Dev Workshop - Kuva Lich Changes Coming Soon™ PART 2

[(PSN)OmegaSlayer]

My 2 cents

Lich must have 10 levels instead of 3

For the first 6 levels you KILL them, because from THEIR speeches they sound like Tenno killed them/dismembered/etc

They progress, at first they are more advanced Grineed units, then they start to "steal powers" from the frames, one from each level, then at level 7 they become the current form of Liches, killable only with the Requiem stuff, and that they can kill you, starting to gain control of sectors and so on

From level 1 to 6 Tenno have a Lich sighting alert every hour to find the mission they're in and kill them, so there's a bit of time gate, but in these missions Tenno can already start to gather murmurs

[IamLoco]

- About the transference of the kuva weapon damage rolls.... what happens when we get a 25% fire damage roll and transfere it to a 50% toxin roll? Will there be a separate option to change the elemental type? Or do we then get a 5x% fire roll? Or will it remain toxin? 

 

- How about adding a "Kuva Lich Fortress Proxima" to Railjack where we can gather information about our liches instead of having to grind thralls for murmurs over and over and...over....again? This would really bring some improvements to the boring grind. 

For example, add collectable data containers from special Thrall fighters, or add thralls to the crew ships / bases.

 

[DarkQuill]

Holding my breath for Kuva Hek or Kuva Sobek~

 

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Really great changes for the most part.

Only thing that's imho still annoying is the mastery points on lvling to 40 and the formas and time wasted it represents.  Also would like love it if nodes that are overrun by a lich had all missions with a lich variant (lich sortie, lich syndicate mission, lich nightmare, etc). Also requiem 3 could go faster.

 

 

[RodocksDonuts]

So Curr Hasu will now do something. So now he’ll kill his brothers and sisters even BETTER

[DarkPhoenixNeos]

And still no hotfix for PS4?

[-Neo_Genesis-]

Instead of a larvling turning into a signpost how about making them more... interesting.
They're meant to be like the Queen's chosen... Give them their randomized Lich for look and let them attack us with the weapon they're given when they spawn for a player on the given mission. When you down them you can run up and see if they're wielding something you'd like and then you can choose to stab them and start the loop.

Liches shouldn't have preset abilities. The way they were first shown off I thought they would steal a skill/color scheme from whatever frame they killed as they got progressively more dangerous. You could even make it so they can keep growing in "power" (that doesn't mean making them more bullet spongy) until they wield that perfect weapon themselves. This way if you want the challenge of "growing" your Lich you actually get a reward worth the time investment.

Lich got a fancy ephemera that you want to "Yoink?" or want to keep their thieving hands out of your pockets? Simply kill them off before they get too strong. Want that perfectly built Kuva weapon? Grow them longer. Want to nurture them and help them grow into a powerhouse for you to convert? Grow them even longer.

Could make it that a "fully grown" Lich spawns in with their own little mini "death squad" like the syndicates send after you. Could be like a little team and if you go down they come and rez you like other players do.

[Tamraine]

None of this helps with the issue that the requiem relic->parazon mod cycle is a terrible, terrible grind. I've been working my lich for a week or so now and it is by far one of the most grindy things I've done in warframe. Well, besides Focus, but that trainwreck of a system isn't directly on the star chart.

Murmur grinding is also just tedious. Not interesting, not fun, just tedious.

[Kurogumihime]

Just now, Tamraine said:

None of this helps with the issue that the requiem relic->parazon mod cycle is a terrible, terrible grind. I've been working my lich for a week or so now and it is by far one of the most grindy things I've done in warframe. Well, besides Focus, but that trainwreck of a system isn't directly on the star chart.

Week? I can kill one in 3 hours if I just focus on doing Liches, 4 max if I'm lazy and not lucky with the parazon RNG. Some can even kill them in less time.

[Mephane]

36 minutes ago, IamLoco said:

- About the transference of the kuva weapon damage rolls.... what happens when we get a 25% fire damage roll and transfere it to a 50% toxin roll? Will there be a separate option to change the elemental type? Or do we then get a 5x% fire roll? Or will it remain toxin? 

I would assume that the bonus damage changes to the damage type of the weapon that is consumed in the process, since you already have full control over what element a Kuva weapon comes with. This would have the nice side effect of allowing you to change the element on your Kuva weapon by producing one lich with that weapon and the desired element, both of which you now can directly influence.

[Sdric]

Zitat

Valence Transfer now also boosts your Kuva weapons innate damage bonus. Examples:

I've been waiting for this since day 1, finally!

[Dragmod]

Loving the changes. Though, gonna miss getting wrecked by my lich. Failure and pain should go hand-in-hand.

[Sahysa]

Finally, some fleshing out that makes a system that is infinitely wide and ankle deep to somewhat deeper with defined edges.  Infinite is not good.  If you cannot see the shore, you are lost.

I really like what I am reading so far.  Its too bad we had to live with the "system" for so long.

I know how much of a PITA this request is because of the scripts but its something every system in Warframe needs to succeed: Integration.

Kuva Liches are isolated from the rest of the game in the UI, in the mission nodes, and socially.  I have to put the entire game on pause to work on a Lich.  They do not exist pass the bark on login if I do not click on the little red square.  I am discouraged from playing with my friends during the brain dead murmur grind which is strictly and artificially governed limiting any optimization. 

Until I can kill thralls in a fissure, in a sortie (yes, invade me lich!), in an invasion, in an endless mission, in a kuva siphon, in a mission where both my lich and my freind's lich can visit, going after a lich is expensive, given how one dimensional Murmur is.  Railjack plus Lich is a good start but Railjack also suffers from this issue.  Next balance pass on Railjack infantry should see the game mode added to the sortie rotation.  (oh, wait, Are those enemy level systems convertible?  They should be.  )

I'm happy to see that the core loop is getting some required attention before new weapons are added.  Next, lets see if the gameplay loop can support any improvements. 

[EMPTY-d]

I certainly will not call these changes satisfaying, let me analysis changes one by one, and give some suggestions according to my own experience.

1. A downed Kuva Larvling will now display an icon of the Kuva weapon that its birthed Kuva Lich will possess.
   This is very nice, nothing to complain about.
    
2. Your Kuva Lich will no longer kill you when you fail a Requiem guess.
   WHAT is exactly the meaning to make us guess requiem? What is SO WRONG if we always get it right the very first time? It is very disturbing to design something in the game that absolutely overpowers a player with no solution or benefit. I suggest you to simply delete guess part once and for all.
    
3. Your Kuva weapon duplicates now offer a gradual progression towards a “perfect” Kuva weapon.
   Good improvement but not enough. Since a kuva weapon must be Polarized to reach level 40, I have an idea: all kuva weapon begins with a fixed bonus ( perhaps 40%?) and every polarization gives it a random bonus between 2%-4% until it reaches level 40 or 5 polarizations, so we can all get some nice weapons.
    
4. You can expect the Chance of a Lich having an Ephemera to double. 
   This is very nice, nothing to complain about.
    
5. Converted Liches will stay longer, do more damage, and actually use their abilities.
   Should the change mentioned above to duplicate kuva weapon be accepted, convert lich is even much more unattractive and only useful for trades, so they really need to stay very much longer, hit very much harder and use much abilities.
    
6. 2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!
   This is very nice, nothing to complain about.
    
7. What you can’t expect is the ‘Lich be-gone’.
   I have seen countless complains from new players who knows little about the game and accidently get a lich, which is way too powerful for them to counter, and eventually force them to abandon this game with a negative comment. This clearly means you have lost potential customers and money. So I won't call lich removal unecessary or not urgent.
   Let me give you an idea: if there is something that can both hit the grineer and help tenno, Steel Meridian and Red Veil will be glad to do it. So you can allow a player to pay something to them and let them dispose unexpected lich for you, espeically helpful for poor new players who get a lich by mistake.

I'm glad to see you are working on improving our game experience and listening to players' suggestions, hope these suggestions help you somehow.

 

[--Q--Goku]

Please also adress the problem with the dull and disconnected farm of murmur. I cant play with my clanmates, because it is disconnected from the rest of the game. This is one of the main issues with the lich. Yesterday i had this conversation:

Clanmate: Can we do 20 waves of defense for nightmare.

Me: I need to do liches.

Clanmate: 😤

This should not be an issue at first. Who thaught that this is a good idea of fully disconnect it from the other gamemodes? I have to play it alone because no other clanmates need this for her progression. 

[BloodRavenCap]

Maybe you should also add some other evergreen rewards for the Liches? Like Kuva artifacts, that grant you temporary bonuses to your stats, you can wear only several at a time, they start to expire after you start wearing them? So there is a point in hunting for Liches even after you've collected all the weapons? 

And really, you still should do something about murmur grind. If you ask me, you should have discarded the whole Requiem system from the start. Just make Liches tougher, but make the system around 'lieutenants', that grant you information about Lich's weaknesses, resistances and immunities, so player has to kill four lieutenants MAX, but if player does this, it will grant full knowledge about the Lich and game will show a node on the map as Lich's hideout. But, at the same time, if player's really experienced, leave the ability to defeat the Lich without any information, just by bruteforcing. Like, if Lich defeats you, it disappears, but if you start to wear down its defenses, it might start fleeing, if it's a cowardly type, or go berserk, if it's a tough one. So, it's already a dynamic fight, but player still has the ability to kill it, without grinding information. But if you track down Lich to its hideout, it's gonna be weaker, and its defenses might be a little lower. 

And, after you decide to recruit the Lich, we should have the ability to manage it. Decide, if it should go raiding, help you hunt other Liches, or just be your bodyguard. 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

This is a copy and past of a post I put up. Here are some ideas that I think can improve the kuva lich system.

 

Parazon

Spoiler

·       If you attack enemies with your melee weapon when the parazon symbol appears above enemies, they are invulnerable for 1 second so that you get a chance to perform a mercy kill on it instead of missing your chance because enemies die too quickly.

·       Increase the speed of grineer hacking terminals.

·       Increase the speed of mercy kill finisher animation.

2

Meeting Larvling

Spoiler

·       The larvling can appear on syndicate missions.

·       The lich will carry the weapon that you can take from it when you kill them. (which will greatly reduce the grind)

·       The larvling will have an ephemera on them.

2

Lich influence

Spoiler

·       There is a location with a mark that shows that the lich will have a 100% chance to spawn on that location.

·       Defeating the lich will give double the resources that was stolen from you.

·       Instead of the lich mission having their own missions, make them be apart of every other mission.

1

Kuva syphon missions

Spoiler

·       Make kuva syphon missions appear on Lua, the void and Uranus.

·       Decrease the time it takes for the kuva cloud to appear from 30s to 15s.

·       Make kuva syphons appear on open spaces instead of narrow spaces. (eris)

5

Finding Clues

Spoiler

·       The thralls can appear in syndicate missions.

·       Thralls can appear in non-grinner tilesets and factions.

·       There is a special thrall (that is highlighted yellow) that will run away when it spots you. When it spots you a timer will start if you fail to stop it from escaping, it will disappear however if you capture it you will be presented with two choices; you can either kill it which will give you five extra requiem murmurs (clues) or you can capture it with the operator which will reveal one strength and one weakness of the lich.

·       There is a chance that you will meet these thralls up to three times before you figure out the clue to kill the lich.

·       These thralls will have a 30% chance to drop 1,300 kuva or two requiem relics.

·       If you are doing fissure missions and the thralls (yellow) appear whether you find all the clues or not which on capture will reward you with 100 void traces killed or captured.

Random examples of strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

·       Immune to primary weapon attacks.

·       Immune to cc warframe powers

·       Increase movement speed.

·       Does viral attacks.

 

Weaknesses

·       Scared of kubros & kavats

·       Weak to operator attacks.

·       Can be opened up to finishers.

·       Easily knocked down.

4

Unique kuva lichs

As mini bosses they need to differ from other bosses when it comes to their fighting behaviour.

Different behaviours

Spoiler

·       The ability to summon companions

·       A roar that can increase enemies` movement speed.

·       Able to perform dodge manoeuvres.

·       Berserker mode when damaged.

·       They will let you know when you attack them that they are resistant to or weak against.

·       If you try to attack it with its weakness but you failed to defeat it, they will remember what you did and mention it the next time they sent you a massage.

·       On the third health bar, they go berserk by moving faster and changing their behaviour.

 

Convert and Vanquish

Me personally I don`t think it’s rewarding enough for the amount of grind it has when it comes to the choice to either vanquish or convert, so I’m going to give points on some ideas to improve the rewards you can receive.

Spoiler

Vanquish

The only thing you get from killing a lich is a weapon but what if you got all the weapons already or (like me) you only want 4 out of the 13 weapons and don`t care about the ephemeras? (since you mostly can`t see it) there needs to be something you can receive that will be worth the time even if you got all the weapons. Here are some ideas of some rewards;

·       More weapons. (new weapons)

·       7,000 kuva.

·       If the lich is wearing a syandana, you will also get it as well. (this also can be seen on the larvling) It will come in a form of a blueprint so you have the option it you want it or not

·       200 void traces.

 

Convert

I don`t think this is a big deal for the fact that there is no difference between them and a spectre besides looks, their need to have something that separates them from a spectre something unique, a reason for you to want to convert them. Here are some ideas of what they should do and what perks you can get if you decide to convert them.

·       You will receive a transmission from the converted lich offering aid and you get to choose if you want it to join you in missions or not or not.

·       It will stay in the mission until the mission is compleat.

·       If they are wearing part of an armour set or a sigil, they offer it to you as a reward. (rare)

·       They will give you 500 void traces.

·       5 riven slivers.

·       You will receive two refined requiem relics.

·       When accompanying you in missions they should give you a buff, here are some examples;

-        You receive an extra 30% strength, duration or range on abilities.

-        20% running speed.

-        Infinite ammo.

-        Immunity to knockdowns.

-        40% damage reduction.

-        50 (over) shields on enemy kills.

-        Fire damage on weapons and abilities.

-        X2 resource and affinity booster. If they decide for them to join you in a kuva fissure or a normal fissure mission, you will get this automatically.

·       The lich will give you two buffs.

·       They should use all of the abilities they have. (teleport, ice wave)

·       They have the ability to instantly revive you once.

·       If a lich is after you, you allied lich will have a 20% chance of revealing to you what requiem mod you need to defeat the lich by telling you.

·       You have the option for them to stay in one spot or to follow you.

8

Kuva weapons

Spoiler

·       Depending on what planets you go to will determine what weapons you have a chance of getting.  (brakk, drakgoon, stubba found on Uranus ogris, karak, kohm found on Earth)

·       Each time you are defeated by your lich, all weapons stats will increase by +2 points. (-1 for reload)

·       You can go beyond level 5 if you add a special mod on the parazon that makes it to where you cannot kill the lich and it will continue to level up by difficulty and the weapon bonus will scale.

·       Formaring you weapon will give you an extra 2 points of space. and increase the status damage by +5.

·       Have the option to change the name of the weapon.

·       If you get a duplicate weapon that you have and you decide to combine it with the weapon you already have, you have the option to combine the elemental stats together.

8

Expansion to the kuva lich system

Spoiler

After defeating 3 liches, you will receive a message from the main boss. In any of the locations where the boss has influence, you will have to seek out three thralls for the coordinates to the location of its ship which you will have to use your railjack to reach him.

First you will have to defeat the enemy fleet attacking you then when you board the bosses ship the mission will either be an exterminate, sabotage or spy. In these missions, you will also have to search for thralls (using the codex scanner) to figure out the combination to defeat the boss, there is also an option to free some prisoners that will fight for you. In the sabotage mission, you have to destroying the ship by finding its power source while spy missions are you stealing information on the boss’s weaknesses to exploit. 

If you fail to defeat the main boss, it will level up increasing the difficulty however if you defeat it you will receive;

·       30,000 kuva.

·       1,000 void traces.

·       One of each refined requiem relics.

·       A unique weapon he is using.

·       5 forma.

·       10 riven slivers.

5

New unique rewards – Para forma and Kuva forma
 

Spoiler

When equipping the para forma on a weapon, it gives you the ability to have more mod space without having to level up whatever you put it on.

The kuva forma gives you increased mod space with the bonus of enhancing your kuva weapon, increasing the weapon`s damage stats by 7%. They can be done up to three times to maximise its stats.

4

One thing I would like to see is a corpus and an infested version. For the infested version it could relate to the infested from the nightwave series or the maconans (glast gambit quest) and similar to the stalker`s acolytes with weapons corrupted by the infested.

If these ideas were to be implemented, I feel that it will drastically improve this game mode for the better.

[TastyTaro]

9 часов назад, [DE]Rebecca сказал:

2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

oh please no 😞

i mean... it's 5 forma per weapon to max it out. it's 5 days of building unless i buy them or unless a player has a big supply of formas ready. For me personally, the Lich farming, the most negative aspect of it, is actually maxing out weapons which i'm not going to use ever. Not to mention that the idea of rank 40 weapons is kinda flawed, it is ok for a single sword that we get from the quest, but the huge amount of these rank 40 weapons is just too much. It's just a highway to burnout and i'm playing like 1-3 hours a day.

Other than that, i like the changes.

[---RNGesus---]

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

A downed Kuva Larvling will now display an icon of the Kuva weapon that its birthed Kuva Lich will possess!

• This allows players to decide upfront if they want to pursue that weapon by finishing the downed Kuva Larvling, or to ignore and attempt another Lich.

On that note: Why not add the same thing for ephemeras as well? 

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Your Kuva Lich will no longer kill you when you fail a Requiem guess, nor will they attempt to break your back. 

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

[master_of_destiny]

I know that people are going to be surprised, but this is something that genuinely looks like it's going in the right direction.

 

What I don't see yet addressed in these changes is:

1. Does the failed parazon attempt still increase the Lich level?  If so, then the only change is that you cut an animation and death.  Maybe it's time to review the cowardice route?  Specifically, running from a Lich will increase its level, but either trying the Parazon or 3 kills will have it maintain its level.  This creates an incentive for people to either run and expedite the process by increasing the level, or if you're lower levels it means fighting will preserve a lower level Lich.  The goal here being player choice will create two paths to the same reward.  That is greater challenge = faster completion, or less challenge = slower completion.
2. Does the larvling's type influence the weapon?  You've got Saturn six, scorpion, and a generic model but in testing the larvling appearance is another random thing that could have been used to convey information with subtlety, but in testing the current system is still a random roll.
3. What is the actual conversion equation?  Your example is 25+40 = 44 (max+4), and 25+44 = 48.4.  The math seems to be MAX+MAX/10 = MAX*1.1.  The problem with two effective examples (your third only confirms order of addition is not influential) is that you've now told us that the higher the initial value maximum the less required infusions of duplicates, but that largely flies in the face of your past additions.  Mathematically, then if you only get 25% bonuses or less than you already have it'll take 10 weapons to max the thing, but a 40% start will be 5 duplicates to get to the maximum 60%.
4. The grind.  This one still kills me, because after all of these great changes it's still grind for relics, grind for mods, grind for murmurs, test out one of six possible combinations after grinding all those murmurs, and then keep grinding until the Lich spawns again.  To be fair, the most unlucky people would get a Lich such that mod order is C-B-A where they would logically test A-B-C (or A-C-B), B-A-C (or B-C-A), C-A-B, and finally C-B-A.  In practice though expediting the process might required a few test organizations which see mods D, E, F,G, and H in the mix because of the mechanics of not knowing the mods until a sufficient amount of grinding enemies happens.

 

Overall, I'd suggest this is a pretty nice set of first steps toward a Lich system that actually feels like fun.  The 100 Kuva drop thing though is still baffling as all get-out.  To guarantee a requiem relic I need to do a Kuva Flood, which drops an order of magnitude more Kuva.  The 100 extra is too small to be of any usage, especially when basic rolls cost 900. 

Maybe forego the Kuva and drop relics containing the mods you will require.  Best case scenario is that you go from 8 possible mods to 4 possible, worst case is from 8 to 6.  Either way, the relics won't guarantee a mod, so you're just giving the player a hint.  Imagine getting a Lich, and getting the III, I, and IV requiem relics.  That tells us you need Fass or Ris, Lohk or Xata, and Khra or Netra.  That's 6*5*4 = 120 potential combinations rather than 336, but it means I only have to test 48 potential combinations in the worst case scenario.  If I get lucky and have relics I, I, and IV drop it's a maximum of 4*4*2 or 32 possible combinations to test.  Either way, it's not like this is removing huge amounts of grind.  It's communicating with players, as a hint rather than a shortcut. If players choose not to understand or engage they've still got the chance to simply plow through like our current system.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

9 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Valence Transfer Infusion

• First introduced in 26.0.6, Valence Transfer was designed to address owning duplicate Kuva weapons with different unique innate damage bonuses. Giving you the ability to replace a Kuva weapon’s innate damage bonus (plus investments like Forma, Focus Lens etc) with one from another Kuva weapon was a good start, but we can push this even further!
  
  Valence Transfer now also boosts your Kuva weapons innate damage bonus. Examples:
• Your Kuva Kohm with 25% damage can be infused into your 40% weapon, to make it 44%

• Your Kuva Kohm with 40% damage can be infused into your 25% weapon, to make it 44%

• Your Kuva Kohm with 25% damage can be infused into your 44% weapon, to make it 48.4%

This is brilliant, but... slots are expensive so I've been converting liches with worthless rolls and I now have loads of them. Most liches I get now get converted, because there was no point vanquising them.

On upgrade could we get the chance to vanquish these converted liches?

9 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Part 1: ETA!

First and foremost - we were going to ship these changes today but are giving ourselves until next week for more testing. Expect this next week on PC… and maybe even PS4 + XB1 (with Switch soon)! 

That's great, but... we're still on the Empyrian release from before Christmas. You're now a week away from a PC release and another week after that before we'll get anything through cert.

Seriously, this is rediculous. We don't have mod trading, we still have repair drones and utterly broken economy (one MK3 wreckage still costs about 100 hours worth of resources). Empyrean is dead on X1 - nobody is playing it, you can't get a squad. We needed a patch weeks ago!

[IggySnow]

while I like the idea of being able to tell what weapon your lich will have, I think just having a window pop up with the image of the weapon is really lazy and immersion breaking.

I think it would be a lot more interesting if once you down the larvling, it turns into the Lich you will get with some kind of kuva effect. Then if you choose to take it on you parazon it, turning it into a an actual Lich.

Not only would this let you see the weapon you would get from beating it, but it would also let you see what it would look like and if it had any ephemera.

Something like this:

[(PSN)Pumba_Beneator]

Great changes - give us more control over weapons (which ones we want and what we do about damage).

The murmur farm remains disconnected from the overall core play of warframe, but frankly I can live with that now, knowing that I'm farming for an objective I chose.

Great changes, can't wait for the update on PS4 🙂

Thanks DE

[Trvldl]

Changes are much better than expected. A lot of issues remains, such as teaming up outside of pub being nigh impossible, lich spawning relying on the fickle rage bar even when you know your requiems, thrall farming being incredibly tedious and disjointed from other activities, but it's a good start nevertheless.

[Vesterbro]

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

• Valence Transfer now also boosts your Kuva weapons innate damage bonus. Examples:
• Your Kuva Kohm with 25% damage can be infused into your 40% weapon, to make it 44%

• Your Kuva Kohm with 40% damage can be infused into your 25% weapon, to make it 44%

• Your Kuva Kohm with 25% damage can be infused into your 44% weapon, to make it 48.4%

Your Kuva weapon duplicates now offer a gradual progression towards a “perfect” Kuva weapon, which would reflect a 60% damage value, if you choose to pursue this path.

This is delightful, so it seems now I can feed my higher bonus% kuva weapon with lower bonus% , then it increased?
how about the element type? If I have kuva weapon toxin 60% then infused with electric 25%, will it be electric 60%?