The problems that still remains with larvalings and liches

[StevenMagnet]

1 hour ago, adek183 said:

Do you want DE to put a giant yellow textbox with an arrow pointing down to the head of a larvaling saying "THIS IS A KUVA LARVALING" or what? It's absolutely clear now that you're killing a special enemy and you DO have a confirmation whether or not you want to do it unless you spam "x" for no apparent reason everywhere.

Did you read any of what people said? Its not that it isn't obvious, its that they're trying to do something else and end up killing the larvaling instead thinking they won't.

[Benour]

Im really impressed how you can have issues with BASIC STUFF like this.

Let me Quote this smart man: 

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ...

[DoomFruit]

Honestly, I'd actually have done it the other way. Parazon the larvaling before the end of the mission and you get no lich, leave it alone and the kuva lardians still have something left to collect. That would have let the devs add some special purpose and lore to the otherwise useless wristblade thing - some kind of special draining ability that sucks the life and/or kuva out of their bodies.

It also ensures that people see the fancy finisher animations which they've implemented, because right now that effort was basically wasted on me entirely (I never once use finishers, they take far too long) and I suspect that I'm not the only one to think that way.

That said, it's much easier for me to never encounter a lich in the current state. I like that. It festered for 3 months and at this point, I no longer have any interest in the system.

[ShortCat]

14 hours ago, StevenMagnet said:

It'd be easy to imagine a situation where you think its a finisher, or perhaps an item, and accidentally execute a larvaling. I executed one because I thought it was a finisher, and now I'm stuck with them for a few days at least before I can get back into having fun with liches.

This one is up there with "Darling, it was an accident that I slept with your sister".

There are visual and acoustic indicators of a Larvling AND it requires a different input command. You made a stupid mistake, now act like an adult, reflect and learn from it.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

17 hours ago, StevenMagnet said:

Yes, they are marked on your map. Which doesn't mean much when theres a bunch of enemies clumped together and you are looking for liches, rather than avoiding them.

As for the brain thing, yes, my brain was off. I was doing the same capture mission over and over again to see the new kuva lich weapons, and if I could get the one I wanted. I don't think adding a 'are you sure you want to do this?' dialog box where you have to click yes would be having the game do everything for you.

If you are surrounded by enemies, why would you even go by stealth executing them one by one instead of just using melee or some other AoE weapon to kill them all in a single hit? This is once again not hard because they spawn in generic Grineer missions, and not in any high level ones such as Sorties.

[sir_deadlock]

11 hours ago, adek183 said:

 It's absolutely clear now that you're killing a special enemy

The reason this is a bad argument, is because it doesn't offer a solution.

If you're suggesting it's the player's own fault, and that's the justification for why the system shouldn't have an abort option, then you're suggesting that to solve the problem they need to go back in time and make a different choice. That's impossible, so it's a bad argument.

Right now, we're on the topic of designing game mechanics. The scenario we're addressing is we've found a pitfall that players keep hitting and it's upsetting them. The way out is long and complicated and many have opted to slog through it once, by choice or ignorance, and have since been very careful to never do it again. But this pitfall was intended to be a fun and engaging mechanic that players were supposed to eagerly seek out and dive into.

 In case you don't see it, this is a waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in man hours developing, testing and marketing a new aspect of our game over roughly the past two years. Instead of players being satisfied with this new content until the next mainline rolls in, they feel like the harvest has yielded poor crops and they're left hungry. The survey in the dev stream at least offers some proof of that. That's not just a bad thing to happen, that's a horrible thing to happen.

 We could have options and this issue can be fixed after the fact. It's not making the game any better by forcing a person to keep a lich they don't want, or any worse by giving a person the choice to get rid of it.

[Kashtan]

On 2020-02-05 at 7:09 AM, StevenMagnet said:

Did you read any of what people said? Its not that it isn't obvious, its that they're trying to do something else and end up killing the larvaling instead thinking they won't.

What would require you to compulsively mash interaction key? The only situation I can think about is that you're trying to do stealth kills in which case you should be well aware that if an enemy is down on their knees instead of just flopping dead after you execute a finisher that something is up with them.

[sir_deadlock]

3 hours ago, adek183 said:

if an enemy is down on their knees instead of just flopping dead after you execute a finisher that something is up with them.

They all do that when a finisher activates. I've heard the big red indicator over their heads that is shaped like a parazon occasionally has a different icon (still big and red), but I don't know what it is.

The larvalings look like grineer capture targets or exima scorpions.

Here's another bright idea. Supposedly you're putting kuva in a larvaling to turn them into a lich. Why not have that be something you're required to intentionally fit into one's parazon? Then there's no mistake about wanting a lich. If the parazon isn't primed with a kuva seed or whatever, then hitting the larvaling will straight up kill it.

[StevenMagnet]

So, I was going around as Loki doing stealth kills. Yeah it happened again.

 

Yes, I'm stupid when I'm tired late at night. Calling me stupid and pointing out how stupid I am won't change that. It just makes you look like a ****.

Edited February 7, 2020 by StevenMagnet

[DoomFruit]

9 hours ago, StevenMagnet said:

So, I was going around as Loki doing stealth kills. Yeah it happened again.

 

Yes, I'm stupid when I'm tired late at night. Calling me stupid and pointing out how stupid I am won't change that. It just makes you look like a ****.

The solution is to never touch anything Grineer again. It's what I did back when the whole "lich" system first came out a quarter of a year ago.

[(PSN)waltsjr]

Sad that people can't form logical arguments, instead relying on ad hominem.

Killing larvalings unintentionally is an issue, despite some of the burden of responsibility falling on the player, DE really should have approached things better.

1. People seem to forget/ignore that on consoles the number of buttons is far fewer and the interact button, even if you remap, will likely overlap with another function. For me the interact button is also used to reload, which is used frequently.

2. I have posted about a glitch/bug and heard of other people experiencing an unintentional larvaling kill, despite not initiating the finisher on the larvaling. I used a finisher on a nearby enemy and had the model switch to the larvaling during the animation. I also killed a larvaling by reloading when I shouldn't have been close enough to trigger the animation. Both of these glitches have been a problem since the beginning of the lich system, although was more frequently seen when killing thralls.

3. Farming larvalings is mindless and can literally take hours to see the weapon you want, I farmed larvalings for 3 hours and still didn't see 6 of the kuva weapons. Yes, it is still partially the players fault for killing the larvaling. However, responding with "you're stupid" etc. is just ignoring how easy it is to make mistakes when you're essentially turning on auto pilot. There have been numerous studies into this sort of thing. Like even something as morbid as people forgetting their kids in the car has been shown to have a basis in them just going through the motions of a day. Although the player is still responsible for the mistake DE can still be faulted for making a gameplay loop that is not engaging, but rather extremely tedious even after the recent changes to the system.

A secondary confirmation, even if it was just another (separate) button press would help bypass the first two issues and would take into account the player making mistakes due to the nature of the gameplay loop. There would be essentially no negatives from a gameplay perspective as the secondary confirmation would only delay you using a finisher on the larvaling for like a second, if you wanted the lich.

Edited February 18, 2020 by (PS4)waltsjr

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, (PS4)waltsjr said:

3. Farming larvalings is mindless and can literally take hours to see the weapon you want, I farmed larvalings for 3 hours and still didn't see 6 of the kuva weapons. Yes, it is still partially the players fault for killing the larvaling.

This is the heart of the argument, I think. In the past, I've argued that "there's enough warning" and "you should be careful." Then it happened to me... I was about half an hour into repeating Cassini when I started to get bored. Alt-tabbed to put on a YouTube video in the background, tabbed back into the game and absent-mindedly stabbed a Kuva Larvling while listening to the video. Yeah, apparently instantly stabbing things with a Parazon symbol over their head has become a habit of mine in ways I didn't fully appreciate until I started playing distracted. Luckily, what I actually got was the Kuva Tonkor which I didn't have AND it was in the element I wanted it to be in (cold, because I have a Primed Cold Damage mod). As such, mine isn't exactly a rant-worthy story since I completely accidentally got what I was after, but it very easily could have been.

I'm still of the opinion that Kuva Larvlings should use the Lich Execution mechanic. Hit your Use key on the Larvling and your Warframe slowly walks up to it, brandishing their Parazon. Your options are to "Kill" the Larvling and transform it into a Lich or "Spare" the Larvling by walking away, causing it to die instantly. That screen would also be a good place to put an image of the Kuva weapon the Lich spawned from that Larvling would eventually carry. Plus, it offers a neat thematic capstone. Despite gaining power, amassing influence and challenging the player every step of the way, the Lich finally ends up right back where they started - as a crumpled mess on the floor, at the mercy of a power they realistically never had a chance to surpass. Bit depressing, but still thematic.

[Ham_Grenabe]

So, the issues with liches and larvalings:

1. Larvalings behave the same way as thralls, down to the sounds it makes when it goes down, it's movement, and the game virtually begging you to stab them immediately with a bright red icon over their head and a big ol' X SECRET MERCY indicator. This game trains us in Pavlovian ways; it's not surprising at all that sometimes you do what the game has trained you to do. 

2. On console, reload and context-action are very, very frequently on the same button, and compulsive reloading is a thing. Drop the larvaling, reload on your way to it, and what-hey, you've got yourself an unintentional lich. It's an extra pain in the ass for console players. 

"Don't do that" is not a sufficient answer to the problem. Every single one of us runs a huge amount of autopilot in the game; there are too many rapid decisions being made to be consciously thinking about them all. 

I am firmly in the camp that either larvalings get a Hold to Confirm option - differentiating the action from Thrall killing - or the devs need to implement the weekly "Goodbye Lich" option, and I would not object to both. 

Note: In the latter case, I support locking people out from another lich for an entire week after they dismiss one, to prevent the dreaded "catering to casuals" ephemera farming that many people are convinced will drive DE to bankruptcy and perhaps destroy civilization. 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Ham_Grenabe

[SordidDreams]

On 2020-02-04 at 10:04 PM, StevenMagnet said:

The system in place to see what weapon a larvaling will have when they turn into a lich is good

I disagree. It's certainly less awful than the blind RNG that was there previously, but that doesn't make it good. This system results in yet more abort farming, where you down the larvling, and if it doesn't have what you want, you abort the mission and try again. DE tried to counteract this by giving you that pitiful kuva drop, but in my experience it's absolutely not worth finishing the mission to get it. And they can't make it worthwhile because that would make kuva siphons irrelevant, everyone would just do larvlings instead to farm kuva.

A lot of recent WF content has this problem, especially railjack, which is basically all abort farming. Didn't get a Shedu drop from the sentient ship? Abort and try again. Didn't get the infested orokin side area to spawn in railjack? Abort. The infested orokin area spawned but didn't drop a Spectra Vandal part? Abort. They 'fixed' the intrinsics abort farm by simply taking the intrinsics away if you abort, and by 'fixed' I mean they took away the only reason a lot of players still had to play that game mode. So rather than make players play the game mode for longer, they did the opposite and made them not play it at all. Bra-f*cking-vo, DE.

I can't imagine abort farming is DE's intended way of playing the game, and with good reason since it's boring af, but in the case of larvlings it results directly from their stubborn unwillingness to give up the RNG aspect of the lich weapons. It kinda reminds me of the small indie game Kingdom, which had a hilarious language selection button in the settings. In most games you click the language button and you get a choice of language options; in Kingdom you click the button and the game switches to a random language, and you just have to keep clicking until you get the one you want. The reason why that was okay in that instance is that you set your language once and then leave it alone, so the randomness was funny and made the game just a little bit more entertaining. But a system where you have to keep trying until the RNG gives you what you want has no business being in places where you make a selection repeatedly. Just let us choose the damn things directly, perhaps in a similar way that we choose the damage elements (i.e. shoot larvling with a bow -> get Kuva Bramma).

On 2020-02-04 at 10:04 PM, StevenMagnet said:

There is no confirmation before executing a larvaling.

This would be an excellent place for the hold-to-confirm system they tried out with railjack. It's aboslutely insane to me that they require that confirmation on actions that are completely inconsequential if done accidentally, such as crafting revolite, but not on larvlings, where one stray button press condemns you to hours upon hours of tedious, fruitless grind.

 

There are also other remaining problems with liches, such as: Liches only gain anger and have a chance to spawn on nodes they own. If you accompany someone else into their lich node that your lich doesn't own, you still gain murmurs, but your lich doesn't gain any anger and cannot spawn in that mission. This actively disincentivizes playing with friends, which seems a poor design choice for a co-op game. Another problem is that if someone vanquishes or converts a lich in a mission, no more thralls or liches will spawn in that mission (I've heard some conflicting reports about this possibly being fixed, but in my experience it still persists).

Edited February 18, 2020 by SordidDreams

[DoomFruit]

20 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Another problem is that if someone vanquishes or converts a lich in a mission, no more thralls or liches will spawn in that mission (I've heard some conflicting reports about this possibly being fixed, but in my experience it still persists).

I seem to recall this only being the case if the host's lich gets finished.

[SordidDreams]

1 minute ago, DoomFruit said:

I seem to recall this only being the case if the host's lich gets finished.

Ah, of course it's yet another host/client issue. Well it would certainly explain the intermittent nature of the problem. Here's hoping for a quick fix... along with all the other such issues..........

[ES-Flinter]

Did already someone mention, that DE could just change "click X to parazoning" to "press x to parazoning"? I think this could even fix the problem, that on console many interaction use the same button.

Am 18.2.2020 um 14:47 schrieb Steel_Rook:

I'm still of the opinion that Kuva Larvlings should use the Lich Execution mechanic.

@Steel_Rook I really respects you and I have nothing against you. But this is probably the worst idea I've ever heard of you.

Just imagine. The animation with killing/ sparing would probably take about 10 seconds.

You needed until you got your Kuva tonkor only 30min. Let's say you needed about 2min per run. So 15 runs in total. And now add the extra 10 seconds for the animation, to look if the larvling really has your wanted weapon. The 30min would now increase to 32,5min. Alone that's 10% longer. But think about all the farming which is needed to just max. one Kuva weapon. You will probably need around 10 times the same weapon to get one on max. With other words, your larvling farming time will increase from around 5 hours to 5,41 hours. In the end you wasted around 25min just with the animation. And we have 16 kuva weapons until now. 6⅔ hours just for the killing/ sparing animation. Is it worth your time?

Edited February 19, 2020 by ES-Flinter

[Steel_Rook]

15 minutes ago, ES-Flinter said:

You needed until you got your Kuva tonkor only 30min. Let's say you needed about 2min per run. So 15 runs in total. And now add the extra 10 seconds for the animation, to look if the larvling really has your wanted weapon. The 30min would now increase to 32,5min. Alone that's 10% longer. But think about all the farming which is needed to just max. one Kuva weapon. You will probably need around 10 times the same weapon to get one on max. With other words, your larvling farming time will increase from around 5 hours to 5,41 hours. In the end you wasted around 25min just with the animation. And we have 16 kuva weapons until now. 6⅔ hours just for the killing/ sparing animation. Is it worth your time?

I needed a lot more than 2 minutes per run. Plus I'm not sure why you believe the Lick animation takes 10 seconds. Maybe with all the unnecessary time spent waiting for the UI to unlock it might go over 5 seconds, but eh. I personally don't consider adding an extra 10 seconds to Larvling hunts to be meaningful. If you're min/maxing down to such an extent than an extra few seconds matters, then you're going to lose more time running for the exist, doing the occasional extermination that sometimes happens on Capture missions or just looking away from the computer at the end of a loading screen. I understand the desire to speed-run content, but I don't understand the desire to optimise it down to the millisecond. I probably lose more than 10 seconds per run getting stuck on terrain, walking around my ship or chatting with people.

That's not to say you're necessarily wrong. It is to say, however, that I tend to not value excessive optimisation very highly.

[Laston]

ive executed my larva by misstake  afew times now so i agree it should be fixed, part of the problem is the weapon screen doesnt show up untill after it completed it´s "down on one knee" animation witch for doesnt work cause my muscle memory is the moment i see the start of that animation i press x to execute  and then a half second later i realise that i havent started a lich yet and DAMMIT now what weapon did i get now?

 

simply make the weapon screen show up immediatly and make it not executable untill it completes the animation or make it a hold to confirm thing so you get a second to be really sure you want to kill it so that reflex button press wont be so punishing.