Tarak's Better Focus and Damage Systems

Tarak · November 12, 2017

(In his own opinion, based on the Warframe he fell in love with years ago.)

Pre-ramble:
Back when The Focus System was first mentioned in the design council (back when it was still just a concept known as the Lens System), I was quite excited for it, as it sounded like a good end game system where you could choose a school to channel your excess affinity into to unlock and gain gameplay benefits as you continued to play with max ranked gear. Then the Focus System came out with the Second Dream and initially I was quite excited, but then I realized it had essentially become a 'use two nodes on one of two schools and ignore the rest because it doesn't matter' system. Then the War within came out and the Operator was usable in missions... and honestly, I was excited... for about as long as it took for me to get into a mission and realize that the Operator was about as survivable as a spaghetti noodle and about as effectual in combat. THEN the plains of Eidolon was coming and the Warrior mode Operator and the rework of focus was discussed and I was excited... then it came out and I found the 'ghost form' gone post-warrior mode and most of the abilities that made the Focus system interesting were gone or turned into very brief effects that forced use of the Operator, who was still mostly a wet noodle unless you invested heavily into the focus system, but even then the damage was... okay, I guess? I'm disappointed, and my disappointment has nothing to do with how much Focus we can gain in a day, which seems to be what the Devs are focusing on right now with the Focus System. That’s NOT what needs changing, though the proposed changes I do believe to be good changes to the system. Small steps in a good direction, if not the one we need to be moving in if you will.

Onto the meat, Focus 3.0; The Focus we need... and deserve... maybe.

(I NOW HAVE AN OUTLINED OVERHAUL TO ALL DAMAGE ARMOR AND HEALTH TYPES IN THE GAME DOWN BELOW! Any mentions I make in the following Focus rework to status effects or chances are not edited to account for this yet.)

First and foremost, unlock rewards and passives:

In my opinion, the system should reward you for investment in each tree regardless of which tree you have equipped, and there should be a reward for both the operator and the Warframe gameplay. This doesn't have to be big, but There should be SOMETHING. First and foremost, make passives truly passives, i.e.: they are there from the start of a mission without making you pop out and back in as soon as the mission starts because... reasons I guess? Secondly, I'd change the system to make the Operator passives into a school-based progressive upgrade, along with a new, small universal passive (new starting node, current passives would be offset on their own branch) that increase as you spend more focus in the tree they are a part of. As an example:

When you unlock Madurai, the first node gives a 1% dmg boost to all damage done regardless of what tree is active, scaling up to 10% as you spend more focus in the rest of the Madurai tree, and the Operator passives give their current starting bonus scaling up to their max bonus, in the same way, no upgrading necessary, and unbindable or even unbound (preferable for me) by default.

In the current system you only really get a benefit from a tree you're not preferential towards after a very large investment. Encouraging players to avoid those trees until you literally don't want anything from another tree you prefer, and then you're not really going to pursue them but rather just more passively gain focus until you can unlock those specific nodes and upgrades before abandoning those trees. This change would encourage players to earn and spend focus in all the trees to get the most out of the focus system and their Operator.

In addition to this, I would add lesser effects to the universal passives that can be unbound (at a much lower cost than the current style of way-bound abilities, I think 150k focus is good for a reason I'll touch on in a bit) once fully upgraded adding as a 'choose one' style add-on to the 'unbound' correlated passive of the other trees. For Example:

Let's say Madurai is the tree you primarily like to run, and so you upgrade Phoenix Talons fully but don't unbind it. It now grants it's 'normal' 15% Physical Damage increase (offset for possible 10% increase from the new universal Node) when you have the Madurai school equipped. Then, however, you decide to Start playing around with Vazarin and Naramon, getting their first passives, Mending Unity and Affinity Spike respectively, maxed (giving their 25m affinity radius increase and 45% increase to melee affinity while their respective schools are equipped) and unbound. Now you are back to Madurai and unbind Phoenix Talons, and upon doing so you have a little radial wheel pop up around the node for Phoenix Talons that has smaller icons with Mending unity and Affinity spike available to select. you can choose to have one of them active at a time along with Pheonix Talons giving either a 10m Affinity radius increase or a 10% melee affinity bonus (the stat of the first level of those abilities).

This, again, encourages the player to try out all the schools and the entirety of the focus system while not punishing players for primarily pursuing one school.

With the passives explored let's look at the actives and how I would change them:

Honestly, I think the current actives are okay in how they function, but I would add a little something to them. Notably, I'd add a small, 2% bonus to their efficiency when they are maxed that would exist across all trees.

As such, a maxed Void Radiance, equipped or not, would add a 2% increase to the efficiency of Void Mode and related abilities (calculated AFTER costs of any active effects) this would be added for each void Mode active ability maxed in each school, totaling in a 20% increased void mode efficiency. (So, with the base of 5/s, abilities like Unairu's Void Shadow and Void Chrysalis costing 4/s each would cost 10.4/s total rather than 13/s, resulting in 9.6 seconds of void mode rather than 7.7 seconds at base energy max, or 18.2 seconds rather than 14.6 seconds with Void Flow maxed. In addition, Abilities like Void Radiance, with its 50 energy cost on leaving void mode, would be reduced to a 40 energy cost with the max bonus).

The void dash abilities would each give a 2% increase in Void Dash efficiency, resulting in Void dash costing 20 energy at max bonus rather than 25. (It's worth noting that the base 100 energy only allowing for three uses of Void Dash is due to the draining cost of having to use Void mode first to then activate void dash. So even a perfectly timed and chained set of void dashes would cost a small amount of energy for void mode's initial activation and 75 for three dashes, leaving just under 25 energy, preventing a fourth dash. As such, the increased efficiency would result in four dashes at base energy with just under 20 energy left over. Alternatively, with Void Flow maxed, 9 dashes could be performed with just under 10 energy left, compared against 7 dashes with just under 15 energy left.)

Finally, Void Blast abilities would add that same 2% efficiency to Void blast, resulting in a cost of 16 energy at max bonus compared to 20. (This would mean 6 Void Blasts with 4 energy left over, rather than exactly 5 at base energy max; or 11 blasts with 14 energy left over, rather than 9 blasts with 10 energy left over with Void Flow maxed.)

I would also add unbind option to the active abilities with a 'select one' style upgrade for each ability that enables you to use a weaker version of the abilities on the corresponding (unbound) node of another school.

Now for one final overarching change to the Focus nodes as a whole:

Make all the nodes have somewhere around 8-10 upgrades scaling to their final stat with a much lower cost at each rank. the current costs in the system result in many of us overall feeling like we make almost no progress in a day, or even a week at times, and it comes down to the fact that everything costs so much to do anything with you can maybe get two or three upgrades in a week as a player like me with a job and a family. I finally got my first way bound node unlocked a couple nights ago after literally farming Focus for only that school for a week and a half of my life. It feels like I'm smashing my head against a grind wall and occasionally a single brick comes loose... It's painful.

In addition to having more upgrade levels at reduced costs, I would change capacity to only apply to actives and have a max capacity that wouldn’t allow you to get every active ability upgrade in a tree (I think the change to universal capacity in Focus 2.5 would work very well with this to be honest). I’d also add a partial re-spec system, with a nominal focus cost, to allow the player to re-spec their active abilities. This could take two forms I could see working well, it would be an item (could be a new special eidolon capture drop from the new eidolon variants or it could simply be another use for Eidolon normal or brilliant shards) that allows the player to either reduce a single active node by one level with no focus refund, or reduce all active nodes by one level with a partial focus refund. Alternatively, it could allow you to reduce a single node with no item cost but give you pop-up asking if you want to use a normal or brilliant shard to get a partial focus refund. This would give some much-needed change from player to player and give a focus sink beyond ‘maxing’ the focus system.

Now for the Operator and their damage:

Right up front, set up Void damage properly and give the Sentients health, armor and shield types unique to them. Sentient pseudo-flesh, Hardened Sentient shell, and Sentient Shielding. (The Eidolon's shield is the aforementioned Sentient shielding.) Personally, I'd like to see a change to how armor works in the game along with this, where armor absorbs a percent of dmg based on a dropping off curve, approaching bet never quite reaching something like a 60% dmg reduction since armor in the game as it is now is just broken with scaling. Failing that though, we can at least get Void damage set up to do as it sounded like it would in the lore. I'd suggest having it do dmg that inherently eats away at armor, and changing its status effect to a building damage vulnerability, where an enemy effected by void status takes 5% increased damage from all sources, stacking with further procs and capping at a 25% damage vulnerability. Now, with those changes, we must talk about one more thing... As it is now if these changes were made the Operator would, without a doubt, be OP at all but the highest-level content... That can't happen, as such, I propose a couple more major changes to counteract that. The first is a five-second Cooldown on the activation of the operator IF and ONLY IF your Operator is reduced to 0 health, with an additional two seconds added for successive downs. You are, after all, recovering from a near-death experience, and as it is currently your Warframe gets a small de-buff and you can just pop back out as the Operator again, back at full health. There’s realistically no risk to falling as the Operator. In addition, I propose one more change, each time to go down as the Operator you receive a 1% penalty to health, armor, and shields for both the Warframe and the Operator, and the efficiency, range, and damage for the operator's abilities (Void mode, Void blast, and Void dash) for the remainder of the mission. If you go down as the operator 10 times, you get a 10% cut to your stats. It should be a risk to step into battle yourself, but currently, it's safer to use the Operator than the Warframe many times since going down as the Operator just sends you back to the Warframe and resets your Operator's health to full. Risk, balanced with reward.

Transcendence; what we were, stripped away:

When the Focus system was first introduced we gained Transcendence, a nifty little fifth ability based on a timer that gave us a small but useful bit of added utility (or damage for Madurai, albeit usually lackluster damage) to complement our personal play. That system had some issues, but most of them were in the balancing between the systems, where a couple of schools were vastly more useful than the others. Then The War Within came out and added Transference, which was cool but not as useful as Transcendence. Then along came Focus 2.0, smashing the Focus system to pieces to try and improve it. Unfortunately, though, in the new system Transcendence was completely stripped down and after The War Within you couldn’t even use the ability, making Transference now a direct upgrade from the new, stripped down Transcendence. This was, in my opinion, a mistake. Post Second Dream but pre War Within should have something worthwhile for the player to use, and it shouldn’t be taken away after gaining Transference. To that end I’d propose the following changes and additions:

Upon completion of The Second Dream the player gains Transcendence, an ability that charges over time and allows the player to pop their consciousness out of their Warframe for a short time. This functions like pre-change Transcendence, where each school has its own effect, but is Tethered to the Warframe you are ‘Transcending’ from. The timer would be longer than the previous version, but the beam would be activated, like the Operator’s void beam, and its use would further reduce the remaining time in Transcendence. In addition, the Beam in transcendence is essentially the current chest Void beam but with void and elemental damage matched to the Focus School you are using with a very high status chance. There would be a few upgrades in the focus system for enhancing Transcendence, namely nodes for charge/recharge time, status chance, range, and duration. There would also be a calculation with diminishing returns based on the total amount of unspent focus to give a bonus to the damage of the void beam during Transcendence.

Upon Completing The War Within you would retain this ability, but affinity gained in Transference as the Operator would further reduce the cooldown of Transcendence, and if activated while in Operator form it will instead overcharge the Operator’s void beam (or amp) with the energy.

A very rough mock up of how the trees would look:

Spoiler

Basic Health Changes

It is worth mentioning that I’d like to see a change to health and armor types in the game, a bit of a distillation to make the overly complex and convoluted damage system a bit more user friendly to everyone. Each faction, in my opinion, should be a bit More unified to itself with minimal overlap between factions. However, if a special unit has a special armor type it would be borrowed from another faction, thus the generic naming scheme on the armors.

Grineer:

Cloned flesh/machinery (Cloned flesh takes 3% more damage than ‘normal’ flesh, but will regenerate up to 10% of its max if the unit doesn’t take any damage for three seconds)

Armor

Plated armor (10% more effective against puncture, 10% less effective against blast)

Corpus:

Flesh/robotics

Armor

Ablative tech armor (10% more effective against blast, 10% Less effective against puncture)

(Shields and proto shields)

Infested:

Infested flesh/infested tech and machinery (Infested health types take 5% more damage but have innate constant regeneration; either a static number that doesn’t scale, or a curve that has a max to prevent regen that would overcome incoming damage with scaling.)

Armor

Fossilization (5% more effective overall than normal armor)

Corrupted:

(Identical to the normal faction specific units)

Sentient (yes, new health and armor types that take similar but reduced damage from normal damage types, and enhanced damage from Void damage):

Sentient pseudo-flesh (15% less damage from all sources, 25% more damage from Void damage)

Sentient exo plating (15% less damage from all sources and can adapt to damage types in a gated fashion, 25% more damage from Void damage and void damage clears adaptations)

(Sentient heavy shielding [Teralyst shielding])

Armor and shield changes

Shields will block any damage to health and armor and status effects outside of damage types with partial shield ignore. Shields will constantly recharge unless they are overloaded (by bringing them to zero or by status effect). After a set duration they will begin recharging, damaging health will not delay their recharge. It is worth noting that current shield values will be based on a percentage of current max, so effects that reduce max shields will reduce the current shields by the same percentage and they will return to an equivalent percentage on any such effect wearing off.

Armor reduces damage done to health by a percentage determined by a curve (capped at 80%) based on total current armor, but damage it absorbs reduces the enemy's armor by 50% of the absorbed effective damage. Armor now replenishes constantly over time like shields but at a slower rate and with no 'overload' mechanic.

Damage type and status overhaul:

Status effects have three ties of effectiveness. A proc chance of 300%+ can cause a top level proc outright, but otherwise causing a proc while it's already active will refresh the duration and have a chance (based on your weapon’s status chance) to upgrade it one step.

IPS:

Element	5% Bonus Damage	Normal Damage	5% Reduced Damage	T1 Effect	T2 Effect	T3 Effect
Impact	Shields Robotic	Flesh Machine	Armor	Causes DOT direct to shields of 5% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick	Causes DOT direct to shields of 15% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick	Causes DOT direct to shields of 30% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick
Puncture	Armor Machine	Shields Robotic	Flesh	Causes 1 small armor ignore hotspot whose size is determined by total weapon damage	Causes 3 small armor ignore hotspots whose size is determined by total weapon damage	Causes 5 small armor ignore hotspots whose size is determined by total weapon damage
Slash	Flesh	Armor	Shields Machine Robotic	Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 3% of total weapon damage per tick	Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 8% of total weapon damage per tick	Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 15% of total weapon damage per tick

(For these, in the even that multiple weapons cause the procs the value will be determined by the strongest active effect. Thus, if you get one proc with high damage and then three more with lower damage, the higher damage will be used for the duration of its individual proc time, after which the lower damage will determine the strength of the effect until a higher damage weapon gets another proc.)

Base Elements:

Element	5% Bonus Damage	Normal Damage	5% Reduced Damage	10% Reduced Damage	T1 Effect	T2 Effect	T3 Effect
Heat	Armor	Flesh	Robotic Machine	Shields	Burning DOT of 2% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)	Burning DOT of 5% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)	Burning DOT of 10% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)
Toxic	Flesh	Robotic Machine	Shields*	Armor	Toxic DOT of 3% of current Health and enemies attack 5% slower and less accurately	Toxic DOT of 8% of current Health and enemies attack 15% slower and less accurately	Toxic DOT of 15% of current Health and enemies attack 30% slower and less accurately + causes the enemy to drop their weapon at the end of the proc
Electric	Shields Robotic	Machine	Flesh	Armor	Electric DOT of 2% of current health and stun (chains to two enemies, causing stun only)	Electric DOT of 5% of current health and stun (chains to 5 enemies, causing 2% DOT and stun)	Electric DOT of 10% of current health and stun (chains to 5 enemies, causing 5% DOT and stun; followed by 3 enemies, causing 2% DOT and stun)
Cold	Shields Machine	Armor	Robotic	Flesh	Slows enemies by 10% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 3%	Slows enemies by 25% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 8%	Slows enemies by 45% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 15%
Void	Deals normal damage to all health and armor types, but damage ignores 50% of all non-sentient armor types and overloads non-sentient shields.				5% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs	15% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs	30% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs

(Electric chains can be direct or through a chained enemy, and can happen at any time during the duration of the proc a susceptible enemy is in range)

(Shield damages notated with a star * have a 5% shield ignore and can proc through shields)

Combo Elements:

Base Elements	Combo Element	5% Bonus Damage	Normal Damage	5% Reduced Ramage	10% Reduced Damage	T1 Effect	T2 Effect	T3 Effect
Heat Toxic	Gas	Flesh	Armor	Robotic Machine	Shield*	Toxin burst with a 20% chance to proc at T1	Toxin burst with a 45% chance to proc at T2	Toxin burst with a 75% chance to proc at T3
Electric Cold	Magnetic	Shields*	Robotic Machine	Armor	Flesh	Causes shield overload	+ Small bullet attractor auras (current void damage status effect)	+ Target bound in place
Heat Electric	Radiation	Flesh	Robotic Machine	Armor	Shields	Confusion (Enemy will target anything near them)	+ 75% chance a T1 Radiation proc will spread to any enemies who come into direct contact with the effected individual	T2 effect becomes a 5M Aura + enemies attacked by effected individual will be guaranteed to be procced with a T1 Radiation proc
Toxic Cold	Viral	Flesh	Armor	Robotic Machine	Shields*	Enemy becomes a Toxic host; spreads Toxin procs to enemies that come in direct contact with them	Enemy becomes a Viral host, instead spreading T1 Viral procs to contacted enemies	Enemy becomes a Virulent Viral host, spreading T2 Viral procs to contacted enemies
Heat Cold	Blast	Armor	Robotic Machine	Flesh	Shields	Knock back with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 5%	Knockdown with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 15%	Ragdoll with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 30%
Toxic Electric	Corrosive	Flesh	Robotic Machine	Armor	Shields	panic and armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 2% of current armor per tick	panic and small armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 5% of current armor per tick	panic and small armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 10% of current armor per tick

(Shield damages notated with a star * have a 5% shield ignore and can proc through shields)

To anyone reading this, thank you for taking the time! I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on these proposed changes so let me know what you think below.

Tarak, Signing off. Fight with honor, Tenno.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Tarak
Many more changes.

Tarak · November 13, 2017

No opinions from anyone eh? I expected hate from people, not to be completely ignored. XP

Styru · November 13, 2017

This looks really promising to me, that Operator debuff that stacks making the enemy taking more damage, reminds me of "Slag Damage" in Borderlands, which is really cool IMO, of course, it should have a Max stack, let's say, 25%, but i think 5% per proc is kinda high, so i would lower that, don't know by how much.

For the Operator risks, i completely agree, you have no risks at all, just a debuff that seems to do really nothing, i like your penalty system, but i think it still too forgivable, since the Operators would be so good. I think decreasing speed (just like a cold proc) would be good too, and would make total sense, as you just got rekt and can't move/control your Warframe properly, also, 1% seems too low, with my Operator with nothing at all to make him survive more, i fought a Teralyst for 10 minutes, dying only one time, without even trying that much to stay alive.

I really liked the Efficiency in the skills and the mixing Schools thing, like using Naramon primarily for melee combat, while using Madurai for a slight increase in overall damage, or even Zenurik for a slight mana regenaration, even with low regen, would still be nice for Warframes that don't use energy that much.

About the actuall focus system standing, i'm really new to this, so i can't really argue, i've just started doing some Equinox Focus farm 2 days ago, so, the only thing i know about the standing needed to level up, is what i saw from Youtubers, which seems to be really insane, but if i remember right, DE is working on a new way to farming without having a daily cap. From what i've seem in one video from Mogamu, the 25,000 points from the Eidolon Shards, don't really seems to help someone who's already deep into the Focus system, but for me who needs like 335,000 for the next level of my skill, seems really appealing.

Overall, your system seems really nice to me, i don't really think DE you say anything about that, since those things use to be made under the table, but maybe they can get some ideas from here, the Focus system is being discussed everywhere, and everyone has a thought about it, a lot of things can be made, DE is problably collecting ideas and discussing the actual system. I think they will come up with something about it anytime, they already made so much changes regards the PoE update, that makes me think that changes to Focus might come anytime soon.

Now, about not getting opinions in your posts, stay cool Bro, not even 24 hours have passed since your post. And even though a lot of people don't really want to say anything about that, they still read and maybe like your post, meaning someone embraces your opinion. Anyway, really like your thoughts, and would really enjoy other people thoughts about that too.

Tarak · November 13, 2017

6 hours ago, Styru said:

This looks really promising to me, that Operator debuff that stacks making the enemy taking more damage, reminds me of "Slag Damage" in Borderlands, which is really cool IMO, of course, it should have a Max stack, let's say, 25%, but i think 5% per proc is kinda high, so i would lower that, don't know by how much.

3

I agree, having a cap on the vulnerability would be good. As for the base value of the proc, our (current) amps don't proc often enough, in my opinion, for that to really be noteworthy, that's also essentially fifty extra damage on a thousand. I think any lower than that and it would be considered pointless. That's my opinion though.

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For the Operator risks, i completely agree, you have no risks at all, just a debuff that seems to do really nothing, i like your penalty system, but i think it still too forgivable, since the Operators would be so good. I think decreasing speed (just like a cold proc) would be good too, and would make total sense, as you just got rekt and can't move/control your Warframe properly, also, 1% seems too low, with my Operator with nothing at all to make him survive more, i fought a Teralyst for 10 minutes, dying only one time, without even trying that much to stay alive.

Hmm, one of the big complaints by the community is how slow the Operators are. How about... instead of a slow effect a reduction in ability efficiency or range? kind of taking the bonuses you get for building out the trees and reversing them if you aren't careful and protecting yourself. I normally would agree that one percent is low but remember that what I proposed is in effect for the duration of a mission, regardless of revives or anything else, on a frame with hight base stats percentage based debuffs add up quick, and frames with low base stats need what they can get. This is also a debuff for both the frame and the operator and it'll stack up. So if you're running an endless survival for instance and after almost an hour of going back and forth between operator and warframe, you weren't quite at the top of your game a few times and your operator went down four or five times, you've now got a four or five percent reduction to all your survivability stats for however much longer you want to stay, and it'll only go up if you go down again. I think any higher and it would dissuade people from using the Operator at all for fear of the negatives.

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About the actuall focus system standing, i'm really new to this, so i can't really argue, i've just started doing some Equinox Focus farm 2 days ago, so, the only thing i know about the standing needed to level up, is what i saw from Youtubers, which seems to be really insane, but if i remember right, DE is working on a new way to farming without having a daily cap. From what i've seem in one video from Mogamu, the 25,000 points from the Eidolon Shards, don't really seems to help someone who's already deep into the Focus system, but for me who needs like 335,000 for the next level of my skill, seems really appealing.

Yes, I mentioned that a bit at the start of the post. They are currently looking at changing the hard daily cap to a soft cap where you'll still get focus past your cap but it will be significantly reduced amounts. Honestly, my biggest problem is that most players, when not actively farming specifically focus on Adaro runs, will likely get upwards of 20-30k focus on a normal day, nowhere near the cap. Upgrade costs however quickly go from 75-80k focus to 300-500k focus, and then there are the way-bound nodes sitting at a mil, It's ridiculous. For me, while actively farming focus I spent a week and a half of my free time specifically farming focus for one school with all my warframe play time so I could get the last upgrade on that one node and get it unbound... it was painful and I'm kinda half taking a break from the game right now because focus and the plains is kinda leaving me feeling burned out.

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Overall, your system seems really nice to me, i don't really think DE you say anything about that, since those things use to be made under the table, but maybe they can get some ideas from here, the Focus system is being discussed everywhere, and everyone has a thought about it, a lot of things can be made, DE is problably collecting ideas and discussing the actual system. I think they will come up with something about it anytime, they already made so much changes regards the PoE update, that makes me think that changes to Focus might come anytime soon.

Thank you, I'm grateful you took the time to read and respond. I love Warframe on whole, and I want more than anything to love every part of it, especially the Focus system because it's a really neat concept I think could really be something else if it was more engaging. That's what I'm trying to get at here.

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Now, about not getting opinions in your posts, stay cool Bro, not even 24 hours have passed since your post. And even though a lot of people don't really want to say anything about that, they still read and maybe like your post, meaning someone embraces your opinion. Anyway, really like your thoughts, and would really enjoy other people thoughts about that too.

Yeah, I get that. when I put that it was the next morning for me but I neglected to think about when I'd posted it the day before, I was thinking more like 16 hours than 10. .-.

I also didn't notice upvotes and applause till now... that's a thing. glad people are liking it.

Styru · November 13, 2017

7 hours ago, Tarak said:

Hmm, one of the big complaints by the community is how slow the Operators are. How about... instead of a slow effect a reduction in ability efficiency or range? kind of taking the bonuses you get for building out the trees and reversing them if you aren't careful and protecting yourself. I normally would agree that one percent is low but remember that what I proposed is in effect for the duration of a mission, regardless of revives or anything else, on a frame with hight base stats percentage based debuffs add up quick, and frames with low base stats need what they can get. This is also a debuff for both the frame and the operator and it'll stack up. So if you're running an endless survival for instance and after almost an hour of going back and forth between operator and warframe, you weren't quite at the top of your game a few times and your operator went down four or five times, you've now got a four or five percent reduction to all your survivability stats for however much longer you want to stay, and it'll only go up if you go down again. I think any higher and it would dissuade people from using the Operator at all for fear of the negatives.

That's something i was not considering, i was just thinking about the Plains in general, but yeah, in actual game it would be pretty dangerous to get downed with the Operator. If you have to do something like a Level 100 Defense Sortie, losing stats would really hurt. And yeah, reducing Operator's "Power ability/efficiency/range/power" when downed seems good, maybe a Cooldown too, like, if you get downed, you can't get out again for X seconds, X going up everytime you get down.

Tarak · November 13, 2017

4 hours ago, Styru said:

That's something i was not considering, i was just thinking about the Plains in general, but yeah, in actual game it would be pretty dangerous to get downed with the Operator. If you have to do something like a Level 100 Defense Sortie, losing stats would really hurt. And yeah, reducing Operator's "Power ability/efficiency/range/power" when downed seems good, maybe a Cooldown too, like, if you get downed, you can't get out again for X seconds, X going up everytime you get down.

A cooldown is something I proposed, having it build on successive down could work. you think a ten-second base and an additional two seconds on successive downs? it's not long, but with the pace of warframe, and in an Eidolon fight for instance that's quite enough I think and it'll add up quick.

Tarak · November 17, 2017

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Tarak · November 18, 2017

Still looking for other opinions... (And bumping XP)

BlackCoMerc · November 18, 2017

On 11/12/2017 at 7:19 PM, Tarak said:

No opinions from anyone eh? I expected hate from people, not to be completely ignored. XP

I like it.

You raise a huge concern here that I also noted:

According to Lore, WARFRAMES are used for the safety if the Operator. Yet, in game...it's SAFER to use (and get knocked out as) the Operator. Literally makes no sense.

So yeah...I like this. Make me WANT to use the Operator, and I WILL. Case in point, those tactical situations where you need position, Invulnerability or stealth to position a powerful frame without enemy interference. The Operator needs to be a fun, tactically sound addition to our arsenal, not a super squishy forced gimmick.

mkwabo · November 18, 2017

Hello Tarak,

I'll respond to each of your sections and ideas.

Passives:

I think the general idea of being able to invest in different trees and see benefit out of them is a good Idea. So for example you have a general pool of focus and you can choose to invested it into certain nodes of a tree. Now I'm thinking along the lines of like the Skyrim perk system but with a few differences. Currently each tree has a main passive node followed by two void mode nodes, two void dash nodes, two waybound...etc. It would be interesting if we're allowed to select all the main passive nodes of all the trees and certain paths. So example you have all the main passives of each tree however opted to select the void dash passives from the Zenurik tree and the void mode passives of the Vazarin tree. A limitation should be set so you can not pick the same node type of two different trees. However, this would allow for more build theory crafting and customization. This would allow De to focus balancing certain nodes at a time instead of an entire tree at a time. They would have data on what nodes players like the most and then could bring the other nodes up to the level of popular nodes. Now for the waybound passives I have an idea of what we could do with them and I'll touch on them later when I talk about transcendence.

Actives:

I feel like the active abilities along with the amp make for good operator game play. I do like the Idea of extra efficiency as you progress. Again I'll address this more when we get to the transcendence section.

Overall change to focus:

I agree we need to feel like we're progressing everyday without it feeling like a chore to log on and play the game. They do have plans to implement this though they plan to boost affinity gain while implementing soft caps after certain amount affinity gained in a day. We will be able to hit the daily cap so progressing will feel fast and satisfying while the soft caps will insure we don't chew through the content to fast.

Operator damage:

I like the proposed changes. Especially the status affect. In fact that status effect would give people more reasons to use operator in coherence with their warframe. They could stack void status effects with other procs such as corrosive, viral, and slash. I will talk about adding more penalty to dying in operator mode in the transcendence section.

Transcendence:

In the second dream we gained the ability to use transcendence. It was a cool ability with some powerful effects for some of the trees. When we got war within we gained the ability to use transference along with transcendence. Now in POE they have removed transcendence. I believe they should bring it back but it should change to become a more refined ability after you achieve warrior mode with the tenno. Transcendence could become a ability where your character reaches a higher state a.k.a transformation for a short period of time. Kinda of like going super sayian (reference to dragon ball z) or activating a super in destiny 1 and 2. So what would be the proposed changes in transcendence mode. Well I wont lay out specifics but more a framework from people to add and contribute ideas. In general I believe pre-transcendence mode the operator should be more utility based with some damage, but sub par to the warframe in term of damage. However in transcendence mode they should add a visual Que like an energy aura, bad &#! animations( Think destiny 2 super animations). Their damage and utility should scale and surpass that of the warframes. I also think gaining all the way bound passives in this mode would make it more rewarding and when out of this mode you lose all but the ones you originally selected. All of the operator abilities should be amplified in someway when in this mode. Also in Transcendence mode I would suggest adding a lot more health and armor. Now I think limitations should be important for this mode. It should only be active for a short time. The time limitation is important we would want this power to feel special and bad &#! when we get it. Not just have it all the time to the point we're super use to it. Transcendence should be something that you slowly get during a mission. However there will be the opportunity to gain it much faster by doing certain in game challenges with the warframe and operator. An example would be getting head shots allows you to get it faster. Now for the penalty I think a penalty for dying in operator mode would to be to lose a little bit of progress toward obtaining your transcendence mode. Either way these are my all my thoughts so far.

Tarak · December 9, 2017

On 11/18/2017 at 8:55 AM, mkwabo said:

-Snip-

I keep intending to write up a proper response to this and update the main post with new ideas (and a transcendence section, which I totally forgot to put into the original post), but life hasn't been co-operating with me as of late. I'll try and get something together tomorrow after I get home from work, but with Focus 2.5 out and Scott having recently said that he doesn't want to have to do another focus refund, my hopes of seeing a fun, enjoyable, engaging and truly good Focus system aren't high. This Focus 2.5 was a slapdash response for the easiest to solve problem in the system (the cost), that didn't actually touch on any of the real issues players have with it. I have to admit I'm rather disappointed at the moment, all things considered.

mkwabo · December 11, 2017

On 12/9/2017 at 7:36 AM, Tarak said:

I keep intending to write up a proper response to this and update the main post with new ideas (and a transcendence section, which I totally forgot to put into the original post), but life hasn't been co-operating with me as of late. I'll try and get something together tomorrow after I get home from work, but with Focus 2.5 out and Scott having recently said that he doesn't want to have to do another focus refund, my hopes of seeing a fun, enjoyable, engaging and truly good Focus system aren't high. This Focus 2.5 was a slapdash response for the easiest to solve problem in the system (the cost), that didn't actually touch on any of the real issues players have with it. I have to admit I'm rather disappointed at the moment, all things considered.

Look Forward to your response, I'll will say this don't lose all hope. I still think this early focus system is probably a framework for another system they will want to introduce later down the line. Notice they implemented new systems usually along with a major cinematic quest. So probably when sacrifice comes out they will introduce another system that probably works with focus and will hopefully make it more interesting. I remember in a dev stream either or steve or scott mentioned how are alignment towards the sun or moon would affect our gameplay later and would give us access to certain abilities.

Gravitus123 · December 12, 2017

I absolutely hate that the way of farming focus has gotten no change whatsoever.Farming affinity is a pain unless youre doing the stealth adaro farm which is only possible with 2 frames(possibly 4 but with less results).

We are already capped at 250k per day so why dont the lenses convert more affinity into focus like a flat 50% and remove that stupid convergeance orb there we can actually play the game normally without having to do a dedicated farm for an hour.The reason why people find exploits is because this system is stupid the new changes have all been good(even though i still hate the pool exists and having seperate schools instead of just one huge tree is still a better idea to me) if we could just farm focus passively while actually playing the game nobody would have a problem with it

ShadowMercer · December 12, 2017

On the scaling passives specifically, I think that they're a great idea. I've always wondered why something like that wasn't included by default when the idea of Focus is learning and improving over time. Having passives like that would reward that grind in WarFrame very well in my eyes. I also very much appreciate the idea of having node branches from individual trees be allowed to combine. It would bring some build diversity to Operators, especially given that Operators can be used effectively to supplement the playstyle of different players and/or Frames, and I would generally agree with your point about allowing balance of individual nodes over whole trees.

As a secondary thought, or maybe an important consideration given the length, regardless of the costs of the nodes, what happens when we max out everything? What happens to all of the extra Focus that gets accumulated? Nothing happens. It doesn't matter how quickly or slowly you get everything unlocked: once you're there, the Lenses, farming setups, all of that, serve no purpose anymore. And some players -will- hit this more quickly than others. No matter what they do (soft-cap, hard-cap, any other solution), this will eventually occur.

The obvious (and very temporary) solution is the add more nodes for each Focus tree. This will push back the day until people cap again, but it will happen. Another solution that I've considered, and that I'm sure others have, is to take your idea of passives that unlock based on Focus spent/acquired and place them on a root or logarithmic scale. However, this has it's own problem. Eventually, the progression will feel so slow and unrewarding that people will forget about it or ignore it. Thus, there is a similar problem as people hit a progression "wall" once again. A third solution could be a slightly modified version of the second solution where it follows a logarithmic/root pattern in the beginning, then switches to linear scaling that is rewarding but not ridiculously so. (For this solution, keep in mind that I generally follow the philosophy in WarFrame where the goal is rewarding players for the grind in a way that doesn't ruin the game for other players.) This has it's own problems, of course, where players will, most likely, eventually scale to break the game, so it's more of an example to consider than one to follow.

A fourth solution could be adding cosmetics that require a) A single Focus tree to be maxed, b) all Focus trees to be maxed, or c) some other condition. This solution also has problems however. Fashion doesn't appeal to all players, being the obvious one. The second problem is people complaining about the grind wall for these cosmetics (similar to Primed mods/special weapons and the login rewards). My counter to this, especially when it comes to Focus, is that Focus is supposed to be a system that takes a long time. I won't argue that it's completely fulfilling at all times, which is where your point about separating Focus nodes out into more tiers comes in. However, Focus, in my mind, is a project to be worked on over time. Just like school, and in life, it might take a while to be rewarded for your efforts in the way you want. The amount of Focus gained per day is already being looked at by DE, so I won't delve into it, but suffice it to say that I do think the current system of Focus acquisition is faulty. Also, these would be cosmetics. They have no massive impact on gameplay, unlike some of the login rewards.

Ultimately, the problem comes down to the desire to reward players equally in a system that will almost certainly never be equal, or rewarding extremely dedicated players (streamers, YouTubers, etc.) in a meaningful way that doesn't cripple play for the more average player (similar to Primed Mods as a login reward), and a solution that satisfies everyone will be nearly impossible, if it's not a certainty.

As an aside, I agree with @mkwabo that DE is setting this up to continue development of the system, though maybe not in the immediate future. So don't give up hope, and don't stop presenting ideas or thoughts on the game. DE is listening and taking notes, even if they aren't looked at or thought about for a while.

Tarak · January 16, 2018

On 12/11/2017 at 7:42 PM, ShadowMercer said:

-snip-

Okay, so focus expenditure beyond 'maxing' is something I did originally intend to include in this, and I had a couple ideas but I forgot to include them. I've added on one of those ideas now, a cap to capacity that doesn't allow you to fully max out the trees and a re-spec system to allow the system to progress beyond 'maxing'

On 12/11/2017 at 12:35 PM, mkwabo said:

-snip-

Sorry, I still need to write up and add the Transcendence section to this, I'll get there though. Life's been kind of hectic for me lately so I haven't done it yet. XI

Tarak · January 16, 2018

Okay, first version of the Transcendence section is in.

Tarak · January 19, 2018

Woot! Okay, I'm aaaall caught up for the moment. The focus rework sections could probably use a once over for continuity with the new stuff, but I've got everything in. Damage and health/armor/shield overhaul is in as well now. Wish the website didn't squish my tables down like that but... otherwise they'd flow off the page so... oh well.

Tarak · January 19, 2018

On 11/18/2017 at 8:55 AM, mkwabo said:

-snip-

Okay, finally gonna get around to responding to this now that I've got that update done...

I've changed and added stuff a bit (a couple ideas you triggered), added in 'chose one' style upgrades to the active abilities as well notably. Now you could run Naramon and add a weaker ranged blast from Madurai to your Naramon void blast if you have them both unbound.

Passives:

So, the Operator passives are, as in the current system, universal for the operator. Once unbound (and they are unbindable from the moment they're unlocked in my overhaul) they affect the Operator in full regardless of what tree you're using. As for the other passives, The ones that effect everything including your warframe and weapons (if applicable). They are limited only by a 'one out of school upgrade per node' rule because they are, overall, pretty powerful (if they aren't broken, looking at you Madurai). So you could have the melee affinity boost from Naramon and the Elemental damage boost from Madurai while you're running Unairu. Having all the passives at once would be, I think, way to much. Tell me if I misunderstood you.

Focus gain and expense:

I also added in a little bit I forgot about for preventing the 'welp I maxed it, guess that's all there is' potential by adding a cap that prevents you from actually maxing everything at once, allowing the player to play around with their individual build and focus on what they individually want out of their abilities.

Damage:

Glad you liked my thoughts there. I now have added a complete overhaul to the damage and status system! O.O

Transcendence:

So I originally forgot to add that section in... whoops. Its in there now, hope you like it. Sounds like your ideas were pretty similar to mine. I am considering having going down as the Operator outright reset progress towards post-second dream Transcendence.

On 12/11/2017 at 7:42 PM, ShadowMercer said:

-snip-

Likewise, I've changed a lot of stuff up there, and pulled some stuff from you, thanks for the feedback. if you have time to look it over again I'd appreciate it.

o.0- · January 19, 2018

On 11/12/2017 at 7:33 AM, Tarak said:

Spoiler

Basic Health Changes

It is worth mentioning that I’d like to see a change to health and armor types in the game, a bit of a distillation to make the overly complex and convoluted damage system a bit more user friendly to everyone. Each faction, in my opinion, should be a bit More unified to itself with minimal overlap between factions. However, if a special unit has a special armor type it would be borrowed from another faction, thus the generic naming scheme on the armors.

Grineer:

Cloned flesh/machinery (Cloned flesh takes 3% more damage than ‘normal’ flesh, but will regenerate up to 10% of its max if the unit doesn’t take any damage for three seconds)

Armor

Plated armor (10% more effective against puncture, 10% less effective against blast)

Corpus:

Flesh/robotics

Armor

Ablative tech armor (10% more effective against blast, 10% Less effective against puncture)

(Shields and proto shields)

Infested:

Infested flesh/infested tech and machinery (Infested health types take 5% more damage but have innate constant regeneration; either a static number that doesn’t scale, or a curve that has a max to prevent regen that would overcome incoming damage with scaling.)

Armor

Fossilization (5% more effective overall than normal armor)

Corrupted:

(Identical to the normal faction specific units)

Sentient (yes, new health and armor types that take similar but reduced damage from normal damage types, and enhanced damage from Void damage):

Sentient pseudo-flesh (15% less damage from all sources, 25% more damage from Void damage)

Sentient exo plating (15% less damage from all sources and can adapt to damage types in a gated fashion, 25% more damage from Void damage and void damage clears adaptations)

(Sentient heavy shielding [Teralyst shielding])

Armor and shield changes

Shields will block any damage to health and armor and status effects outside of damage types with partial shield ignore. Shields will constantly recharge unless they are overloaded (by bringing them to zero or by status effect). After a set duration they will begin recharging, damaging health will not delay their recharge. It is worth noting that current shield values will be based on a percentage of current max, so effects that reduce max shields will reduce the current shields by the same percentage and they will return to an equivalent percentage on any such effect wearing off.

Armor reduces damage done to health by a percentage determined by a curve (capped at 80%) based on total current armor, but damage it absorbs reduces the enemy's armor by 50% of the absorbed effective damage. Armor now replenishes constantly over time like shields but at a slower rate and with no 'overload' mechanic.

Damage type and status overhaul:

Status effects have three ties of effectiveness. A proc chance of 300%+ can cause a top level proc outright, but otherwise causing a proc while it's already active will refresh the duration and have a chance (based on your weapon’s status chance) to upgrade it one step.

IPS:

Element

5% Bonus Damage

Normal Damage

5% Reduced Damage

T1 Effect

T2 Effect

T3 Effect

Impact

Shields Robotic

Flesh Machine

Armor

Causes DOT direct to shields of 5% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick

Causes DOT direct to shields of 15% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick

Causes DOT direct to shields of 30% (if Shields are down causes DOT direct to armor) of total weapon damage per tick

Puncture

Armor Machine

Shields Robotic

Flesh

Causes 1 small armor ignore hotspot whose size is determined by total weapon damage

Causes 3 small armor ignore hotspots whose size is determined by total weapon damage

Causes 5 small armor ignore hotspots whose size is determined by total weapon damage

Slash

Flesh

Armor

Shields Machine Robotic

Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 3% of total weapon damage per tick

Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 8% of total weapon damage per tick

Causes Slash DOT direct to health (ignoring shields if they recharge while a slash proc is still dealing damage) of 15% of total weapon damage per tick

(For these, in the even that multiple weapons cause the procs the value will be determined by the strongest active effect. Thus, if you get one proc with high damage and then three more with lower damage, the higher damage will be used for the duration of its individual proc time, after which the lower damage will determine the strength of the effect until a higher damage weapon gets another proc.)

Base Elements:

Element

5% Bonus Damage

Normal Damage

5% Reduced Damage

10% Reduced Damage

T1 Effect

T2 Effect

T3 Effect

Heat

Armor

Flesh

Robotic Machine

Shields

Burning DOT of 2% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)

Burning DOT of 5% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)

Burning DOT of 10% of current health per tick and panic (glitching erratic movements for robotic/mechanical units)

Toxic

Flesh

Robotic Machine

Shields*

Armor

Toxic DOT of 3% of current Health and enemies attack 5% slower and less accurately

Toxic DOT of 8% of current Health and enemies attack 15% slower and less accurately

Toxic DOT of 15% of current Health and enemies attack 30% slower and less accurately + causes the enemy to drop their weapon at the end of the proc

Electric

Shields Robotic

Machine

Flesh

Armor

Electric DOT of 2% of current health and stun (chains to two enemies, causing stun only)

Electric DOT of 5% of current health and stun (chains to 5 enemies, causing 2% DOT and stun)

Electric DOT of 10% of current health and stun (chains to 5 enemies, causing 5% DOT and stun; followed by 3 enemies, causing 2% DOT and stun)

Cold

Shields Machine

Armor

Robotic

Flesh

Slows enemies by 10% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 3%

Slows enemies by 25% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 8%

Slows enemies by 45% and armor is reduced (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) by 15%

Void

Deals normal damage to all health and armor types, but damage ignores 50% of all non-sentient armor types and overloads non-sentient shields.

5% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs

15% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs

30% more damage received from all sources and more susceptible to all status procs

(Electric chains can be direct or through a chained enemy, and can happen at any time during the duration of the proc a susceptible enemy is in range)

(Shield damages notated with a star * have a 5% shield ignore and can proc through shields)

Combo Elements:

Base Elements

Combo Element

5% Bonus Damage

Normal Damage

5% Reduced Ramage

10% Reduced Damage

T1 Effect

T2 Effect

T3 Effect

Heat Toxic

Gas

Flesh

Armor

Robotic Machine

Shield*

Toxin burst with a 20% chance to proc at T1

Toxin burst with a 45% chance to proc at T2

Toxin burst with a 75% chance to proc at T3

Electric Cold

Magnetic

Shields*

Robotic Machine

Armor

Flesh

Causes shield overload

+ Small bullet attractor auras (current void damage status effect)

+ Target bound in place

Heat Electric

Radiation

Flesh

Robotic Machine

Armor

Shields

Confusion (Enemy will target anything near them)

+ 75% chance a T1 Radiation proc will spread to any enemies who come into direct contact with the effected individual

T2 effect becomes a 5M Aura + enemies attacked by effected individual will be guaranteed to be procced with a T1 Radiation proc

Toxic Cold

Viral

Flesh

Armor

Robotic Machine

Shields*

Enemy becomes a Toxic host; spreads Toxin procs to enemies that come in direct contact with them

Enemy becomes a Viral host, instead spreading T1 Viral procs to contacted enemies

Enemy becomes a Virulent Viral host, spreading T2 Viral procs to contacted enemies

Heat Cold

Blast

Armor

Robotic Machine

Flesh

Shields

Knock back with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 5%

Knockdown with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 15%

Ragdoll with armor stripping (immediate drop of armor value and max armor for duration of proc) of 30%

Toxic Electric

Corrosive

Flesh

Robotic Machine

Armor

Shields

panic and armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 2% of current armor per tick

panic and small armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 5% of current armor per tick

panic and small armor erosion (stops armor regen and causes a DOT effect to armor value for duration) of 10% of current armor per tick

(Shield damages notated with a star * have a 5% shield ignore and can proc through shields)

To anyone reading this, thank you for taking the time! I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on these proposed changes so let me know what you think below.

Tarak, Signing off. Fight with honor, Tenno.

Lots of neat ideas here, specifically on how Shields could work, my only issue is that this structure keeps damage and status effects on a one to one relationship, and so some there's overlap in how damage interacts and how status effects apply on the enemy.

My suggestion has been, as I too have been thinking about this area is to have Status be more independent of damage and more connected to health types. How to do this would leave weapon damage alone and expand on how Status Effects relate to each other when an enemy is damaged and change up how our mods work.

So if the devs could find value in such a change to how Status works and also be able to adjust mods, it should be possible to explore further ideas for Health Changes and how enemies respond to Status Effects.

Such as Bursa being resistant to stun and stagger they gain Disrupt and Armor Failure or Corrupted not being affected by Weaken and Confusion, due to the Neural Sentry control and so on.

Also, I can see Grineer expand on their two types of Armor to three (and could see a different naming to reduce confusion with 'Alloy' in the process), as they do need some sort of armor carrier to hold those carbon steel plates in place, and could fail before the plates themselves, thus how slash or impact could have a chance at ruining their armor, just not as fast and cleanly as Puncture would:

So the base black suits are the Light type (need to think on a possible Grineer sort of name), but thinking of under-armor / wetsuit rugged style here,
Ferrite could be the Medium one, relabeled 1050 'Uk-ro-fhuve' (named after 1050 Carbon Steel)
and Alloy could be the Heavy one, relabeled 4130 'Forr-uk-chee'. (Idea being to keep within their Post-Industrial vibe, it would make sense that they would continue a tradition of forging their equipment from the materials they've used their entire lives and countless generations. http://nadler.us/armour/hardening.html)

The Corpus humanoids could see a Kevlar styled polymer Armor when they have some on, and Robotics could maybe use a sort of Ceramic (maybe Ambulas and Oxium Ospreys) or just really thick carbon steel different from the Grineer's like the Bursa's Armor Plates.

I'd even go to having the Warframes have their own unique class of Armor, as they'd be using more exotic alloy mixes than what the Grineer and Corpus could possibly make use of.

That way the individual armor types can see different mixes of damage resistances and weaknesses as well as having a set of resistances and weaknesses to Status Effects that can be crafted to make enemies and factions more unique between themselves and in relation to Warframes.

The thinking here, being that swinging a Jat Kittag or Galatine at an enemies head, if the blow was not fatal, then one could expect the enemy to be severely weakened and confused so those Effects have a far higher chance of happening

Or using a Sniper Rifle, that it's higher velocity rounds would have better chances of punching through a target or making armor fail, regardless of how the projectile is designed as there can be a large variety of projectiles available, (armor piercing, hollow point, HE, semi-wadcutter and so on) Further different weapons could have their existing IPS damage and then favor a Effect, such as Rapiers with punch through. Revolvers causing more Major Trauma (Bleed) and so on.

Then new Status Effects and how they relate to damage can be added in as new mods as time goes on and as we've seen with mods like Acid Shells.

More specifics on what I touched on earlier. So the first idea with health types, for example Disrupt would only appear on Shielded enemies and can even appear as an Effect without modding for it, just a reduced chance of proc'ing. Same for Armor Failure (Corrode and/or Shattering Impact) only appearing for Armored enemies. So essentially as enemies can have resistances and immunities, they can also receive weaknesses in this regard.

When we fire our weapons we could have a set of procs that represents the enemy responding to being hit so say a Grineer and we happen to have modded for Ignite and Armor Failure, we might see this:

A Strun Wraith using Ignite and Armor Failure mods, its projectiles will be dealing the same IPS damage that we are familiar with, and with procs we could see:
- 30.8% Stun - Stagger - Knockback/down
- 9.6% Weaken - Confuse
- 13.3% Punch-through
- 10.9% Ignite
- 18.0% Major Trauma (Bleed)
- 17.4% Armor Failure (Corrode)
A Mara Detron using Ignite and Armor Failure:
- 12.0 Stun - Stagger - Knockback/down
- 23.7% Weaken - Confuse
- 1.5% Punch-through
- 11.0% Ignite
- 19.0% Major Trauma (Bleed)
- 27.8% Armor Failure (Corrode)

And to achieve this, there would be changes to how mods work so that we don't need to worry about combining elements, and to protect against rainbow damage, the existing systems that prevent us using say Primed Trauma with Trauma and/or using the same mod on a Sentinel weapon and one of ours would prevent any unwanted combos from happening, so maybe something like this:

What I was thinking is provide mods for procs, and change up the ones that do flat damage boosts in the process, for example:
- Stun - Stagger - Knockback / Ragdoll: Hammer Shot / Full Contact / Pummel / Collision Force
- Weaken/Confusion: Wildfire / Blaze / Concussion Rounds / Buzz Kill / (Shell Shock?)
- Major Trauma (Bleed): Serration / Point Blank (Primed) / Hornet Strike / Heavy Trauma (Primed)
- Freeze: Cryo Rounds (Primed) / Frigid Blast / Rime Rounds / Glacial Edge
- Chain Lightning: High Voltage Warhead / Charged Shell / Convulsion / Shocking Touch
- Ignite: Thermite Rounds / Incendiary Coat / Scorch / Molten Impact
- Poison: Infected Clip / [Caustic Shells] / Pathogen Rounds / Poisonous Sting
- Pressure Wave (Blast): Hellfire Munitions / (Thunderbolt) / Accelerated Blast / Heated Charge / (Concealed Explosives) / Volcanic Strike
- Armor Failure: Piercing Hit / Shredder / Sawtooth Clip (moved from Primaries) / Shattering Impact
- Poison Cloud: Malignant Force / Toxic Barrage / [Blistering Agent] / Virulent Scourge
- Disrupt: Stormbringer Munitions / Disruptor / Jolt / Voltaic Strike
- Virus: [Contact Transmission] / Contagious Spread / Pistol Pestilence / Fever Strike (Primed)
- Punch-Through: Metal Auger / Flechette / Razor Shot / Sundering Strike
Then mods like Heavy Caliber that raises flat damage, also carries the draw back of increased recoil and spread.

Hope what I'm going on about would serve to benefit Warframe, as not having to line up a Status Effect to a Damage type could open things up alot, as I've read some neat ideas for procs all over the forums, and its just that having them be one to one with damage ends up being very limiting in what the game engine seems capable of delivering in this area.

Edited January 19, 2018 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
typo

Tarak · January 19, 2018

28 minutes ago, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

-snip-

So, I like the thought put into this, but I have a huuuge issue with the design.

The damage system as it is now is inherently very complicated, and we have way more mods than we can effectively use. DE has made it clear that 'mandatory mods' aren't going anywhere, and that leaves us with a limitation to our builds. That said, leaving damage types unchanged and then separating status effects from them serves to do two things; it does allow us to diversify our builds from needing to have three to four slots reserved for elementals, but it also serves to further force a choice between damage or status, and alternatively, you could load a weapon with eight different status effects this way (the damage would be crap though). That makes the system as a whole much harder to balance, even harder to understand and figure out from the player end, and I think weakens the system as a whole.

My reason for changing things was to try and maintain a balance (and enhance it in cases where things are woefully underwhelming, such as impact) while trying to distill the system to make it not so complicated without taking anything away from it. This feels... like it would shatter everything from status chance to damage spreads to a required overhaul of every weapon and Warframe in the game... That... scares me... Unless I completely misunderstood what you were saying...

Edited January 19, 2018 by Tarak

o.0- · January 19, 2018

1 hour ago, Tarak said:

So, I like the thought put into this, but I have a huuuge issue with the design.

The damage system as it is now is inherently very complicated, and we have way more mods than we can effectively use. DE has made it clear that 'mandatory mods' aren't going anywhere, and that leaves us with a limitation to our builds. That said, leaving damage types unchanged and then separating status effects from them serves to do two things; it does allow us to diversify our builds from needing to have three to four slots reserved for elementals, but it also serves to further force a choice between damage or status, and alternatively, you could load a weapon with eight different status effects this way (the damage would be crap though). That makes the system as a whole much harder to balance, even harder to understand and figure out from the player end, and I think weakens the system as a whole.

My reason for changing things was to try and maintain a balance (and enhance it in cases where things are woefully underwhelming, such as impact) while trying to distill the system to make it not so complicated without taking anything away from it. This feels... like it would shatter everything from status chance to damage spreads to a required overhaul of every weapon and Warframe in the game... That... scares me... Unless I completely misunderstood what you were saying...

I was thinking that mods would grant either damage or status effects, so as a result, there would be a big reduction in inflated damage numbers occurring, like popping a market bubble and slotting on the mods would simply adjust the odds of getting the proc, so a build that simply slaps on a bunch of status mods might not see a benefit, potentially. And I didn't worry about mandatory too much since, players will naturally go to the best option, and so the idea is then to simply provide more trade-offs in desired effects as a result.

Furthermore, I was thinking of having any gun, dagger, hammer with access to some basic procs (essentially what we see with any IPS weapon), regardless of damage types, so Karyst and Sibear would then have the same expectation as a Scindo seeing one of these roll, when hittng a Crewman:

Stun - Stagger - Knockback/down (representing the kinetic Impact)
Weaken - Confuse (existing Puncture, and is tied to Headshots and the MOA packs and so on)
Punch-through (comes in for Puncture)
Toxin / Freeze (from the base damage types on the Karyst and Sibear)
Major Trauma (Bleed)
Disrupt (enemy has Shields)

As hitting an enemy with the Sibear, should still impart similar kinetic effects to a Fragor and both could have a chance to seriously damage Armor in some form, thus the difference being the Cryotic having such a strong influence and deals Cold with the Fragor being mostly Impact (honestly I don't see why, at least melee, do not deal at least one physical damage type each (like Sibear being 100 Impact, 30 Cold), but I can live with this current setup).

Then Sniper Rifles regardless of their IPS damage can be beastly at Punch-Through and Armor Failure, Revolvers could be the go to for causing Major Trauma, Shotguns could be the best at Staggering and Knocking back even the largest of enemy heavies and so on. Next, with this setup, then maybe the procs that can deal damage maybe could see a new limit, so that only one of such type could be fitted, and mods could adjust the weighting on how often they can happen. So Viral, Ignite, Gas, Chain Lightning could be fitted against each other as the Exilus Flight mods are restricted on builds.

So going back to how this could look on each swing, mods that we'd fit on would change the chance of getting that proc on each hit, say if I use the Sibear with Ignite and Armor Failure against a Nox could possibly be:

22.3% Stun - Stagger - Knockback/down
5.75% Weaken - Confuse
1.25% Punch-through
10.8% Ignite
9.9% Freeze
26.1% Major Trauma
23.7% Armor Failure

Where currently, the Sibear, would at most get to roll between two status effects, the same with other elemental only weapons, so If I go Radiation then I have Cold or Viral and only have Confusion and Freeze or Virus possible.

Something that I've been mulling over is weapons like the Lesion that have the essentially concurrent procs when a status is inflicted (or the Plasmor that inflicts Knockback on Status), could be a basis for some of these status effects as well, so that there is a bit more to how this works that the devs can play around with.

I hope this helps clear up the perspective I have for this.

Edited January 19, 2018 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
typos

Tarak · January 20, 2018

17 hours ago, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

-snip-

Okay, so, I'll have to read through this again later 'cause I'm sitting at work on my break and my brain is a little fried... I'm still gonna restate though, that the 'inflated' damage values in the game are in responce to enemy scaling, and is just about required for high level content because of how enemies' health and armor scales.

If you uncouple status from damage types, forcing a huge drop in effective damage while greatly widening the number of potential status combinations, you are essentially throwing the entirety of the current game balance away. Everything would need reworked from the ground up. Weapons, warframes, enemies, defense objectives, anything that has a health or armor value and/or deals damage would have to be rebalanced. That's what I was pointing at.

Putting aside that the devs would likely not even consider such a massive destruction of the work they've already put into all this, the amount of work that would take is itself monumental.

On a side note, the status effects I did with my changes were intended to make sense with the kind of damage that was causing them whiletaking the current game balance into account. Completely separating status and damage type honestly doesn't make a ton of sense to me...

I could see having the current combined elements being changed to stand on their own, but it would weaken the current system overall, and without drastic changes would effectively render high level content nearly unplayable without simply following the current meta to a harder line, the exact opposite of what we want to see.

o.0- · January 20, 2018

18 minutes ago, Tarak said:

Okay, so, I'll have to read through this again later 'cause I'm sitting at work on my break and my brain is a little fried... I'm still gonna restate though, that the 'inflated' damage values in the game are in responce to enemy scaling, and is just about required for high level content because of how enemies' health and armor scales.

If you uncouple status from damage types, forcing a huge drop in effective damage while greatly widening the number of potential status combinations, you are essentially throwing the entirety of the current game balance away. Everything would need reworked from the ground up. Weapons, warframes, enemies, defense objectives, anything that has a health or armor value and/or deals damage would have to be rebalanced. That's what I was pointing at.

Putting aside that the devs would likely not even consider such a massive destruction of the work they've already put into all this, the amount of work that would take is itself monumental.

On a side note, the status effects I did with my changes were intended to make sense with the kind of damage that was causing them whiletaking the current game balance into account. Completely separating status and damage type honestly doesn't make a ton of sense to me...

I could see having the current combined elements being changed to stand on their own, but it would weaken the current system overall, and without drastic changes would effectively render high level content nearly unplayable without simply following the current meta to a harder line, the exact opposite of what we want to see.

I get where you are coming from. However, my hope is that this sort of change gives the devs back their control of what they intended when they first began this project.

Granted, it can easily be nostalgia for me at this point, but the thought was of how the game felt facing off against Grineer, Corpus and the Infested as a new player. As I learned more about where things were going, I was confused, yet have been enjoying the process nonetheless. And I need to share that this was playing totally solo until I began reaching Level 40ish content, that I then began to look into how to do content solo and started looking for other sources, finding the wiki and these forums and using Public and eventually finding a Clan.

So as that experience has stayed with me, since then, I've done what I could to understand how Warframe works now, and slowly began dreaming of what could be possible in the future, as we went from Damage 1.0 into 2.0 and saw how things like the Acolyte mods and Primes, plus Corrupted mods made a difference in facing content, I slowly began to see new possibilities with mods like Acid Shells (and more recently Hunter Munitions) no to mention special cases with the Lesion or Plasmor. Eventually, I realized that changing the existing static content needs to be done first, and then enemies would follow as a result, as I began looking into Status Effects in Warframe.

So I feel that how enemies scale is totally within what the devs can adjust, and relates to how our static mods work from there, to create difficulty. So the idea I've shared is to try a new paradigm to get back to that goal (granted I could be assuming to much now that I think about this point).

So, I can see how this thought could be seen as destroying what's been here, where what should be changing is how we perceive scaling in endless content mostly, as the rest of the content (Starchart to Sortie and Trial, Nightmare) can be crafted as the devs intended in the first place, and it was considerations for Endless content that went towards the current direction in the first place with what we have with various mods and their values.

What I see is the basic structure of:

Shoot the enemy:

Does the enemy die or live?
If the enemy dies move onto next target, if the enemy lives then what?

The 'then what' is where Status Effects can bring in interesting differences and changes to how we experience Warframe, as what players actually do to defeat enemies doesn't really change from the time being a brand new player to a long time player, especially when we know how to trivialize content, which has been a major issue for some time as voiced by many in different forms around here and other places.

Again I can understand the fears of undermining the current systems in changing how things work now, although I can also see how the game could then benefit in making such changes as was seen in going from 1.0 to 2.0. And where the ideas of your effects could fit within either framework, with my hope that the frame work could evolve over time. And I see enemies being more malleable than what is often typed about in discussions.

Tarak · January 21, 2018

15 hours ago, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

I get where you are coming from. However, my hope is that this sort of change gives the devs back their control of what they intended when they first began this project.

Granted, it can easily be nostalgia for me at this point, but the thought was of how the game felt facing off against Grineer, Corpus and the Infested as a new player. As I learned more about where things were going, I was confused, yet have been enjoying the process nonetheless. And I need to share that this was playing totally solo until I began reaching Level 40ish content, that I then began to look into how to do content solo and started looking for other sources, finding the wiki and these forums and using Public and eventually finding a Clan.

So as that experience has stayed with me, since then, I've done what I could to understand how Warframe works now, and slowly began dreaming of what could be possible in the future, as we went from Damage 1.0 into 2.0 and saw how things like the Acolyte mods and Primes, plus Corrupted mods made a difference in facing content, I slowly began to see new possibilities with mods like Acid Shells (and more recently Hunter Munitions) no to mention special cases with the Lesion or Plasmor. Eventually, I realized that changing the existing static content needs to be done first, and then enemies would follow as a result, as I began looking into Status Effects in Warframe.

So I feel that how enemies scale is totally within what the devs can adjust, and relates to how our static mods work from there, to create difficulty. So the idea I've shared is to try a new paradigm to get back to that goal (granted I could be assuming to much now that I think about this point).

So, I can see how this thought could be seen as destroying what's been here, where what should be changing is how we perceive scaling in endless content mostly, as the rest of the content (Starchart to Sortie and Trial, Nightmare) can be crafted as the devs intended in the first place, and it was considerations for Endless content that went towards the current direction in the first place with what we have with various mods and their values.

What I see is the basic structure of:

Shoot the enemy:

Does the enemy die or live?

If the enemy dies move onto next target, if the enemy lives then what?

The 'then what' is where Status Effects can bring in interesting differences and changes to how we experience Warframe, as what players actually do to defeat enemies doesn't really change from the time being a brand new player to a long time player, especially when we know how to trivialize content, which has been a major issue for some time as voiced by many in different forms around here and other places.

Again I can understand the fears of undermining the current systems in changing how things work now, although I can also see how the game could then benefit in making such changes as was seen in going from 1.0 to 2.0. And where the ideas of your effects could fit within either framework, with my hope that the frame work could evolve over time. And I see enemies being more malleable than what is often typed about in discussions.

I get where you're coming from, and honestly I do appreciate the sentiment. I have myself at times considered ideas for bringing the combo elemental types off their current combos to stand on their own, but I've come to the conclusion that, overall, the damage system would be made more complicated than it already is. That wouldn't help the game in my opinion, so I've left that as it is, and tried to work around it. Making the combos somewhat reflect the elements that feed into them in what they damage.

As for the desires and intents of the devs, I think the changes they make reflect those, but with a large, opinionated community. There's only so much they can do. They tried to nerf slash because it's honestly disproportionately powerful and the community essentially had a seizure... Unfortunately, the current damage system (and health and armor scaling as a result) is functioning how it is because of them making slash a bit too strong in comparison to everything else and then leaving it in that state for years. That resulted in the ridiculous scaling and corrosive status' relative necessity for high level content.

Again, I think it's a neat idea you have but I just don't think it's practical. I feel that we need to work the current system into a better balence rather than change to a new system.

That's also why, if you look at my system rework, you have at most 10%-15% damage mitigation for most factions. I tried to normalize the damages themselves so you could more easily focus on the status effects you want without having to take a massive cut to your outgoing damage.

o.0- · January 21, 2018

3 minutes ago, Tarak said:

Spoiler

I get where you're coming from, and honestly I do appreciate the sentiment. I have myself at times considered ideas for bringing the combo elemental types off their current combos to stand on their own, but I've come to the conclusion that, overall, the damage system would be made more complicated than it already is. That wouldn't help the game in my opinion, so I've left that as it is, and tried to work around it. Making the combos somewhat reflect the elements that feed into them in what they damage.

As for the desires and intents of the devs, I think the changes they make reflect those, but with a large, opinionated community. There's only so much they can do. They tried to nerf slash because it's honestly disproportionately powerful and the community essentially had a seizure... Unfortunately, the current damage system (and health and armor scaling as a result) is functioning how it is because of them making slash a bit too strong in comparison to everything else and then leaving it in that state for years. That resulted in the ridiculous scaling and corrosive status' relative necessity for high level content.

Again, I think it's a neat idea you have but I just don't think it's practical. I feel that we need to work the current system into a better balence rather than change to a new system.

That's also why, if you look at my system rework, you have at most 10%-15% damage mitigation for most factions. I tried to normalize the damages themselves so you could more easily focus on the status effects you want without having to take a massive cut to your outgoing damage.

See, the other factor I am looking at is between a brand new player on the early nodes, going through them, and then having an Alert of a Fissure go up, they join and see another player just fly through the content. So by taking the existing content and normalizing damage more this sort of situation could be lessened as other systems get improved, and what I'm looking at can have Bleed stay more or less the same, as it will be one of many Status Effects that could occur as enemies get damaged.

So the reason for adjusting mods and then reinforcing the status system is so there could be more parity within the start chart. I've seen comments judging things against lvl 145 this or 150 that, which is where I take issue, as that is not something that gets experienced within the starchart all that often in the first place.

So this idea is updating the foundation so to speak with a certain set of tweaks, and I don't understand how this is that complex as what it does is:

Change mods so there's no longer be combo elements, and adding extra damage like Magnetic, Cold or Gas would be reviewed to add along the damage the weapons deal or maybe even be added into the Status Effect.
Flat damage boosts like Serration and Hornet Strike instead would increase the Bleed Status, that I was thinking of relabeling Major Trauma.
Status Effects would then lose their current weighted RNG (to the highest damage value) and have each weapon with a different chance assignment of effects, with mods changing the ratios and/or adding a new effect here and there, and then be guaranteed to appear against certain Health types, that mods can then adjust the percent chance of proc'ing.
Enemy scaling would then need adjustments with the changes to our damage output.
All this using existing tools that devs should have access to, like keeping Firewalker, Lightning Dash or Toxic Flight exclusive from going on a build as it works for say Primed Point Blank and Point Blank.

Anything else, as long as I'm not missing something, shouldn't be changing much from this point. So true that your suggestions change many values and have a ramping up of sorts with the tiered Effects (T1 to T3), I just feel that to keep damage and effects on a one to one relationship is missing a chance to take another step with what can be done with Status Effects, as many of the ideas in the tiers are very similar DoTs.

And a side note, for the longest I've often wondered how does Confusion even relate to Radiation, as Radiation would more likely be causing Weakness and other deleterious effects, not simply Confusion, which in Warframe is enemies attacking the closest actor nearby. So it was that and Puncture's Weaken that got me looking into this in the first place!

Tarak's Better Focus and Damage Systems

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