Why the Lich gameplay died, and what can be done to improve it ?

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

2 hours ago, White_Matter said:

Why the Lich gameplay died, and what can be done to improve it ?

🤔

 

2 hours ago, White_Matter said:

People either got everything they wanted

👆 This. 

[(PSN)XxDrakenguardxX]

Honestly my biggest beef with the lich's is that their freaking boring! Honestly I'd like it more if they had their own node you unlocked by killing a certain number of thralls rather than them spawning at random. The mission could have you going to a regular grinder galleon for ranks 1-5 then afterwards have you chase them down in your RJ on their own ship. A function that I think should occur weather you have your RJ or not.

they start out in easier locations(undersea bases Earth's forest, asteroids ect) but grow in rank and power as you hunt them (and fail). Eventually culminating in them having their own ship. Which I think should provide a large amount of kuva(say 20k) as well as a bunch of other recourses they've aquired during their reign as a warlord. Their not just stealing your sh** and terrorizing you, DE dose know that right?

Of course when on their ship your fighting them on their turf. Traps, random arenas, and ads could be used as well as unique mechanics could make the fights difficult outside of "me have girthy health bar, unbreakable armor and a 1 shot bangstick". Because let's face it, DE has already made combat alone impossible to be a challenge.

 

this also lets you choose your own difficulty. You could grind out all three reqs but it'll be freaking slow and a R1 lich will give no other reward but their weapon. Thus your encouraged to try at least once or twice before needing to back off before it gets out of hand. But oh wait, they'll still attack you in their nodes, so sometimes you'll be forced to try anyways or run.

 

also maybe the higher level they get they also get some new taunts. Maybe something a bit more menacing than the endless juvenile taunts they speew out 24/7.

[Luciole77]

Kuva lich maybe can be another option to farm kuva?

 

 

[Butterfly85]

I just cba. I'll do a lich and then nope out for a month or two, then do another. The fight is fine, but 3 hours of banging my head on my desk farming murmurs ...

 

There's only 2 weapons I care enough about to max out the element and one of those will be finished after the next lich

[SpiritTeA]

Farming murmur is super terrible in solo, always farming requiem mods, luck based parazon stabs (you can be lucky and kill lvl 1 lich with all 3 preinstalled mods, in theory, or getting right mod as last). I'd rather get rid of murmur and thralls at all and leave only lich. You fight him at some mission and stab him, that's how you trying to guess right parazon combination. Increase lich ranks from 1-5 to kinda 1-25, so it will be not so strong at start, but will be much stronger at the end. And give more kuva for killing lich

[Aldain]

The reason Liches aren't popular is simple, it is content designed to aggravate and irritate the player.

You might want to challenge a player, maybe even make them lose, but outside of the masochists who run things like Kaizo Mario World for fun most people don't want their video game time to irritate them.

But lo and behold during the launch, we had people outright applaud things like the automatic death reveling not in the gameplay but the misery of others that it caused, people who insist that the player deserves to be irritated and mistake irritation for challenge.

That's the issue at large with Warframe, a segment of players have confused irritation with challenge, long RNG slogs with hard work, and effortless 1-button killfests for 8+ hours in one mission with skill.

[Kingsmount]

Liches need to be Invaders that can jump into your missions the same way other invaders can.

And then add an Invasion mission to the Invasions tab that you can see if you have an active lich,  funneling all lich players towards those invasions.   And scrap the BS alternate node mechanic.  You can keep the influence thing, and missions in those areas can simply have an increased chance of spawning your lich if you do those normal nodes, and those nodes have the resource theft. 

 

Boom.  A thousand times better of a system,  now to make a million times more enjoyable on top of the above making it more functional,  killing a lich should drop all stolen loot in a mini loot shower, so anyone in the mission can also pick up those resources,  improving the teamplay aspect, sharing the love, and allowing resource boosters to potentially apply to it.  I even like to suggest that the level of the lich should have an impact on scaling the drop quantity so it's not just a negative experience of the lich taking what you earned, and then just giving it back, but some positive feedback with it being boosted proportional to the lich level, which also gives a reason to let the lich level. 

[Alpha_Tango]

Things on top of my head why they are forgotten:

(warning! some may contest some points as an improvement, but these are my personal opinions why Lich engagement feels cheap nowadays and therefore ends up being boring)   

• there is barely any personality differences among Liches making them annoying than amusing. Idk if I remembered this right, but it was shown in the past that they are suppose to have their own ships for you to breach and conquer (someone correct me if I am wrong)
• no thrill in hunting once anyone can see and pick what the thrall has and cancel it anyway, RNG was removed and with it , cheapen the nemesis factor of Liches where every engagement should be like placing your fate on a roll of a dice
• devalued platinum worth of Kuva weapons and Ephemera as a result of thralls that can be cancelled and the introduction of valence system. this made the thrill of looking for the best rolls on a kuva weapon useless. Just buy anything above >50% or better.
• DE did not believe in them, simply put, they gave up their idea of a prolonged engagement and nerfed the whole process to kingdom come and just buckled to whinging
• converted Liches. What is their purpose anyway other than showing up with a default name of Agor Rok and displaying how idiotic their AI is? A completely forgotten potential for a first real companion. Railjack crew? still hanging in the air
• other than improving their stats minimally through valence, why even bother when you have every weapon/ephemera already? Are we waiting for the Corpus/Infested version? 

What DE can do?

• Expand Liches personality. something really close to Shadow of Mordor
• let players pick any converted Liches you can call in (per day? week?) and be depended upon as real support who finishes a mission with you unless they die
• let a limited number of converted Liches roam the star chart, put them on a quest, like how you assign resource drones and have them bring you resources, surprise item maybe even rare ones after a week?
• they are Kuva Liches, why can't DE give them a hefty amount of Kuva once conquered? Buff Kuva drops when going for murmurs.  They can really be an alternative to Kuva farming

[sitfesz]

It's because for time consuming reasons we can't have liches in every mission on an occupied node, but we have to specifically farm murmur in "lich" missions. It would have been great to do lich mission level invasions or fissures and farm murmur as a side activity.

[Gasau]

I dont like restarting and rush missions over and over.

 

Just give us some lich survial where we can farm murmur nonstop. 

[Kadesfy]

Well, if was up to me to make some chages, they would be something like this:

-Kuva larvling spawns on kuva syphon and flood missios, flood ones have higher chance of having ephemera!!!.
-Kuva first territory its the closest planet from the kuva fortress that its grineer controlled.
-You will start having zero info on your lich caracteristics, damage that hes strong, weak, what hes afraid of, etc...
-Theres no thrals, by completing the normal mission nodes on the lich territory, it will make him angrier, but also reveling info on the lich and a chance of requiem relics to drop.
-Liches spawns just like stalker when hes angry enough and you are on his territory.
-When hes donwed you can try to parazon stab him, if you think are luck enough or... you use transference on him!! Once on his mind you you hear some words that can be found on the respective requiem mod text. Then... if you recognise that have the correct one already equiped, you can use on it, and so it goes for all of his three health bars...if you not have the right one, RUN!!! Finish the mission and equip the right ones. But if you try to blindly stab him and you re wrong... you get your back brocken! (Steves gonna be happy!!)
-Liches level up by 2 ways, by breaking you back(if you let then), or by the quantity of stolen goods he takes from you... so the more you know of your lich making misions, also the stronger he gets!!!(and get him the resources to build their capital ship!!)
-The Liches you kill of convert will give all the resources stolen back, but you also will get plenty of resources (rares ones and kuva included) from the territories it once have. so you can get a reason to keep doing liches.
-By talking with palladino, you can buy a beacon to summon you actual lich any moment on any place to fight then at your rules. You can also, ask her to dispell your lich, if hes too strong or do not have what you want.
-Converted liches can be summoned mid missions just like a normal specter(instead of apearing at random and ruining your adaro focus farm...)

-And how about subsuming your converted liches to your helminth for some of their abilities? (EVIL LAUGHTER INTENSIFIES!!!)

[KrazyKavatLady]

I actually just finally started doing Liches 2 days ago. So I'll be doing it for awhile. It seems to me more people are doing Lich stuff during the morning/afternoon for NA.

It may seem dead, but since the majority already got the weapons they want, they have no reason to do Liches anymore. 

[schilds]

It died because it doesn't really add much new gameplay, and what it does add is very repetitive. That means people see it as a chore to get out of as soon as possible.

[Methanoid]

all "one and done" content/additions are dead once complete, liches are no different.

[Sevek7]

4 hours ago, sorcer3r said:

99% murmur farming and 1% fighting the Lich.

This. 100% this. I love fighting liches. They're so much fun to fight. If I could, I would fight them all day. I would make new and interesting lich varieties, experiment with their behaviors and weaknesses / strengths, vary my loadout to make really interesting and challenging fights, etc...

But... If I want to fight a lich, first I have to slog through missions I can do in my sleep for 20 minutes. I can reduce this time by equipping Mesa and just blasting away with 4 in every mission. But then when the lich comes, I want to switch to an interesting frame. Unfortunately, I have no idea when the lich will come! So I ether have a long farm to have an interesting fight, or a quick farm and then a boring *press 4 to win* fight.

I really don't understand why the devs decided to gate fun and interesting gameplay behind 20 minutes of boredom. I don't even mind the amount of time needed to get the weapon, just let me spend my time having fun instead of waiting for the fun!

[IIDMOII]

It really doesnt matter what they do with it if they continually nerf the good weapons or release ones that suck to begin with.

Its way too much of a grind for MR fodder.

Same with kitguns and now mechs. They will nerf the popular stuff, leaving you wondering why you bothered with it in the first place.

Best thing to do is ignore it and move on. They will release a new set of guns that will immediately outclass kuva weapons anyways.

[Yamazuki]

Lich gameplay is irrelevant when Liches offer virtually 0 rewards for all the time spent on them. The majority of people don't care about maxing out each weapon, most won't care to do them over and over for cosmetics, and others just bought them anyways. Liches are a get each weapon once and you're done scenario. They could be the most fun form of content, and they still wouldn't be active if there's no reward.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

4 hours ago, White_Matter said:

what do you think are the top 3 things that has to change for Lich gameplay to liven up again ?

- murmur farms. it takes too long to get that last murmur and being randomly determined, you may have to wait until the last murmur before you can even start making a dent in your Lich. 

- unreliable spawns: when you actually want your Lich to appear because you know how to take them down, it means killing even MORE thralls to annoy them enough to come after you. there should be a way to guarantee a Lich spawn at rank 5: personally I like the idea of giving them their own ship in Railjack where the Lich resides.

- a new way to punish players. stealing 100 Alloy Plates is not intimidating, I'd rather they have the ability to give you a debuff that lasts until you make more progress with your Requiem Sequence: e.g. you get one wrong and it gives you 20% less primary weapon damage, and these debuffs stack as you keep getting them wrong, but are removed if you get a correct murmur. that way, those who want an added challenge can stab away while those who don't can just wait until the sequence is fully unveiled and then try each possible order. it's more or less optional this way, at least until you get a sequence wrong with all murmurs unveiled. this, to me, feels like it makes Requiem Sequences a little more high stakes.

either way, Liches need looking at again, and we definitely need some more personalities so that our Liches feel more like individuals. I hope DE will at least mention the idea of Liches 2.0 this year.

 

 

[schilds]

13 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

They could be the most fun form of content, and they still wouldn't be active if there's no reward.

Maybe it's not what motivates you to play, but other people will play stuff they find fun regardless of the reward, assuming they don't have other higher priority chores/activities to do.

 

Liches, however, do not add gameplay that is significantly/sufficiently different to the rest of the game, and what they do add is very repetitive.

[Brosef42]

As soon as I saw that mods you needed to kill the lich had limited uses. I was out. 

[Firetempest]

I knew from the start that the extra ~200 nodes with different mission types from the original would lead to no random public teams without recruiting. There should be a lich 'tower' per tier. Inner planets, mid planets, then outter planets. Funnels everyone to 3 nodes. Have missions change every half hour or so.

[(XBOX)Kuhl MC]

Hmm, I guess a lot could be improved here, but the most annoying thing for me is the murmur farm. The first two are O.K. imo, but why does the third one take three times as long as the other two? Luckily, with almost 60 Liches killed and only a few weapons to max out, I won't need to do this chore much longer... Except, when you need to run Cassini for 3h, before you finally get the weapon you want...

[Nailclipper]

7 hours ago, White_Matter said:

...

EU.

I wasn't talking about premades. I find those if I search hard enough.

Oh then I guess people who do Liches are doing it with premade groups because it's much more efficient than doing it solo. You just need a couple hours to unlock all three requiem words with premades.

[BDMblue]

To fix lich let’s just shadow of war them.

 

make it so you need only 2/3 runes to kill a lich.

up the number of lich that are after the player to 10.

Give each lich a mission node each day with unique lich missions. Think SOW.

make it so they can randomly pop up in normal missions. 1% each player.

They don’t take your stuff.

if you kill 1 another new one takes it’s place and they all get stronger.

lich infighting.

Higher max level 30, but lich levels are not as strong. 30 would = Todays 5.

Only mission nodes for a lich would reveal its runes.

 

 

This would make them more organic. Players could passively kill convert. If they wanted a Lich they could target it in a mission for that lich.

[EmberStar]

9 hours ago, White_Matter said:

I rarely find squads for Lich nodes nowadays. People either got everything they wanted, or they stay simply don't bother playing them.

I know what went wrong with Liches has been discussed in broad strokes, but if we were to go into details,  what do you think are the top 3 things that has to change for Lich gameplay to liven up again ?

The lichs themselves are boring and just not fun.  There is only one voice actor and only ONE personality type per gender.  Male - amiably evil and female - calculating.  Shadow of War / Shadow of Mordor (which they clearly were inspired by) has at least half a dozen different actors, and each of them has lines for every personality type.  Even getting two enemy Captains with the same basic personality doesn't feel so samey when they have different actors with different accents and reads of the lines.

The lichs are just another content island.  They aren't connected to anything, they don't "build a history with the player."  They're a delivery mechanism for kuva weapons... and that's basically it.  Again, the "Shadow of" enemies would "remember" your interactions with them.  If they lost and ran away the last mission they'd bluster and talk big about how *this time* they were going to kick your butt.  If they actually killed you, they'd call you out on it.  They'd gain scars sometimes if you nearly killed them (or if they succeeded on their "avoid death" saving throw.)  The best ones would turn into an emergent story, that would be recorded in their looks and comments and even their armor.

The devs more or less admitted they made lichs killable because they knew players would revolt if they had to wait months to get a kuva weapon from them.  My first question would have been "Why did you make the kuva weapons drop from killing the lich in the first place?"  There's a ton of other ways they could have handled that that would have left Lichs as a recurring nemesis.  Give them a chance to drop their current weapon when they are vanquished (but not permanently killed!)  Have a second "tier" of Thralls that are stronger than the current ones, but not Lich strong.  Give these Elite Thralls say a one in ten chance of popping up instead of a normal Thrall (so generally you could see about one per mission) and give them the Kuva weapon instead of what they'd normally carry.  With a *chance* to drop it when killed.  There's probably other and better methods for letting players get Kuva weapons without reducing Lichs to what they are... yet another disposable mook.

If they really want players to use the matchmaking to fight Lichs, then they need to focus the mission distribution somehow.  Kind of how they do with Rifts and Nightmare missions.  Instead of the lichs randomly "infecting" ever mission across the entire starchart, there might need to be one or two nodes of "active interest" on a planet the Lich controls.  That way if someone has a Lich on Mars and *wants* help, they have any chance at all of the matchmaking doing something.  Probably just as important, they need to revisit how "lich takeovers" affect the base mission and make sure they don't *break.*  The worst offenders I can think of here are Rescue and Spy missions on Corpus controlled maps.  The cellblock/data vault security is still Corpus faction - which means that they can be alerted the instant you open the door, because the Grineer invaders can and will attack them.