How the Kuva Lich System SHOULD work

[BloodRavenCap]

It should go like this.

Instead of generating Liches by killing larvas, there will be about 15-20 Liches all the time, like in Shadow of War, some are in alliances, some are in rivalries with each other. This system becomes available after War Within, just like now.
Liches have their own spheres of influence, but they operate like lieutenants to the actual bosses of the planets. They can take some of your loot if you die at least two times in their nodes, but if you are doing missions without any problems, they just become more and more enraged. They can spawn in your missions if they are properly enraged and be killed right there or recruited. Either way, you and your squadmates get the blueprint for the weapon. But if you kill it, you also get some kind of artefact that acts like arcanes (I mean that it doesn't take a mod slot and is equipped separately): increasing health, shields, duration\efficiency\strength\range, sprint speed, parkour speed, affinity bonus (like in endless fissures), credit bonus, augments to your powers, straight up damage bonuses, but most importantly, elementals for Kuva weapons. About the last part: instead of getting the weapon with the bonus you want, you get "decaying mods", that only work on Kuva weapons and don't take mod space. They start to decay the minute you install them in any weapon. So, there won't be a problem, where you have to grind several dozens of Liches just to get the weapon with the bonus you want. You can get any bonus, but it works only for some time. So, other artifacts are time-limited too: they go on only for two or three days. And also, like in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you have a limit. For example, you can't equip more than four. But duplicates are melted together, so if you get a health booster twice, they add to each other. It creates an incentive to continue killing Liches, because the effects are temporary, but you still want to be on the top of your game. And if you are out of the game for some time, you still can get back pretty quickly by playing one-two days.

Even if you decide to recruit your Lich, everyone gets a splinter of artifact. Combine four or five - and you get a full one, so there is a really good incentive for players to help each other. Even if the guy decides to recruit the Lich and not to kill it, everyone still gets rewards for participation. So there is more point to hunting Liches together. Also, you can turn down difficulty for solo players, so taking down a Lich won't feel like a pain in the butt.

The main point I want to talk about: you don't have to have any Requiem mods to kill a Lich. You can take it down any time you want. But they are very tough, they have immunities, resistances and weaknesses. If you really want to prepare for the battle, you can kill three lieutenants of the Lich to learn about Lich's properties and powers. Sometimes even a group of 4 players can't take a buffed Lich down. And if you torture the Thralls for information, you can get a specific node just for killing Lich, where it's weaker than in usual missions - it also will mitigate a problem of Lich not spawning for players in missions.

You might be asking, what's the point in recruiting Liches, when they drop good artifacts. Well, you get a management system of your Liches, like in Shadow of War. You send them after each other in a special screen. They can steal resources, they can make reconnaissances to figure out enemy Lich's weaknesses or straight up challenge other Lich for battle. The same thing happens in "open world"-invasion style, where you can aid one of the sides of the conflict - or just try to kill two birds with one stone, betraying everyone.
If you send your Lich after the other without knowing its weaknesses, the battle will be severely harder and your Lich might die. But there is a chance of winning, so you can just do other stuff, while your Liches clean up the starchart of enemy influence for you. Or you can appoint them as your bodyguards, so they help you in your missions, when you press a specific button. They are really good as a supports, they have powers, they draw enemy's fire - so they can save your butt when you really need their help. But you can call for them only once in three-four missions, so you have to choose wisely. Also, they can passively collect resources while you are away from the game. Still, you have to decide very carefully when to call for them, because if they sustain too much damage and you abandon them in a mission, they can turn on you. But if you do the mission buddy-cop style, killing everything in your way, Lich can grow more fond of you. You will always have kind of a relationship bar with your Lich, where it is indicated how they think of you. The more you spend time with them, the more powerful they become, the more effective they start to do their missions. But you have to be on a lookout, because you don't want your powerful Lich to betray you, because it will be very hard to take it down in the future.

Do you think it's better than everything we have right now? I know that the grind is still there, but at least it's fair for everyone involved and it boosts the co-op spirit of the game.

Edited November 12, 2019 by BloodRavenCap

[Uhkretor]

6 minutes ago, BloodRavenCap said:

I know, title is a bit click-baity

And~ I'm gone. Whichever comes after is irrelevant.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Uhkretor

[BloodRavenCap]

Thanks, Uhkretor, your input is really appreciated and your opinion is invaluable 😥

[peterc3]

The idea is inspired by SoM, but they can't and won't wholesale recreate the entire system from the game.

[BloodRavenCap]

1 час назад, peterc3 сказал:

The idea is inspired by SoM, but they can't and won't wholesale recreate the entire system from the game.

Why though? If they can't do it properly, why even bother creating something half-baked and unfun?

[peterc3]

5 minutes ago, BloodRavenCap said:

Why though? If they can't do it properly, why even bother creating something half-baked and unfun?

This is Warframe, an existing game, and SoM was a brand new game to put it into.

Why would they put a new system into the game that is constantly getting changed and fixed? You find it not to be proper or fun, but that doesn't make it objective fact.

[BloodRavenCap]

1 час назад, peterc3 сказал:

Why would they put a new system into the game that is constantly getting changed and fixed?

Exactly because it's getting changed and fixed. Warframe has a good story of getting rid of some old bad desicions, mitigating grind and tying some previously useless systems together. Telling that "it's fine" when it's clearly not fine - and more than a half of playerbase thinks the same - it's not the way. We should - no, we must address the issues as fully as we can, so our voices could be heard. Just telling "your opinions is irrelevant" is straight up censoring.

If you don't want QoL - it's fine. But don't tell others how to feel, what to do and what to suggest. You think that realistically DE won't implement anything - but that mindset is the reason that allows the game to be in a disjointed state. You should push on, suggest your ideas - and if you don't have anything to say, at least don't demotivate the others.

[Unibot]

It should be yes, but it won't be. DE takes parts of a working system and implement them on their own as part of a game. The result is a wacky stapled frankenstein monster you play. The whole point of implementing kuva liches was to artificaly prolong gameplay through grind... as always... DE do not know the other way(s) to prolong gameplay, though it doesn't mean there aren't any. Its just what you have to deal with since... open beta ? Oh wait, its still open beta....
I don't really like the idea of temperal stuff, though warframe lacks in temporal buffs unattached to specific warframes.
I do like the idead of developing kuva lich system, though it probably won't happen(just look at archwing, howerdrive, focus system, gadgets, specters...). The best they can do is to break something that worked earlier by bringing meaningless elements and taking meaningfull away.

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, peterc3 said:

The idea is inspired by SoM, but they can't and won't wholesale recreate the entire system from the game.

Exacltly, least SoM had more to it then some bully who bothered only you. They show up, especially if your stalking around their grounds, not just some random map at how kuva liches pretty much work at the moment. Plus multiple of them can exist at a time for those SoM Orcs and what not. Sadly i never got the game, or never wanted to pay for it, but from what i recall on what i have seen:

• They weren`t solely after your neck so they could go after each other and rise in ranks as the ways they usually got stronger.
• They could literally betray each other to climb the ladder too, especially if you took one of them as your `agents`, to have a semi-sleeper-like agent to be ruthlessly cutting down the competition for you while your doing other things.
• You could actually shame the damn things and force them to level down, plus it would have a real impact on whether they leveled up or fell down, to where you could make them into a blubbering idiot that could be alot easier to deal with.

Anyway yeah, very sure i am rambling it a bit, but it honestly feels like they only looked at the very surface of maybe some trailer video of SoM and just took the closest thing that looks like a villain making system and grabbed only that. Since if it was more inspired by SoM i feel instead of us having to get kill codes to deal with the bugger, we should be hunting the murmurs to find the lich`s home or something along those lines and just straight up ambush him into a kind of assassin`s creed like style boss fight entry, plus any details we also pick up from the `thralls` would include his weaknesses, preferred actions they like todo (such as do they prefer to keep distance or try to constantly rush you?) and knowing such from the thralls, would let us know what to bring for that final confrontation to significantly make the fight easier.

Honestly, now that i am thinking that deep for it, i wish D.E. never included relics or requiem mods for the thing, it really should of just been like this:

1. They show up to give us a bad time, likely as a nearly unkillable enemy (running away like stalker if you manage to whittle their health down).
2. We do a one time only quest to gain the ability to scan for kuva lich essence by getting some special parts, similar to how we got the orbiter add-ons in the beginning of the game.
3. We chase after those `lich influence bubbles` to gain say, 5 to 8 segments of details to figure what planet, tile set type, mission type, weapon preferences, combat type behaviors, etc. by interrogating kuva lich thralls by stabbing our parazon into their spines(style points honestly) and get to fill out a spread sheet on what lich is fking with us this time.
4. If we do the right mission node, we can get a prompt and special generated section in the map which would be the Den of the Kuva lich and if we were to hack into that room (aka are the only ones who can break into it as part of the lock for it), we can then start the boss fight against the Kuva Lich.
5. Take down the lich, decide either mercy or vanquish to decide what we get. Plus just make it in either case we get his weapon, but if we give him mercy we get a huge cache of resources and then get to decide if they are left alone or have to be our mysterious stranger from now on. Though if we vanquish him, we get a huge amount of kuva and then a self destruct sequence could start for that den where if we do not get out of that room, everyone in it gets killed and the room gets locked off afterwards, basically acting as the `excuse` on why we couldnt loot the resources after we killed the kuva lich.

Certainly would be alot more fun, still have some grind in it, but instead of bouncing between 4 systems, its a straight path to finding this annoying bugger and decide if we give them a chance for having some bravado unlike most other `grunts` or we just shank them dead like the rest, cept they get to enjoy a flourish of death to them, instead of the usual gun to the head.

Course if it sounds like that would be way too quick, they could always lock it to where you can`t spawn the den itself, if you do not know at least 3 outta 4 of the 8 or so special clues about the lich, such as the planet, the tile set and tid bits that hint what kind of mission you would have to be doing (aka the specific node) that you might find them frequenting around.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Avienas

[BloodRavenCap]

8 часов назад, Avienas сказал:

Sadly i never got the game, or never wanted to pay for it

Skip Shadow of Mordor, go right to Shadow of War. It's a really good game with unique system and interesting gameplay loop. After playing it, you'll see the Lich system in a different perspective. You'll see exactly why it doesn't work. 

8 часов назад, Avienas сказал:

Anyway yeah, very sure i am rambling it a bit, but it honestly feels like they only looked at the very surface of maybe some trailer video of SoM and just took the closest thing that looks like a villain making system and grabbed only that.

That's the thing, even if they only looked at the trailers, they should have seen various options the system has. Not only current Lich system is barebones, it also is unnecessary grindy and unbalanced.

8 часов назад, Avienas сказал:

Since if it was more inspired by SoM i feel instead of us having to get kill codes to deal with the bugger, we should be hunting the murmurs to find the lich`s home or something along those lines and just straight up ambush him into a kind of assassin`s creed like style boss fight entry

Again, in that game you didn't have to collect information at all. There were missions on the map indicating that warchiefs are up to something - and it was up to you to go unprepared or to make some reconnaissance first. Bruteforcing actually was a viable method of playing.

Honestly, don't like your other ideas. As I said, check out Shadow of War. Just look how they've done dynamic boss hunts. You'll understand why everything you proposed are just unnecessary complications.

[Avienas]

7 hours ago, BloodRavenCap said:

-snip-

I can understand my ideas were not the best of things, but part of my intent was to think of a way the kuva liches could be done, WITHOUT needing to involve the dang relic system. Even the fact they could not just let us straight up farm the requeim mods from endless kuva fortress missions, without the need of relics, is silly enough where if i recall, D.E. has been working on this system for a very long time. Then thought it was a good idea to have something that has a singular reward only, with what is basically triple-quintuple-moretuple the grind, compared to chasing a single entire prime set. Least you had plenty of other things you could also get in more recent systems like disruption, plus they had ones that catered to specific items one wants.

Especially since they had no problem having gas city mods jammed into the rotation tables of disruption, low drop rates for gauss parts in another disruption map and the lua lens in another map with a sprinkling of universal medallions amongst them, as a so called `reverse jackpot` reward that you might as well get derped by getting a item that has little use and seems to show up often despite its low drop rate.

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by Avienas

[BloodRavenCap]

5 часов назад, Avienas сказал:

I can understand my ideas were not the best of things, but part of my intent was to think of a way the kuva liches could be done, WITHOUT needing to involve the dang relic system

No, I agree that we should be able to kill the Lich without Requiems, that's like what my original post is all about.

I just don't like your suggestions about the way how we should track down the Lich, etc. No offense.

[BloodRavenCap]

I just LOVE how with the current trading system you still have to go through the Liches you didn't want. Like, I really LOVE it /s

[Ailith]

I've been solo grinding my first Lich off and on for the last two weeks and it's one of the most un-fun things I've ever done in Warframe (and I've been playing since early 2013). It's so ridiculously tedious to farm Thralls for what feels like a hundred murmurs, to farm Kuva missions for requiem relics, then run dozens fissures only to get the wrong requiem mods over and over. I don't even care about the weapons, I just want the Lich to stop taking my mission rewards and talking to me non-stop every time I enter my ship.

I know an overhaul of OP's scale will never happen, but it sounds 1000x more enjoyable than the system we have right now.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Ailith

[BloodRavenCap]

So, Reb confirmed on the devstream that Requiem system is staying in and moreover - players will still die if they get the wrong combination.

WHY

Edited November 22, 2019 by BloodRavenCap