The Convergence Orb as a Player Deployable

[Paradoxbomb]

(You can probably skip to the bottom bit if you don't wanna hear my pseudo-rant about why I think the Convergence Orb is poorly designed).

 

I know I'm super late to jump on this topic, but I've been meaning to talk about the Convergence Orb mechanic for a while now, and by "talk about" I mean call out for being pretty garbage (at least in it's current state). I can accept that they were implemented as a means of making sure players aren't just macroing/afking their way to maximum focus and thus understand the DEvs likely won't remove them entirely, but what does bother me about them is how counter-intuitive they are to all forms of gameplay aside from power-farming and how they effectively punish you for not gaining focus in this manner.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that power-farming tactics will always be optimal for any form of experience farming, but unlike standard affinity gain, which is somewhat tolerable without power-farming and (for the most part) isn't dictated by chance, the discrepancy between focus gain through power-farming and, well, anything else, is horrendously abysmal, and I blame it on to two key factors of Convergence Orbs: their spawning locations and their random spawning times.

~Spawn Locations

The spawning logic of the CO is just absurd to me, and I still don't entirely understand it. Sometimes you'll get lucky and it'll spawn near you or an objective. Other times it'll spawn smack dab in a horde of enemies or near another player. Sometimes it'll spawn 15 meters away, sometimes 300 meters away. As I mentioned before, I get that the point of this is to get you to actually move around a bit to make sure you're playing the game, but if that's the only reason for it to spawn in at all, then the fact that this thing is spawning anywhere beyond 20m of the player just confounds me!

If I'm defending an objective with my teammates (you know, actually doing what I'm supposed to do) the last thing I want is to have the CO spawn on the other side of an enemy swarm or in an entirely separate tile-set, forcing me to abandon my team, marathon to said tileset and back, and risk being downed by enemies to fetch it, or else I lose out on focus experience for my efforts in completing the objective. On top of that, there's the possibility the enemies you have to weave around have a high chance of being dead by the time you even reach the orb, meaning you'll likely lose out on the increased focus for killing them. Again, it's as if it's intended to screw you over for doing the right thing by supporting your teammates and completing your objectives. In my experience, It's particularly bad on Interception and Survival maps, where the orb has a habit of spawning on a single tile for the whole mission, forcing you have to stay near or beeline for that specific location over and over, regardless of how beneficial it is to you and your squad.

~Timing

The issue with orbs randomly spawning after a certain time-frame is that, for a good portion of missions, it rarely ever seems to coincide with moments and opportunities where you will actually get the most benefit from it. Non-endless mission suffer the most from this: the fact that most people just rush through non-endless missions notwithstanding, it's basically up to luck or coincidence as to whether or not you'll have your CO boost in tote whenever a significant, high affinity-yielding objective is completed by your squad, such as capturing a key target or completing spy vaults. Heck, general encounters with enemies are also choppy since they CO has a 50-50 chance of spawning either during or after you've killed everything.

Even in endless missions like Defense and Interception you can still lose out; countless times I can recall the orb spawning during a lull in enemies, forcing me either babysit the orb in anticipation or waste the boost if I'd already picked it up. This is where the whole "you're basically punished for not power-farming" thing comes in, since in almost any situation that you aren't on an endless map rapidly vaporizing enemies the difference in focus gain is substantial, (mostly) out of your control, and a consequence of chance rather than playing the game poorly or lazily.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Anyway, now that my unnecessarily lengthy grievances are out of the way, here's my simple proposal to address the Convergence Orb's poor spawning logic and timing: just add it onto the gear wheel, allowing the player to determine when the proper time to make use of it is. I even have a little mock-up for it:

The time for the orb to recharge in order to be spawned again will still remain the same (and be visually represented by the circular meter around the focus symbol) and once ready to be spawned the player can do so by either clicking on the big yellow button or through the use of their hotkey of choice (represented by the [#] symbol). Once activated, the orb will spawn in a random spot within 15-20m of the player (you know, how it should have been in the first place) so the anti-afk requirement of picking it up is still there, just without the unnecessary absurdity.

Perhaps it isn't the most elegant change that could be implemented, but I believe it would put the Convergence Orb in a position of much better all-around practicality than it's currently in.

Edited July 4, 2018 by Paradoxbomb

[Renseiryuu]

56 minutes ago, Paradoxbomb said:

Anyway, now that my unnecessarily lengthy grievances are out of the way, here's my simple proposal to address the Convergence Orb's poor spawning logic and timing: just add it onto the gear wheel, allowing the player to determine when the proper time to make use of it is. I even have a little mock-up for it:

The time for the orb to recharge in order to be spawned again will still remain the same (and be visually represented by the circular meter around the focus symbol) and once ready to be spawned the player can do so by either clicking on the big yellow button or through the use of their hotkey of choice (represented by the [#] symbol). Once activated, the orb will spawn in a random spot within 15-20m of the player (you know, how it should have been in the first place) so the anti-afk requirement of picking it up is still there, just without the unnecessary absurdity.

Perhaps it isn't the most elegant change that could be implemented, but I believe it would put the Convergence Orb in a position of much better all-around practicality than it's currently in.

Sounds interesting. However, is there any indication whether the orb is full or not, other than opening up Gear Wheel? I know I would definitely forgot to call out my CO during the heat in ESO, only remembered when the zone is over XD.

[SolidSnake8774]

How about using the space in your operator energy circle as the indication of how full it is? that way you can tell at a glance?

[Paradoxbomb]

13 minutes ago, Renseiryuu said:

Sounds interesting. However, is there any indication whether the orb is full or not, other than opening up Gear Wheel? I know I would definitely forgot to call out my CO during the heat in ESO, only remembered when the zone is over XD.

Ideally there should still be a sound/visual cue that plays when the orb is ready to spawned, just like how it currently does it appears on the map. They could even bring back the old meter from Focus 1.0 (for the old focus abilities) so that there's an indication on the screen at all times (the mock-up I made pretty much is that meter).

As for Onslaught (which I forgot to mention), Convergence could probably get away with going unchanged, since the constant flow of enemies means you likely won't be missing out on experience due to a lack of enemies to kill (at least, not to the same extent you would in the main game). That and the gear wheel is disabled in ESO anyway, so...

8 minutes ago, SolidSnake8774 said:

How about using the space in your operator energy circle as the indication of how full it is? that way you can tell at a glance?

That could work too, although you'd only see it when in Operator mode. As I mentioned above, the meter could also be on the screen rather than only in the gear wheel.

[Inventive_Exile]

Something definitely needs to be done because hitting focus cap without cheesing the stealth modifier mechanics takes way too much time and for most people just isn't feasible. With how much focus is required to fill a tree, missing out on a daily cap hurts quite a bit. I get that it's end-game and isn't intended to be done quickly, but making people feel forced to cheese mechanics can't possibly be the desired effect. As it stands, the only reasonable methods of farming that I have found are Saryn/Banshee power spam on Hydron and Banshee/Equinox stealth killing on high level exterminates. If I don't do one of those things, it's virtually impossible for me to hit cap and I generally play at least a couple hours a day. It should be much more passive. Why do cheaters have to ruin the game for everyone, and not just themselves? It seems to me that since you can't convert focus into any currency, the entire concept of the convergence orb, given there is a daily focus cap, is only hindering active players. I think that it should be a % of affinity gained for every kill, based on lenses you have on your gear. If the current iteration would yield too much, then lower it. And make it so the % is less on survival or something. The current iteration is terrible though and I really hope something is done soon because it's sucking the fun out of even trying.

[peterc3]

This isn't QoL. This is a rather direct buff to Focus gains.

[Paradoxbomb]

16 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

This isn't QoL. This is a rather direct buff to Focus gains.

I'd say its both a buff and a QoL change, but yeah, I should probably omit that from the title since it's a bit of a misnomer.