Is there some way to streamline how Affinity works?

[FrostDragoon]

The current mechanics are confusing, cumbersome, and don't play well with the somewhat new Focus system.

For those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Affinity.

I'm not sure how this should be addressed, but I just wanted to open the discussion to see what ideas my fellow Tenno might have.

[CrudShuzKong]

You dont agree that people who deal the least damage get the most out of the affinity?

Makes total sense to me! /sarcasm

And yes, the whole affinity system could use some improvements or meaybe even a rework. Shared affinity ranges are a joke (especially for arching and/or interception missions). The way Warfrmaes and weapons share affinity makes sense on paper but leads to above mentioned phenomenon where everybody except the guy getting kills are better off.

[FrostDragoon]

If I kill something with my Lex, does my Orthos get exp? How much? What about if I kill it with World on Fire or something? How should I attach lenses to get the most Focus? How does this interact with party mechanics and kills other people make?

 

The answers to all these questions are available, but they aren't intuitive, and it's frankly annoying to try to think about. I've played this game quite a lot. I no-lifed it on PS4 for a solid 3 months, and have an additional 400 hours on PC. I still find this aspect of the game annoying. What about new players? They have enough other stuff that is poorly explained to try to figure out that this doesn't help anything either.

 

Some kind of rework would be nice, but as I said earlier, I'm not sure where to start. That's why I opened this thread.

[NinjaZeku]

IMO, all Affinity gained should be distributed throughout your gear,
I'd be okay with the majority (50%?) going to whatever did the killing,
it's just that (non-stealth) solo leveling is pretty painful
(the new MR = Capacity boost thingamajig helps ... if you're, like, MR20+)
and it's very silly that having the highest kill count in a Squad is such a detriment.

Shared Affinity ... eh, you could just make it global, in a co-op game that features
high mobility and large maps, getting penalized for not clumping up together is ... DE why.
Implement better AFK / leech countermeasures already if that's all that's holding it back
(I know I know, a little tiny bit easier said than done, and actually,
I'd rather have the occasional leech than relying on the newest "leveling trick").

Focus ... yeah you know what, I'd be completely unopposed to just trashing everything
(while keeping our gained Focus points though) and reworking it all from the ground up.

Barring that, Convergence pickups have to go
(or at the very very least spawn for each player individually and very very near),
you could just make Convergence periodically happen for the whole Squad,
or ... trash 'em and give us back our good ol' pre-Convergence gains :P

[FrostDragoon]

Well, Focus doesn't really bother me by itself. It's really the mechanics of Affinity and how Focus interacts with it that I dislike.

[Av3rage]

47 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

If I kill something with my Lex, does my Orthos get exp? How much? What about if I kill it with World on Fire or something? How should I attach lenses to get the most Focus? How does this interact with party mechanics and kills other people make?

In my experience the answer is your Orthos doesnt get s**t. Let me explain:

Individual or Solo Play:

Kill an enemy with a weapon: 50% of the affinity goes to the weapon that killed the enemy and the remaining 50% goes to warframe.

Kill an enemy using a warframe skill: 100% goes to warframe (not sure if cc counts as killing an enemy with warframe skill)

If your leveling a warframe all is good since whatever u kill your warframe gets affinity, if your leveling a weapon unless you are using that weapon to deal the killling blow ur pretty much screwed. Tested this myself. 

Co-Op Game (effects on you):

Ally kill an enemy by any means (warframe or weapon): you must be within 50m of the person who did the killing. You get the same affinity, 25% of it go to ur warframe, the remaining 75% are divided equally to ur equipped weapon/s.

That is it in a nutshell. For focus the way I understood it is the amount of focus gained is based on a percentage of the affinity gained by the equipment or warframe to which the lens is attached. So basically if your lens is equipped on a level 30 warframe, whatever affinity that warframe gets a percentage of it is gonna be focus. I didnt bother with the exact number. Best to put lens is on a warframe you use the most coz warframe get more affinity no matter what you use to kill the enemy. If you change warframe a lot then put it on a weapon you use the most.

If there will be any changes its one thing for me:

Change the way affinity gained Individually/Solo Play: make it so that all affinity is shared with warframe and all weapons equipped, result of these is you can level weapons even if you are not using it as long as it is equipped. 

Group Play: nothing really here, sure add more range for affinity range the amount is I dunno. Too much of it will just result in leeching and more negative effects.

 

As of late about a week after draco died, I just keep finding groups that even tho they are MR20+ they dont kill or they act dumb. After learning how affinity works well I guess they are doing what im doing. trying to act dumb so allies will do most of the killing so I get more affinity. The more I kill the less affinity I get since focus is not my priority. Sucks but thats the system we have, so just make the best out of it. :D

Edited July 26, 2016 by Av3rage

[gluih]

I'm with not having affinity shared with everyone on the map. Making the players stay together isn't a bad idea overall. If you are not staying together, you might aswell play solo.

How large a good range is depends a lot of the tiles however. On larger tiles the range should be bigger. Maybe change it so you always share affinity when you are on the same tile. Archwing also needs a greater sharing range.

What I would like to see to improve this is more affinity based on objectives, like capture targets, sabotage caches, etc. Bosses should also give a lot more affinity. This way, more affinity would go to gear that is not actually used.

How many kills or how much damage every single players gets shouldn't matter to how much affinity they get. There are other ways to contribute to the team and players shouldn't be punished for playing a supportive style.
Players also shouldn't be punished for killing stuff however, by not getting xp for the gear that they aren'tg using and support frames still need a better way to level up. Again making objectives more important would be nice.

[LuckyCharm]

Makes things a bit bad sticking together for spy mission affinity too.. cus really.. most groups take one vault each to get things done..

[FrostDragoon]

For Spy missions, I just go solo. The objective itself gives a nice Affinity boost, and I don't like risking randoms failing it.

[(PSN)PillarOfWar]

13 hours ago, NinjaZeku said:

IMO, all Affinity gained should be distributed throughout your gear,
I'd be okay with the majority (50%?) going to whatever did the killing,
it's just that (non-stealth) solo leveling is pretty painful
(the new MR = Capacity boost thingamajig helps ... if you're, like, MR20+)
and it's very silly that having the highest kill count in a Squad is such a detriment.

Shared Affinity ... eh, you could just make it global, in a co-op game that features
high mobility and large maps, getting penalized for not clumping up together is ... DE why.
Implement better AFK / leech countermeasures already if that's all that's holding it back
(I know I know, a little tiny bit easier said than done, and actually,
I'd rather have the occasional leech than relying on the newest "leveling trick").

Focus ... yeah you know what, I'd be completely unopposed to just trashing everything
(while keeping our gained Focus points though) and reworking it all from the ground up.

Barring that, Convergence pickups have to go
(or at the very very least spawn for each player individually and very very near),
you could just make Convergence periodically happen for the whole Squad,
or ... trash 'em and give us back our good ol' pre-Convergence gains :P

That's pretty spot on. Would be nice if the shared affinity range went away. 

[DxAdder]

It was called Draco..

Now it's called Boosters or grind forever to even come close to catching up.

 

[FrostDragoon]

I thought about getting a booster, but I don't think that's how I want to reward DE for killing Draco while these kinds of issues exist. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why they did it. I just think this should have been a bigger concern.

[FrostDragoon]

I was thinking about it, and the squad Affinity radius is easy enough to tackle on its own, but the core problem is still the base mechanics of how to decide what equipment gets how much. I think we should start our discussion there.

[SilentMobius]

On 7/26/2016 at 7:43 AM, FrostDragoon said:

If I kill something with my Lex, does my Orthos get exp? How much? What about if I kill it with World on Fire or something? How should I attach lenses to get the most Focus? How does this interact with party mechanics and kills other people make?

 

The answers to all these questions are available, but they aren't intuitive, and it's frankly annoying to try to think about. I've played this game quite a lot. I no-lifed it on PS4 for a solid 3 months, and have an additional 400 hours on PC. I still find this aspect of the game annoying. What about new players? They have enough other stuff that is poorly explained to try to figure out that this doesn't help anything either.

 

Some kind of rework would be nice, but as I said earlier, I'm not sure where to start. That's why I opened this thread.

If you kill with it then it gets Affinity. I don't think thats really that confusing.

Even the details are pretty straight forward:

• Weapon kills: 50% weapon, %50 frame
• Power kills 100% frame

Easy.

The only odd part is the radial Affinity from teammates, and I wouldn't worry about that as it's most likely changing soon.

Things to remember about radial-teammate affinity:

1. DE tried to change it before. They don't like the current system, the players raged at the change and they reverted it
2. DE don't like the idea that you can level a weapon via radial affinity without using it.
3. Steve said that the base-capacity change would mean that the way you level weapon will change

IMHO the you-only-get-radial-affinity-if-you're-actually-using-a-weapon system is coming back, it will make all affinity gain more straightforward IMHO.

Imagine the following:

• All radial affinity goes into a pot
• That pot is given to you in the same proportions as any affinity you earn.
• If you aren't killing with a weapon then it doesn't level up

I'm certain this is on it's way now we have base-capacity.

Edited July 28, 2016 by SilentMobius

[FrostDragoon]

Something like that would cripple support frames. I don't think that's a viable--or even likely--change.

[SilentMobius]

48 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

Something like that would cripple support frames. I don't think that's a viable--or even likely--change.

It's already happened, ( 2.5 year ago Here I think my solution is slightly superior though ) DE reverted it explicitly because of complaints regarding levelling "weak" weapons. Which has been solved with the base capacity as Steve mentioned.

There is no "Support" frame in this game that shouldn't also be shooting, DE thinks that if you don't use it you shouldn't be able to rank it, personally I agree.

And it would make affinity gain much more obvious (which is an issue as you point out) by preventing people leaching from their teammates (and incidentally killing all forms of 'Draco' and it's kin)

It's win, win, win, win. 

Edited July 28, 2016 by SilentMobius

[EmptyDevil]

What do you think of this idea? It's a very rough concept, but could possibly eliminate the woes of shared and wasted XP.

 

[DxAdder]

On 7/27/2016 at 6:06 AM, FrostDragoon said:

I thought about getting a booster, but I don't think that's how I want to reward DE for killing Draco while these kinds of issues exist. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why they did it. I just think this should have been a bigger concern.

The problem with boosters is the timer is running all the time. 

Being generous, IF you played 8 hours a day your still wasting 66% of the booster so on a 30 day booster your throwing away 132 plat.

DE could release booster that were way more efficient but for some reason won't .i.e 4 hour boosters.