Kuva Lich System Redesign: More RPG, Less Grind

[Ash_of_Narmer]

Introduction

Having just defeated my 3rd Lich and being exceedingly bored doing so. I think the Lich system is a cool idea but executed in an overly grindy way with no dynamic progression.

I run a Discord based Warframe roleplay group and just recently implemented a system for my players to create, hunt, and defeat a Kuva Lich. I thought I'd share an augmented version of my RP system, made more suitable for actual gameplay rather than RP, and see what people think. Please note that all percentages used here should not be regarded as final. I'm not great at balancing things out like in that manner.

Having said that, here we go:

 

 

Requiem Mods

In my RP, Requiem Mods are no longer mods, but just something called Requiems. Unlike in game where you have to get them from relics, in the RP, players must travel to Lua and/or Orokin Towers and search for a special room similar to an Orokin Vault on Derelicts. Once this room, or "Requiem Vault" is found, the entire team learns a Requiem Whisper/Murmur. For example, say the players open the vault. When they enter, they gain one of 16 collectibles.In this example lets say they gain "Carrion hordes trill their profane...". Once the mission is successfully completed, that whisper is stored in the players inventory. Players will then keep running missions in either Lua or the Void to search for the rest of the Requiem Fragments. Once they find two halves of a Requiem Fragment, that Requiem is permanently gained and will never run out of charges like the Requiem mods do now. Ultimately, the idea is to make players search for the Requiem Fragments in a similar fashion to the Silver Grove, running missions until they find the "Requiem Vault" and acquire all 16 Whispers/Murmurs to form all 8 Requiems.

Note: Players should not receive copies of Requiem Whispers/Murmurs they already own.

 

I'll summarize the above system in bullet points:

1. Requiems are no long expendable mods, but rather permanent but fragmented mods that must be reconstructed.
 

2. Players must hunt for "Requiem Fragments/Murmurs" kept within "Requiem Vaults" in the Void or Lua similar to how the Silver Grove/Derelict Vaults are found in normal missions. I'm thinking a 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 chance for a Requiem Vault to appear in missions.

3. Once 2 halves of each Requiem (a. "From Brooding Gulfs we are beheld..." b. "By that which bears no name." = Lohk) the player gains permanent Requiem Mod that cannot run out of uses/charges.

4. Two copies of a"Requiem Fragments/Murmurs" cannot be collected to save on grind.

5. Players will ultimately have to find 16 "Requiem Fragments/Murmurs" in order to gain all 8 Requiem Mods.

 

Lich Requiems

The next stage of my RP's Lich System requires players to learn the Requiems that will ultimately kill the Lich. I modified this so that rather than grind for requiems, players have a chance to learn the Requiems through more varied means. Players can chose to raid the Kuva Fortress or Lich's Territory to learn these Requiems. The missions that would contain them are Spy, Mobile Defense, Capture, and Endless with Thralls having a small chance to reveal one of the Requiems. Each missions type should have a chance to give the player one full Requiem they need to kill the Lich. Granted, this shouldn't be a guaranteed drop for mission completion. Spy missions should have a chance to reveal a Requiem based on player success. Mobile Defense should have a flat chance, and Interception should have an increasing chance based on how long players stay in the level. These 3 mission types and Thralls should also be able to potentially drop the same Requiem, multiple times, simply so people have to actually earn their rewards. Players won't be given the correct order of the Requiems, and the Requiem count should be increased to 4 rather than staying at 3 (this will be explained later).
 

To Summarize:
1. Instead of farming Thralls for hints about which Requiem to use, players now complete different mission types to simply learn 1 of 4 Requiems until they know all 4.
A. Spy missions (Kuva Fortress & Lich Territory) should have an increasing drop rate based on player success. Each vault should contribute a certain

percentage to the acquisition of the Requiem. For example:
A successful hack should contribute 3-5% per vault with a max chance of 9-15% to reveal a Requiem on mission completion.
A successful hack with no alarms triggered should contribute 7-10% per vault with a max chance of 21-30% to reveal a Requiem on mission

completion.

B. Mobile Defense (Lich Territory) should have a flat 10-15% chance to reveal a Requiem on mission completion.

 

C. Capture (Lich Territory) should have a 3-5% chance to reveal a Requiem.

D. Endless should have a base chance to reveal a Requiem that increases the longer the player stays until a Requiem is revealed. Once a Requiem

is revealed, the chance resets and continues like the mission started, while keeping enemy level. The same Requiem can be revealed again in the

same mission. Interception missions should not be capped.

Waves B and C should increase the percentage chance the Requiem is revealed every time those are successfully completed. For example:
A1a = 4%, A1b = 4%, B1 = 6% (+2%), C1 = 8% (+2%)
A2a = 8%, A2b = 8%, B2 = 10% (+2%), C2 = 12% (+2%)
A3a = 12% (Requiem Revealed), A3b = 4%, B3 = 6% (+2%), C3 = 8% (+2%)
and so on and so forth.

2. Thralls should have a significantly smaller chance (1-2%) to simply reveal a Requiem rather than giving the current "Murmurs"

 

3. Unlike finding the Requiem Mod Fragments, the same Requiem can be found multiple times until all 4 are found.

4. Attacking a Lich with random Requiems should remain as is, with correct Requiems becoming instantly known.

 

 

Lich Debuffs

In my RP, using the correct Requiem on a Lich prevents them from scaling up in a specific area, which adds a unique layer to each Lich encounter. Each of 4 requiems should prevent the Lich from scaling in either Health, Shields, Armor, or damage. Consequently, Lich levelling should be uncapped, this will help offset being weakened by the correct Requiem and make attacking a Lich with a random Requiem a little easier.

 

 

Lich Territory Rewards

This isn't in my RP yet, but it would be a cool idea to have Thralls drop a small amount of Kuva on death (50-100) and maybe have Kuva show up as a drop in endless mission rewards as well.

 

 

Conclusion

I've spent a lot of time redesigning Warframe into a table top style RPG and thought that this might be a cool suggestion considering how many complaints I've seen/heard about the current iteration of the Kuva Lich system. In my eyes, this will actually make farming Kuva Lichs feel more dynamic and less raw grindy, while still also offering the normal mission rewards and in some cases, Kuva.

If anyone has any suggestions for me to add to this don't hesitate to let me know. I'd love to hear any and all constructive feedback on my thoughts here!

Edited January 18, 2020 by Mataeru

[Lightel03]

First of all, about that fancy font and article organization. I would like to thank you for the satisfaction that reading this post brought to me, my OCD can finally get some rest now.

Second of all, your idea is actually pretty great:

- The hunt for requiem mods seems to be much more interesting, aswell as absent of RNG, in contrast of the current requiem relic farming.

- And your idea for making the Lich`es requiems RNG obtainable is actually pretty great, it makes a lot more sense story wise. And the chances of revealing the Lich`es requiems seem to be quite balanced and actually reasonable for the mission types, and i do appreciate the option of playing endless missions with scalling chances for requiems. This will really fix the general tedium that is killing Liches.

But as for critiscism, It`s not exactly of your ideas, and more of what they presuppose. These changes are implying that Liches can be killed in a single day, making them not a true nemesis, and I wouldn`t have anything wrong with that if the Liches weren`t advertised as such.

- Your changes would make Lich farming possibly tolerable, but it wouldn`t be able to make the Lich system what it was meant to be. Since currently, the only reason a player would want to have a Lich is to kill it and get his kuva weapon, and this is fundamentally breaking the Lich system.

If your changes would be implemented, people would have all kuva weapons in, possibly, a couple days. After that no one would ever touch the system again, because there is no reason to do so, other than for ephemeras, who will also soon be farmed away aswell.

There needs to be a reason as to why someone would want to keep an enemy Lich alive for a certain period of time, otherwise it`s just another mastery rank dump of a system.

I rather hear what you have to say about this issue, rather than have me give suggestions, since your changes wouldn`t be something out of the ordinary for DE to implement, unlike many other posts I`ve seen.

[Ash_of_Narmer]

2 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

First of all, about that fancy font and article organization. I would like to thank you for the satisfaction that reading this post brought to me, my OCD can finally get some rest now.

Second of all, your idea is actually pretty great:

- The hunt for requiem mods seems to be much more interesting, aswell as absent of RNG, in contrast of the current requiem relic farming.

- And your idea for making the Lich`es requiems RNG obtainable is actually pretty great, it makes a lot more sense story wise. And the chances of revealing the Lich`es requiems seem to be quite balanced and actually reasonable for the mission types, and i do appreciate the option of playing endless missions with scalling chances for requiems. This will really fix the general tedium that is killing Liches.

But as for critiscism, It`s not exactly of your ideas, and more of what they presuppose. These changes are implying that Liches can be killed in a single day, making them not a true nemesis, and I wouldn`t have anything wrong with that if the Liches weren`t advertised as such.

- Your changes would make Lich farming possibly tolerable, but it wouldn`t be able to make the Lich system what it was meant to be. Since currently, the only reason a player would want to have a Lich is to kill it and get his kuva weapon, and this is fundamentally breaking the Lich system.

If your changes would be implemented, people would have all kuva weapons in, possibly, a couple days. After that no one would ever touch the system again, because there is no reason to do so, other than for ephemeras, who will also soon be farmed away aswell.

There needs to be a reason as to why someone would want to keep an enemy Lich alive for a certain period of time, otherwise it`s just another mastery rank dump of a system.

I rather hear what you have to say about this issue, rather than have me give suggestions, since your changes wouldn`t be something out of the ordinary for DE to implement, unlike many other posts I`ve seen.

I just used Times New Roman (Copied from google docs and pasted in here)

Mild Rant:
 

Spoiler

My initial response to this is that people who just devote an entire day to nothing but Warframe are cheating themselves. As an college student going for a degree in software development, I can confidently say that NOTHING DE does, short of up-sizing their staff by a few hundred people will allow them to keep pace with the people that burn through new content in a day or two. You have to make a choice to either try to pander to the power gamers and always fail or do your best to maintain the game for the people that can't devote an entire day to the game. For a game like Warframe, there really is no way to create new content on a scale that will satisfy the people who burn through it in a day. And those that do behave like children in my honest opinion. I get that people who take on careers in entertainment are obligated to work to please the people they entertain but the people that are entertained also need to be mindful of the demands they put on those entertaining them.
That being said, I do believe DE needs to improve the pacing and start listening to the community more than they currently do, but the community also needs to be conscientious about the stress DE is under trying to cater to a section of community that will never be satisfied.

Now then, for my proposed fixes to make it less single day farmable:
1. The drop chances I proposed are probably a little bit too high. But even then, the odds of having the same Requiem drop repeatedly should even things out at least a little. Its not like the Requiems are gonna be the only item on the list. They could even be made a rot C only reward. I don't know. Balancing isn't my strong suit (I'm still revisiting my RP system and balancing stuff out that I made months ago).

2. More Requiems could be required to kill the Lich. I mean, with 4 requiems, you end up with what, 4x3x2 combinations? If you add 5 into that mix, the amount of time guessing what the order is goes up exponentially, as does the Lich level/difficulty.

3. DE could spend a little extra time making Kuva Variants of EVERY Grineer weapon out there. That would add a hefty buff to content.

4. Rather than allow you to just put all 3 Requiem mods on and kill the Lich in a single encounter, the Lich go run and hide away for 24 hours after each successful Requiem is used on it. That'll make at least a 3 day wait for each Lich. Yes people will whine and complain about this, but then they'd whine and complain about anything else DE does.

5. The BEST thing DE could do to make Lich's worthwhile is create a prestige system where every Lich you kill gives you a SINGLE resource token per Lich killed called a (place holder name) "Kuva Ducat" or something to that effect, that is used to buy elite cosmetics, mods, decorations, hell, maybe even add new Dojo room blueprints, captura scenes. I'm talking simple things to design, but also something really cool and worth the effort. Maybe a really cool Syndana that looks kinda like the Kuva gem thing some Lich's have on their backs could cost 25 Kuva Ducats, which means after you kill 25 Liches you could buy this Syndana. Or maybe, a Kuva Energy Ephemera? There's so much DE could do with just this alone.
Some reward ideas & prices: (Obviously unbalanced but fictional numbers. mostly designed to appeal to the "content in a day players")
Decorations - 1-20 Kuva Ducats
Booster - 20 Kuva Ducats
Attachments (Different Styles) - 25 Kuva Ducats each
XXk Endo - 30 Kuva Ducats
XXXk Kuva - 40 Kuva Ducats
Syndanas (Different styles) - 50 Kuva Ducats
Kuva Ephemeras (Different Kuva effects) - 75 Kuva Ducats
Kuva Themed Skins - 100 Kuva Ducats

Spoiler

On another note, it would be cool if the quirks did had more actual game play affecting elements and if Liches could have maybe 3 or 4 at once. Here's a list of my homebrew/modified existing quirks and what they'll do to a Lich that has them in the RP:
1. Vigorous - Extra Health
2. Fear of Kubrows - Kubrows do double damage to Liches
3. Burly - Extra Armor
4. Diseased - Negates Viral & Toxin damage
5. Strong - Increases damage for melee based Liches
6. Weak - Reduced Health
7. Fear of Kavats - Kavats do double damage to Liches
8. Precise - Increases damage for ranged based Liches
9. Vengeful - Briefly becomes invulnerable on 0 Health and attacks for a few seconds before the Vanquish/Convert menu shows up.
10. Clumsy - May periodically drop their weapon (think disarm, but they can pick it back up)
11. Fear of Children - Operators do double damage to Liches
12. Pyromaniac - Negates Heat & Blast damage
13. Conceited - The clap emote makes the Lich stop fighting for a few seconds as it basks in your admonishment, allowing free damage briefly
14. Intimidating - Tenno deal 20% less damage within 20 meters of the Lich
15. Trophy Hunter - If your Warframe is defeated by the Lich, you have to play a Zanuka Hunter style escape mission, but with appropriate level enemies.

These are just a couple more ideas I have. I need MOAR FEEDBACK/DISCUSSION! Help fuel my creative fires!

Edited January 19, 2020 by Mataeru

[Lightel03]

Sorry for making this so long, I included a list of suggestions aswell, and it kept getting bigger and bigger to account for any variables, hope you got some time to read all this.

8 hours ago, Mataeru said:

Now then, for my proposed fixes to make it less single day farmable:
1. The drop chances I proposed are probably a little bit too high. But even then, the odds of having the same Requiem drop repeatedly should even things out at least a little. Its not like the Requiems are gonna be the only item on the list. They could even be made a rot C only reward. I don't know. Balancing isn't my strong suit (I'm still revisiting my RP system and balancing stuff out that I made months ago).

Well, if the same Lich requiem can drop repeatedly, I do think it would be better to keep the OP`s endless mode format, since chances that are in the single digits are still extremely low, it`s not like people will get requiems every 4 or 6 waves of defence, even with scalling chances. Making it a rot C only reward would just detract players from doing endless Lich missions, it`s much better for them to just do spy or other high chance missions.

8 hours ago, Mataeru said:

2. More Requiems could be required to kill the Lich. I mean, with 4 requiems, you end up with what, 4x3x2 combinations? If you add 5 into that mix, the amount of time guessing what the order is goes up exponentially, as does the Lich level/difficulty.

Every time we try to kill a Lich, and get the wrong sequence, it gets stronger. Even if the player knows all the requiems for their Lich, he does not know the correct order, making it a simple guessing game, where every time you fail, everything gets harder, even though the path to succes is out of the players hand, it`s just blind luck. Making Liches have 4 or 5 requiems would just worsen this problem even more. I do think I have a suggestion that fixes this, I`ll write it after I take in the rest of your post.

9 hours ago, Mataeru said:

3. DE could spend a little extra time making Kuva Variants of EVERY Grineer weapon out there. That would add a hefty buff to content.

Simple enough, but would still work in terms of giving more content. But this just gives more reason to kill Liches rather than keep them, aswell as worsen the RNG that is to get the weapon that you want from Liches, trust me, no one wants a Kuva Stug. Maybe integrate this into your Token idea, add certain new kuva variant of weapons to the token reward pool, that`ll keep the maniacs from complaining about content drought.

9 hours ago, Mataeru said:

4. Rather than allow you to just put all 3 Requiem mods on and kill the Lich in a single encounter, the Lich go run and hide away for 24 hours after each successful Requiem is used on it. That'll make at least a 3 day wait for each Lich. Yes people will whine and complain about this, but then they'd whine and complain about anything else DE does.

B r u h, I get you don`t like players who play this game 24/7, but gating Liches for a whole day would set the community on fire, it`s much better if we focus on other ways to extend a Liches life cycle, like giving reasons to keep it alive.

9 hours ago, Mataeru said:

5. The BEST thing DE could do to make Lich's worthwhile is create a prestige system where every Lich you kill gives you a SINGLE resource token per Lich killed called a (place holder name) "Kuva Ducat" or something to that effect, that is used to buy elite cosmetics, mods, decorations, hell, maybe even add new Dojo room blueprints, captura scenes. I'm talking simple things to design, but also something really cool and worth the effort. Maybe a really cool Syndana that looks kinda like the Kuva gem thing some Lich's have on their backs could cost 25 Kuva Ducats, which means after you kill 25 Liches you could buy this Syndana. Or maybe, a Kuva Energy Ephemera? There's so much DE could do with just this alone.
Some reward ideas & prices: (Obviously unbalanced but fictional numbers. mostly designed to appeal to the "content in a day players")
Decorations - 1-20 Kuva Ducats
Booster - 20 Kuva Ducats
Attachments (Different Styles) - 25 Kuva Ducats each
XXk Endo - 30 Kuva Ducats
XXXk Kuva - 40 Kuva Ducats
Syndanas (Different styles) - 50 Kuva Ducats
Kuva Ephemeras (Different Kuva effects) - 75 Kuva Ducats
Kuva Themed Skins - 100 Kuva Ducats

I do think this Kuva Ducat has it`s place to reduce weapon RNG, perhaps making weapons cost 2-5 tokens (btw, them prices need to go down, screw "content a day" players, killing 100 or even 50 Liches would send me into an induced coma, even with your changes). The only issue is how is this going to be explained storywise.

9 hours ago, Mataeru said:

On another note, it would be cool if the quirks did had more actual game play affecting elements and if Liches could have maybe 3 or 4 at once. Here's a list of my homebrew/modified existing quirks and what they'll do to a Lich that has them in the RP:
1. Vigorous - Extra Health
2. Fear of Kubrows - Kubrows do double damage to Liches
3. Burly - Extra Armor
4. Diseased - Negates Viral & Toxin damage
5. Strong - Increases damage for melee based Liches
6. Weak - Reduced Health
7. Fear of Kavats - Kavats do double damage to Liches
8. Precise - Increases damage for ranged based Liches
9. Vengeful - Briefly becomes invulnerable on 0 Health and attacks for a few seconds before the Vanquish/Convert menu shows up.
10. Clumsy - May periodically drop their weapon (think disarm, but they can pick it back up)
11. Fear of Children - Operators do double damage to Liches
12. Pyromaniac - Negates Heat & Blast damage
13. Conceited - The clap emote makes the Lich stop fighting for a few seconds as it basks in your admonishment, allowing free damage briefly
14. Intimidating - Tenno deal 20% less damage within 20 meters of the Lich
15. Trophy Hunter - If your Warframe is defeated by the Lich, you have to play a Zanuka Hunter style escape mission, but with appropriate level enemies.

2, 7 and 11 - I think that damage should be bumped up to tripled, kubrows and kavats don`t really do that much damage, especially compared to a Liches EHP

13 -  Y   E   S,  it`s spammable, and would probably break any difficulty that especific Lich had, but I DON`T CARE

15 - Seems pretty cool, but maybe to reduce effort on DE`s part, it`s better to just make an escape mission in the Kuva fortress.

Overall, these additions would be welcome, but I do think Liches should have at least 2 of these, since having a Lich that is only Vengeful, or only Diseased doesn`t really allow for any intricate planning prior to a showdown. Of course there will need to be some exclusions: you can`t have a Strong and also Weak Lich, that doesn`t make sense, aswell as for balancing: I don`t think anyone wants a Lich that has increased health and armor, that would just be a nightmare.

 

Anyway, here are some ideas I have:

• Reasons to keep the Lich alive

- Every Lich, when adavancing to other planets with his influence, leaves grinner operation outsposts that help coordinate his army, these facilities are fundamental to the Lich`s expansion through the planet, aswell as holding many resources that are needed to fund said operations. These facilities are present in every planet the Lich has influence in, they are marked as a special node in the map. These special nodes are always on the same spot, making so players can join others in their invasion, aswell as letting all of them get the same rewards as others. (Everyone goes into the facility, so everyone gets the same rewards and benefits as the others)

The invasion involves the Tenno destroying all data gathered aswell as any communication relays within the facility, making for a mobile defence mission. After this objective is done the players are given an option to remain in the facility and fight the incoming backup for an unlimited amount of time (which includes a guaranteed Lich spawn at every 5 minutes, so players dont get shafted when trying to kill their Lich), or they can extract.

By staying in the facility, the player is rewarded with Kuva and rare resources (from the respective planet), aswell as any previously stolen loot at the end of the mission. (I haven`t really thought of any other rewards that make sense to be in these facilities and are valuable to the player, if anyone has an idea as to what could be added into this reward pool, I would appreciate it)

• The Lich army

 - The influence spreads through planets similarly to how it is currently, if you leave the Lich alone, it will soon enough have influence all over the star system. But it happens too quickly as of currently, this process needs to slow down a bit, having the Lich completely take over one planet every 48 real hours seems reasonable to me.

- There

 - With both of my previous and later suggestions taken into account, the Lich`es army needs to scale in level according to the Lich`es influence in the system.

Starting around level 50, and with every planet under its influence, that level grows by 5. (the max level it can reach is 130, the player will have to interact with the Lich and his facilities to keep the enemy levels at a comfortable place, but will also want to let planets fall under his influence to maximize the amount of facilities that are available to loot)

In the special facilities, the units will have the same level as the army. But the backup will begin at level 80, since they are units sent by the Kuva fortress aswell as the Liches special units.

• The Lich himself

- First of all, Liches would be buffed, starting out with their level 5 stats, and being invincible, with the greyed out health bar, but with his shields still being abe to get damaged.

- Liches would hunt the player similarly to the Stalker, but with a slightly increased chance of spawning, the Lich has a 2 minute timer, but he can also be sent away by letting him kill his respective player, or by depleting his shield, where he kneels, and soon after he goes away.

- There is no correct order of requiems to kill a Lich, instead, you only need one of the requiems assigned to the Lich to kill it. And at every requiem you stab into the Lich after the first, you weaken him.

The first requiem enables you to damage the Liches health, enabling you to kill him.

The second requiem bumps the Lich`s stats to lvl 4

The third requiem bumps the Lich`s stats to lvl 3

These requiems can be punctured into the Lich the same way they are currently, the Lich has one shield bar, and three health bars, at first, when the shields are depleted, the player can release the first requiem, enabling the Lich`es health to become vulnerable. After one health bar is depleted, he kneels once again, this is the opportunity for the player to release another requiem into the Lich and make his next health bar weaker, if done so, the Lich WWE`s the player away from him, making use of his throwing animation, these events repeat into his last health bar, where when it is depleted, it gives the option to kill or convert.

• Other necessary systems that should be implemented

- There needs to be a way for players to opt out of this system, by making a peace treaty with the Lich, giving him resources in exchange for him stop bothering you, or by trading a Lich with another player while the Lich is still active.

When putting a Lich up for trade, his influence spread should stop, as to compensate for the time that it will take for players to find people who would want their Lich. In every Clan, players should have a limited amount of Liches they can put on hold, as the clan gets bigger in size the bigger that amount goes. Ghost tier = 2 ... Moon tier = 6

[Ash_of_Narmer]

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

Well, if the same Lich requiem can drop repeatedly, I do think it would be better to keep the OP`s endless mode format, since chances that are in the single digits are still extremely low, it`s not like people will get requiems every 4 or 6 waves of defence, even with scalling chances. Making it a rot C only reward would just detract players from doing endless Lich missions, it`s much better for them to just do spy or other high chance missions.

This is a fair point. Again, I leave the actual drop balancing to DE.

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

Every time we try to kill a Lich, and get the wrong sequence, it gets stronger. Even if the player knows all the requiems for their Lich, he does not know the correct order, making it a simple guessing game, where every time you fail, everything gets harder, even though the path to succes is out of the players hand, it`s just blind luck. Making Liches have 4 or 5 requiems would just worsen this problem even more. I do think I have a suggestion that fixes this, I`ll write it after I take in the rest of your post.

This is only a problem if the levels scale too high to fast. Perhaps making them only jump in level by 5-10 points with each defeat would make things easier? I dunno.

 

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

I do think this Kuva Ducat has it`s place to reduce weapon RNG, perhaps making weapons cost 2-5 tokens (btw, them prices need to go down, screw "content a day" players, killing 100 or even 50 Liches would send me into an induced coma, even with your changes). The only issue is how is this going to be explained storywise.

Who said this had to be a store thing? The Crimson Branch in dojos could easlity facilitiate this. Maybe the Kuva Ducat would be better made into something like "Purified Kuva" or "Refined Kuva" and used as a crafting material to allow players to craft a Kuva weapon of their choice BUT ONLY be able to select weapons from Liches they've killed. This could also be where the other rewards are created. We could just add additional normal resources to the cost, and make the Kuva Resource reward from killing a Lich a necessary part to get said item. Doesn't really need any lore fleshing out.

 

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

- Every Lich, when adavancing to other planets with his influence, leaves grinner operation outsposts that help coordinate his army, these facilities are fundamental to the Lich`s expansion through the planet, aswell as holding many resources that are needed to fund said operations. These facilities are present in every planet the Lich has influence in, they are marked as a special node in the map. These special nodes are always on the same spot, making so players can join others in their invasion, aswell as letting all of them get the same rewards as others. (Everyone goes into the facility, so everyone gets the same rewards and benefits as the others)

The invasion involves the Tenno destroying all data gathered aswell as any communication relays within the facility, making for a mobile defence mission. After this objective is done the players are given an option to remain in the facility and fight the incoming backup for an unlimited amount of time (which includes a guaranteed Lich spawn at every 5 minutes, so players dont get shafted when trying to kill their Lich), or they can extract.

By staying in the facility, the player is rewarded with Kuva and rare resources (from the respective planet), aswell as any previously stolen loot at the end of the mission. (I haven`t really thought of any other rewards that make sense to be in these facilities and are valuable to the player, if anyone has an idea as to what could be added into this reward pool, I would appreciate it)

Imma build on this, cause this a really good idea, but it feels a little lacking. I think it would provide incentive to leave said Lich alive if the Lich was able to passively gain credits, Kuva, and resources specific to the planet it's on every day (Cryotic included). Those stockpiled resources could then be siphoned off in a mission similar to yours, but perhaps in Disruption style, where we have to defend a console for x amount of time and when thats done, we get some of the Lich's resources. And a counter on screen tells us exactly how much of the Lich's pool we've stolen. (This would be a GREAT way to piss the Lich off right after it defeats you if you're trying to figure out the sequence).

 

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

- The influence spreads through planets similarly to how it is currently, if you leave the Lich alone, it will soon enough have influence all over the star system. But it happens too quickly as of currently, this process needs to slow down a bit, having the Lich completely take over one planet every 48 real hours seems reasonable to me.

- There

 - With both of my previous and later suggestions taken into account, the Lich`es army needs to scale in level according to the Lich`es influence in the system.

Starting around level 50, and with every planet under its influence, that level grows by 5. (the max level it can reach is 130, the player will have to interact with the Lich and his facilities to keep the enemy levels at a comfortable place, but will also want to let planets fall under his influence to maximize the amount of facilities that are available to loot)

In the special facilities, the units will have the same level as the army. But the backup will begin at level 80, since they are units sent by the Kuva fortress aswell as the Liches special units.

Believe it or not, this is ALMOST EXACTLY what I'm doing with Liches in my RP, and I agree, this would be a good idea. However, there needs to be incentive to keep this under control. Which brings up another situation that I actually need to make a whole new thread about. (I'll start that thread later). But in short, my idea would be that the 6 Syndicates would hold ground on planets in the Origin System and skirmish amongst themselves for new territory, similar to the way the Invasions work. Part of the incentive to balance the Lich's power to keep them from overruning everything, while maintaining a steady resource income from raiding the outpost could be gaining special rewards and standing from helping Syndicates defend their turf from the Lich in the form of maybe Alert Missions. The player can choose to accept or ignore, but the penalty would be lost standing with said Syndicate and no reward for helping them. Basically forcing the user to choose between aiding Syndicate for special rewards, or letting the Lich gain power for more resources and money in the long run.
 

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

- First of all, Liches would be buffed, starting out with their level 5 stats, and being invincible, with the greyed out health bar, but with his shields still being abe to get damaged.

- Liches would hunt the player similarly to the Stalker, but with a slightly increased chance of spawning, the Lich has a 2 minute timer, but he can also be sent away by letting him kill his respective player, or by depleting his shield, where he kneels, and soon after he goes away.

- There is no correct order of requiems to kill a Lich, instead, you only need one of the requiems assigned to the Lich to kill it. And at every requiem you stab into the Lich after the first, you weaken him.

The first requiem enables you to damage the Liches health, enabling you to kill him.

The second requiem bumps the Lich`s stats to lvl 4

The third requiem bumps the Lich`s stats to lvl 3

These requiems can be punctured into the Lich the same way they are currently, the Lich has one shield bar, and three health bars, at first, when the shields are depleted, the player can release the first requiem, enabling the Lich`es health to become vulnerable. After one health bar is depleted, he kneels once again, this is the opportunity for the player to release another requiem into the Lich and make his next health bar weaker, if done so, the Lich WWE`s the player away from him, making use of his throwing animation, these events repeat into his last health bar, where when it is depleted, it gives the option to kill or convert.

I disagree with the idea that only one Requiem should be able to kill the Lich and the other two just make it easier to hurt it. It would be more satisfying imo if the requiems had different growth stunting effects like I mentioned before but I guess thats just me. Although I may just not be understanding your suggestion here.

 

22 hours ago, Lightel03 said:

- There needs to be a way for players to opt out of this system, by making a peace treaty with the Lich, giving him resources in exchange for him stop bothering you, or by trading a Lich with another player while the Lich is still active.

When putting a Lich up for trade, his influence spread should stop, as to compensate for the time that it will take for players to find people who would want their Lich. In every Clan, players should have a limited amount of Liches they can put on hold, as the clan gets bigger in size the bigger that amount goes. Ghost tier = 2 ... Moon tier = 6

This already exists. its called not killing the Larvling. Whow in their right mind would voluntarily give away resources/credits to a Lich to just get him to stop bothering you?

[Kaian-a-coel]

For all the faults in the lich system, the requiem mods are probably the least problematic ones. Sure, the initial acquisition is a pain, but after that you only need an average of one mod per lich. It's everything else that needs changing.

Conveniently, I have packaged all of my ideas in the form of a playable web game, so I can just leave a link instead of a wall of text (there is a wall of text in the game if you still want it). It has quite a lot of things packed in here. Intel system, Assets, Plots, requiem tweaks, territory tweaks, lich leveling more slowly... Lots of stuff, that overall aims at making the liches true nemeses.

As for the lich scaling, the idea I had was to have a formula based on the player's MR and how many requiem mods are equipped on their parazon at the time of the larvaling's execution (with depleted mods counting double for maximum endgame). Here's a picture. As you see, an MR5 fresh out of war within, with no mods on his parazon, would have to face a lich scaling from level 24 at rank one, to level 40 at rank 5. A MR 20 with three non-depleted requiem mods on his parazon, would have a lich scaling from level 53 to level 123 (roughly the current values). A MR28 in search of challenge, with three deplete requiem mods, would be able to face a lich scaling from level 77 to level 215.