It only took 2 weeks for people to lose interest in Kuva Lich gameplay

[DoomFruit]

26 minutes ago, Aadi880 said:

Beta is not limited to people who are outsourced to test their build. Video games do have "open beta" phase where the software is made public and used, where the players are used to give feedback and find bugs. One example would be Ironsight, which is still in open beta for over 2 years. (that game was released in 2014, only to die and come back again in 2017-ish).

That is what they might call it, but that is neither a correct usage of the term "beta test" nor is it a good thing to do. It is also not applicable to this game, as there are many outstanding bugs, balancing issues and general problems which have been reported over the years and have been completely ignored. Again, beta testers are kept in the loop. If they raise issues, the devs will respond saying "yes, we're working on it", "this will take longer to fix" or "no, that's how it's supposed to be". Complete silence is not a professional response to one's beta testers, so the two conclusions here are either a) we aren't the beta testers, or b) DE are completely unprofessional.

29 minutes ago, Aadi880 said:

Players are better in finding bugs than the staff are, simply because there is a power in numbers. 200k+ people are more likely to find bugs than 300-400 employees. This is common practice when game developers plan to release new content that they never introduced before. If you meant something else and I misunderstood this or the other quote, do tell me.

You'd think so, but there have been many many many cases where they threw parts of the game at us which were obviously defective from the start. Stuff that if it ever got past alpha testing, would have been covered in giant red warnings saying "WIP, do not release, known issues". Examples: almost every single melee stance interfering with your movement (something which directly contradicts their stated goals) and sanctuary onslaught being literally impossible to complete solo except perhaps for one very specific perfect minmax build saryn.

Then there are other issues that would have been shown up in even a few minutes playtesting. Those being the autoblock system interfering with everything that you do (and if you're in the air, getting forced to aimglide), melee breaking scanners/fishing/mining (while this was fixed, it took a full half year) and forced melee equipping breaking your alt-fire.

Sensible game devs, if they do present their changes to the public, do it in the form of a separate beta version (and server, if applicable). See: Planetside 2, which has a separate test server and build with its own patch notes (https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php. Yeah, PS2 is not the best example right now - the game is dying due to a rampant flood of script kiddy cheaters and the inclusion of this stupid killcam mechanic which nobody asked for and almost everybody hates, but it did quite well for a long time.

[SneakyErvin]

49 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

From the steam data: 3.8% at rank 17, 0.9% have made a lich. As already mentioned, MR17 is only a guess for what counts as "endgame" based upon what the highest MR locked item is. If you're counting total players, you want the 0.9% number.

Again, if you have another source, then list it here. We're using steam data because it's all we have.

Yeah 0.9% equals 25% of the active playerbase that have spawned a lich. That is all that the info tells us. The 3.8% at rank 17 matters very little because it isnt tied to liches, it only means that near 700000 players have reached MR17. It doesnt tell us when, it doesnt tell us if they are active, it only tells us how many have reached that point on Steam out of the 18m+ "accounts" since release. So it really has no bearing on the number of liches which is just based on total players.

The number of liches sit at a minimum of 25% created out of the whole playerbase, that percentage increases when you pinpoint it towards the group that is endgame ready, since it is obviously a smaller group compared to the whole playerbase. Unless of course you claim all active players are endgame ready at which point the percentage would still be 25% i.e 1/4th out of the playerbase. But everyone being endgame ready is very very unlikely, so we are looking at a number higher than 25% when it comes to spawned liches.

[Ssalem]

I made the mistake of creating one a week ago. At first I was really excited because I thought having a personal arch-nemesis was really cool. However the murmur farm was an absolute slogfest, which I'd like to never experience ever again. Then came the relic farming which wasn't that bad. However the fact that I have to waste 100's of traces on them is. And the rewards are frankly insulting, and haven't gotten anything of value from them.

So 4 relics later I still haven't got a single requiem mod. My lich controls like 5 planets. I'd need to farm requiem relics again. Then traces. Then hope I get a few mods.

It's killing all my motivation to play this game.

[Oreades]

Honestly speaking you're better off not bothering to upgrade the Kuva Relics at all. 

I've taken to using the relics as a great source of traces because they aren't worth upgrading at all. Then I use those traces on relics that I actually care about (read: literally anything else)

[Miser_able]

Yea... The relics aren't worth making radiant. I run most of mine at flawless. That extra 2% chance for a mod isn't worth the 50 traces. 

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I am really glad this is an opt in mechanic, because from everything I've read up till now It feels like I've made the correct choice in simply avoiding the Lich system. Perhaps DE will ecru enough feedback and they alter course, but currently all I'm seeing is it is no big loss on avoiding this from all accounts.

[Miser_able]

17 minutes ago, Ssalem said:

 However the fact that I have to waste 100's of traces on them is. And the rewards are frankly insulting, and haven't gotten anything of value from them.

So 4 relics later I still haven't got a single requiem mod.  Then hope I get a few mods.

Are you running the fissures solo? Every single time I've run a public requiem fissure someone got a mod. And if it was a mod I already had, I could trade it for what I want. 

[BDMblue]

Play with people..... just open your relic hunt to games with randoms and get it done. I did the relics when you had to do a Kuva flood. Now you have no reason at all to complain it’s easy. Even with floods it was easy. If you gimp your game by just playing solo accept you did this to your self.

[Methanoid]

27 minutes ago, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

I am really glad this is an opt in mechanic, because from everything I've read up till now It feels like I've made the correct choice in simply avoiding the Lich system. Perhaps DE will ecru enough feedback and they alter course, but currently all I'm seeing is it is no big loss on avoiding this from all accounts.

from what i can tell its just yet again their latest disposable "content", in this case i take it for lich weapons, and like all their other disposable content, once you have the thinsg you need and enough timegating has achieved its desired results you never have a reason to go back to that "content" ever again.  +1 for avoiding this.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Methanoid

[-DG-ShadowPrime]

3 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

On PC, yeah. On console... who knows how many releases behind they've been until now.

 

Ahh, okay. They should be getting it today I believe.

[Oreades]

15 minutes ago, Methanoid said:

from what i can tell its just yet again their latest disposable "content", in this case i take it for lich weapons, and like all their other disposable content, once you have the thinsg you need and enough timegating has achieved its desired results you never have a reason to go back to that "content" ever again.  +1 for avoiding this.

It actually makes me sad because I wouldn't mind grinding this a ton if they just made a few tweaks. None of which they have even come close to, some have been almost in the right direction but stop well short of actually solving the problem. 

[RamPuppy]

45 minutes ago, Ssalem said:

Then came the relic farming which wasn't that bad.

 

46 minutes ago, Ssalem said:

So 4 relics later I still haven't got a single requiem mod.

I'm sorry - this made me laugh a little.    I'm also not saying the Kuva Lich system couldn't use some refinement, cause it definitely can.  My personal theory is that DE has been slogging away at Railjack and The New War and that update 26 had to happen to lay the groundwork for those changes - and at some point they went "Oh )!@#$)(!!! We don't have any content for Update 26!" So they ripped the Kuva Lich system out of Railjack and gave it to us as we see it now.  The reason I say that is that the system to me feels very incomplete, truly more so than just bad design - it feels like there were little tendrils of connectivity to other systems in the game that are just flopping in the breeze all alone because they haven't delivered yet.

All that being said - I probably put an hour in a day in the game, and I run pubs, or w/ my clan, but a few solos - and I can grind a lich out in 3 or 4 days at most.  The only time the system really annoys me is when it refuses to give me a larva to kill, but I think I have now found a way consistently around that.  (May seem stupid - but when I don't get a larva to spawn on my PC, I just log out, log on to my laptop - and I usually have one killed within a single run on Titan.)

Oh - and I agree - radiant is a waste of traces. 

[Methanoid]

Just now, Oreades said:

It actually makes me sad because I wouldn't mind grinding this a ton if they just made a few tweaks. None of which they have even come close to, some have been almost in the right direction but stop well short of actually solving the problem. 

Most of the terrible decisions they make is due to the echo chamber they live in, only taking their own opinions or the small group of "friends" they have that voice their own opinions while disregarding the opinions of the larger majority of players, resulting in the mess we have had for a long time.

DE still rock when it comes to story+cinematics, unfortunatly we cant "play" those things, only watch them once, digest them and thats it done and dusted, they are good at updating their graphics engine and their sound team is probably the best of the lot of them, their sounds/music are always first class, its just a shame the innovation side of things has been  kneecapped since 2014 with lots of un-warframe like additions meant to appease players of different genres of games rather than the actual warframe fans who just want to run, gun, hack n slash, you end up with fishing, mining, photography, pokemon catching and various other stupid additions which would be great as side things for cosmetics or other non essential things but when they are forced as main progression routes it just angers many people, esp the ones that want to ignore all that boring stuff.

[Methanoid]

On 2019-11-15 at 2:53 PM, White_Matter said:

70-80% of the lich nodes are half empty squads(or none), takes forever to find a group for a Rad Relic run. 

So people either gave up, or burned out already(because of the multiple layers of RNG not working in their favor).

Is this really the sustainable content we were looking for ? What went wrong ? 

because as usual its not "real" content, its another timegating mechanics to get weapons which you can disregard after that, so unless you are desperate for MR or badly need yet more variants of existing weapons then whats the point, and in true DE style its yet another bolted in confusing overcomplicated mess of a system.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Methanoid

[Monolake]

40 minutes ago, Methanoid said:

because as usual its not "real" content, its another timegating mechanics to get weapons which you can disregard after that, so unless you are desperate for MR or badly need yet more variants of existing weapons then whats the point, and in true DE style its yet another bolted in confusing overcomplicated mess of a system.

Indeed there is no new gameplay besides the guessing game, you just run 10-20 exterminates for 2-3 hrs rushing to the conveniently marked thralls, poke your lich (if it even bothers to spawn) and thats it. No wonder it got old quick. Not only it's repetitive and tedious, it's OLD gameplay everyone had done 100s times - same old missions. Adding few marked targets to them is not enough. 

Not even an option to run endless to farm thralls in it (since they stop spawning)

[(NSW)zari10zero]

Just Feed the RNG GRIND MONSTER since it has worked for 6 years. Pile it on upon pile and pile . Doesn't matter if Rng and Grind is too extreme.

Do not bother to streamline the game for more enjoyable experiences. Just waste a year on a meaningless upgrade that no nobody wants.

Doesn't matter if no one agrees.

Feed it until it explodes in Dev's faces 

[(NSW)zari10zero]

Btw. We can nerf the Kuva weapons in a later update. Cos that what we do.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

It sets RNG repetitive grinding as "content". And this update has nothing but "content".😂

Personally, I like some of the content in Warframe - I enjoy endless survival, the occasional Eidolon, the occasional relic run.

I enjoyed the comradery of the raids, playing with friends.  This update has little content for me where activating a lich ties one to hours of farming to unlock a trash weapon I don't want (that needs 5 forma to get XP from 🙄)

I do like that the missions start at higher levels - but the whole RNG requiem relic/mod cr*p, the artificial auto-kill without them with no game play recourse feels like a job not a game.

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

It needs a lot of polish.  That being said, as someone who's a long time player from the games that this system is based off of (aka nemisis system) it's something you're going to grow tired of because the setup itself of making an interesting enemy to fight is only fun the first dozen or so times.  Then the tedious things you have to do and go through in order to craft a perfect enemy that's challenging yet fun to fight against is going to take it's pound of flesh from you.

It's an amazingly fun and cool concept and I was excited that DE was trying their hand at that type of system.  But it's deffinitely not something that will give most players the longevity they want.

[EmberStar]

7 hours ago, OmegaDonut said:

I just put the person who doesn’t poke their lich on ignore after the mission.  I’m hoping it means I won’t group up with them again and quite frankly don’t want to. 

It doesn't, as far as I know.  It mutes them in chat, but seems to have no effect on matchmaking.  Or at least, I've been dropped into groups with people i know I just ignored, because they're part of the only available team playing on the node.  (Usually Hydron on Sedna, which is one of the few places where I do team.  Mostly when I just want to finish leveling something so I can polarize it and just want to be done with it.)

[(PSN)robotwars7]

3 hours ago, Ssalem said:

It's killing all my motivation to play this game.

I can see why, but I think part of the reason for Lich burnout is because - as people usually do - they're trying to rush it. yes, you can argue the Lich starts taking over a ton of nodes but the taxes are negligible (my Lich steals a few hundred credits, oh Noooo...), and just about everyone fighting Liches is at a point where they have abundant resources anyway. if you try to just go for Liches all the time it's gonna wear you down, so you should do something else for a little while instead, like farm regular relics, sorties, invasions or whatever. Liches aren't something that you have to do RIGHT NOW, they're a system you can opt in or out of whenever you want.

tomorrow my first lich, Joniss Mukk, will die. he's snapped my back about 6 times, but I don't take it personally, because eventually you get all 3 murmurs uncovered and then it's just a question of getting the order right. plus when they level up, they expand their influence to other planets, so you aren't on the same Tileset and the same mode all the time. I think they've done a pretty decent job overall. some room for improvement of course, I think the enemy spawns in Kuva Survival Fissure could be better, and RNG is a fickle mistress, and I do think that now we need another way of getting consistent void traces, but that's about it IMO.

 

[Vox_Preliator]

Check for and do Capture Floods/Siphons every now and then, you don't need to actually do the kuva part to get a Relic.  Soon enough you'll have more than enough, and once you have a bit of a buffer you'll be collecting more through Thralls than you're likely using.

Do Requiem Fissures with Flawless relics if you're going solo, two 17% percent chances is better than one 20% chance.  If you're going public, which I very much recommend despite not doing it myself, just use Intact ones.  Again, once you have a bit of a buffer of Requiem Mods it gets much better, I've been running solo Intact Requiem Fissures mostly for Void Traces and leveling things recently, and while I don't have a lot of spare mods I do have spares.

If you're up for trading, Requiem mods seem to be going for around 10-20 for an unused one.

Over a longer period of time, because a Requiem Mod comes with three pips and defeating a Lich uses three pips, it averages out to about one Requiem mod per Lich which really isn't bad at all, and being able to transmute Defiled ones improves the ratio slightly.

The beginning is far and above the worst part of the system no questions asked, but to be perfectly frank even at that point it isn't close to a bad grind as far as Warframe grinds go.

[(NSW)FlameDivinity]

On 2019-11-19 at 2:49 PM, ShadowExodus said:

Uhhh, gauss doesn't need a buff lol, he's fine as he is.

I was talking about his buffs which have yet to arrive on console 2 months later. Yes, he's fine in PC, but on console we are still spending 90% of our time running in circles instead of playing the actual game so he can build up his meter.

[Tuench]

Oh look, 5 Forma per weapon just to "level it out" for the codex. Massive RNG for the weapons and their stats. Huge murmur grind on the way just to be able to kill ur lich. Weapons we already have, just slightly better... thats what is reflecting here.

[Kaotyke]

On 2019-11-20 at 8:45 PM, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

(my Lich steals a few hundred credits, oh Noooo...)

Not just that. Can be a few other things, including.

My team laughed when he stole the Despair BP.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Kaotyke