Waybound Focus Nodes and Their Implications On Focus Farming (Over 140 MORE Days)

[-..-]

So I finally unbound one of the nodes after doing the, in my opinion, greatest boss fight that DE has designed and retrieving a Brilliant Eidolon Shard. The problem here is how Waybound nodes work. Previously, I was under the naive impression that the nodes would simply just work on all trees as long as you had them activated in their respective tree. I was poorly mistaken. This is what it looks like after you unbind a node.

https://i.imgur.com/kcVTYSY.jpg

Notice that it 1. is unactivated and 2. requires the full amount of pool in order to activate it. That means in order to activate the waybound nodes in every tree, you need to grind all that extra focus to increase your pool for all of them. Let's take a look at the complete trees in the beta that the streamers showed us.

https://imgur.com/a/9XnC5

Now let's do some math. Keep in mind that some of the pool changes have actually increased since this beta. For instance, Mind Sprint now requires 11 pool at max. However, since I don't have all the exact numbers I'll just use what the beta gave us. Also, in order to estimate the additional focus needed, I used the summation 75000+750n from 1 to the additional pool value. It's a very rough lowball estimate. The real number is likely much higher.

Madurai -

Base waybound nodes pool total: 23

Additional pool required: 63

Estimated additional focus required: 6237000

Zenurik -

Base waybound nodes pool total: 18

Additional pool required: 68

Estimated additional focus required: 6859500

Naramon -

Base waybound nodes pool total: 14

Additional pool required: 72

Estimated additional focus required: 7371000

Vazarin -

Base waybound nodes pool total: 17

Additional pool required: 69

Estimated additional focus required: 6986250

Unairu -

Base waybound nodes pool total: 14

Additional pool required: 72

Estimated additional focus required: 7371000

Total additional focus required to have all nodes maxed in all schools after unlocking all waybound nodes: 34824750

At a cap of 250k focus per day, that's around 140 days of extra farming. These are on top of the estimated 280 days it takes to max out the current trees without the waybound nodes.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Ecksplisit, no one actually needs to do all of this. 90% of the nodes are garbage and people will probably only use Madurai for DPS and Zenurik for support." But what happens if DE actually decides to make the rest of the nodes useful? What if they make it so it's required that we have different focus trees for future content? Then everyone will be clamoring to get focus farming changed.

However, we've already seen from things like log in rewards and Hema that DE is hesitant to change things that people have invested large amounts of time into. We need to put Focus gain changes on a higher priority than they are now, or else the problem will fester and we'll have no choice but to commit 400+ days of our lives focus farming every single day for an hour without missing a day, lest we miss out on precious XP. And those new players that join a couple years from now? Yeah they'll never even have a chance to enjoy the game when they hear they need to farm an hour a day for over an entire year. They'll just drop it and move on.

My suggestion? Increase gains by making the Convergence multiplier the base, remove that annoying little yellow ball, and flat out remove the cap. It already takes an absurd amount of time to farm all of this without the cap. It takes me around an hour of bere to reach 250k. 400+ hours farming for a single part of the content is already ridiculous enough. Being forced to split that into an hour sessions every single day is worse than Runescape level masochistic grinding.

So please guys, while DE is in this period of time where they're willing to change mechanics, let's make Focus great again.

TL;DR Waybound nodes increase focus farming by over 140 days. That's wack. Let's band together to convince DE to make focus farming not wack anymore.

[artemisfortune]

I mean sure, buff the cap to 500k.

Now it only takes 70 days. Then what? Complain that it takes 70? These things are supposed to take awhile. No one is going to get every single one maxed out within a month. That's not how it's supposed to work. I think the 250k cap is fine per day, and just increasing how quickly we can reach the cap just a touch is what we really need.

Also why'd you post this in general discussion? DE doesn't look at that. You put in all this work and stuck it in the wrong subforum.

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/427-focus-20operator/ Here is where it should go.

Edited October 17, 2017 by JSharpie

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1 minute ago, JSharpie said:

I mean sure, buff the cap to 500k.

Now it only takes 70 days. Then what? Complain that it takes 70? These things are supposed to take awhile. No one is going to get every single one maxed out within a month. That's not how it's supposed to work. I think the 250k cap is fine per day, and just increasing how quickly we can reach the cap just a touch is what we really need.

Well yes, I would complain if all we did was increase the cap. I'm suggesting a complete removal of it. In order to max everything out, if you read my post, it takes a total of 420 days. At an hour a day, that's 420 hours. This is doing a farm that is solely dedicated to focus farming with an organized group of 4 people. The average person will not get even close to the cap either. Even if you could reach the 250k cap twice as fast, that's still 210 hours of organized, prioritized farming. You're not doing anything but focus farming for all of these hours. It's not like you can level up gear while you're doing it, since all the gear has to be maxed. You're not getting reputation past the daily cap. All the resources are common and you'll have more than enough just by farming a few hours of Bere. All you're doing for 420 hours of your life is focus farming. Is that really fine with you? And the worst part is if you miss a day or two or god forbid, you take a short hiatus, you're actually hurting yourself. It's worse than not making progress. You've just pushed your end date that many days back and you will never ever get those days back. Stopped for 30 days? Now you have to spend another 30 days grinding. I don't see how any of this is okay. Especially for new players that actually get invested into the game.

[artemisfortune]

5 minutes ago, -..- said:

Well yes, I would complain if all we did was increase the cap. I'm suggesting a complete removal of it. In order to max everything out, if you read my post, it takes a total of 420 days. At an hour a day, that's 420 hours. This is doing a farm that is solely dedicated to focus farming with an organized group of 4 people. The average person will not get even close to the cap either. Even if you could reach the 250k cap twice as fast, that's still 210 hours of organized, prioritized farming. You're not doing anything but focus farming for all of these hours. It's not like you can level up gear while you're doing it, since all the gear has to be maxed. You're not getting reputation past the daily cap. All the resources are common and you'll have more than enough just by farming a few hours of Bere. All you're doing for 420 hours of your life is focus farming. Is that really fine with you? And the worst part is if you miss a day or two or god forbid, you take a short hiatus, you're actually hurting yourself. It's worse than not making progress. You've just pushed your end date that many days back and you will never ever get those days back. Stopped for 30 days? Now you have to spend another 30 days grinding. I don't see how any of this is okay. Especially for new players that actually get invested into the game.

Yes, it's fine for me. I don't need everything immediately. It's a passive gain I can get over the course of my play time. This is especially true for new players. If I miss a day, who gives a S#&$? It's a video game. I don't need to have every single power maxed out within a month to have fun.

[N7_Nikusu]

16 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

I mean sure, buff the cap to 500k.

Now it only takes 70 days. Then what? Complain that it takes 70? These things are supposed to take awhile. No one is going to get every single one maxed out within a month. That's not how it's supposed to work. I think the 250k cap is fine per day, and just increasing how quickly we can reach the cap just a touch is what we really need.

The cap and time needed to cap are not the problem. It's how we reach the focus cap. I get that DE wants to avoid AFK focus farming, but right now you need to dedicate time specifically to focus farming to make any progress as the orbs are the only way to get any meaningful gains. Maxing even just one tree would take years if you play the game normally. I get on daily, but usually for a little less than two hours. If I want to cap almost half my playtime would be focus farming and it's not even fun. I can't level new gear. I either have to add lenses to other maxed frames or keep using Saryn or Banshee. Honestly, as someone who wants to like the Operator (I know, weird) the whole focus system on top of Brilliant Eidolon Shards make me not want to bother. Operators aren't popular and DE keep making them harder and harder to enjoy when they lock viability behind ridiculous grinds. Just making them so they won't die in a couple hits was all I was hoping for, but I guess I'll just use my frame. I wasn't expecting a teenage killing machine. Just something viable to mix up gameplay a bit.

[-..-]

Just now, JSharpie said:

Yes, it's fine for me. I don't need everything immediately. It's a passive gain I can get over the course of my play time. This is especially true for new players. If I miss a day, who gives a S#&$? It's a video game. I don't need to have every single power maxed out within a month to have fun.

I don't quite understand your qualms with my suggestions. If they remove the cap, it doesn't affect your desired playstyle at all. You can continue to play and gain your 10k focus gain per day casually. So why are you so against it for the players that actually want to play efficiently? This change only benefits people and doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't take much programming time to remove the cap and increase rates either.

[artemisfortune]

2 minutes ago, N7_Nikusu said:

The cap and time needed to cap are not the problem. It's how we reach the focus cap. I get that DE wants to avoid AFK focus farming, but right now you need to dedicate time specifically to focus farming to make any progress as the orbs are the only way to get any meaningful gains. Maxing even just one tree would take years if you play the game normally. I get on daily, but usually for a little less than two hours. If I want to cap almost half my playtime would be focus farming and it's not even fun. I can't level new gear. I either have to add lenses to other maxed frames or keep using Saryn or Banshee. Honestly, as someone who wants to like the Operator (I know, weird) the whole focus system on top of Brilliant Eidolon Shards make me not want to bother. Operators aren't popular and DE keep making them harder and harder to enjoy when they lock viability behind ridiculous grinds. Just making them so they won't die in a couple hits was all I was hoping for, but I guess I'll just use my frame. I wasn't expecting a teenage killing machine. Just something viable to mix up gameplay a bit.

If you reread, I said they need to tweak how we get there.

1 minute ago, -..- said:

I don't quite understand your qualms with my suggestions. If they remove the cap, it doesn't affect your desired playstyle at all. You can continue to play and gain your 10k focus gain per day casually. So why are you so against it for the players that actually want to play efficiently? This change only benefits people and doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't take much programming time to remove the cap and increase rates either.

Here is how a free2play model works. The entire idea behind making money off a free2play model is player retention. The reason there are grindwalls, foundry times, daily currency caps, etc is because DE wants players to come back the next day and check up on what they have. Whether it's to max out their syndicates, their focus, claim some foundry stuff, build a dojo room, what have you. By limiting they are able to in a way force a player to come back the next day if he wants to progress, instead of spending one day getting a large chunk of content done, they're able to spread the content out over a few days.

If you take this away, you take away player retention, which removes possible customers, which removes money from DE, and can hurt the company. This means slower update times, increased cash shop necessity, and maybe even expansions you have to pay for.

Personally? I'd love to have no syndicate or focus cap, but I understand that things don't work this way. You have to look at it from all angles. Personally, I think DE handles their free2play model really really well.

[Xaero]

I'm ok with that. I just want to finally get brilliant shards. BTW were you using lures at final stage?

[-..-]

4 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

If you reread, I said they need to tweak how we get there.

Here is how a free2play model works. The entire idea behind making money off a free2play model is player retention. The reason there are grindwalls, foundry times, daily currency caps, etc is because DE wants players to come back the next day and check up on what they have. Whether it's to max out their syndicates, their focus, claim some foundry stuff, build a dojo room, what have you. By limiting they are able to in a way force a player to come back the next day if he wants to progress, instead of spending one day getting a large chunk of content done, they're able to spread the content out over a few days.

If you take this away, you take away player retention, which removes possible customers, which removes money from DE, and can hurt the company. This means slower update times, increased cash shop necessity, and maybe even expansions you have to pay for.

Personally? I'd love to have no syndicate or focus cap, but I understand that things don't work this way. You have to look at it from all angles. Personally, I think DE handles their free2play model really really well.

Yes, I understand those fully. However if you told any new player that in order to fully max out one of the systems in the game, you need to do nothing but grind for that one system for an hour a day every day for 420 days in a row without missing a day, then I guarantee that they would not touch this game. Not even Runescape has that unforgiving of a system, and it's the most monotonous grinding games that exists. Plus, 420 hours is nothing to scoff about. I doubt anyone would even manage to get it done in a month. That's over 13 hours a day every day for a month. No one's gonna do that. They'll spread it out and farm when they want to. And it would also make Double XP weekends useful for veteran players.

2 minutes ago, Ksaero said:

I'm ok with that. I just want to finally get brilliant shards. BTW were you using lures at final stage?

Yes, you need 2 charged lures attached to the Eidolon when it dies.

Edited October 17, 2017 by -..-

[Xaero]

1 minute ago, -..- said:

Yes, you need 2 charged lures attached to the Eidolon when it dies.

Ok thanks.

[artemisfortune]

Just now, -..- said:

Yes, I understand those fully. However if you told any new player that in order to fully max out one of the systems in the game, you need to do nothing but grind for that one system for an hour a day every day for 420 days in a row without missing a day, then I guarantee that they would not touch this game. Not even Runescape has that unforgiving of a system, and it's the most monotonous grinding games that exists. Plus, 420 hours is nothing to scoff about. I doubt anyone would even manage to get it done in a month. That's over 13 hours a day every day for a month. No one's gonna do that. They'll spread it out and farm when they want to. And it would also make Double XP weekends useful for veteran players.

I don't think most players are completionists, considering none of the content requires you to have these maxed out. I've played for 4 and a half years, and I'm assuming you have to, and I still haven't done everything. It's the nature of games like these. You work for things over time. No one absolutely needs every single waybound passive maxed out to accomplish anything in this game. Like I said, tweaking how we get focus is what needs to be worked on. Not how long it's going to take to get everything maxed out.

[Midas]

An operator is unique he or she should have mastery in about one school. Full mastery in all school will defeat the unique qualities of YOUR operator making him or symmetrical to all the other operators. In other words work together for future content based off of your school.

[-..-]

Just now, JSharpie said:

I don't think most players are completionists, considering none of the content requires you to have these maxed out. I've played for 4 and a half years, and I'm assuming you have to, and I still haven't done everything. It's the nature of games like these. You work for things over time. No one absolutely needs every single waybound passive maxed out to accomplish anything in this game. Like I said, tweaking how we get focus is what needs to be worked on. Not how long it's going to take to get everything maxed out.

I don't see why they can't change both of those. The difference with Focus and the other things I've completed like having every mod owned and maxed out, is that I can't take a break if I want to max Focus. I could do mod collecting at my own pace. I didn't have to log in for an hour every day. I could take a break anytime I wanted. Every day that goes by that I farm focus I resent the system more and more. If I stop, then I feel like I wasted that time and when I come back I'll just have that many more days to farm. It's not a fun system to farm for, and I think DE wants their players to either have fun or pay to skip grinding. Hell, at this point I'd spend 200 bucks to max out focus and never have to touch Berehynia ever again. 

[Midas]

8 minutes ago, -..- said:

Yes, I understand those fully. However if you told any new player that in order to fully max out one of the systems in the game, you need to do nothing but grind for that one system for an hour a day every day for 420 days in a row without missing a day, then I guarantee that they would not touch this game. Not even Runescape has that unforgiving of a system, and it's the most monotonous grinding games that exists. Plus, 420 hours is nothing to scoff about. I doubt anyone would even manage to get it done in a month. That's over 13 hours a day every day for a month. No one's gonna do that. They'll spread it out and farm when they want to. And it would also make Double XP weekends useful for veteran players.

Yes, you need 2 charged lures attached to the Eidolon when it dies.

It takes a good 5+ years to max out Runescape completionist trimmed cape.

[N7_Nikusu]

2 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

If you reread, I said they need to tweak how we get there.

Here is how a free2play model works. The entire idea behind making money off a free2play model is player retention. The reason there are grindwalls, foundry times, daily currency caps, etc is because DE wants players to come back the next day and check up on what they have. Whether it's to max out their syndicates, their focus, claim some foundry stuff, build a dojo room, what have you. By limiting they are able to in a way force a player to come back the next day if he wants to progress, instead of spending one day getting a large chunk of content done, they're able to spread the content out over a few days.

If you take this away, you take away player retention, which removes possible customers, which removes money from DE, and can hurt the company. This means slower update times, increased cash shop necessity, and maybe even expansions you have to pay for.

Personally? I'd love to have no syndicate or focus cap, but I understand that things don't work this way. You have to look at it from all angles. Personally, I think DE handles their free2play model really really well.

If you reread it's not the time needed that is the problem. I don't take issue with focus farming taking 20, 40, or even 60 minutes. It's how. I'm tired of having to use the same few frames on the same couple maps. I've installed greater Zenurik lenses on multiple frames just because it is mind-numbingly boring to press 4 on Banshee, but I can't do that for all of my frames. What if I want to play Nezha? Too bad. Banshee, Saryn, or Ember it is.

Your whole point about the grind being necessary for player retention is also wrong. Considering how many people just ignored focus outside of Zenurik the first time around focus is not what's keeping people playing

[artemisfortune]

3 minutes ago, -..- said:

I don't see why they can't change both of those. The difference with Focus and the other things I've completed like having every mod owned and maxed out, is that I can't take a break if I want to max Focus. I could do mod collecting at my own pace. I didn't have to log in for an hour every day. I could take a break anytime I wanted. Every day that goes by that I farm focus I resent the system more and more. If I stop, then I feel like I wasted that time and when I come back I'll just have that many more days to farm. It's not a fun system to farm for, and I think DE wants their players to either have fun or pay to skip grinding. Hell, at this point I'd spend 200 bucks to max out focus and never have to touch Berehynia ever again. 

You could take a break, it would just take longer.

Again, you don't absolutely need every waybound passive. You can also gain focus by just playing equipment with lenses and let your focus grow passively. But I think I've made my point, and I'm not keen on repeating myself.

Edit: @N7_Nikusu bud you really didn't pay attention to anything I said, did you? Whatever, like I said, I made my point. You can like it, hate it, doesn't mean a thing to me. I'm gonna go back to playing the game.

Edited October 17, 2017 by JSharpie

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Just now, JSharpie said:

You could take a break, it would just take longer.

Again, you don't absolutely need every waybound passive. You can also gain focus by just playing equipment with lenses and let your focus grow passively. But I think I've made my point, and I'm not keen on repeating myself.

Exactly, that's the problem. Taking a break actually makes your account worse off than before, rather than other games where taking a break doesn't affect you at all. You're essentially moving backwards for everyday you don't log in.

Even if I didn't need every waybound passive, which is actually pretty incorrect since they're much stronger than the rest of the nodes, it would still take 280 days to max out focus for new players. 

[N7_Nikusu]

6 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

You could take a break, it would just take longer.

Again, you don't absolutely need every waybound passive. You can also gain focus by just playing equipment with lenses and let your focus grow passively. But I think I've made my point, and I'm not keen on repeating myself.

Edit: @N7_Nikusu bud you really didn't pay attention to anything I said, did you? Whatever, like I said, I made my point. You can like it, hate it, doesn't mean a thing to me. I'm gonna go back to playing the game.

Yeah, that whole 10,000 focus (being very generous here) a day is really going to make a dent. You didn't make any points. You said focus gain could be tweaked. That doesn't address the fact that you have to specifically farm for it to get meaningful gains. Slapping a lens on a frame and playing the game normally while picking up orbs along the way doesn't get you anywhere.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Orbs really do need removed.  And while I personally wouldn't mind the removal of the cap, I doubt DE will remove it.  It just means people go from farming the crap out of a node until they hit the cap, to farming the crap out of a node until they have nothing left to level, then either burn out or complain there's nothing left to grind for.  Some people just don't know when to stop.

I could see the cap raising though.

But mostly, we needed to get rid of this focus ball crap since the moment it was ever implemented.  It USED to be that we got near-focus ball gains by default, but people complained about the new grind that was focus (of course they did, it couldn't be done and over with overnight) and DE decided we would better enjoy trickle gains with the occasional 20-40 second focus gain buff they had to chase down every five or so minutes.  The "flash sale!" mentality works in retail, not in mind-numbing, already long term grinding.  What's especially horrible is how awful this is in non-endless, and especially in the plains, where you might complete an intense vault defense, THEN the damn thing pops up when all you've got is stragglers left.

The stupid thing was made specifically for endless nodes.  But you know, as long as we're still playing and using that damn ball, then it must be fine.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Littleman88

[LascarCapable]

Moved to Plain of Eidolon feedback.

[Endorphinz]

I definitely agree with OP on this one. my feedback is not just one waybound nodes, though, it applies to the entire focus system. Since the introduction of the focus system with the second dream update, I have been playing this game almost non-stop and steadily farming focus. It's been almost 2 years (December 2015) and I haven't even remotely come close to denting any schools. 2-3 million focus accrued each for 4 out of the 5 schools, which is enough to max out maybe 2 or 3 nodes in a focus tree. I imagine that if I'd focused all that focus into one single school, I still wouldn't even have enough to max out all the nodes.

I've had focus lenses installed in all my most-used equipment and warframes, and 2 years of steady progress feels like barely anything. Can you see how discouraging this can be to a player? There are obviously a handful of players that cheerfully run to the mindless Berehynia grind, but I think those folks should be treated as the exception rather than the rule; it's just not fun to grind that map, and I think a lot of people know that. It's been stated by the devs that that sort of afk farming is something they want to get rid of, rather than encourage; and yet, looking at the numbers, I honestly can't tell what they were thinking.

Increasing or removal of the focus cap does not fix anything, because it does nothing to abate the monstrous amount of grinding needed. All it does is tell you that instead of grinding one mission for 2 hours a day, you can do it for 4, or 8, or however long the human body can sit in one spot.

Based on my experiences, and OP's math, focus is just too unforgiving of a grind currently.

[Mewvg2]

12 hours ago, JSharpie said:

It's a passive gain I can get over the course of my play time.

I need some of what you're smoking. Passive gains are so infinitesimal they might as well be zero. You're either doing stealth exterminate specifically for Focus or you just don't get enough to even mention.

[Oreades]

The whole way you earn focus needs to be torn down and rebuilt if they want people to embrace Operators and the focus schools as a serious part of the game. Well I guess it actually just needs to be rolled back because apparently earning decent amounts of focus passively once you leveled something to 30 and slapped a lens in it was how it started out and at some point they decided to nix that and go with the system we have now. Which just doesn't work anymore, not with them wanting people to really explore focus, the current system of awarding focus is just too much of an IV drip.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Oreades

[Robopope]

I was about to make a thread about this myself. I never paid any attention to using lenses and all that in the past because it didn't seem very fleshed out so I'm pretty much starting from scratch in terms of focus points. I wasn't actually too bothered by the grind for focus and was even kind of enjoying unlocking new nodes and seeing results. That is until I unlocked a waybound node on a secondary tree and realized it didn't do anything and after looking up what it would take to actually make them do something I can't see myself ever bothering with focus or operators again.

It shouldn't take grinding focus all the way until maxing out the waybound node and then grinding focus some more and also grinding the new boss in the hopes it'll drop the doodad you need to even unlock it. Operators are awful enough as it is without having to put in that much unnecessary effort just to buff their energy and health a little.

[kTwn2]

13 hours ago, -..- said:

It takes me around an hour of bere to reach 250k.

how....  the BEST gains I've seen in a run is like 8k...  how in the heck are you getting so much focus?!?!?!  (I'm guessing this is a "I have 5 greater lens' of all the groups equipped" type thing...)