Dev Workshop: The Features of Focus 2.5

[HeartofDragons]

55 minutes ago, -dicht.Goko- said:

Instead of convergence orbs spawning, can we consider a similar mechanic to focus 1.0 where we had to activate our focus manually based on a timer...except instead of activating "focus", we activate the "convergence" effect?

I'd love if this was a thing. The current orb system is annoying at best.

[KennBone]

29 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

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

yes so .. seem each point we farm with every school will get into same pool so u can distribute as u want ur preferences.. that will help really ALOT of farming and dont to changing lens to " fav gear focus farm "  when u want some focus to another school

[UvBenServed]

2 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

-Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)

Could we get some clarification on this? Seems to be a lot of confusion.

How much does Void Dash currently cost? How much will it cost with Lightning Dash? 10 energy or 10 more energy?

[BornWithTeeth]

3 minutes ago, davej83 said:

yes so .. seem each point we farm with every school will get into same pool so u can distribute as u want ur preferences.. that will help really ALOT of farming and dont to changing lens to " fav gear focus farm "  when u want some focus to another school

Dude. Stop. That's not what DE are doing, and that's been made really clear. You are basically just spreading misinformation now.

[Rydian]

This is not what we were told was going to happen, and this does not address most of what keeps Focus slow (the huge point costs, slow gains, and points from a piece of gear being locked to a single school unless we waste lenses to change).

Quote

Focus points are still collected into five separate trees

Because somebody realized that if we didn't have to farm as many different types of lenses, we'd have to farm less overall, and that's not allowed right?  Gotta' make sure we get drops we don't want (undesired lenses) so that we have to run more missions total right?

Quote

This effectively slashes overall pool costs to 20% of what they used to be

If you were only working on one school, then it's 100% of what it used to be, which is no improvement.

Quote

This will also enable players to spend points from less prioritized schools in a manner that benefits your school(s) of choice

Increasing capacity for a school is like ranking up a weapon.  It adds no abilities, improves no stats, and removes no downsides.

The actual improvements come from activating and ranking up nodes (akin to adding in mods on a weapon).  If I'm reading this correctly, that will still only be done with points stuck into the various schools.  Focus is still going to be slow for the average player, people are still going to be very picky about what they put points into, and people who focused on one school for 1.0 still can't move themselves into another school using the point refunds if they're still going to be locked.

Quote

On average, node costs have been reduced by almost 30%

If the 1,000,000 focus cost to unbind (which does not actually improve the ability's stats) still exists, then that's a bit misleading.  1,012,500 -> 638,878 sounds good (36% less), but for bound nodes it's actually 2,012,500 -> 1,638,878 which is just 18% less... on top of the fact that people only focusing on one school to start with have no improvement from the pool changes.

Quote

When combined with the millions of Focus saved on pool capacity

There's so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.

Using Zenurik as an example, getting the full benefits of Energy Pulse and Energizing Dash costs 17 points together.  If I also wanted Mind Step (and thus Affinity Spike) from Naramon as a passive, that's 24 points in Zenurik, and 8 points in Naramon, totaling (163,659 + 13,503) = 177,162 affinity in both schools total for the pool cost.  However, if the pool was shared, the 32 capacity (24+8) cost 303,074 points, 71% more!

10 points in two different schools = 47,178 (23,589 * 2)
20 points in one single school = 110,622 (110,622 * 1)

30 points in two different schools = 527,904 (263,952 * 2)
60 points in one single school = 1,169,689 (1,169,689 * 1)

What if I wanted things from four focus schools?

20 points in 4 different schools = 442,488 (110,622 *4)
80 points in one single school = 2,178,147 (2,178,147 *1)

So it's actually a lot more expensive to have a single shared pool!

... right?

This seems like a huge oversight, am I just really derping on my math or reading skills or something?

(Somebody please tell me if I am!)

 

 

Anyways let's look at the actual list of changes that the thread says are coming.

+ 36% less point cost on normal nodes, 18% less on waybound nodes.

+/- Points respecced, lenses not.

- Pool costs will be much more expensive overall.
- Cap unchanged (despite what we were told earlier).
- Convergence unchanged (still going to be annoying to chase down).

This is more like Focus 2.1 than Focus 2.5, and you're going to need 2.2 to fix 2.1.

[KennBone]

1 minute ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Dude. Stop. That's not what DE are doing, and that's been made really clear. You are basically just spreading misinformation now.

so.. what, where that general pool come from to where?.. common it makes sense change like me or some ppl think.

[PearceJelly]

I just need to chip in, because I think the no refunds on lenses is absolutely ridiculous. Why is there no form of a refund? Why couldn't you simply refund a percentage of the platinum or credits cost? I do not know the stats but what I do know is that I have spent 100s worth of platinum on lenses and to be told its going to be taken from me is absolutely maddening.  Please offer some form of recompense, and not one that is flat across all players please!

[TheKaosManiac]

2 hours 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)

So let me math this Stone Skin change in the case of Atlas -who has 450 Base armor- and Valkyr Prime -who has 700 Base armor- without mods and arcanes added to these numbers...

Currently, Since the current Stone Skin buff is 20%, Atlas would get 90 Armor, and Valkyr prime would get 140 Armor.

So, is this Stone Skin change trying to benefit Warframes with less armor instead of Warframes with more armor? As interesting as that is, I doubt that players who benefits from this would switch to Unairu because of these near 10% damage reduction buffs for Warframes with less than 100 base armor. There are others schools that benefit them more, so really the stone skin changes are more of a small nerf to the few people that use Unairu. 

The Void Spines change is interesting, Every little bit helps. But as said by others, it does still seem dull.

Overall, These changes look interesting for Warframes with less armor and Operators, however, it seems meh to current Unairu users.

The Rest of the Focus 2.5 workshop seems really Interesting, only way to judge it fully at this point imo is to try it out. 

[BornWithTeeth]

Guys. Seriously. You were not ever told "Focus is going to be universal now!" That is one of those blatantly false ideas that the community latches onto from time to time and then gets explosively mad about when it turns out not to be true.

[Anti-Skub]

Can you tell us what's going to happen to people who have already maxed out 1 tree and capacity? You say we'll get our Focus back, but what if we are way passed the amount of Focus we need after 2.5 hits. Is all that extra focus we worked for just going to waste?

[BornWithTeeth]

1 minute ago, davej83 said:

so.. what, where that general pool come from to where?.. common it makes sense change like me or some ppl think.

Oh for the love of God....

 

 

No. Focus is not being made universal. What is being made universal is the NODE CAPACITY. You know how right now, you need to unlock extra capacity in order to 'switch on' each node in a Focus tree? That's what's being made universal, in the sense that instead of each tree having its own separate capacity limit, there is just going to be one capacity limit which applies to all Focus Schools, and which can be paid into from each School's points.

 

But! Unlocking the actual nodes of each tree will still require Focus points for that specific tree.

 

Get it?

[DeltaPangaea]

And... zero changes to what people actually go to Zenurik for, to the exclusion of all others.

Energizing Dash is just... a really really powerful ability man. And not just mechanically.

That energy lets people do the things they actually want to do. They want to use powers. They want to use what their warframe GIVES them. Powers are the most immediate, visceral, impactful element of a warframe, and people want to USE THOSE. They want to have fun with it, to feel free to use them and not feel overly punished for using them outside of optimal situations.

Zenurik lost Energy Overflow because it was considered 'too braindead', but all it had added to it was busywork. Not even simple busywork like hopping into and out of operator mode. You need to hop in, void dash, and then hop out.

It's not just one ability, it's practically four abilities. Your Warframe's abilities. THAT's why people go for Zenurik. But I will never want to use it, because that unnecessary rigmarole of hopping out, void dashing, and hopping back in is asinine. You don't make something less braindead by adding busywork. I don't care if it maxes out at 1 energy per second, to have that as the central basic passive for Zenurik would be GREAT. Hell, 1/s is where I think it should be. But constant. No busywork.

On other topics, I like the change to Void Spines. Might be worth a heck now. Incidentally though, please make the damage it reflects NOT be affected by your own armor. It's kind of antisynergistic.

Stoneskin I appreciate the tweak to, but it'd be nice if it was still a percentage but had a minimum value. Like the values it had before, but with the values NOW as a minimum bonus. So squishy warframes get more value out of it, but tanky ones aren't left with what is practically nothing. 25% armor, to a minimum of 60.

I'm also disappointed that talk was in reference to a universal CAPACITY, not a universal pool of focus points you could assign to any school you wanted. Currently, people don't get to work towards the school they want, they're hamstrung by what lenses they can get, and RNG is a fickle, fickle mistress.

 

Overall I still have HEAVY issues with Focus. Heavy, heavy issues. Really basic, obvious abilities and benefits that are just entirely forgotten in favor of more operator stuff. Abilities I'd never want to use since they have a hefty energy cost or are just awkward. No unbindable abilities which benefit warframes, even a little bit.

Honestly I just want to entirely rebuild the focus trees myself, but that'd probably not accomplish much. Still, I'm glad there's eyes on this topic and responses are being made.

[Anti-Skub]

1 minute ago, TheKaosManiac said:

Currently, Since the current Stone Skin buff is 20%, Atlas would get 90 Armor, and Valkyr prime would get 140 Armor.

This really needs to be thought out better for precisely this reason.

 

Would it be too complicated to do +60 armour or +20% armour depending on which is higher? So that this was useful to all Warframes. Because all this change has done has swapped it to being useful for high armour frames but useless to low armour frames, to the opposite.

[TheSteelRat]

1 hour ago, [DE]Connor said:

My name’s [DE]Connor,

really? you sure about that?

The reduced costs and universal focus pool are great.  Really nice to have when you have unbound way bounds and only need to upgrade the pool once, instead of in EACH SCHOOL.  100% appreciate this.

THere is still the issue of abilites that do not scale, because of flat damage values  Specifically Madurais Blazing dash and Meteroic Dash that are flat 100 damage, they are nothing more than an annoyance to enemies beyond level 20.  Zenuriks Void Static and lighting dash of 200/s.  Even change a 200 damage, or 10% damage (which ever is greater) or adding a status effect would be more useful.  I have never bothered with these abilities because of the waste of spending focus points and pool on an ability that is weaker then my amp.

Unairu's Void dash and Crippling dash are % base and viable to use.  So why are Damaging abilites not % based? be nice to have some consitancy

then vague Voltaic blast does 100% more damage... more damage of what?

 Unairus Void spines.  Which have the exact same problem a similar Varazin ability did back in Focus 1.0.  Most players either avoid taking damage, or have Mods and abilities that increase their warframes Damage resistance.  IF the damage taken was from Shields, or before damage resistance was applied these would be incredible abilities and well used, but a little over powered if you didn't reduce the damage reflected.

naramons Disorientating Dash, and Disarming dash never get close to 100%, and i do not think it is worth the investment.

 

thank you for your conciderations

[RadYogh]

1 hour ago, Dornez said:

Yes , yes it is, because not everyone can play warframe for 4 hours a day. Or wants to be stuck with the dumbest of meta builds to farm focus

Not 4 hours actualy.... let's calculate...

1) Everyone should be able to kill 5 eidolons per night, that takes 50 minutes. 25k focus per shard, 40 shards for 1m, that's 8 nights, it takes almost 7 hours....

2) Including the daytime it would be around 19-20 hours....

3) If you have a good squad and try real hard you may be able to kill 8-10 eidolons per night, so ay best you'll probably be able to do this in like 8-10 hours...

4) We may count in a daily focus limit for MR24 that's 250, and it's 1 night at the best eidolon killing rate... But it takes some time to farm too... though you can do that in daytime...  Let's say you've got real lucky and when you just logged id it was 5 minutes before the night ... and you already have a squad ready for eidolons that would reduce required time a bit less than 6 hours.

5) But most likely you won't be able to kill an average 10 eidolons per night... and also you would need 1 additional shard to unlock 1 the passive... So... that is veeeery saaaaad. :(

[Anti-Skub]

1 minute ago, DeltaPangaea said:

Energizing Dash is just... a really really powerful ability man. And not just mechanically.

For god sake this. THIS is the number one problem with Focus right now. They seriously need to just get that S#&$ out of the Focus trees, make energy regen a moddable stat, or a companion mod, or anything but focus, or even make it way bound. As long as it's solely in Zenurik and not Way Bound, it will forever make all other trees sub par. It just has way too much impact on how the game plays. It's the Vacuum of Focus.

Change it to Power Strength. The bubble gives you PS if you walk through it, the passive gives you PS on energy pick up.

[RoninJed]

54 minutes 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.

No you're right...no focus lenses are getting deleted. Last time they did return the lenses to our inventory but now for some reason DE doesn't want to do that.

[_fayth]

12 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Guys. Seriously. You were not ever told "Focus is going to be universal now!" That is one of those blatantly false ideas that the community latches onto from time to time and then gets explosively mad about when it turns out not to be true.

yes they only said the pool cap for focus would be; i was always telling everyone who had high hopes but few did believe me...

 

i'm salty about no lens refund; while lens are much easier to get, the fact that crafting 4 normals in to a greater takes a FORMA.. is super off-putting, there is far to many items that takes the 1/24hour item

[3thereal]

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 -

 

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.

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)
 

Focus trees now have a shared pool.

-Great, this was needed.

 

Focus Nodes cost reduced

-Great, this is going to be a nice change

 

"Void Singularity (doubled pull speed)"

-Nice this was needed, but I still don't see why this is considered a perk when my operator is squishy (even with upgrades) and I have no melee weapon in operator. Additionally I have to still spend energy to use this perk which doesn't make sense to me.

 

"Lightning Dash (costs 10 energy per cast)"

-This was one of the best focus abilities in the game and now it's going to get shelved. This is now an added bonus to mobility that the Naramon Dash passive + Void Flow combo gave your operator and to deal some damage in game. Players will drop this as players want mobility from the dash primarily and the elec damage is just icing. If this is too powerful reduce range or damage instead.

 

"Guardian Blast (grants 160 shields at max, up from 100)"

I have never seen anyone use this because it requires you to melee an ally in a face paced movement game.... How about you make this create a buff for your self and have an AoE affect for your allies?

 

"Protective Dash (grants 5s of immunity at max, up from 2s)"

This again should have an AoE to it, single target immunity is nice but most people aren't going to be aiming for allies except for niche situations... in those cases the buff would be nice

 

 

"Void Spines (reflects 100% damage at max, up from 25%)"

This in concept isn't a bad idea. But a 'Cold' Chroma gets this with an cold armor build with a 300% multiplier and that still doesn't seem powerful, this needs to be at like 1000% or 300% BEFORE Armor reduction not After.

 

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

I haven't tested this fully, but this should be scaled with  the Operator Passive . Arcane Husk should also multiply this value. Seems decent but I would go farther

 

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

Not sure what this means. 12% per second at max rank was sad, so I can "charge" for 10 seconds to gain a 120% damage boost or I could just fire my weapon 5 times in that same time it takes to charge for more than a single shot of  120% burst damage. Buff this to 100% per second up to 5 seconds of charge might be useful for bosses but it's still going to be niche. I would recommend moving this to "Upon leaving void move your next strike will deal 30% Void Damage over 5 seconds". The idea here is you enter void mode go back to your operator/warframe for a 150% damage boost which would work well for teralyst/sentient fights since it's void damage.

"Blazing Dash (now stuns enemies instead of ragdolling)"

Should just set enemies ablaze for 1000 damage over X seconds instead of leaving a trail.

 

 

Either way I really think you guys need to bring operators into a "Buff"/"Support" role for the different schools each with their own speciality. Zenurik - Energy ; Madurai - Damage; Unairu - Armor ; Vazarin - Health ; Naramon - Speed. Let each have an AoE that buffs operators and Frames. Let each also have a damage buff for your operator and warframe that scales (based off of a multiplier) . Perhaps each could have their own element-> Zenurik-> Electric ; Madurai -> Fire; Unairu -> Cold; Vazarin -> Toxi; Naramon -> Slash? IPS? .  The idea that these operators are going to replace your warframes for combat needs to be rethought. They should be centered around augmenting your warframe's with abilities (Blast buffs 'X', Dash Buffs 'Y', Void Mode grants 'Z') and buffing them in certain ways; but not replacing them in game play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Eldirian]

I'm happy with reducing nodes' costs. :)

I have one question, @[DE]Connor. Is there a future for new skills incorporated into current schools? I really want to have a combo on my void blast and to be able to perform a void dash assassination. It would be cool. :)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

 

[BarneyRubble]

2 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

Lenses will not be refunded this time around.

@[DE]Connor I assume you don't want to repeat that part of the whole refund process because it's database-intensive or something, which is fair enough, but the team previously talked about this second refund as if it was gonna be the whole thing again (or at least that's certainly the impression I got).

So I spent some of those lenses under the assumption that it's gonna be temporary. Given that we don't have the ability to remove lenses from equipment (we can only replace, not remove), will the support be willing to remove these lenses for me?

[LjMjollnir]

Oh yeah i'd love to see Energy Pulse as a waybound.. then i could consider using another tree.. Energizing Dash is quite amazing and would be hard to give up.. but i can understand why it cant be a way bound.. it was make the Dash very OP for other tree's...

Actually why not make ALL the center abilities Waybound... That'd be quite nice then its just a matter of what skill you want for Blast, Dash and Void mode

[RadYogh]

16 minutes ago, DeltaPangaea said:

Zenurik lost Energy Overflow because it was considered 'too braindead', but all it had added to it was busywork. Not even simple busywork like hopping into and out of operator mode. You need to hop in, void dash, and then hop out.

And it doesn't even work well on clients.... You have to press 5, void dash, press 5 again and then run back to get the buff that spawned 10-15 meters behind you. ... And sometimes it just doesn't work and you have to void dash 2-5 times to get the damn buff.....

[SasoDuck]

I mean..... great? But it's still pointless to unlock all the "damage" abilities from each focus tree since they're all useless. They can hardly hurt a fly at lvl20, let alone sortie-level stuff where you're "supposed" to use your Op. Hopefully those get addressed soon.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Changes sound okay, but could be a little more drastic(toning down Zenurik's energy gain for instance.). A small request I do have about Naramon would be to improve telegraphing on confused/enemies opened to finishers, like the old Naramon had.

Also, I take it that Brilliant Eidolon Shards used to unlock waybounds be refunded as well, right?

 

6 minutes ago, SasoDuck said:

I mean..... great? But it's still pointless to unlock all the "damage" abilities from each focus tree since they're all useless. They can hardly hurt a fly at lvl20, let alone sortie-level stuff where you're "supposed" to use your Op. Hopefully those get addressed soon.

Guess what? Operators aren't and shouldn't be designed around being able to compete with frames in every part of the game. They need their own way of standing out, which is Sentient combat and some support abilities for general combat. I'd never want hem to be able to to regular sortie content, that just erodes mechanical uniqueness from them.