Lich Improvements

[redeyedtreefrog]

First, I'd like to say that, as a whole, I'm rather enjoying this kuva lich update. The system gets a few things right, namely, a way to ensure players experience a good mix of mission variety. Because you have to play multiple nodes(generally) in order to get even a single complete murmur, and those nodes can only be played once, it means you're unlikely to be able to get everything you need from just a single mission type. This is refreshing, as a lot of content in warframe is most quickly/easily completed by rerunning a certain mission type, or even sometimes a certain NODE in order to get the most xp/most credits/most spawns of a certain enemy type/best chance at relic x on rotation y.

But, not everything about the system is perfect. The one that sticks out to me, and based on the people I've talked to, a lot of others, is how lichs interact with you passively, eg. when you're not actively hunting them.

They steal your stuff. That's it.

Not that I mind them stealing mission rewards; it incentivizes killing your lich eventually, and means that you'll get a sizable payday at the end of it all. (Think of this like a tax return: most people dislike taxes, sure, but far fewer people dislike the tax returns they get at the end of the year...). But, this is the only thing they do to interact with you passively. As near as I can tell, thralls and liches don't spawn in regular missions. Thus, the only way to go after your lich is to do his controlled nodes, which doesn't synergize well with normal gameplay, since these missions aren't fissures, or sorties, or arbitrations, or any other kind of content at all, and since thralls stop spawning after a certain amount of time/kills(a design choice that I only begrudgingly agree with), you can't do deep endless runs for xp/resources/mission rotation drops and still get murmur. So, the only way to get rid of a kuva lich is to focus entirely on him, and the alternate is let him passively leech your rewards and do nothing otherwise.

To fix this, your lich should interact with normal missions more. In a grineer mission? You just might find a few of his thralls scuttling about the map; not a large number, to keep his controlled nodes still worth playing, but more than 0. Make your lich send death squads after you when he's just mildly annoyed at you (like syndicates), and once you butcher a couple of those squads he comes at you in person, like stalker, although I think he should be much more common. After all, stalker has thousands of tenno and only so much time; your kuva lich has only one person to worry about, and that person is you.

I've also heard a lot of people talking about the fact that you don't ever really kill your lich except twice. While this doesn't bother me too much, I think it would still be a lot cooler if you could fight your kuva lich with the incorrect mods, and instead of him levelling up by killing you, he levels up by you killing him. Fight him with no mods = he will eventually flee, fight him with the incorrect or incomplete mods and you can kill him, but he gets stronger. Fight him with the correct mods, and he dies permanently. In addition, I feel as if kuva liches should reward a moderate amount of kuva when you kill them. After all, they look like they might be a solid 20% kuva. We can collect large quantities by just zooping through loose clouds of it, so why can't we make use of it when it's a concentrated liquid? It also means you'll get a real reward out of them, as opposed to just unlocking the resources they stole, since you DID work for those rewards once already.

[Silta]

21 minutes ago, redeyedtreefrog said:

I've also heard a lot of people talking about the fact that you don't ever really kill your lich except twice. While this doesn't bother me too much, I think it would still be a lot cooler if you could fight your kuva lich with the incorrect mods, and instead of him levelling up by killing you, he levels up by you killing him. Fight him with no mods = he will eventually flee, fight him with the incorrect or incomplete mods and you can kill him, but he gets stronger. Fight him with the correct mods, and he dies permanently. In addition, I feel as if kuva liches should reward a moderate amount of kuva when you kill them. After all, they look like they might be a solid 20% kuva. We can collect large quantities by just zooping through loose clouds of it, so why can't we make use of it when it's a concentrated liquid? It also means you'll get a real reward out of them, as opposed to just unlocking the resources they stole, since you DID work for those rewards once already.

I agree heavily on this, I was expecting to be able to actually kill the lich but no you can;t. He just insta kills you for improper mods. I want to defeat him on the off-hand and have him return stronger.

[DaftMeat]

59 minutes ago, Silta said:

I agree heavily on this, I was expecting to be able to actually kill the lich but no you can;t. He just insta kills you for improper mods. I want to defeat him on the off-hand and have him return stronger.

This is what I was hoping for as well. I felt it was just very anticlimactic when I first tried a finisher and got instant-killed because WHOOPS that's an intentional mechanic that really isn't addressed clearly in-game under the tutorial (it says "battle X to determine the correct sequence" not "die to X to determine the correct sequence").

Plus, it's just not a very intuitive system and it's self-defeating to just have an enemy that you just have to flat-out avoid. Every public match I've played so far, I ignore the Lich since I don't have everything I need to beat him, but teammates swarm all over him while I'm left alone trying to take care of the actual mission objectives.

[Silta]

18 minutes ago, DaftMeat said:

Every public match I've played so far, I ignore the Lich since I don't have everything I need to beat him, but teammates swarm all over him while I'm left alone trying to take care of the actual mission objectives.

The problem when you do that is you lock the other players out of their Kuva Lich spawns. We had one guy who refused to die to his lich while another player claims they had the right combination of mods to kill theirs. So we all got annoyed at the guy who didn't die to his lich, because he locked the other players from trying to kill theirs.

It's a very flawed system and people have no incentive/intention to die/try to kill their lich. Rebb said on twitter they will change this in the next update to make it so you get more murmur progress on an attempt.

[DaftMeat]

14 hours ago, Silta said:

The problem when you do that is you lock the other players out of their Kuva Lich spawns. We had one guy who refused to die to his lich while another player claims they had the right combination of mods to kill theirs. So we all got annoyed at the guy who didn't die to his lich, because he locked the other players from trying to kill theirs.

It's a very flawed system and people have no incentive/intention to die/try to kill their lich. Rebb said on twitter they will change this in the next update to make it so you get more murmur progress on an attempt.

Exactly my point. I just wanted murmurs, others wanted a different kind of progress, and there's no way to control it in public matches. The current setup is really geared for solo runs or pre-made squads. 😕

[redeyedtreefrog]

16 hours ago, Silta said:

The problem when you do that is you lock the other players out of their Kuva Lich spawns. We had one guy who refused to die to his lich while another player claims they had the right combination of mods to kill theirs. So we all got annoyed at the guy who didn't die to his lich, because he locked the other players from trying to kill theirs.

It's a very flawed system and people have no incentive/intention to die/try to kill their lich. Rebb said on twitter they will change this in the next update to make it so you get more murmur progress on an attempt.

This is one of the major problems with the current system, since players who either don't have the gear or don't have the desire to fight a stronger lich will potentially penalize players. Additionally, some people prefer keeping the lich around as he can increase murmur gain with more thralls. Personally, as someone with the means to take down a rank 5 lich, albeit slower than a rank 1, I always take the gamble that maybe, just maybe, I have one or more of the right mods equipped on my parazon right now. While I can't blame someone who doesn't want to gamble and keep a weaker lich around, when I'm at 2/3 murmurs known I'm all about that 1 in 6 chance of guessing the third mod... a chance I can't get if someone else's lich stays around for the entire mission. Once, it happened in a mobile defense mission, where a player refused to kill their lich when I personally had the right mods to kill my lich, and someone else was at 2/3 and willing to test a mod out. If nothing else changes, this conflict of interests between players needs a second look.

[Silta]

4 minutes ago, redeyedtreefrog said:

Once, it happened in a mobile defense mission, where a player refused to kill their lich when I personally had the right mods to kill my lich,

This happened to me just an hour ago, A player refused to kill/face his lich after I and another player explicitly stated we had the right mods to kill ours but he just ignored us and waited at extraction forcing the rest of us to go. It honestly ticked me off because all he said was: "Ignore him" (In regards to the lich)

 

This will surely start a divide and fights in games now

[DaftMeat]

Lots of people argue "Just fail to execute and die, you get 4 revives so it's not a big deal", but that attitude alone proves it's not a great system: If the insta-kill isn't really a major consequence, then why is it even in there? It just interrupts the game's fast pace, like a speedbump in the middle of an express highway.

 

I still feel that failure to execute the Lich should just "wound" them and drive them off instead of arbitrarily killing the player.

Edited November 8, 2019 by DaftMeat

[EinheriarJudith]

1 hour ago, DaftMeat said:

Lots of people argue "Just fail to execute and die, you get 4 revives so it's not a big deal", but that attitude alone proves it's not a great system: If the insta-kill isn't really a major consequence, then why is it even in there? It just interrupts the game's fast pace, like a speedbump in the middle of an express highway.

 

I still feel that failure to execute the Lich should just "wound" them and drive them off instead of arbitrarily killing the player.

pretty much this. they copied the nemesis system from shadows of mordor/war but left out all the things that makes the nemesis system good.