Yet Another Lich Suggestion - Lich Side Objectives

[Grey_Star_Rival_Defender]

Yeah yeah more Lich improvement suggestions. Not like there's a million threads or anything. There's a TLDR if you don't like overly long paragraphs.

Overly Long Preface

 

One thing that I first enjoyed about the Lich system was the chance to fight Grineer in tilesets that they aren't normally in. Which was cool. But after the second Lich that novelty factor wore off pretty badly. Especially with the lack of diversification of Grineer sub-factions minus the Kuva variants and Empyrean's "Corrosive Only, Sortie Health" Grineer. And slightly less so, the bizarreness of seeing Grineer sub-factions in places I wouldn't expect them. Like Arid Grineer on a Corpus ship.

There's only three things acquired from doing Lich missions. Lich Anger (to kill them and upgrade their thralls), Murmur progress (to kill the Lich), and Requiem Relics (to crack open for Endo or Kuva once enough spare mods are acquired). I've only done two liches, but the second lich I did mostly by myself. With no dedicated Murmur farming group farming a R5 Kuva Lich's thralls, it took myself around 8 hours of full gameplay or so to get all of the requiem murmurs by myself. In comparison it should take 4 Exterminates if unlucky to get all the murmurs for someone with an R5 Lich, which shouldn't be more than 40 minutes tops. I'm not asking for reducing the murmur grind when doing the simple thing makes it easy, I'm looking to instead make hunting Liches feel more organic and rewarding.

At present, one of my big problems with the Kuva Lich system is that it is completely separated from the base game. A player must hunt their lich, and not the other way around. Generally this means killing thralls on personalized nodes in the starchart to anger the lich in a way that feels separated from the rest of the game. It feels separated from the rest of the game because it takes place on personalized mission nodes, and only rewards the three things I mentioned above: endo/kuva, murmur progress, Lich anger. Unless a player speedruns the lich system, the choice boils down to clearing Lich influence in order to get the weapon, or doing literally any other mission for rewards other than requiem relics and Lich progress, such as void fissures to get rid of the one thousand relics I have. I would like to chance this dichotomy.

One thing I believe is underutilized in Warframe is the presence of side objectives. The only side objectives that regularly come up in the game are: Nightwave missions, Bounty bonuses, Orokin Vaults, and Halls of Ascension. The first of these is per player rather than per mission, the second is limited to exactly one game mode, and the second two are region specific. I suggest integrating Lich content into the main starchart, rather than a separate extension of it, to solve the problem of both making the lich system feel separate from the core gameplay, and to make lich progress somewhat more rewarding. I liked the Acolyte hunting events, and I believe it could be useful for improving Kuva Liches.

The Actual Suggestion

Instead of having Lich progress be tied to Lich territory in a more or less separate part of the Starchart, instead tie Lich progress into the mainline starchart as secondary or side objectives. This way a player can reap the benefits of both a regular mission and do Lich content at once.

Examples:

• Thrall Deathsquad (Any Exterminate, Survival, Defense, or any Corpus Ship tileset mission): There's a deathsquad of your Lich's thralls that are in the vicinity, there's a marked tile on your HUD that will let you bait out the thralls to gain murmur progress. For terrain missions or Grineer galleon missions, this would be a locked tile marked on the hud that when opened, causes several thralls to spawn. For Corpus Ship missions, this instead would be a marked wall that when activated, would cause a Grineer boarding pod to crash in with several thralls at the location. Because Thralls being on a Corpus ship filled with Corpus would be weird.
• Sabotage Machinery (any mission): There's a hidden Lich outpost in the vicinity, find and destroy. Another marked tile, but reusing sabotage assets. The tile is marked off with a forcefield that only a Parazon can remove, and inside that tile is a piece of Grineer machinery to destroy and several thralls in order to raise Lich anger.
• Hidden Vault (any mission): A hidden lich spy vault is in the area, hack it and retrieve some of your stolen items. Pretty much another forcefield protected area, hack with Parazon, break into the vault, make it out with some of your stolen items and raise lich anger.
• Intercepted Data (mobile defense): There's a system in the area that contains some data on your Lich, retrieve it. Basically a fourth mobile defense system that when raided, and being protected by thralls, provides murmur progress or lich anger.

The overall idea is to reuse part of the base gameplay, but allow the player to take out lich territory on the starchart without separating them from the rest of the game, so these could be completed during void fissures or such. Completing these side objectives would also remove the lich's influence on that node, like completing a lich mission does currently. In addition to making lich missions something other than five exterminates, one excavation, etc.

The current lich missions are useful for speedrunning liches, so I would like to see those to remain, but since they're no longer the only place to acquire lich progress, allow more varied gameplay in them than just "random grineer faction on tileset, exterminate mission." Providing the opportunity to make the territory missions better.

TLDR: Incorporate Liches into base starchart instead of separate starchart.

Edited January 19, 2020 by Grey_Star_Rival_Defender