Dev Workshop - Kuva Lich Changes Coming Soon™ PART 2

[Soulless_Spartan]

34 minutes 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. 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. 

What could be cool is if we "killed" them instead of them shrugging it off. It'd be a good way to have their lines about dying repeatedly make more sense.

[JaycemeSwain]

34 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

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.

This feels like it'll be abused heavily, like people just killing larvlings for easy kuva(esp since people generally do captures to get the larvling). Would make more sense if you got the kuva for accepting the weapon then finishing the mission.

[Zeyez]

looks like it covered most of the problems, except Murmur gathering in team
but ironically i wasn't that bothered from dying... more about knowing what kind of weapon my next lich will have

[Skaleek]

38 minutes 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%

How will this work in regard to different elements? Ie. 25% heat damage infused into 40% radiation, and vice versa?

[ValinorAtani]

Why doesnt we get Kuva from killing a Lich? Maybe one Riven Roll per Lich-Lvl? Right now the mentioned changes arent worth the time to even bother with it and i'm still in the No-Lich-Club.

[AdunSaveMe]

38 minutes 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. 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. 

This is a good change, but I think just to really make it thematically fitting, the Lich should actually die, THEN laugh at you and disappear. The whole concept along with a lot of their dialogue implies they've got a resurrection thing going on, and making them actually die but still be immortal through resurrection would work a lot better. Even as a small change. Either way I'm glad the cheesy non-challenge of a failure death is gone.

[diaversai]

I agree with a lot of people here. The murmur grind is pretty boring and the forma to max is harsh. I'd prefer if it were 2-3 forma to get a rank 40 weapon vs 5. 

But good changes otherwise. I still don't know if it'll make me interact with the system aside from the new weapons, since it's still a content island. 

If murmurs could be gained by doing normal nodes, I'd probably always have an active lich, but currently I haven't touched one since railjack.

[Okami_Amaterasu]

>Lichs not killing you for a requiem attempt

First you had my curiosity but now you have my attention

[Kylo.]

Pretty solid changes.

[xRufus7x]

These changes are good and all but this still leaves liches as a content island. Thralls should have a chance to spawn in any mission on a controlled planet while the lich nodes give specialized bonuses. Spy and mobile defense giving extra murmurs for instance or exterminate and sabotage increasing the liche's anger.

[Ham_Grenabe]

4 minutes ago, JaycemeSwain said:

This feels like it'll be abused heavily, like people just killing larvlings for easy kuva(esp since people generally do captures to get the larvling). Would make more sense if you got the kuva for accepting the weapon then finishing the mission.

I dunno. Kuva is pretty plentiful; if you want to run Cassini a thousand times on top of the siphons and floods and survivals and buying it at 10K a pop from Nightwave, I don't see it being a huge problem. 

[Diamondmatter]

This sounds really good for making the system as it is enjoyable and logical, but I'd be way more into it if I cared about Kuva weapons or Kuva. The weapons are nice, but not very interesting, and I don't bother with Rivens in general. What I really want out of Liches is a rival character who can create an engaging personal story, but so far you're incentivised to just kill them as soon as possible, and they don't stand up to you in any way besides verbal harassment, an occasional boss fight, and of course the loot draining that just pushes you to kill them faster. Looking forward to anything that makes the system deeper and more worth interacting with than some strong weapons.

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

36 minutes 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.

  Hide 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!
 

While that's all well & good, what reason is there to max your Lich out? I've repeated this point countless times already, but the RNG weapon stat should've been tied to Lich levels to incentivize leveling them in the first place, otherwise increased mission difficulty is the only purpose levels have.

What are we going to do about Murmur & Requiem mod grind? That's the majority of what this content is, and it isn't stellar or revolutionary by any means. It's just busy work, nothing we haven't already done an nth amount of times already. Murmur grind should to be reduced to prevent monotony & Requiem mods shouldn't be locked behind some glorified Relic system that isn't even worth half the effort regular Relics are.

[JaycemeSwain]

2 minutes ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

I dunno. Kuva is pretty plentiful; if you want to run Cassini a thousand times on top of the siphons and floods and survivals and buying it at 10K a pop from Nightwave, I don't see it being a huge problem. 

Remember when for a patch, they accidently let the thralls drop the mods instead of the relics or that time they fixed current Itzal from breaking the golem fight.

 

Sure there are plenty of ways to get kuva but DE doesn't seem to love farming exploits, hence how generally enemies in quests that can drop important stuff outside of the quest are generally made infertile of drops.

[Loza03]

28 minutes 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.

Sweet! Better late than never I suppose. The randomness has contributed to my unwillingness to pursue liches after getting an alright chunk. This should help.

Having the larvling itself hold it would be ideal, but I assume there's some spaghetti code risks that could make it buggy.

29 minutes 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. 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. 

Also great. Again, feels like this shouldn't have taken so long, but whatever.

Will the animation itself make a return, possibly in any future larger-scale lich missions? It's pretty neat, even if the circumstances made it hated.

36 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

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

Meta chasing isn't really my thing, but appreciated.

37 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

You can expect the Chance of a Lich having an Ephemera to double. 

How unusual.

Spoiler

 

38 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

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

Nice. I hope this is just a taste though, I have two convertees that I'm quite fond of, and I'd like to make them more significant. Brave as it was for them to jump in during Plague Star, it wasn't really that impressive. Perhaps the ability to mod their weapons in some limited fashion, or somehow mentor them to become even mightier?

44 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

Hoping for Kuva Sobek or Kuva Twin Basolk. I like them in theory for their augments but they're far too early in the progression curve. If not now, something for the future?

39 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

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. 

Fair enough. If nothing else it helps with testing.

34 minutes ago, Abraxas said:

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

Given that they can't really remove it at this point, I'm hoping they can at least reduce the Forma costs to something like 2, an amount you're semi-expected to invest anyway.

[Xsoskeleton]

45 minutes 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%

Aww and here i planned on getting lowest toxin bonus ogris to transfer and override my current elec bonus for low viral setup

[Ham_Grenabe]

4 minutes ago, JaycemeSwain said:

Remember when for a patch, they accidently let the thralls drop the mods instead of the relics or that time they fixed current Itzal from breaking the golem fight.

 

Sure there are plenty of ways to get kuva but DE doesn't seem to love farming exploits, hence how generally enemies in quests that can drop important stuff outside of the quest are generally made infertile of drops.

I'm not saying they won't change it, I just don't see it as much of an exploit given how much they've opened up Kuva acquisition over time. If you do a kuva siphon and get 600 Kuva, and you blitz Cassini 6 times and get 600 more, you've spent maybe 15 minutes on 1200 kuva and that seems like a reasonable rate of acquisition.

[TheIvoryKitty]

These are great additions! To be fair, I already really liked the system - but now I'll like it even more. 🙂

[Hello]

47 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

Please let Sobek be one, please please please haha. That would actually get me to start doing Lich's again.

[Zandermanith222]

Thank goodness, knowing which weapon the Lich will have is the only thing I really wanted.

[Gelkor]

I don't think the Lich should laugh and run away. You should have to brute force kill them and then they level up from the death.

[Monolake]

still not addressing the main problem -  lack of any new or interesting gameplay, grinding thralls in the same old missions is a snoozfest

 

[Yakhul]

Liking the upcoming changes.

However, i must express my personal opinion about the removal of the back-breaking kuva lich kill on requiem failure.

I cannot think of anything else other than this change being implemented to cater to every single person who complained about being one shot by their liches. Personally, i didnt mind that, i liked it, the sense of defeat when you fail, is something this game has been lacking for a very long time, since we have become godlike machines of destruction. It was refreshing to have an enemy capable to kill you (outside of survival missions of 1 hour +)

[AimlessDictator]

Pretty disappointed with the news about lich cancellation. I picked one up by accident (didn't know what to look out for) at MR 7, and I definitely don't have the power to work towards defeating one. I've just been avoiding Eris - and the associated quests - in hopes that the banish system would be implemented soon. 

It's great that you're making the system more fun! But I don't know what to do now. 😅

[taiiat]

i like being able to throw away a Lich before i even get it.