Talk:Focus/@comment-71.158.175.65-20160317215756/@comment-71.158.175.65-20160412001012

OP here

I do buy plat every once in a while (A.K.A. whenever I get a discount), but I prefer to spend it on things that I can't obtain anywhere else in the game (aesthetics and inventory slots). I really like this game, I'm all too happy to pay the devs for providing me with it, and I'm willing to be patient to earn Focus. But I know that a great many people aren't, and as a result, the Focus system was largely abandoned before even before U18.5 dropped. Those who had shelled out or farmed Sorties to reliably earn Focus had already reached their goals, and most of those who hadn't had largely given up on trying to earn it. This is a bad sign for a system that they'd hoped would be interesting for a long time to come.

I hit my Focus cap every day that I care to (I have quite a bit of investment into all 5 trees, which is why I discussed all of them from personal usage). However, I know that many people don't without putting a great deal of time into it.

And, before someone starts saying "Focus isn't for n00bs", I mean, it kind of is. You can get your first lens as early as MR3, and you can start attempting Sorties as early as MR4. And at MR4, the player can't even use such weapons as: Jat Kittag, Tonkor, Dual Ichor, Simulor, Lanka, any member of the Soma family, any Syndicate weapon, or any weapon ending in "lok". And they've only just unlocked weapons like Atomos, Hek, Redemeer, Tigris, and Ignis.

If they didn't want new players participating in the system, then they could have very easily put a higher MR requirement on Second Dream and Sorties. Players only need to have 1 frame and 5 weapons maxed, and one weapon at rank 15, to reach MR3. Some players are still working their way through the Mk-1 items at that point! And they only need 2 frames and 9 weapons maxed, and 1 weapon at rank 10 to reach MR4. The MR4 test can also literally be beaten by walking in a circle. Or it can be beaten by running to a ledge, then weighting your W and Shift keys. Both of which are some really mind-bending strats that require great expertise, eh?

But, like I said in my original post, the biggest problem with the system isn't the act of obtaining the Focus. It's the fact that what you're spending it on isn't that appealing. Why spend hours of your gameplay (and life) farming for a skill that you won't even use in at least half of your missions? And at that, a skill tree that you won't even invest in most of the branches because it will stretch the cooldown to maximum of 9 minutes, 45 seconds! Sure, there's the mastery branch to take that down to 8:45, but that's still an intimidating wait in the relatively fast pace of Warframe. So most people won't invest that heavily. They'll pick up to 5 or six branches of the tree, and one of those will always be the cooldown reduction. So what's the point of half of the branches IF THEY WILL NEVER BE USED?

It was a terrible idea to introduce cooldown times into Warframe. Sure, the Syndicate weapons/augments have them, but that's more to make sure that the player still needs to press buttons to kill things. And they have a cooldown of, what, 5 seconds? The Focus cooldowns, on the other hand, absolutely kill the usefulness of any of the active branches of the skill tree. Which basically makes them into passives that you have to invest heavily in.