Who's idea was it to require 5 forma to max out the lich weapons?!

[BernieBlack]

Seriously?! There's a lot of weapons from the lich I simply will never care about (Kraken, the boring rifle, a flamethrow, etc.) and the grind to get all 16 weapons is already a slog. Now you're telling me to statisfy my completionist cravings and reach MR 29 I have to not only grind this island of content 16 times over, but level each weapon FIVE TIMES and spend forma that I can only get ONCE A DAY (unless there's an event or I get "lucky" during a sortie). There's no point! The extra "levels" don't add any stats, which is already counter intuitive, but by 2-3 forma I have all the mod capacity I could ever want with most of them. Not to mention the leveling process in this game is a bit of a slog well before MR 28.This just screams "please spend your forma and waste your platinum." 

While I'm ranting, what is with the unavoidable wrestling moves they pull on you? It doesn't fit in this game at all. You're punished for what, being close? When the bastard is hopping everywhere and squirting out his/her field of Oberon flowers. It isn't punishing its just frustrating and odd (and the animations break half the time for me anyways). And why is all this content completely separate from the rest of the game? Why do I have to actively seek out my nemesis to convince him to show up, all so I can win a glorified guessing game? Why can't murmurs just be a part of regular missions, so everything can just connect instead of creating yet another island of content in the Bahamas that is this game. 

I understand that this rant is a  bit late, and probably overdone at this point, but I recently returned to this game after hearing some good things and I was greeted by this mind numbing grind and a "sit and wait 6 hours 4 times over for a ship you're going to be bored with after a week because all the railjack missions are the same" story quest. 

Let me end by saying I do love a lot of the things they have done. The corpus rework is amazing and beautiful, the Protea quest is incredible, and Gauss is god tier. Please, DE, fix this. New players already have an insurmountable wall of grind to get over, no one needs level 40 weapons for the sake of it.  

[YUNoJump]

Mastery Rank is essentially useless past MR15 and even then there will always be new items that can take you to the next MR without having to do the Lich grind.

I agree that its a lot of effort to truly max out Lich weapons, but as you say there's not really a need to do it other than for completion's sake. I can't really fault DE for it if the only reason people do it is because they feel they have to have absolutely everything in the game. DE has to get players to spend time in the game; if you're willing to do the grind while complaining about it then clearly it's not so bad that you can't tolerate it, and if you aren't willing then it's entirely optional and you're welcome to simply leave the weapon as-is and find another task. I don't mean to say that in a "if you don't like it go home" kind of way; there really are lots of other things you can be doing in-game instead of that weapon grind.

In comparison, a BAD application of that system would be the Paracesis, which unlocks the ability to wipe Sentient adaptation but only with 5 Formas installed. Again it's not required to do well at the game, but locking actual mechanics behind the 5-forma grind feels bad because you really aren't getting the most out of the weapon until you finish it. If I had to choose I'd rather that 40-rank weapons just stick to being an MR booster, without directly increasing stats, than for maxing them out to be a required part of the meta.

[BernieBlack]

3 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

Mastery Rank is essentially useless past MR15 and even then there will always be new items that can take you to the next MR without having to do the Lich grind.

I agree that its a lot of effort to truly max out Lich weapons, but as you say there's not really a need to do it other than for completion's sake. I can't really fault DE for it if the only reason people do it is because they feel they have to have absolutely everything in the game. DE has to get players to spend time in the game; if you're willing to do the grind while complaining about it then clearly it's not so bad that you can't tolerate it, and if you aren't willing then it's entirely optional and you're welcome to simply leave the weapon as-is and find another task. I don't mean to say that in a "if you don't like it go home" kind of way; there really are lots of other things you can be doing in-game instead of that weapon grind.

In comparison, a BAD application of that system would be the Paracesis, which unlocks the ability to wipe Sentient adaptation but only with 5 Formas installed. Again it's not required to do well at the game, but locking actual mechanics behind the 5-forma grind feels bad because you really aren't getting the most out of the weapon until you finish it. If I had to choose I'd rather 40-rank weapons just stuck to being an MR booster, without directly increasing stats, than for maxing them out to be a required part of the meta.

I understand its useless but my favorite part of this game was always maxing out my MR and seeing those shiny check marks on my profile. And that no longer feels good with this implementation. Before when I grinded out a weapon, I would play with it and if I liked it I would stick the forma on it and keep going, if not I would put it up and not have to worry about it. But with this mechanic I have to forma it regardless and level the damn thing five times over. Not once, but 16 times. I understand its a personal choice but now I can no longer enjoy the MR grind like I did before. 

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

It takes 80 forma to fill out each weapon, and unless you want to forma 5 times and then dump a fully forma'd weapon, it takes 96 plat to have slots to hold all the weapons.  It also takes far, far longer to put 5 forma on a kuva weapon than on a regular weapon because the extra levels have much greater affinity cost than just leveling to 30 five times.

Most of the weapons are solid, or even top-tier, so there's that, but it's an atrocious, tedious system that does not need to be repeated when Corpus Liches eventually hit.  The whole Lich system is a garbage layer cake of RNG and grind, and it's only half over once you kill the Lich because of this stupid, boring, extended grind to 40.

Oh, and MR is absolutely not useless, especially for the subject matter at hand.  At MR 29, I have almost all of my mod capacity available at rank 0, which is the only saving grace I had while leveling kuva weapons.  I can't imagine trying to put 5 forma on one of these things at like MR 10, when you can barely fit a maxed serration on the weapon at rank 0 IF you have a catalyst on it.  All the extra standing and other resource caps like traces and focus being extended due to MR also means you grind certain content faster since your daily progress potential is greater, or in the case of traces, you can run more radiant relics while prime farming.

[AlphaPHENIX]

2 hours ago, BernieBlack said:

There's a lot of weapons from the lich I simply will never care about (Kraken, the boring rifle, a flamethrow, etc.)

There's a flamethrower?

[BernieBlack]

13 minutes ago, AlphaPHENIX said:

There's a flamethrower?

I mistook the Ogris for a flamethrower

38 minutes ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

It takes 80 forma to fill out each weapon, and unless you want to forma 5 times and then dump a fully forma'd weapon, it takes 96 plat to have slots to hold all the weapons.  It also takes far, far longer to put 5 forma on a kuva weapon than on a regular weapon because the extra levels have much greater affinity cost than just leveling to 30 five times.

Most of the weapons are solid, or even top-tier, so there's that, but it's an atrocious, tedious system that does not need to be repeated when Corpus Liches eventually hit.  The whole Lich system is a garbage layer cake of RNG and grind, and it's only half over once you kill the Lich because of this stupid, boring, extended grind to 40.

Oh, and MR is absolutely not useless, especially for the subject matter at hand.  At MR 29, I have almost all of my mod capacity available at rank 0, which is the only saving grace I had while leveling kuva weapons.  I can't imagine trying to put 5 forma on one of these things at like MR 10, when you can barely fit a maxed serration on the weapon at rank 0 IF you have a catalyst on it.  All the extra standing and other resource caps like traces and focus being extended due to MR also means you grind certain content faster since your daily progress potential is greater, or in the case of traces, you can run more radiant relics while prime farming.

This man is speaking the gospel

[BahamutKaiser]

I'm not sure where the assumption that weapons have to be mastered comes from? Do you get no mastery unless you reformat them? Or do you think they won't come out with enough weapons to reach rank 30?

[(PSN)A-0Titan]

This, i just get the kuva weapons, master them to 30, then dump em. I want mastery but its too much forma and work atm. I’ll do them later when im rich with forma and bored

[(PSN)Wolfsherrscher]

5 forma is a great idea because it motivates player investment. You get a potentially super-powerfull weapon, but only after investing a little work.

It would feel unrewarding if you just got 80 mod capacity without polarizing anything...

[MasterBurik]

35 minutes ago, (PS4)Wolfsherrscher said:

5 forma is a great idea because it motivates player investment. You get a potentially super-powerfull weapon, but only after investing a little work.

It would feel unrewarding if you just got 80 mod capacity without polarizing anything...

With 5-9 (innates & exilus) polarities in, 80 capacity just makes things redundant in almost every case except slotting in mods with the wrong polarity. Now, if the bonus status damage started at a standard baseline and increased to max % with the 5 forma...

 

[Els236]

I complained about this a few months ago when I came back.

Not only was it a huge time investment, it was also a huge plat investment. All because, just like you OP, I want all my weapons to have checkmarks on my profile stats.

 

With how DE keep talking about wanting to reduce burnout and stuff lately, the Lich system is by no means any step in the right direction. If anything, it's about 6 steps backwards. 

It's boring, unrewarding and tedious. 

 

I could (and have) make a whole thread about how Lichs need fixing, but so, so many people already have and it's just a waste of breath at this point.

[Monolake]

It is epitome of unimaginative resource sink and timesink padding that adds nothing good to the game. if WF wasn't enough of a timesink already. And with how much time you need to spend just on farming liches (and good luck if you are trying to max the bonus % on the weapons - makes even nolifers cry)  requiring 5 formas to max the weapon and extract all the mastery from it was absolutely unnecessary.  Its no wonder people are unhappy with Liches and many avoid them entirely

IF anyone from DE reads the thread: think how badly this sort of padding and time/resource sink feels even if its optional and how it adds nothing to the game and only scares people away.

[Tesseract7777]

13 hours ago, Els236 said:

I complained about this a few months ago when I came back.

Not only was it a huge time investment, it was also a huge plat investment. All because, just like you OP, I want all my weapons to have checkmarks on my profile stats.

 

With how DE keep talking about wanting to reduce burnout and stuff lately, the Lich system is by no means any step in the right direction. If anything, it's about 6 steps backwards. 

It's boring, unrewarding and tedious. 

 

I could (and have) make a whole thread about how Lichs need fixing, but so, so many people already have and it's just a waste of breath at this point.

They took six steps back, two to the side, and then tripped and fell off the side of a building, hitting the fire escape several times on the way down. 

[FireSegment]

On 2020-07-17 at 11:09 AM, BernieBlack said:

I understand its useless but my favorite part of this game was always maxing out my MR and seeing those shiny check marks on my profile

DE don't want to further encourage the association between weapons and MR points, not anymore. So they decide in compromise is to make it costly to squeeze all the MR points possible from a weapon. That's the design intention.

The extra capacity is a nice bonus that i imagine would be really beneficial when DE start to add umbra mod for primary and secondary as well, it is already pretty useful on the two lvl40 melee we have.

 

[Hypernaut1]

2 hours ago, FireSegment said:

DE don't want to further encourage the association between weapons and MR points, not anymore. So they decide in compromise is to make it costly to squeeze all the MR points possible from a weapon. That's the design intention.

The extra capacity is a nice bonus that i imagine would be really beneficial when DE start to add umbra mod for primary and secondary as well, it is already pretty useful on the two lvl40 melee we have.

 

I agree. It seems like the intent was no for people to chase the weapons for mastery, but they should've known better

[FireSegment]

32 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

I agree. It seems like the intent was no for people to chase the weapons for mastery, but they should've known better

not sure what u mean about they "known better" part, i think that strategy work well enough for me as mastery point that are actually optional

[BernieBlack]

9 hours ago, FireSegment said:

DE don't want to further encourage the association between weapons and MR points, not anymore. So they decide in compromise is to make it costly to squeeze all the MR points possible from a weapon. That's the design intention.

The extra capacity is a nice bonus that i imagine would be really beneficial when DE start to add umbra mod for primary and secondary as well, it is already pretty useful on the two lvl40 melee we have.

 

I doubt this was their intention, but if it were I think it only ENCOURAGES the association. I mean right now this is the converstion: 

"Hey, here's 16 weapons that you can level all the way to 40! (but it'll cost you 5 forma and you have to level it to max yourself each time)"

"Okaaay, what does the extra levels give you?"

"Extra capacity!"

"But 2 forma is enough capacity, what else?"

"More mastery!"

"And?"

"That's it! :D"

Its a system ONLY put in place for the mastery, so it once again encourages us to associate weapons and their levels with mastery. Lets be honest, their intention was to grab the forma from players sitting on a stock pile, and the rest is collateral. 

 

[Monolake]

18 hours ago, FireSegment said:

DE don't want to further encourage the association between weapons and MR points, not anymore. So they decide in compromise is to make it costly to squeeze all the MR points possible from a weapon. That's the design intention.

The extra capacity is a nice bonus that i imagine would be really beneficial when DE start to add umbra mod for primary and secondary as well, it is already pretty useful on the two lvl40 melee we have.

 

No its the opposite - they give MORE mastery for extra ranks giving 4,000 points in total (unlike normal weapons that give 3000 total form reaching lvl30). Per wiki: "special weapons can exceed Rank 30 and these weapons will continue to grant 100 mastery points for each additional level until they reach their max". If they thought like you they wouldnt grant extra mastery at all. But DE wants you to grind more and waste formas in order to get maximum mastery points.

[FireSegment]

On 2020-07-22 at 6:33 AM, BernieBlack said:

I doubt this was their intention, but if it were I think it only ENCOURAGES the association. I mean right now this is the converstion: 

"Hey, here's 16 weapons that you can level all the way to 40! (but it'll cost you 5 forma and you have to level it to max yourself each time)"

"Okaaay, what does the extra levels give you?"

"Extra capacity!"

"But 2 forma is enough capacity, what else?"

"More mastery!"

"And?"

"That's it! :D"

Its a system ONLY put in place for the mastery, so it once again encourages us to associate weapons and their levels with mastery. Lets be honest, their intention was to grab the forma from players sitting on a stock pile, and the rest is collateral. 

 

 

On 2020-07-22 at 4:30 PM, Monolake said:

No its the opposite - they give MORE mastery for extra ranks giving 4,000 points in total (unlike normal weapons that give 3000 total form reaching lvl30). Per wiki: "special weapons can exceed Rank 30 and these weapons will continue to grant 100 mastery points for each additional level until they reach their max". If they thought like you they wouldnt grant extra mastery at all. But DE wants you to grind more and waste formas in order to get maximum mastery points.

the thing that you missed in that "conversation" is that you assumed every player would willingly put a potato in the weapon already for the 2-forma is enough assumption. (also i can't see how that related to encouragement of MR point as u argue). but most players would only ever invest potato on a few weapons that they selected, either from their experience or what they learnt from the meta they encounter. But in other hand, those player don't mind spending forma into weapons (low plat, lots of time players if you may). For those players, Lich weapons are dream come true because they don't need potato and do benefit from having more forma put into it. 

Lich weapons are the only set of weapon that you can fully populate all the mod slot with max rank, useful mods without using potato, and still have some room for flexibility. And that in turn, lead to having a much higher chance to escape the fate of being a MR folder simply because by the time the player done leveling it up, the weapon would actually be ... you know ... functional.

In other words, i believe that with the completionist player mindset, we would got the idea completely backward. DE looked at the system and realize casual players would discard a weapon too soon after mastered it without ever reaching a build that touch on it potential. So they make it easier for those players, allowing them to reach a good build without taxing them on the resource they don't have abundant, while still make it costly enough with the forma and the increased effort to ranking it up again.

In that view, the added MR point is just something extra resulted from those system interacting with each other. DE couldn't care less about it. And if you using potato then the weapon should already reach it potential way before the 5th forma, which for me really make any MR point i could gain after that is "optional MR point", and i extremely glad those optional MR point exist in the system simply from the analysis view.

 

[BernieBlack]

6 hours ago, FireSegment said:

 

the thing that you missed in that "conversation" is that you assumed every player would willingly put a potato in the weapon already for the 2-forma is enough assumption. (also i can't see how that related to encouragement of MR point as u argue). but most players would only ever invest potato on a few weapons that they selected, either from their experience or what they learnt from the meta they encounter. But in other hand, those player don't mind spending forma into weapons (low plat, lots of time players if you may). For those players, Lich weapons are dream come true because they don't need potato and do benefit from having more forma put into it. 

Lich weapons are the only set of weapon that you can fully populate all the mod slot with max rank, useful mods without using potato, and still have some room for flexibility. And that in turn, lead to having a much higher chance to escape the fate of being a MR folder simply because by the time the player done leveling it up, the weapon would actually be ... you know ... functional.

In other words, i believe that with the completionist player mindset, we would got the idea completely backward. DE looked at the system and realize casual players would discard a weapon too soon after mastered it without ever reaching a build that touch on it potential. So they make it easier for those players, allowing them to reach a good build without taxing them on the resource they don't have abundant, while still make it costly enough with the forma and the increased effort to ranking it up again.

In that view, the added MR point is just something extra resulted from those system interacting with each other. DE couldn't care less about it. And if you using potato then the weapon should already reach it potential way before the 5th forma, which for me really make any MR point i could gain after that is "optional MR point", and i extremely glad those optional MR point exist in the system simply from the analysis view.

 

You are jumping through some impressive hoops. There is no build that requires five forma. Hell, I don't think there's any mod set up that requires that much room, much less a functional one. Its there because they knew the completionist would do it and sink their forma. Its another wall of grind, and at this point I'm convinced grind is all DE knows anymore.

[FireSegment]

1 hour ago, BernieBlack said:

You are jumping through some impressive hoops. There is no build that requires five forma. Hell, I don't think there's any mod set up that requires that much room, much less a functional one. Its there because they knew the completionist would do it and sink their forma. Its another wall of grind, and at this point I'm convinced grind is all DE knows anymore.

u did catch the "without potato" in the same sentence i posted right? (and the whole post?) some build on normal rank 30 weapon did have to use 7-8 forma to max stuff out with potato already. Five forma and extra 10 capacity should barely be enough to not ever feel the need to forma it again.

regardless, i already show how or which player type the lich weapon system benefit and my opinion that extra MR to it is just some trivia thing that somehow people keep focusing on and no discussion on it intended effect. (my mind changed a bit compare to my first response on this topic but i only realize what the system truly does after that point), Think of it what u want, it's not my mission to change people's mind on the internet.

If DE want to impose as much grind as possible, they have way more sinister options to implement them. Heck, one worse MR point grind than this whole thing is already in the game and nobody was talking about it.