Focus 2.0: Focus Exp = Not Fun

[Ceryk]

6 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Fortunately I'm seeing a lot of Focus threads saying mostly the same things, so unless DE decides to be stubborn about it like with Hema research we should hopefully see a change.

Convergence does not add ANYTHING positive to the experience, and actively hurts teamplay.

Yeah, I've been noticing that too. I've only been paying attention to the PoE feed back thread, but I may have to get out there in the rest of the Forums and try and collect more links to add to my post here and keep trying to generate interest in the thread so it keeps getting attention and they are more likely to notice it.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Ceryk

[Zephnus]

Yup I have 1 mil worth of shards, not gonna use it cause I'd still have to cap the focus to get somewhere. It might patch a bit the fact that I don't spend time on focus farming, but hey teralysts are still a tedious farm (cycles).

[UltraLYT]

Ceryk, I agree with you.

If you can avoid Focus 1.0, you can also avoid Focus 2.0.  I just play whatever I like, and stop doing whatever I don't like in this game.    

For example, I love archwing very much, put formas on my favorite archwing and the weapons, but I did not build the archwing launcher segment, it is just sitting in my foundry, because I do not want to fish at all for a flimsy version of archwing.  Don't feel like missing out too much, I am fine with my speedy frames in PoE.

[Ceryk]

28 minutes ago, modalmojo said:

Ceryk, I agree with you.

If you can avoid Focus 1.0, you can also avoid Focus 2.0.  I just play whatever I like, and stop doing whatever I don't like in this game.    

For example, I love archwing very much, put formas on my favorite archwing and the weapons, but I did not build the archwing launcher segment, it is just sitting in my foundry, because I do not want to fish at all for a flimsy version of archwing.  Don't feel like missing out too much, I am fine with my speedy frames in PoE.

I avoided Focus 1.0 because I did not feel like it would add anything to my game play experience. If I want to play a stealth frame, I'd play a stealth frame. The way I play generally doesn't require me to constantly spam abilities on the majority of frames so I've never felt like Zenurik was a necessary thing to get.

I don't want to avoid Focus 2.0. It looks interesting and has the potential add a new level to my game play experience. What I, and may others, do not like is that it's gated behind poorly thought out and executed mechanics that are geared towards hardcore players rather than core players and the cost of entry does not encourage people to embrace Focus 2.0.

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by Ceryk

[MJ12]

What I would suggest is this:

1. You always gain 'generic' focus, which applies to your focus cap, from kills. Generic focus is spent last, after you spend all your school-specific focus.

2. Lenses give you additional school-specific focus.

3. Instead of the 1.5/2/2.5% affinity conversion to focus (x8 for ~12/16/20%) split that. You get 10% of all affinity as 'generic' focus for playing the game, then 2/6/10% of affinity as typed focus for the lens school.

4. Rebalance the focus grind to ensure that you can get focus upgrades on a fairly regular basis. You should be able to, playing normally, get 1 upgrade every day or so as an experienced player by doing some Survivals or other high-enemy-density missions without having to do dedicated, specific farm builds. If you need to keep maxing out trees slow, it would be much, much better to just add more levels and give us more granularity. Instead of 5 levels costing a total of 1.5 million focus and costing +2 capacity each, give us 20 levels which cost +0.5 capacity each for 1.5 million focus, so you can get 75K . This would allow the buffing of some weaker powers (for example, 'return 5% damage to attacker' would be significantly more useful if you had 20 levels for it, and could increase that to 'return 100% damage to attacker' than if it only maxed out at 20%) while not nerfing stronger powers (stuff like energizing dash can simply have their progress split over more levels).

5. Let us unbind way-bound passives without maxing them out. It would give people who don't have the full focus tree unlocked more of a reason to farm Eidolon Shards. This combines with #4 so people feel like they're making tangible, visible progress.

6. If you want players to keep doing things with 'focus' add some sort of prestige mechanic to it. For example, after you max out your Unairu tree, all Unairu affinity you earn goes into "Unairu Mastery" which provides minor bonuses relating to things relating to the theme of Unairu-Outlasting The Enemy. For example, Prestige Levels might give +armor, +health, +health regen, -enemy proc chance, -enemy proc duration, and damage resistance at critical health. The cost of getting these bonuses would increase significantly so it'd be impractical to use them to become truly overpowered. If you end up adding new nodes to the tree, mastery would pause until you filled out those new nodes as well.

A prestige mechanic for minor bonuses + a progression mechanic that doesn't take too long is probably much better than the current setup where you have a grind that takes forever and then after you're done, well, you don't have anything to do.

[Sunder]

Well another update, still no word from Dev's about the state of focus.

Me-thinks they're gonna go on and on about the economy of cetus and just shun focus to the side.

Probably hoping we forget about it and just accept the ridiculous, insane grind.

[Sunder]

Just now, MarrikBroom said:

We must honor those that already farmed /s

 

I'm very annoyed disappointed and just MEH about focus.

I can see it now

• Reb: So...a lot of people are upset with the state of focus saying it's too much of a grind, too time consuming. Are there any plans to revisit this?
• Devs: .......
• Reb: Scott...?
• Scott: *makes face*
• Scott: *slowly shakes head no repeatedly*
• Scott: I feel we're at a good place now. And with the increased cap, the better len's, people are earning more focus now than ever.
• Reb: So players can expect having to earn all their focus abilities and passives?
• Scott: Yeah. Just wouldn't be fair to the folks who've already put in countless hours, and I feel we owe it to them. We start lowering costs for focus people are gonna want everything cheaper and that's just not how game development works. Give them an inch, they want a mile.
• Reb: *throws arms up like a shrug while giving half-smile
• Reb: There ya have it folks! Focus is to stay

I've seen so many threads on reddit and here on the forums about this grind. We've heard little bits here and there about them working on the reward system. About the economy of Cetus and how to make it fair to all players and stay fun while still feeling rewarding. But I haven't seen a single thing from any Dev about adjusting/fixing Focus.

Looks like it might go the way of the Hema...

[Ceryk]

26 minutes ago, Sunder said:

Well another update, still no word from Dev's about the state of focus.

Me-thinks they're gonna go on and on about the economy of cetus and just shun focus to the side.

Probably hoping we forget about it and just accept the ridiculous, insane grind.

Actually, Rebb does not seem to be on board with the current state of Focus. She did a Livestream the weekend after PoE launched and Steve was in there and she flat out suggested the idea of getting rid of Convergence Orbs. So I don't believe everyone at DE is on board with the state of Focus Exp to the point of complacency and just saying leave it alone. I'm sure it will be brought up more and more now that the daily cap is more that double what it used to be.

It's also not a problem that I think may take some time to deal with since they would actually have to come up with a plan, put it in, and test it internally rather than just throw it out into the wild. So I'm not really surprised it's things haven't been reworked in a hotfix.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Ceryk

[Sunder]

21 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

Actually, Rebb does not seem to be on board with the current state of Focus. She did a Livestream the weekend after PoE launched and Steve was in there and she flat out suggested the idea of getting rid of Convergence Orbs. So I don't believe everyone at DE is on board with the state of Focus Exp to the point of complacency and just saying leave it alone. I'm sure it will be brought up more and more now that the daily cap is more that double what it used to be.

It's also not a problem that I think may take some time to deal with since they would actually have to come up with a plan, put it in, and test it internally rather than just throw it out into the wild. So I'm not really surprised it's things haven't been reworked in a hotfix.

Oh I didn't expect it to be in a hotfix. But I was hoping with each fix/update that came, someone would at least mention it.

Make an official statement or something.

[ArbitUHM]

I mostly agree, OP. I would edit out the poop stuff because as amusing as it is, I feel that it detracts from an otherwise well-worded and cogent argument.

Also, I think that the heart of the problem is Warframe's affinity gain system. DE can't seem to decide whether they want to put the kibosh on power farming, alternately removing favorite farming spots and then pumping up the XP/affinity requirements for new content. The practical effect of this is it's still quite possible to power farm, but it now requires specific team, gear, and missions setups. The "endgame" content now basically requires this sort of power farming, which sucks for people that don't like stealth Adaro or sitting on a defense pod for 20 rounds.

[Ceryk]

30 minutes ago, ArbitUHM said:

I mostly agree, OP. I would edit out the poop stuff because as amusing as it is, I feel that it detracts from an otherwise well-worded and cogent argument.

Also, I think that the heart of the problem is Warframe's affinity gain system. DE can't seem to decide whether they want to put the kibosh on power farming, alternately removing favorite farming spots and then pumping up the XP/affinity requirements for new content. The practical effect of this is it's still quite possible to power farm, but it now requires specific team, gear, and missions setups. The "endgame" content now basically requires this sort of power farming, which sucks for people that don't like stealth Adaro or sitting on a defense pod for 20 rounds.

Valid point. I will take it under consideration.

[ra9una]

I've been itching to make this very thread, but I see it's been done for me, and beautifully might I add. Basically everything I wanted to say has been said, now all I can say is I wish I could upvote more than once.

I still feel I'd like to get some words out, just for good measure, so here's my take :

The system is absolutely painful, it's not fun, it's not reasonable, it's not even cleverly disguised, but the worst of it, the most jarring, ignominious part of this, is that we have a model for this kind of system. We went through this drama once, with the original syndicates, we had this exact problem! The rep was too slow to gain, so people exploited, and they finally settled on the system we have now, which works well enough. But here, none of that was taken into consideration : We have to farm for the right to farm, we have to make limiting decisions about what gear we use, and worst of all, we are actively, strongly discouraged from playing the game normally (regarding accumulating focus), which I thought was the exact opposite point of a hard cap! (Seriously, what difference does it make if I earn my cap in thirty minutes of regular game play that I'll enjoy and be excited to come back for tomorrow, or an hourish of strict farming, Viver style which is widely agreed not to be the point of playing a game in the first place?) Here was a fun moment for me recently : I spent thirty minute in the plains, playing rather normally, I got something in the range of 500 focus. Base unlocks for nodes varies from 25k to 80k, for an 80k, just unlocking the ability would take 160 mission like that... And if I only have time for one such mission (to be fair, 3.5 hours/week isn't that shabby), my effective cap, for a system that would require millions of points to advance significantly, is five hundred, 0.0000333% of my focus tree, no way....Yay.

 

Plains of eidolon, for me, was the opportunity to finally get to enjoy playing my operator(Which I really, really want to do!), and while other things have messed that up, nothing has been as disappointing as the feeling of glossing over focus trees with faint excitation about my operator's new life as a new part of my gameplay, only to have it quickly stifled into nonexistence as my evening's game time gives me all of 0.00625% of the focus I need to unlock level one of one ability. 

 

...In the end, I'm not adding much other than agreeing with many words. I don't have refined, super cleaver solutions to offer and I don't want them, I just want something that's fun and doesn't feel like a huge bummer bordering on insulting. As I see it, we have a cap, we can't burn through it no matter what, so just let us progress normally to that chosen pace by playing reasonable amounts of the game we all really like... Am I just crazy or does that sound okay?

[Anthraxicus]

Sterculius approves this message

 

The thing that bothers me is that I don't know whether DE knew the system was a pile of feces and went with it anyway or it was just an honest screw up. Judging from their silence, I tend to believe on the former.

In any case, I've been avoiding any PoE related stuff. And the covergence orbs are so bugged I don't even bother with them most of the time. They either spawn inside the terrain or other inaccessible area or simply spawn so far away that it won't do any good. Couldn't they design a system that improves teamplay instead of forcing people to be selfish or, if they aren't, they won't ever go level up that garbage focus system?

Edited October 24, 2017 by Anthraxicus

[Ceryk]

38 minutes ago, ra9una said:

...In the end, I'm not adding much other than agreeing with many words. I don't have refined, super cleaver solutions to offer and I don't want them, I just want something that's fun and doesn't feel like a huge bummer bordering on insulting. As I see it, we have a cap, we can't burn through it no matter what, so just let us progress normally to that chosen pace by playing reasonable amounts of the game we all really like... Am I just crazy or does that sound okay?

Considering the entire point of games of any kind is that they are fun, no, not crazy at all. The cap and node costs are more than enough to control progress. Literally zero legitimate reason why it should be difficult to gain Focus Exp as well.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Ceryk

[warjo.]

1.) It would be bad enough if your operator could use the state boast from the way bound perks. How ever it is mandatory to grind the entire perk to max before doing this. (Make us unbound the way-bound without having to fully unlock the perk.)

2.) Give quests or events that allow for bonus amounts of focus when in the mission.

(Potentially Kuva conversion to focus)(since we need to use our operator to kill guardians and get siphon this is a nice touch to the system)

(Having a feeling of using and empowering our operator)

2.) at min 2.5x to the focus cap (At MINIMUM)

3.) Not directly focus but some more ways to move around as the operator other than (slide and dashing).

4.) Make is so lenses are reusable and are placed an all of a types aka put a lens on all primary weapons. Aslo do the same with arcane its annoying to continually replace the arcane.

 

 

[racooperii]

38 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

Sterculius approves this message

 

The thing that bothers me is that I don't know whether DE knew the system was a pile of feces and went with it anyway or it was just an honest screw up. Judging from their silence, I tend to believe on the former.

In any case, I've been avoiding any PoE related stuff. And the covergence orbs are so bugged I don't even bother with them most of the time. They either spawn inside the terrain or other inaccessible area or simply spawn so far away that it won't do any good. Couldn't they design a system that improves teamplay instead of forcing people to be selfish or, if they aren't, they won't ever go level up that garbage focus system?

I've had one spawn at the start of a Defense Mission in the middle of the Wave. There was Focus I wasn't going to bother running all the way back, grab, lose seconds just getting back to the pod and get 200 focus since it's wave 5 and eats up the remaining time making me wait for the extraction screen...

Focus 2.0, as I've said before, is like putting new sheet rock on rotting studs. 

I LIKE the new perks for Focus .

I LIKE the idea of making the operator suck less by increasing their stats

I even LIKE having control over Zenuriks energy gain at the start of a mission, and that it affects channeled abilities now.

But why, oh god WHY, is it not only gated by a Daily Cap(Which if you hit it every day, you could unlock everything in 400 days or so.) but also the slowest acquisition rate I've seen since I last played a Korean MMO RPG and an exponential cost per skill level. It's just so absurdly gated that I don't even see why they're adding operator stuff when the price-of-entry to make them kinda useful is so high and so heavy.

 

[Rinteru]

So let me add 2 cents to this dicussion.

First off i'd like to touch upon what focus system is and what i belive DE wanted to make it into, because we need to understand developers intentions and thought process. So basicaly focus system was this thing to reward veteran players for playing the game, getting exp on warframes and weapons that are already maxed. However they didnt wanted to simply go for this mastery system like for example D3 has ( the paragon system if you know what im talking about). They needed to make it grindy because it would keep vets still playing the game. Another thing is people accepted it since operator was not the core gameplay. It was still alll about warframes. You didnt need to use operator, yeah you could, but it was totaly optional and insignificant. Untill playerbase discovered zenurik regen and naromon stealth. Then for a lot of community it became mandatory. You could basicaly invincible with naromon or make ridicoulously powerful builds with zenurik.

With introduction of Focus 2.0 nothing changed. You can ask "What? Its not true look all skills changed, the focus trees are useful now." and my answer would be "Yeah they are. However its is not what it meant to be." 

Operator became mandatory for plains.

It is core gameplay mechanic right now.

 

And this true issue of system. If it was like paragon system in d3, minor stats that doesnt affect much of your gameplay it would be totaly fine for focus, because only min-maxers would farm for it. Other players would just add points when they get some points and have minor increases. It works in other games why wouldnt it work here. Todays state of focus is core gameplay locked behind endgame grind. This is like taking a warframe and locking it behind 1000days login reward.

Developers just cant decide thou on which state they want focus to be in. Do they want focus to be core gameplay or do they want it to be mastery system. 

For me personaly operator becoming something i can use incredible.

What i belive should be done is creating another system for veterans and leaving focus as it is with the buffs to it as suggest above like buffing convergence rate by much and deleting the yellow orb of annoyance. About systems for veterans what i think it should be for example: you gain access to "mastery" focus tree after completing all tenno ways or making specializations for each tree that wouldnt affect much gameplay or making for example 2 focus skills that you can only choose one from them, and they are super hard to power up. To max these out you could do very hard solo mission that would test your skills with your warframe and tenno once a day. And to max out all the specialization/mastery tree/skills you would need around 100 missions done. Which is pretty resonable endgame. Its not a year of grinding its hard and it takes some time. I feel also that a bit more of hard content is what warframe needs but thats for another time.

If you guys feel like something my not work, state some solid arguments,  i'd love to hear other opinions

Edited October 24, 2017 by Rinteru

[LuckyCharm]

I agree with all of the above. As for my input, i would like to see the little mission challenges like "gain 5 slide kills" be changed to a focus gain after tww is complete depending on how hard the challenge. "Kill 30 enemies with your operator" and get a lot of focus etc. 

At least then my daily grind comes down to trying to play more missions and complete challenges. 

The node costs definately need a look at though. I had over half naramon completed and now i have 2 nodea unlocked. Feelsbadman

[Anthraxicus]

25 minutes ago, Nation_X said:

You mean its not fun that i have to farm lenses to place them on a farm frame, with a farm mission that must be farmed in a specific manner to reduce the amount of farming while we farm?

When you put it that way, it makes the whole thing even sadder.

[dudefaceguy]

I am fine with the very long-term nature of focus. I can also understand that they want people to buy the greater lenses for plat. But we need to be able to make discernable progress by just playing the game normally.

There is an aspect of the current system that nobody had mentioned, but I think tweaking it could improve this experience. Let us make gains in smaller steps, so that we get tangible rewards more often. Unlocking a node costs a small amount of focus - usually 50,000. You can get this amount from just playing the game for a couple of days with regular lenses. Subsequent levels, however, are 3-4 times more expensive right away. So, we are encouraged to unlock all of the nodes before leveling them up because the first step much cheaper than subsequent levels. If the subsequent nodes were less expensive, I think it would feel more rewarding to get focus from just playing. An easy way to do this would be to add more ranks to each node, with smaller individual gains per rank. The high ranks would still be very expensive and the total cost would be the same, but we could get some more tangible rewards from gaining focus causally.

I agree with all of the other common suggestions to increase the amount of focus we get from playing causally without farming. But I also think DE could make the progression feel more rewarding, even as focus remains a long-term system. As it is, a casual player will probably just give up and have no motivation to play from focus.

Edited October 24, 2017 by dudefaceguy

[Ceryk]

1 hour ago, Rinteru said:

Operator became mandatory for plains.

It is core gameplay mechanic right now.

Overall, I agree with what you have said. But this particularly is big part of the change. It has become a core system over a grind goal for vets. The original idea was for something that people with nothing better to do in the game could do. You have access to it fairly early in the game.

And not to mention that the game now is SO much different than what it was when Focus 1.0 was introduced. We have more activities to do now. I mean look at Kuva farming. At least that has VARIETY and reasonable reward for doing it and you are just sitting around in one mission doing the same thing over and over. But I should be able to get good Focus Exp if I choose to go an get Kuva because Focus is ever present.

And the Operator improvements, by the way, help a lot in Kuva farming. I've got this Electric blast that will shock near by enemies when I hit the Guardians with it to disarm them, which helps control the room. So the changes aren't just about the Plains and making Operators Eidolon Hunters, they are throughout the a lot of the game.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Ceryk

[RAZORLIGHT]

One update without DE messing something terribly up... only once

now i know again why i havent been on the plains yet, waiting for fixes, if they ll ever come.

 

 

Edited October 24, 2017 by RAZORLIGHT

[Ceryk]

12 minutes ago, RAZORLIGHT said:

One update without DE messing something terribly up... only once

now i know again why i havent been on the plains yet, waiting for fixes, if they ll ever come.

 

 

Thanks for that video. Going to add it to the initial page. Really highlights how bad it is.

However, like I've stated in a few replies I think and my original post, I do not believe that Focus is End Game content anymore. It's become a core system. Which is why we NEED the absolute worst parts of the grind removed.

[Rojeen]

Theres a Warframe Youtuber named MCGamerz and he express his disappointment on the new focus system.LINK: 

 

So far he's the only warframe youtuber that I know addressed this issue and just what he calculated based on just his "passively farming focus" everyday, he can max them in more than 4 years. 

I also understand his feeling that doing passive focus farming is pointless now and makes me ignore FOCUS 2.0 entirely.

[Ceryk]

1 hour ago, Rojeen said:

Theres a Warframe Youtuber named MCGamerz and he express his disappointment on the new focus system.LINK: 

So far he's the only warframe youtuber that I know addressed this issue and just what he calculated based on just his "passively farming focus" everyday, he can max them in more than 4 years. 

I also understand his feeling that doing passive focus farming is pointless now and makes me ignore FOCUS 2.0 entirely.

Yeah. I think it's become a core system rather than an end game system now. They are usable in combat, they are required for working on Rivens and Eidolons. The system isn't locked behind a level gate. And not being able to be rewarded with Focus for just playing the game is simply no acceptable for a core system. I want to be able to play what I want, when I want, and with what ever frame and weapons I want (hence why I'm so insistent on Lenses being a single item on Operators) and be adequately rewarded for playing the game and having a good time. Locking me down a loadout just for focus is not fun. Locking me down to doing specific mission types just for focus is not fun. Locking me down to specific playstyles just for focus is not fun.

Now I wouldn't say that it makes me want to ignore Focus entirely, however it makes me less likely to try to really get anywhere with it. Instead of inspiring me to have a tangible goal in the game that makes me want to play more and take less breaks (because I take frequent breaks from the game so I don't burn out and can keep playing), it makes me feel like my breaks are going to be just as frequent as they have been. Which I think I'll add this comment to the main page now that I look at it.