Why must Focus be both PITA to gain and have a daily cap at the same time?

[[DE]Grzegorz]

We hopefully are to see another Focus rework soon™ as of now the vast majority of what it offers lies between the realm of "very niche application" and "irrelevant" but in the meantime I'd like to see different viewpoints members of the community hold on the matter.

As of now, Focus seems to have repeated and keeps repeating the same mistakes the initial introduction of Syndicate system has made while at the same time, the adjustment to how Focus is gained has been mostly cosmetic and inconsequential. It seems to be fairly common knowledge that focus gains during "normal" gameplay are limited to values that would require more time to reach the daily cap than realistically possible with the alternative falling into coma or suffering from mild seizure farming Hydron, spinning through Adaro or hunting Eidolons.

I personally don't really see the point of gating such currently underwhelming system behind so much time and grindgates for what ultimately is barely worth it gimmick. I acknowledge the value of Zenurik energy bubble and Vazarin's increased affinity and instantaneous revives but that's a few select upgrades while the vast majority of nodes are either trash or serve to only make the operator less of an nuisance in gameplay.

 

There "luckily" is the alternative of gaining reasonable(er) amount of focus per time spent in the form of Eidolon hunts which result in 25-40k-ish focus per captured Eidolon but this leads us to a vicious cycle where advanced focus nodes are fairly useful in taking them down, borderline require a group to do and the whole Quills and Ostron grind that gates access to gear necessary to take down an Eidolon.

Eidolons are an alternative to the laughable amounts of focus that can be gained anywhere outside typical lootcaves but does that translate to the whole system that still needs a lot of work to be deprecated and left in the dust?

 

As far as I am concerned the whole focus gain through lenses might be increased beyond tenfold so people who don't religiously attend a lootcave can make meaningful progress in the current system while DE works to improve and build upon it so as close to the whole scope of it remains relevant to players..

 

tl;dr

Focus 3.0 when?

Edited February 15, 2018 by JuicyButthurt

[k05h]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb JuicyButthurt:

I personally don't really see the point of gating such currently underwhelming system

And that is why I do not care anymore. Once you do bounties you get a constant supply of lenses. Put one on every frame and just farm focus passively. 

The current system is just not worth the time you have to invest for the avarage player. 

[--C--Notorious]

I mean, I can max out my cap in 10 minutes. So, if they never had a cap I would prob be done all of the focus schools in a week lol... - They added it, to prevent us from ripping right through all the content on the first day. 

[[DE]Grzegorz]

10 minutes ago, ShaiPaneer said:

I mean, I can max out my cap in 10 minutes. So, if they never had a cap I would prob be done all of the focus schools in a week lol... - They added it, to prevent us from ripping right through all the content on the first day. 

I've mentioned Hydron, Adaro and Eidolons in the thread, IIRC Eidolon shards can bypass the daily limit but just because you can spin2win a rivened scoliac with XP boosters through Adaro or something doesn't mean the same is attainable for everyone.

I understand why the 250k cap is in place and I appreciate that it can be bypassed through some means, what bothers me is the rate at which players gain focus when not resorting to crème de la crème of cheese.

 

And even if someone got through Focus in a week, there's still plenty of stuff in the game to do besides it as well as the advantages of focus are rather limited.

Edited February 15, 2018 by JuicyButthurt

[OoKeNnEtHoO]

I think focus and affinity should be innate to missions.

I don't see the point to it being tied to killing mobs.

I mean why do we have to kill in spy or sabotage or pretty much any missions in order to get affinity/focus if the mission can be completed without killing and may actually take more skill to do so?

Shouldn't we be rewarded large amounts of affinity for doing things that actually are relevant to the mission?

I mean shouldn't we get affinity/focus from a defense mission based on how little damage the target got hit with and also what level enemies we fight against?

Why is a guy who hacks all 3 consoles rewarded with less affinity/focus than the guy who just skips and go on a killing spree without caring about the entire mission?

Shouldn't a sabotage mission reward us affinity/focus based on how fast we take out the target and escape?

Why are we getting peanuts amounts of affinity/focus from playing missions normally and having to rely on the Equinox/Adavo trick which I am worried will be nerfed soon.

Edited February 15, 2018 by OoKeNnEtHoO

[polarity]

I think the best thing that could be done for focus is to separate it from affinity gain, that way people won't be able to look for niche exploits to gain it at ridiculous rates, which necessitates a low cap, and a low rate of acquisition (and nerfs to frames and weapons).

Have it as a mission completion reward instead, and set the amount to something suitable for how long it takes to complete a mission (and yes, bonuses should be given for doing tasks that are relevant to the mission, ie. hacking in spies, shooting the capture target or capturing him, killing things that are attacking the defense pod instead of farming in a corridor while it takes damage).

And stick the @(*()$ convergence orbs where the sun doesn't shine.

Edited February 15, 2018 by polarity

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

Maybe don't think about it too much cos it's pretty depressing when you do.

As you alluded to in your OP, the actual benefits you get from focus really aren't that great. Sure, each school (probably, haven't studied them all) has something that's pretty useful but a lot of it seems rather meh and is easy to do without. The requirements for that useful stuff probably isn't that bad, especially since they reduced the cost recently.

Yet, despite this, we're DESPERATE for that focus. We MUST have those abilities unlocked NOW. They HAVE to be maxed. MY TREE MUST BE COMPLETE!!!!!!!!!!

I'm as guilty of this as the next person. It's weird. It makes no sense. We are strange creatures.

And on top of this, why are we so desperate to get that focus, to complete our trees, when once it's done, then what? There is nothing else. Most other rep we gain there is a use for it. Like syndicate rep, buy relics or sell augments for plat. There's always something to do with the rep you've built up. But not focus. That's just gonna build and build and build and build. The fact that there is nothing after completing the tree does suggest that DE always intended it to take us a very very very very long time to finish. But nope, we to whiny for that.

We want it so bad so we won't want it so bad?

Why does it bother us so much?

Edited February 15, 2018 by (PS4)drpunk-yo

[LSG501]

When it's quicker to hunt the eidolon and use the shards it drops than it is to naturally farm focus without resorting to cheese/meta farming you realise just how broken gaining focus is in the game. 

On a 'normal' day playing the game without focusing on any specific farming I can come out with 20-30k focus standing....I can get that in around 5-10mins with a good team fighting an eidolon. 

Mind you when you think about it there are far too many 'restrictions' and intentional ways of 'dragging out the grind' in place with focus anyway:

Daily cap

1 Million points per waybound + the other level costs

The focus capacity costs which gets expensive really quickly... which no one actually wanted but DE knows best...

The focus lenses being restricted to individual schools meaning we get situations like operation plague star where you get an excess of one school (naramon) and none of the others.  It also restricts what frame/weapons unless you get lots of lenses.

To get any decent amount of focus you need to use the bonus orbs and to top it off the actual focus lenses give such a small amount of standing on their own that they're hardly worth bothering with... you might as well just do the eidolon like I said above.

 

[HellVOps]

There were talks in one of the Dev Streams about having a soft cap on gaining focus pass a certain point, and yet nothing to hear so far.

A lot of features that we hear about and are dying somewhere: sortie token system, quest morality system, daily login rewards path choosing and many more I sure that I forgot and look how long it took for dark sectors to be back in some form...ya...

Edited February 15, 2018 by HellVOps

[Isca]

52 minutes ago, (PS4)drpunk-yo said:

Yet, despite this, we're DESPERATE for that focus. We MUST have those abilities unlocked NOW. They HAVE to be maxed. MY TREE MUST BE COMPLETE!!!!!!!!!!

I'm as guilty of this as the next person. It's weird. It makes no sense. We are strange creatures.

We want it so bad so we won't want it so bad?

Why does it bother us so much?

It's pretty simple: a big part of it is the lack of other endgame activities to occupy people. There are many completionists drawn to this kind of game, whose end goal is to have everything maxed and ground out. Grinding focus is one of the non-rushable 'challenges' that someone can invest time and effort into every day for months before it's maxed out.

[Reifnir]

An even bigger problem with Focus is that it's for the most part, a system that can be used for one purpose: Get more focus. That's it.

Vast majority of nodes are only necessary for Eidolon hunting and have little to no use outside of it. Everything else is either gimmicky, clunky, useless or a combination of those. 

There are 50 Focus Nodes in game. Out of those, maybe half a dozen are useful in normal Warframe gameplay (no, this game is not called War-Operator, thank you very much) and the rest are either tools to help with Focus farming or dealing with Eidolons (which is in essence, another way of Focus farming). The rest are, for all intents and purposes, just bells and whistles. Which not only provide next to no rewards, but are also locked behind a ridiculous grind wall. 

The whole system doesn't just need fine-tuning, it needs a "back to the drawing board" approach. 

 

[BornWithTeeth]

1 hour ago, OoKeNnEtHoO said:

I think focus and affinity should be innate to missions.

I don't see the point to it being tied to killing mobs.

I mean why do we have to kill in spy or sabotage or pretty much any missions in order to get affinity/focus if the mission can be completed without killing and may actually take more skill to do so?

Shouldn't we be rewarded large amounts of affinity for doing things that actually are relevant to the mission?

I mean shouldn't we get affinity/focus from a defense mission based on how little damage the target got hit with and also what level enemies we fight against?

Why is a guy who hacks all 3 consoles rewarded with less affinity/focus than the guy who just skips and go on a killing spree without caring about the entire mission?

Shouldn't a sabotage mission reward us affinity/focus based on how fast we take out the target and escape?

Why are we getting peanuts amounts of affinity/focus from playing missions normally and having to rely on the Equinox/Adavo trick which I am worried will be nerfed soon.

Because Warframe being purely a horde shooter has meant that any real stealth or espionage mechanics have withered on the vine, mission efficiency is measures in your ability to effortlessly kill quite literally every single thing that moves, and the combat system has become an exercise in stacking buffs and multipliers as hard as possible?

 

I once asked these forums how people would feel if Warframe had its combat scaling flattened out, had its stealth and intrusion mechanics scale way harder, and shift the emphasis of the Tenno from ‘actually, literally unstoppable gods’ to ‘assassins and ninjas whom you could totally kill if you caught them with your whole army except you can’t mobilise your whole army because someone sabotaged all your sh*t overnight and now you can’t catch the bloody Tenno anyway.’

 

If you could imagine the sort of shrieked trumpeting sound of a panicking elephant, that would be the general noise that came out of people.

[Kaotyke]

44 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

If you could imagine the sort of shrieked trumpeting sound of a panicking elephant, that would be the general noise that came out of people.

Now I have the situation of an old cartoon stuck in my head.

Thank you very much...

[JohnKable]

I think focus gain should have earning rate steps to be fair to everyone:
- 4xfocus gain until reaching the first 50k, a pretty fair amount for casual players that can feel some sort of progression, maybe just focusing on a single school
-2x focus gain from 50k to 100k. Fair for less casual players that can feel much more progression just playing normally. 10 days for a waybound is not that much.
-1x focus gain from 100k to 250k. as it is now. for people that play alot and want to cheese a bit for focus farming to reach this point everyday. And in total will take almost half the time it does now.
-0.7x gain till 500k. Ultimate new cap. for hardcore farmers that want to forget about focus in less days possible. and for people that instead of logging everyday for 1h they go hardcore on weekends. 

I mean i get why there is a cap. So players can have something to do everyday, this way there will still be a cap but more fair for people that can play alot for a couple days in a week only and okish for the ones that really want to go as far as possible every day.

[helioth137]

I think we the players need to say what we specifically want.

don't you?

focus 2.0 and 2.5 were pretty close to 1.0, after all, so i feel like they just don't get what we want.

What do people want?

A system which rewards their efforts, and which opens up new ways to play the game.

for instance, the madurai "10% more physical / elemental damage" are ok, but the fact there's really not many attractive options in madurai tree, except blind, and the waybounds, means people will choose the staple "energy regen", energy regen is a boring mechanic though, because you just activate it every 30 seconds, and forget about it until it runs out.

I've been thinking they should redo the whole energy mechanic, and do away with energy orbs. 

Instead: Power up your warframe by using its abilities, the more intense the fighting gets the more powerful your abilities become (stack). 

What do you think ? 

[Ham_Grenabe]

If focus weren't both capped and a pain to acquire, the game would be much too fun and convenient. We wouldn't want that now, would we?

[Grymkreaper]

It's not a pain in the ass though. A simple google search will land you on the most effective manner to farm it daily. Don't want to do it that way? That's on you. 

Takes no more than 15 minutes a day to cap 250k focus. Takes much more time to earn that same amount of focus from Eidolon captures. 

I spend less than 30 minutes every day focus and standing capping. Afterwards I can spend the rest of my play time doing whatever I want. All while knowing that I have done everything required to progress for the day. I really don't know what you people want. The games free, all progression is extremely easy to do and almost completely soloable. Guess you want a "press to progress cap" button on the login screen. God forbid you actually have to play the game.

[[DE]Grzegorz]

7 minutes ago, Grymkreaper said:

It's not a pain in the ass though. A simple google search will land you on the most effective manner to farm it daily. Don't want to do it that way? That's on you. 

Takes no more than 15 minutes a day to cap 250k focus. Takes much more time to earn that same amount of focus from Eidolon captures. 

I spend less than 30 minutes every day focus and standing capping. Afterwards I can spend the rest of my play time doing whatever I want. All while knowing that I have done everything required to progress for the day. I really don't know what you people want. The games free, all progression is extremely easy to do and almost completely soloable. Guess you want a "press to progress cap" button on the login screen. God forbid you actually have to play the game.

You are directed into the direction of crème de la crème of cheese as it has been mentioned in the thread already.

It is advised that you read through the whole thread, there isn't that many messages as of now and the subject has been already brought up.

Edited February 15, 2018 by JuicyButthurt

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

 

• Focus 2.5 significantly reduced the grind
• WF is a marathon not a sprint
• There are plenty of ways to get lots of focus without resorting to s2w or hydron.
• Lenses drop like candy on PoE.

Get rid of the convergence orb so its "active" all the time, and call it a day. And even that is unnecessary but definitely a QoL change - before I maxed all the focus - I hated those things with a passion. Hated the timing of them, the location of them, everything.  And now that I am maxed, I hate them cluttering my screen.

 

Edited February 15, 2018 by (XB1)Tucker D Dawg

[Autongnosis]

il y a 6 minutes, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg a dit :

• Snip

Agree. 

Though there is one suggestion i have regarding focus. Missiom objective affinity should be converted at high rate, maybe even 100%. And should be rebalanced so Spy doesn't S#&$ on everything else.

That would give you more options to farm focus and open up more avenues (kuva assault, sabotage 2.0, spy, capture, interception, mobile defence...) to farm focus. 

Like, imagine if playing different mission naturally rewarded you with a good chunk of Focus points without forcing you to spam the one meta setup to do so... 

 

Edited February 15, 2018 by Autongnosis

[[DE]Grzegorz]

4 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

There are plenty of ways to get lots of focus without resorting to s2w or hydron.

If we are delving into technicalities, literally anything the player does to gain affinity while having a piece of equipment with a lens on it will result in focus gain, it will be a slow and unrewarding chase after a half-rotten carrot on a mile long stick but focus is gained.

4 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

Lenses drop like candy on PoE.

Which is subject to layers of RNG, that one player gets lenses at reasonable rate doesn't mean that their neighbour is not experiencing drought.

4 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

Get rid of the convergence orb so its "active" all the time, and call it a day. And even that is unnecessary but definitely a QoL change - before I maxed all the focus - I hated those things with a passion. Hated the timing of them, the location of them, everything.  And now that I am maxed, I hate them cluttering my screen.

Back to square one, focus gain could or even should be increased as well as the bandaid mechanic that "promotes active gameplay" might get removed or reworked.

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

10 minutes ago, Grymkreaper said:

I really don't know what you people want.

I think people just want a reasonable accumulation of focus during normal play, like pretty much everything else in the game, instead of having to play with the sole intention of gaining focus.

You can generally run (ANY) mission and achieve multiple goals. But if you want to gain focus (at anything other than a snail's pace) then you're pretty limited in what you can do. And you can burn out pretty quick.

The problem with this is that if it was possible then I think all we'd get is everyone crying about what to do with all the focus they now have that there isn't a use for. Because once a tree is complete, no more need for any focus. At all.

[Ham_Grenabe]

I'd love a consumable that converts mission affinity into focus at an extremely high rate (as in, say, ALL of it) - with focus cap intact, of course.

Or, let us establish a sliding scale of an actual split between affinity and focus, in the warframe arsenal screen (e.g. you can set the Focus/Affinity split anywhere from 1/99 to 50/50).

And S#&$can convergence. It's a bad idea poorly implemented.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Ham_Grenabe

[K2k4]

The problem in my opinion are the lenses and the rate of focus gain.  

Because of the lens system you are pigeonholed into playing a specific frame or weapon until you reach your daily cap for focus - meaning you aren't able to choose something else or you get the wrong school or worse - less focus.  The lenses are either too expensive to pick up in game, costing 200k credits for the bp, some mats, and time trying to get the right lesser lenses from bounties, or costing 40 plat, not even accounting for eidolon lens time.  Once you get your lenses installed on your frame or weapon, you can't remove them.  You will now have to use that frame, and only that frame, to farm for that focus school.  You can replace the lens when you want to work on a different school but then you will lose all the resources you paid for the original lens.

In order to gain focus in a remotely efficient way, you must resort to a stealth farming method on a mid to high level planet. This means you will be playing solo, not in a group as de intends for the game.  It's not fun, and depending on your setup it can be extremely slow.  There are certain ways to do it fast and efficient that are popular (savage silence banshee, sleep equinox, or stomp rhino) but not every player wants to play these frames come 6 pm cst when the new day begins.

My proposed solution can be in 1 of 3 ways:

1: remove "focus by school" allowing players to farm focus using any frame with.a lens.

2: remove focus orbs and increase natural focus gain so we can get it throug regular play.  Cap should be reachable in 3-4 missions without a lens in my opinion.

3: remove the focus cap or otherwise reduce the cost of focus abilities so we can max out our focus schools in a reasonable amount of grind.  I would like to think that maxing focus for a month should max out everything on the focus screen.  Thats like an hour every day dedicated to focus grinding or eidolon fights.

 

I know that it's easy to cap focus right now with savage silence banshee and you can far exceed the cap by participating in eidolon fights regularly. I say it still sucks because its taxing me to try to finish up my waybound unlocks and even with 6 of the 10 already unlocked I'm looking at another 17 days of grind and eidolons to unlock 4 minor skills. That's waaay too much grind for the rewards in my opinion.

[ljmadruga]

Tbh, they could overhaul the entire focus system again and I would not give two sheevs about it.

Honestly, I could care less about operators. They’re fast, sure, but they have really bad weapons, they can’t take a hit, and they’re annoying to control.

Heck, the only focus school I actually “maxed out” is zenurik only because I use my Operator as an energy slave.

With the raids going away, I have no use for my operator anymore outside of Eidolons, which I could not care less about.