DE, the Lich System is bad and it needs to change.

[Paradoxity]

14 minutes ago, EinheriarJudith said:

i agree with everything you've said except this. 20+ missions to spawn a larva? since when? i can barely go 2 without spawnning one.

I think he meant level 20+

Because in those they're frigging endemic. I've yet to get one without a larva. 

Thankfully now we can clear a room and scoot on, leaving the thing to bleed out. 

[Sunder]

46 minutes ago, EinheriarJudith said:

i agree with everything you've said except this. 20+ missions to spawn a larva? since when? i can barely go 2 without spawnning one.

I meant it in the terms that the enemies need to be level 20+ in order to spawn a larva. My bad

[GruntBlender]

1 hour ago, Paradoxity said:

Nah, I mean, I kinda like it. Now I can go nah, I don't think I'll cop that plat or engage with this whole lich mess because it's as bad a turdburger as archwing was/is. 

 

Maybe in like 4-5 years it'll be revisited. Guess we'll see! 

I'm only a couple nightwave levels away from another Umbra forma. Next week I'll grind out that standing to get the forma, just in case, then uninstall until I read good reviews about a major update. Till then, I've plenty of games from Steam sales I haven't even touched yet.

[GruntBlender]

1 hour ago, Paradoxity said:

 

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by GruntBlender
Mobile interface caused double post

[H0B0Z]

I was optimistic about the Lich system even after release. I was hoping DE just shoved it out in an unpolished form because of The New War delays. No big deal, think of it as beta testing before Empyrean. Steve's comments and attitude during the dev stream kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It had a very, "Because I said so, end of discussion." ring to it. Usually DE is pretty open about explaining how they came to a particular design decision, whether we agree with it or not. I know they're not obligated to, but they set that precedent, not the players.

It's starting to look like what was shown at Tenno Con was completely scripted for Tenno Con. I don't buy the, "We went back and changed it (removed most of the meat) because we think this current iteration is better...because reasons."

More like,

* "This is what we would like the finished product to look like." 

 

 

 

 

*actually finished product my vary.

 

[Sunder]

Note: If any mods can make the text in my boxes appear normal, help me out

 

They could still change and make Liches fun if they put in the effort. For instance, 

- - -

• Make them pursue us
  • We're insanely fast and acrobatic. Make them at least fast. Have them chase us through the tiles.
  • Having them spawn and only walk/jog after us through 1, MAYBE 2 tiles and giving up just walking about poses no urgency or threat.
• Let them trick us
  • Following waypoints and suddenly notice your team has went another way? BAM, your Lich changed them. Bringing you into a dead end, putting the room on lockdown and trying to kill you. Basically we can respond with either fending them off while a team mate hacks the door so we can flee, or we pull a Rorschach and kick their ass.
• Have them hinder us
  • Stealing our stuff is annoying but I get it. It develops a dislike for the Lich. Run up some Nightmare mode mutators. Your Lich could disable your shields temporarily since you have that connection with them. They could find a way to drain your health over time. Disable a mini-map or crosshairs, turn off your vacuum. Send a squad of Manics. Etc.
• Make us struggle
  • Lich's need to be more powerful. Either in attack power or survivability. The Wolf of Saturn Six had survivability on his side and there was a sense of fear about him. Why? Cause he was a distraction. People had to take this guy down and got pelted by other enemies or had to worry about a defense objective.
  • This could also play into the lore that female grineer are strong and ruthless. Got a female Lich? They'll deal even more damage. Their cold, serious attitudes towards you will seem warranted now.
• Let them be unique
  • Currently each Lich has traits/quirks about them. These could easily play into an ace in the hole for defeating stronger, more dangerous Liches. Currently the traits we have and ways to integrate them would be something like...

 

Allergic to Nature	Fighting them outdoors lowers Attack/Defense by x%
Always Hungry	Drawing out the fight will get them famished, lower speed by x%
Bloodhound	Invisibility is useless and they'll target the cloaked enemy in particular
Coward	They have a chance to panic when losing large portions of health at once
Deserter
Fear of Being Alone	Killing all other enemies in the surrounding area lowers Attack by x%
Fear of Children	Operators do x% more damage (Void proc lowers their defense by x%)
Fear of Kubrows	Change to, "Fear of wild-life" and let pets do x% more damage
Fear of Space Travel	Fighting in space lowers defense and can make them pause in fear
Hatred of Corpus	Corpus weaponry does x% more damage but enrages them (They get damage boost too)
Hatred of Infested	Same as above but with infested weaponry
Loner	Is susceptible to friendly fire at an x% increase of damage received.
Paranoid
Poor Sense of Balance	Jump-kicks and slam attacks knock them down
Prone to Vertigo	Have them jump up/down to reach you will cause them to be dizzy. Lower speed/pause in place
Pyromaniac	Carries explosives/firebombs that can be detonated for procs and damage (Think Sargas Ruk parts)
Trophy Hunter	In stealing more rewards, you also get back 1.2x the rewards when beating a Lich. (Scales with level up to 2x)
Vain	Dressing in Grineer cosmetics will have them monologue at times

 

• These traits and weaknesses could warrant a buff for the Lich. It would certainly make us pick our battles. Know when to flee and when to engage.
• Could have us deploy drones to spy and learn about the Lich to get this info. (Know how much DE loves their time-gates)
• Could be expanded upon with ideas from the Design Council and community.

But most importantly...

 

• Give us a fighting chance
  • Life and death on an RNG coin toss isn't fun or engaging. It does not provide humility or make us feel like we were beaten.
  • I don't feel grievance with my Lich and want to rise up to beat him like the hero of a story.
  • All this does is fester annoyances with the Devs who implemented it as though I'm playing with an immature DM who decides what failures occur, "Because I said so".

- - -

Until change come to pass? I for one, --like many others, will avoid the Lich system entirely.

As will I warn new players from even participating in its RNG heavy shenanigans.

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Sunder

[ArcticHelix]

1 hour ago, H0B0Z said:

I was optimistic about the Lich system even after release. I was hoping DE just shoved it out in an unpolished form because of The New War delays. No big deal, think of it as beta testing before Empyrean. Steve's comments and attitude during the dev stream kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It had a very, "Because I said so, end of discussion." ring to it. Usually DE is pretty open about explaining how they came to a particular design decision, whether we agree with it or not. I know they're not obligated to, but they set that precedent, not the players.

It's starting to look like what was shown at Tenno Con was completely scripted for Tenno Con. I don't buy the, "We went back and changed it (removed most of the meat) because we think this current iteration is better...because reasons."

More like,

* "This is what we would like the finished product to look like." 

 

 

 

 

*actually finished product my vary.

 

You ever heard of Work in progress? 

[GruntBlender]

2 hours ago, PrinceMeliodas said:

You ever heard of Work in progress? 

You ever heard of "Bait & switch"?

[ArcticHelix]

3 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

You ever heard of "Bait & switch"?

You ever heard of "ever changing"?

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-11-24 at 5:02 AM, DrakeWurrum said:

I think the charges would be fine if we could use kuva, or credits, or endo, or something to recharge the mods instead of being forced to get more. Of course, then... what do we do with the extras? Other than just having free Endo. Converting them to Kuva makes more sense, though.
I think they were just trying to make sure the Kuva fissures have a future, rather than just being one-and-done content. Which gets me to that second line.

Do not remove either from the drop table. The numerous people who do play with Rivens are actually glad to have so many alternate paths to collect Kuva. It's also the case that numerous people struggle with Ayatan stars (not me, I have plenty somehow, but that might not last).

I would rather see an alternative path to grabbing Requiem mods, if this concern is addressed at all.

Frankly, I'm not sure going with an extra tier of fissures and a new type of relic, completely separate from everything else we do with the kuva lich, was the right route to take, but we're already here. It's harder to step back from a bad idea than to move forward into one. I think it's better to find a way to make it work - which is why I'm glad they made Thralls capable of dropping Requiem Relics.

You're missing the bigger point here - why should these mods even have finite uses in the first place?

The whole thing would have been much better done as a quest which you get after finding your first "lich", where you need to find out exactly what happened and how to deal with it. The quest would lead you through getting one copy of each mod and provide backstory as you do that. You'd only ever get 1 copy of each mod, they wouldn't be tradeable and they would not run out of batteries. T5 relics would not be necessary.

This solves several problems at once: the complete absence of any kind of explanation as to what's going on, the fact that these mods run out of power, the un-necessary existence of T5 relics and the possibility of the mods you need getting stolen by the "lich" and the resulting requirement of forced exceptions for specific items which is almost guaranteed to add more edge cases and bloat to the codebase.

Of course, this is all academic now that DE have basically stated that the system will remain as complete bullS#&$ (forced Russian roulette with 5 filled chambers) and as such should never be bothered with by anyone with a shred of sense. There's no point in trying to polish a turd.

[H0B0Z]

2 hours ago, PrinceMeliodas said:

You ever heard of Work in progress? 

They're moving backwards. The system described for leading up to and eventually demonstrated at TennoCon sounded/looked amazing. 

We've moved from a potentially months long campaign against a strengthening enemy that slowly spreads their influence across the map, culminating in an epic battle...

to a cycle that can be completed in a day, where we collect some stuff to get some other stuff to have a 1 in 3 chance of killing a watered down Wolf of Saturn Six for a so so reward.

And people are still whining about the grind.....

I guess we get the game we deserve.

[GruntBlender]

1 hour ago, H0B0Z said:

And people are still whining about the grind.....

The grind complaints are about the concentrated boredom of doing the same thing over and over. You know, grind. Something progressing over a month doesn't have to be a grind, it could be a slow and steady but fun progression.

[Jivy]

i like how all the feedback given about liches and DE still wont change them

[Paradoxity]

7 hours ago, PrinceMeliodas said:

You ever heard of Work in progress? 

Oh, sure. 

like Archwing? Maybe like Syndicates? Dark Sectors conflict? 

... wait. 

One of DE's greatest strengths- and biggest weaknesses- is they don't spend much time working on something once it's out. It'll get a major overhaul after a long period of time- maybe- or it'll sit, abandoned and ignored, for years. It means there's always something new to try out- but if that new thing's bad, as in the case of liches, it's not very likely to improve beyond some minor tweaks for a long time. 

Which isn't to say we shouldn't appreciate the tweaks. Having to actually use a finisher on a larvaling means that Grineer missions above level 20 arent a trap nearly the way they were at first. 

 

[CuChulainnWD]

2 hours ago, Jivy said:

i like how all the feedback given about liches and DE still wont change them

That is because DE say they are listening, but all they hear is "Whuah wha waa whah whaaa waa" Peanuts style. I agree they have been offered a Metric $hit ton of fantastic to the point feed back that addresses for DE what would make the Old Blood good, balanced, enjoyable and replayable. Instead they stick  their fingers in their ears and cry, we want constructive feed back and we are damned if we do or damned if we don't.

They fail to realise ALL of their problems are created by themselves.  So now they chose to go radio silent, paying lip service like they did in November, the previous half assed Devstream, and the Distraction Devstream last night. This is your new DE. They banked on our good will since 2015 and think they can still trade on it. I say enough is enough, it is time DE were held accountable.

Edited December 7, 2019 by CuChulainnWD

[Jivy]

37 minutes ago, CuChulainnWD said:

That is because DE say they are listening, but all they hear is "Whuah wha waa whah whaaa waa" Peanuts style. I agree they have been offered a Metric $hit ton of fantastic to the point feed back that addresses for DE what would make the Old Blood good, balanced, enjoyable and replayable. Instead they stick  their fingers in their ears and cry, we want constructive feed back and we are damned if we do or damned if we don't.

They fail to realise ALL of their problems are created by themselves.  So now they chose to go radio silent, paying lip service like they did in November, the previous half assed Devstream, and the Distraction Devstream last night. This is your new DE. They banked on our good will since 2015 and think they can still trade on it. I say enough is enough, it is time DE were held accountable.

well said

[CuChulainnWD]

5 hours ago, H0B0Z said:

They're moving backwards. The system described for leading up to and eventually demonstrated at TennoCon sounded/looked amazing. 

We've moved from a potentially months long campaign against a strengthening enemy that slowly spreads their influence across the map, culminating in an epic battle...

to a cycle that can be completed in a day, where we collect some stuff to get some other stuff to have a 1 in 3 chance of killing a watered down Wolf of Saturn Six for a so so reward.

And people are still whining about the grind.....

I guess we get the game we deserve.

I would not say people are whining. People have given DE a metric $hit ton of feed back that would make the grind enjoyable, replayable and systems complete. As you said yourself, instead DE is moving backwards away from what the people want and asked for.

The grind would be alleviated if DE fully baked the half assed Valence system. DE could make money too if they allowed for a %Elemental increase for each crap Duplicate weapon we invest into it, even allowing us to pick the element between weapons, up until it is locked at 60% elemental status. They could in addition to, allow a % increase for each forma we invest into the weapon until it reaches rank 40. Win win for the player base and DE? Think they are listening? Nope.

The grind could have been made more bearable and enjoyable as I did, when we had Anthem day. We got x10 murmur traces for each assisted lich kill. Thralls had a chance to drop Kuva and a possible intact Req mod. That was fun, people actually worked together on it. Then DE decided we could not have that, instead creating the community divide as to do I want to kill my Lich or not. That one got nasty.

Then we got WARFRAME! SLAVERS PLAY FOR FREE! I don't know about you, but I did not ask for a slave trade safari trophy hunt in my game. That really put a crimp on my enjoyment and desire to hunt down Lich's. They were supposed to be personal bounties, we could trade the bounties up front. Not befriend them, then trade them on as slaves. We get the game we ask for? Hell no. There were far better ways DE could have alleviated some of the RNG grind for the community, as suggested by many in the community. The Slave trade just tacitly admits that DE created a crap RNG system, here, have a nasty way to deal with it in the process. I did not agree to that, and I do not support it. Think DE will redress that issue? Slot Machines, No No, Slave Trade Si, Si, Slot Machines, NO NO, Slave trade Si Si. you get the idea.

You are shifting the blame for these problems onto the community. It is ALL on DE what is and has happened. They are solely responsible for their actions, in actions, broken promises. Why divide our player base when we should be uniting. DE has had their chance. They have traded and banked on our good will and support since 2015. Now they have far more staff and resources, than is necessary or reasonable to allow them to continue their half ass methodology. It is time we said enough is enough. DE you will be held accountable and earn our community good will again.

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by CuChulainnWD

[MirageKnight]

11 hours ago, PrinceMeliodas said:

You ever heard of Work in progress? 

On Devstream 134 Steve and company said that they're not doing anything else with the Lich system "for now".

Which we all reasonably know means that, like a lot of other systems that feel half-baked and neglected, they're done with it and have already moved on to the Next Big Thing.

To clarify, yes Warframe is a WIP and "ever changing" as you put it. That's a given. However, the LIch System has barely shifted since its introduction, save for a few needed fixes, some controversial tweaks, and a token gesture or two.

9 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

You ever heard of "Bait & switch"?

That's a bit harsh, but I do see where you're coming from. I feel this is more of a used car salesman dupe, with us being sold a repainted clunker with unmentioned problems and a rigged odometer.

As bad as the Lich System arguably is, it does have one saving grace now. You can easily ignore it...kinda like Lunaro and Conclave.

 

Thanks again to everyone that's offering constructive criticism and feedback and for keeping this discussion civil and on track.

Edit: Judging from the recent proliferation of "downvotes" for arguably reasonable opinions and observations, It seems the thread's gotten the attention of a [DE]fender / White Knight. Which means we're all definitely doing something right.

Please keep the discussion going everyone...not just here but everywhere else.

Edited December 7, 2019 by MirageKnight

[H0B0Z]

4 hours ago, CuChulainnWD said:

I would not say people are whining. People have given DE a metric $hit ton of feed back that would make the grind enjoyable, replayable and systems complete. As you said yourself, instead DE is moving backwards away from what the people want and asked for.

I agree with you. The Kuva Lich game play loop is not enjoyable. The mechanics are "ok", the replayability is questionable . The entire implementation is uninspired. 

What I'm talking about is the army of folks demanding that "murmur" progression be faster. That killing Thralls should grant more progress.

That is not the same thing as asking DE to make the grind more enjoyable.

They're asking DE to make the grind shorter and easier so they can get all the Kuva weapons before Christmas and then spend the first quarter of 2020 crying about content.

[Aldain]

12 minutes ago, H0B0Z said:

What I'm talking about is the army of folks demanding that "murmur" progression be faster. That killing Thralls should grant more progress.

I have not seen much of that in most topics on this subject lately.

What I don't like is that things like that are being conflated with people who have the opinion that the automatic death is bad design, that is my (personal) sole complaint that is making all the other negatives worse, and honestly if that were gone I'd consider playing the system with no further changes.

It doesn't need to be faster, it needs to not literally go against the entire concept of what the Lich is supposed to do, die and return if killed improperly, currently only the player is dying over and over regardless of if the player wins the battle or not.

[H0B0Z]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

I have not seen much of that in most topics on this subject lately.

What I don't like is that things like that are being conflated with people who have the opinion that the automatic death is bad design, that is my (personal) sole complaint that is making all the other negatives worse, and honestly if that were gone I'd consider playing the system with no further changes.

It doesn't need to be faster, it needs to not literally go against the entire concept of what the Lich is supposed to do, die and return if killed improperly, currently only the player is dying over and over regardless of if the player wins the battle or not.

Agreed.

I don't care about dying, losing a revive, etc. I die all the time because I am a bad.

I don't like it because it just doesn't "fit". It doesn't "feel right".

If DE wanted to put their own "warframe" spin on it, then why not make the LIch an overpowered behemoth that crushes you in every encounter, but every loss fills in a piece of the puzzle you need to finally end them.

but then that would make US the Lich.

 

 

Which honestly sounds kind of cool.

 

 

[CuChulainnWD]

1 hour ago, H0B0Z said:

Agreed.

I don't care about dying, losing a revive, etc. I die all the time because I am a bad.

I don't like it because it just doesn't "fit". It doesn't "feel right".

If DE wanted to put their own "warframe" spin on it, then why not make the LIch an overpowered behemoth that crushes you in every encounter, but every loss fills in a piece of the puzzle you need to finally end them.

but then that would make US the Lich.

 

 

Which honestly sounds kind of cool.

 

 

Ummm, that is exactly what happens when you guess wrong, you become the lich.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

The only time I ever want the murmur grind to be faster is times like right now, when I have a lich with a 28% bonus on a weapon I already have, and therefore have no reason to do it. I can't sell it, because no one would buy that, and I can't get anything out of killing it, either. I just want to be done with this waste of my time so that I can pull the lever again and hope I don't get screwed twice in a row.

The only problem I currently have (and that Rebecca somewhat addressed in the last Devstream) is the problem of the useless lich. If doing the 3 hour grind will do nothing but waste time and mod charges, why would I want to do it?

Some compromise fixes that I think would help a lot:

1. Get rid of T5 fissures and make T5 relics equippable on any lich mission, and make them take 10 thralls to unlock (shared across teammates, same as murmur). At the same time, increase thrall spawn rate slightly to make sure this is possible on all lich missions. If you aren't willing to let us get lich progress in general missions, then at least let us double down on lich missions and get two things done at once.
2. Like the game Mastermind (which is what the Requiem system is based off of), let us check all 3 mod positions every time we run into the lich, and make only the third one kill you if you got at least one of the three wrong (I.E., you try 1,4,6; the lich says 1 and 6 are right, but kills you because the middle one was wrong). This way, you only get killed for being greedy. If you want to play it safe and not check the third one until you have all three murmurs complete and have determined which of the three are the first two, you should be able to do that. Forcing us to trial and error one slot at a time is not rewarding, and greatly contributes to the 'cheapness' of the forced deaths. In exchange, liches no longer give murmur progress or kuva (not that the kuva amounts were enough to be worth it anyway). Since thrall spawns are slightly increased with the first suggestion, not getting murmur from liches shouldn't slow things down much compared to now.
3. Make them return stolen resources with interest. Endo, Kuva, Cryotic, Credits, and all planetary resources should be given back with an ~10% increase over what was stolen. If they were stealing resources in general, they would have more than just what they stole from you.
4. Make 'useless' weapon rolls useful. Let them increment another weapon, let us break them down into kuva, I don't care; just give us some way to get something more than credits out of a weapon with too low of stats to use or sell. Even adding only 1% to an existing weapon of the exact same type and element would be fine. We just need something that makes them worth grinding, instead of looking at it and saying "Why should I waste time and requiem charges on you?".
5. If the above change isn't ok, then implement what Rebecca suggested in the last Devstream: a way to get rid of a lich that has no use to you.
6. Make it possible to use a weapon with lower percentage but different element to change the element without changing the bonus. In other words, make the combination system use the new weapon's element, the polarities of the old weapon, and the higher of the two percentages. This makes getting the correct element for a given weapon easier, as you no longer have to get both the right element and an equal or higher percentage.

I'm sure others have good suggestions as well, but these were the ones I could come up with that I could see DE implementing at some point, or in some fashion.

[GruntBlender]

2 hours ago, H0B0Z said:

What I'm talking about is the army of folks demanding that "murmur" progression be faster. That killing Thralls should grant more progress.

I think that goes to those people not liking the grind, but not knowing how to improve it, so they say to shorten it. It comes from the same place, a long boring grind for sometimes no reward.

[DrakeWurrum]

16 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

You're missing the bigger point here - why should these mods even have finite uses in the first place?

The whole thing would have been much better done as a quest which you get after finding your first "lich", where you need to find out exactly what happened and how to deal with it. The quest would lead you through getting one copy of each mod and provide backstory as you do that. You'd only ever get 1 copy of each mod, they wouldn't be tradeable and they would not run out of batteries. T5 relics would not be necessary.

This solves several problems at once: the complete absence of any kind of explanation as to what's going on, the fact that these mods run out of power, the un-necessary existence of T5 relics and the possibility of the mods you need getting stolen by the "lich" and the resulting requirement of forced exceptions for specific items which is almost guaranteed to add more edge cases and bloat to the codebase.

No, I agree with all that. It's bothered me from day 1 of liches that we're given nothing about it. They just threw the system at us. There's not even a specific section of the Orbiter dedicated to them, or a console for them. It's just tossed in our UI menus. At least Nightwave is our actual radio. The only real backstory/lore we have to it is the little cinematic. A quest to unlock the system and explain what's happening would indeed make things better, let alone just getting rid of the idea of T5 relics to begin with.

But it's like you said: we already have this system in place. We have Requiem Relics and T5 fissures now. It's harder to get rid of a bad mistake than it is to implement one.

Also, btw: the liches cannot steal the mods/relics you need anymore. That was hotfixed quite a while ago. They've fixed some of the most glaring mistakes of the relics, at least, even if the relics themselves are a terrible implementation.

Edited December 8, 2019 by DrakeWurrum