Dev Workshop - Kuva Lich Changes Coming Soon™ PART 2

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

Instead of grinding murmurs to reveal the mods and then rely on trial and error to get the right order

Why not make use of the words on the cards and grind that instead

As if  i'm scratching a ticket and finding out the words in it and it's proper order 

It'd be the same, you kill thralls but instead of the murmur bar gets filled slowly over time 

The fog hiding the words gets cleared more and more...until you start to make sense of them

 

Then the player can already guess what these words are and which card they refer to

I hope i'm making sense to you

[Gaikki]

4 hours ago, (NSW)Gunz said:

You preferred the annoyance of being killed by RNG? Not dying from lack of skill or making a real mistake. Dying from not selecting the proper order for 3 of 8 mods. Making them threatening as enemies, and having a death against them be infuriating because you played the encounter wrong is far more better than being infuriated because you've been grinding murmurs for 2 hours and then need to spawn the lich a few times to get the order right, which is likely to be 2-3 deaths you can't escape from.

y e s

[frogov99]

This changes to the lich creation and kuva weapon improvement are excellent. I think the murmur farming needs some improvement as well. Completing missions under Lich influence and clearing said influence from a planet should contribute to revealing the requiems as well. Otherwise this future changes that encourage the "lich hunt" will exist with the slow murmur farm, which I consider to be an obstacle for the lich hunt replayability. The removal of the instakill is not bad, but it should be replaced for a heavy damage move, and allow other players to revive us. It leaves us less concerned about the possible fail and the right order of requiem mods.

The lich system is getting better thanks to you, keep it up DE.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

How does the lich rank up now?

[(PSN)AthrenZ]

Just feedback/potential suggestion. Maybe for a wrong Requiem guess the penalty can be a random debuff similar to the ones on the derelict dragon keys but probably to a lesser degree. Make em stack with each failure and function as a sort of "aura" that activates when your on a level with the lich.

Feel free to critique, correct, discuss or expand upon this as I've never actually bothered with the Kuva stuff yet so it's def half baked and I really can't speak to the level of frustration suffered by those that have been killed via "rng/wrong guesses." However the lack of any actual penalty makes the liches seem way less threatening (...but I guess that could be a good or bad thing depending on the type of player you are)

[-Clear-]

• Quote

  6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

  2 more Weapons entering the Kuva Fold!

  so we can expect that kuva anku 

  

[0_The_F00l]

I am liking the changes, would address some of the frustration faced in the current system. 

I am slightly disappointed that there is no mention of the murmur acquisition, guess it's a telltale sign that it's not going to be changed and liches are still gonna take 2 hours on average to clear. 

I personally did not mind the back break animation itself, I disliked how it was against the core concept of the lich dying multiple times. I would have preferred a back break if the lich was first downed and then it rose and did the animation, or better yet a crushing bear hug. 

Also need more info on valence transference and how it would work with different elements. 

 

[T_erry]

6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

a downed Kuva Larvling will grant 100 Kuva on End of Mission.

It is good of course but I don't know its significance

[---.CCC.---TradeFrame]

I've skipped liches waiting for something like this
Kuva weapons = Duplicates are now opt-in and have value for a min-maxer

``A downed Kuva Larvling will now display an icon of the Kuva weapon that its birthed Kuva Lich will possess!
Nice
**Valence Transfer Infusion**
Valence Transfer now also boosts your Kuva weapons innate damage bonus. (10% increase on highest dmg%)
THIS is what was needed. Some way to get to that damn 60%.

 ``   Converted Liches will stay longer, do more damage, and actually use their abilities!``
nice, hopefully will be more than pretty pixels and be useful now.


It's pretty much the same for railjack.
Till they don't actually integrate it into the main game, I'm perfectly happy leaving it for later, when hopefully bugs get fixed and grind gets less insane.
F for all those who are playing and raising a loud enough ruckus that DE makes changes. (though I'm sure they can see how many players are actively playing it.)

[(PSN)Silverback73]

6 hours ago, DeLawrence said:

I have a quick suggestion that I think could be implemented until next week. Have Kuva Lich death squads of 5-10 thralls spawn in normal missions/activities/fissures etc.

As long as you opted in to have a Lich, you should expect it to be annoying you, either by itself or by sending its minions after you. There's no point in "farming" Liches...they should be integrated into the game, as the custom enemy you envisioned.

Holy Tenno, I love it!  KUVA LICH SYNDICATE-MURMUR DEATH SQUADS!

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

6 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...

To Abraxas, I'm not responding to you, quoting you for a different reason.  Feel free to completely ignore this.

I've done 3 liches so far.  One of them I only did because an alliance member was willing to give me a lich that had a weapon I wanted for pretty much nothing.  Otherwise it would still be at 2.  To not be completely negative, the changes you're implementing look great.  They really do, they look super solid, zero complaints about what IS being done.  They actually made me think "I might actually give liches another chance." right up until I had the exact same thoughts that are in Abraxas' post.

The murmurs aren't so bad to me in a group.  There's room for improvement in the grind there, like the murmur grind not taking place on regular starchart nodes that we've been on thousands of times before (that felt seriously lazy to me), but they aren't what makes me still not want to do liches.  It's the fact that only half the grind happens before you get the weapon from your lich.  The other half of the grind comes from the amount of time and resources you have to spend leveling the weapon to max rank if you want the MR and to have it checked off in your codex.

I'm MR28 and I have about 1700 hours in game.  I'm not sitting on huge forma stockpiles, and I'd say the vast majority of your players aren't either.  If it weren't for plague star I'd have maybe enough for one weapon.  Considering I finally got around to getting a rank 3 Exodia Contagion (only to find out it flat out doesn't work as client.  Fantastic.) and couldn't bring myself to run it 24/7 I'm only sitting on about 16 forma now that PS is gone.  That means to build the forma required to do the rest of the weapons, assuming I don't forma ANYTHING else, it's going to be over a month before I have the forma I need just to be able to DO the grind.  And the grind itself is horrible.  With an affinity booster it takes about 10 minutes to fully re-level a weapon if you are farming affinity specifically for that weapon, which is about an hour if you're applying 5 forma to a normal weapon.  An hour of straight concentrated grinding in one of the very few handfuls of missions where you can quickly gain affinity for a weapon.  And these aren't normal weapons, these extra levels double the time it takes to apply a forma.  It's a massive resource and time investment after an already large time investment, and it's not an engaging gameplay loop.  It's Hydron or ESO over and over and over.  Passively leveling a weapon while doing other things you actually want to be doing takes 3 or 4 times as long in my experience, and I always have a booster on.  You could literally give me all the kuva weapons I don't have yet with perfect rolls on them and I would probably avoid logging in for weeks because I would just be thinking about all the tedious work sitting in my arsenal.  Applying forma is flat out not a fun process.  It's mind-numbing.  I don't even think when I'm on Hydron because I don't have to.  I can play 20 waves only looking at the minimap.  I will NEVER need any of the Sedna resources ever again.  The "defense starting alarm" is starting to remind me of the feeling I get when my alarm clock goes off in the morning.  Putting on 65 forma as a requirement for the MR and weapon completion was either thought up by someone that actively hates the player base or does not play the game.

The TL;DR here is that there is a very good reason that the post I quoted is so popular and has such a positive reaction from your players.  Please pay attention to it.  I just wanted to flesh out the WHY (at least for me) of that post.  What you're fixing is fantastic and exactly what we asked for.  But when you get done with this fix, it would be super appreciated if doing anything about those things mentioned in the quoted comment was next on the docket.

[Big-gentleman]

NICE!!

[---.CCC.---TradeFrame]

23 minutes ago, T_erry said:

It is good of course but I don't know its significance

it's like a 15endo reward. If it had been 250-500 kuva, it would have been a 50-80 endo reward.

[WhiteCopain]

7 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!

I get this is "better" but can't we have something other than a big UI box? Maybe have the weapon they'll use fall infront of them or something? The models are already made, yeah? So just have it fly up with them when they die or something I don't know (just throwing an idea out).

 

The way this is now really kinda takes out any intimidation or immersion feel of the system and purely makes it a game-y feel. An ok stop gap I guess, but I feel like it could be done better to make it more immersive.

[(PSN)Originalkatsu]

These look like good and needed changes but I have a question. I’m probably missing something incredibly obvious but on console is there a way to see one’s inventory of converted liches ? When I couldn’t find this function I started a written list with weapon stats, etc. as I converted the ones whose weapons I didn’t need, but I think my dog ate it or something and now I have a handful of litches I don’t remember weapons and stats on. Shouldn’t this be a function available in the crimson branch or a tab in one’s inventory?

[Hawk_of_the_Reborn]

7 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

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. 

 

No please. 

Stop making it easier. Reb, I honestly beg you to reconsider this. I'm sick of not being punished for failing in this game.

[DennyPhantom]

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.

Im sorry. WHAT?!

What 9 year olds complained? 
This is a M rated game, KEEP STUFF LIKE THIS IN!!!

[tussletoes]

Just wanted to say, these are some of the exact changes I wanted from day 1, so I'm glad to see this happening! This actually makes me want to come back to the system after a while.

2 things still in my "wishlist," though, if feedback is still being considered:

-Bring back shared lich XP: Unless this already happened and I missed it, it'd be nice to give players more of an incentive to work together, rather than--from what I've seen more than a few times--yell at each other to get rid of a lich as fast as possible so someone else can get their turn. I know this would simply make the grind quicker, so a way to balance this would be to have a cap on earned/shared XP per mission. Ultimately it's about getting players to work with each other more, so exactly how much that cap should be is up to the team.

-Strategies against liches should matter more: Liches aren't usually a big threat unless they have radiation abilities and are immune to corrosive. More often than not, even if they're weak to something like magnetic or viral, I end up dealing far more damage using a good corrosive weapon than a weapon with a solid magnetic build, and so on. I don't necessarily think they need a dmg buff (as some have said), but I think they should overall have greater defenses against all damage types except their weakness, making it critical to build around their stats. I also like quirks, like the ones that make them afraid of random things, such as kids or kubrows -- it's fun to see how these are translated to gameplay (liches being stunned, etc), and it'd be nice to see more of them, since they can be useful. Making strategies a big part of fighting liches could be a good way to make use of the varied types of builds the game has.

 

Quick edit: I dunno why I didn't mention this, but we can't keep getting enemies that are immune to status. Procs like viral obviously can't split a lich's HP in half, but these effects should still do enough dmg to a boss-type enemy to stack up to other damage types, as opposed to being useless. Easier said than done, but...

 

Anyway, thanks for the update! Keep up the good work.

[Kefirno]

I guess I'll never have a chance to enjoy the system in its good state because I already have all the old lich MR fodder and will get the 2 new pieces before liches arrive to Railjack missions like was shown in Tennocon demo. Well, maybe with Corpus liches.

It's good that you guys are addressing the grind part, but will the fundamental dullness of the system ever be fixed? I mean, they are supposed to be very personal enemies, with strengths, weaknesses and quirks but all we have now is just a few set of elemental abilities and 3 symbols password we have to bruteforce. Quirks don't seem to matter, elemental resistances and weaknesses aren't really noticeable, most of progress towards killing lich is achieved via murdering hordes of their thralls while interaction with liches themselves are very limited, there's no tweaking your build and strategy to deal with particular lich, no unique ways to lure liches out, just grinding the rage meter. They are all same, they all behave the same, they are all killed in a same way, nothing about them is unique or personal besides looks and names.

Also, I think that larvling carrying regular version of lich's weapon instead of just showing icon would be more subtle approach.

[Flying_Scorpion]

How about instead of them laughing and disappearing...they actually die and come back to life...like as if they were a lich...and as if their dialogue of dying over and over again was actually witnessed by the player. 

[xcrimsonlegendx]

Just now, Flying_Scorpion said:

How about instead of them laughing and disappearing...they actually die and come back to life...like as if they were a lich...and as if their dialogue of dying over and over again was actually witnessed by the player. 

A lot of us in this thread have been echoing the same sentiment, hopefully they hear it. Simply reusing the larvaling death animation would suffice. Then maybe laugh while they vanish in red vapor?

[.Unforgotten.]

8 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.

The billion Dollar question that I have regarding the Valence Transfer option is as follows:
Can it be made possible to end up allowing us to Manually Choose the Weapon and Bonus buff. This would help the players who have already fused their weapon with 5 Forma's and have a good Bonus like Toxin. 

Example:
Kuva Kohm X: 50% Rad Damage with 5 Forma's
Kuva Kohm Y: 25% Toxin Damage

Would it be possible to mix and match the Weapon and Bonus, like Kuva Kohm X (to keep the 5 Forma's and Replace the bonus of Rad to Toxin from Kuva Kohm Y while Boosting it to whatever, or end up at 60% Max as previously mentioned).

This would across the board end up players farming the Liches, endlessly and to enjoy it whilst preventing them from feeling irritated at forma'ing their weapons a 2nd time or rather n^th time.

Sincerely,
.Unforgotten.
(My discord Tag: .Unforgotten.#9969)

[Zoh_Veldae]

Ok, these are actually good changes, kinda unexpected really.

But I do still have a few more questions regarding all this, such as:

- The Larvling displaying the icon of the weapon it will "evolve" with is extremely useful, but does this also apply to Ephemeras? As in, will it have an icon for it as well or will the Larvling itself have the visual effects of the Ephemera it will gain?

- Removing that forced death on using the wrong rune is a solid step forward, I'll admit that. Will we also have different ways to find rune clues, such as maybe hacking consoles on the level controlled by a lich that start glowing in Kuva fumes or something to denote that they have data for the rune clue? It got very tiresome very fast "learning" thralls to death. Maybe even have some sort of new rare item drop from thralls that can be used to manually increase rune progress on any Lich of ours when we need, something to make it worthwhile to keep on shanking fools when our clues are topped off while our squadmates are still working on theirs.

- The boosting of elements with Kuva weapon duplicates is also great, but would it be asking too much to reduce the number of forced forma to max them out? Like I mentioned before when they came out: it was cute when Paracesis did it, it's irritating when a whole series of weapons does it.

- Lastly, I agree on leaving the Lich-B-Gone product on the drawing board. If we now have better control over what we get, there's really no need for it. However, giving a one-time option to players when this update goes live to either dismiss their current Lich or not would be very much apreciated.

If all these features are going live as is, it should be a good step forward. Ideally, both Kuva Liches and Railjack will be fully fixed BEFORE they're merged.

 

[Sliv]

Very good changes.

The RNG guessing part remains a problem, though. Maybe make some kind of minigame giving us hints about what words may or may not be in the combinaison ? The whole system would go from "let's try another word and pray" to "I want to try that word to see if I am right !".

[Kurogumihime]

Like everybody else, I want a more not annoying way to farm Murmurs.