Kuva Lich 1.1: Feedback Megathread

[Ham_Grenabe]

7 hours ago, Doppelhan said:

These are good changes, but it’s nowhere near enough. Lichs are still just boring disposable loot boxes.

Nothing short of a full rework is gonna fix that.

I don’t think there will ever be a full rework for the Kuva liches.

If we’re fortunate, some of our suggestions might make it into the Corpus or Infested equivalents, but I think we’re pretty much looking at “as good as it’s gonna get” out of the Grineer iteration of the system.

The fixes that would make it a complete system are just too big to retrofit.

[Shonaney]

it was already posted but i want to bring it up once more:

if the "not the same kuva weapon in row" is still active, and it looks like, it should be reconsidered, with the valence boost it is common to want the same weapon twice without wasting a lich to skip the rule

[SeidronDaer]

3 hours ago, Shonaney said:

it was already posted but i want to bring it up once more:

if the "not the same kuva weapon in row" is still active, and it looks like, it should be reconsidered, with the valence boost it is common to want the same weapon twice without wasting a lich to skip the rule

I had a similar experience looking for a particular weapon. This is to let you, DE, know that your game has morphed and is now a source of frustration.

[Rasdan]

Remember that "Bug" when everyone gets 10 murmurs after someone failing to kill their lich?

That was good times. Maybe 10 is way too much. Reduce it to 5 to keep the pace. Thus everyone will try to enrage their lich and do a murmur share, win win.

[Enikuo]

I wish you'd just add the ability to abandon liches already. It's like you've decided it's better to hold players hostage with a lich they don't want in the hopes that you can change their mind, rather than trusting that the improvements you make will bring players back and get them re-engaged in the content later.

Maybe that's not it and you just don't want to spend the development time on liche-be-gone first, though it's not clear to me if you're even committed to letting us back out of the lich system or not.

All I know is that every time I get in the mood to play the game, I realize I've got a chore waiting on me that I don't want to deal with and I go play something else. It sucks because I loved Warframe, a lot. But, lately, you seem to not trust players to just enjoy the content you make without you needing to funnel us into it (Nightwave) or trap us in it (liches).

[Buff00n]

With the new weapon preview and valence upgrade mechanisms, plus the existing no-repeat rule where it doesn't give you the same weapon as the last lich you defeated, trying to upgrade a particular weapon multiple times is now an exercise in frustration.  You have to go through a lich with a random weapon in between each copy of the one you want, and that's if you know the rule exists.  As far as I know it's not explained in-game anywhere.  Without that knowledge, you could spend days killing larvlings and never know why you're not getting the weapon you want. 

The no-repeat rule never actually made that much of a difference anyway.  Now with 16 weapons, the average player will go through around 51 larvlings to collect all of them.  Without the no-repeat rule, that number is around 54.

[STEPONMEKIMJISOO]

The core gameplay loop is not good.

I believe progression towards finishing the lich should be shifted very heavily from thralls to the lich itself, because the lich is the spotlight of the entire system and is promoted as a "personal nemesis".

Far more time is spent on farming thralls than fighting the lich, this is the opposite of an engaging system.  The entire system currently revolves around thralls.  See: thralls being the main source of progress towards figuring out the mods, lich converting enemies to thralls which further discourages interaction with the lich until thralls stop spawning.

There are too few encounters needed with the lich to finish it entirely.  Someone who knows all the mods need a max of 4 encounters to figure out the order.  Brute forcing takes a max of 18, in practice every lich takes much less due to murmurs and fails all giving hints towards mod order.

Extra encounters with the lich would reduce total time taken to finish one in the current system.  If devs are against this then a very simple solution is to introduce checkpoints for when each requiem can be tested.  Rewards on lich encounter such as murmur and kuva can just be tweaked accordingly to be the same as the current system.

As for missions, currently they only serve to bring out thralls and the lich.  Any mission objectives are completely unrelated to the system when they could have been implemented as a part of it, e.g. capture targets could be lich underlings of a different rank to thralls, spy vaults could contain information about lich activity and where to encounter it, rescue targets could be the lich's hostage specifically.  All types of objectives could be extended to give progress towards finishing the lich.  Again this doesn't necessarily have to reduce the total time to grind but to give more engagement with the system.

tldr: fight thralls less & fight lich more for a more engaging system.  Rewards stay the same & devs decide whether to shorten the grind or not.

[SeidronDaer]

4 hours ago, Buff00n said:

With the new weapon preview and valence upgrade mechanisms, plus the existing no-repeat rule where it doesn't give you the same weapon as the last lich you defeated, trying to upgrade a particular weapon multiple times is now an exercise in frustration.  You have to go through a lich with a random weapon in between each copy of the one you want, and that's if you know the rule exists.  As far as I know it's not explained in-game anywhere.  Without that knowledge, you could spend days killing larvlings and never know why you're not getting the weapon you want. 

The no-repeat rule never actually made that much of a difference anyway.  Now with 16 weapons, the average player will go through around 51 larvlings to collect all of them.  Without the no-repeat rule, that number is around 54.

On closer inspection, 54 is merely the average number of runs to gain a particular weapon: half of all people will have fewer than 47 runs and half will take more than 54 runs to gain the said weapon. To be somewhat certain of gaining a particular weapon (99%), that rises to 107 runs. In the worst case scenario, it took the simulation 247 runs to gain a particular weapon. At this moment, any other game look more enticing that WF.

[woisen]

what a journey...

i start playing at 22:15 and finished at 1:15 (only murmur part), and i can not say that this is made to be farmed in one go, but must it i dont think so. but the explicied missions kind of forcing me too.

what are my opinions now, its nice that we can choose the weapon, but i also must say the murmurs part should be looked at.

in short the lich should sporn more often, maybe increasing with the anger, and when i got all the requium mods unvaild it should sporn in every lich mission. the thralls should be sightly more in lich missions and they should also sprone on regular missions. 

I still dont like the rnd bonus on the kuva weapons but, i decided that i will ignore it and not farm for a good roll even with the update mechanic, also becourse the "UPGRADE" of the bonus in comparison to the grind is just a joke. it is way to mutch farming for me personaly and i hope other players do the same and not get totaly burned out on this wounderfull system. i also thougth that the bonus should be displayed at the larvling, but this would only mean, at one point with more weapons added, we will run the larvling mission up to infinity, and this is even more boring. But i want to see the emphemera on the larvling (i do every thing for fashion frame ☺️).

i also found it mutch better to farm murmurs in a group. maybe we can get viewer missions so that you more often get a full squad, at the moment it feels like your a lonely hunter and for pre made groups its nearly impossible to play together. 

i also had one guy in a defance mission who doesn't want to get his lich done, and in my loadout was nothing to heal up the pod, so the mission faild. maybe we can get some timer on a lich after it disappears?

edit:

now i did another round, and i got 4 liches in a cap mission, all of them sporned in a ~1min cycle on the start of the map and it was realy annoying to run back and forth 3 times. so can we maybe get the lich sporn at our location?

edit edit: 
im done now with my weapons.. wasn't all bad but wasn't enjoyable ether..
Had Liches that appeared 2 times in 2 1/2 houres, the liches shoudn't say: "Commrades are they scared, i think there scared" they should say "commrades are they bored, i think there bored"

I decided to stop playing wf for a while...

 

 

 

 

[Reifnir]

The larvling Mercy trigger really, REALLY needs to be held. The frustration of doing this by accident when you're running Cassini for a hundredth time looking for that ONE weapon you need is just horrible. That, or we need to able to make a meaningful choice regarding which weapon we're getting. Running Cassini for hours on end is not fun in the slightest.

The core murmur farm loop is still awful. Plain and simple. It's not challenging, it's repetitive, mind-numbingly tedious and ultimately burnout-inducing. There's no feel of "facing a nemesis", at all. This needs a "back-to-the-drawing-board" kind of rework, properly incorporating different mission types with different outcomes. Spy/Interception runs to gain a bunch of Murmurs, Sabotage/Exterminate to quickly fill out a node, guaranteed ways to face a lich... Right now it's just hours of stabbing grunts with mission itself just being an irrelevant piece of background. This needs to change, Railjack needs to be incorporated into this... A LOT of stuff needs to happen. 

Right now, it's still the least enjoyable piece of content we've had in a while, and the fact that good weapons are locked behind it only adds insult to injury. 

 

[Buff00n]

1 hour ago, SeidronDaer said:

On closer inspection, 54 is merely the average number of runs to gain a particular weapon: half of all people will have fewer than 47 runs and half will take more than 54 runs to gain the said weapon. To be somewhat certain of gaining a particular weapon (99%), that rises to 107 runs. In the worst case scenario, it took the simulation 247 runs to gain a particular weapon. At this moment, any other game look more enticing that WF.

Not sure if there's confusion here, but 51 is the average number of larvlings to go through to collect all 16 weapons, starting from zero, with the 99th percentile around 107.  After a million trials the worst case to collect all 16 starting from zero usually falls around 250; that number should be taken with a grain of salt but it basically represents a 1 in a million chance.

To gain one particular weapon is just a simple 1 in 15 chance, so it will take 15 larvlings on average (it's a simple Binomial Distribution), as long as you got a different weapon on your last lich. 

If you got the same weapon on your last lich then it's impossible, which is not obvious and that's mostly my point.  The confusion of the no-repeat rule is not worth the minimal RNG relief.

[(PSN)SolarPhantom82]

Thanks DE for making having a lich on your side worth it now. I was in a boss fight with a frame that wasn’t good for the boss and the lich showed up and helped me kill it..  it was so much fun,  and made getting him worth it….  Watching him use his powers was so cool… 

[Renzo]

Ok, having grinded bramma and currently grinding the nukor I can say the following:

These changed changed close to nothing for me, as the most important aspect of kuva liches, which is the most boring and tedious grind of murmurs, is still there. This is really triggering me and I am feeling I am massively wasting my time for this, doing tens of "exterminate" or "survival" or "defense" again and again and again and it feels like there is no end to it. This has to be the worst warframe content I have played so far and until the murmurs are fixed, I will refuse to play liches after the "mandatory get the new weapons" part.

Make liches spawn 10x more often, reduce the murmur requirement by a huge amount or something, this is definitely not the content I want to use my time on as it stands currently.

[Reifnir]

Adding to my previous post - Valence transfer/fusion is another thing that needs work.

Currently, dedicating any effort to it is extremely unrewarding and at times - insulting. My experience so far is a 27% Chakkhurr, followed by 26% followed by another 27%. I feel like smashing my screen at this point. 

First off, it apparently works by only taking the larger value of elemental bonuses into account. So, if I have a weapon with 38% bonus and I consume a weapon with 26% bonus to upgrade it, I'm getting a 3.8% increase. If I were to consume ANY weapon in the range of 25% - 38%, I'd still get a 3.8% increase. So unless I get MORE lucky than I did originally, my effort is capped.

What's worse, the feeling when after a number of upgrades with low rolls you finally get a high-% fodder piece, you don't really feel any achievement. You feel cheated, because it's like "Ha-ha, loser, you've done almost a dozen valence upgrades with bad rolls, if only you'd have gotten a good roll sooner!" At worst, you're looking at 10+ liches vanquished to fully upgrade a weapon's elemental bonus. That's hours upon hours of grinding murmurs, requiem relics and requiem mods. Which feels like wasted time, not rewarding gameplay.

TL;DR: Valence transfer needs to be much, MUCH more profitable. Either make it a fixed 15% per upgrade, so that no more than 3 liches are required to cap it, or use a more generous formula that benefits from both the target and the donor weapon bonus. What we have now is only a tiniest bit less horrible than what we had originally, and it's definitely not good. 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

DE why did you change the visual effect of the laser? I liked the circler laser effect, that was one of the reasons I like this weapon because it wasn't like any other beam weapon and now you ruined the visual uniqueness of the weapon PLEASE revert it back the way it was. Stop fixing things that ant broke, no one asked for this.

[diaversai]

After playing with it a bit. Picking your weapon is definitely better but it's still a slog. I have a couple of suggestions.

1. Lichs shouldn't lose rage so that they're more common. If they showed up in every/every other mission, that would significantly increase the number of murmurs you got. Also, increases number of trial and error chances. 

2. Every x lichs defeated should reduce the murmur count you need permanently by 1. According to the wiki, it's 36, 60, 84 right now. It could be done in a cycling system. So first defeat = 35, 60, 84. Second defeat = 35, 59, 84. Third defeat = 35, 59, 83. That way it takes some off of both ends. Maybe to a minimum of half. That would be 90 liches killed/converted would end up with 18, 30, 42 for murmurs. It's a constant progression that way as you learn how requiem mods interact with Kuva Lich physiology through defeats.

3. Trade requiem mods/relics for lich lures. Helps in the same way as #1 does.  

4. Kuva weapons shouldn't repeat on larvalings until they've cycled through or you spawned a lich. 

[Neah]

Did a bit of Lich grinding over the last few days (12 so far, 3 for new weps), valence fusion feels like it could be more generous with its upgrades. 

RNG is RNG, 8 / 9 of the duplicates I got are of a lower roll than what I have, and as you fuse to a higher damage %, the probability of getting a higher roll is even less. Going by the current 10% increase it takes 10 Liches (maximum) to cap out the weapon bonus, given an average of 2-3 hours per lich, not including requiem mod farming, takes up to 7 Liches or ~20 hours (on average) of dedicated farming for a maxed weapon, which feels a little too much. Considering we have 16 Kuva weapons, that's 320 hours of just Liches alone.

Would suggest bumping it up to at least +20% per transfer, which is about 5 fusions max to get to 60% bonus, still takes ~160 hours minimum for everything though (which tbh, is probably already way more than it should be), with exceptions towards extremely lucky rolls.

[Mos-Eisley]

Now I can see what weapon I will be getting, that's great! That means there will be fewer liches I have to deal with to acquire all of the weapons. This change would not have been necessary though, if liches were enjoyable in the first place. If it were enjoyable to "run a lich" then players would repeatedly "run liches" to acquire the weapon they want. However a really good system would have players engaging liches regardless of the potential to acquire a new weapon. I run Eidolons still, though I have everything I personally need from them, because it is an enjoyable, and engaging battle. Liches are the worst things ever put into Warframe. Granted its something I could completely ignore like Lunaro, Framefighter, but they do have weapons to acquire..which likely will be simple MR fodder as they essentially are just re-skins of existing weapons that I was not fond of the first time round. I honestly hope that there are no further liches introduced into the game, resources spent on Railjack instead. I say this because at this point I don't believe the liches will ever be brought into a state where they would add value to the game. I certainly believe that it is possible to make the liches something that add value to the game, but without a complete scrap of the existing system I just do not see that happening. I'm at the point with this, that I'd just like to see the amount of murmurs required to learn a phrase reduced so that I would be able to get this over with sooner. 

I do like the removal of auto death on fail, definitely a good change. Its not that the death really meant anything, its more that you have absolutely no control on whether it happens or not. Death when a player has zero control on avoiding is not something that should have ever been considered. 

I don't want to sound overly harsh, obviously you (DE) put time and effort into this, and having something you created criticized (or vilified as most people do in these forums) hurts, but all the recent round of changes did was make the liches suck less.

Liches are not a "Nemesis" 

1. I have to go create one in the first place.

2. I have to hunt the lich, not the other way around

3. I have to kill the thralls, which are typically the easiest thing to kill on the entire map. Hasn't the thrall been sent in the liches stead to take me down before the lich needs to take a personal hand in the endeavor? 

4. I need to anger my lich to get it to show up....shouldn't it already be angered? Isn't that why it was created and sent to hunt me down?

5. Somehow after using my parazon on the lich it calms right down.

In short, I just don't understand any of the thought processes that went into creating this system. The implementation of the liches seems to be a complete antithesis of what it was supposed to be.

 

Possible changes?

I'd like to see the creation process changed...completely. I'd like a system akin to how you receive death marks from Stalker, G3, etc. Perhaps tie it into Railjack..kill x number of base commanders in Railjack to create a lich. Or create a new mission node on the Kuva fortress, that would generate a death mark for a lich. Perhaps two new nodes on the Kuva fortress..one lower level than the other. The lower level mission would generate a rank 1 lich, the higher level one would generate a rank 3 lich?

Thralls would be sent out in packs akin to the syndicate death squads. The thrall squad could show up any where, but if on a node currently under the liches influence, the squad would have a significantly increased chance of showing up, would be higher level, and provide more murmurs. Possibly change the lich agro meter to increase based on the number of thrall squads you've defeated, and then show up based on the agro meter as it does now? Or perhaps, the lich will only show in the subsequent mission, and be guaranteed to do so, upon learning the first, second and third code word. The player could then attempt the parazon, or down the lich 3x and then finish the mission. 

 

 

[Disruptis]

I was looking at a downed lich and decided that I didn't want it. I went to walk away, but accidentally clicked the interact button which made me start the mercy animation. Panicking, I alt+F4'd Warframe. When I logged back in again, the Kuva Lich had already been created despite me not even finishing the animation for it and being in solo matchmaking. Now I am forced to grind a whole bunch of hours for a weapon I will never want or want to fuse.

DE please fix kuva liches spawning the nanosecond you press execute on them, it makes no sense to have it that way. If someone's game were to crash they would even miss the entire spawning-in event of the lich while inside the orbiter too, and just relog to have a lich be like "HEY I'm here now lol". And because of this bug, no one actually has to bother completing their mission. They can just mercy the lich and abandon, leaving all the rest of the people in the squad to eat a host migration in the middle of an adaro exterminate.

All that said, thanks for the update. I've loved liches since day 1, even with the problems back then, and these changes only make it even better.

[Voltage]

Can the Lich spawning mechanic be reduced to around the first 90 seconds of a given mission? I find myself constantly alt tabbing and going AFK to ride out the ~5 minute spawn timer to make sure I do not miss a spawn. It's truly punishing when you aren't slow in these general missions. Also, the spawning of Thralls on non-endless missions is too far apart. I find myself getting more Thralls while AFK waiting for the 5 minute time to pass. This should be addressed as well.

Murmur farming needs to be addressed. I don't really feel I need to repeat why. A more consistent and standardized progression system would be more enjoyable.

[(NSW)MoonlightSerenade]

Very poor Thrall spawn rate....that alone is what I am finding very discouraging 

[rstripn]

RE: Kuva weapons @ rank 40

I enjoyed Paracesis going to a special high rank and requiring formas to rank up because 1) it was a unique storyline weapon & 2) rank 40 unlocked a special ability.

Kuva weapons are awesome but they aren't special to the game, and they don't gain any extra ability when they hit max rank. But if the rank system stays as it is, I request that the max rank of 40 actually mean something - i.e. unlock some ability.

It won't appease the people who just want to master the weapons and then not use them. But it'll give the system meaning, which right now it lacks.

Simplest cool idea I can think of would be the same ability unlock for all of them, something to do with Kuva or Continuity. In a similar way the weapons gained from Corpus Kingpins would have some faction-specific bonus having to do with their immortality mechanic.

[TennoClock]

On 2020-02-08 at 3:03 PM, Reifnir said:

The larvling Mercy trigger really, REALLY needs to be held.

 

I second/third/forth/and any number after that.  Since the murmur farm ingrains the player to press X when a mob kneels and the "Press X" popup shows, it becomes a habitual-muscle-memory-habit.  As soon as the larvling goes down, and that popup shows, down goes the X key without even a hitch.  Please add hold to transform the larvling into a lich.

Playing the lich content from the beginning makes asking for this seem like nitpicking.  Perhaps it is haha however.. if only you could see the colorful rainbow of words upon muscle memory pressing X.

There is another possibility.  If hold to transform is too much, please don't commit it to our account instantly - let us abort.

P.S.  Thank you for your hard work and this epic game! ❤️❤️  Onward I shall go barfing rainbows.. and apologizing to the neighbors.

[(NSW)Sim11]

Please Read

[(PSN)Mesaflave]

Spent about 10 hours farming larvlings for Kohm which would never drop, only to learn on forums that I can not drop the same weapon my last Kuva Lich had.

Thanks De, I appreciate that you communicated this BS to me through game. :)