Dev Workshop: The Features of Focus 2.5

[[DE]Connor]

Hail Tenno!

My name’s [DE]Connor, and I’m here to help cover the upcoming changes to our Focus system.

First order of business: If you have yet to complete The Second Dream, turn back now!
 

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Are they gone yet? Ok cool, let’s do this.

With the release of Plains of Eidolon, players saw an overhaul of operator gameplay known as Focus 2.0. Through our transition to “combat operators”, we entered a new realm of player progression - amps, unbounds and Eidolons, oh my! 

Now, having been out in the wild for over a month, we’ve watched you guys dive head first into the exciting new possibilities offered in the various Focus trees, and listened to your thoughts and suggestions for what could be improved. Hopefully you’re having as much fun with it as we are - but we’re not done yet.

In an update coming soon, we will be launching Focus 2.5. This will include another refund of Focus points for players to redistribute as they please. Lenses will not be refunded this time around.

The biggest systemic change with Focus will address pool capacity costs. Focus points are still collected into five separate trees, but all will now have a shared pool capacity - this means you can upgrade your pool size using the points from any school you wish, which increases the maximum capacity for every school all at once! This effectively slashes overall pool costs to 20% of what they used to be, encouraging players to spend more time upgrading their Focus nodes, making tangible progress through the various trees. This will also enable players to spend points from less prioritized schools in a manner that benefits your school(s) of choice, outside of focusing on waybounds.
 

A new option to increase pool capacity from your active tree. Upgrading the capacity inside the tree itself will work similarly.
 

However, we didn’t stop there - to hasten Focus progression even further, we reduced the costs of unlocking nodes across all trees. The table below compares what a 5 rank passive node (like Zenurik’s Energy Pulse) costs before and after these changes:

On average, node costs have been reduced by almost 30%. When combined with the millions of Focus saved on pool capacity, the cost of Focus as a whole will be roughly half of what it is currently.
 

Focus 2.5 also serves as an opportunity to slightly tweak the powers themselves, with the goal of improving usability while bringing the overall power levels of the five schools closer together. That said, here are the changes we currently have implemented:

Zenurik:
-Void Singularity (doubled pull speed)
-Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

Vazarin:
-Guardian Blast (grants 160 shields at max, up from 100)
-Protective Dash (grants 5s of immunity at max, up from 2s)

Unairu:
-Void Spines (reflects 100% damage at max, up from 25%)
-Stone Skin (adds flat armor, 60 for both warframe and operator at max)

Madurai:
-Void Strike (continues accumulating damage boosts over multiple uses of void mode, each rank adds additional attacks up to a max of 8)
-Blazing Dash (now stuns enemies instead of ragdolling)
 

Finally, I’d like to give updates on the development status of other anticipated Focus changes. Discussions about Convergence are still ongoing; for the time being, we have an interest in maintaining the mechanic for the change of pacing it can offer, and we will think on it even more once higher priority issues are resolved.

On the topic of Focus acquisition, some of you may also remember the daily cap removal mentioned in a recent devstream - we are still working out how best to implement this change, so it will not be included in this update. We appreciate your patience in this matter.

We will continue to monitor player experiences after these improvements and tweaks - thanks for sticking with us as Warframe continues to evolve!

 

EDIT: Going to try clarifying some of the more common questions and misunderstandings:
-Brilliant Eidolon Shards will be part of the refund. Shards invested in waybounds will be returned as items, while shards that have been turned into Focus points will be refunded as points.
-When I said "no lens refund", I was referring to what we did with Focus 2.0, where lenses were pulled out of your weapons to redistribute as you please. With Focus 2.5, players will still keep their lenses, they will just remain installed on your weapons.
-Waybound nodes are not subject to the cost reduction.
-New unified pool capacity will not be an increase in any way. If you spend enough points to get your pool size up to 20 points, you will be able to use 20 points worth of abilities in Zenurik, 20 in Naramon, etc etc.

[trunks013]

Cool to see some advance sruff connor ^.^ 

No change to naramon right ?

[Vlada91]

new hairstyle in future????

[NightmareT12]

Thanks for the heads up! Hoping the changes not adressed yet will be adressed in the next devstream if they've not arrived yet.

 

[Echoes]

5 minutes ago, [DE]Connor said:

Lenses will not be refunded this time around.

That's... sad :c

But i'm okey with everything else

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

Will the armor from Stone Skin scale with mods?

[Azamagon]

Overall, some babysteps in the right direction.

However:

2 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

 

-Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

 

Why downgrade an already highly underwhelming, flat-damage, no-utility node? In fact, why haven't you gotten rid of ALL energypenalties on all the nodes? As soon as I see a penalty, it just means I'll NEVER upgrade that node. ESPECIALLY not those on Void Mode (as more time in Void Mode is too invaluable)

 

EDIT:
Also, get rid of the Convergence Orb and increase gains overall, please?

The Convergence Orb leads to REALLY weird gameplay, for example:

• It encourages not killing until it spawns (if you are farming focus, mainly) and save up LOTS of enemies, then kill them all as quickly as possibly. This also promotes burst-damage gameplay (such as (ab)using Maim Equinox, Resonating Quake Banshee, etc), something I've heard you dislike yourselves, DE (yes?).
• It leads to delaying gameplay, like in defense missions, so that the orb's timer runs out first before you finish the mission/wave, so you get the bonus without losing out on bonuspoints. This can bother your teammates a whole bunch.
• It DOES encourage you to move around here and there, yes, but so would increasing the passive gains so we don't HAVE to dedicatedly farm for Focus points (but rather let us play casually and still get decent amounts of it every day). The cap is there anyway, so what's the point of miniscule gains as well?
• Further, Lenses leads to anti-diversity of gameplay. I'm not a "mainer" by any means (I love the variety in the game), so I hate Lenses with a passion. So: General Focus point pool too please? Lenses being consumables for flat amounts of Focus points instead please?

EDIT 2:
If you, DE, think that you can't do powerful nodes without energy-drawbacks to balance them, I've tried to help you out with that right here:

 

[DJ_Vauban]

Am I the only one here who got kind of a red text vibe from Connor? .w.

[WhiteSpike]

So...the lenses will not be refunded.

That's unfortunate, considering most of my installed lenses are eidolon lens but oh well, I will get used to that.

Though, I like the focus pool change. Don't have wait 2 days to get 1 more into the pool. :V

EDIT:

Quote

-Void Strike (continues accumulating damage boosts over multiple uses of void mode, each rank adds additional attacks up to a max of 8)

-Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

How about get rid of energy penalty to make Void Strike viable? Actually, how about get rid of the penalties from all the nodes, instead of giving more?

If I'm spending my time to farm focus so that I can spend it on a node, I'm not expecting to be punished for getting that node.

For example, Void Singularity which pulls enemies towards my operator while in Void mode (which I don't want when I go out from it, especially at high levels) and takes off more energy when in Void mode. This node is simply saying to me to not get it, simply because it's not useful in any way.

[Magnus]

Fix Void Mode powers costing additional energy drain on leveling them up. You shouldn't be punished for leveling up a skill that you can't level down.

 

Don't make Unairu a flat armor addition, keep it a percentage.

 

Make it so you can fill Pool like you can nodes, so you can put scraps into Pool from any other focus tree that you don't intend to use.

[Wevi]

so will unbinding still cost 1 mill per?

[Mudfam]

18 minutes ago, [DE]Connor said:

-Stone Skin (adds flat armor, 60 for both warframe and operator at max)

So my operator will go from having 720 armour down to 300...

RIP my 20 Magus Husk arcanes.

Overall I see this one huge nerf and no notable improvements.

Nevermind, I was thinking of Basilisk Scales.

[OvisCaedo]

Just now, Mudfam said:

So my operator will go from having 720 armour down to 300...

RIP my 20 Magus Husk arcanes.

Overall I see this one huge nerf and no notable improvements.

No, this was the OTHER armor skill. This only gave 20%. The 200% operator armor one is a separate skill.

[Kinperor]

13 minutes ago, [DE]Connor said:

Unairu:
-Void Spines (reflects 100% damage at max, up from 25%)
-Stone Skin (adds flat armor, 60 for both warframe and operator at max)

Ah, these changes are nice to see for Unairu. I think that any % below 100% was insignificant for Void Spines, because of the difference in magnitude between enemy health and enemy damage. 

Stone Skins change is interesting, anything with less than 300 armor wins out in the end. 

Here are two things I think needs to be looked at by the designers: 

• The Void Blast modifiers from the trees like Madurai could really use some scaling from the amp used by the Operator, for relevance.
• Armor buffs can get confusing. Will Stone Skins be applied to base armor and affected by mods? Will it be affected by abilities? What abilities affect base armor and not bonus armor from mods or focus? An in-game stat screen would be mighty useful, I think. 

[[DE]Grzegorz]

That is... underwhelming.

[Mudfam]

1 minute ago, OvisCaedo said:

No, this was the OTHER armor skill. This only gave 20%. The 200% operator armor one is a separate skill.

Yeah, I realised my mistake.

Overall then I'd say the changes just seem very underwhelming.

[GreyEnneract]

How about making Naramon's Executing Dash sleep enemies instead of just opening them up to finishers with even less CC than not having the node on at all.

[paul5473]

really no lens refund...

[Valiant]

18 minutes ago, Vlada91 said:

new hairstyle in future????

Yeah seriously...

How about an operator visual 2.0 or something? More customisation for noses, eyebrows and haircuts with physics? We know eye textures/shaders are being worked on but we kinda need more.

[DrBorris]

3 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

Overall, some babysteps in the right direction.

However:

Why downgrade an already highly underwhelming, flat-damage, no-utility node? In fact, why haven't you gotten rid of ALL energypenalties on all the nodes? As soon as I see a penalty, it just means I'll NEVER upgrade that node. ESPECIALLY not those on Void Mode (as more time in Void Mode is too invaluable)

Gotta agree here, Focus should not be a system of tradeoffs because it is supposed to be an upwards progression system. If someone ever decides to not rank up a node because it will harm their playstyle, there is an issue. And tying that extra energy drain onto Void Dash is probably the worst possible option as anyone who has invested heavily into Focus 2.0 with the aim of improved mobility (Void Flow + Mind Sprint) will steer far away from anything that will effectively decrease the effectiveness of Void Dash. An energy orb is nice, but at the cost of less movement? Hell no.

 

And on another note, could you take a second look at how Madurai interacts with your Warframe? Most of the other schools have interesting synergies between Operator and Warframe abilities, but Madurai is heavily focused on your Operator doing damage (which is basically nothing compared to a Warframe).

In addition Unairu's Sundering Dash being capped at 75% armor reduction is pretty underwhelming given that other options in the game (including an Aura that requires no gameplay) can completely strip armor. It is basically just a single corrosive proc... and there are weapons that can do countless corrosive procs per second. Would stripping 100% armor at max rank really be that powerful?

One more note on Unairu, even reflecting 100% damage is... well... worthless, given how little damage enemies do. Maybe have it also reflect status procs to give it some utility?

[Magnus]

5 minutes ago, Kinperor said:

Ah, these changes are nice to see for Unairu. I think that any % below 100% was insignificant for Void Spines, because of the difference in magnitude between enemy health and enemy damage. 

Currently 1-4 damage per bullet, multiplied by 4 is only 4-12 damage per bullet, if you're lucky. It is still insignificant.

[BornWithTeeth]

Hmmm.

@[DE]Connor

 

Will we also be getting another Lens reset, or is there any word towards a way to remove Lenses from gear? Some of us have Eidolon Lenses which we want to slot, but which we cannot install without destroying and wasting Greater Lenses.

 

Also, these changes look great!

[paul5473]

Just now, BornWithTeeth said:

Hmmm.

@[DE]Connor

 

Will we also be getting another Lens reset, or is there any word towards a way to remove Lenses from gear? Some of us have Eidolon Lenses which we want to slot, but which we cannot install without destroying and wasting Greater Lenses.

 

Also, these changes look great!

 

26 minutes ago, [DE]Connor said:

Lenses will not be refunded this time around.

 

[BornWithTeeth]

Just now, paul5473 said:

 

 

Balls. Thanks Paul, but that is one hell of a terrible decision by DE.

[paul5473]

1 minute ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Balls. Thanks Paul, but that's is a hell of a terrible decision by DE.

I know, also greater lens are not even in the game anymore as a drop...