Unlock Way-Bound Skills for all Schools, please

[Toran]

First off, I appreciate the planned changes to Focus 2.0 announced in Dev Stream 100 very much (https://forums.warframe.com/topic/872974-devstream-100-overview/) and I'm looking forward to the upcoming boost for focus gain.

There's one thing that still stings me, however: way-bound skills. For those who don't know: way-bound skills handle the base attributes (like health, energy, running speed, beam damage etc.) of your Operator. Every school has two such skills that contribute to the Operator's direct performance. In the current system you can unlock these way-bound skills for all focus schools, but you have to upgrade them to their highest level first, which takes several millions affinity and a Brilliant Eidolon shard.

That doesn't make much sense to me. Imagine an upcoming football/hockey/soccer pro who's training is totally focused on shooting and tackling techniques but that ignores general training for speed, stamina, strength and coordination up to the end of the season.

A simple solution: make way-bound skills generally active in all focus schools
By that you can train your Operator's general attributes early on. You still would have to invest a lot of affinity, and you still would have to get 1,000,000 and that Eidolon shard for the very last point of a way-bound skill, but you could give your Operator a wider training from the start. At the moment, you have to fully unlock a way-bound skill from a different school, if you want to see any effect. All the way before that last point, you don't get any boon at all... a disgusting thought.

TL;DR: Current way-bound skills only unlock for other schools after fully investing in the skill node. E.g.: If you're Zenurik but want the Madurai way-bound skills, you need to invest millions of affinity - you get the full boon but you won't see any bonus before that very last point. Making way-bound skills generally active in all the schools would allow for a wider Operator training and a better snse of progress.

Please answer if you support the idea or got a better one.

[ScribbleClash]

The "curve" for Operator improvement definetly feels crippled by the way it currently is.
Myself however, I'd like to scrap the 1mil focus cost and make abilities able to be unbound at any stage:

• Add a button to unbind next to the skill in question.
• Remove the 1 million focus cost from unbinding
• Increase the Brilliant shard cost depending on the ammount of unbound nodes (+1 per previously unbound node)

I personally see no need to keep the extra 1 million focus cost that unbinding brings with itself. Taken cost and duration from the wiki:

Spoiler

• Madurai: 8,700,000 (35 days)
• Vazarin: 12,300,000 (49 days)
• Unairu: 9,900,000 (40 days)
• Naramon: 6,300,000 (25 days)
• Zenurik: 18,600,000 (75 days)

Considering these values, removing 10 million focus requirement would reduce the grind from 55.800.000 by roughly 22% (184 days instead of 224 days). These values are without taking brilliant shard exchange into account, yet this is still a very long road. If it was up to me, I'd also scrap capacity.
If you want to limit active abilities (which it doesn't seem as if that's the goal), do so by introducing a hard cap and not by doubling grind.

[Mr.Holyroller]

I think that would be way too easy and unrewarding. I mean when you think about it, most games with a talent point system don't allow you to pull from other trees.

If you put the time in and if you're doing eidolon captures at a normal rate, it's only about 60 days from scratch if you want ALL of the waybounds, but Unairi is pretty garbage so not getting that will save you about another 15-20 days depending on how many brilliant shards you're farming

[Toran]

15 hours ago, Mr.Holyroller said:

I think that would be way too easy and unrewarding. I mean when you think about it, most games with a talent point system don't allow you to pull from other trees.

If you put the time in and if you're doing eidolon captures at a normal rate, it's only about 60 days from scratch if you want ALL of the waybounds, but Unairi is pretty garbage so not getting that will save you about another 15-20 days depending on how many brilliant shards you're farming

If you bring this in a role-playing/MMO context, this stuff ain't the talents but the character attributes which usually are independent of a talent tree. I just find it very odd that something that improves the general attributes of the Operator has such a hard lock. 

Edited November 7, 2017 by Toran

[Xaero]

21 hours ago, ScribbleClash said:

I personally see no need to keep the extra 1 million focus cost that unbinding brings with itself. Taken cost and duration from the wiki:

  Hide contents

• Madurai: 8,700,000 (35 days)
• Vazarin: 12,300,000 (49 days)
• Unairu: 9,900,000 (40 days)
• Naramon: 6,300,000 (25 days)
• Zenurik: 18,600,000 (75 days)

Considering these values, removing 10 million focus requirement would reduce the grind from 55.800.000 by roughly 22% (184 days instead of 224 days). These values are without taking brilliant shard exchange into account, yet this is still a very long road. If it was up to me, I'd also scrap capacity.
If you want to limit active abilities (which it doesn't seem as if that's the goal), do so by introducing a hard cap and not by doubling grind.

Wrong numbers. I've had 15 million focus points available for Madurai when Focus 2.0 was introduced. It was only enough to upgrade every node and unbind two passives. Not even counting cost of capacity you'd need to activate other way-bounds. I guess wiki lies about other schools too. So imagine how long would it really take to max out everything.

[ScribbleClash]

54 minutes ago, Ksaero said:

Wrong numbers. I've had 15 million focus points available for Madurai when Focus 2.0 was introduced. It was only enough to upgrade every node and unbind two passives. Not even counting cost of capacity you'd need to activate other way-bounds. I guess wiki lies about other schools too. So imagine how long would it really take to max out everything.

Thanks for the intel. I suppose though that this just cements that flat out removing unbinding costs and capacity would be reasonable. I doubt wiki actually lies though, it may just be old data and need an update.

[Xaero]

13 minutes ago, ScribbleClash said:

Thanks for the intel. I suppose though that this just cements that flat out removing unbinding costs and capacity would be reasonable. I doubt wiki actually lies though, it may just be old data and need an update.

It can't be just outdated info, I've maxed out Madurai tree in Focus 1.0 times and had only about 1.5 spare million points. That means it required 13-14 millions back then. Maybe the one who's given these numbers hasn't counted capacity costs needed for unlocking the nodes. It's very unlikely Zenurik tree cost was equal to double Madurai or Triple Vazarin costs.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Ksaero

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

1- Remove Capacity. 

2- Make it so you can unbind a node after putting a single point in them instead of when fully maxed provided you have the shards to unlock them. Maybe require one shard per level on waybound nodes.

3- Buff operator movement speed.

4- Give us mod for amps.

Edited November 7, 2017 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra