Kuva Lich system critiques

[Cortanis]

So now that I've been through the Lich system and I'm almost done with it, I'm going to give my two cents on the system and it's rather large negatives...

First issue is clearly the RNG issue. Per the last dev stream, yeah they're working on a token system as well as other systems to give the ability to otherwise quick toss your current lich out the nearest airlock to move on to the next one. Sure... that works to an extent. It also doesn't work in any respect to keep from waffling between a couple of weapons at all. I've refused to buy any liches from trade chat just to see how far I could properly take the system. I've got two weapons left to get and that will be it. Just the Kuva Brakk and The Kuva Drakgoon. Over all I've had far more weapons pile up that I will legit never need. This also leaves the odds of actually making progress entirely up to RNG and actively makes the system worse. Literal loot boxes would arguably be more effective at this point due to the time sink and effort required. No one wants that. Their needs to be a system in place to narrow down the RNG a lot more as to bring the RNG into a selection for the primaries only, secondaries only, and the other two weapons. That way we have a chance of 1 in 7 chance on the primaries and a 1 in 4 chance for the secondaries, as of current weapon additions in the system, to actually make progress rather than in my case, a 2 in 13 chance to actually pull something that I don't have. Narrowing it down to weapon classes like that helps and also doesn't because it doesn't prevent waffling, but it does properly increase the chance of getting what you're missing.

Now I have a bone to pick with the weapons themselves... or rather the lack of weapons. We've known about the kingpin system being done for some time now. Scott and Steve confirmed that a long time ago and the lich system was created from that. So at least half the work was already done? So rather to the point, where is the larger selection of Kuva weapons in this? Virtually all of the weapons we do have are all 3/5 riven disposition and I'm pretty sure that selection was done on purpose, but why are their not just more weapons in this? Example being that they wanted to include a sniper rifle in the mix and they clearly were going to use the Vulkar Wraith but the disposition was too high. So they tweaked the stats a bit, added on the radial damage at the cost of the scope, and inserted the Kuva weapon metrics while inserting it as a new weapon. Ok, fine with that. But where are the rest of the weapons? Where are all the go to weapons that have been little more than primary to the Grineer or the crowd favorites? Instead we got irredeemable trash fires like the Kraken added in. Meanwhile, we're 3 weapons short of just matching the primaries and the melee's leave much to be desired. All of which could have just been filled with 3/5 dispositions and under to fill the categories. Where is the Kuva Marelok, Kuva Twin Kohmak, and Kuva Twin Rogga to name a few even if they had to pull what they did with the Kuva Chakkhurr to include them.

Since they're actively changing the approach to lich spawning and such, I'm going to leave that out. Feedback on that could be its own category on its own as well as I'm still finding strange bugs/mechanics to it that I can't identify as being intentional or even reliable ether.

Now this brings me to the biggest glaring issue I see with the system. To put it simply, longevity is a problem. As it currently stands, you get each of the Kuva weapons and you're technically done. Best case scenario, you keep collecting liches until you get the best or nearly best possible stats on the Kuva weapons. After that point of getting in the 90-95% top end range the system is also then rendered useless. The added problem with that comes back to the RNG problem in that you can pull top end stats on first pull or 1000th pull. Apparently 50-60% on the weapon is top end as far as I've seen and that's not exactly hard to get ether. The biggest critique I could give this is that most of the Kuva weapons are just average. They're not great and most don't even include a new secondary fire for them like Kraken does. To add longevity to the system, allow the collection of the same Kuva weapons and then allow players to use those otherwise useless extra weapons to be used to increase a selected stat a couple points at a time. Yes power creep has a potential, but that ship sailed long ago anyway. By all means, adding in weapons like a Kuva Hek with its basic lack luster stats would be an amazing addition to the game by simply allowing players to turn them into project weapons that we can actually invest into. Turn Kuva weapons that we would actually care about rather than at least half of them becoming nothing more than MR fodder. They're already mostly outclassed by much of the primes and other weapons anyway.