Dev Workshop: The Features of Focus 2.5

[LSG501]

2 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

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.

 

The need for 5 different school lenses is one of the biggest annoyances to getting standing on all of our schools.  We need a central pool for our points, not our capacity, we don't even want the capacity cost....lowering the cost helps but it's still an unnecessary cost.

This restriction to only being able to get specific school focus limits our variety of frames/weapons we can use at any given time to gain focus and as is usually the case certain frames are better at getting focus than others so they're the ones we focus on.   Combined with the fact that we can't get all the lenses that easily and operation plague star has basically made us overflow with naramon lenses (pretty sure I've got about 40... versus 2 or 3 for the other schools) means that we're totally unbalanced in the way we can get focus standing for ALL the schools, something we now need to work on seeing as it's the only way to upgrade the usability of the operator. 

We can't transfer excess standing to another school so any leftovers basically goes to waste even if we've got another school that could really do with some extra standing.  We cant even convert our lenses to another school for a small fee (ideally credits and readily available resources)

Quote

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:

How about getting rid of some of the forced void dashing etc that we need to do to activate 'passives', having to 5, void dash onto self, 5 for energy regen (because it doesn't even auto trigger on our own frame) for example is one of the most annoying things we now need to do in this game, especially if we're empty and want to fully recharge when there are no enemies around to drop energy, which happens quite frequently on the plains.  It's not dynamic or a change of pace, it's literally a in out process that breaks any sort of flow we had going if we're trying to fight enemies. 

 

And I'll be honest, I still feel the costs are too high and the fact that we still need to grab that orb is really annoying, it's bad enough getting any decent standing as it is and well I don't want to chase after the yellow orb all the time (even if it is made to spawn closer).  And lol at the change of pace it supposedly causes, all it currently does is make us run several hundred metres away from the action, in some cases, to grab it and then run back again... what we do when we have it is no different to what we do before we have it....

 

[felix]

If lenses will not be refunded, how about a distiller? I don't get why this isn't a thing yet.

[Fullerton957]

Can we please get a focus lens distiller?

[FrostyNovaPrime]

Will Brilliant Eidolon Shards be refunded with the 1 million focus if you had unbound some of the passives? Or will they stay unbound and we just have to rank them up?

[Dornez]

9 minutes ago, RoninJed said:

I agree everything is fine but I really don't get why we can't get the lenses back. I mean after hearing focus was going to get another look I decided to use some of my greater lenses so I could continue to farm focus xp. I wanted to use them to make the better eidilon lenses but In the sixty some bounty 5 missions I ran at that time I got two eidilon lenses bp... Then bounties got changed and I started to get eidilon lenses almost every time I ran the bounty. I'm sure alot of people are not in the same boat as me so maybe that's why DE doesn't want to mess with it...but then again if it's a small number of people then it shouldn't be to hard to do. I guess it's my fault to assume the focus re-rework would go down the same way the first rework did.

My main problem is some spent plat on those lenses.

I don't think DE has ever, to this day, just straight up deleted something that people have paid plat for. So this would be a very very frustrating first. 

[sightjacker]

1 hour ago, [DE]Connor said:

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.

@[DE]Connor will you refund all the points invested?

[DreadRain]

@[DE]Connor Overall lower focus costs are nice, but are there any plans to make certain schools worth using? Vazarin needs to regain an instant revive charge every 60 seconds or so, because it's nothing compared to Zenurik for longer games :(

[UvBenServed]

8 minutes ago, Dornez said:

My main problem is some spent plat on those lenses.

I don't think DE has ever, to this day, just straight up deleted something that people have paid plat for. So this would be a very very frustrating first. 

Pretty sure no focus lenses are getting deleted. They'll likely just stay on our equipment instead of getting moved to our inventories like they were last time focus was refunded.

[Dornez]

1 minute ago, UvBenServed said:

Pretty sure no focus lenses are getting deleted. They'll likely just stay on our equipment instead of getting moved to our inventories like they were last time focus was refunded.

How does that work though? If there is a global pool does every school lense just contribute to the whole?

None of this makes sense 

[Ardhanarishvara]

1 hour ago, DrBorris said:

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?

Your post isn't quite accurate.

Madurai's Void Strike creates two separate instances of damage bonuses, for both Operator AND Warframe, that are consumed separately, similar to how Vazarin's bonus revives work. You could say that the nodes are tuned towards operator damage, and that'd not be wrong, but they also apply decent CC due to the heat procs. But Vazarin's most prominent nodes, Void Strike and the damage bonus residuals, are most prominent with regards to warframe damage output.

Unairu's Sundering Dash is three corrosive procs - corrosive is 25%. Actually it's probably more than three given Corrosive will be way more subject to diminishing returns than Unairu's Sundering Dash is. Unairu's sundering dash is also an AoE and with enough enemies grouped up can be done basically as much as you like due to void dashes regenerating energy from dashing through enemies, meaning you can just spam space at the floor and completely strip armour in short order, whereas with corrosive procs there's very few weapons that can give those significantly consistently (due to status weighting from IPS) aside from Pox, Torid and Acrid, which aren't especially great weapons on their own and are used more for support and cc. I generally find that most weapons will kill the enemy long before they completely strip the armour.

That said, for Unairu's damage reflection, it's not actually an issue of how little damage enemies do, but the fact that the damage they do is being filtered both through your armour and through their own armour, and how much HEALTH they have. If it was 300%-400% damage reflection at max paired with treating the damage as finisher damage (bypassing armour in the process) then it would be more worthwhile. As of right now it's little more than an "okay bonus."

I do have to agree about it being kind of pointless for Focus to be a system of tradeoffs. I find it very weird, on a conceptual level, that someone growing more skilled at doing something would actually become less efficient at doing that thing. I really feel like energy costs for some of these nodes should be reversed, costing less as you rank them up.

[BornWithTeeth]

Just now, Dornez said:

How does that work though? If there is a global pool does every school lense just contribute to the whole?

None of this makes sense 

People seem to be fixated on the idea that there is going to be a global, universal Focus pool.

 

THAT IS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING. THAT IS NOT WHAT WAS EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

 

Thank you.

 

What's happening instead is universal node capacity, that being the marker of how many nodes you can have active in a School at once.

 

 

It is still a completely terrible idea for there to be no refund of Lenses, nor a way to remove Lenses from equipment, as by now there are people with Eidolon Lenses who can only install them on their favourite gear by destroying and wasting the Greater Lenses on that gear.

[RadYogh]

1 hour ago, [DE]Connor said:

-Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

With this energy cost you can just remove it from the focus tree.

Actualy absolutely no focus nodes that require energy worth using. 

Also... Why no lens refund? With this changes ppl wouldn't need this much focus...

Where is uncapped daily focus? Where is single focus tree with all stuff? 

[Dornez]

Just now, RadYogh said:

With this energy cost you can just remove it from the focus tree.

Actualy absolutely no focus nodes that require energy worth using. 

 

Consider it a dead node and put no points into it. Only data seems to get their attention. A node that is never used will get a rework Someday (TM)

[Azamagon]

41 minutes ago, taiiat said:

probably to give less capability of stunlocking Enemies with it(unless you have all of the Waybounds), if i was to guess.

Haha, yeah right, with the low status chance the orb has, I hardly think so. I think it's more because DE think it's too powerful damagewise... I dunno wether to laugh or cry about that...

[Yaerion]

Hello!

It's good to read that there is a step in the good direction for Unairu with the flat armor bonus. At least the frames with low armor will benefit much more from this school. I still think that it's not enough to make Unairu competitive when compared to other schools (it could explore the resistance to Statuses, maybe? and +60 flat armor at max, it's waaay too low to be interesting, really. I would multiply this by 10. Or 5, at the very least, to make me raise an eyebrow...) but still, it's a progress... I hope that the current change will make it more useful (and seen) in missions, at least. Still not enough, in conclusion. >_<

 

I have a request for Vazarin:  Mending Soul.

Instead of giving 4 revives for an entire mission/until the 8 are spent (which doesn't feel like a passive, but more of a single buff capacity), could we have either:

- 4 revives per minute (at max rank): basically a cool down after which we can replenish the instant revives for the frame and operator, OR

- just an acceleration of the reviving rate, for any revive during all the mission (à la Trinity, but even faster at max rank. Cumulated with the passive of Trinity, the revive would be instant for her).

 

The above would be true passives, and decent for very high end game (cause that's where we need this advantage). Currently, once our 4 revives are used, we're doomed because the "passive" is gone until we have spent everything on both sides.

 

Thank you for your consideration!

[Arniox]

1 hour ago, [DE]Connor said:

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!
 

...

......
 

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!

I'm very happy about these changes but the focus cap removal was my most hyped. Can't you just remove the cap altogether? That's it? Why is there a cap? You should just let the people who want to farm, farm. And the people who want to do it slowly, should do it slowly. This, and syndicate caps are an artifical grind cap and it's annoying 

[RadYogh]

Just now, Dornez said:

Consider it a dead node and put no points into it. Only data seems to get their attention. A node that is never used will get a rework Someday (TM)

I have already maxed it. It was just a nice and funny addition to the void dash... and it could kill some extremely low level stuff... maybe a short stuf for mobs around... but that's it. 

...Also, since focus 2.0 and operators rework I keep thinking -- why operator weapons don't ignore all armor/resists by a default?

[Dornez]

1 minute ago, RadYogh said:

I have already maxed it. It was just a nice and funny addition to the void dash... and it could kill some extremely low level stuff... maybe a short stuf for mobs around... but that's it. 

...Also, since focus 2.0 and operators rework I keep thinking -- why operator weapons don't ignore all armor/resists by a default?

Oh you mean how all teh lore keeps makeing void energy out to be some sort of world ending colossal deathbringer...and we Tenno have bent it to our will so we can do....1000 dmg.....wow

[ArcusVeles]

Do you think we'll have a chance to unlock more nodes as waybounds in the future, or add more passives to trees to make being in Operator mode not feel so awkward?  For instance, I think the schools would be more equally loved if you could mix Void Dash, Void Blast or Void Mode effects together, and having a passive that'd give the Operator the enemy radar, loot radar, vacuum range, etc. our pets afford us would be nice.

And how about lowering the energy cost for those Void Mode passives, or making them some kind of active?  I literally never toggle them on because they cost me time in Void Mode + lower the amount of Void Dashing I get before I'm out of energy.  They're way not worth the trade off for me.

Also uh, Lens Distiller when?  Greater and Eidolon Lenses are big investments, and I'd like a way to be able to extract them so I'm not wasting them if I decide to change the school of a frame - or better yet, allow us to just accumulate lenses and install them into our Transference chair for universal gains (and diminishing returns for each lens added) so we don't have to deal with them on frames and weapons any more.

[Anti-Skub]

Any chance of reconsidering this?

- Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

Please don't nerf the one, actually fun node in Focus 2.0. Are you trying to make it as bland as it was before? It's literally one of the only abilities in any tree that makes Operator combat an actual viable alternative to just using your frame. It's fun, and not particularly powerful in the grand scheme on things. It seriously does not need a nerf. It should be the baseline for what the other trees combat abilities should be capable of.

As someone else already pointed out. None of these nodes should have energy penalties. The damaging abilities that have the energy penalties are already massively overshadowed by the utility of dashing and void mode. As soon as you put an energy cost on them you make them worthless, because it reduces the number of times you can dash/how long you can void for, and then what you get in return is universally underwhelming. 

When Focus already requires such a huge time investment, you shouldn't be trying to make the player decide whether it's worth unlocking a node. Unlocking a node and spending days and days leveling it up, should always be uncategorically better than not having done it. You're just making the whole process unsatisfying by making them pros vs cons. And even worse, for anyone who doesn't realise this before they unlock these nodes, you're going to make them feel like they've wasted their time...lots of their time.

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, [DE]Connor said:

Good question Urlan! The Brilliant Eidolon Shards that were used to unbind waybound nodes will be refunded as items, and Shards converted to Focus will be refunded as points.

Thanks for the quick response DE Connor. Appreciate the information.

[BornWithTeeth]

Chaps, about the removing Lenses issue, I actually had a suggestion for that:

 

 

[LjMjollnir]

If lightning dash is going to cost an Additional 10 energy thats terrible... if its just going to cost 10 energy i can accept that...

But we really need to remove all the costs with ANY node.. im not going to touch the Static node.. it does NO damage and adds a cost to void mode.. why would i ever use that...

With refunding all the Focus and breaking our passives you should atleast allow us to allocate our focus to other trees that will work.. AND refund the lens...

I was very happy with Lightning dash but if the cost is going to increase well focus is broken for me again and the little dude will be shelved

 

[RadYogh]

4 minutes ago, Dornez said:

Oh you mean how all teh lore keeps makeing void energy out to be some sort of world ending colossal deathbringer...and we Tenno have bent it to our will so we can do....1000 dmg.....wow

This 1000 dmg is just a joke...  If this was a newbie content, that would probably be ok... But it's not.

[Fishyflakes]

50 minutes ago, Magnus said:

At the end of that Cetus costs nerf, you still had to fish in a specific way. If you changed your spears, you had to throw bait again because it broke it. You had to use the right spears for the right fish or bring Volt. You had to actually put in effort to still get your fish, as minimal as it was.

The costs are already being reduced and convergence will eventually™ get removed. On top of that, waybound themselves already didn't take that long, despite being the long term end game grind focus was designed to be. The people who wanted it, got it. There will always be a better way to go about gains. Then, we have people who don't want to put any work in at all.

Do you think it's fair to the people who want it more, who are willing to do more, to have a) their work undermined b) attempts at self improvement rendered useless c) wasted so much time just to see DE turn around and just hand out what is meant to be an end game grind?

It will always take effort and some amount of dedication. That has always been what focus was conveyed as.

Sorry my dude, but just because you've sunken alot of time into this system doesn't mean it was the best or most intuitive for everyone.

It was your choice to put in all that work, nobody forced ya to do it.

Surely you enjoyed the actual fruits of your work? Wouldn't you want everyone to experience the content DE created?