Making focus more reasonable

[Phyrak]

Hey there,

The focus system in its 2.0 has come great steps since it beginnings from the second dream, but with the change of how each school works along with the unbinding - there are still a few tweaks that can help with getting a casual player to utilize it a greater extent.

Remove the convergence orb:
The convergence orb serves as nothing more than a distraction; leaving team mates to die or to neglect objectives.
Now, if this were to become passive, the gain from a lense would need to be upped by 100-500% or even standardizing to 5%,10%,15% and 20% of affinity converted into focus of the chosen school/lense.

This would allow for a greater focus on gameplay and letting the focus come in naturally, as is the case with syndicate Sigils.

Operator missions/kills:
Again, taking a page out of the syndicates - much as how you can earn full standing with a syndicate and then take on the syndicate missions for additional standing, such should be the case with operator missions or perhaps a mission based specifically on a focus school (s). This will reduce the grind more so. 

Taking out foes with the operator should yield a direct conversion from affinity to focus - be it a 1:1 or perhaps, a focus to take out foes yields the affinity by a factor of 10x.

Eg.
Killing a vomvalyst yields 308 affinity
Using this system, you will gain the 308 affinity towards normal weapons but you will gain 3080 focus directly towards the school you are currently running.

Lastly,

Unbinding:
Unbinding is a chore, not only is there a massive gap of focus to gain - but also set behind rng to gain the core needed to do so.
One of a few methods to reduce this grind and increase the way to open up the schools as such.

Difference in shards - let unbinding be based on shards, 10 intact or 5 exceptional or 1 brilliant shard. Any of these three to unbind would make the grind much easier on those who play casually - this also rewards those who play specifically for the schools to gain them as they wish.

Just some thoughts, 

Thank you for reading, 

-Phyrak 

Edited October 17, 2017 by Phyrak
Cores to shards

[Diarmut]

The item I agree with most is the 1:1 focus conversion for kills with an operator, seems like it just makes sense, and would incentivize operators, but I also support upping the lens conversions as well.

[Clats01]

19 minutes ago, Phyrak said:

Difference in cores - let unbinding be based on cores, 10 intact or 5 exceptional or 1 brilliant core. Any of these three to unbind would make the grind much easier on those who play casually - this also rewards those who play specifically for the schools to gain them as they wish.

Shards not cores, shards for focus, cores for Quill standing, also at this stage there are only 2 known types, "Brilliant Eidolon shard" and just plain old "Eidolon shard." Yes there needs to be a way to convert normal shard to brilliant or for a way to use them, but this update is only a few days old so there might still be a use we do not know about for them.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Clats01

[Phyrak]

Just now, Clats01 said:

Shards not cores, also at this stage there are only 2 known types, "Brilliant Eidolon shard" and just plain old "Eidolon shard." Yes there needs to be a way to convert normal shard to brilliant or for a way to use them, but this update is only a few days old so there might still be a use we do not know about for them.

Thank you for the correction

[ashrah]

would be really nice to see that changes cz amount of focus we need now for each school is really huge   someone told me now to much one school we need about 7.5mil+ slots xd

[Phyrak]

6 minutes ago, ashrah said:

would be really nice to see that changes cz amount of focus we need now for each school is really huge   someone told me now to much one school we need about 7.5mil+ slots xd

7.5 mil is an extreme amount

If just the lense changes mentioned were implemented, getting 7.5 would be that hard 

Putting operator missions on top would be icing on the cake 

[ashrah]

1 hour ago, Phyrak said:

7.5 mil is an extreme amount

If just the lense changes mentioned were implemented, getting 7.5 would be that hard 

Putting operator missions on top would be icing on the cake 

after focus 2.0 i had almost 4 mil in naramon... and i can max only maybe 4-5 skills at max..  u idea is really great

[ArbitUHM]

I really hate focus farming because it requires rank 30 weapons, which means you can't rank up weapons/frames while focus farming. That is a bummer for me.

For that reason, I REALLY like the idea of 1:1 focus for operator kills. That's a great idea. You can't rank up weapons as an operator anyway (except for the amp, which seems to rank up damn near instantly anyway) so why not rank up focus?

[ashrah]

27 minutes ago, ArbitUHM said:

I really hate focus farming because it requires rank 30 weapons, which means you can't rank up weapons/frames while focus farming. That is a bummer for me.

For that reason, I REALLY like the idea of 1:1 focus for operator kills. That's a great idea. You can't rank up weapons as an operator anyway (except for the amp, which seems to rank up damn near instantly anyway) so why not rank up focus?

worst thing for current focus farm u need to commit majority of u time to farm  focus only...greater lens is mandatory and xp booster is pretty much recommanded

[Frostvind]

There are way too many mechanics in this game, Focus should just have been removed.

[GovernmentSecrets.gov]

Completely agree on this; there's been times I had temporarily abandoned the objective to get focus orbs and it'd cause a bit of chaos with me being crowd control. But hey I need literally several boat loads of focus sooo worth the risk.

If it were made into something passive like affinity that'd be absolutely awesome.

[Phyrak]

12 minutes ago, GenerationX3 said:

Completely agree on this; there's been times I had temporarily abandoned the objective to get focus orbs and it'd cause a bit of chaos with me being crowd control. But hey I need literally several boat loads of focus sooo worth the risk.

If it were made into something passive like affinity that'd be absolutely awesome.

The negative implications of gameplay because focus is a priorty is an issue within itself - focus being a passive secondary would allow for focus on gameplay rather than chasing the orb in hopes for filling a niche

3 hours ago, ashrah said:

worst thing for current focus farm u need to commit majority of u time to farm  focus only...greater lens is mandatory and xp booster is pretty much recommanded

A pay to win of sorts - not a great look

If the % seems reasonable 5-20%, then this could certainly release some of the stress of the players and give the devs a little more freedom with how focus works into gameplay

[ashrah]

8 hours ago, Phyrak said:

The negative implications of gameplay because focus is a priorty is an issue within itself - focus being a passive secondary would allow for focus on gameplay rather than chasing the orb in hopes for filling a niche

A pay to win of sorts - not a great look

If the % seems reasonable 5-20%, then this could certainly release some of the stress of the players and give the devs a little more freedom with how focus works into gameplay

yeah make lens 10-15-20% to we can feel that  rewarding system of progression

[Phyrak]

4 hours ago, ashrah said:

yeah make lens 10-15-20% to we can feel that  rewarding system of progression

Far more rewarding than 1-4% affinity to focus 

[Phyrak]

8 minutes ago, ChaosSabre said:

Yea the old rates were fine with old system. But the new one requires so much more investment to get even started would be great if killing stuff with operator actually gained some extra focus. Taking down a eidolon could get you maybe 30k-50k in your current focus school. Would actually give me some incentive to go hunt them since the shield aura isn't working anymore. Or you could choose to use cores for standing or for focus points. That would be interesting too.

Both of these pointsare brilliant 

You certainly need the operator to take the Eidolon down - I would argue for 50-80k.

Larger rather than smaller

Perhaps some assimilation?

On gaining core, gain X focus - the core can then be invested more so to gain greater focus if need be or applied to gaining cetus standing

[HandOfTaurus]

Honestly, I think the whole cost system just needs to come down. Remove the cap, remove convergence orbs. We can level a frame in a few minutes, a weapon or sentinel the same. Focus shouldn't take months or years to get. There's a lot of talk about this over at reddit too. Maybe we can come up with some ideas and suggestions and maybe get DE on board. Here's some of what I compiled from reddit discussions.

These are good reads:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/76yb7t/why_do_we_still_have_to_rely_on_the_convergeance/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/76whpg/waybound_focus_nodes_and_their_implications_on/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/763cs0/de_grinding_needed_in_focus_20_and_poe_is/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/76n76r/lets_talk_focus_why_is_so_expensive/

Edited October 18, 2017 by HandOfTaurus
Grammar

[An_An0ma1y]

i agree wholeheartedly, i have found myself chasing after convergence orbs because they are about to despawn, and i have to worry about far too much when farming hydron for focus. i have had 3 people die at the same time while im running after a convergence orb and im like "welp, sorry guys ill be right back" 

for this reason i have actually taken a liking to titania a lot more when grinding my focus. part of warframe for me, is being able to accomplish a couple things at once sometimes, and having to worry about convergence orbs and getting as many things killed as possible is a big pain in the butt for the entire group. and i just feel ashamed when i get like 3k focus exp and semi happy about 6k exp. which i have yet to get any higher than 6k (around 6k, could be a little higher, point is i've yet to get 7k)

add onto this that with the latest hotfix at the time of this post enemies actually seem somewhat stronger and either have more health or something or maybe my hydroid tentacles were reworked and dont do as much initial damage. i'm not quite sure, im just not getting ridiculous amounts of kills on enemies on hydron anymore and seeing tons of affinity numbers instantly popping up everywhere when i charge my tentacles for range and more tentacles. and am also now gaining less focus exp on my few hydron runs ive done during this hotfix.

all in all, the convergence orb highly takes away from gameplay, and i feel like an &#! because i just NEED to get to that orb to get max exp every time, and sometimes i dont even notice it. considering the new amounts of focus exp to level focus stuff its just a huge pain in the butt in general. thus i personally find that something needs to change with it, but i'm not sure what as i am not the most intelligent person out there. 

but really, i hate convergence orbs soo much. i just want to shoot things and stuff like that. really takes the fun away from the game for me to some degree.

that being said, if you have issues with said orbs, try titania in the meantime, really helps.

[Nadath]

I totally agree on removing the orbs.  It is totally unlike anything else in the game, you have to run and grab it, then hope your team hasn't killed everything already or no Focus for you.  It is just a real pain to try and farm it.

[TaylorsContraction]

Pretty much agree with the sentiment in the thread.

I had approximately 4 million focus on each school after reset and that only unlocked some of the passives, whereas prior to update I had 3-5 nodes left to unlock.

Chasing after focus orbs in sorties has cost me mission fails in Mobile defence on two occasions. They should get rid of the focus orb at this point. We have a cruel daily cap the focus orb is unnecessary.

[EvilNickolas]

+1.

Personally tho, i think just removing the daily cap would sort out a lot of issues for me.

[An_An0ma1y]

1 hour ago, EvilNickolas said:

+1.

Personally tho, i think just removing the daily cap would sort out a lot of issues for me.

basically this or removing the convergence orb, one or the other i think would work.

[Phyrak]

7 hours ago, Nadath said:

I totally agree on removing the orbs.  It is totally unlike anything else in the game, you have to run and grab it, then hope your team hasn't killed everything already or no Focus for you.  It is just a real pain to try and farm it.

 

4 hours ago, TaylorsContraction said:

Pretty much agree with the sentiment in the thread.

I had approximately 4 million focus on each school after reset and that only unlocked some of the passives, whereas prior to update I had 3-5 nodes left to unlock.

Chasing after focus orbs in sorties has cost me mission fails in Mobile defence on two occasions. They should get rid of the focus orb at this point. We have a cruel daily cap the focus orb is unnecessary.

The orb seems to be the centre of the issue of focus

Stats wise, what percentage of affinity converted into focus would have the best potential? 

[Kurtys]

2 hours ago, Phyrak said:

Stats wise, what percentage of affinity converted into focus would have the best potential? 

They could start by using the old "before convergence" values : 5% for basic lenses and 7% for greater lenses (and following that logic 9% for Eidolon lenses). And tweak them if needed.

Right now, we're getting 1.25% with basic lenses (10% with convergence) and 1.75% with greater lenses (14% with convergence).

[Ampoth]

Even when you pick up the convergence orb in normal missions you still get rather pitiful amounts of focus, to the extent that the only way to actually get any meaningful amount of focus is to specifically farm for focus through the use of two very specific Affinity farming builds, and even those don't award large quantities of focus in the context of the costs of things in Focus 2.0. 

If DE is worried about people progressing in Focus too fast, then a daily/weekly cap can solve that issue. But drastically reducing Focus gains when they implemented the convergence orb was a big mistake, now normal players don't make any progress just passively gaining Focus, and only those who specifically farm for Focus will. Even after a year and a half since Focus 1.0 they still apparently haven't realized this and dealt with the issue. 

[Phyrak]

3 hours ago, Kurtys said:

They could start by using the old "before convergence" values : 5% for basic lenses and 7% for greater lenses (and following that logic 9% for Eidolon lenses). And tweak them if needed.

Right now, we're getting 1.25% with basic lenses (10% with convergence) and 1.75% with greater lenses (14% with convergence).

Such values are far too small considering the current need for focus 

2 hours ago, Ampoth said:

Even when you pick up the convergence orb in normal missions you still get rather pitiful amounts of focus, to the extent that the only way to actually get any meaningful amount of focus is to specifically farm for focus through the use of two very specific Affinity farming builds, and even those don't award large quantities of focus in the context of the costs of things in Focus 2.0. 

If DE is worried about people progressing in Focus too fast, then a daily/weekly cap can solve that issue. But drastically reducing Focus gains when they implemented the convergence orb was a big mistake, now normal players don't make any progress just passively gaining Focus, and only those who specifically farm for Focus will. Even after a year and a half since Focus 1.0 they still apparently haven't realized this and dealt with the issue. 

All these points are spot on

Use a cap to mitigate any obscene numbers whilst removing the orb and allow for natural progression rather than a stunted growth of a system creating bitterness in players