Tarak's Better Focus and Damage Systems

[Tarak]

I will admit that radiation doesn't make a ton of sense, and I considered both changing the damage type to something else entirely or changing it's effect type to a sort of weakening effect but, as other people have said in responce to the changes DE was looking at, weakening an enemy's damage output is nearly useless when compared up against a more traditional CC effect. I think that their thinking on that though was maybe the radiation playing havoc on the organic brain, which would cause them to maybe not be able to tell the difference between friend and foe. Not that the effect ending and everything going back to normal makes any more sense.

I want to make sure I'm clear on this... In your idea of the system, would these mods essentially be pure status? Like a '25% bleed chance' mod or would it be dmg mods where, like in the current system, higher damage caused a greater chance for that damage type's status to occur?

[Tarak]

2 hours ago, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

-snip-

(Forgot to quote on last one but read above)

Side note, as for now player experience; that's part of why I tried to normalize damage, so that damage and staystatus types that are targeted at a specific faction arent needed. You can fit your choice to a status effect that fits your play style, rather than needing to worry about what enemy your facing and needing to match your damage (or statuses) to that specific faction.

(While still allowing damage focused builds to focus on dealing as much damage as possible to a particular faction)

Edited January 21, 2018 by Tarak

[o.0-]

2 hours ago, Tarak said:

I want to make sure I'm clear on this... In your idea of the system, would these mods essentially be pure status? Like a '25% bleed chance' mod or would it be dmg mods where, like in the current system, higher damage caused a greater chance for that damage type's status to occur?

 

2 hours ago, Tarak said:

Side note, as for now player experience; that's part of why I tried to normalize damage, so that damage and staystatus types that are targeted at a specific faction arent needed. You can fit your choice to a status effect that fits your play style, rather than needing to worry about what enemy your facing and needing to match your damage (or statuses) to that specific faction.

(While still allowing damage focused builds to focus on dealing as much damage as possible to a particular faction)

I want to say yes to your questions. Where mods are available to modify how weapons work against enemies, and different enemies then respond to being damaged differently as the devs envision, meaning that Status Effects could be expressed differently based on how the targeted are trained and designed, within existing lore. So Meta's based on basic damage would still remain more or less the same, and extra damage used to game Endless might see some adjustments as a result, and maybe tougher to achieve.

That way specialist units like Bursas, maybe the Napalm/Bombard/Nox enemies might fulfill similar rolls, and whatever is intended for them, to be active to mix up combat, when they appear, they could do so and not just be a minor road block (not to mentions the Assassin units).

For example, one of the things I've done with the current balancing has been to simply run Radiation and Toxic, with what ever CC, that I choose from my Warframe selection and from time to time, rely on the PuG's CC, even against Infested. So yes Radiation against infested auras for example, is what I've used.

So I hope you can appreciate why I do prefer your focus on changing the damage percents, as there too is a difference between armored and unarmored enemies in how the math is currently calculated, and like the ideas presented in how the direct damage works against enemies, that could be adjusted as needed in the future.

Nonetheless, I also choose to instead look to go back to basics and then go with a new foundation that did not have the likes of Serration, Hornet Strike and Primed Pressure Point for how damage is then built, as that becomes a layer that distances older players from brand new players, for little benefit in the Star Chart and beyond, since the devs have proven to have a variety of tools to promote challenge that seems mostly dampened by the current static mods we possess.

So my hope is that veterans can then still specialize with new mixes of mods, and not totally leave behind newer players, with the goal that the whole star chart could at least be a fleeting challenge for all, regardless of the chosen nodes and mod combos.

 

[Tarak]

Okay, it's been a while since I posted or updated here but I a couple more thoughts about the focus system and figured I'd post then here and see if I could get some opinions on them (and maybe pull some attention back to my other ideas XP).

Notably, I had an idea on focus gain and expense. I was thinking that maybe the current lens system could stay capped but rather than being a small percentage of the affinity you gained in a mission it could instead be a sort of end of mission reward based on base enemy level and the mission type, with typically faster missions giving a smaller reward and endless missions giving a reward based on how many waves you stayed for. This way the focus earned for any given mission could be increased greatly and it would avoid exploitative use of highly specific and grind heavy focus farming methods. In addition, any affinity that would normally be earned while actively playing as the operator could be fed into the focus school you are currently using without a daily cap, but with diminishing returns. These could be two completely separate things, allowing the current 250k for mission reward, lens based focus (keep in mind that the rewards would be reasonably decent values with rarer lenses giving more) and a diminishing uncapped gain based on you actually using the operator. 

I also thought of another means of using 'excess' focus; temporary buffs. Let's say a group from a clan is planning on getting together to do the new dark sector stuff that was just shown in the last dev steam (once that comes out) and they all decide a day they're gonna get together and go as far as they can. They decided on a day a week out. Over the course of that week they each have a two or three days to prep. What I mean by prep is this, they play the game, like then normally would, but they each stock up focus in one or two schools. Then the day of their event they channel that focus into a couple, limited, twelve or twenty-four hour buffs. Their healer/support channels zenurik focus into a power efficiency buff and vazarin into a team health regen buff, their damage dealer channels Madurai focus into a crit damage buff, and their tank channels Unairu and vasarin focus into armor and health buffs respectively. These buffs would be temporary and woul dhave a minimum input, but would allow you to channel more focus on fire a stronger effect. The stronger the effect, the higher the cost however. 

This would have another placefor us to spend focus endlessly, allowing DE breathing room to up focus gains and reduce costs elsewhere.