Kuva Liches & Sisters of Parvos: Adversary System, Railjack, Observations and Requests

[Lahared]

With the change of "Adversary Pruning" soon to arrive, I thought it might be time, after roughly 211 Kuva Liches and 181 Sisters of Parvos being generated on my account, to compare this content with the philosophy of respecting player time that has been presented by Digital Extremes.

I do not feel that this content respects my time, but expects me to invest a large chunk of it. I also feel that this might as well be addressed if you're truthfully going to add yet another faction to this complicated system that needs an overhaul.
 

Assume I'm wrong, and that this data is flawed and anecdotal. You can collect your own findings, which I'd encourage to be shared in the comments. One of us will be right after all.

Observations: 10 Thralls seems to be equal to 30%. The maximum number of Thralls, in an endless Kuva Lich controlled mission, is up to 10, which is corroborated by the Warframe wiki. For Hounds it is 3. Thrall progression value is split across all spawns?

The differences in value. It takes roughly, to over, an hour to clear a Kuva Lich, just from the timers of the missions we're expected to run. Remember there are twenty weapons, and takes an hour for each Lich's weapon, not taking into account the assumption of an ideal progenitor bonus. This also does not yet take into consideration the time to acquire at least three requiem words, for either a new player, or someone who has completely run out of Oull, or all three cards that are exactly the same for the next Adversary. An unlikely possibility, but still possible regardless.

Kuva Lich Dataset #1

1. Mission - Defense

   10m 26s

   9 Thralls

2. Mission - Exterminate X/76

   5m 8s

   6 Thralls

3. Mission - Capture

   4m 27s

   Lich spawned. 6 Thralls total. Stabbed with Oull. Downed three times on second health bar.  Counted thralls to max Requiem Ring 1: 20

4. Mission - Mobile Defense

   7m 52s

   Lich showed up. converted 1 (9 to 10) to Thrall.

   10 Thralls

5. Mission - Rescue

   Lich showed up. Might've it converted 1 to Thrall?

   7m 37s

   10 Thralls

6. Mission - Interception

   4m 31s

   Lich showed up. Converted 1. wasn't able to mercy thrall, end of wave interception timer and knocked back by AoE self stagger.

   6 Thralls

7.  Mission - Excavation

   13m 9s

   Lich showed up. Converted 3 Thralls. (7 of 9) Third stab was incorrect, 100% upon stabbing to Second Requiem. ±35 Thralls to max Second Requiem (contaminated with Kuva Lich Progress, assume 34 in this case.)

   9 Thralls

8.  Mission (Mars) - Survival

   6m 23s

   10 Thralls

9.  Mission - Defense

   9m 23s

   9 Thralls

10. Mission - Mobile Defense

    6m 12s

    7 Thralls

11.  Mission - Exterminate X/90

    4m 8s

    Lich showed up. Maybe converted 1-2? Thralls. All three Requiem correct.

    8 Thralls

12. Mission - Confrontation: 6m 36s.

 

Kuva Lich Dataset (Comparing Requiem Ring 1) #2

1. Mission - Defense

   11m 57s - 9 Thralls

2.  Mission - Exterminate /82

   6m 50s - 6  Thralls

3.  Mission - Rescue

    9m 46s - 9 Thralls - Lich showed up. Converted 1. Did not stab. (8th of this set was First Requiem complete) Total thralls was: 24. The 23rd completed the first Requiem Ring.

4. Mission - Mobile Defense

    8m 19s - 8 Thralls - Lich showed up. Stabbed. Did not convert/make any thralls

 

20 vs 23 for Ring 1. This dataset is incomplete as I was trying to determine if there was indeed a float range value, so it should be safe to assume that it continues on Requiem Rings 2 and 3.

 

Sister of Parvos Dataset #1

1. Mission - Survival

   5m 49s

   3 Hounds

2. Mission - Exterminate X/122

   5m 41s

   Sister spawned and Hound. Ignored both.

   3 Hounds

3. Mission - Rescue

   3m 54s

   Sister spawned and Hound. Mercy'd the Hound.

   2 Hounds —7th hound completed the first Requiem Ring.

4. Mission - Capture

   3m 31s

   2 Hounds

5. Mission - Mobile Defense

   ~5m? Maybe it was 11m.

   Sister spawned and Hound. Extra progress on failed mercy.

   4 Hounds

6. Mission - (Phobos - Technically Crossfire) Exterminate

   4m 52s

   2 Hounds

7. Mission - Mobile Defense

   8m 47s

   Sister spawned and Hound. Extra progress on failed mercy.

   3 Hounds

8. Mission - Sabotage

   6m 3s

   2 Hounds

9. Mission - Sabotage

   3m 10s

   2 Hounds

10. Mission - Survival
    
    6m 39s
    
    3 Hounds
    
    Sister spawned and Hound.

11. Confrontation
    
    7m 9s

On average, with Oull, a Sister of Parvos will require one less mission to clear the Adversary than a Kuva Lich. 12 missions versus 11.

My requests are as follow:

• Show the name of the adversary (when downed as a Larvaling/Canditate) as it would be, if you were to parazon it into existence as a Kuva Lich or Sister of Parvos. A portion of the community cares about the goofy names. I do not, this change benefits both.
• Remove the float (low-high value) ranges of Murmur Progression. Make it consistent.
• Reduce or supplement another system for the amount of parazon interactive presses. I should not have to press the interact button over twenty times for just one Requiem Ring. Considering from experience, and data, each ring adds +10 to the parazon presses. Damage them to reduce their bleed-out timer duration so they auto-mercy?
• Move both the Requiem Progress Ring or hide other effects (such as focus earned) when the Murmur Progress bar is being displayed, and display it after it disappears, or below it. The "boss bar" for Liches and similar will obfuscate the progress on smaller resolutions. Status effects also make visibility worse on that bar.
• Provide an actual visual percentage to the Murmur Progress bar so we have, in clarity, the actual percentage we're at.
• Add a rotating shop for Kuva Weapons, or provide a better solution. You can still have the name generation. You could restrict this to Adversary weapons that the player already owns. We have twenty of these. Lone Tenno Operative anyone? This is monotonous. Rolling the table for thirty weapons is not fun, is this supposed to be?
• Remove the flash-bang/loading effect for the Granum Void, and possibly other aspects of the game. The effect happens at least twice, going into, and out of the Granum Void, however sometimes the effect spams with the animation in. Having to shield my eyes is not quirky or acceptable to me. This means being blinded twenty times, if there are ten weapons gotten from the Sisters of Parvos.
• Resolve the Candidate not spawning near Extraction of, or at ±127 meters. It seems to spawn around 176m. The player should not be punished indirectly for this. This doesn't happen if the Capture is changed to an Exterminate mid-mission (i.e Change of plans). In this case, the Candidate will spawn in a nearby dead-end tile.
• Raise the lower cap of progenitor bonus from 25% to 30%.
• Fix Grineer units being unalerted spawning underneath the telemetry aiming up at the Defense Objective. (The spawn corridors that you notice on Earth, Mars) This consistently happens for me once a wave. Seems to have been fixed in a patch after this thread.
• Prioritize, or increase, the spawning of Granum Void Hands tiles in Corpus Ship tile-sets. It's either I can't find one, or when one is available, it's near extraction, which is a wasted opportunity I cannot make any use of.
• Remove the wait between being able to extract at the end of a Railjack Confrontration for Sisters of Parvos. Parvos Granum' about LEARN, ITERATE, monologue does not interest me after the 30th time.
• Fix the bug where players can actually "stab" past the current health bar, stabbing twice, when we only pressed once. Might happen in Public squads when not host? Damage bypassing health bar? This can cause the player to prematurely, and accidentally, completely out of their control, to rank up their Adversary.
• Allow Crew AI to use the Tunguska cannon on Crewships in Railjack and fully complete at least one objective.
• Maybe give our Kuva Liches/Sisters of Parvos their own Ship if active in your crew and have them join the battle. Could re-use the generic Crewship assets already present in the game?
• Fix the bug where you can be teleported or dropped out of the Adversary confrontation arena and immediately receive a fail state.
• Prevent the mission from ending (until the encounter is completely finished with a small pause to allow players to collect the loot) if there is a current field boss (I.E Kuva Lich/Acolyte, etc). Like seriously? Last of wave/zone 1, and they spawn, we get their bark entrance taunt, but the missions over and we're already extracting. This is just offensive and annoying.
• Prevent/bugfix thralls from using their charge/special attack while they're already downed. Makes no sense.
• Re-evaluate the requirements to complete "endless" occupied nodes. Excavation for example requires you to get 500 cryotic, but you'll probably get the max possible spawn cap of thralls at ~370 cryotic.
• Requiem relics have unnecessary pollution in their tables from a time when it might've been more necessary, but no longer is. Riven Slivers for example are earned far more than they could ever be spent. Acquiring murmur cards should have alternative acquisition sources if you're going to refuse to change the relic drop table. Amber Ayatan Stars already drop in other content, several bounty locations, and from containers. Exilus Weapon Adapters can be acquired from Syndicates with arguably less investment than spending void traces on a requiem relic, to maybe have a chance to get an adapter; gotten the other way, they don't have an arbitrary hidden percentage tied to them that we can't see, and we can effectively get passively. Yet curiously Requiem Mods have only one source.
• Murmur progress should be given regardless of the branch of content island chosen. In my opinion, they're clearly part of the same tree, since the same system is used for both. For example if one person has a Sister of Parvos active, and the other, a Kuva Lich, and they're in a squad together, they should both get progress whether from a thrall, or hound. Interestingly enough, thralls will spawn with the generated Sister of Parvos' name. This, in theory, could help the matchmaking issue. If there's going to be "Infested Liches", or something even past this, the issue will continue to grow. Adding content without addressing the problems of the system in place isn't good game design. Not everyone will want this kind of streamlined progression for one reason or another, so try to simplify it. As it seems antithetical to separate people in a game where multiplayer is somewhat preferred, for personal choice, or recommended for content (Netracells, Deep Archimedea) and as a result player interaction occurs heavily. This is the biggest problem Warframe has, which is your numerous content islands that pretend they're doing something different by using the same formula, where there is hardly or completely nonexistent overlap.
• Alter the duration/speed of a parazon finisher and its invulnerability period. Getting energy leeched by an Eximus because the animation just ended and having zero control to avoid it is ironic given why Eximus units effects were changed in the first place.

 

Maybe this is "fine" to you, but it's despicable to me, and I'm tired of pretending that this is just the way it has to be.

 

Thanks for reading or ignoring my post. Hope we all learn something.

Edited August 29 by Lahared

[Zanchak]

I've been away for some time. I have around 2.4k hours or so in-game so a grind isn't new to me.

IMAGINE my delighted surprise when I came back and killed my long waiting Lich in expectation of a shiny new kuva weapon, only to find it just.... flew itself off to Saturn and Railjack.. because reasons. A mode I have happily avoided almost entirely due to the motion sickness it induces even just in the time it takes to get to an objective. I absolutely love when changes are implemented that weren't needed. Additional crap just tacked on the end of the Lich hunt for ?? Reasons.

I don't know much else about what you wrote at this point in time since I'm still catching up on changes but I know this: "I do not feel that this content respects my time" and if they want to retain players not just churn them over and over, they need to respect their time.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

37 minutes ago, Zanchak said:

IMAGINE my delighted surprise when I came back and killed my long waiting Lich in expectation of a shiny new kuva weapon, only to find it just.... flew itself off to Saturn and Railjack.. because reasons. A mode I have happily avoided almost entirely due to the motion sickness it induces even just in the time it takes to get to an objective. I absolutely love when changes are implemented that weren't needed. Additional crap just tacked on the end of the Lich hunt for ?? Reasons.

I hate this. Having liches tied to Railjack and forcing me to play a game mode I absolutely despise in order to play content I love is wretched. The worst part about this change though was no longer being able to help others with their liches -- another thing I very much enjoy -- unless I have one of my own. And I still don't understand why any of this was done.

As for OP...

I can run a Sister from start -- coin in hand -- to finish -- convert or vanquish -- in 30-45 minutes.

I can run a Kuva from start -- parazon -- to finish -- convert or vanquish -- in 45-60 minutes.

I don't really mind the grind to get whichever weapon because I'm used to everything in Warframe being repetitive, but I do wish they'd bring Kuva more in line with Sister as far as time goes -- something they said they did. I think cutting the needed Kuva thralls to half what they are currently would achieve this.

I'm actually hoping with Infested that they don't decide to change anything else because typically whenever they try to better something, they inadvertently make it worse. 😂

[ominumi]

If you're spending more than an hour on lich/sister, you're stabbing them too soon. Otherwise your damage is too low. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to get health down for stabby stabby.

[BeheadedFrito]

Kuva Liches relative to sisters require so much more time for no good reason. Additional info like quirks and such or maybe even just a full preview of the Lich/Sister would be super rad. Good for helmet farmers as well.