, forced to leave a tile when I'm still clearing another, forced to spam powers when I much prefer being conservative. 

Warframe's draw for me was always centred on a sort of "freedom of expression" in mass-murder. Now I'm forced to play like every other speed-running metajunkie - which I'm fine with occasionally - but not all the time. Yes Focus needs some sort of interactive mechanic - but this is a big fail in my opinion. 

 

[Loswaith]

On 2/23/2016 at 8:45 PM, YasaiTsume said:

I find myself finally able to earn more than a handful of Focus for each mission, earning as much as 5000 ~ 10,000 per mission now.

Before, I would only earn about 2000 per mission, if I do not hog all the kills for myself.

I like Convergence. 

Keep in mind that before Convergence was added you only got Focus for your personal kills while now you get shared focus as well (abet all at much lower rates).  So you may find it really isn't convergence giving you the majority of the improved focus gains but shared affinity gains adding to the focus.

 

As it is convergence doesn't really help the non-dedicated farmers gain that much more than they would have gained with previous conversion rates and shared affinity gains actually counting to the overall gain itself.

[Neogeo]

On 2/23/2016 at 2:20 PM, Gruppesechs said:

 

I still think that lenses were a bad idea. Players should be able to earn focus on any maxed frame or weapon. That way they won't feel locked into playing certain frames and if they are earning focus at a steady rate no matter what frame or weapon they play they may feel less inclined to look to draco as the go to source for focus. Lenses don't need to necessarily go away--they could still augment the amount of focus gained or they could do something different like give a small bonus to refresh time on the 5th ability. That way if you want to pay platinum and specialize on a particular frame, you can.

Now, why would they do that? The whole idea was to limit player choice of frame/weapon to selective few unless they spend money to buy lens. If they were to allow any max rank item to auto gain focus, you won't spend money buying lens, would you? They nerf the focus affinity not because of Draco, but because people will put on their focus farming gear and capped the focus in one game. That defeat the purpose to limiting player choice of frame and weapon. DE want people to gradually earning focus through out their play sessions. Since you can't have enough lens to put on all your gear, you're force to spend plats. It's a brilliant idea to force player to pay, almost as good as the exilus adaptor.  

[JalakBali]

On 2/24/2016 at 2:48 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

DE could solve the AFK problem at any time with a simple in-game reputation system and give the community incentive to provide video evidence support and start handing out some bans. They could also limit the tendency of players to AFK by making the game more engaging and less repetitive. 

Those ideas only sound good on paper. In-game reputation might be great for a community that is so toxic that you wouldn't mind some casualties since those toxic players are driving away players. It's not so in this game where the players' problems are not being toxic to other players and more like they're gaining more without actually playing. Video recording proof, ignoring the fact that recording someone farming to report them when it doesn't really affect you yourself as a player is too much effort for something so petty, the manpower and logistics required to review these video proofs is not feasible. Also, it's not like someone cheating and robbing you of something like in PvP games. Relying on the community to police itself will not work.

 

On 2/24/2016 at 2:48 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Nope, you don't have to worry. The game should not penalize you for bad things that happen to other players, but it should reward you for assisting them. As for the rest of it... I think you're misunderstanding my suggestion. It's simply a meter - a multiplier, if you will, similar to the melee combo counter. You do well consistently, and you max out the meter and start earning Focus much quicker from all sources. You don't do so hot, and you gain Focus less quickly and need to work your way back up. It essentially makes Convergence dynamic, and should be built off a system of positive reinforcement.

This does not solve the problem that it *will* be exploitable. Like, I've said before, the system will not be able to tell a player getting downed legitimately to players getting downed deliberately. So if the incentive is good enough, teams will designate a patsy to take a hit and get revived by his team for a boost. I used to play an MMORPG long ago where if a teammate is killed, the team would get a massive buff due to some skill. So we designated someone to die during boss fights to give the rest of us buffs. Often that someone was a bot.

 

On 2/24/2016 at 2:48 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Except my goal was never to address the issue of AFKers, it was to address the issues I had with Convergence, which makes simply leaving it as-is unacceptable to me. The system I have proposed achieves the same effect as Convergence - AFK players will not gain boosts to Focus gains as they won't with Convergence, and it solves my issues with the clunkiness of having an arbitrary power-up for lack of a better idea. 

And my concern is that while it does solve AFK players, like current Convergence does, it also adds an easily exploitable system. My proposed system is that the Convergence orb spawns near the objective. Or if it is an Exterminate mission, it would spawn in an enemy and drops (to be picked up) when he is killed. The Convergence orb should spawn in a way to entice the player to keep up with the objective, instead of sometimes making them go back to grab it.

[ShikiRen]

It doesn't discourage Draco farming in the slightest... You actually get more Focus with it than before. I mean it is just one big , easily accessable room where Convergance even spawns, and you can reel in a ton of focus with each picked up Convergence.

 

Also, ally kills count towards focus gain now, which is already a very big plus.

 

In any case, I like convergance... The rush to kill as fast as possible once you've picked one up is just great for the same reason playing body count + bloodrush on melees feels great...always running , searching for the next enemy, just so your combo counter doesn't reset...beautiful. Now if only bodycount was baseline instead of a mod...

 

Anyway. The only time when I don't like it is when the pick-up spawns at a S#&$ty location, or halfway through a def-round so there just aren't enough enemies to kill and you can't really wait it out because it will despawn after some time. Although it is also one of the reasons the fact that "it distracts people from the objective" isn't really true, because you usually wait until a round is over before collecting the pick up, just to get the most out of it.