Possibly controversial but I think focus should be removed and Runes should instead be cooldown based. Gems and enchantments that interact with focus generation should instead affect Rune cooldowns.
As of now (and as it pretty much always has been), runes are incredibly spammy and trivialize the game. Focus is far too easy to get and mst players will quickly tumble into a gameplay flow of repeatedly firing off runes without thinking. In the rare instance that focus actually does bottleneck you, it feels horrible and stunts the flow of combat
A cooldown based system forces the player to pick the right moment to use a Rune and weave normal attacks in between. If the attack is interrupted or misses, the player has to wait to use it again and each use is a meaningful decision – not just a button that wipes the screen
For runes that cost stamina, they should remain exactly as they are with no cooldown, functioning as alternative attacks to weave into your moveset
The problems you have seen with the Focus system are a balancing problem, the system is really good when balanced correctly (it can be done reasonably it is not the system’s fault if it is unbalanced).
That seid cooldown runes would be a cool addition, I think utility runes would be better if they had a cooldown instead of consuming Focus.
And it’s true that a cooldown based system would be easier to balance.
But the Focus system is Better for combat, it encourages an active role while a cooldown based system rewards passivity (if you add that hitting enemies reduces the cooldowns, it causes the same problems that there are with focus).
At the end of the day the main problem is that everything is very unbalanced at the moment.
TeoH, you are free to ignore any topics you don’t like. Please refrain from making passive-aggresive comments that curtail a person’s ability to opiniate on any aspects of NRFTW.
Everyone is invited and allowed to do so, none shall be held back in that regard.
I actually like how Focus is implemented, it is the same in Hollow Knight and Silksong and it’s a very good game design in my opinion. It should not change.
You can imagine that the developer can’t please everyone and adding alternative mechanics will end up being extremely tedious to balance.
Furthermore, the rune use is not meaningless as the focus that is being used is precious and you have to choose between healing or dealing damage, and you if choose to spend the focus then you also need to think that you may not be able to use it again until you recharge your focus (i.e you either need to deal damage or to tank some damage via blocking). So in my opinion it’s already tactical, and rewards active gameplay, even through blocking, also tactical because your receive damage as well and you can be staggered.
As for balancing, you should expect more focus balancing updates now that they will add multiplayer, so it may be harder to gain focus in the future which may align more with your style.
