This Man Made His Own Game To Show How The Kuva Liches Should Be Improved

[Hypernaut1]

3 hours ago, Skaleek said:

The difference is mostly assets, which they have in game (mostly). and yes because hes got a standalone game he doesn't have to go through the pain of integrating the code into Warframe. Still though... this isn't a very complex system.

Far far more than assets. Without even getting into the technical side, theory about how players will do something varies greatly from how they actually play when they get their hands on it. 

I'm not saying this idea isn't possibly better in some ways, but it's far too premature to sing it's praises and bag on devs that an almost armchair programmer outdid a whole team.

I'm sure it's much harder than you think to balance a game for min/maxers and players that go at the average pace. Those min/maxers also tend to be the most vocal and blow things out of proportion . 

Edited December 5, 2019 by Hypernaut1

[OniDax]

1 minute ago, Hypernaut1 said:

Far far more than assets. Without even getting into the technical side, theory about how players will do something bathes greatly from how they actually play when they get their hands on it. 

I'm not saying this idea isn't possibly better in some ways, but it's far too premature to sing it's praises and bag on devs that an almost armchair programmer outdid a whole team.

I'm sure it's much harder than you think to balance and mode for min/maxers and players that go at the average pace. Those min/maxers also tend to be the most vocal and blow things out of proportion . 

How is he an "almost armchair" programmer?

[Sitchrea]

Just now, Hypernaut1 said:

Far far more than assets. Without even getting into the technical side, theory about how players will do something bathes greatly from how they actually play when they get their hands on it. 

I'm not saying this idea isn't possibly better in some ways, but it's far too premature to sing it's praises and bag on devs that an almost armchair programmer outdid a whole team.

I'm sure it's much harder than you think to balance and mode for min/maxers and players that go at the average pace. Those min/maxers also tend to be the most vocal and blow things out of proportion . 

This game wasn't made to discuss min/maxing, the author even addresses that in his OP.

The purpose of this game was to show how the current Kuva Lich system has almost zero interactivity. It's just fill a bar, kill the lich, repeat. There is so, SO much more that can be done with the Kuva Liches that it's almost tragic DE didn't go the full mile.

This also isn't bashing DE. This is constructive criticism at its finest - the dude made a whole game to prove his point.

[darkbrick]

i stopped with lich after i got the same 2 weapons.. it's really waste of time to grind for something that i already have.. dem rng..

[Corvid]

I'd be down for this as a potential Lich 2.0. Right now I'm going to wait and see if Empyrean integrates Liches in some way.

[Sitchrea]

2 minutes ago, Corvid said:

I'd be down for this as a potential Lich 2.0. Right now I'm going to wait and see if Empyrean integrates Liches in some way.

Surely - SURELY - it will, if the Tennocon reveal is anything to go off of.

[Corvid]

Just now, Sitchrea said:

Surely - SURELY - it will, if the Tennocon reveal is anything to go off of.

That's the hope. I'm just conscious of the fact that things change before release.

For instance, I'm a tad miffed that the Liches went from resurrecting nemeses to counterattacking instakillers. Would've been cool to have an enemy that comes back to haunt you after you thought you'd dealt with it.

[Kaotyke]

3 hours ago, Sitchrea said:

It's... It's literally in the post.

Yeah, it was put there after that person you quoted wrote their post, wasnt it?

Edited December 5, 2019 by Kaotyke

[Sitchrea]

2 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Would've been cool to have an enemy that comes back to haunt you after you thought you'd dealt with it.

That's sorta what I thought the system would be, given they are called Kuva LICHES.

Also, that is entirely what the Tennocon reveal implied. Changing the system from the reveal just led to huge disappointment.

[Sitchrea]

Just now, Kaotyke said:

Yeah, it was put there after that person you quoted wrote their post, wasnt it?

...It's in the Reddit post. The big blue letters that say "Here is the link."

Is the post not appearing for some people or something? Or is no one actually reading the OP?

[Kaotyke]

1 minute ago, Sitchrea said:

...It's in the Reddit post. The big blue letters that say "Here is the link."

Is the post not appearing for some people or something? Or is no one actually reading the OP?

Dunno, for me the reddit link is going to a blank page that never loads.

But that might be on my end, hold on, I might need to update a few things.

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

*if you don't know how to make a game don't talk about de's choices 

 

This man -" Hold my clem "

[White_Matter]

4 hours ago, TheGildedOni said:

 DE's system puts reward item grind and RNG first.

That's where the problem lies.

The whole Kuva lich gameplay trivializes the journey and focuses only on the destination, when 99% of your time is spent on the journey.

[Sitchrea]

7 minutes ago, White_Matter said:

That's where the problem lies.

The whole Kuva lich gameplay trivializes the journey and focuses only on the destination, when 99% of your time is spent on the journey.

Brilliantly stated. Playing the game isn't the fun part at that point in the game, only the rewards. The combat is great but past TWW when Liches get involved the system needs more meat.

[Pavelord]

When they first tease the system, I tought the liches would be like cartels, and we would be eliminating commanders till you reach the lich, I could definitely see it working on a corpus system where you hunt a CEO and you go hunting their offices branches. The gameplay presented seem to resemble that so I would feel very positive about a system like that, I just started my first lich so i still dont have a strong opinion on the current system. 

One of the common critisism i´ve seen is that players feel they are playing the same missions over and over, i´m not sure if this game idea fix this, since it is mostly using the same mission (do they want new maps or new mission types?) types but adding alternative objectives, like gathering intel or stealing back our loot. It feels a bit weird, regular critisims of the open worlds is that those did not feel like the core experience , like the start chart missions. Now they have that but still there is some negative response, a very delicate balance DE has to pull, well i hope that have more in store for the full concept with empyrean or they take a look at such a well presented concept.

[Gullim92]

This is seriously brilliant. Reading the intel mission page gave me serious XCOM 2 vibes. Mad props to the author, I pray DE will take a look at this and see how they could improve the system.

[Paradoxity]

10 hours ago, Sitchrea said:

Look at this fan-made game and tell me this wouldn't be an incredible system. I would play this far, FAR more willingly than the simple murmer-farm Lich system we have now.

 

 

Edit: For clarity, here is a link to the game: https://kaian-a-coel.github.io/Kuva-Lich-Rework/

 

 

 

Man. If the system was like this I think I'd have actually played it. 

Like, no. This is actually good and engaging. I imagine in game it'd be even more infuriating to lose and watch the lich wear a helmet torn from your warframe around, and even as just a simple webgame, it was kinda satisfying to off the thing after about 2 weeks of effort. 

Hope DE takes some notes. Great work OP. 

[Sitchrea]

Just now, Paradoxity said:

Man. If the system was like this I think I'd have actually played it. 

Like, no. This is actually good and engaging. I imagine in game it'd be even more infuriating to lose and watch the lich wear a helmet torn from your warframe around, and even as just a simple webgame, it was kinda satisfying to off the thing after about 2 weeks of effort. 

Hope DE takes some notes. Great work OP. 

All credit to the original programmer who posted on Reddit - I am just the messenger!

[Paradoxity]

Just now, Sitchrea said:

All credit to the original programmer who posted on Reddit - I am just the messenger!

Good on them, then. And you for bringing it here. I like how it explicitly notes "Your parazon wasn't enough to undo their immortality" not, ya know "They broke your spine cos you guessed wrong." It made the guessing game a lot less irritating. 

[Sitchrea]

2 minutes ago, Paradoxity said:

Good on them, then. And you for bringing it here. I like how it explicitly notes "Your parazon wasn't enough to undo their immortality" not, ya know "They broke your spine cos you guessed wrong." It made the guessing game a lot less irritating. 

If there was a single mechanic from the current system I would remove, it would be the "die because you guessed wrong."

What part of that is difficult? There's no difficulty in guessing a random combination incorrectly. It's just needlessly punishing and actually quite annoying. I love the Kuva Lich system but my goodness it could have been executed so much better. The promise of the Tennocon gameplay was far better than the shipped product.

[Vyra]

No sure why DE ( and many others ) rely so hard on RNG anyway...
RNG is the mos negative thing i know, nobody actually likes it...
why add stuff that nobody likes?
 

[taiiat]

10 hours ago, TheGildedOni said:

whereas DE's system puts reward item grind and RNG first.

i think you mean just RNG first, and then playing the same Missions 5x as many times to do one thing second, and then filling XP bars third.

[kevoisvevo]

already a better dev than digital extremes lmao

[OniDax]

4 minutes ago, taiiat said:

i think you mean just RNG first, and then playing the same Missions 5x as many times to do one thing second, and then filling XP bars third.

Well, yeah.

6 minutes ago, Vyra said:

No sure why DE ( and many others ) rely so hard on RNG anyway...
RNG is the mos negative thing i know, nobody actually likes it...
why add stuff that nobody likes?
 

To stretch out content (i.e. making the acquisition of reward items take a longer time by giving them low drop chance percentages) to make up for a low amount of new content.

Edited December 6, 2019 by TheGildedOni

[Paradoxity]

8 minutes ago, Vyra said:

No sure why DE ( and many others ) rely so hard on RNG anyway...
RNG is the mos negative thing i know, nobody actually likes it...
why add stuff that nobody likes?
 

I think, to DE, it's the only way to extend a grind (and, to them, gameplay) - throw more and more RNG elements on there to ensure that, no matter how fast you can do it, you'll always have a minimum amount of time you have to sink (more or less). It stems from the belief that we, as players, are way too strong to develop challenging and/or engaging content for any other way. 

I think this little webgame proves them wrong though- even if, as a player, I know I could absolutely blow through the lich's missions in the starmap, it still took me 14-16 days to kill one, and that's driving straight at it. The challenge wasn't in contesting me directly in a mission, it was in making me manage my intel to stretch it out to be able to hunt and kill the lich, to setup ambushes or raid their resource stockpile or break their toys. The challenge wasn't in the fight- since that's kind of silly, since it's fairly easy to minmax a nukeframe to murder everything in a 9000 AU radius and trivialize any fight, but in the technical side of the system. 

That all said- would I have gotten a bunch of kuva weapons off of it? Sure- but changing a loot table to have something repeatable and desirable in it isn't that hard, either. 

All in all I think DE ought to, at the very least, be taking some notes. 

If not, ya  know, hiring this cat so they can shamelessly crib this system for the lich overhaul. 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Paradoxity
clarification