Should lich assassination be its own mission?

[motorfirebox]

Seems like splitting the actual final lich encounter into a separate mission would fix a lot of the issues, and would also make the entire lich system feel more player-driven. As it stands, the lich controls basically the entire gameplay loop aside from the initial spawn. The lich hunts the player and the player just facerolls around waiting for their lich to show up (and getting justifiably mad when their lich is lichblocked by someone else).

Making lich assassination its own mission solves all of that, at the possible expense of making it basically impossible to pug. If you want help with your lich, you'd have to form a group. But that seems... right, honestly. The showdown between you and your mortal enemy should be personal.

What it shouldn't be is a massive explosionfest that occurs while you're on the way to do something else. Which is what we have now.

Liches can and should show up in missions, and you should be able to try out your glyph combinations on them, but they should survive and leave regardless of whether you're successful or not. And that would create an opportunity to solve the one-at-a-time bottleneck: ANYBODY should be able to mercy a lich, using their own lich's glyph combo. The lich is going to survive and escape regardless, so it matters less who get "kill".

Another option that would allow pugging is for the assassination mission to spawn EVERYONE'S lich for the boss encounter, all at once.

[Pizzarugi]

I dunno, I like the idea of having my lich showing up to attack me in the middle of an otherwise ordinary mission. It adds to them being my nemesis who is trying to stop me from doing Tenno things. In fact, I'd like it if they showed up in missions outside of their influence to further add to them being my rival. I'd dig having one jump me in the middle of a sortie assassination!

What needs to be done about people bottlenecking Lich spawns is to give players reason to mercy them. Right now, there's nothing to be gained from getting killed and having them rank up in a failed attempt at executing them. They get better resistances/immunities and their influenced missions get higher leveled, but there's nothing to benefit the player. Lich finishers should force the player into bleedout rather than outright killing them (if they're playing in public), and add rewards for having higher ranks. Increase thrall spawns without Liches being present as well.

[motorfirebox]

1 hour ago, Pizzarugi said:

I dunno, I like the idea of having my lich showing up to attack me in the middle of an otherwise ordinary mission. It adds to them being my nemesis who is trying to stop me from doing Tenno things. In fact, I'd like it if they showed up in missions outside of their influence to further add to them being my rival. I'd dig having one jump me in the middle of a sortie assassination!

What needs to be done about people bottlenecking Lich spawns is to give players reason to mercy them. Right now, there's nothing to be gained from getting killed and having them rank up in a failed attempt at executing them. They get better resistances/immunities and their influenced missions get higher leveled, but there's nothing to benefit the player. Lich finishers should force the player into bleedout rather than outright killing them (if they're playing in public), and add rewards for having higher ranks. Increase thrall spawns without Liches being present as well.

The lich could still show up mid-mission, it's just that instead of only you being able to parazon him, anyone could do it (thus negating the issue of players not dealing with their lich, preventing other players' liches from spawning). 'Killing' a lich mid-mission would just drive it away. To actually finish it, you'd have to hunt down its assassination node.

Edited November 4, 2019 by motorfirebox