Focus is too much of a grind, even for an endgame system...

[ArtiSylv]

The system itself is otherwise fine, but it's hands down the worst grind in the game. Sure, the daily cap was increased, but so was the cost of everything, so it still takes a year and a half of hitting the daily cap (which is still a lot of effort to put in every day with how many points you gain).

Wasn't the increase in multiplier from the convergence orb supposed to make the system less of a grind? It takes so much more effort to make even a little progress now, I feel like even if I do a super-efficient run with two greater lenses I'm not making enough - and the daily cap makes it so, so much worse. Doubling the cap or removing it entirely wouldn't even fix the problem because the costs are still far too high.

EDIT: So not long after I posted this they added the ability to trade in brilliant sentient shards. They give less standing than a stealth run of sedna exterminate, but they bypass the cap, so that's at least a step in the right direction?

Edited October 20, 2017 by ArtiSylv

[Stinker]

Hitting that cap is also a ridiculous feat.

made a farming equinox setup just for getting that cap. 15 - 20k possible without a boost?
That's 13ish runs minimum to hit the cap, playing the game in an exploitative way in one place that makes the game very VERY grindy.

Alternatives? Well I could get around 30k after 20+ waves using a saryn (The frame I enjoy most). So you know, I guess I could spend 4 - 5 hours a day doing that to reach focus cap. . . .

I could get around 15 - 17k on a high level extraction map that's flooded with eximus after about 20-25 minutes. Similar time investment to reach the cap that way.

Just what is it you are telling your playerbase you want them to DO with this here daily grind cap?

[Xriborg]

It's a long grind, but you can get the meaty parts of the tree you want fairly quickly. If you want to absolutely max it out, yeah that's going to take forever. But I don't think were supposed to just get everything possible.

[ArtiSylv]

1 hour ago, Xriah said:

It's a long grind, but you can get the meaty parts of the tree you want fairly quickly. If you want to absolutely max it out, yeah that's going to take forever. But I don't think were supposed to just get everything possible.

I think the game should be designed to allow "getting everything possible" to be a realistic goal...

[Eating_Paste]

The focus grind is absolutely insane, but the way that you earn focus is what compounds it into a depressing, un-climbable mountain of grind.

 

Focus was introduced as a long term goal that you are always making progress on. The problem is that you earn a pittance of focus points playing the game normally. In a game with 34 basic warframes, and dozens? hundreds? of weapons, you have to lock into whatever gear you have invested lenses on. That alone is not enough though, you then farm the few specific ways that provide a decent amount of focus. Otherwise you are not making progress. Spending 30+ minutes in the hardest difficulty bounty, while grabbing every single (reachable) convergence orb rewards me with ~2k focus. At that rate, I would not hit the daily cap unless I played for 3 days straight.

 

I have to stop helping friends progress, stop enjoying new content, stop trying out new weapons, stop collecting prime gear, and stop collecting resources for clan research, if I want to make progress into focus. That cant be the intended goal of the focus system, right?

Edited October 21, 2017 by Ninothing

[Mattoropael]

5 hours ago, ArtiSylv said:

EDIT: So not long after I posted this they added the ability to trade in brilliant sentient shards. They give less standing than a stealth run of sedna exterminate, but they bypass the cap, so that's at least a step in the right direction?

A step in the right direction, yes, but the gain is so comically bad compared to the time and effort required, it's hard to decide whether to cry or laugh.

The notion of spending 41 shards to unbind a waybound passive with shards alone is just.. ridiculous

[Sunder]

Remove Convergence orbs - Make focus a "Press 6 to activate" ability

• Works the same
• Only available for a limited time as is now
• Gives us a bit more control over when to activate it (Specially useful in large tiles or the Plains)

Remove the "Pool" entirely. It serves no other purpose than to just be a focus dump.

Cut the costs. By half.

As it is now? It'll take well over 500 days of constantly hitting the daily cap of 250k to max all the trees. Good luck telling that to a new player you want to stick around.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Sunder

[Lost_Cartographer]

3 hours ago, ArtiSylv said:

I think the game should be designed to allow "getting everything possible" to be a realistic goal...

Realistic yes, but for many people, "realistic" seems tantamount to "a month or two."  I think we're meant to focus on one tree and then grab the passives from the others.

But the focus grind IS a bit slow.  It's actually wrong to assume casual play should hit that cap regularly - it's there to slow down the hardcores, not as a goal to hit for everyone - but to come no where close without intentionally farming hardcore is a serious fault of the design.  It suggests the balance is built strictly with those hardcores and efficiency farm builds in mind, and that's a grievious design mistake, especially when you have A DAILY CAP in place to stop such behaviors from running away with the grind in the first place.

Still, if you're going to place a daily cap on some kind of grind, then you better plan around people wanting to hit that cap regularly without hardcore, maximum efficiency grinding. 

The convergence orbs are the main culprit really - they have the greatest efficiency in an endless but outside of endless their value is incredibly sporadic.  They could spawn when you're about to smash a tidal wave of high-value of targets, or when you're only fighting a trickle of low-tier cannon fodder.  When it was first introduced people complained, but they eventually smashed their way through to the most important nodes in the only two trees most people cared about and stopped caring about focus after that point.  There was little point bringing it up because the way this community thinks, "if it's not a problem for me, then DE shouldn't worry about it."  

Now that the value has been spread around, it's become an issue again.

One to two things needs to happen:  Lenses need to offer more by default first and foremost.  I'd prefer if they were beefed up a flat 5-6x their current value but if DE really wants to keep the orb concept, then they could at least beef up lens conversion 4-5x and have the orb improve conversions further another 2-1.6x.  It makes the orb more of a bonus, instead of a necessity to put a dent into focus at all.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Littleman88

[Pizzarugi]

6 hours ago, Stinker said:

Just what is it you are telling your playerbase you want them to DO with this here daily grind cap?

"Yeah! Bet you wish you still had Draco now, don't you?" ~DE

[Anthraxicus]

When you combine the prohibitively long grind, the daily cap, the horrible money grab lenses system and that awful yellow pickup that insists on spawning 500 m away from the action, you have an entire system that is doomed to fail and make people even madder. One or two of these four moronic mechanics has got to go, and quick.
The transition from Focus 1.0 to new Focus 0.5 screwed up veteran players, no doubt about it. If the system has an unrealistic grind even for veterans who had everything maxed out before, just imagine what it will be for a new player who has just picked up the game? It is absolutely insane and I'd rather see this entire nonsense gone for good. It is a terrible game mechanic with terribly long grind.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Anthraxicus

[Lockhart77]

Brilliant shard now can be turned to focus points though. 

[Sunder]

10 minutes ago, Lockhart77 said:

Brilliant shard now can be turned to focus points though. 

I believe this was just to give us something to do with them once we got enough to unlock all passives.

I don't think DE or anyone really, would be that out of touch to consider this a resolution to the Focus 2.0 grind.

[Lockhart77]

Yea, still, better than nothing. It also doesn't get limited by the daily cap so for hardcore grinders, its a step to the right path. 

[Sunder]

Just now, Lockhart77 said:

Yea, still, better than nothing. It also doesn't get limited by the daily cap so for hardcore grinders, its a step to the right path. 

Wouldn't even consider this a step in the right path.

Hell I wouldn't even consider this facing the general direction of said, "right path"

I'd consider this sitting down while thinking about glancing over towards the right path.

- - -

In other words? Yes it's nice. No it doesn't help the massive grind.

[Lockhart77]

Suit yourself my guy

[ArtiSylv]

3 hours ago, Mattoropael said:

A step in the right direction, yes, but the gain is so comically bad compared to the time and effort required, it's hard to decide whether to cry or laugh.

The notion of spending 41 shards to unbind a waybound passive with shards alone is just.. ridiculous

I'll clarify that the 41 shards is for if you've actually been able to max out the passive in question. You'll need WAY more than that to max it with just shards.

Shards are a bit of a help but they don't make it much better in reality. All they give you is a way to extend the daily cap past 250k.

[Lost_Cartographer]

6 hours ago, Lockhart77 said:

Yea, still, better than nothing. It also doesn't get limited by the daily cap so for hardcore grinders, its a step to the right path. 

Bolded the key problem.

The system is being balanced around hardcore grinding at the moment.

This is one of those issues where systems are being designed around limiting the 1% or one "problem behavior" from a developer perspective and everyone else is getting screwed for it.

But the shards did need a purpose beyond unlocking way-bound's, so there's that.  Probably spent slightly more time implementing that than they could have spent removing the convergence orb and upping lens conversion rates though.  How many times can they hotfix "orbs will no longer spawn in the air" anyway?

Edited October 21, 2017 by Littleman88

[Rojeen]

33 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

  How many times can they hotfix "orbs will no longer spawn in the air" anyway?

they like 3 or 4 hotfixes already? I still get these S#&$ balls in the air! and 60% of them can be obtained by doing crazy, hardcore parkouring across the field.

[DreamsmithJane]

36 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

I think we're meant to focus on one tree and then grab the passives from the others.

The trouble with that is, in order to do that, you first have to max out those passives, and then spend another MILLION focus points each to unbind them. And the passives are generally the most expensive nodes in each tree to begin with. But for use in other schools, there's no gradual gain. If you want to gain any benefit from other schools' passives, it's all or nothing. Want the extra energy and regen for void powers from Zenurik? That's 5.88 million Zenurik focus points and two Brilliant Eidolon Shards, please. Don't have 2.55 or 3.33 million for either of those nodes? You get nothing unless that's your active focus school. Want health and regen from Vazarin so your operator doesn't get one-shot in tier 5 bounty missions or sorties? Well, that's at little cheaper at 3.82 million, but that's still a tall order, and still all or nothing for each node.

Evidently, then, what we're meant to do is max out one tree at a time, or even dabble in all of them, but not grab the passives (or at least, not invest heavily in them) until we have everything else we want. Because dumping the lion's share of your focus points into two nodes, that will do literally nothing for you while you're in other schools until the very end, just doesn't make sense. You can do a lot with 4-6 million focus points in any of the schools, as long as you're actually using that school.

 

[Ceryk]

There are a number of threads complaining about the issue, including my own, so you are definitely not alone. Even if all they do is make it so hitting the cap is less of a painful experience and you can just go out and play the game and get focus without having to stealth farm or cheese grind something like Hydron.

I think the Brilliant Shards are bit of a step in the right direction, but it's a baby step. I don't believe it's nearly enough when the Focus Exp Cap is so difficult to hit. No other cap in the game is difficult to hit like that and none of them feel like a painful chore.

Node Costs probably need to be adjusted as well, but I'll reserve judgement on that after they make gaining focus come from naturally playing the game and becoming an enjoyable experience rather than a trip to the dentist for a root canal.

Here's the link to my thread griping about the Focus Exp issue. I think the more attention these threads about how miserable Focus gains are get, the more likely they are to do something about it.

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/864231-focus-20-focus-exp-not-fun/

Edited October 23, 2017 by Ceryk