Focus needs Economy changes or at least some Communication

[ENGINEEEEER]

It's awesome the Cetus economy is getting lot's of attention and tweaks. The amount of hotfixes the first week was fantastic.

What isn't awesome is that focus 2.0 looks to be abandoned out of the gate. Some brief bullet points:

• Focus costs were increased dramatically. Total costs seem to be increased by about 2.25 times.
• Daily cap was increased from 100k to 250k.
• Acquisition had two changes: convergence orbs went from 6x to 8x and eidolon lenses were added.
• Convergence orbs have preexisting issues such as pulling away from the objective or spawning in the sky or underground.
• Eidolon lenses(~28% better than a greater lens) have a 2% drop chance from a sortie level bounty with 5 stages. They also cannot even be plat purchased. Don't forget to see that full benefit you need at least two for a frame and a single weapon.
• Brilliant shards give 25k focus, over the cap. This only helps people who have a great deal of time and are already hitting the cap.
• Maxing every tree takes 523 days hitting the cap daily.

Acquisition has not been altered proportionally to the cost changes or the daily cap changes. Focus farming cannot be done passively and hit the cap. And you need to hit the cap to make much of a difference.

Focus is the only way to make our operators more survivable and generally better, aside from amps. I could go on but I don't have to because there are quite a few topics on it:

Reddit:

• [TCN] Analysis of Focus 2.0 - This is a really well written and in-depth description of the current issues.
• Focus costs are too high
• Focus costs are off-putting
• Video on Focus grind

Forums

• Focus 2.0 Exp isn't fun
• Waybound nodes and their impact
• Focus cap needs to be higher since it is the only way to mod the operator

Even if we don't get changes soon, please reach out and at least say what you're planning or why you increased the grind on this system so dramatically.

[-..-]

Everyone needs to get on this train. DE is trying to push Focus/Operator gameplay more and more and soon it will be a required farm. We need to squash the problems now while we're in the transitional state from Focus 1.0 to 2.0. No one wants to grind 523 days in a row without missing a day. No one wants to have to do sleepquinox/bere just to farm focus efficiently. The average person gets a measly amount of focus per day. Even the 30k focus in MCGamerCZ's case is above average from what I can tell. Over 9 years (using my calculations. It's closer to 11 according to TGDM's actual numbers) is WAY too long to do anything in ANY game. Not just Warframe. It surpasses even Runescape True Trim Comp levels of grind.

[notlamprey]

I hate that I'm only seeing this thread too late at night to add anything of real consequence, but I can try to slap down some rough thoughts.

Appearances make it seem like DE's only consideration for balancing this system was math, and what math they did seems to have been far from comprehensive.

Nearly all of the people who play Warframe at any point will not log in for even a year's worth of days; DE has the numbers on "retention" and median number of days logged. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say that in its current state, virtually no one will ever complete even a single focus tree - let alone make any serious exploration of multiple trees.

To cynical or business-oriented eyes, Focus 2.0 could be seen as a carrot strategically dangled before players as a means of enticing them towards plat purchases. They complete TSD, likely feeling very positive about the game and its money model, and are exposed to a system that promises more than it could possibly hope to deliver. Many players have no way of knowing that, and will probably buy a few lenses or forma, perhaps investing a substantial amount of money/platinum towards attacking this new grind hill with vigor.

Only later would they see the pitiful returns on such an investment. Overall, it's currently a bad look for DE, and I think we all agree they can do better for us and for themselves.

Edited October 26, 2017 by yerpmalton

[Gravitus123]

Seriously they havent even mentioned anything about Focus 2.0 since PoE came out and it cant be left the way it is right now.Its such a painful and annoying grind.

Why are lenses still lost upon removing them from gear?Why cant we just switch them when we want?Why is capacity still a thing?Why is focus gain still so freaking low and requires a dedicated setup and mission to actually gain any focus at all?Why is that convergeance orb still a thing?Why are the focus costs so freaking huge?Why do some of the focus nodes have like 6 or 7 ranks for no reason?

This whole system needs another hammer

[Sannleikur]

The simplest solution would be to get rid of convergence orbs altogether, increase the %s on all lenses by 12x, put the daily cap at 1 mil, and make brilliant shards worth 75k.

[Dornez]

• Maxing every tree takes 523 days hitting the cap daily.

[JonesmanThe64th]

This up and down the lanes. The whole convergence orb thing makes no sense with the daily cap already limiting how much you can get in a day. I understand its supposed to be a long form thing, after all you get to use your operator with every frame, so when they get strong they will always be usable with even a starting frame.

[Riger82]

I'm for this. I threw some lenses into gear I play a lot just for the pittance we get from normal missions. We get so little from the plains that they're practically worthless there. I stopped even trying to farm the eidolon lens after getting more than 80% axi relic 'rewards'.

[Oreades]

I'd almost say another thing to look into would be applying lenses to loadouts instead of the gear itself. That way you wouldn't feel like you where shoehorning your play style by being obligated to put the lenses on the highest damage AoE frames you had.  

You could just put the lenses into your (insert school) loadout and then swap frames and weapons in and out of that as you felt like. It would in my opinion go a long way to making the focus feel more fluid/dynamic. 

Go ahead and have it stack up to three lenses since people where going to use three lenses anyhow. 

As an added bonus it would help nudge people into the fact that Loadouts are a thing that exist and they are actually pretty useful/convenient. 

[ra9una]

I want to add something constructive... But there's nothing really left to say. There have been several well worded, reasoned and compete arguments. There is absolutely nothing left to say, except maybe, quite frankly that none of this should have need to be said in first place. It's an abomination and saps a great deal of fun out of what should otherwise have been a great pass over a system that wasn't quite there the first time around.

[Somb3rBivalve]

Well since you asked for some communication, there ye go

Anyway, at least they are looking into it.

[racooperii]

44 minutes ago, Somb3rBivalve said:

Well since you asked for some communication, there ye go

Anyway, at least they are looking into it.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but a generic response to a tweet like that doesn't feel all that genuine. Why have Feedback Forums if you're not going to Respond to them and just use Twitter?

Feels more like a really vague response to try to buy time and actually think of something. Not to mention calling it "Buffs" makes me nervous, cause if anything Focus 2.0 is a reorganization that was handled poorly from the start.

So yeah, might be cynicism speaking but a response tweet to someone hardly feels like proper communication to a vocal issue on their own forums.

 

[Somb3rBivalve]

12 minutes ago, racooperii said:

Maybe I'm just cynical, but a generic response to a tweet like that doesn't feel all that genuine. Why have Feedback Forums if you're not going to Respond to them and just use Twitter?

Feels more like a really vague response to try to buy time and actually think of something. Not to mention calling it "Buffs" makes me nervous, cause if anything Focus 2.0 is a reorganization that was handled poorly from the start.

So yeah, might be cynicism speaking but a response tweet to someone hardly feels like proper communication to a vocal issue on their own forums.

It doesn't guarantee that they will actually do anything about it (thinking back to shield gating), but it does mean that they are talking about it (she wouldn't straight-up lie about that part). Also if she called it "buffs" then that would go against her statement that they didn't want to reveal anything about what they are planning/talking about since "buffs" would imply that they would in fact make it easier as opposed to letting it remain.

I'd say you are being pessimistic. Try not to do much reading between the lines here and simply wait a while to see if anything comes out of their discussions.

I also wish they would use the forums a little more tho.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Somb3rBivalve

[Mattoropael]

2 hours ago, Somb3rBivalve said:

It doesn't guarantee that they will actually do anything about it (thinking back to shield gating), but it does mean that they are talking about it (she wouldn't straight-up lie about that part). Also if she called it "buffs" then that would go against her statement that they didn't want to reveal anything about what they are planning/talking about since "buffs" would imply that they would in fact make it easier as opposed to letting it remain.

I'd say you are being pessimistic. Try not to do much reading between the lines here and simply wait a while to see if anything comes out of their discussions.

I also wish they would use the forums a little more tho.

Rebecca is calling 22.0.0 "buffs", not any future changes DE might have in mind.

i.e. She is calling "daily cap 100k -> 250k, convergence multiplier 6x -> 8x, introduction of Eidolon Lens" a buff, despite the massive increase in focus points required easily matching the increase in daily cap and way more than the paltry increase* in actual focus gain.

 

* Pre-PoE Greater Lens vs Post-PoE Eidolon Lens: ~28% increase without convergence, ~71% increase under convergence, with no change to the actual mechanics of gaining focus

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Mattoropael

[Darkuhn]

12 hours ago, ReinSerenity said:

The simplest solution would be to get rid of convergence orbs altogether, increase the %s on all lenses by 12x, put the daily cap at 1 mil, and make brilliant shards worth 75k.

This Change would make Focus 2.0 more rewarding and it could be accessed easier by the part of the Community with limited Time to play. As of now the grind involved to only get the Waybound passives is so enormous that it kills the fun I had with the Game for the past 4 Years. 

Another problem I have with Focus 2.0 is, that some schools have really badass new abilities (e.g. Vazarin's invincible Operator) and then there are some utterly useless abilities like Zenutiks 500 electro dmg/s in 20m which is only useful on the first few planets. But sadly these aren't interesting anymore by the time you getting the ability.

Basically about 60% of the new abilities don't feel worth grinding for. Because of he poor effort/gain ratio they have. It takes literally days of grind just to unlock not really contributing gimmicks.

Other than the Change ReinSerenity suggested I see only one other option to make Focus 2.0 more appealing. Divide all Focus needed by 5 and buff all these rather useless abilities to the point where they are useful against Enemies lv 35-50. Which could be done by letting them deal True DMG(which ignores amor and other damage reductions) and buff the effect (damage or duration) by at least 150% (The Invulnerably Vazarin grants should be turned to a longer working (e.g. 25 sec at max) Damage reduction with a maximum of 90%)

[notlamprey]

Don't worry, everyone! DE is looking into it.

xD