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

[MirageKnight]

6 hours ago, Ishredpapers said:

Who in the world made this decision?

You mean came up with the idea? My guess would be Steve or Sheldon.

6 hours ago, Ishredpapers said:

Who makes these decisions?

Probably Steve.

6 hours ago, Ishredpapers said:

Do they even play the game themselves?

It seems that the actual devs play test developer builds only...and with active cheat codes developer tools / shortcuts. By play test, I mean playing in short bursts to test specific changes to see if they work or not. On the dev streams, Reb uses console commands a fair bit to show off stuff.

As a modder for Company of Heroes 2, yes I do that myself...but i also try to take the time to play full length modded game sessions to see if my changes have any unintended consequences or issues that might not be immediately apparent. Cheats are useful for testing certain things, but ultimately you need to test without them. When I play test, I try to put myself in the role of a player that's looking to critique the mod: Do the changes feel fair? Do they benefit me as a player? Do they make the game-play experience more interesting or enjoyable for me as a player? Do the changes really belong in the game? If yes, then mission accomplished. If no, then back to the mod tools I go. Said mod has 30k+ subscribers and 450+ Favorites - all with very little promotion - so I must be doing something right 😛

I think the reason why the whole Lich system feels like such a massive, frustrating chore is because the devs don't seem to play test with the mindset of a player that's looking to grade or critique what's been coded and introduced. I feel like they just spit out stuff because it felt cool to do it at the time, because it's the latest fad in the gaming industry, and / or they want to make some extremely vocal, entitled try-hards happy. The devs force systems on us without really thinking "does this REALLY belong in Warframe" or "would most players REALLY want this" and in this case without giving players a means of opting out of or ignoring a system that they may outright dislike or even hate.

Don't like Lunaro? You don't have to play it and ignoring it doesn't negatively affect the rest of the game.

Don't like Conclave? You don't have to play it and ignoring it doesn't negatively affect the rest of the game.

Don't like Frame Fighter? You don't have to play it and ignoring it doesn't negatively affect the rest of the game.

Don't like the Lich system? If you killed a Larvaling (intentionally or not), too bad. Sure you can try and ignore your Lich but if that LIch wound up infecting nodes that you usually frequent, you're stuck having to clear them out if you want all the rewards you should normally be getting.

6 hours ago, Ishredpapers said:

People will start leaving in droves since there are free games now like Destiny 2 and its going to drop in player base AGAIN.

That's assuming it's not happening already. It would be interesting to see active player counts for the last few days...

Edited November 5, 2019 by MirageKnight

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

From a console player who can only read feedback and understand what has been explained as how the system works:

Edit: yay, they agreed and are adding: Creating a Lich needs to be INTENTIONAL. That means: even if you "kill" the larvaling, you'd have to choose to use your Parazon on it, to "put it out of its misery" or whatever lore needs to be there for why we'd contribute to the formation of a grineer super soldier.

Influence needs to spread slower or be limited. I suggest "converted" Liches should be able to "guard" planets or nodes, to prevent Lich encroachment, or at least protect your drops. This creates an incentive for players to convert a large number of Liches to protect their star chart. Guarded planets/nodes would have a higher chance for the converted Lich to come to your aid.

I can't comment much on the Requiem Relics/mod acquisition stuff yet.

 

The changes to how the kill phrase is revealed have been announced (Twitter?), so murmurs don't tell you a mod that you already know... which only makes sense...

I think Railjack/Empyrean will bring with it the ability to hunt down the Kuva Lich's main base of operations to allow an "assassination mission" against that Lich, rather than relying on the RNG to make your Lich appear in a mission (since they showcased this as an example of an Empyrean mission along with squad-link).

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by (PS4)AyinDygra
They released patch notes as i was writing this post...

[MirageKnight]

The latest update to Warframe seems to have made it harder to accidentally create a Lich. About damn time but a bit late IMO.

Some other changes...

• Quote

   

  • Mercying a Thrall now has a 5% chance to drop 500 Kuva or a Requiem Relic, adding another reward vector in the steps that are required to Vanquish/Convert a Kuva Lich. Requiem Relics play a very key part in the Kuva Lich system, and our goal with this change is to conjoin the Thrall hunt on (what is currently) normal mission modes with your eventual Requiem Relic hunt.
  • Increased the drop chance of each Requiem Relic in Kuva Siphon missions from 30% to 50%. 
  • Tweaked the Requiem Murmur discovery requirements for each hint to reduce initial ramp-up:
    • Instead of each Murmur requiring the same amount of Hints, the first and second Murmur require 60% of what they used to, with the last Murmur requiring 140%. <- So 130 needed instead of 150. That's not much of a change.
  • Excess Murmur progress now carries over to the next Murmur to allow for faster Murmur discovery.
  • Known Requiems that you discover from using your Parazon on your Kuva Lich are now immediately visible on the UI as a permanent known Requiem.
  • Requiem Mods and Relics can no longer be Taxed by your Lich. <- still broken btw.
  • Ingame Murmur popups now show progress, in the form of a progress bar, from your previous Murmur discovery. This progress bar will not be displayed if you’ve solved all the Murmur hints.
  • Testing a Requiem on a Lich now advances Murmur progress by roughly 10x more than a Thrall on average. 

   

So slightly less grindy, but multiple levels of RNG still exist. A peace offering option is still warranted for people that don't want to deal with their Lich. Consumable Phrase mods are still a thing because they insist on us grinding even though mods aren't normally consumable. The fight still has a binary outcome and you're still punished for losing.

DE, you can do way better than this.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

With various posts on the forums before hand I'm getting a pretty clear picture of what's to come when this update hits consoles and I'm just going to avoid this thing till DE announces whatever they are going to do or not do about it....and the humorous part is that avoiding it might actually be the best use of time considering DE's nerf mentality when a weapon hits the meta....So jumping through all these hoops for a Kuva weapon sounds great now...but if they nerf it into the ground like the Catchmoon a year from now.......all that time...all that farming kuva siphons....just for another set of dust collectors...???

 

yeah pass...my end game is now how long can I go without catching this RNG malaria...and that could actually be just as fun to see how far you could go...

Edited November 5, 2019 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[Lazframe]

AGREED entirely and I also made multiple posts to express the same. After all these years this update feels like a slap in the face and it's pushing me to stop playing. I might quit for good and it sucks because I invested so much in it.

[Whiskered]

2 hours ago, MirageKnight said:

•  

So slightly less grindy, but multiple levels of RNG still exist. A peace offering option is still warranted for people that don't want to deal with their Lich. Consumable Phrase mods are still a thing because they insist on us grinding even though mods aren't normally consumable. The fight still has a binary outcome and you're still punished for losing.

DE, you can do way better than this.

well it's something ... a start but still long way ahead.

[MirageKnight]

4 hours ago, SeRialPiXel said:

AGREED entirely and I also made multiple posts to express the same.

Good. The more people offering intense, consistent, and constructive criticism, the better.

4 hours ago, SeRialPiXel said:

After all these years this update feels like a slap in the face and it's pushing me to stop playing. I might quit for good and it sucks because I invested so much in it.

I know the feeling. After my Lich leveled to 5 and coated half the star chart in sortie level nodes that I needed to clear out just to get normal drops again, I was ready to uninstall right then and there, after playing since 2013 with only a couple of really short breaks.

4 hours ago, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

So jumping through all these hoops for a Kuva weapon sounds great now...but if they nerf it into the ground like the Catchmoon a year from now.......all that time...all that farming kuva siphons....just for another set of dust collectors...???

Indeed. You're also grinding for 2-3 hours MINIMUM to get a weapon that might be good but will require even more time to bring it up to its full potential. Wound up creating a Lich with a weapon you don't want? Too bad. You still have to slog through all that grind and rng just to convert it to an ally so you can stop it from cramping your style.

My Lich wound up being equipped with a Kuva Tonkor. That does extra poison damage.

No thanks. Do not want.

Do I think that my Lich will ever be a useful and reliable ally?

Not really.

Edited November 6, 2019 by MirageKnight

[BlackAce]

21 hours ago, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

yeah pass...my end game is now how long can I go without catching this RNG malaria...and that could actually be just as fun to see how far you could go...

You managed to squeeze some chuckles out of my burned soul.

 

It seems that I rode the hype train so hard that I'm out of steam already after getting back to this game a couple of months ago from a 2 years break. I was going to start my 3rd lich hunt when I realized I spent almost 4 hours just to figure out the murmurs to get a weapon that will definitely be another MR fodder. At this point I don't want to remember how long it took me to farm the right requiem mods.

I'm a big fan of the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor and thought that putting it in Warframe would let me feel the thrill of having a nemesis once again. But instead I got a rage inducing multi-layered RNG slot machine. It feels tedious especially when the only compensation I get is collecting 10+ of weapons with a high chance of getting duplicates and sub-par bonus stats (which again relied on RNG). I don't think I'm going to play another round of lich hunt until DE somehow tweak it.

[MirageKnight]

I'm going to offer a suggestion that will help players in deciding if they want to convert a Larvaling or not into a Lich. Have the Larvaling spawn with the regular version of the Kuva Weapon they'll get if they turn into a Lich.

In the cases where there's no regular version...have them spawn with a weapon that's closest in terms of function / use.

Example: Grinlock / Vulkar -> Kuva Chakkhurr

 

[Kaleidoomscope]

On 2019-11-02 at 6:29 PM, MirageKnight said:

I’d also like to add that for all you people that pressure other players into trying to kill their Lich even when they’re not ready to do so - just so your Lich will show up - you are terrible, selfish people and should be ashamed of yourselves.

This happened to me as I refused to kill my lich when I was 90% on my 3rd murmur (If I killed it then the anger level of lich would be reverted back to "indifferent" and it would rank up). They argued if I don't kill then others would not have their liches shown up nor could they get murmur progress. I didn't want to refute that or create trouble on others so I managed to ditch that mission right away and grind my last progress solo. 

If warframe is deemed a co-op game, I would suggest DE to address this issue since the dilemma that you either have to sacrifice yourself or make other squad members enraged creates bad blood. And I don't want to do the majority of kuva lich mission solo because of this kind of hindrance.

And I must say, thank you for your great post. We need to speak out of issues so that DE can be aware of them.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Kaleidoomscope

[Biotic_Prototype_6]

On 2019-11-02 at 7:29 PM, MirageKnight said:

To cut to the chase, the new Lich system has so much wrong with it that makes the game off-putting. I'd even go so far to say that it's the most disgusting and disrespectful serving of grind in Warframe's history I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

Since there is no Dislike button of any sort for me to count my disagreement with your post, i would like to voice my opinion and say that i dont agree with pretty much anything you said and i've been enjoying the new Kuva Lich system which i know it will be expanded when Railjack comes adding more depth to it.

There are some things that i wish it would've changed, like instead of we having Kuva Thrall missions the Lich would chase us like the Stalker, but i'm 180º with anyone who just hyperbolizes saying its terrible and should be overhauled completely.

[George_PPS]

20 hours ago, MirageKnight said:

Good. The more people offering intense, consistent, and constructive criticism, the better.

I know the feeling. After my Lich leveled to 5 and coated half the star chart in sortie level nodes that I needed to clear out just to get normal drops again, I was ready to uninstall right then and there, after playing since 2013 with only a couple of really short breaks.

Indeed. You're also grinding for 2-3 hours MINIMUM to get a weapon that might be good but will require even more time to bring it up to its full potential. Wound up creating a Lich with a weapon you don't want? Too bad. You still have to slog through all that grind and rng just to convert it to an ally so you can stop it from cramping your style.

My Lich wound up being equipped with a Kuva Tonkor. That does extra poison damage.

No thanks. Do not want.

Do I think that my Lich will ever be a useful and reliable ally?

Not really.

I haven't even toughed the system at all. Years of playing, logging in EVERY SINGLE DAY until the Update came out. It is that bad. Very disappointed about all the nerfing and that it becoming a game of no fun, caving to nerfing requests. It's almost like nerfing is the new end game released quarterly and monthly. 

[Ishredpapers]

Why are they nerfing anything is the real question. There is barely any existing PvP anyway. You are not getting some unfair edge over other players. You're just killing mindless NPC's. But i guess DE doesn't like that, because reasons?

[Genoscythe]

I disagree on the difficulty and enemy level parts, they should even gve us options to scale it up to level 200 or more to gain greater rewards, it's supposed to be endgame content, so please don't complain about enemies barely above sortie level, they're a joke to handle. Now that Kuva Liches are opt-out there's no reason to complain for getting your head bashed in, you know what you signed up for.

Rewards, that's problem numero uno: We get nothing apart from the gun or ally. We should get either an interest (maybe multiply resources and creds with lich level) on the stolen resources from the lich or gallons of kuva extra, right now, and you got that very right, Liches are a glorified effort of RNG layered weapon grind.

People who want others to kill their Lich aren't selfish, they just don't want your lich to block their possible lich spawns, you're selfish because you entered a mission knowing you might reduce other people's chances to fight their lich if you don't clear it. Again, if you're not ready for it, don't sign up for it, you get all stuff back after killing your lich anyway, would you miss 20k credits?. I hope DE finds a solution to this soon, though, it's pretty broken, they really borked the coop aspect in a coop-game, which has me concerned.

[MirageKnight]

1 hour ago, Biotic_Prototype_6 said:

Since there is no Dislike button of any sort for me to count my disagreement with your post, i would like to voice my opinion and say that i dont agree with pretty much anything you said and i've been enjoying the new Kuva Lich system which i know it will be expanded when Railjack comes adding more depth to it.

Thanks for reminding me about how Liches will be tied into Railjack. So my point that Lich system needs overhauling to make it fairer for all and give everyone better opt out options is concerned still stands.

Glad you're enjoying the rng and grind. That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. That said, myself and a number of other players DON'T. And I'd like to remind you that your opinion doesn't make you absolutely correct about the state of the Lich system.

 

[MirageKnight]

 

3 hours ago, Genoscythe said:

you know what you signed up for.

When I first set out to create my Lich, on day one of the update going live, I had no clue that it would wind up dealing with massive grind, 3 levels of crappy RNG, and sortie level enemies. I'm sure a lot of people didn't as well. If I'd known EXACTLY what I was getting myself into, I'd have stayed the hell away from the entire system. I mentioned this in my OP. 

There are numerous posts from players regretting going after a Lich on day one, not knowing how frustrating the experience would be.

DE was far too vague with regard to communicating what opting into the Lich system would involve. Them simply saying "You need to have finished The War Within" really doesn't cut it in the slightest. They talked about all the cool rewards, but only made vague statements about how "challenging" our "personal adversary" would be.

Nothing about Sortie-level enemies, little about the drop tables, nothing about the sheer number of thralls you need to get murmurs, and so on.

They should have just stuck a warning saying "Recommended for entitled, bored try-hards extremely well-geared veterans only." and we'd have gotten the hint...

3 hours ago, Genoscythe said:

 you get all stuff back after killing your lich anyway

So what's your point? Yeah - I know I get the "taxed" amount back. I could care less about most of it, save extremely rare mods, relics and resources. Part of my complaint is how is this Lich able to "tax" us when we're picking up the items in the mission ourselves. It's certainly not sneaking up behind us picking our pockets. It has no access to the Lander or Orbiter. There's no logical reason for a Lich to be able to "take a cut" outside of the devs saying "cuz we said so!" 

Mind you the Lich could try and DEMAND a cut in its dialogues with us...just not actually get it.

"I have a right to tribute."

HAHAHAHAHA - I'm not paying you jack, you delusional freak.

or...

"You took what's rightfully mine, adversary!"

Whatever. You want your stuff back, you'll have to find my Orbiter and take it by force. Oh wait, you can't.

I mean if the Lich could gain access to the Lander to somehow take a tribute...why not just outright steal  / take back everything I scrounged up?! Seriously, this is an enemy that loathes and despises me and is actively trying to make my life as miserable as possible if not kill me! Why stop at a friggin' percent of what I gathered up?!

*rolls eyes*

My biggest problem with DE is that they really don't think these important details out.

3 hours ago, Genoscythe said:

they really borked the coop aspect in a coop-game, which has me concerned.

That they did and we should all be concerned.

[DatDarkOne]

4 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

"Recommended for entitled, bored try-hards extremely well-geared veterans only."

[MirageKnight]

To clarify my position on this, I don't mind real challenge at all. I have some pretty powerful loadouts and it's nice to run into enemies that are capable of dropping me FAIRLY and that require exploiting a weakness to end the fight faster.

And by fairly, I mean not having to rely on gimmicks like status / ability immunity, ridiculous levels of armor, and one-shot kill weapons.

That being said, slogging through multiple sortie-level missions is not challenging. It's tiring and frustrating. This doesn't test my gear limits or skills or smarts. Just my ability to pump out big numbers, avoid hyper-damage abilities and weapons, and how much grind I'm willing to tolerate at the time.

[Aldain]

48 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

To clarify my position on this, I don't mind real challenge at all. I have some pretty powerful loadouts and it's nice to run into enemies that are capable of dropping me FAIRLY and that require exploiting a weakness to end the fight faster.

And by fairly, I mean not having to rely on gimmicks like status / ability immunity, ridiculous levels of armor, and one-shot kill weapons.

That being said, slogging through multiple sortie-level missions is not challenging. It's tiring and frustrating. This doesn't test my gear limits or skills or smarts. Just my ability to pump out big numbers, avoid hyper-damage abilities and weapons, and how much grind I'm willing to tolerate at the time.

I agree with that overall.

The issue with the Lich system is that there is very little player agency, players have no say in if they die while trying to kill the Lich, players had no say in even making one (as far as I know DE fixed or is fixing this) and players had no choice in dealing with their Lich other than letting it level up and make a mess of the rest of the game.

But the thing that baffles me most of all are the people demanding punishments for people who don't like the system or demanding that they go solo, rather than the simpler solution of just actually fixing what is causing players to ignore their Lichs in the first place.

[MirageKnight]

 

15 hours ago, Aldain said:

The issue with the Lich system is that there is very little player agency

These days, player agency feels like a dying myth.

15 hours ago, Aldain said:

rather than the simpler solution of just actually fixing what is causing players to ignore their Lichs in the first place.

That would be be too obvious.

15 hours ago, Aldain said:

But the thing that baffles me most of all are the people demanding punishments for people who don't like the system

What also baffles me are people that are vehemently opposed to a "peace offering" option. Someone actually said an option like that felt wrong because being able to skip out it was "cheating". Whatever.

It would give overwhelmed / disinterested players a way out and players that want to farm LIches ad-infinitum can simply and completely ignore that option with no harm done.

An absolute Win-win for all concerned.

 

[Mach25]

1 hour ago, MirageKnight said:

 

What also baffles me are people that are vehemently opposed to a "peace offering" option. Someone actually said an option like that felt wrong because being able to skip out it was "cheating". Whatever.

It would give overwhelmed / disinterested players a way out and players that want to farm LIches ad-infinitum can simply and completely ignore that option with no harm done.

An absolute Win-win for all concerned.

 

Agreed; however, the merits of the solution aren't the problem - it's the fact that you disagree with someone, that is the problem. /s

I won't be doing this Lich system until this is resolved.

[MirageKnight]

With regard to the actual fight with the Lich itself, I'd like to elaborate on my original suggestion for allowing it to be beaten (although not permanently) by normal means. Attempting a jab with the Parazon without the right mod sequence or any mods should not result in the player getting K.O.'d, nor should it automatically level up the Lich. Instead, it has the Lich initiate an emergency teleport escape so it can fight another day.

In addition, the Lich should only be able to level up if it defeats the player in an actual fight. We level our weapons and 'Frames by defeating enemies. It should be no different with a Lich. When the Lich defeats a player, it teleports away and levels up. When it levels up, it only reclaims the nodes you previously cleared but doesn't spread further.

[Aldain]

48 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

Attempting a jab with the Parazon without the right mod sequence or any mods should not result in the player getting K.O.'d, nor should it automatically level up the Lich. Instead, it has the Lich initiate an emergency teleport escape so it can fight another day.

In addition, the Lich should only be able to level up if it defeats the player in an actual fight. We level our weapons and 'Frames by defeating enemies. It should be no different with a Lich. When the Lich defeats a player, it teleports away and levels up. When it levels up, it only reclaims the nodes you previously cleared but doesn't spread further.

Put me down for supporting this entire set of words with every drop of blood in my body.

...As if it weren't obvious from my words in other threads though.

[MirageKnight]

8 minutes ago, Aldain said:

..As if it weren't obvious from my words in other threads though.

 It was VERY obvious, trust me. Thanks for popping in and giving this thread some support!

Getting the devs to revise the whole Nemesis / Lich system to be more consistent, fair, logical, and respectful of player time and effort is as much of an uphill battle as dealing with a Lich itself...if not more-so. Still, it's the right thing to do.

 

[tomrair]

Am 5.11.2019 um 18:39 schrieb MirageKnight:

That's assuming it's not happening already. It would be interesting to see active player counts for the last few days...

You can get a pretty good picture of what's going on here: https://steamcharts.com/app/230410#1y

These are of course just the steam charts which don't include the consoles or the people on PC that start WF right from the game launcher. Still, they represent a large portion of the player base and as such give a valid data basis.

According to these numbers, over the last 6 months WF hast lost about 50% of its players.

To put that into perspective: That means essentially that the gains in player numbers that were made since october 2017, when warframe managed cross the 100.000 player mark, and that were maintained until about august 2019 have been lost now. As today, WF is back to the player numbers it had in 2016 and early 2017. The latest updates have created short bursts of player interest, but especially after update 26 player numbers have declined just as rapidly again, meaning that the latest peaks were just that - short bursts, nothing more. As a comparison, WF's closest competitor Destiny 2 has seen a comparable decline, but on average has still double the amount of players as WF.

I think it's abundantly clear that Warframe is in a crisis at the moment. The desaster of update 26 is a clear indication that something is going seriously wrong at DE, since no well-managed studio would have released such a mess. Bugs are certainly normal when games get changed, but those in U26 were just ridiculous, and the game design of the Kuva Liches is clearly half-baked and rushed. Right now, DE is just scrambling to repair the damage.

While one bad update could be written off as just an accident, the much more fundamental problem is that WF is not a game anymore that you play for the excitement and experience it gives you - nowadays the whole game is just all about getting stuff for the sake of getting stuff. Other games, like for example Diablo 3, have a considerable amount of grind, too, but they offer enough content - and challenges! - to provide their players with actual fun for years.

Of course, that doesn't mean that WF is doomed. Maybe this is just the normal loss of players that every game experiences over time. Maybe DE decided that the old, relatively short update cycles were only sustainable for a relatively small indy game, but now that WF has become much more complex, they need to switch over to the longer, basically 6-12 month update cycles that the bigger games have always had. Only that, if this should indeed be the case, they have failed to communicate it to the player base, creating a mismatch between what the players expect and what DE is actually able to deliver.

DE still has the chance to save WF with the upcoming Empyrean and New War expansions. If, however, those do not bring a very substantial amount of new content to the game, i think we will all one day remember Halloween 2019 as the beginning of Warframe's decline into a long, slow death spiral.

Edited November 8, 2019 by tomrair
typo