Dev Workshop - Kuva Lich Changes Coming Soon™ PART 2

[fo3nixz]

kuva sobek or kuva miter please 😄

[Waake]

18 hours ago, GrowthProfitGrofit said:

One additional issue is that liches still don't tie into Railjack in any meaningful way.

If I recall correctly, said tie will come with the Command intrinsics, which will make NPCs take the other roles. Among them, converted Kuva Liches.

[Azvalk]

Where to start ... well, I'm going to make it simple, interpret it as you want, it's very short but there is a lot in it.
Thank you '-'

I participated in the feedback pointing to the problems of liches, and in particular the problem of the deadly sequence of the parazon.
I am therefore happy to see that the feedback has been listened to, and that the changes undertaken in response are rather good.

Personally, I complained that the kuva liches had lost the creepy aspect of the kuva capable of bringing them back to life.
Obviously, this aspect will not return, or perhaps, was never really planned in the idea, although the tennocon demo seemed to strongly indicate it.
But I realized one thing recently.
Who writes warframe lore? Who writes the operating rules for background elements? Probably someone with the title of Creative director, right ? ^^
Obviously, he didn't want to define the Kuva as being able to resuscitate someone.
He defined it as capable of establishing immortality / invincibility, the only flaw of which is a Requiem. To summarize.
This is the way to accept the warframe / lich interaction.
And that's good for me ^^

With the deadly failure no longer there, things will be much less frustrating.
Thanks again for that, but I hope that this will be accompanied by a small increase in the difficulty to compensate.
Improved AI, combat possibilities of the lich.
A Nemesis system, by definition, is something impressive, don't be afraid to put too much ambition in the system.
I quickly take the example of the bosses of Dark souls.
They can infuriate many players.
But when they are defeated, not only are we happy, but we sometimes want to do them again, just to see if we could succeed in defeating them in a better way.
Successfully designing elements that make you want to replay them, even when they drove us crazy 5min ago is not easy, I suspect, but since warframe counts on repetition for its lifespan, that seems to me to be an important part not to be missed.

To be useful to the workshop, here are my important questions:

- What happened to the idea of abandoning your active lich to make it available to any member of our clan ?
There is a Dojo room that languish to have more utility I think..

- You want to reduce the grind, the frustration, the boring repetition, and for that you introduce the possibility of knowing which will be the weapon of the Lich. It's fantastic.
( We won't know if it's going to have an ephemera, will we ? )
But at the same time, you abandon the idea of "Lich be-gone".
So that means the loss of the function supposed to guarantee us a weapon with the next lich doesn't it ?
Consequently, that obliges us to have to repeat a rush of mission in loop to hope to find a Larvling with the weapon which one seeks. '-' ?

- Since the lich does not die when it is attacked with the bad requiem, and that it flees, what did you plan during the integration of Liches in Empyrean ?
I mean, if we show up on its ship, attack it with the wrong requiem, will it leave ? Leave its own ship ?
It doesn't seem logical to me, so good luck finding a logical solution.

A quick idea: Let's admit that we attack a lich on its ship, with the bad requiem, it does not leave, and the objective of the mission changes:
- neutralize the lich, with an object designed for. (a trap or something)
- sabotage the ship and leave.
Result: The Lich suffers heavy losses, but is not defeated.
It will take time for it to regain sufficient rank to obtain a new ship.
This makes this railjack mission, rare, valuable, in terms of staging and content.
And the logic is preserved, the lich will be gone before its ship explodes. Quite simply.

Well..
Good luck with the rest, as always, I trust that you will develop the right features, and in the worst case, the necessary changes will come soon after. ^^

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Let us recharge requiem mods with Kuva!

[Tyreaus]

I absolutely love the changes here. Part of my first response was "finally! Freaking finally!" So don't get me wrong about what I'm about to say.

But

I really want to see failed requiems leading to us "killing" the Lich, only for them to float away laughing at us a moment later. It's a comparatively minor addition and doesn't really change anything about the whole "if you fail, they laugh at you and bugger off". But it accentuates the whole "lich" aspect, that these aren't just tough enemies, but flat-out immortal.

[SneakyErvin]

The changes are looking good.

The change to the insta-death-back-breaker-randy-savage-cosplay thing was much needed even though it was a trivial thing in the end. This because when someone like me runs into a thing like that in a game, the only thing that pops up are all those bad memories of meta-GMs in RPGs that just wanna bully you over cos they can, even when it it is very out of place and breaks immersion 100%. Nice to see that you decided to change it, since it shows that you, DE, can accept changes even though it may hurt your pride. I liked the animation of the whole back breaker thing, it was just presented/used in the wrong way.

I honestly would mind if it stayed when we failed, but instead of killing us the Lich could just counter us and throw us back as he runs off cackling as he escapes. He does already grab and throw us when we are in melee range, so it would be a solution to keep the animation around while removing the extremely out of place insta kill.

I was expecting changes to the murmur grind, so make it less tedious. However, you've instead decided to give us better progression (alot better by the looks of it) when it comes to getting the weapon we actually want aswell as getting the option to upgrade the one we want over time. Some changes to murmurs would be welcomed, but arent 100% needed now since we can decide at the larva stage if we wanna get into questionable relationship or not. So alot of pointless murmur grinding will be avoided already.

 

[(XBOX)ElPaseDeEspania]

19 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Lich 1.1: Dev Workshop + ETA:
 

Tenno!

Welcome to a 3-part workshop covering Kuva Lich changes. We have already talked about changes in 2 major batches: At the end of 2019 both in our Devstreams and our initial Dev Workshop on November 11th, and at the start of 2020 on our first Stream of the year. This workshop aims to better summarize the on-couch thoughts into what’s being implemented and why.
 

The 3 parts are as follows:
1. ETA
2. Can / Can’t Expect
3. Bigger Picture. 

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)! 

Part 2: What you can and can’t expect!

You can expect: 

2020 Kuvision

The birth of the very first Kuva Lich came just over 3 months ago to the day (October 31 2019)! A copious amount of Additions, Changes, and Fixes have been made in these 3 months; each one of them touching the surface of feedback, but not fully reaching all the way into the depths. Today, that changes! 

If you watched Devstream #136, the 2019 Player Survey showed us that out of the 27,000+ responses, the Kuva Lich system was the 2019 addition that was enjoyed the least. Many players voiced that the Kuva Lich system got progressively less fun the more time and energy was devoted to it. While finding the line between repetition and progress is one Warframe has struggled with since its first day, Liches highlighted some issues we aim to address while walking that line.

The Kuva Larvling Who Lived

Starting from the very beginning of Kuva Lich conception brings us to Kuva Larvlings. Kuva Larvlings will now play a key role in determining your future relationship with your Kuva Lich.

• 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.

  Reveal hidden contents

As an added benefit to completing the mission even if you choose NOT to kill the Kuva Larvling, a downed Kuva Larvling will grant 100 Kuva on End of Mission.

 

Breaking Your Back for Knowledge

• Your Kuva Lich will no longer kill you when you fail a Requiem guess, nor will they attempt to break your back. The Parazon stabbing animation will play but the UI will show whether it was a success or failure. Upon receiving a Requiem fail, your Kuva Lich will laugh at you and leave, leaving your back and dignity intact! There is no longer a failure loop here for the Requiem flow. 

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%

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.

Other Changes you can expect:

• You can expect the Chance of a Lich having an Ephemera to double. 
• Converted Liches will stay longer, do more damage, and actually use their abilities! 
• 2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

What you can’t expect is the ‘Lich be-gone’: We have removed the prototype for this for now, because rather than not fixing the core loop and just letting a Lich be banished, we intend to focus on the core loop first. Since duplicates are now opt-in and have value for a min-maxer, there’s less of a reason to dispel a Lich. 

Part 3: Bigger Picture Items

The major questions remaining to be answered include Kuva Lich + Railjack, and other faction Liches. Until we complete Part 2 of this workshop, we won’t have much to discuss on this front, but stay tuned! 

Thank you for reading - see you soon, Tenno!
 

Can you all really do something about the bs that is the murmur farm ?????

 

[Vasala]

One thought for the other faction liches is that if you don't want to figure out a new way for a lich to be created is that the corpus could steal or buy the kuva lich method from the Grineer. The infested could just have learned the process through infesting Grineer that know about the project or larvalings that were ready to become liches.

[SneakyErvin]

6 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Let us recharge requiem mods with Kuva!

That is actually a really good idea.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

19 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Upon receiving a Requiem fail, your Kuva Lich will laugh at you and leave, leaving your back and dignity intact!

Tch. What dignity? The ones who cried constantly on the forums about it certainly don't have any.

You get four revives during a mission (An extra two with arcanes). Quit your blubbering and take your failure and punishment like a man!

[Lone_Dude]

19 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%

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.

Oh look an actual somewhat healthy progression path with RNG. It is possible after all. Good job!

Any chances of adding thralls and the lich itself to normal missions? Stuff like fissures and kuva floods?

[Renzo]

19 hours ago, Abraxas said:

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

This is the one thing and the one thing only that made me stop doing kuva liches when I got all the weapons available from them. Not so much back breaking, or even the bad rng, but these murmurs...

[SordidDreams]

19 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.

While that is an excellent addition, the execution is a bit lackluster. Instead of a floating icon, why not make the larvling actually use the weapon in question and physically hold it in their hands?

[Enikuo]

You should still add a lich-be-gone or some way for players to back out of the system, regardless of any and all the other changes. A player that opts-in to just just try it out and see if they can do it or want to do it shouldn't then be locked into finishing it. It impacts the game too much and is too in your face to just ignore once triggered.

You can punish dismissing liches by keeping all the stolen goods and/or putting a long timer or some kind of limit on it, but it should absolutely be an option. It seems like you've only considered lich dismissal in the context of min-maxers, but they're not the only ones who might want to abandon a lich once they've opted in.

[(PSN)ThePedroKid]

Make it show the ephemera, if there is one, on the downed Kuva Larvling also, please.  It should show _all_ things you will receive if you commit to that awful grind.

The cashgrab... errr.. I mean Forma requirement for Kuva Weapons is ridiculous.  There is nothing about them that justifies requiring 5 forma to maximize MR.  Excessive cost for MR fodder in many cases.

Also, please make it so murmurs can be obtained from _any_ Grineer mission (heck, it already shows the parazon-able marker!).  Not just when you pick the 'lich' option.

That is all.

 

Thank you.

[TheBigBrzezinski]

I'm a bit concerned that unsuccessful/incomplete mercy attempts will no longer cause a lich to increase in level and expand its territory. My process thus far has been to clear all the non-annoying (intercepts, defense, etc) missions, learn a requiem mod in the process, and try it on the lich in the first unknown slot. If it works, great. Try another to level the lich. If not, great. Move the mod over one slot. Either way, new missions open up and I don't have to hunt thralls AND escort a hijack target or hold intercept points at the same time. This systematic method effectively takes control of the star map away from the lich and returns it to me. I can choose where to hunt the lich as I see fit. Every level I give it means more knowledge of the proper requiem sequence, bringing the lich at least 1/6 closer to death.

If I instead have to clear every kuva lich mission on a planet to level the lich and open more missions, that will be far more off-putting than exchanging one of my unused respawns for requiem knowledge. Respawning is literally the first action you take in this game. It doesn't upset me.

[Exodess]

This is a VERY good start which addresses the core problems with Kuva Lich.

There remains some underlying factors that should probably be looked into. Just off the top of my head:

1) The Lich's Island-of-Content setup, forcing players to pursue only that content when interacting with their current target.

2) The rate of penalty from the taxation being at such a degree that it can interfere with standard farming should the player not aggressively seek to end their Lich in what is a multi-hour spectacle. There should be a percentage cap of how much the Lich can take from you per mission, with rewards tied to mission completion being omitted.

3) The murmur grind. Murmurs should have alternative means of allocating them en-masse, like Spy Missions on one of the controlled planets.

[Ogundiety]

I am pretty heavily for these changes, with one (relatively minor) proviso- right now the 'worst case' solution is 10 (!!!) additional weapon of the same time to max it out (assuming you start at 25%, and get 10% of the current each time).  That feels just a little too punishing for someone who keeps ducking under the same number.  Could this possibly be increased to say, 15% for people who just have terrible luck (this takes it to 7 at maximum, which is a little more reasonable while still giving a strong advantage to the luckier people).

I also would ask that the 'cannot be the same weapon twice in a row' get removed/reverted, as this change makes it redundant and potentially annoying ('I really want to max out my  x').  I'd be fine if this stayed in place for the first kuva larva  (so I had karak, killed it, next larva cannot be karak but I don't activate it, next one can again be any of the weapons or not whatever I didn't pick from the other larva).

[(PSN)AlexAntares]

get rid of the requiem relic system, is redundant, disconected and pretty much becomes yet another grindwall which you have to go trough unnecesesarily for just getting the mods.

Make the mods rewards from anything else, or just part of the natural progression while hunting for murmurs (I.E. let them be a thrall drop, for example). Eliminate the pointless aspects of the system

[(PSN)GilgameshNEO]

19 hours ago, Xemgoa said:

I hope to see the Kuva Lich system receive some serious improvements, I know I and many others want this system to be fun and not a slog - but it'd be nice to see more interactions and dynamics to your relationship with a Kuva lich.

Several examples being off the top of my head is:

• Your Kuva Lich might actually be guarding one of the Spy missions you're infiltrating, hoping to detect you and thwart your efforts early.
   
• Your Kuva Lich ends up in a precarious situation that benefits you both - say a rare and/or powerful Orokin artifact needs to be protected (Defense) and you're both faced up against the Infested - a faction both of you would agree that the solar system can do without them, making a temporary truce; and as a consequence, the Lich that stole-- er, "Taxed" your earnings from operating in their territory, would relinquish a fraction or the entirety of the loot they stole from you.
   
• Your Lich meets with you on several different scenarios, whether you work together or pit against each other, they start to develop a distinct perspective or set of perspectives about you, themselves, the solar system they reside in and all that takes place in it. Which could result in:
   
  • Your Kuva Lich, while still your enemy, may end up confiding something personal or a secret to you, whether that be of a benefit or a detriment.
  • Your Kuva Lich makes more frequent attempts to talk with you, with unique dialogue.
  • Your Kuva Lich might come by to help you if your health reaches a certain threshold and attempt to assist/deliver the final blow to whomever weakened you, but will likely turn on you once the threat has been abated.
  • Exceptionally rare chance the Kuva Lich might concede and ask if they can join you in your adventure.

There being more examples people could throw in, but it be nice to see these or something like these, and more.

Rather than... an obstacle.

 

 

Now this is something that should definitely be implemented.   

[(PSN)GilgameshNEO]

I like the change about how the liches wont instagib you anymore if you get the Requiem sequence wrong.   While I like this,  I feel like having them laugh at you and run away seems a bit wonky.  I forget who said it first, but they should die first, THEN resurrect, laugh at you and level up as then run away.

[MorteNexus13]

I like these changes, especially that of knowing what weapon the lich will use if I choose to spawn it. But I would like to keep the animation of the lich breaking my back but without killing me. It looks great despite everything.

[(PSN)GilgameshNEO]

4 minutes ago, MorteNexus13 said:

I like these changes, especially that of knowing what weapon the lich will use if I choose to spawn it. But I would like to keep the animation of the lich breaking my back but without killing me. It looks great despite everything.

Indeed.  A Nidus with 99 stacks  of mutation or 9k health inaros should not die from a simple broken back.  But that's just an example of course.

 

[Fl_3]

It's a start.

I'm not a fan of a larvalling holding up a poster of the weapon it's going to be using up in an effort to encourage a to player kill it, it comes across as being something that Wile E Coyote would do before a falling anvil landed on his head. Do we get to make Roadrunner noises before we run off just to put a cherry on the cake? 

I'd rather have the Larvalling actually fight with the rest of the Grineer in the mission using the weapon as he attempts to get the player to "power him up" It's easy enough to tell the difference between the weapon types, and the bonus damage would still be granted by the frame killing it. It's not like we don't have time to stop and check to see what weapon it's carrying it before we take it down.

Also, would it be possible to make the Larvelling a recurring nemesis itself? appearing over several missions in an attempt to get the player to kill it if we ignored it the first time? 

Here's an idea.

Each time the larvelling appears it carries a different Kuva Weapon, and maybe ephemera? That way a player can wait until they get a weapon they desire and then convert the Lich. Maybe the longer a larvelling survived the higher the starting level of the Lich it becomes?

This would allow players to pick and choose which weapon they require whilst also adding the complication of starting with a stronger Lich once created, and perhaps make Larvellings a little more interesting than the slab of meat they are now.

It's still awful games design that this thing with hardly any relation to the story of Warframe (so far) exists with no purpose other than to drop some half assed, lazy variant weapons though, and I'm hoping that once it gets fully implemented into the rest of the game that it will become something worth chasing and not just something else to grind for MR, or fashion.

Thankyou for your continued efforts.

[TheBigBrzezinski]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)GilgameshNEO said:

Indeed.  A Nidus with 99 stacks  of mutation or 9k health inaros should not die from a simple broken back.  But that's just an example of course.

 

Or Valkyr with Hysteria active. Really, the best solution would be to dismember a lich, drag the angry screaming torso off, and chain it up in the orbiter. Then we could try requiem sequences in relative peace. But then, we would have no gameplay.

Don't look at me like that. You were all thinking the same thing and you know it.