More than one year after their release and Liches are still nowhere near the status of long term Nemesis that the developers had hopped for. The system, which was often compared with Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system, feels incredible inorganic and removed from the rest of the game for several reasons.
1 - Lich acquisition
Acquiring a Lich is done by pressing the action button after waiting a couple minutes in Cassini (Saturn). This is most likely the mission where almost all Liches are born. Why? Because they only spawn in regular, +20 lvl Grineer missions. This means you can't run into a Lich if your doing your daily sortie or cracking relics, no, in order to get a Lich you have to play regular star chart missions with regular star chart mission rewards. In short, you have to go out of your way to aquire what was supposed to be a "random enemy turned nemesis" which turned out to be a [PH]SPAWN LICH button in a gimp suit with a gun icon above its head (srsly why aren't they at least holding the gun?)
2 - Murmur farming
Whilst developers have buffed the rate at which you farm murmurs (which I have no problems with), the manner in which you do it suffers the same problems as Lich acquisition. Murmur Grind is it's own mission and must be done in slightly harder missions which have, again, regular star chart rewards. In the beginning this wasn't so much of an issue as the higher difficulty did make these missions more enjoyable. However, with the introduction of Steel Path it is now possible to play harder missions whilst actually getting better rewards.
I understand that the developers would want to keep "hard" enemies away from low level missions (except for you know, Wolf Of Saturn and glass resonance in your neighborhood) as well as to keep Liches as "optional" but there are many, more interesting ways to achieve this whilst connecting Liches with the rest of the game. Personally I suggest adding Thralls to marked and locked rooms within every mission type in a Kuva controlled node. Players would have to willingly open the room via hacking to fight the Thralls. Upon opening a door there is always a chance that your Lich is behind it, triggering an animation as it "surprise attacks you".
3 - Boss fight
The fight stage of your Lich is going to be changed with the introduction of Corpus Liches so there's not much I can say. In their current state fighting Liches is, well, weird. Their attacks are not well telegraphed and they tend to blend in with the background/regular enemies which really doesn't help the Nemesis goal.
Upon asking friends and clan members how they felt about the Lich system and how far they were into it, this is what I noticed were the three most common scenarios:
- Players going months without a Lich because they have to go out of their way to get one.
- Players going months with the same Lich because Murmur grind is boring and there isn't a big enough incentive.
- Players speedrunning Liches for their favorite weapons and either abandoning the system entirely or trying their luck with the ephemeras (go to 2. if the you fail to get that 20% spawn chance)
As I see it the Lich System is in need of a rework to not only connect it with the rest of the game (which would also bridge the gap between standard gameplay and Railjack) and make the whole process feel much more organic and enjoyable. As it stands I fear that linking Railjack with the Lich system isn't going to improve either of these modes but rather create one big obsolete mode.
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