Can we talk about that whole Energy Regen / Zenurik topic one more time

[Jukantos]

So, here i am, back again. I'm going to try to express my core frustrations as well as the appreciation i have for Focus 2.0 and to put it to constructive use and i'd invite you to join me in this effort by adding your own experience to it as well.

 

So, first, let's begin on a positive note with the stuff i actually like about the system's rework

1) The passives now work instantly and the penalty for activating secondary skills has been completely removed. Kudos on that one. I never used any of the active abilities despite having them all maxed out on Zenurik, simply because of that 45 second penalty per active ability. Very glad to see that gone

2) Operator Mode now actually has meaningfull moves. The fluidity of the transition in particular means you can now actually use it as an added for of mobility by weaving a few operator dashes into your mobility, instead of it being a clunky kuva-cloud-chasing-only mode. Very nice, even if there are still some horrendous bugs attached to it, like instantly failing bounties if you transition between Warframe and Operator if you're the first / only player in the Objective area (that's a different topic i've covered HERE )

3) I appreciate the idea of having bonus unlockables across all focus trees, giving an incentive to further level out the focus trees and their capacity maximum even after you have everything in them. More stuff to hunt is always fun, especially if it's actually meaningfull passives (like the bonus amp/operator energy and regen from Madurai im now working on)

 

Unfortunately there are also a couple of things really really tainting the overall experience though, which i would love to see at least mitigated in some way

1) The amount of focus now needed for everything is insane. Like, completely nuts. I had Zenurik completely maxed out to the last ability and enough pool to equip all of them, now after the rework i barely managed to grab all the passives (with the waybound ones NOT being unbound for 1 million points each) plus the energizing dash ability

2) Having to pop out into transference every half minute just to aim my camera at the floor for a non-blink to refresh the buff is tedious. Like, it feels so arbitrary, it's so incredibly disruptive to the combat flow. I am quite literally jumping through a forced transferrence design hoop to get that energy back up, which, in theory, if i was playing high level missions, would probably get my operator vaporized quite often and me sent flat on the floor swiftly afterwards. Where's the harm in making it permanent at least for the person who used it? Now you too can feel like an EV trin getting shouted at to provide energy for your team, and now completely regardless of your frame - Join Zenurik today! (could be a nice TV ad style trailer for Zenurik)

3) The changes to the ability costs and the quite literally theoretically now needed hundreds of pool points if you were to get all the waybound passives unlocked feel like a grossly over the top you'd-better-be farming-at-Berehynia acquisition rate smackdown. My previous TWO YEARS of farming slightly over 10.000.000 Focus became such a small number they barely unlocked all the passives at non unbound level. That is... that is too far out there man. Imagine what this means for new players. Even if they were using full on Eidolon Lenses on all their gear and we give them the maximum affinity conversion rate of a full 9%, we're talking about pretty high double digits of MILLIONS of affinity, aka probably roughly a MILLION enemies to kill to get their focus trees anyway. That is a gross number, and for me to call any farming in Warframe gross after 4000 hours the asked number really has to be outlandish (the only previous examples being pre-hickup cetus economy and the hema situation)

4) The entire justification for the Zenurik Energy Regen removal has been silently flushed down the drain/swept under the rug. You said you'd "look into alternative means of permanent energy regen if people conceive it to be mandatory", because you "didn't want it to be locked behind a single focus tree" (my abbreviated version of the dev workshop)

 

Sooo let me rip into that last one a little bit, please:

1) the obvious one, it IS still bound to a single focus tree. If you dont play with Zenurik as your main Focus, you are not getting Warframe energy regeneration by yourself, period. Better keep spamming those pizzas.

2) You actually buffed it while still locking it behind a single tree, which is nice but weird considering you announced it was going to be nerfed quite drastically. I just find it hilarious that every time i go out into the plains i see people blinking around and every single one of them leaves a zenurik orb. At least from my experience it feels as if 90%+ of the people utilizing operator mode were now running it focused on Zenurik (pun fully intended). I doubt that was your goal with this, but it's going to stay that way unless you unbind the regen from the tree like you said you wanted to (please do NOT take this as a recommendation to remove it completely like the 50% melee dmg which disappeared from Naramon. That's NOT what im advocating here. Otherwise reddit would probably draw and quarter me)

 - Not to mention the amount of newbie players which have probably been spoiled storywise by someone popping out right in front of them to give the whole group energy regeneration. I always helped new players and LOVED seeing their initial reaction to the second dream, i avoided spoiling them at all costs (hiding in other rooms while pretending im looting to pop my focus ability was a fun minigame)

 - I really appreciate the ability applying to teammates, but so far i am quite literally the only player i have seen having the ability on level 5. Everyone else keeps overwriting my 5-points-for-30-seconds buff with their weaker 4-points-for-20-seconds buff. It's irritating and simply shouldnt happen. If anything, queue the 4 point version BEHIND the 5 pointer in case that one expires, but buffs should never be overwritten by weaker versions of themselves (which if i remember correctly was already a thing on trinity's blessing in the past at one point)

 

Overall, it's a weird mix. I like the changes to operator mode, but the focus changes while now meaningfull and usefull also feel like one incoherent mess of an acquisition nerf which also came with a REALLY annoying arbitrary button combo of 5, look down, Ctrl+space, 5 every 30 seconds, which is disruptive and immersion breaking. And since you've thrown every single justification you gave for the changes under the bus by your own actions, i don't see why we can't simply turn it into a waybound passive at this point. That'd be more fun for everyone who likes energy but appreciates the ability alterations of the other trees and it would spoil less players by removing arbitrary hoopjumping from the core gameplay flow.

 

So, i hope this gives you some insights into my thoughts and maybe some valuable "veteran feedback" as you called it in SkillUps Interview. And i'd highly welcome it if other tenno added their personal experiences below as well. What do you agree/disagree with me on? Do you use a different core focus other than Zenurik? Which one and which unique ability convinced you to do so?

[Mr.Holyroller]

Only thing I'm going to comment on is your comments regarding how much focus it costs. To get all waybounds is about 21.9mil focus which from scratch takes 88 days without getting brilliant edilon shards. I don't feel like it's that much considering the mods/weapons locked behind daily login rewards. On top of that, it only takes me 20 minutes to Max out focus with a booster with equinox/ivara  on Adaro. I don't like to admit it, but the enjoyment of this game for me has become heavily dependent on affinity boosters because they've continued to nerf exp farming as time goes on (that's another topic for another day). I don't feel like you should be able to get everything super quick in just a months time. I feel like people are overreacting to focus costs because everyone is used to throwing platinum at things to fix their impatience

[Jukantos]

1 minute ago, Mr.Holyroller said:

it only takes me 20 minutes to Max out focus with a booster with equinox/ivara  on Adaro. I don't like to admit it, but the enjoyment of this game for me has become heavily dependent on affinity boosters because they've continued to nerf exp farming as time goes on (that's another topic for another day). I don't feel like you should be able to get everything super quick in just a months time. I feel like people are overreacting to focus costs because everyone is used to throwing platinum at things to fix their impatience

Thing is, i'd like to not have to rely on the most abusive exp farm in the game to max out my focus. If i play 3 hours a day, with lenses on everything, it should max out. Instead 6 hours of "normal" gameplay wont even use close to half of it, while abuse stuff can do it in 20 minutes. It was something i could look past back when it was easy to get your 100000 just by playing normally with the points you got during regular gameplay, but now you HAVE to do dedicated farming for it, preferably with a booster in an abusive setup. That's a negative change compared to just being rewarded for your playtime, at least in my books

[Mr.Holyroller]

2 minutes ago, Jukantos said:

Thing is, i'd like to not have to rely on the most abusive exp farm in the game to max out my focus. If i play 3 hours a day, with lenses on everything, it should max out. Instead 6 hours of "normal" gameplay wont even use close to half of it, while abuse stuff can do it in 20 minutes. It was something i could look past back when it was easy to get your 100000 just by playing normally with the points you got during regular gameplay, but now you HAVE to do dedicated farming for it, preferably with a booster in an abusive setup. That's a negative change compared to just being rewarded for your playtime, at least in my books

I don't really feel like doing stealth runs are "abusive". I work full time and I'm able to Max my focus, do my sortie, max osteron, quill, and syndicate standing all in about 2-3 hours of gameplay. 

[Mr.Holyroller]

Also, I want to apologize for de-railing the focus of this topic. I do agree with you that constantly swapping into operator for energy feels clunky 

[kebra]

35 minutes ago, Mr.Holyroller said:

I'm able to Max my focus, do my sortie, max osteron, quill, and syndicate standing all in about 2-3 hours of gameplay. 

That's the problem, that's all you can do now if you want to progress, Focus, Sorties, Bounties, Eidolon Hunt (if night comes while you're playing), fishing, mining, rince and repeat... what we are saying is that we should be able to progress at a decent pace with normal gameplay and not optimizing (Also Equinox and Ivara are among the hardest Warframe to get) and buying boosters. The farming/grinding is too prevalent.

Edited October 30, 2017 by kebra

[Mr.Holyroller]

32 minutes ago, kebra said:

That's the problem, that's all you can do now if you want to progress, Focus, Sorties, Bounties, Eidolon Hunt (if night comes while you're playing), fishing, mining, rince and repeat... what we are saying is that we should be able to progress at a decent pace with normal gameplay and not optimizing (Also Equinox and Ivara are among the hardest Warframe to get) and buying boosters. The farming/grinding is too prevalent.

I understand that, but currently, focus and operators and still pretty auxiliary and people are downing 4+ eidolons a night without waybounds unlocked (I'm one of them) so it's basically "arbitrary end game content". It just feels like something extra that you can do. I don't think the target of focus is for new players. It's a perfect fit, being at MR24 with relatively nothing to do. Now I still have a good reason to play every day. And in regard to how difficult ivara and equinox are, shouldn't there be a return reward for how difficult they are to obtain? It would feel terrible if the hardest frames to get didn't really allow you do to things in different ways or be able to farm certain things faster. It took a lot of effort for me to grind out ivara and equinox and put 4 forma on both of them. A player SHOULD be rewarded for that effort.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Mr.Holyroller
Additional comments

[Jukantos]

The core problem with the general progression FEELING in this update, even after some form of mitigation hotfixing is that it forces you into using Boosters so badly you feel punished when NOT using abusive strats like Equinox/Ivara on Adaro. Sure, i can see why it's not great when people don't feel a need to use boosters in a Free2Play game, but making normal gameplay feel completely unrewarding is obviously going to drive people into farming with the most abusive method available to them.

 

Hell, i don't want to imagine what farming Cetus Standing would feel like if they didn't double the bounty rewards and if i didn't have my Resource Booster + Smeeta Kavat for fishing purposes

[jofdeath]

In regards to focus gain, i do agree that its set really high for most cases, when you grab convergence its set to 8x bonus from what it normal is, i would say it should be shifted around so that a normal lens should be like 4%, but apon getting convergence orb increases it by 3 times to 12%. the relayence of soley convergence when running focus farm is just really out of the way.

but as for the abilitys them self, out side of the initial start of the mission, most players including me dont need to use energizing dash because of how efficient the builds i make are. there are indeed some really useful abilitys, naramon is great for affinity farming of any sort for melee only(ya the affinity gain bonus is only for melee, i always get more focus by the 45% mark vs my frame) abilitys sure do have there limited use because of situational base, but exicuting dash is one where you pop out to stun everything to get that juicy covert lethality kill, vazarin heals and gives invulnerability for a short time with the ability to heal them well there invulnerability.

and alot of these arnt even including some of the other useful skills outside of the main stays of each tree that can do some impressive things

[BitVyper]

I pretty much agree with the OP's criticisms, especially swapping for Energizing Dash.  The entire idea of having the operator forced down my throat so I can get some energy regen, is something I find so arbitrary and annoying that I've just felt zero desire to play ever since I redid my focus and realised that would be the case.

Anyway, I gotta ask like, why does this "X days to finish a focus tree if you max focus every day" stuff keep getting bandied about like 88 days isn't a really long time? Is this just where we're at in the age of MMOs? Actually, I shouldn't be surprised that these timescales line up with what modern psychology suggests it takes to form a reasonably complex habit.  That's not really the point though, I just find it baffling that I'm expected to believe three months is a reasonable amount of time here.