Kuva Lich System Feedback

[Zueluca]

A little bit of feedback based on my experiences with the system so far.

Praise

- I like the personalized enemy and even the expansion of influence through the system. It makes it feel more like the game is alive with an adversary actively working against you. I would love to see a similar system in place once the New War starts for the villain groups there.

- I enjoy the new higher level missions, giving a reason to go back to old nodes and adding a sort of mystery solving element to the game.

Criticisms

- Liches can steal unique rewards if their influence is in a system. Mods, resources, and other common items I can understand, but blueprints, glyphs, relics (and their rewards) should be excluded to make the system less punishing (and to not discourage other, regular activities while dealing with a Lich). New weapons, ephemera, and reclaiming resource caches are enough of an incentive to want to hunt your Lich - trying to make a player angry at them by heavily discouraging other play patterns just makes a player frustrated with the game.

- Liches don't seem to do anything with the items they steal beyond hoard them. They feel more like Kuva Dragons. (This is the most minor criticism out of these)

- Other than defense style missions, your Kuva Lich spawning doesn't feel very momentous. The Gustag Three (for example) are interesting because they fundamentally change something about the objective or the playstyle. The Kuva Lich just feels like an overpowered enemy that will instantly kill you if you try to deal with it directly. This may be intentional, but the dichotomy of a Lich encounter being

1. They die, ends the system
2. You die, spreads influence
3. Ignore the enemy who adds nothing to the mission experience

Adding additional options for dealing with Liches in missions (trapping them, banishing them) when you're not ready to kill them would be a welcome change.

- There's a disconnect when doing public missions between players hunting murmers and players hunting their Liches. Since influence spreads when the Liches level (after killing you), there's no incentive to kill them in missions where they aren't threatening objective completion. Players without the incentive to kill their Liches then block other players who are in missions to try to kill their Liches from doing so. While this disconnect may work itself out in the player base over time, it leads to bad feelings between players when their goals in missions are at an impasse.

Overall

It's a really cool system that adds life to the game, but has some very punishing mechanics that can make regular play feel pointless until you can deal with the Lich. The system often feels like it takes away gameplay options when active rather than adding them.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Zueluca