These are my ideas for Liches 2.0:
Intro: I think the Lich system is in a much better state now than it was on release, but it still needs a bunch of work.
The main things are connecting it to other parts of the game, and improving the murmur grind. For connection things like squad link, having Liches appear in normal missions, and making Liches have more effect on what you do would all help. The murmur grind could be improved in a lot of different ways all discussed below.
Objectives: Having the Lich have different objectives that it is trying to do, such as take a planet, build a galleon, capture a Warframe and experiment with it, create an improved weapon, gain new abilities, and much more. These objectives would be time based, meaning you have to intervene before the Lich becomes stronger, but the amount of things a Lich can do will be capped by its level meaning that it can't become infinitely powerful if you leave it alone. There are tons of possibilities with this system. If these objectives are not stopped the Lich will gain an advantage over you, and have more effect on you in some way such as making the boss fight harder or causing other events to happen. Murmurs also need to be found in other places. Such as searching for one of the Liches captains on another planet, and capturing him to gain large amounts of murmur and learn of some of the Liches plans in order to prevent them. Or breaking into a communication satellite in Railjack, and extracting information from there. There are tons of possibilities. Objectives could help the Liches feel more alive, and be more unique. It would make the Liches seem like they have their own goals and ambitions, and it could be used as an awesome way to make Liches more interactive. They could also remember if you stop them or halt their objectives, which could make their personalities seem more unique.
Boss Nodes: The next thing would be creating permanent boss nodes for the Lich that you can go to when the murmurs are found. They are harder depending on how many Lich nodes are still on the planet. You may attack the node right away or clear the side nodes to make it easier. When the main node is cleared. All other nodes on the planet are too. The Lich will retreat after each node until the final fight where you will finally be able to kill it. If you prevent the Litch from spreading and building bases in the early stages it no longer owns any extra bases (galleon's or bases on the planet). Then you would go to the final fight and get to beat it. They could even have the Requium change after each planet is cleared as long as finding out all three is fairly easy. After you beat it the Lich should adapt to whatever Warframe/weapons you used and begin to take less damage from those sources, along with gaining a level (max of 10), forcing you to change your gameplay to adapt to the Lich.
Interaction with Objectives: The boss nodes, including ones in Railjack, should have Lich interaction. They could either create specific boss tiles, or even use tiles already in the sets for the fight, but the Lich should be able to interact with them in some way which is why custom boss tiles would be the best solution. Random events could occur depending on what objectives the Lich has completed. Such as getting bombarded with an orbital asteroid cannon which you did not take out in your Railjack. Getting attacked by a squad of thrall reinforcements, or having the Lich being protected by a shield, or a situation similar to the Tennocon demo.
The Lich has built a galleon and the final fight is taking place there. The Lich has made fighters to defend his fleet. He also managed to steal research from the corpus, and used it to attach shield generators to the side of his ship which will shield him in battle unless they are destroyed. He has also build a shield generator on a node down on earth. This creates a squad link opportunity for the shield generator to be destroyed by another squad. You could have destroyed it before the fight, but maybe you didn't know it existed because you did not get enough intel before the fight. That could be a setup for what was shown in the Tennocon Demo. And as more objectives are added, the complexity and uniqueness of these situations will increase, and the ways of dealing with them will too.
Conclusion: This is what I think the Lich system needs to be infinitely engaging and fun. They have the very base of the system there, but adding a overlaying system to give the Liches purpose would make them so much more fun and engaging. It would involve strategy and critical thinking, which is mostly missing from the Lich system right now. Overall these boss fights and much more strategic gameplay would be what the system needs to be really fun and unique every time. This is obviously a lot so they could start small. Maybe a few boss tiles. A dozen objectives like planet take overs, building galleons, building armies, expanding, stealing things from the Corpus Tenno and maybe other Grineer, and other basic objectives. A few random events based on the if the objectives are completed or not, improvements to the boss fight mechanics, and more personalities. They already have the base of the system there, so they just need to expand on it. They could always add more things in the future, making the system even more cool, but that would be a great start to making the system as cool as they showed originally, and still easily within the scope of possibility for the team to make happen.
Tell me what you think of my ideas, and give me your own in the comments 🙂
