Dev Workshop - Kuva Lich Changes Coming Soon™ PART 2

[DoomFruit]

Ah, they're addressing 2 of the-

On 2020-01-29 at 9:49 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

First and foremost - we were going to ship these changes today but are giving ourselves until next week for more testing

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to hear you guys say that?

EDIT: and consumable requiem mods are still a stupid idea. Make them infinite use, get rid of T5 relics and move their acquisition to a questline where you get 1 of each. There's precisely zero explanation as to what any of this system is. This game needs more lore, more tutorials and more explanation.

Also, while letting the player know what weapon the lich will get is useful, I personally wouldn't do it in such a blatant manner. Show the player by having the larvaling wield the weapon and get rid of the text which says what weapon it is. Reward the player for being observant.

EDIT 3: nope, keep the label. It makes more internal consistency to have Ordis or someone else pop up a window, but better to show the information than not show it.

EDIT 2: also also, for internal consistency's sake, I'd actually make liches an opt-out mechanic. As in: you down the larvaling with normal weapons and you then need to parazon them in order to stop them coming back. Leave them and they'll rise from the dead. Just like any infestation, it's much easier to deal with them at the start when they're still small and weak.

Not only does this make more sense when you stop and think about the mechanics of this situation (get to the larvaling now before they've adapted, and your un-customised parazon is enough to rip the still formless kuva out of them and let them die normally), it's also something which you can use to make players actively desire to use these fancy parazon finisher moves that you coded in, rather than just rejecting them outright because they're a waste of time compared to swordspamming everything.

[SECURATYYY]

Can we expect murmur progress to be quicker, or to stay the same?

 

I like the changes.

[JDisenfeldt]

Awesome changes! One thing: can we expect the infusion system to be implemented to Railjack equipment?

Also, DE. You may get lots of negative feedback and while some of it is true that you should test more things before releasing etc. You're still one of my favourite dev teams. Being able to hold a game alive for so long is impressive and you should be proud. I know it's hard to work with a split community (some want more content others want refining old content) but you're still an amazing team. Thanks DE. 

[(XBOX)Lycentia]

How about that murmur slog?

[Sannidor]

13 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.

 

Of course it is infinity more time saving than current Lich roulette but let me point out how this is yet another part of this system which rewards players who quit mid-mission - a sloppy, counter-intuitive design and you should know better at this point. You even actively discouraged RNG ditching by slapping question marks on cache rewards and now we see another silly band aid.

To avoid this "quitfest" just add end of mission screen with obtained weapon and allow us to refuse it or accept from there.

[AltaCilindrada]

I think Kuva Larvling should use the Weapon and Ephemera instead of the icon showing before mercy, also i think it would be cool to send your converted lich to ocupied nodes to free them and if sucessfull it would reward you with murmur and freeing that node but if failed you would need to do a rescue mission where the rescue target would be your converted lich and the wardens would be your "nemesis" lich and his thralls, if rescue mission fails you would lose your converted kuva forever.

EDIT: Maybe even a mission chain like a sortie where it would be a spy mission to find where your lich is being kept then the rescue mission and finally a assassination where you get a 100% chance for your kuva lich to appear, or something on railjack to link these 2 systems.

[Urlan]

7 minutes ago, AltaCilindrada said:

I think Kuva Larvling should use the Weapon and Ephemera instead of the icon showing before mercy, also i think it would be cool to send your converted lich to ocupied nodes to free them and if sucessfull it would reward you with murmur and freeing that node but if failed you would need to do a rescue mission where the rescue target would be your converted lich and the wardens would be your "nemesis" lich and his thralls, if rescue mission fails you would lose your converted kuva forever.

EDIT: Maybe even a mission chain like a sortie where it would be a spy mission to find where your lich is being kept then the rescue mission and finally a assassination where you get a 100% chance for your kuva lich to appear, or something on railjack to link these 2 systems.

That is a great idea if possible, since it would show an even more apparently personalization, but this might help until then.

[KagaNerdy]

Reduce the Murmur Grind by Half since the spawn rate of them is just low regardless being on a squad, It gets more boring after a while (I haven't killed my Kuva Lich ever since December 2019 and no, i'm not the only person who actually gets bored out in kuva lich system due to the pointless numerous of murmur grind)

Out of topic, but please bring back Conclave to the list in Universal Medallion. It shouldn't be called "Universal" Medallion when its missing Conclave and [DE]Steve literally had to respond to that 1 guy in twitter who actually complained that its unfair for them that they grinded conclave standings (In that process, Conclave was removed in the list unnecessarily in the next hotfix because its just only 1 guy and you took that feedback instead of taking feedback from actually major playerbase that has actually major issues with the game) and playerbase should do the same thing as well and there's the problem, no one plays Conclave! (Reminder that Warframe is PvE major than PvP and the conclave community base is just too small and no point of actually fixing it if no one's going to play it unless you rework the entire thing into like Rahetalius' PvEvP content and Universal Medallions is only 1000 standings and drop chance of it is only 5%) Please, bring it back to the Universal Medallions list and that "Feedback" wasn't even literally a "Feedback", but a Deconstructive Feedback. (I don't care if its unfair for them, but literally no one wanted that kind of feedback and ruins the grind for medallion)

[InvdrZOB]

Really happy about the Transfer Infusion change. It would be nice though, if we could also choose wether to keep the old dmg type or adapt the one of the new weapon
(So that 25%-Rad-Tonkor and 40%-Tox-Tonkor could either become 44%-Rad-Tonkor or 44%-Tox-Tonkor). When, for example, farming Ephemeras, this would help somewhat if you get a Lich with a weapon you'd like to use to upgrade an existing one, but without the new ephemera for a dmg type you don't want for said weapon. Otherwise you'd have to go back and farm the weapon with the according dmg type again. I wouldn't even mind to pay some Kuva (say 500?) to keep a stat i don't want to change.

Also, thanks for removing the whole Breaking Back thing. It didnt seem to make much sense to me and was more annoying then an actual thread. I could still live with some consequence though. Lich siphoning some of our power of, to level up, leaving us with some sort of debuff for the rest of the mission, (maybe in ways resembling a "minor dragon key", with -25% energy/health/shields/speed or something like this) and the lich taking a bigger tithe then usual. I'd still like some sense of thread from a lich, making me decide wether I'd try to ignore it, to just shoot it 'til it goes away or actually trying to stab and kill it. But maybe that's just me.

Speaking of tithes/steals. I still don't quite get how the lich does that. Aren't our landers cloaked or at least very hard to detect? Does the lich teleport stuff out of our cargo hold? I'd rather like something like a debuffed node, where you get smaller chances of loot drops and loot amounts, because the lich is already "farming" there, making it harder for us to find stuff. Thralls could still have regular or even hightened chances for some ressource (so that one still has the chance to get the much needed orokin cell or such) and stealing could still be a thing, for when we actually fight the lich and don't manage to beat it. And if we should manage to beat it, we could be rewarded with a cache of the ressources it extracted from the nodes it was on. I guess a little more complicated tp programm then the system that is in place atm.

Kuva larvlings to me still seem like somewhat of a missed opportunity. Why such a sad, helpless piece of cloned flesh? Why would my Tenno even bother looking at it and not just passing it by? It's not a threat! Why not give us a "Tenno Hunter", like some sort of wannebe Gustrag Three prototype (or some toughened up bombard/heavy gunner) that is after us, maybe already using an according weapon. But if we strike it down, it will become more powerful and return with a vengence!

Converted Liches just showing up randomly doesn't really appeal to me. Personally, I'd like some kind of beacon to call it, so i could use it like a spectre, air support charge or Clem. Give the thing an X-hour-timer and everything would be fine. We could use (or show off) our Lich when we think we need to and it still wouldn't be something to overpowered, hindering people from just calling in in every mission. And maybe it doesn't join boss fights, arbitrations and similar mission types.

Murmurs and farming them will propably still take some time. Having to farm about 180 Murmurs for every Lich feels a bit much. Even more so, of course, because so few people are playing lich nodes atm and those few being scattered among different planets. That might change again with players now being able to farm weapons more easily, but if not (or if it goes back after a while again) farming murmurs is a total, unenjoyable pain.
How about throwing some Thralls into EVERY mission in lich-claimed territory/sectors, with a chance for a Lich spawning after so-and.so much thralls were killed. Then, in every sector, there are a handful of nodes (2 to 5?) with hightened lich activity, where u can select a special lich mission, like you have to do now, with a lot more thralls spawning. This mission can have special objectives or, someday, even feature special mission types. Disrupting the Liches activities on that node makes it switch to another one, making the Lich much more angry at you. Disrupt it's efforts in one sector often enough, and it will "invade" another system.

At last, Liches progress and die rather quickly, for my taste. They are not quite the nemesis they we're advertised at. There were some nice ideas on that from user "clown_tempura" on Reddit. Maybe take a look at what he wrote about "The Meat".

EDIT:
Almost forgot: Concerning 5-Forma-Kuva-Weapons
Farming and leveling them is quite tedious. With the Paracesis it was sort of a new, interesting mechanic, but still with quite the little payoff in the end. Now i have the prospect of getting more and more of such weapons, each calling for 5 Forma to put in with... not tu much reason for doing so. The thing that really annoys me, is that i still have to use a potato on them to fit everything in at the end, since 40 Points don't cut it for a lot of builds, even with 5 formated slots, while 80 points are just too much to use up, even if you ignore the polarity on some slots for specialized builds. I'd really like to see the Kuva weapon to get buffed (even if that means that the weapon would start off as a little weaker) or having some benefits when Tenno/Orokin-tech and Grineer-Kuva-tech are combined, like bonus effects that don't affect dmg primarily. Or maybe there could be some Kuva-Mods (no, not Riven-Mods) for Kuva-Weapons only. Something to make leveling the weapons more worthwhile then just for squezing some more mastery points out of the things.

[(XBOX)Dyalar]

Please do away with the five forma requirement for Kuva weapon mastery, or at least provide rationale as to why it's a thing.  Because all I can view it as is a time and resource sink, as well as a blatant plat grab.

[DhatZ]

How about the kuva weapons get a boost at 5 formas, like damage boost vs all factions or slow ammo regen even when equipped.

[xXPeGaSuSXx]

When comes part 3 then i wait untill it come out to save some dead grind....

 

[xXPeGaSuSXx]

vor 24 Minuten schrieb DhatZ:

How about the kuva weapons get a boost at 5 formas, like damage boost vs all factions or slow ammo regen even when equipped.

u got the elemental Boost allready, if u can't see the damage difference, change game plx :D!

[xXPeGaSuSXx]

vor 30 Minuten schrieb (XB1)Dyalar:

Please do away with the five forma requirement for Kuva weapon mastery, or at least provide rationale as to why it's a thing.  Because all I can view it as is a time and resource sink, as well as a blatant plat grab.

U need to, because the masterypoints are insane from them

[SanicTheGreat]

Newly players: Oh! Nice!

 

Old players:

[ciTiger]

Only took you 3 months of stubbornness, congratulations.

[RizzRustbolt]

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

Kuva Sobek?

[DebrisFlow]

The listed changes are surely all very welcome but they are still only scratching the surface of the dissatisfaction feedback, in my opinion.

The core gameplay of the system, that is the murmur grind, is overwhelmingly considered dull and boring (i bet that if you prepare a "word cloud", like that one of Devstream 136, but just considering the Lich system feredback, "dull" and "boring" would dominate the center of the cloud). This absolutely demands for some critical thinking on the nature of the "new" content that you developers have been pushing out recently. If players are labelling "dull" and "boring" a content from the first week of its release, and this content consists for ~95% of the same exterminate, sabotage and defense mission that have been served in the game from Warframe day 1, i would call it an educated guess that after so many years this content doesn't satisfy the audience anymore. People are asking for cutting in half the murmur requirements: you developers maybe just think that players want a faster reward, i suggest you to go deeper and think that maybe they are tired to play that same content at all.

The Lich system has been teased since a long time and players have been speculating by making comparison with other games since then: the general idea, if i reconstruct it right, is that they were dreaming about extensive duels with some highly skilled evolving enemy. What we got is a momentary appearance of a bullet sponge, a glimpse of a fight, between countless runs of exterminate, sabotage, defense. 

To resume, it's a double delusion: i) having to run the same old content for the most part; ii) not receiving the epic fights they were dreaming of (and maybe teased to)

I already proposed a solution in the first Kuva Lich Dev Workshop, i will post it here again in the hope that someone of you will consider it. -> Make the murmur discovery process also based on fighting the lich (as opposed to only downing it). Make us analyze its attack patterns, its defensive responses to certain attacks, its abilities usage, to deduct the correct requiem. For example, for every X times that we force him to repeat an action we get some murmurs: we have to shoot it in the back, to shoot its weapon off its hands, to make it charge us, to make it use a specific ability, parry its bullets/melee attacks, etc. This approach could be integrated in the system that we have now, shifting the murmur grind burden from mindless killing of the same basic enemies to longer, more engaging and truly unique nemesis fights. 

Also, you din't mention a rework of the Kuva lich codex entries, out of all the mess that has been reported (i.e. search function not working, old progenitor weapon name after Valence Transfer but new attributes, hard to tell the weapon elemental bonus without tracking separately its progenitor and all the eventual Valence Transfers)...

[TheTodesfall]

15 hours ago, Abraxas said:

C'mon, guys. Please, do something about grinding murmurs. It gets old after managing to do the first Lich...

Also, the forma sink and forced repetition to level the weapon to the max is a bit too much.

 

Sorry for the negativity. I was just hoping that these two aspects wouldn't get ignored...

 

15 hours ago, Drachnyn said:

Very good and necessary improvements for the core lich loop, we will have to wait for their integration into their game so they arent just a very distant island.

An improvement sure but still RNG, when the initial goal for ephemeras wanted to have them achievement based.

Also:

Currently killing thralls outside of your own lich nodes does not give you lich aggro, which makes Lich hunting with friends a lot slower. Can we get that changed so liches get angrier outside their own nodes and can also show up?

These are very good points why isn't there a token system for liches so after N liches we can spawn one with either the weapon I want o the ephemera I want, murmurs farm is by far the most annoying in the game to do because when the liches were promised it was said that the inspiration was shadow of murmurs in that game they come after you invading you to make your game more challenging you already have that you have the stalker half the infrastructure is there. I am happy that you finally decided to fix liches but these still feel like last minute fixes that should have been there at launch.

[Kurizen]

Amalgam Liches for Corpus faction please.

[PETI258]

Finally it was time to fix it.

Hope you are not forgetting to fix the spawn problems as well.

[vegetosayajin]

This is amazing! Thanks for finally listening to the community for the most common problems.
Only the 1-2 hour grind for the murmurs is there, but if I can choose my weapon I don't mind this at all.
This is great, thansk!
Please, more updates like this.

[Shifted]

These sound like good changes, but I can't help but feel like it's just more bandaids to make a fundamentally broken system tolerable.

"Oh people don't want to create liches? Give them way to avoid the system / give them more info about the end goal before they commit."

A player should WANT to fight a lich, not decide to disengage from it.

By now you're probably sick of it but yes, I will bring Shadow of Mordor again.
Fighting Nemeses was FUN, regardless of the loot.

THAT should be the end goal, not making the system "tolerable".

[-GrT-kostasp99]

Please consider something about the 5 forma for each kuva weapon and we would be able to put all forma at once and level the weapon once with the xp need of 5 formas ,it's the same but easier for us 

[Thundervision]

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Converted Liches will stay longer, do more damage, and actually use their abilities! 

I sure hope it's true. Witnessing converted Lv.85 lich with Ogris barely scratching the paint on a ~Lv.50 Grineer Roller has put to an end any second thoughts regarding killing/converting liches.