Getting a duplicate Kuva weapon is one of the worst feeling in Warframe

[Bakaguya-sama]

I really try to like this Kuva lich system. I think there's some good quality to it. I certainly enjoy the increased difficulty (mobs die in more than 1 hit for example), and fighting a Lich solo (not cheesing using Mesa or Revenant) is some of the most fun times I had in Warframe.
But duplicate weapons just completely kills it. It is burning out my will to play Warframe faster than anything else. Like how many times has this happen:

  You popped a larvaling, hurried back to your ship to find out what weapon you get and...

  Voila! A lich with no ephemera and carrying a worse version of a Kuva weapon I already have...

I just feel completely trapped. I know I'm gonna have to completely waste 2 or 3 more hours (minimum) get something I don't want, just for another chance at maybe getting the thing I want. I'm not a kid with 8 hours a day to burn on video games, so I want to make sure that the hours I can play actually bring me enjoyment and a sense of Pride and Accomplishment**TM.
I've heard about the upcoming change to prevent 2 kuva weapons in a row. It is a miniscule bandaid.  

Yes, I play the game only for the rewards. Getting good loots that make me hit the NPCs harder tickle my primate brain. That's the point of playing looter shooter games.

And to make things worse, the Kuva lich system is not something you can just do on the side. It requires you to dedicate your time in Warframe to completing it, as it is not connected to any other system in any meaningful way. Tier 5 relics might net you some Kuva and riven sliver, but the bulk of the time is spent on farming murmurs, and it doesn't give any other reward other than Kuva weapons.

Look at Eidolon, for example, a system that's also pretty time-consuming. It is not as bad, because you don't step into a 5x3 already knowing that you're gonna waste 50 minutes for nothing but a bunch trash arcanes. But even trash arcanes can sometimes be sold for a bit of plat. It also gives you eidolon shards which can be used to gain a large amount of Operator focus, so there is some consolidation prize.

No, I don't expect DE to just gift me every Kuva weapon with max elemental bonus and every ephemera with 0 work. This is a slippery slope strawman that does not constitute a valid argument. Again, statements like this show fundamental misunderstanding of the looter shooter game formula. I just want to be rewarded accordingly for the time I spent playing, that is all.  

There's some ways I believe that will fix the Lich system. Many of them are already implemented as "bugs" but were "fixed" out. If DE wants to keep their triple-layer RNG system, fine. But at least they can make it faster worth our time investments.  Suggestions:  

Quote

1. Change the amount of murmur required to unlock hints from 30/30/70 to 30/40/50 (130 to 120 total).  

2. Reinstate team reward for killing or attempting to kill a lich. 10 murmurs for the whole team like prior to the "fix".  

3. Lich's rage gain is doubled after 3 hints are unlocked. This should lead to a much faster rematch if the player guessed the order wrong.  

4. Reinstate the chance for kuva drop from killing thralls. 5% for 500 kuva drop per thralls.  

5. Remove Tier 5 relic drops from thralls. Make Kuva Siphon have a guaranteed chance to drop Tier 5 relics. Kuva Flood guaranteed to give Radiant Tier 5 Relic.  

1. This lead to faster lich cycles (lower murmur count, team farming lich spawns and better lich spawns). Each lich cycle should take no more than 2 hours of dedicated playtime.  
2. Kuva is a highly sought after resource in the late game. This serves as an adequate consolidation prize for farming murmur. The rate of getting Kuva this way remains lower than siphon and flood.  
3. I kinda liked doing siphon and flood to get relics. I think it's nice that we are able to farm kuva while getting relics at the same time, increasing the sense of reward. Having thralls drop Tier 5 relics make relics farming far too easy. By removing relics from thralls and make siphon guaranteed to drop relics, this will encourage player to do siphon more for both kuva and relics, and balancing out the fact that thralls gives kuva.  
 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Bakaguya-sama
Added Suggestions

[Oreades]

I think two things would solve this while allowing DE to retain ~2/3rds of the RNG

• Switching the Liches Weapon to a Token system (No Lich would feel like a waste of time because you would choose the weapon you got)
• Improving the Valance system to include a method of improving the elemental % of your current weapon even if the new weapons % is actually lower (So there would be a reason to go for duplicates and no duplicate would be worthless because there would always be some ammount of progression) Like maybe a fixed 5% or adopting the 2nd weapon value whichever is higher**.

They lose the weapon RNG but keep everything related to the Elemental Percentages.

They're essentially losing the weapon RNG with the proposed "Lich Trading" system anyhow.... it's just being obfuscated through additional layers of inconvenience while also being over complicated to the nines. 

 

 

**EG: Your elemental damage is 30%

• You get a duplicate weapon that has a 22% the New Valance system would take your current weapon to 35%
• You get a duplicate weapon that has a 33% the New Valance system would take your current weapon to 35%
• You get a duplicate weapon that has a 55% the New Valance system would take your current weapon to 55%

So there is always progression where the hops at least feel like "you're getting there" and the leaps are going to feel great.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Oreades

[Lokidus_Prime]

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.  A Kuva Lich hunt is very unrewarding given the amount of time spent grinding through several layers of RNG to defeat them.  Overall they need to give something more than just a Kuva Weapon + chance at an ephemera to give more of an incentive to hunt them in the first place.  The fix proposed in the dev workshop does nothing to resolve the issue of getting duplicate weapons with lower bonuses than your current one, which results in many unwanted liches due to there literally being nothing to gain from fighting it.  It will also do next to nothing to stop players from getting caught in RNG loops and makes the grind worse for players who actually want the same weapon to drop.  I hope that this is just the bare-bones testing for the system and that the Lich stuff will be more fully incorporated with the release of Railjack.  Regardless of how Railjack will affect the system, these issues (and ideally a few others) NEED to be addressed if players are going to be running this stuff long-term. 

 

[Bakaguya-sama]

1 hour ago, Lokidus_Prime said:

Overall they need to give something more than just a Kuva Weapon + chance at an ephemera to give more of an incentive to hunt them in the first place. 

I thought giving thralls a chance to drop kuva was perfect. Unfortunately DE deemed i a bug and removed it an hour after it was implemented.  

It would be nice if we're able to farm a small amount of kuva on the side while grinding for murmur.