DE supposedly only listening to "specific" feedback regarding Liches

[waterboytkd]

@Steel_Rook (I'm "at"ing you because I don't know how to do multiple quotes from a single post on these forums; if there was a quote, I would have simply made it "-snip-")

I don't disagree with anything you said, really. But the topic of the OP was about DE only listening to "select" feedback, not whether they bit off more than they can chew, or generally mismanage their development time/resources. 

If I were a developer making something under a time crunch (even if that time crunch was our own fault), I really wouldn't want the community team bothering me or my team with changes that were pretty much just aesthetics on a system that, at the bare minimum, works. And if that's the case here, it would make sense that the question of "who kills whom" would catch the dev team by surprise.

I think a lot of the criticisms of the Lich system are fair. And I think there's been a lot of suggestions that would make it better. But again, the topic of this thread wasn't that. It was specifically about the line of communication between the players and devs. Maybe the line is broken somewhere along the way, or maybe what we saw on the stream is a just a symptom of the reality the devs are currently facing (even if it's a time crunch of their own making).

My post was more aimed at the fact that this thread seemed to shift quickly from "There's something wrong with the line of communication with DE" to " There's something wrong with DE", and a lot of posts were just a general "piling on" of any and all mistakes DE has made recently.

 

There was one specific thing I wanted to respond to, though:

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The whole "people want to grind for 76" days is just... What? Where are you getting this from? Who ever said anything like this? 

A few days before the dev stream, there was a forum post here (or was it reddit?) that got a ton of activity about that. The OP of that post was complaining that our liches weren't taking as long to kill as some snippet from some early development footage of liches. And a lot of people chimed in, agreeing with the OP (my suspicion--no one actually wanted that; they just saw an opportunity for more "piling on" and got in on that action). The fact that Steve knew about that but not the more legit/constructive criticisms was surprising, but could also be simply explained by him browsing the forums/reddit on his phone while taking a dumper. Who knows?

 

[Steel_Rook]

54 minutes ago, waterboytkd said:

@Steel_Rook (I'm "at"ing you because I don't know how to do multiple quotes from a single post on these forums; if there was a quote, I would have simply made it "-snip-")

Highlight any part of a post and a "Quote" button should pop up to the bottom right of your selection. It's how I pull my own quotes.

 

54 minutes ago, waterboytkd said:

If I were a developer making something under a time crunch (even if that time crunch was our own fault), I really wouldn't want the community team bothering me or my team with changes that were pretty much just aesthetics on a system that, at the bare minimum, works. And if that's the case here, it would make sense that the question of "who kills whom" would catch the dev team by surprise.

The problem is that DE's recent behaviour has made me question the good faith of their words. While it's entirely possible that they're just so overworked that they haven't been able to keep up on what people are saying... I don't buy that. For one thing, I could have told you that people would hate being killed in a cutscene for guessing wrong before the system was even released because of course people would hate that. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the mentality which would see this as OK and be utterly baffled by why people don't like it. To then go and pin the blame on a frankly outlandish post just comes across as a deflection - the same thing people on these forums do all the time. Post something trollish, wait for responses, pick the one guy who calls you names then act all vindicated that you're being attacked.

I fail to see how the concerns we're discussing didn't come up in conversation when planning the system. I fail to see how DE's development team might struggle to understand why people are upset. I fail to see how they could mistakenly assume people want individual Liches to be fought for 76 days over a single weapon drops. Each of these individually? Maybe. All of them together, though? That to me smacks of deliberate insincerity. Not communication issues, not a heavy workload, not a misunderstanding - actual deceit. It's pretending to not see the problem when you very well know what the problem is, just because you don't want to talk about it.

DE taking feedback from only some people seems to be manifesting as DE only taking lowball questions and ignoring questions on substance. And it's not like they've been too busy to see those. These questions were in chat on the stream and they still got ignored.

 

1 hour ago, waterboytkd said:

A few days before the dev stream, there was a forum post here (or was it reddit?) that got a ton of activity about that. The OP of that post was complaining that our liches weren't taking as long to kill as some snippet from some early development footage of liches. And a lot of people chimed in, agreeing with the OP (my suspicion--no one actually wanted that; they just saw an opportunity for more "piling on" and got in on that action). The fact that Steve knew about that but not the more legit/constructive criticisms was surprising, but could also be simply explained by him browsing the forums/reddit on his phone while taking a dumper. Who knows?

Could be, sure. But if that really is what happened, then that would be mighty convenient for DE. Somehow, by just random happenstance, they keep accidentally hearing only the dumb arguments but by sheer luck keep missing any of the substantive feedback. Sure it's possible, but it's also entirely consistent with a steam of people who hear all of the feedback but are selectively filtering for only the feedback they can turn into a straw man, the feedback they can address as cover for deliberately not addressing the other, much harder questions. It's entirely possible that I'm reading malice where simply incompetence could just as easily be the cause, this is true. However, I've seen the Kuva Lich system. I've experienced the naked cynicism of its design. I know first hand just how much of a "nothing" system they released while still pretending to be this major development years in the making.

The system is not as advertised but DE refuse to address it. The system is a hollow shell made of grind but DE refuse to address this. The system was very clearly released for reasons other than it being a piece of content ready for release but DE refuse to address this. The only feedback they'll address is the feedback they can make fun of. It's just so convenient that that's all the feedback they seem to keep randomly running into.

I'm willing to give people as much good faith as I'm getting out of them. I've not felt like I was getting any good faith out of DE over their last couple of Devstreams. The previous one was an utter farce of constant jokes about competing streams and two presenters talking over each other, almost as if to paper over the lack of substance with noise and silliness and this one was disingenuous at best, far as I'm concerned. You can call it piling on DE or being unfair - I won't really try to defend it. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that I no longer trust them or believe their words and I've seen nothing of late to change my mind.

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-12-12 at 5:18 PM, Steel_Rook said:

The simple fact of the matter, however, is that I no longer trust them or believe their words and I've seen nothing of late to change my mind.

For me, that point happened way back in 2014 when they first released T4 void keys. "We're doing this to reduce drop table dilution".

If they cared about drop table dilution, they would have taken out the worthless trash like orokin cells and fusion cores from the void key drop tables.

The one thing I absolutely cannot stand is blatant lying. The moment someone does that, that's it. My opinion of them goes straight to "trash" and there are no circumstances where I will ever trust them again. It's a point of no return.

That caused an instant 6 month ragequit from the game. Hell, I still get pissed off even remembering it now.

[b4timert]

The biggest take i got out of this was.

i kill the liches then he kills me in return. How they implemented it feels more like i fail to kill him then he counter attacks and kill me. 

If it was for example a corpus "lich" i tried to kill and it explode in my face when i fail fine. But when i try to kill something and get counter attacked it feels worse.

[GruntBlender]

That's it. Empyrean is here. Liches are over. Next will be the Command intrinsic in 2020 that only touches the converted liches, and even then it's not guaranteed. And there's the New War, which is an entirely different direction. What was even the point of having feedback if it'll be ignored?

26.0.4: "It’s been 5 days since the launch of Old Blood and we’ve got our hands full with some great player feedback so far! "

I uninstalled Warframe. The game has been sourred by the lack of responsiveness from the team, even stating the reasons to not implement any of the great suggestions from the forums would have been enough, but the dismissal made me feel like the players really don't matter. Before the Old Blood, I was looking forward to Empyrean, but since that stream I lost all excitement and today's launch of the update isn't making me come back to the game. I don't know why this is my line in the sand, but if the lich feedback isn't addressed, I'll probably never come back to Warframe.

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

47 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

but the dismissal made me feel like the players really don't matter

I think the only thing that mattered to DE was the 800 plat "Lich Hunter" bundle on the Market, and their precious little Railjacks.

[(XBOX)TheRoflLizard]

I don't care about the damn weapon...I have been activity avoiding playing warframe because this..S#&$..

It is not a "experience" It's a #*!%ing grindwall with RNG all over It to create a system and relic set to jerk off Riven mods more...

I have already stated my peace of removing the Reqruim mods and instead having to find concordance to their recreation chamber as a idea and even things to improve how they should work..

There is no logical reason for It to be this grinddy...To kill one person,who littery is not hard to kill because "They adept"..But,because they did not grind enough for the right mods on some newly added trash item which will be forgotten about in a few months. (that arm dagger)...And once you do grind em,you just spam until you get the right combo and win..

 

I'm sorry how is my idea worst when It is a actual experience and not just playing bop-it.

[Aldain]

Not letting this thread die out of sheer stubbornness.

[GruntBlender]

1 hour ago, Aldain said:

Not letting this thread die out of sheer stubbornness.

Turns out there's a hefty bit of RNG grind in Railjack too. Seems this is the new direction for Warframe, I'm kinda glad I'm free of the coming grindfest now.

[MJ12]

1 hour ago, GruntBlender said:

Turns out there's a hefty bit of RNG grind in Railjack too. Seems this is the new direction for Warframe, I'm kinda glad I'm free of the coming grindfest now.

The RNG item drops are actually weaker than the researchables, IIRC.

And more importantly, you get the resources you spent on them back if you scrap them. It's honestly a better working setup than Liches because the resources you find can be respec-ed and reinvested.

Edited December 14, 2019 by MJ12

[DeltaPangaea]

Man I wish DE would sit the hell down and focus on one or maybe two things at a time rather than seven thousand. Liches, Empyrean, Duviri, whatever the hell else they've got going on, can you just calm the hell down and refine one thing before moving on to the next?

And them being annoyingly cagey about feedback has always been a thing. Like when people were upset over the melee changes they just clammed the #*!% up and said nothing for months and months and months.

Edited December 14, 2019 by DeltaPangaea

[(PSN)Bailiwick]

On 2019-12-09 at 10:21 AM, DoomFruit said:

On 2019-12-08 at 6:02 PM, Sunder said:

That generally the feedback Steve only sees is in regards to that the Lich system is too quick and we want it to last 76 days.

I don't think I've seen that feedback anywhere. Where is he getting this from?

it was on Devstream 134, near the end when they actually looked at chat and they all had an oh S#&$ look on their faces. and then Steve mentions the chat being concerned about liches dying to quickly. which were not, like for real were not

[(PSN)Bailiwick]

wonder when were getting a response from DE on this

[tekmansam]

I too was taken aback by Steve's attitude in that cast, but what it really speaks to for me was exemplified in one of the hotfixes after Old Blood that had the nerve to say (paraphrasing) "We have listened to your feedback and we've made these changes!..."  What proceeded was in no way reflective of 90% of the complaints on the forums.  Like the OP said, it just goes to show that they were only listening to the feedback that they wanted to acknowledge.  They cherry picked feedback and served it up as listening to the players.

[Kaian-a-coel]

I'll chime in and say that yes, I do want the liches to live longer. 70+ days would be great. But I want it to be 76 interesting days, not just the bland murmur farm with occasional assassin with plot armor that we have now, but stretched hundreds of time. That would be attempting to stretch a nugget of butter over a slice of bread a mile long. We need more butter. And possibly jam.

The actual thing that people saying "we want longer liches" want is the nemesis system we were promised at tennocon and earlier. If liches die in under two hours they can't be nemesis. The call for longer liches is, I believe, a reaction to people who don't care about the liches and just want to collect kuva weapons as fast as possible, who are calling for shorter liches. I don't want shorter liches. I don't want them to be reduced to a glorified loot pinata that you open five of each day.

As much as the "longer life" part of that faction's claims sticks out, any post calling for it will also call for that longer life to be filled with more content, as well as a reword of the reward structure so that longer liches don't also mean longer grind for kuva weapons. Just about every post mentioning "I want liches to last 76 days" will also have a part that says "give us kuva weapons for temporary kills and have the lich come back with a new, different one".

I went through the effort to code an entire game to illustrate my points, don't reduce it to "76 days liches" and nothing else. This last bit also addressed to DE.

[Sunder]

On 2019-12-16 at 12:43 AM, Kaian-a-coel said:

-Snip-

 

On 2019-12-16 at 5:39 AM, Uthael said:

-Snip-

A solution then would be separating obtaining the Kuva weapon from the Lich, no? I understand those people who want to rush through it. They feel as though it's a new task given by DE and they want to accomplish it for whatever reason.

• Personal pride
• Bragging rights
• Worried about having something "un-finished" on their plate

But at the same time you have people who are purely in this for the gameplay experience. Who just want to have fun. And of course, the players who want both.To have fun and a challenge, and want to feel rewarded for overcoming it. I know DE said they're leaving the mechanics of the Lich system as-is, (which is why I refuse to touch it) but Scott claims they're going to re-visit some aspects of it come the new year. I can only hope they don't just alter some number values and call it a day. The very system in which we interact with the Liches feels....rushed, unpolished, and stripped. Whether that's true or not, DE has been getting plenty of feedback. If they simply ignore all the issues people keep talking about in-game, on the forums, on reddit, and elsewhere? How can we trust they're not just going to do the same thing over and over so long as money is made? 

After seeing the work that went into Railjack and Empyrean? I understand the amount of work DE had on their plate. Specially with dessert on its way (New War). But they still should  communicate with us openly and let us know what's going on. My faith in the direction Warframe development is taking has made me weary. I no longer feel as rooted in the game as I once did. I hate that I say it but it kinda feels like I'm just waiting for something to push me to the point where I finally give up on the game and uninstall. 

Can only hope some positive changes are on the way. 

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, Sunder said:

I know DE said they're leaving the mechanics of the Lich system as-is, (which is why I refuse to touch it) but Scott claims they're going to re-visit some aspects of it come the new year.

I'll believe it when I see it, until then I shall be doing the same thing as you, refusing to touch the system with a 200 foot Iron Pole Prime.

[Kaian-a-coel]

On 2019-12-16 at 11:39 AM, Uthael said:

-snip-

It has one:

 

[Lightel03]

DE really should work on improving the things they made so far.

I personally wouldn`t mind if Duviri and New War were delayed to 2021. If we get to see a revision in the Lich system, RNG balancing, QoL additions, and some bug crusades for Liches and Railjack, I say it would be time well spent, and would surely make the game more accesible, and generally fun.

Though it seems that 'DE`s vision" is to let these clear oversighted mistakes remain, I have hope that they will listen to this thread and act on it.

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Sunder said:

A solution then would be separating obtaining the Kuva weapon from the Lich, no? I understand those people who want to rush through it. They feel as though it's a new task given by DE and they want to accomplish it for whatever reason.

That would be a good solution, yes. Someone made their own JavaScript game where Liches could be robbed of their weapon without killing them by performing a number of fairly complex tasks, whereupon the Lich would then return sporting a new weapon. I remain of the opinion that we should not be allowed to kill our Liches AT ALL, or at least not outside of a VERY long, laborious, difficult process and that we should NOT be rewarded for doing it. The problem of all of these Nemesis systems throughout gaming is always the same - killing your Nemesis and taking them out of the game is an anti-climax and actually removes the whole reason for the system to exist. Even Shadow of Mordor had that issue. Longer-living Liches who can change, evolve, adapt but always stay with us, who can be farmed for loot without killing them - that would be a good Nemesis system.

A solution like that wouldn't even heavily impact DE's desire for endless repetitive grind. Even doing something as simple as letting us kill our Lich on a successful Requiem Stab... Only to then have that same Lich pop back into the game sprting different abilities and a weapon but the same name and personality would work, even if it's a bit of a dirty hack. Let players "convert" a Lich if they want a new one, let players "vanquish" a Lich to have it come back. Replace the Kuva Larvling mission with a special "Reconnaissance" Alert through which we "learn about" a Lich already being active, which could either be a new Lich or the same Lich coming back from the dead.

The problem is they slapped together the Kuva Lich system in no time flat just to throw it as a smoke bomb and hopefully buy themselves time to release an Early Access version of Railjack. Just about anything we can suggest that isn't a minor stat tweak isn't going to happen at this stage.

[Sunder]

Thread stays relevant as we approach yet another Dev-Steam. 

For we're going to see more of them avoiding Liches as they focus on the release of Empyrean. And while they'll discuss a few game-breaking issues that are being worked on and what they plan to expand on? I guarantee you they'll either pass over, or being incredibly vague regarding the main issues people have with this update such as 50% returns on repaired items, and how the repairing in general costs an arm and a leg. If they do mention the Lich system? It'll be in passing in that they have any plans for integrating it with Empyrean. The forums are still filled with feedback, complaints and people keep  mentioning how separated and lame the system is in its current state but as the thread suggests....

DE has selective hearing on what feedback they want to listen to.

[Darkshifter98]

24 minutes ago, Sunder said:

...complaints and people keep  mentioning how separated and lame the system is in its current state...

I'm not sure how often this has been brought up in this thread, but this is a big one for me. I vanquished my first Lich today and my issue with the whole system right now is that the Lich has no sense of actually being a competent antagonist. They come as the equivalent of a low-level player given high-level stats and gear when they don't have the full knowledge of the game's systems (In this case being seemingly unaware that we, as Tenno, can extract their kuva and make them mortal).

A big reason for this is their only impact on regular gameplay is that they'll take some of your rewards on planets they occupy and taught you when you enter the game. If you actually want to see or affect your Lich, you have to go into missions tailored around them. A better way to have them seem like more credible threats is for them to actually have a higher chance (if they even have a chance at all) of appearing in pretty much any mission in the game. Or maybe having an effect on any extractors you deploy on planets they own.

Bottom line; my only current gripe with the current Lich system is how separate they are from the base game, and how the system is less fun because of it.

[Thrymm]

My biggest gripe with them is that they aren't even new content.

Step one:  Want the relics to get the mods to kill them?  Run missions with them in it to pick them up, but rarely.  OR run the same old Kuva Siphons to get them reliably.  The better choice at this phase is to play old content because it works better.

Step two, open those relics!  You do this by....running relic open missions.  For petes sake, we've already had relics and relic opening missions.  This is not original content.

Step three is new, but certainly not improved.  Now you get to play parazon suicide until you get the combination right.  It's dumb.  Nothing is kicking my butt, I already beat it in combat to even try this.  I just arbitrarily die until I guess the safecracker code.

Step four, you get it all right, and now you get a karak, or a kraken, or some other weapon that already existed(read: not new content), except with different stats.  Now sure, I wouldn't mind an actual, viable Kraken or yet another Karak, but to pretend its generating new content feelz is a bit of a stretch.

The Lich itself is new, and the nemesis bit is novel and fun(I really enjoyed Shadows of Mordor) and that alone gives it the potential to be some good fun.  Turning it into a cop out excuse to rehash old content......knock that stuff off already.

 

[The.Mad.Doctor]

I'm annoyed with most of the new systems in the game. The kuva lich system needs to be gutted and reworked, and empyrean is better played as a mooch than doing anything with the ship yourself.