Steve didn't want...

[BethTheBean]

This Lich system.
 

The comment section is worth the read.

~ 

[Moogleoftheages]

There's also quotes from streams with Scott and presumably steve about how they're going to build upon the lich system in future. Remember when liches were something you found on the ships in railjack?

 

Their longterm plan they said was something akin to that. But I agree with you also, I just don't think liches are already over and something to say "Well that didn't work"

[Lost_Cartographer]

The real trick is to offer players a "quick" lich system while giving them a reason to drag it out.

Unfortunately, Warframe's community is largely reward driven.  See: Players meta-gaming the fun out of the game with mass AoE spam.  See: people bullet jumping through a mission with"out firing a single shot just get it over with.  So what Steve didn't want nearly 50 devstreams ago is precisely what the community really wants if it had to choose between what we have now and what was promised.  Ergo, either we get the best of both worlds, or the one that people can get "done and over with" because "grind bad!"  Apparently shooting lancers is more of a nuisance than a core reason to even log in.

Honestly, short of balancing the entire damn game, any long term lich system will have to require game play and decision making that doesn't involve direct mission combat.  This is not a simple order to fulfill.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Kaotyke]

OP did want...

Spoiler

A clickbait title.

 

[SordidDreams]

21 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Unfortunately, Warframe's community is largely reward driven. [...] Apparently shooting lancers is more of a nuisance than a core reason to even log in.

Unfortunately, that's how the game is due to the business model it uses, namely free-to-play with pay-to-skip monetization. In a pay-to-play game, the gameplay is something you pay to experience. In a pay-to-skip game, the gameplay is something you pay to not have to experience. That's why the game is so grindy, to get you to buy boosters to get it over with quicker. This is a fundamental problem that cannot be solved unless WF abandons all pay-to-skip monetization, including boosters, buying equipment from the market, and Prime Access, and generates revenue through selling cosmetics only. That is to say, this is a fundamental problem that will never be solved.

Edited December 9, 2019 by SordidDreams

[Lost_Cartographer]

2 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

Unfortunately, that's how the game is due to the business model it uses, namely free-to-play with pay-to-skip monetization. In a pay-to-play game, the gameplay is something you pay to experience. In a pay-to-skip game, the gameplay is something you pay to not have to experience. That's why the game is so grindy, to get you to buy boosters to get it over with quicker. This is a fundamental problem that cannot be solved until and unless WF abandons all pay-to-skip monetization, including boosters, buying equipment from the market, and Prime Access, and generates revenue through selling cosmetics only. That is to say, this is a fundamental problem that will never be solved.

The business model follows the player's interests, not the other way around.

It's because players play for the rewards that things like loot boxes and pay-to-skip are so profitable.  What DE is doing?  Probably offering one of the more player-friendly cash shop services.  Can't blame the harvester for taking advantage of the bee hive, just how abusive they are about it.

[SordidDreams]

35 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

The business model follows the player's interests, not the other way around.

It's because players play for the rewards that things like loot boxes and pay-to-skip are so profitable.  What DE is doing?  Probably offering one of the more player-friendly cash shop services.  Can't blame the harvester for taking advantage of the bee hive, just how abusive they are about it.

No, it does not. DE didn't release the game, see what kind of players turned up, and then decide what business model to use based on their preferences. They decided the business model first, and it attracted a certain type of player. The players' interests absolutely did follow the business model.

And yes, you're right, it is because players are willing to pay that loot boxes and pay-to-skip are profitable. But you could say that about literal gambling as well. The assumption that "if people pay for it, they must be enjoying it" is one of the major failures of economics because it ignores the fact that people are irrational meatbags that can be made to pay for things they hate through all kinds of psychological tricks and manipulations. Slot machines aren't good games, yet lots of people get addicted to them and gamble away their entire savings, feeling miserable about it the entire time. And just in case you think that's a ridiculous comparison, don't those requirems flashing on the screen when fighting a lich remind you of anything? Three symbols in a row are revealed one at a time, building anticipation, and if you randomly get the right combination, you win and it feels great! It's exactly the same addiction-building trick slot machines use by stopping their reels one at a time. Personally I find the inclusion of such a thing in a video game disgusting.

More to the point, I don't think any cash shop that includes boosters and purchasable equipment is player-friendly. In order for such a cash shop to be profitable, the game has to be balanced in such a way that the players have incentive to spend to skip, which is to say it has to be made unfun, because nobody would pay extra to have less fun. In my mind, deliberately making a game unfun is not a player-friendly practice. Worse still, devs get out of touch over time. DE has now implemented several excessive grinds that aren't monetized at all, because apparently they've been working in the pay-to-skip headspace for so long that they don't even know what is and isn't fun anymore, they honestly think this sh*t is great. So yeah, I do think you can absolutely blame the harvester for taking advantage.

Edited December 9, 2019 by SordidDreams

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

2 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

And just in case you think that's a ridiculous comparison, don't those requiems flashing on the screen when fighting a lich remind you of anything? Three symbols are revealed one at a time, building anticipation, and if you get the right combination, you win! It's exactly the same addiction-building trick slot machines use by stopping their reels one at a time.

Not gonna lie: I didn't make this connection until you mentioned it, but you are completely right. It's the exact same psychological hook.

[Erwes]

It was 2 years ago. Why does they change their mind about liches ?

[Rivyn]

Would I like a more in depth Lich system? Sure I would. But I'm also aware how seeming anti grind parts of this community have become. When DE inputs a system that requires work, you can bet there will be four thousand threads complaining 'the grind is unreal!' Look at the construction of the Railjack, for instance. We're at a point right now where if DE implements something time consuming, people complain. But when they don't, people still complain. There's really no win.

Now, it was mentioned that the lich system will be built upon in the future, as more is added. I'm fine with that. I consider what we have now as just the foundation. All the fancy bells and whistles will come with time. 

[TARINunit9]

Steve actually brings this up in Devstream 134. He said that they DID make a much longer, less randomized Kingpin system. And he said that it just wasn't fun

[Kaotyke]

4 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Steve actually brings this up in Devstream 134. He said that they DID make a much longer, less randomized Kingpin system. And he said that it just wasn't fun

So it was worse than what we have?

I would have liked details to compare.

[TARINunit9]

7 minutes ago, Kaotyke said:

So it was worse than what we have?

I would have liked details to compare.

"The feedback I saw was 'why doesn't it take 79 days to down a lich'... It did not work, we thought, to have the lich going on and dragging on. So we shortened that loop."

Steve's words

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Personally, here's how I would rework the Lich system : By introducing a lower tier of liches called generals.

1 - Liches no longer carry "exclusive" weapons (Just a god roll kuva weapon with 50+ stats) . They carry a 100% drop chance ephemera that's specific to them (and ideally tradable), and maybe another reward like a riven mod or an arcane , ideally selectable and randomised from a list of potential rivens or arcanes (or good stuff like umbra forma)

2 -The bulk of the Weapon acquisiton is instead moved to a lich's general. These act as bosses for regions controlled by a Lich, and can be hunted by the player. They act and behave roughly like our current liches do, where you can kill or convert them to get their weapon or make them an ally, and you can trade generals to other players if the one you roll don't have weapons you like. Expect to have to kill like 5-10 to get to the Lich. They have a small chance to spawn an ephemera, but the coolest ones are still only available on the big baddy Liches.

3-Weapons off these generals are maybe capped at 50%, making the god roll kuva lich weapons desirable over their budget general variants , but technically, someone that likes a lich could leave him active for months and only periodically hunt the generals, keeping his personal nemesis around. System could even encourage leaving them alive for long, as the stronger you let them become, the better the reward. Imagining for example letting the same lich grow stronger for like two months, only to get a full set or arcane energize as a reward , instead of a single arcane energize if you would have gone and killed the lich immediately upon creation.

5 - Since multiple Generals are available , player can choose the general they want to tackle based on the weapons he's using, and acquire multiple weapons in the process during each Lich Cycle. This makes it much easier to target weapons for mastery rank progression ,while keeping a long-term threat looming at the horizon. If you just want a specific weapon , target generals with that weapon and ignore those that have weapon you don't like.

6 - Once the player has tracked and killed enough generals, the player goes and kill the Lich in his capital ship, as shown in the raijack reveal video. Note that the lich would still attack the player from time to time as he does currently, but player would mostly deal with his generals through his adventures. Compared to the generals, the lich would be an almost indestructible adversary , using the same powers of it's progenitor, and being even more impressive than the current iteration.

7 - The whole requiem system, murmur farming and annoying "you keep dying to learn the correct pattern" is replaced with the hunt for generals, which is more organic and tied to existing starchart content. You don't have to play specific missions , as long as you play in systems controlled by your lich , you will progress in your uncovering of the various generals, which you can then choose to tackle or ignore based on their weapon. That way you can simply play content you enjoy (fissures, kuva floods, sorties , etc, and still get progression on uncovering your generals). You would still be working on getting the correct combination to kill your lich , only by killing generals instead of trial and error and murmur farming.

8 - In terms of duration, a player that really hates his lich could maybe take him out in a week or two , if he really goes straight for the generals and hunts them alot. However, most players would see the benefits of letting their liches grow really strong, meaning they would keep fighting the generals till their Lich is ripe for the looting, which could take months and yield rewards proportional to the time the lich had free control over the star chart.

Again , this is a first draft of the idea, so some kinks needs to be ironed out.

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[-Kittens-]

3 hours ago, Moogleoftheages said:

There's also quotes from streams with Scott and presumably steve about how they're going to build upon the lich system in future. Remember when liches were something you found on the ships in railjack?

 

Their longterm plan they said was something akin to that. But I agree with you also, I just don't think liches are already over and something to say "Well that didn't work"

No that's about it. Liches are simply unfinished and the grind is #*!%ing awful, and no amount of unbridled optimism will ameliorate that. When lIches are finished THEY might be amazing, the grind and rng will still be bullS#&$, because DE has learned to take their playerbase for granted, because their playerbase wants to be taken for granted in many cases.

Edited December 10, 2019 by -Kittens-

[Seph-Aldaire]

47 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

"The feedback I saw was 'why doesn't it take 79 days to down a lich'... It did not work, we thought, to have the lich going on and dragging on. So we shortened that loop."

So... It was the same exact system but longer??? Since he said they shortened it.

[SordidDreams]

11 hours ago, Rivyn said:

Would I like a more in depth Lich system? Sure I would. But I'm also aware how seeming anti grind parts of this community have become. When DE inputs a system that requires work, you can bet there will be four thousand threads complaining 'the grind is unreal!' Look at the construction of the Railjack, for instance. We're at a point right now where if DE implements something time consuming, people complain. But when they don't, people still complain. There's really no win.

I don't think they have anybody to blame but themselves. Yes, people complain about grind.That's because DE is taking longer and longer between each update, which means they have to make new content more and more grindy to make it 'last', and people are getting fed up with that. They are consistently overambitious, releasing content behind schedule but before it's actually ready.

And yes, people will complain no matter what. Sounds to me like a great reason to not worry about the inevitable complaints and just do the right thing. Thing is, I don't think DE even knows what that is anymore. It seems to me they're so used to making grindy, unfun content to motivate people to pay to skip it that they don't even know anymore how to make something that lasts a long time while actually being fun.

11 hours ago, Rivyn said:

Now, it was mentioned that the lich system will be built upon in the future, as more is added. I'm fine with that. I consider what we have now as just the foundation. All the fancy bells and whistles will come with time. 

That's not very reassuring. Foundations need to be above all else solid and sound. It is not.

Edited December 10, 2019 by SordidDreams

[SnowRyder]

tbh the only thing i wish they would add is that we could get rid of a lich/reroll it when we get one that is worthless for us.
maybe with a 24hour cooldown on it so it cant be insanely abused

[Kaotyke]

10 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

"The feedback I saw was 'why doesn't it take 79 days to down a lich'... It did not work, we thought, to have the lich going on and dragging on. So we shortened that loop."

Steve's words

I think the idea I had would have made the Lich work in those "79 days" scenario while keeping it more or less like what we have now...

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

If the only reward from the "Kingpin/Nemesis" system is the Kuva guns... then, yeah, Months worth of grinding would have been too long, especially if there were no way to determine which gun you'd get, and the roll you'd get on the elemental bonus. If it was the exact same system, just stretched out over months, there would be a serious lack of reward, very high annoyance factor, and nothing "worthwhile" about the system. HOWEVER...

As I and others have pointed out (in threads such as "DE, the Lich System is bad and it needs to change.")

Quote

(I wrote, edited due to changes since release:)

Assuming the early descriptions of the system were in-line with the design intent of the Nemesis system:

My assessment of the current Lich system is that it didn't meet the intent.

* It doesn't create a long-term nemesis, necessarily (although, early victims of getting liches before it was a choice, still getting their parazon mods may still be dealing with their first Lich, or simply chose to not interact with them until the kill-on-wrong-guess mechanic is gone). In fact, people take them out in under 4hrs. Currently, the whole system is designed around killing them off quickly to iterate on the weapons they drop as many times as possible to get the top tier rolls on their bonuses. They're disposable bosses that kinda sorta take on features based on the player's warframe and the planet the were created on (and possibly other factors not yet revealed/figured out). They're extreme nuisances that goad you into taking them out as fast as possible, stealing your drops, taking over nodes, and making themselves the entire focus of your game time until they're gone.

* They level up when they kill you... at least, that's how the game presents it (technically, you defeat them in combat, and then fail to totally kill them if you try early, until you know their kill code) instead of gaining power when you kill them. They only really die once/twice in the game, when you make them, and then when you stab them with the correct code. It doesn't match up with the lore and calling them Liches. The in-game system surrounding their encounters feels bad, and not like "power inversion" bad... you defeat them, and then lose anyway, without the full code - and you losing means you die? at the hands of an incapacitated, near-dead enemy? AND they get stronger. AND they gain more influence. AND they steal more from you.

~*~

Their deaths should be climactic, as in the Tennocon demo, on their capital ship. And the reason for the battle should be more of a "start over" to see a different Lich's personality or change some other facet of the system that can only be changed by having a new Nemesis - like switching between Grineer and Corpus Nemesis'. If our goal is always to kill our Lich for what they drop, of course, we'll try to get to that point ASAP. That shouldn't be the goal... the rewards should be along the way, dealing with our Nemesis and succeeding along the way - to keep them as a "long term Nemesis."

That means, we interfere with their goals and they try to stop us. We could raid their supply lines, their treasure ships (letting us get back the stuff they steal), their research bases where they're experimenting with infusing Kuva into weapons (where we'd get chances at the Kuva Weapons, instead of only upon killing the Nemesis), interrupt their communications, kill their high ranking officers, destroy their equipment, sabotage their plans, enter spy vaults to learn the correct order of requiem mods to kill the lich, etc. While we're doing all that, they appear from time to time to try to stop us. They lead a raiding party to try to stop us from completing our objective. These objectives could appear as "alerts" with the old Alerts reward table. Succeeding in these alerts would reduce the Nemesis' influence over the system. Killing the Nemesis when he appears would give him some experience, but not be an automatic levelup. (I'd add more levels to make this even more granular and more of a lasting system.)

They level up too fast. This penalizes newer players who may have just completed the War Within, and create a Lich as soon as possible (as players will do, and already did when it wasn't optional) They will not have all the mods they need, and they will level up their Lich to the point where they can't deal with them... and the Lich's influence will grow, and their nodes will be covered in high level encounters, or their resources will be stolen (and at that point in the game, the resources really do amount to something players need.) It's only really good if players WANT higher level starting enemies in a wide variety of mission nodes. That's about the only good thing I can think that comes from leveling up a Lich, and it's niche.

There should be good reason to level them up. Maybe higher level Nemesis will have better treasure ships (interest rate gained on stolen stuff, so when we steal from them, we get more back than what they stole originally - after all, it takes more effort to go getting it all back), higher stats on their weapons, and benefits once we convert them into allies. In fact, you should WANT high level Lich allies to use like guards on planets, so future Liches can't take influence there if it's one of your preferred farming spots. Also, to crew your Empyrean Railjack... and summonable partners in battle, instead of specters. Imagine if you could send them off on their own little resource gathering missions, like they were stealing from you before, now they go stealing from their queens instead.

Murmur hunting becomes less of a focus in this re-focus of the system... and more of a thing that will happen regardless, over time, as you're dealing with your Nemesis - not the primary fuel for why you're engaging with the Old Blood content.

And when you finally do want to face off against your Nemesis (maybe you just want a low level one again), you go assault their home base (be it a capital ship like the demo, or some other place.) and wipe them out. No RNG, waiting for them to attack you randomly in a mission.

 

I mean, there's plenty of potential in this system, and plenty of ways to keep it from being annoying... (I get annoying was one of the goals, to goad people into fighting their liches, hating that their stuff gets stolen, etc... but that's horribad, IMO... as I've said in other posts... I avoid games where open world free-for-all PK is allowed, because it leads to griefing and people's stuff being stolen, and overall just a bad experience... and this is literally the NPC version of PK ganking - much like the stalker/assassins, only they don't take your stuff like Liches do.)

In other words, make having the Lich active be a good thing, and a goal to power it up and eventually use it... with killing them being a decision to change your nemesis, rather than the goal of the whole thing.

That change right there would immediately remedy the need to "tighten the loop" of gameplay down to a few hours of having a nemesis... and restore the vision of the system.

 

[Ham_Grenabe]

Steve didn't want it, and yet...here we are. 

[SordidDreams]

8 minutes ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

Steve didn't want it, and yet...here we are. 

Yeah, it's mind-boggling. He describes what they have, says that's not what they want, they work on it for almost three more years, then release exactly the thing they had and didn't want all the way back then. WTF were they doing those almost three years?

Edited December 10, 2019 by SordidDreams

[VentiGlondi]

4 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

WTF were they doing those almost three years?

Trying to achieve their goal only to realize it's not feasible given how Warframe works.

Or maybe snickering at players who believed Steve's words.

Hard to tell.

[Skaleek]

Rough man. I'm not really sure what they were thinking with the Lich system. Most players saw the glaring issues the minute it was released, to which DE said "just try it first". Well we tried it.

Lo and Behold, the issues we all forecasted/feared were in fact, glaring problems with the systems. For me namely:

Content island - Segregation from the other gameplay loops

Lack of replayability/evergreen rewards - No reason to do liches after getting the one time rewards you wanted from the system

Grind severely outweighs reward - Spend hours only to have a lich give you a downgrade weapon with nothing of value added to your effort

Lack of Co-op - Unable to play with friends because liches start in their own system, no real reason to work with others

Layers of RNG causing burnout - Self explanatory at this point

These were all problems many people on the forums complained at release, without even playing the content. Because at this point, DE, we're so used to your tricks, we know what's coming before we play it. These problems have been left now for a month and a half, and there are no plans to even look at changes until after the new year.

This is akin to a chef putting a rotting piece of meat on your plate and saying "just try it". If you don't like it, we'll take it back and serve you a new piece of meat in a few weeks. Granted, this is a free to play game, so perhaps the analogy is not 100% apt, but i think you get the idea.

Edited December 10, 2019 by Skaleek

[SordidDreams]

53 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Lack of Co-op - Unable to play with friends because liches start in their own system, no real reason to work with others

That is a huge issue that I don't see discussed much in lich complaint threads, yet it's one of the things that I hate the most about the system. If you do thrall missions with someone else in nodes that your lich doesn't own, your lich gains no anger and can't spawn in the mission. Wanna play with a friend? Tough sh*t, your respective liches' territories have no overlap, so one of you is going to be missing out and retarding their already painfully slow progress. Oh, you want to play with two or three friends? The chances of everyone's liches' territories lining up are almost nil. F*cking brilliant.

Whoever made the system should be made to write "I will not design a co-op game to discourage and punish playing with friends" five hundred times on a blackboard while wearing a dunce hat.

Edited December 10, 2019 by SordidDreams