Kuva Lich difficulty scaling--and difficulty in general

[Maka.Bones]

On Quiet Shy's art stream last week, DE_Scott said that currently the Kuva Lich difficulty is too high atm. He said that QA wanted him to lower the difficulty scaling, and make the battle easier.

_{I'm not sure if you guys already keep an internal change-log, but...}

It might be a good idea for DE to keep a change-log that's easy to switch in-between. A tool that stores what things are changed to make a Kuva Lich, or even an enemy/boss/encounter/mission to make them easier, or harder, and you can tab in between to change those settings (Like a difficulty setting that devs could use). This way if the player base finds them extremely easy--which we will probably find a way to cheese them, given enough time--the devs can upgrade the lich difficulty within a hotfix. This would work as a time-saving tool, and would also work as a reference tool to analyze & compare changes faster. 

Edit: You could also use this tool to help create events. You could periodically increase the difficulty of a faction/planet/mission type like this, for different events throughout the year. 

Edited October 21, 2019 by Maka.Bones

[bad4youLT]

I for one want Kuva Lich be hard , like you would need full squad to dent the guy

[Maka.Bones]

18 minutes ago, bad4youLT said:

I for one want Kuva Lich be hard , like you would need full squad to dent the guy

Same tbh, but how would you distribute rewards for that? And what about solo players, or people with no friends? _{like me} 

Edited October 21, 2019 by Maka.Bones

[Renegade343]

2 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

Same tbh, but how would you distribute rewards for that? And what about solo players, or people with no friends? like me 

Teshin: I have this thing called the Conclave...

[peterc3]

4 hours ago, Maka.Bones said:

It might be a good idea for DE to keep a change-log that's easy to switch in-between. A tool that stores what things are changed to make a Kuva Lich, or even an enemy/boss/encounter/mission to make them easier, or harder, and you can tab in between to change those settings (Like a difficulty setting that devs could use). This way if the player base finds them extremely easy--which we will probably find a way to cheese them, given enough time--the devs can upgrade the lich difficulty within a hotfix. This would work as a time-saving tool, and would also work as a reference tool to analyze & compare changes faster. 

Do you really think you know more than the game devs about how to develop their own game?

[Maka.Bones]

1 hour ago, peterc3 said:

Do you really think you know more than the game devs about how to develop their own game?

First of all: No, that's why I said 

5 hours ago, Maka.Bones said:

I'm not sure if you guys already keep an internal change-log, but...

Secondly, just because they're the game's developers doesn't mean that they're all-knowing, perfect gods of game development (I mean... maybe SOME of them are, but I didn't think ALL of them were). There might always be Ideas they didn't think of, or new things  that might seem obvious they hadn't previously considered... We're all human, and that's why the "feedback forums" exist. 

Simply put, you tell me which one would be faster... would it be faster to customize your warframe's colors by:

a) writing, deleting, and verifying, and re-writing a new line of code every single time

or

B) move a slider, or click on a box?

I'm saying that I don't know if they have an internal tool to customize things faster and more efficiently... but IF THEY DON'T, it would definitely help them to save time, if they did make some sort of dev interface for making fast changes to events/enemy difficulty

 

Edited October 21, 2019 by Maka.Bones

[Kimimoto]

1 hour ago, peterc3 said:

Do you really think you know more than the game devs about how to develop their own game?

Yeah

[Jessadactyl]

6 hours ago, bad4youLT said:

I for one want Kuva Lich be hard , like you would need full squad to dent the guy

The Kuva Lich is designed to be tailored to you, and to be killed by your operator. The boss fight itself needs to be a solo ordeal, or it makes the whole point of a personalized boss pointless. If your Lich is designed to counter, let's say your Ember and your friend just brings along Mesa and annihilates it; it would trivialize the fight entirely.

You can have difficulty, and it be solo content.

[Jessadactyl]

6 hours ago, Renegade343 said:

Teshin: I have this thing called the Conclave...

Conclave is dead and irrelevant at the moment, and you can't lock players out of PvE content; even solo players because it exists. Technically even an Eidolon Hunt is soloable, just extremely difficult to do solo.

[Renegade343]

1 minute ago, Bearadactyl-Prime said:

The Kuva Lich is designed to be tailored to you, and to be killed by your operator. The boss fight itself needs to be a solo ordeal, or it makes the whole point of a personalized boss pointless. If your Lich is designed to counter, let's say your Ember and your friend just brings along Mesa and annihilates it; it would trivialize the fight entirely.

Yet you can trade them with other players, which is... well, I'm waiting for the lore reason on how that works.

[Renegade343]

Just now, Bearadactyl-Prime said:

Conclave is dead and irrelevant at the moment, and you can't lock players out of PvE content; even solo players because it exists. Technically even an Eidolon Hunt is soloable, just extremely difficult to do solo.

I'm more referring to the fact that if you want to survive, start learning how to move fast and aim well.

[Duality52]

6 hours ago, bad4youLT said:

I for one want Kuva Lich be hard , like you would need full squad to dent the guy

Like the Wolf of Saturn Six? Bullet sponges aren't challenging, nor engaging.

The challenge also comes from your own loadout by manipulating the Lich or limiting yourself. I suspect lots of Inaros ignoring the bulk of the "challenge" while demanding or cheesing said "challenge".

[Jessadactyl]

2 minutes ago, Renegade343 said:

Yet you can trade them with other players, which is... well, I'm waiting for the lore reason on how that works.

I mean, I guess you can do the whole... Put a bounty thing if you want, though honestly we don't know the lore behind it to begin with and won't until Old Blood comes out.

If DE hadn't highlighted the whole... Tailored to the tenno that killed them thing as the big selling point I guess it would make more sense. But, we'll just have to see what lore they come up with.

 

Spoiler

Honestly I wish we could just kill Space Mom and rip that bandage off already.

 

[Klokwerkaos]

I honestly am not interested in the kuva liches being accessible to newbies.  as it stands I'm having expecting to one shot these suckers and stick them with a parazon.  catering everything to new players is the cancer that is killing this game.  frankly should be an mr 20 quest unlock or something... give people a reason to grind past mr 16.

at this point they really need to start gating content for real.  at the moment the highest bars to clear are getting to mr 16 to use max requirement rivens, and clearing the star chart... and that's like 200 hours if you put in minimal effort for a game where people have in mission times of over 5K hours.

they won't gate it (except for probably like second dream or something), but they really should, otherwise aspirational content will never be a thing.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[-Kittens-]

4 hours ago, Bearadactyl-Prime said:

be killed by your operator.

and the assumption that endgame should revolve around a tacked on feature sink is a bad one.

[Maka.Bones]

Hey I just thought of something! (first time for everything) 

They could call this tool "The GM's Screen" or "GM's UI" like when playing pen & paper games xD (Like D&D)

Edited October 22, 2019 by Maka.Bones

[Klokwerkaos]

15 hours ago, -Kittens- said:

and the assumption that endgame should revolve around a tacked on feature sink is a bad one.

the feature is only tacked on if you don't understand it.  use of operators in combat is a highly effective tool that directly affects all game play and can make you a monster... if you learn how to do it.  if you don't, that's more about you than the mechanic.

I don't disagree that centering things on operators is bad, but this is the wrong reasoning.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[Tyreaus]

On 2019-10-21 at 9:27 AM, Maka.Bones said:

It might be a good idea for DE to keep a change-log that's easy to switch in-between. A tool that stores what things are changed to make a Kuva Lich, or even an enemy/boss/encounter/mission to make them easier, or harder, and you can tab in between to change those settings (Like a difficulty setting that devs could use). This way if the player base finds them extremely easy--which we will probably find a way to cheese them, given enough time--the devs can upgrade the lich difficulty within a hotfix. This would work as a time-saving tool, and would also work as a reference tool to analyze & compare changes faster. 

Just to say, having had a little bit of practical IT experience: they very probably have some kind of version control like an internal Git server where they can track changes and the like (it is literal hell to code in a team without version control), and a lot of those aspects like Kuva Lunch Lich health are likely tied to global(-ish) variables that DE could tweak on a practical whim. It'd require a recompile of the file and a patch to throw it out to clients but that's par the course for game updates anyway. I mean, assuming whoever coded stuff added in comments properly. Like you know you should, DE. Yes, I'm looking at you. You'd better have commented your code properly, like good coders do. You did that, right? Good boys and girls.

_{The joke is that nobody ever comments their code because everyone hates commenting...it's funny, trust me}

Edit: Kuva Lunch. Lol.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Tyreaus

[-Kittens-]

3 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

the feature is only tacked on if you don't understand it.  use of operators in combat is a highly effective tool that directly affects all game play and can make you a monster... if you learn how to do it.  if you don't, that's more about you than the mechanic.

I don't disagree that centering things on operators is bad, but this is the wrong reasoning.

if operators weren't completely op spammy trash you might have a salient point, but they aren't so your assumption of git gud is not only completely unfounded but doesn't even speak to the problem at hand in any kind of usable context.

Operators are the literal epitome of click to win laziness, never mind making any frame effectively immortal. Power and feature creep literally starts and are highlighted with operators.

Edited October 22, 2019 by -Kittens-

[Klokwerkaos]

5 hours ago, -Kittens- said:

if operators weren't completely op spammy trash you might have a salient point, but they aren't so your assumption of git gud is not only completely unfounded but doesn't even speak to the problem at hand in any kind of usable context.

Operators are the literal epitome of click to win laziness, never mind making any frame effectively immortal. Power and feature creep literally starts and are highlighted with operators.

they can be, or they can be an integral part of your playstyle.  it all depends on how you use it.

give a skilled craftsman a hammer and saw and they will make something different than a 10 year old.

you can hate on it all you want, but there are players who develop creative synergies in engaging ways.  whether you know about that or not, that's kind of irrelevant to the fact that it exists...
 

[-Kittens-]

I know exactly how the mechanics of operator mode work, that's not the issue at all. Context is king. Context is never not king.

[IzzyTH-I51]

I was some what under the impression that it scales on your ability to kill it, and from what I remember from the dev streams only the player who's lich it is can kill it, cause only their parazon will be configured to do so.

So even with a team the boss battle will always be the lich's owners alone, with other Tenno for support I suppose.

[Monolake]

The difficulty in WF is a joke and cant even be discussed for real because there is no balance whatsoever: There are unkillable frames that can dish out millions of damage and take on lvl1000s no problem. And then there are useless glass frames and crappy weapons that struggle with lvl60s. 

Its a mess and impossible to get the difficulty right, impossible to give any challenge or 'endgame'  (hello from 2014 when it's all been said, but DE didnt listen and made the mess even worse).

What are they using to test now, some Ember with a Boltor? if you adjust for crap like that then you get boring non-difficulty for anyone who uses better gear.

And instead of balancing gear DE just makes enemies immune to most abilities, essentially making more frames useless...  And when we ask for optional   higher difficulty content DE denies us and gives us waitwalls instead. Then you wonder why everyone quits.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Monolake

[(PSN)thegarada]

On 2019-10-21 at 11:39 AM, bad4youLT said:

I for one want Kuva Lich be hard , like you would need full squad to dent the guy

I am certain it will be  soloable. It probably would not be a damage sponge. I am expecting something kinda like Ropalolyst, where you cannot just tunnel damage it.

[Maka.Bones]

On 2019-10-22 at 1:10 PM, Tyreaus said:

Just to say, having had a little bit of practical IT experience: they very probably have some kind of version control like an internal Git server where they can track changes and the like (it is literal hell to code in a team without version control), and a lot of those aspects like Kuva Lunch Lich health are likely tied to global(-ish) variables that DE could tweak on a practical whim. It'd require a recompile of the file and a patch to throw it out to clients but that's par the course for game updates anyway. I mean, assuming whoever coded stuff added in comments properly. Like you know you should, DE. Yes, I'm looking at you. You'd better have commented your code properly, like good coders do. You did that, right? Good boys and girls.

_{The joke is that nobody ever comments their code because everyone hates commenting...it's funny, trust me}

Edit: Kuva Lunch. Lol.

Yeah I've forgotten most of what I knew about coding but I could guess that any dev company would have some internal change-logs, or method to backup/revert updates. I'm just suggesting that they clean it up, and give it a user-friendly interface that reduces time involvement for quick changes, but also allows them to edit some of the more key values / code.

**Like if they just wanted to change every "Bombard" object within the "Grineer" Grouping/class, but only IF they're on "Mars" AND spawning in [x] "event||mission"

It's a pain in the ass to sift through all the code, even when properly annotated. It's easy to forget a small thing here and there, like proper punctuation or old values that cause funny bugs. Having streamline uniform code value for all enemy types, and logged changes--that they can tab through like they're pages in a book--would allow them to create a dev "GM's Screen" type of UI that's much faster to use for changes and for rolling out events. 

But for that to work, every enemy type really needs to have a uniform format of coding, and clear vectors/variables that affect key components. 

This would really help them in tackling the much sought after "armor" and "difficulty" scaling of mobs. As well as rolling out new and dynamic/challenging events that can be easily changed overtime. 

_{and yeah, coders who write notes are mythical unicorns... even the ones who WANT to write notes often forget to like myself}

Edited October 23, 2019 by Maka.Bones