Please give us a way to choose what Kuva weapon a Lich spawns with

[(PSN)Maunstre]

There are 16 unique Kuva weapons currently available through the Lich system, soon to be more with the eventual release of Corpus Liches. Trying to get one of each is a pain, because each weapon has, assuming each weapon has a rounded and equal chance of spawning per Larvaling, a mere 6% chance of spawning. It's great that we have a the ability to check what a Larvaling will have before deciding to convert one into a Lich, but I feel this needs to be taken a step further considering how diluted the weapon pool is and due to this spawning system being the sole means to attain these weapons.

Prior to implementing the weapon preview system (borne from a very similar frustration regarding Kuva weapons and having no control over what a Lich has), the idea that Paladino could simply
"vanish" a Lich for a small fee was floated. I think this idea is worth revisiting, but instead of just getting rid of a Lich for a small fee, have that fee go towards a guaranteed spawn of a specific Kuva weapon on your next Kuva Larvaling spawn. Something like 10 - 20K Kuva for a guaranteed weapon spawn sounds reasonable enough, most players are swimming in Kuva and Kuva isn't hard to farm overall.

I have only three Kuva weapons left to complete my Kuva weapon collection, and as my "needed" list gets shorter, the more arbitrarily difficult and time-consuming it is to get the weapon I want. I just spent about an hour trying to get any one of these three weapons to spawn. It's an annoying, boring, and frustrating process that is made as much purely for lack of any option to influence the RNG involved.

[baldy117]

the larva shows which weapon the lich gets it has done so for awhile now as far as i know so...

[chaotea]

Maybe even a system were you take any lich weapon to a trader and swap it for another weapon of the same element and damage roll.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

Just now, baldy117 said:

the larva shows which weapon the lich gets it has done so for awhile now as far as i know so...

Please read the post, I mentioned this. I'm specifically asking about a way to influence what the Larvaling has.

[chaotea]

1 minute ago, baldy117 said:

the larva shows which weapon the lich gets it has done so for awhile now as far as i know so...

Yes, he mentioned this in his post. Its in the second paragraph.

[baldy117]

🤔 dont think they will ever do that they would have done so ages ago if it was such a big issue

[(PSN)Maunstre]

Just now, baldy117 said:

🤔 dont think they will ever do that they would have done so ages ago if it was such a big issue

Maybe not, but it doesn't hurt to ask. They wouldn't have given us the preview option if players hadn't complained originally, since that was added later on after the Liches were introduced.

[IamLoco]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Maunstre said:

Please read the post, I mentioned this. I'm specifically asking about a way to influence what the Larvaling has.

How easy do you need it? They already implemented a preview of the weapon you will get.

When we started to get ours, it was completely random until we had the lich sitting in our orbiter.

 

[(PSN)Maunstre]

3 minutes ago, IamLoco said:

How easy do you need it? They already implemented a preview of the weapon you will get.

When we started to get ours, it was completely random until we had the lich sitting in our orbiter.

 

And? What's your point? I was farming Liches at the beginning, too. Consider reading the post, I said why I'd like to see the option to influence the weapon selection, because it can take an hour or more to get the weapon you are looking for even with the preview system if RNG happens to be terrible. There are 16 weapons, each one only has an approximate 6% chance to spawn if you are looking for anything specific.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Hey while you're at it

how about a way to choose what weapon Rivens will unveil for?

and a way to choose what Warframe parts drop from the next boss run?

and a way to choose what rare mod will drop next....

 

*sarcasm end*

[(PSN)Maunstre]

15 minutes ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

Hey while you're at it

how about a way to choose what weapon Rivens will unveil for?

and a way to choose what Warframe parts drop from the next boss run?

and a way to choose what rare mod will drop next....

 

*sarcasm end*

If you have an actual point that is comparible, you're welcome to make it.

Rivens are an optional system that don't have any effect on Mastery.

All Warframe parts have an close to equal chance of dropping per boss, and (excepting Equinox and Wisp) there are only three parts to farm as opposed to 16.

You can focus farm for most mods, and those that have a BS drop rate of 0.2% from a single source are still BS drop rates from a single source that can be affected by drop chance boosters and loot abilities.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

fine, I guess I wasn't direct enough

My point is, this game is all about Grind.

You're whining about grind in a grind focused game.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

fine, I guess I wasn't direct enough

My point is, this game is all about Grind.

You're whining about grind in a grind focused game.

And? Levels of grind are a point of "complaint" in Warframe all the time. It gets changed all the time. People complaining about grind is what got us the preview function for Kuva Larvalings in the first place. It's what got scintillants changed, Khora's farm changed, Son Token reward requirements changed, Arbitrations changed, Steel Path changed. How big of a list do you want?

I fail to see what's so egregious for the suggestion of an option to lock a weapon for a price. The grind is still present, you still have to hunt and kill the Lich, the sole difference is yanking out a potential hour+ of cycling Larvaling if someone so chose for a price of resources (that also require grinding).

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

And?

And?

And?

that's all you ever respond with when someone disagrees with you, just dismissing them.

You come off as Entitled and Whiny.

 

Anyway, have another reason why not, maybe this one will matter?

Lich Trade value. A major reason people are willing to buy Liches is to skip the pain of the RNG. Remove that and you screw over a number of people who worked hard for their Lich inventories. And in a 'free to play - pay to skip grind' game money does matter. So I'd see that as a pretty legitimate reason.

 

and now you're probably going to say those people don't matter... just what You want matters, going back to my point about entitled and whiny....

[(PSN)Maunstre]

Just now, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

And?

And?

And?

that's all you ever respond with when someone disagrees with you, just dismissing them.

You come off as Entitled and Whiny.

 

Anyway, have another reason why not, maybe this one will matter?

Lich Trade value. A major reason people are willing to buy Liches is to skip the pain of the RNG. Remove that and you screw over a number of people who worked hard for their Lich inventories. And in a 'free to play - pay to skip grind' game money does matter. So I'd see that as a pretty legitimate reason.

 

and now you're probably going to say those people don't matter... just what You want matters, going back to my point about entitled and whiny....

And your or others' responses weren't equally dismissive right out the gate? No actual points, just "sarcasm" or "we had it worse before, quit asking for it to be better"? With that kind of response, why should I give you or anyone else the benefit of the doubt that you have anything to actually say?

Mentioning the Lich trading system is the first actual point anyone has actually made, thank you. Yes, I can see how this would impact trading.

No, I do not believe those people "don't matter", but thanks for the assumption I suppose. The grind others have done has only not come up, since no one has made an actual point until now. I've grinded for Liches and Kuva weapons since they were introduced - 33 Liches so far. Not as much as some, I'm sure, but that's still a lot of grind. I don't believe a change like this one would invalidate their grind, no differently that Scarlet Spear invalidated the grind for Arcanes before the overall changes to frame Arcanes from maxing out from R3 to R5. Would a change like this make the weapon grind too easy? Maybe. If it did, but its implementation was still worthwhile, then lock it behind the original plan for Palladino's "vanish Lich" ability - it can only be used once a week.

People still buy Liches for ephemera and bonus %, being able to choose a weapon for a resource price, as steep as you want, could or could not impact this. Would it still be a good or bad idea? I don't know, I don't have access to the stats DE probably has for plat-based Lich trading. But I wanted to suggest it anyways, as I felt it was at least worth that - a suggestion.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Maunstre said:

 thanks for the assumption I suppose.

NP, it wasn't that much of a stretch to imagine tho, considering.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

1 minute ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

NP, it wasn't that much of a stretch to imagine tho, considering.

Respectfully disagree. If you had just made your point about trading originally, the "and"s and my own assumption that your commentary was only disingenuous bait would not have been my response.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Well it all ties together, I guess I didn't make the connections obvious enough since I think of them as de facto....

but the implications about Rivens/Parts/Etc and Grind in my mind are directly linked to Trade and Money.

Since Grind is Time and Time is Money.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

23 minutes ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

Well it all ties together, I guess I didn't make the connections obvious enough since I think of them as de facto....

but the implications about Rivens/Parts/Etc and Grind in my mind are directly linked to Trade and Money.

Since Grind is Time and Time is Money.

I can understand that, and I definitely agree - time is money. For the same reason I do think that in some cases, the grind is or teeters on unreasonable, and being encouraged to pay real money to skip a grind that is legitimately unreasonable just feels scummy to me. EX: the grind for Hema. Hema comes up a lot on this point and in having ground for it myself solo I'm solidly in the camp that Hema's grind is frankly just stupid for such a mediocre weapon. Prior to opening the Derelict as Deimos, farming for Mutagen Samples was pretty difficult without boosters and a squad. Maybe with the HoD update the grind will feel less burdensome to newcomers?

Rivens are a whole other beast, but speaking purely on this specific suggestion - I would still want to interpret it as "paying" to skip the grind, you're just paying via a different grind as opposed to money (or plat), the grind for resources specifically. Resources still take grind to attain, and to trade them in for something like a guaranteed (or an increased chance, like relics) drop on a really crappily diluted weapon pool would seem at least within the realm of "fair". The time is technically still being put in. I don't know if anyone else would feel the same with this interpretation in mind.

Honestly, I don't consider the Kuva weapon grind to be within the same league as the Hema. I wouldn't think this would be that important of a consideration if the drop pool wasn't as diluted as it was. 6% (assuming all weapons drop equal, goodness knows if they are) is pretty crappy all things considered, especially with Valence Transfer and % bonus RNG to account for. It seems unnecessary in a way that is unique to this isolated system. Either way, if it never happens I wouldn't feel slighted or anything, but if it did I'd certainly be grateful and use it.

[DoomFruit]

I like the idea and would do it by putting some extra scripts into kuva fortress spy missions. Like so: if you get a perfect run of all 3 vaults, you can pick an option at the end of the mission to increase production of "special" weapons. The first mission would let you choose primary, secondary or melee, then if you do another perfect run you can narrow it down (if applicable) into "explosive"/non-explosive (where "explosive" is anything with an AoE on the projectile - ogris, bramma, seer), then do another perfect run to start *removing* options on the list (eg. take out "tonkor" or "quartakk"). Each stage would let you do nothing to the list of active kuva weapons, and if you ever empty the list then it resets to the default random selection of everything. This altered list would apply to the next larvaling which spawns in a mission that you host. Either ignoring or killing the larvaling would result in the list again resetting to full.

But that won't happen. Tying aspects of the game together to make a cohesive whole is something that I don't ever see being done.

[IamLoco]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Maunstre said:

And? What's your point? I was farming Liches at the beginning, too. Consider reading the post, I said why I'd like to see the option to influence the weapon selection, because it can take an hour or more to get the weapon you are looking for even with the preview system if RNG happens to be terrible. There are 16 weapons, each one only has an approximate 6% chance to spawn if you are looking for anything specific.

It takes literally 2 minutes to do a Cassini run with Wukong or Titania or Volt (...). Capture, nuke, find and kill the larvling. Maybe you were doing the wrong mission if it took you so long?

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, IamLoco said:

It takes literally 2 minutes to do a Cassini run with Wukong or Titania or Volt (...). Capture, nuke, find and kill the larvling. Maybe you were doing the wrong mission if it took you so long?

At a rate of 1 in 16, that can still involve over 30 minutes to get the weapon you want, more if you're unlucky. That's half an hour of really boring, tedious grinding just to be able to start grinding a new Lich. What possible benefit could there be to this, other than frustrating your players?

 

8 hours ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

Lich Trade value. A major reason people are willing to buy Liches is to skip the pain of the RNG. Remove that and you screw over a number of people who worked hard for their Lich inventories. And in a 'free to play - pay to skip grind' game money does matter. So I'd see that as a pretty legitimate reason.

That's assuming the current system for obtaining Liches was created with the intention of fostering a Market economy. It wasn't, and you can see that fairly clearly when going through the old Dev Streams. Indeed, Scott McGregor floated a much simpler idea - sacrifice a Lich weapon to create a Lich Lure. Use the lure in order to draw out a Lich with exactly the weapon you want. They were already working on a better system - or at least talking about it - but ended up half-assing it likely due to time restrictions. Everything under the sun can develop an "economy" if it's broken enough. The fact that people have found another niche to scalp others over doesn't mean the core gameplay experience should not be fixed.

If DE actually gave a rat's ass about trading beyond maybe the occasional Prime Part, they'd have given us a trading system worth a crap. Instead, I had to go to Warframe.market just to check on your claim that Lich Trading is even happening. What I found wasn't exactly a booming market. A handful of auctions for fairly low Plat prices, most of them with no bids. I didn't look very closely, though, so there may be more interest than what I saw.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

10 hours ago, IamLoco said:

It takes literally 2 minutes to do a Cassini run with Wukong or Titania or Volt (...). Capture, nuke, find and kill the larvling. Maybe you were doing the wrong mission if it took you so long?

Cassini is what I run for Larvaling farming; I can do a Cassini run in under a minute 45 even with waiting for a Larvaling in Cassini with any frame. Please try being slightly more charitable to another player instead of being haughty and dismissing them with "you're probably doing it wrong"? Because RNG is RNG, RNG itself can be a considerable barrier to just getting something done. Even with extremely low mission complete times, if RNG decides to be a problem, anyone can still wind up wasting time and runs just cycling through Larvalings.

[(PSN)Maunstre]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

At a rate of 1 in 16, that can still involve over 30 minutes to get the weapon you want, more if you're unlucky. That's half an hour of really boring, tedious grinding just to be able to start grinding a new Lich. What possible benefit could there be to this, other than frustrating your players?

Thank you, finally someone who understands! This is exactly it - unless you have incredible luck you're all but guaranteed to sink a solid 30+ minutes or more the second you start looking for a specific weapon to spawn, whether for collecting or for Valence transfer since you need the exact same weapon to upgrade. For some vets, this is probably all that's left to really engage in outside of Deimos content, which in and of itself is unfinished and still needs balancing.

 

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's assuming the current system for obtaining Liches was created with the intention of fostering a Market economy. It wasn't, and you can see that fairly clearly when going through the old Dev Streams. Indeed, Scott McGregor floated a much simpler idea - sacrifice a Lich weapon to create a Lich Lure. Use the lure in order to draw out a Lich with exactly the weapon you want. They were already working on a better system - or at least talking about it - but ended up half-assing it likely due to time restrictions. Everything under the sun can develop an "economy" if it's broken enough. The fact that people have found another niche to scalp others over doesn't mean the core gameplay experience should not be fixed.

If DE actually gave a rat's ass about trading beyond maybe the occasional Prime Part, they'd have given us a trading system worth a crap. Instead, I had to go to Warframe.market just to check on your claim that Lich Trading is even happening. What I found wasn't exactly a booming market. A handful of auctions for fairly low Plat prices, most of them with no bids. I didn't look very closely, though, so there may be more interest than what I saw.

I had completely forgotten about the suggested Lich-lure mechanic - I really wish they would bring this back. I would be willing to sacrifice a weapon to get another guaranteed, it's thematically appropriate, but with the Lich trading system it's probably terribly unlikely because now Liches are a "source" of player spending, however small. The only place I have seen people trying to trade / sell or request Liches is here on the Forums, often with either questionable asking prices or just no offers or takers. Plus, this is assuming that people actually convert their Liches instead of just vanquishing them, because there is no upside to converting Liches right now. You can't force a Lich to spawn to help you, and we don't have the Command Instrinsic for Railjack to make use of them as co-pilots. A lich has greater value vanquished than kept alive, which is likely why people ask for absurd plat numbers for them. Considering Liches are locked behind WW and are themselves a big source of complaint from players for being "boring and unrewarding" (which is true), I really can't see them being much of a draw for player trading even into the future unless Liches start providing something truly exceptional. The number of people who have disengaged with Liches for being boring and unrewarding is much greater than those who pursue the system for everything it has, in my experience.

 

8 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

I like the idea and would do it by putting some extra scripts into kuva fortress spy missions. Like so: if you get a perfect run of all 3 vaults, you can pick an option at the end of the mission to increase production of "special" weapons. The first mission would let you choose primary, secondary or melee, then if you do another perfect run you can narrow it down (if applicable) into "explosive"/non-explosive (where "explosive" is anything with an AoE on the projectile - ogris, bramma, seer), then do another perfect run to start *removing* options on the list (eg. take out "tonkor" or "quartakk"). Each stage would let you do nothing to the list of active kuva weapons, and if you ever empty the list then it resets to the default random selection of everything. This altered list would apply to the next larvaling which spawns in a mission that you host. Either ignoring or killing the larvaling would result in the list again resetting to full.

But that won't happen. Tying aspects of the game together to make a cohesive whole is something that I don't ever see being done.

I am all for a system that rewards player skill! You're right though, the chances of something like this being implemented are slim to none.

The depth of the script for something like this could work against it, but it's reminded me of a very similar idea from a user on Reddit where what Lich-controlled mission you did and how well you completed that mission directly affected that Lich's behaviour and your Murmur farm. For spy vaults, there would be a special modifier that, if met, would give you more Murmurs. For another mission type (I unfortunately don't remember which), if you met the modifier you could steal a Lich's weapon to force them to get a new one, but this could only be done once. For another, you could actively influence how angry your Lich was and more or less bait out a guaranteed appearance. It was a great system and I wish I could recall the user who suggested it, it helped tie Liches overall to the game in a much more engaging and exciting way.

[Steel_Rook]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Maunstre said:

I had completely forgotten about the suggested Lich-lure mechanic - I really wish they would bring this back. I would be willing to sacrifice a weapon to get another guaranteed, it's thematically appropriate, but with the Lich trading system it's probably terribly unlikely because now Liches are a "source" of player spending, however small.

Personally, I feel that's in the cards, provided we ever get any kind of Lich update. As I said - the Lich acquisition system we have now is a creature of circumstance. The original design was awful, DE didn't have the ability to redesign it massively before the holidays, so they patched in a quick fix and sort of... Left it. It's what happens to most new content. If they sit down and redesign the system, I wouldn't be surprised to see this. Scott had a pretty well-thought-out idea for it. Like you, I'd be fine with sacrificing a random low-grade Lich weapon in order to get the precise one I want because I'm always going to take a long deterministic grind over a short random one. Someone recently reminded me that for all my *@##$ing about the Cephalon Simaris grind, that's still under my control. If I want Titania, that's 125K Simaris Standing. Yes, that's a LOT of standing, but it's a fixed value. I'm not reliant on a mission randomly giving me 25K or giving me nothing whatsoever. That actually made me feel a lot better about the grind.

And I don't think the Lich traders are going to be going anywhere, either. If getting the exact weapon you want cost two Liches, then there would be plenty of people spending money instead. Besides - the most lucrative time to trade Liches is gone already. That was back before Valence Fusion. Now? Now it's just a matter of inconvenience.