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UnderRevision

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Posts posted by UnderRevision

  1. 5 hours ago, EtherPigeon said:

    Just to illustrate what I mean, here's the door on a Grineer missile platform: the "port" is about 25m wide (see waypoint) and the actual door probably less than half of that. That means the door is actually quite close to the width of corridors in-game. You'll also note how the frame itself is probably a bit oversized with that as scale reference - but it doesn't stand out - it almost looks like a perspective issue.

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    Now let's have a look at a Corpus Stanchion next to the Railjack - that really shows how huge even a Stanchion is! The giant thing you see in the Dry Dock? It's dwarfed by that ship! It almost fits in that hangar bay at the back of the ship... wait? Hangar bay?

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    Oh no, that's not a hangar bay, that's how you get into the ship isn't it? Let's go closer and measure that thing with a way point... revealing that that "door" is over 120m wide! And that also reveals that the frame is probably oversized by a factor of two or so, that's not 120m wide compared to your frame!

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    But when you then enter the ship, it drops you in a narrow corridor or airlock, breaking the illusion.

    I went back in to do some measurements myself and I think you've really hit the nail on the head.  Even the crewships checked out when I did some waypoint measuring, and I was convinced that they were halfway to being TARDISes!  I went back into the game to park my ship next to a bunch of things for scale like in your screenshot and it honestly floored me what a difference it makes to have a point of reference like that.  I've rewritten that section of my feedback entirely with all this in mind.  Thank you so much for pointing all this out to me.

  2. 7 hours ago, EtherPigeon said:

     

    1. Archwing/Warframes are oversized - that's really noticeable when you fly to your own Railjack and compare the size to the Dojo Railjack. Some of it is the camera, but some of it is the actual size (you need to fly right into the collision to notice that). Same is true for the Grineer models, though.
    2. The Corpus entrances are huge compared to the Grineer ones - for the Grineer models, especially the asteroids, they were quite clever with having the big door shape with a much smaller door in the centre. On the Corpus stations/ships, the doors look much bigger... so when you transition into the interior, the scale feels all wrong.

    That's very interesting.  It hadn't occurred to me to consider that it might be the player that was too big.  Like you said, I took the doors as a point of reference because they looked like they were supposed to correspond directly between the interior and exterior, precisely because their Grineer counterparts did.  I'm going to have to take another look at this, maybe revise my feedback.  Thank you for your insight on this.

  3. I have both positive and negative feedback regarding the new Corpus missions.  Please bear in mind that this feedback comes from a solo player who started out pretty well geared up in terms of my Railjack weapons and whatnot when the update dropped. Sorry for the wall of text.

    I'll lead with the positives:

    1.  Holy hell, the art and level design teams knocked it out of the park with the side-objective mission tiles.  The Ice Mines in particular are gorgeous but all the others are impressive in their own rights.  Stepping into the connector between the Corpus base and the Orokin tower was a real "wow" moment for me.  I love how "lived in" these new places feel and I'm especially digging the more focused design they have.  A lot of older tilesets come across as a random patchwork of rooms and halls with no in-universe purpose.  Seeing Solaris mining ice or walking alongside a moa assembly line or ice driver system loading projectiles really serves to reinforce the thematic elements of the missions and give them that sense of purpose.  I really hope we go to do more with these in future.  It also goes without saying that the new space skyboxes and space debris are beautiful.  Seriously, the art team did a wonderful job.

    2.  The new hacking mission with the EMP's and jamming drones is a definite step up from what otherwise would have probably been another mobile defense objective.  The pulses are well aimed enough to make it feel like they're trying to predict where I'm going to be (regardless of how it may or may not be coded under the hood), and they do a great job of thwarting the worst part of defense style objectives: making me stay put.  Warframe is at its best in motion, and this hacking thing actively encourages us to keep moving and actually traverse the new tiles rather than just park ourselves and be a turret with Mesa or something.

    3.  I quite like Volatile.  It makes great use of a room that previously felt like it was being wasted on just being another room in the tileset, and it's an interesting spin on sabotage style objectives.  I love that it incentivizes staying mobile at all times despite being confined to a single, admittedly decently large, tile.  The ever-narrowing heat range does a good job of making me think on my feet.  Should I really pop that vent now?  What if an engineer comes while I'm at the far corner?  It it worth dropping it below the range for a few seconds by prematurely venting just to be safe?  It's not exactly the deepest and most sophisticated of tactical assessments, but I think it's just right for a short and sweet mission like this.

    4. It's really fun having more places to use my necramech. For a solo player like me who isn't decked out with arcanes and rivens, necramechs offer some much needed firepower and protection in tight spots.

     

    Now for the more negative/mixed feedback/suggestions.

    1. I recall a devstream stating that the goal with Corpus railjack was to bring more core warframe gameplay into railjack missions. While this is a goal I was on board with, I think railjack as a whole now caters exclusively to two extreme ends of this balance. Grineer missions are 80% space to 20% ground, and Corpus swing all the way over to 20% space, 80% ground. Personally, I don't want to see either extreme go away. Rather, I'd like to see more missions added with a more even ratio.

    2. Bounty-style missions. The explanation about overloading the game with lots of AI if you let the crew split up into something like a normal exterminate or survival alongside space combat and also two further side objectives full of enemies made a lot of sense to me. I can see how that'd get out of hand really, really quickly. I wonder though if this could be limited by delineating a mission into distinct phases a-la bounties or defense/interception/disruption waves. Simply put, if only one ground objective was open at any given time, that limits how many AI could be running ground side. The game seems to handle that much well enough already in skirmish missions. This could perhaps be further improved by limiting space enemies to a squadron of crewships rather than swarms of fighters and having the ground mission be an assassination mission with limited enemy spawns. Even if this doesn't hold for under-the-hood reasons, the bounty format would also have other benefits in terms of making more distinct mission types possible for the space portion of railjack by chaining objectives in different, thematically interesting ways.

    3. EDIT:  After some eye-opening discussion further down in this thread with EtherPigeon, I've heavily revised my assessment of size scaling issues in Corpus railjack.  My initial impression was that the interiors were hilariously oversized for the exteriors, but some (admittedly crude) measurements with waypoints, and taking a good look from a distance using my railjack for reference, shows this to be quite, quite wrong.  I think what I'm seeing is the same thing that makes the moon look bigger down by the horizon where there are trees and/or buildings to compare it to, and smaller high in the sky with nothing but stars to compare it to.  In space, there's nothing to readily use to judge the ships against... except the entrances.  As EtherPigeon so astutely pointed out, the Grineer versions have a much smaller door nested inside a larger structure to make it readily visible from a distance.  The Corpus doors by contrast look virtually identical from both sides, but are at radically different scales.  Absent any other frame of reference, this makes it look like the interior is much, much too big for the exterior, even if it clearly isn't when measured.  Even the crewships check out pretty darn well when waypointed for height from the inside and outside.  If the exterior doors on all the Corpus ships and points of interest were adjusted to compensate, I think this issue would be significantly reduced.

    4. Speaking of capital ships, I really wish they were more of a threat. Maybe it's just because I'm decently well geared and modded shipwise, but they seem to be almost entirely harmless. This is something that Corpus missions inherited from their Grineer predecessors. I'll never forget my immense disappointment the first time Cy told me that a galleon had launched missiles at me… only for them to approach slower than a drunken Teralyst and then give up and explode three kilometers short of hitting my ship. The Corpus capital ships really don't fare much better. The Corpus captain may as well not have the voicelines about firing torpedoes because they don't matter at all. I am more frightened of the flying polyps of Deimos throwing themselves at my head than I am of a Corpus capital ship's entire arsenal. It feels more like we've caught them in drydock with their pants down rather than engaging them in a pitched space battle. Although, I'd actually be totally down for that as a mission setup in future.

    5. Side objective gameplay variety is a little too limited. While I do like the new hacking mission with the pulses and drones, it's a bit of a letdown that it's as prevalent as it is. It's much the same problem that the Grineer objectives had with being “use the console, shoot the radiators”. Some more variety in this department would be great. Even something as simple “oh, this one has a conduit and a demolyst”, or “find and blow the heat vents”. Just a touch more unpredictability to shake things up a little. I would make it a rotation though. If you give options like a starchart sabotage mission does, everyone will always go with whatever is fastest and never even touch the others, something I'm totally guilty of.

    6. Archwing continues to be out of place in Corpus railjack. Beyond the lowest level missions, everything but Amesha gets blown to bits if an enemy so much as looks at it the wrong way. I get that it's probably a nightmare to balance the archwing against the railjack without either one becoming a clear winner, but right now the archwing is in a bad place even while serving its sole purpose of moving between the railjack and objectives. The overall weakness of archmelee also makes it really hard to scan fighters since trying to actually use a scanner on fast targets is hopeless (especially on controllers) and trying to melee higher level fighters feels like breaking down a wall with a spoon.

    7. Corpus fighters don't particularly stand out either as threats (to the railjack) or as targets. They die so quickly that I'm not even sure what unique mechanics any of them might have, and they don't really pop out of the background enough to be visually striking. This latter issue I think is down to their darker color schemes compared to Grineer fighters combined with their use of light effects. It's mostly their glowing features that get spotted while the hulls fade into the background.  For the record, the fighters do look good when I get a look at them, I just don't really get the chance in gameplay.  EDIT:  After spending a little more time in the Veil, which has a skybox which clashes against the fighters much more strongly, I did start to get better looks at the fighters.  And after playing a bit of Grineer railjack again, I think I might have hit upon another reason I wasn't seeing them as well: inferior numbers.  Grineer approach in large enough numbers that some can survive long enough to buzz the cockpit for a good look, if I don't blast them all into oblivion with seeker missiles anyway.  Corpus fighters come in relative handfuls and are thus a lot easier to pick off at a distance before they ever get close enough to really look closely at.

    In terms of combat, I can't help but wonder if there needs to be a level of enemy between fighter and crewship. Something that I or my gunner crewmate can't instantly swat out of the sky, but which doesn't demand the use of the main artillery to bring down. Grineer outriders sort of got towards that territory, but the Corpus units don't seem to have anything comparable.

    8.  After going back and playing some more Grineer missions again, I've noticed that there's a serious gulf in enemy strength between Corpus and Grineer.  I actually suffered multiple hull breaches and died a few times groundside, whereas the Corpus were doing comparatively little damage and going down a heck of a lot easier.   I'm not one to go around asking for harder content, filthy casual that I am, but I wanted to mention it just in case it's not intentional.

    • Like 2
  4. There's a lot to love about command thus far, so I'll lead with the biggest positives I've experienced.  This is all from a totally solo player so keep that context in mind.  Apologies if it's a bit of a ramble.

    1.  Gunners seem pretty darn good at their jobs, at least my rank five gunner does.  Having just one guy on the turrets is very effective overall and a big help for a solo player with keeping the fighters at bay while off-ship.  If anything, they might be a little too good at their jobs.  I often come out of a point of interest to find my ship unscathed and surrounded by a debris field of drops.

    2.  I absolutely love being able to customize my crew with all the stray attachments and syandanas I've picked up but hardly ever use because I have no eye for making good fashion.  And giving them modded weapons out of my ever expanding arsenal of guns that I never use but can't bring myself to throw away makes me irrationally happy.  I've given mine themed sets from their syndicates (as best as I can without everything unlocked) and it's amazing.  It's actually given me new drive to get the rest of the syndicate weapons and whatnot to finish their loadouts.  If anything, I only wish I could arm them a little more fully, like a specter.  Give my Steel Meridian crewmate a full Vaykor loadout, you know?

    3.  Having an engineer has made solo play so much smoother.  I don't miss having to run back and forth putting out fires and whatnot myself only to pick up more damage in the course of making the trip (smaller interior helps too) leaving the only sane option to be simply ignoring it until I got a catastrophic breach.

     

    Most of my negative feedback (beyond reiterating a bunch of stuff about liches) comes down to pilots.

    Pilot behavior isn't great.  I get that this is probably an absolute nightmare to program, heck, one AI class in college was enough to scare me off that subject ever since, but it needs work.  Currently I am hard pressed to see any useful role for a pilot.  When I leave the ship I am better served by just leaving the ship stationary with someone on the guns and the other two defending/repairing.  And when I'm on the ship, having a pilot at the helm renders the artillery and slingshot effectively unusable.

    The solution, I think, might be to give the player a way to give more specific orders to the pilot.  Add something to the tactical menu like "pursue primary objective" to send the pilot to take up a holding pattern around the capital ship.  Or "evasive maneuvers" to tell them to floor it.  Better still, a way to designate targets like crewships.  The waypoint system might be the obvious candidate, but if the pilot would point the ship at something long enough for us to waypoint it, we'd already be able to use the slingshot at least.  It'd probably need to be something through the tactical menu, even if it's just as simple as ordering them to target the nearest crewship it'd be enough to get the job done. 

    This could also be expanded upon for commanding gunners to fire on mission targets.  I get that having them automatically blast them might feel a bit like letting the game play itself, but perhaps obligating the player to issue the order to an appropriately assigned and skilled crewmember would do enough to keep it feeling interactive and thematic?  Plus, access to orders could be a great way to fill out the intrinsic tiers with something more interesting than slots and points.

    That's all "pie in the sky" sort of stuff though, I suppose.  I'm sure that it's a whole heck of a lot easier said than done to add a system like that on top of everything else going on in Railjack already.  Pilot does need something if it's going to be worthwhile to use, though.  Right now it's more of a hindrance than a help.

    A more grounded alternative for the artillery would be to allow the player to fire from the pilot seat by commanding a rank five gunner to take the artillery seat.  This would mechanically give the player control, but would come balanced with an opportunity cost of not being able to have that crewmember do anything else while they're on that seat, if just giving the player this ability via an intrinsic is considered too cheap of a barrier to entry.  I can understand being reluctant to pursue this option, of course, from the perspective of it giving the pilot too much power within their role that should be distributed elsewhere.  At the same time, however, I maintain that the artillery and slingshot are functionally useless to a solo player who lets the AI pilot, so this might be a case of picking a poison.  Then again, I'm not sure where we'd bind the artillery on a controller for the pilot.  Maybe map it like a fourth battle mod?  The slingshot could just be given more leeway to aim away from where the ship is currently facing.  Honestly, those might be the most feasible solutions.

    And now some random thoughts:

    1.  I'd love it if my syndicate crew members would replace the generic NPC's for syndicate missions.  Not a priority I'm sure, but it'd be nice to see.

    2.  It goes without saying that I'd love representatives from some of the other syndicates to be available.  Solaris, Ostrons, maybe even Myconians or Quills or even just the people who run the relays.  If the normal Solaris have too many conflicts with their animation rigging, maybe base some off of Little Duck's model and call them Solaris rail agents instead?  I'd believe that Solaris who pilot ships have different rigs than Solaris doing heavy manual labor.

    3.  Add a crew lounge/barracks room to the dojo that populates with all the crew you have contracted.  Who wouldn't want their own personal ten-forward?

    • Like 1
  5. My best guess at the rationale is that death is meant to be a drawback to balance the extra damage and functionality that pets bring.  For example, you can choose to put radar on your pet so that you can put more powerful mods on your Warframe instead, but the risk you take is that the pet might die and you lose access to that utility.  With non-sentinel companions you have the further risk vs reward dynamic of reviving them and leaving yourself potentially vulnerable while doing so, or letting them die to keep yourself safe but losing the functionality they bring.  Plus, without death, there's the probably potential to use a warframe geared to be functionally immortal and then going AFK and letting them just whittle enemies to death for you.

    Whether that risk of death vs reward of functionality has struck a good balance or not... well, I certainly haven't ever felt like it was worth it to use a non-sentinel companion outside of getting mastery points for them.  There are mods like link-health but those only help if RNG consents to smile upon you and actually give you one.  In the absence of having them, I personally just stick with sentinels.  They're going to die anyway, and reviving a pet over and over and over is not my idea of a good time.  It's like turning every single mission in the game into an escort mission with an incredibly brain-dead AI to babysit.  So, yeah, I think I get why it's a thing, but I don't enjoy it at all.

     

    • Like 2
  6. 5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    And just as a parting thought because it occurred to me earlier today - the Nox. You know how people complain about "tanky enemies?" Well, the Nox is by FAR the game's tankiest, most bullet-spongey enemy, featuring a lot of health, a lot of armour AND a 75% damage resistance on top of it all. But you don't see a lot of people complaining about Noxes, do you? The reason for that is simple - the Nox is only this tanky IF you try to brute-force your way through his armour.

    Funny thing is, this also makes it good at standing up to Mesa, at least to a point.  My own Mesa can eventually chew through a Nox, but it takes a long time and reduces my aiming angle to its smallest size in a matter of moments.  It's actually advantageous to turn off Peacemaker and attack with my normal weapons that I can actually aim at the weakpoint.  It's a very short list of enemies that can have that impact on my playstyle.  I actually stop and think twice when I hear one of them coming.  Plus, the way their threat level escalates when the glass is broken is great.

    3 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

    The Aerolyst should have the Nox treatment: high damage reduction, not invulnerable. Each canister destroyed lowers the dr. Again, I extremely like the telegraphed orb attack that bursts into projectiles that can be interrupted by breaking the orb before it fires. Again, it could be much more damaging than it is, but still it's a fun mechanic.

    The issue I have with the Aerolyst is that it is completely immobilized when the canisters break, rendering it harmless and an easy target.  Which would be fine if it was more dangerous, but right now it's not packing enough of a wallop (at least at enemy levels that I can play at) to make the stun feel like it's earned.  Take, for contrast, the Exploiter.  She is stunned when she's overheated, but it takes long enough to get her there that it feels like a milestone in the fight.  With the right weapons, an Aerolyst's canisters can be taken out almost immediately, turning it helpless and ready to be obliterated before it can do anything.

  7. 4 hours ago, keikogi said:

    At this point I think just having gimmick bosses is better than bullet sponges. Because it's more about execution than dps.

    I think there's a fair amount of truth in that.  The Exploiter is certainly one of my favorite bosses.  She was also well designed enough that I both needed and was able to figure it out largely on my own.  Enough to win, anyway.  The exact details of how the overheating was working weren't clear until I looked them up, but I was able to beat her regardless.  She does suffer from a little too much RNG and would benefit from a little more structure.  There are few things more annoying than being out of thermia fissures and having to just sit there and wait for her to decide to open more.  Sometimes she just doesn't for a good five minutes or so.  Or gets herself stuck on the cliffs and breaks her AI.  But in terms of the ideal run, she's a lot more entertaining to deal with than a wall of health or marginally beefed up normal enemy like the Sargent.  Less geared players can still make worthwhile contributions with the thermia, and over-geared players can't evaporate her with their first shot.

  8. 1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    I'd argue that "If the player doesn't know about a mechanic and has no good way of tracking it, that mechanic might as well not even exist."

    I like that.  Definitely an issue Warframe has.  There's just so much going on in this game and almost nothing telling the players about any of it.  I'd say that placebo mechanics can have a place as set-dressing but should be treated like such.  For example, if they took the idea of randomly grabbing player models and used them to fill out the specters in the Index, that'd be fine because there's no actual gameplay impact.  If that was how Scarlet Spear worked, it'd be less fine since it'd beg the question of "why is this hoop even here, then?".

    On the subject of Thumpers, they could have the fast rotation if they gave us a way to counter it.  Something like shooting and disabling all the weapons putting it into a stunned state for long enough to have a fair shot at one of the legs while it repairs itself.  Of course, that leads to the prospect of having them stunlockable.  Maybe some sort of cooldown on that.  The classic approach would be the hit-hit-rest combo.  It does some attacks, ending with something big that "overheats" it.  Hit the weakpoint that exposes for a guaranteed stun and then go for a leg.  Wash, rinse, repeat with ever escalating threat between overheats.  It's formulaic and would be too much for rank-and-file enemies, but it does the job for a mini-boss.  Plus, they could make using that stun optional by not gating damage on the legs behind it, rather making it an option for those who aren't playing a frame with the required CC.

    We're probably going to disagree on the subject of coy patch notes as a matter of personal preference.  I'd be irritated if I was reading the notes for bug fixes and the like and ran across an explanation of exactly how to kill the new enemy they just added.  I like to at least try to figure them out blind on my first few tries before I go to external sources.  Part of why I dislike Profit Taker is that it's such a gear check that I thought I was missing something in the mechanics of the fight, so I looked it all up and kind of spoiled it for myself.  If they put it in the notes and spoiler-tagged it I'd be cool with it though.  I just don't want to accidentally find that sort of information before I want it.

    • Like 1
  9. 1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Consider Disruption. While a "defence" style mission at heart, Disruption objectives do not very strongly benefit from Frost, Limbo or Garaa. They don't fail by being shot at from range, they fail when a Demolyst enemy is allowed reach them and self-destruct.

    Funny thing, I hate defense missions.  Hate them.  Really like Disruption though.  The way they encourage mobility, the way that the combat is focused on finding those Demolysts, the way those Demolysts have just enough variety for me to have to vary my tactics a little bit.  Some of them I can just shoot, others are too tough and require that I try to slow them down so that I have time to chew through their health.  I actually use CC abilities in Disruption missions, which is something I hardly ever do in the rest of the game.  And then there's the flexibility of choosing the risk vs reward of activating more than one conduit at a time as a solo player.  I'm not sure how to bring those sorts of positives to defense missions.  The first thing that comes to mind is having variable secondary objectives that give the enemies an alternate means to destroy the defense target that you can't Globe or Cataclysm your way out of.  Most defense tiles are large and intricate enough to tuck things away into corners where a Mesa wouldn't have line of sight from the defense target without moving, but the only way to work around Cataclysm is to make things ignore it, which is less than ideal.

    I only recently leveled my basic Limbo up to thirty and haven't tried to use him in Scarlet Spear yet.  Five to six Condryx is pretty much exactly what I can do using my Mesa, arguably my most effective frame in terms of damage output.  I suffer from not having the most effective weapons and so get outscaled by enemies in terms of damage output vs their defense pretty quickly.  Come to think of it, I haven't really tried higher level stuff since the armor re-balance with my weapons.  I've just gotten so used to relying on abilities that it's habit by this point.  I should reevaluate where my arsenal stands.

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    There's really not much complexity to playing Inaros. He's the ultimate gear check. Have Inaros, have Adaptation, have Arcane Guardian and Arcane Grace. That's it. It hardly matters what you actually do at that point, you are not going to die.

    Getting that gear is no small feat for someone who doesn't trade.  That's another problem with gear checks: the ones who get punished most by them are the ones who play the game without buying their gear.  Theoretically, I could have bought platinum and traded for all of that stuff right out of the gate and been invincible from day one.  Now I find myself in a position where I don't want to get that gear assembled because I want to be able to die if I'm being careless.

     

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    As a general rule of thumb, players in an action game should only ever find themselves fighting the enemies. They should never be fighting the controls, the design or otherwise fighting the "the game."

    That reminds me of what I'd call one of the golden rules of game design.  "If a mechanic in your game could be effectively replicated by having someone burst into the room and slap the player's hands away from the controls for a few seconds, don't put it in the game."  Take, for example, the classic "frozen" status effect.  A freeze I can button-mash my way out of faster is infinitely less frustrating than one that is just a timer counting down to when I am allowed to continue playing the game.  Warframe mostly dodges this particular thing by letting us recover from staggers and knock-backs to a degree, but then the issue becomes how much those things can be spammed. 

    I definitely agree on the Sentient designs.  Games have spent decades teaching everyone that we should always shoot the glowing bits.  It's as universal as red barrels being explosive or glinting objects being important.  One has to be very, very careful when subverting that sort of embedded design language.  Thumpers were actually not too bad in that regard, in my opinion, precisely because they followed those rules.  The plates glint like breakable objects and the joints underneath have glowy bits on them.  Both of these things communicate, in previously established design language, exactly where the player should shoot.  Sometimes I wish they'd stop spinning so I could hit their freaking back legs, but I guess that's encouraging the use of frames with CC abilities.

  10. 7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Defence missions too hard? Take Frost. Survival missions too hard? Take Nekros. Dying too much? Take Inaros. Don't like knockdown? Take Rhino. Don't like enemies in your game? Take Saryn.

    The question this evokes from me is: where is the line between "This frame has a role/niche where it's a good choice" and "This frame has a role/niche where it is overpowered"?  Because if using a defensive frame like Frost doesn't make a defense mission easier, then what's the point of having a defensive frame?  And I realize that I don't have a clue how to answer those questions.  I assume this is the point where it becomes a numbers game, deciding how much damage an ability should negate vs how much energy it should cost vs how quickly it should be cast vs a thousand other factors.  Or is it a conceptual level issue?  Is the way to balance it by making the defensive frame only viable when paired with an offensive frame because they sacrifice the ability to do enough damage for the ability to protect the target?  How is that then balanced against the universally available weapons that are theoretically capable of leveling a small city in the hands of sufficiently geared player?  To call this a challenge to solve would be a massive understatement, I think.

    Side note, I actually have barely played Frost, Rhino, Inaros, or Saryn.  No idea how to use them properly at all.  I die constantly as Rhino and Inaros, and I can't even clear a single room with Saryn's abilities.  The gap in frame effectiveness when handled by a player like me and a player who has a clue is insanely huge.

  11. 2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Warframe is in a really odd place right now. It HAS complexity in combat - rather a lot of it, if DE cared to actually use their own systems. However, players very rarely care to engage with this complexity, choosing instead to just brute-force their way through complex encounters because it's faster and easier. Players also often don't realise that they're engaging with complex systems because Warframe is UTTERLY TERRIBLE at communicating any kind of important information to the player.

    I have very much relied on brute force to get as far as I have.  It's not an exaggeration to say that I've spent a lot of my time with Warframe relying on Valkyr's Hysteria and Mesa's Peacemaker to get me through higher level enemies.  Faced with the choice of digging through wiki articles and youtube videos to figure out how to build things properly and then to acquire and level all the mods and apply all the forma and grind all the arcanes, or pressing four and turning into a blender of psychotic rage... I picked the blender.  The problem with this is that, eventually, I ran into things that can't be brute forced effectively in that manner.  For example, pressing four proved utterly ineffective against enemies like Profit Taker and the Teralyst.  Now I'm in the position of being several hundred hours in and having to try to learn all the things that I should have been picking up gradually over time while I played, except now I'm doing it all at once.  The learning curve turned from shallow slope to brick wall and I never saw it coming.  Warframe let me get away with not understanding anything for so long that being forced to in order to keep making progress almost feels like I've picked up a different game.

  12. 16 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Possibly, but probably not - not on its own anyway. Like difficulty, ability nullification is a means limit players' options. That's only a good thing if the combat system offers enough underlying complexity for players to fall back on when their abilities are nullified, and I'm not really convinced that Warframe has that. As I said - just buffing enemies or nerfing players (even conditionally) isn't going to make Warframe more challenging. On the contrary, would make combat even more reductive, since it would invalidate even more currently viable options and push us into even more cheese as we try to kill these kinds of ability nullification enemies before they're able to nullify us.

    Hm, I see your point.  Looking back as someone who joined the game after they were added, I've followed a sort of progression on my reaction when I see nullifiers .  At first I took them in stride because I was still figuring out how to bullet jump reliably and thus had bigger fish to fry.  Later I found them irritating because they shut down the abilities I was finally getting used to relying on.  Then, much like you said, I realized I had options for how to fight them and I went back to taking them in stride and dealing them them as needed.  Now they only irritate me when the map becomes 80% nullifier crewmen, partially because I can't see what's going on at that point.  Pretty sure I don't know how to design an enemy that would strike that kind of balance.

    14 hours ago, keikogi said:

    A bit of side note I find it shamefull that the mods that affect the weapon handeling ( switch speed , reload speed , magazine size , projectile speed ) can´t make the cut on a good build.

    I agree there.  On the one hand, I like how distinctive a lot of weapons can feel.  On the other, there have been quite a few weapons where I've really wished I could mod for stuff like that and not feel like I'm crippling my ability to actually kill things with it.  In theory, the weapon exilus slots should help with that but I play casually enough that that just feels like more effort than it's worth when I still might not like the weapon afterward.  Also, I've got to agree with Steel_Rook that "damage compression" is a really good term and I might have to use it.

  13. 1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    In almost every discussion on the subject of challenge, we invariably get to the point of "Who cares how complex enemies are when I can one-shot all of 'em with AoE weapons without even knowing they're there?" As an Inaros fanboy, I'd add the other side of this coin - "Who cares about telegraphed enemy attacks when I can just tank 'em all since they can't hurt me?" Without difficulty, players will naturally gravitate towards the simplest, dumbest, most boring way to play the game because that's our nature.

    I'm not sure if this would work, but the thought this provokes from me is if we should give enemies counterplay options.  If they could resist ranged damage or strip our armor, for example, would that encourage more diverse play?  I find I can't personally answer this because I'm not really at the point where I can evaporate any enemy without fail or face-tank any and all damage, so I don't have the required perspective.

  14. 55 minutes ago, Avienas said:

    Considering how many nodes they have loaded up per planet and no mention on them GUTTING most of them to replace them with different game modes or something. Thats kind of why i do not want them cramming more planets with dozens of identical nodes and just further bloating useless, basically the same, missions in.  We do not need bloatware content we need content that actually HAS value. 

    I'd agree that railjack missions in particular would benefit strongly from more variety.  For example, disruption missions are basically the same between different planets on the normal star chart, yet I go to Uranus for the relics I'm currently grinding, and Neptune for credits.  Railjack doesn't take advantage of this at all presently with all nodes being the same mission type, but if we want the situation to improve, removing and replacing entire planets only limits options for future improvements.

    I can't speak to railjack bugs as I hardly ever seem to encounter any and thus lack anything meaningful to contribute.  And I doubt we're likely to get any redesigns on the level of completely replacing the avionics system.  I wouldn't want to see a research style system used regardless until I see focus improved because I think that is what we'd be likely to get if we didn't use a mod-type system.

  15. 1 hour ago, Avienas said:

    That or they trash Saturn proxima and replace it with a Jupiter one instead to match up with a Corpus faction.

    I mean, there's no reason they couldn't just keep Saturn and add Jupiter as well.  We could have Earth, Saturn, and Veil for Grineer, then Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune or Pluto for Corpus, putting both factions at three difficulty tiers each.  The problem I forsee with adding more Dirac, at least from DE's perspective, is that there's a finite amount of Dirac needed.  Once your grid and avionics are maxed, does Dirac even have another use or would it just be another resource that piles up?  Fair point about the quote blocks though, I'll try to trim mine down to specific points.

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Man, some of the game's coolest enemies are so dang rare...

    Agreed, would love to see Manics more often, and more enemies in that vein besides.  Infested Zealots would fit that mold, as would a Zanuka variant or Amalgam.  Also, I have no idea I could roll out of Nox goop!  How many other things like this am I just completely missing out on?

    27 minutes ago, keikogi said:

    As far as it being an orokin creation or a Discovery , not sure witch one it would be. As far as exploration on their lore I´m all for it.

    So am I.  I've always been fascinated by these sorts of hive-mind species in science fiction and they're hardly ever explored as much as I'd like.  The exception being the Borg, and then the writers kind of undermined the whole hive aspect of it as time went on, but that's a whooole other kettle of fish.  I'm given hope for the future Infested by that concept art they showed of Infested planetoids in a recent Devstream.  I do sort of hope they never tell us exactly where they came from though.  It never hurts to leave at least a little bit of mystery about that kind of thing, especially for an enemy you plan to keep around.  That still leaves plenty of room to explore in both lore and gameplay design.

  16. 38 minutes ago, keikogi said:

     DE should be carefull reusing warframe skills for enemies because warframe skills were not designed with conterplay in mind. The Commander using Loki switch teleport is probably one of the worse enemy desings I've ever seen. An enemy that can both change your position and stun you without much you can do stop him outside of nuking him out of existence as soon as he enters line of sight. Also the stupid animation of an warframe looking around for 3 seconds is just jarring.

    Fair point.  Snow Globe and Fire Blast are big and obviously telegraphed enough to work, but other powers not so much.  Switch teleport isn't so bad if you roll out of it when it starts to lock onto you, but combat is messy enough without enemies using Mirage's Prism.  It really would have to be carefully handled on a case by case basis, and balanced for counterplay, but it does at least offer a starting point rather than starting from scratch.  Come to think of it, they've kind of been experimenting with this with Lich powers, haven't they?  I've personally only had three liches in total so I sometimes neglect to consider them when thinking about enemies.

  17.  
    51 minutes ago, keikogi said:

    They don't even need to be visually diferent the "attack" should have visual indicator, if the aura created a link between the player and the enemy. This way you could quickly locate the treat. 

    That would be a nice start.  It's so easy to not see the enemy around the corner that's sucking you dry.

    53 minutes ago, keikogi said:

    Infested jackal , Infested Hyean , Infested condroc , Infested rollers , Indested mining equipment ( the one on the old grineer sabotage mission ) and so on. So much unttaped potential for new units. 

    Indeed.  A ton of opportunity there just waiting to be tapped into.  And who knows?  The Corpus are supposedly getting some work with the upcoming Deadlock update, maybe one day it will be the Infestation's turn.

     13 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

    I've seen a bit of DE's sound team over the last few Dev Streams. I think these guys are creative enough to put together several voice packages which all sound distinctly Grineer, but with different voices and - crucially - personalities to go with them. Also in their wheelhouse should be separate mechanical sound packages unique to each Special's weapons. Or hell... Imagine a series of monstrous screeches and roars, but all of them specific to a different Infested creature - unique enough that we can tell t

    hem apart just from how that sound 🙂 I mean hell - they managed to create several Moa voice packs consisting entirely of beeps and yet they still all sound distinctly individual.

    Agreed.  They are a talented bunch, and hopefully they'll be able to make good use of their new studio once it's built and they're able to go into the office again.  They've also done these sorts of vocal shoutouts in the past with the Manic Grineer.  The way they cackle before they spawn is unmistakable and gives you exactly the sort of heads up you need to have a fair chance to see such an agile enemy coming.  I could easily imagine the same treatment for these hypothetical new Eximi enemies working quite nicely.  Plus, I think it could really add to the atmosphere of combat.  A variety of Infested howls echoing the halls of a derelict above the slavering growls of the horde.  A heavy Grineer's battle-cry rallying the troops behind his ice dome to advance.  A Corpus priest calling his disciples to honor their vows to the temple of profit.  A lot of room for characterization there.

    And for Eximus powers, there's precident for enemies using knock-offs of Tenno powers.  Grineer commanders can use Loki's Switch Teleport, Heat and Cold Eximus units use variations of Ember's Fire Blast and Frost's Snow Globe, that sort of thing.  One of the Scrambus units even uses something reminiscent of Mag's Polarize.  Heck, Scorpions and Ancients arguably use a budget version of Valkyr's Ripline.  There are opportunities there to borrow more of our own arsenal.  Or even to recycle older abilities that got reworked out of the game rather than making something new.

    36 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Well, I have you guys to thank contributing to the discussion. These kinds of conversations are why I come to the forums, ultimately. Even if what we're discussing here is unlikely to happen (and let's face it - it's unlikely), it's still fun to throw around and who know? Maybe some of the stuff we come up with could amount to something 🙂

    Maybe.  Talking game design is fun either way, right?  Whatever problems Warframe might have, I'm still looking forward to what they have coming for us next.  I loved the Gas City rework and can't wait to see what Deadlock will do for the Corpus ships.

  18. 1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Basically, do three things: Give the player an audio-visual warning than an attack is coming and tell the player where it's going to hit. Wind the attack up for 1-2 seconds, fire the attack, then go into a short reload and maybe a cooldown. Of course, you could potentially still give each individual enemy a more "regular" attack that they could do in the meantime. A Heavy Gunner could fire in shorter bursts, a Bombard can fire micromissiles while their big shot is recharging, Napalms could fire short-range flame jets, etc. Sure, give them something to do while their abilities are recharging, just ensure that they don't hit that much harder than a Common enemy outside of their big hits. That way, you encourage players to scan the crowd for important enemies who will stand out due to their windup, to watch their actual character for indicators for an incoming AoE, and to NOT just stare at their own health/energy bars or the health bar of whatever enemy they happen to be shooting at.

    I can't say I'd be adverse to any of that.  I can think of a few games where those sorts of frequent AoE's would get irritating, but those are all situations when the player character have sluggish movement.  Warframes are so mobile, and the mobility itself so enjoyable, that I could have a lot of fun with that.

     

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    That's definitely a problem, yes, and a pretty significant one when it comes to adding mechanical complexity to enemies. Most of what I've suggested so far has relied on audio and visual cues, which do tend to get drowned out a lot in the din of Warframe combat. I've proposed a more rigid differentiation between Common and Uncommon enemies in the past, which I feel could help address this problem. If we ensure that Common enemies themselves are simple in terms of mechanics and basic in terms of audio and visual "noise," then that should help the actually meaningful Special enemies stand out more. For instance, I'd take away the voice lines from all of the Grineer Commons. Sure, while "Ket Clem!" is funny every so often, it adds nothing to gameplay and actually drowns out important other sound effects.

    The noise is a problem, but I'll argue against taking away all the voice lines from the rank and file Grineer.  For one thing, complete silence would make them feel pretty lifeless.  For another, if their voicing was just limited to only go off when they came onto the battlefield it'd serve the dual purpose of giving them a little life while also announcing "hey, more enemies incoming".  Sure, later in the game those Lancers may not be a threat, but early on they very much can be, and those new players might not have radar.  Having a new player suddenly get riddled with bullets by a squad of Lancers who appeared behind them completely silently is not an acceptable trade for less noise at higher levels.  And they should definitely be kept talkative for out of combat, since audio cues are an important way to know if you've made an enemy suspicious while stealthing around.

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    I don't necessarily like the Infested Eximus units largely because they have TERRIBLE player feedback, often being hard to tell apart from regular units featuring abilities which are hard to read. I mean... What is a Sanguine Eximus and what does it do? I still don't know, even to this day. However, an Infested Caustic Eximus is always a variety of a Toxic Ancient with an additional ability - a toxic damage aura. OK, great, but why couldn't that have been an entirely new unit all its own? DE recently added those new Infested enemies from the Railjack trailers. Use that character model, give it the Toxic aura and a few toxic ability and you have a new boss-like enemy. And that's just off the top of my head.

    I agree so much with this.  And don't forget the energy draining chargers who have their only distinguishing characteristics as a pallet swap and a slight size increase.  Ironically, this is in the faction with the most right to be heavily varied in designs.  I'd love to see them take more Grineer and Corpus units and infest them, like how the Undying Flyer is an Infested Hellion.  An Infested Nox would be a perfect candidate for a Toxic Eximus design.  They already have the association with Toxin damage, which means that the player will immediately understand what this new enemy is and the sort of threat they present, all without having to be explained.  I was really hopeful when they introduced the Flyers and Zealots in the last Nightwave because it opened the door to whole new classes of Infested.  DE could recycle so many assets and add so much badly needed variety to the Infestation.

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    I'm... Genuinely surprised I managed to string that post together with the appearance of a continuous narrative 🙂

    I'm surprised by this whole thread.  It's been so civil and the discussion has been a lot of fun.  Points and counterpoints, and me even changing my mind about a thing to two.

  19. I've played Railjack solo all the way into the Veil and it is indeed possible, but requires you to be able to juggle a lot of things at once.  Unfortunately, it is somewhat down to luck.  Specifically, you need to have the health and armor avionics drop and then install and upgrade them them to make the railjack a good deal more resilient.  It also helps a great deal with invest in the early engineering intrinsics to speed up omni repairs (Engineering 1).  My go-to forward weapon is the Cryophon, and I stick with the seeker missiles to pick off ramsleds and outriders before they can close in.  If you're having trouble using the main artillery to take down crewships, don't hesitate to use the slingshot to board them.  Unlocking the omnitool recall should also be a priority so you can get back to the ship from a boarding as quickly and safely as possible (Tactical 4).  When it comes to my warframe, I personally use my Valkyr since her Hysteria gives me the invulnerability I need to survive the beefed-up space Grineer so much as glancing in my direction.  Note that this really requires that you've invested in making her talons well modded enough to do worthwhile damage.

    Oh, and use specters.  I drop a warframe specter in the main room of my railjack and have it hold position.  Mine is a Mag with a vectis and it usually does a pretty good job of slowing down boarding parties.

    I had to play cautiously to start with.  Killing fighters as they spawned, then trying to get distance so that the next spawns might not automatically detect me and attack while I repaired and tried to scavenge resources.  Of course, when railjack launched, you got to earn some intrinsics even from a failed mission, so even my failures let me progress to valuable skills.  I'm not sure if that's the case anymore.  Oh, and try to make yourself a keybinding for the tactical menu.  There's a skill that will let you warp from point to point inside the ship by using it (Tactical 3).

    At the end of the day, soloing railjack missions is hard.  The Command intrinsics were supposed to be coming specifically to help with this, but there's been no word on them since launch that I'm aware of other than "they're being worked on".

    • Like 3
  20. 15 minutes ago, VieuxPappy said:

    What's the "player skill" you are referring to? Also, I'v yet to farm a frame for "hours" as you say. As bregastor said, it's all about finding the right combination of cheese and voilà. 

    Unless one doesn't enjoy using cheese.  A lot of the cheese strategies I've read just don't sound fun to me, so I don't use them.  Farming a frame without them can take quite a while.  The problem I have with Grendel's acquisition is that it all but seems to mandate cheesing it for someone who isn't especially skilled or doesn't have the patience of a saint.  I'm sure that, if I read and followed the right guide, I could use some specific combination of frame, weapons, and strategy that would let me slog through the fifteen waves of defense, but stuff like that is how I get burned out on a game.

    • Like 1
  21. 6 minutes ago, MysteryPig said:

    I think there's a little bit of a problem in this game with Warframe abilities being so bright, loud, and overwhelmingly present that it reduces enemy attacks to background noise. Even some of the Lich abilities were difficult to notice or react to. This is magnified by the fact that enemies usually die before attacking, don't attack because you're invisible, or don't matter when they atttack because you have 200k iron skin or 95% damage reduction. It's either that, or they hit you during a weak moment and you melt under the continuous fire from other areas. I think there need to be more attacks that present a specific danger, like status effects or nullification, because things that Hit Hard or are Big and Bright are the only things that will still catch the player's attention.

    This can vary pretty widely on which frame the player is using at any given moment.  Some frames are a lot flashier than others.  The problem with things like status effects is that they have to rise above the noise as well, or else you can pick one up and not realize it until it gets you killed.  Consider, for example, all the calls for enemies to have visible cues that they're draining your energy away.

  22. 1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    I don't want to get too far into Railjack design since that's a massive topic on its own

    Fair enough.  I'd say your comparison to operators is pretty on point, with the exception that while the focus grind is long and arduous, it's at least not based on getting RNG drops.

    1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Generally speaking, I prefer to avoid homing attacks against players. Being able to break the lock certainly helps and you're right - it would make for more challenging gameplay. However, I tend to find that systems like that end up with a abstract sort of complexity. You're not reacting to an enemy in the map firing a missile at you, you're reacting to a UI indicator and hitting a button to make it go away. Personally, I find that dumbfire weapons have a bit more "physicality" to them, since you're reacting to something in game space - even if it's just a coloured circle. Circles on the ground, cones in the air, large glowing projectiles and so on are still objects which exist outside your UI and in the "real world" of the game. When it comes to Bombards, for instance, I would like for them to have a wind-up with some associated audio and visual indicator alerting you that they're about to fire, followed by them shooting one or more slow-moving rockets with a bright exhaust visible at a glance. You hear the sound, you turn around to spot the Bombard, you either shoot him or get out of the way. Or you panic and jump "somewhere, anywhere but here." Bonus points if the Bombard will track you WHILE aiming, but the rockets themselves are still dumbfire.

    You raise a very good point there about the "reacting to a UI indicator" vs physicality.  Now that I think about it, I generally just see a Ballista laser sight and move rather than picking them out of the crowd.  For snipers I still think that's a fair trade off because they lack any of the fireworks that a rocket launcher has.  Trying to scan the horizon for a three-pixel-tall figure shooting a bullet you can't see to track back isn't particularly fun.

    You know, the Ogris we get to use is actually more like what you describe for Bombards than the version they use.  We get a brief charge, then launch a single dumbfire rocket.  Amp up the charge sound for the enemy version and maybe put a little more flame into their exhaust trail, give it a little more speed to make up for the loss of homing, and I think that'd pretty much do it.  Maybe put a little more oomph into the explosion sound to make it a little more punchy and pop out of the general chaos of combat for that extra audio cue, but that might be nitpicky on my part.

    1 minute ago, MysteryPig said:

    I think something that could help this reductivity a lot is an eximus redesign. The only ones I find meaningful are the infested ancient eximi, because they have a little more staying power than the others. Grineer and corpus eximi, though, die too fast, and as a whole they're not dangerous enough. I don't think they should be super high-health minibosses, though; that would go against the current feel of combat, which I like.

    I agree that making them just bigger bags of health would not be the way to go on that, especially any that drain energy.  A lot of my deaths are down to having all my energy drained and being unable to kill the source of the drain without my abilities before I get overwhelmed, which feels a little like a cheap shot from the game.

     

    8 minutes ago, MysteryPig said:

    Instead, give eximi some attacks which:

    • present a serious threat to any player, maybe by doing straight health damage, or disabling abilities, or some other effect which is difficult to tank
    • are easily visible and slow moving, like the flame eximus wave
    • are dodgable
    • high cooldown, but trigger early, so they can be relevant before getting annihilated by plasmor fire.

    Also, bump their size scaling up another notch, they aren't quite b i g enough.

    Another avenue might be to give them access to some of their faction weapons that we don't see the enemy use too often.  Some of them are pretty flashy and dangerous.  I don't think any Corpus use the Opticor outside of the Index.  They might require some tuning to give them the desired telegraphing, though.

    • Like 1
  23. 3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Yes on all fronts. From what I've seen, Warframe used to have a movement system closer to Prince of Persia, with fairly little in the way of high jumps and mostly limited wall-running. You can see that design all over the Orokin Tower tileset. And while I can somewhat understand old tilesets not being built with Parkour 2.0 in mind, even Jupiter Remastered kind of... Isn't. There are I think three or so tiles which require any kind of parkour, usually a long wall run or wire-walking, but most of it takes place on flat ground. There are a few secrets and loot areas up high where you need parkour to reach them, but - as we've established - Warframe does a piss-poor job encouraging exploration so few ever go there. Yes, it's a larger tileset which much better ALLOWS for parkour, but it still feels designed to let players mostly walk their way from one end to the other if they don't like parkour.

    Enemy design is the one I can't really excuse, though. I know at the very least Cetus, Fortuna and Jupiter have come out after Parkour 2.0, and I can really only think of ONE enemy among all of those that really ties into parkour to any real degree - that Mortar Moa from the Terra Corpus. You know - the one which fires shots in the air and marks the ground where they fall so you know to parkour your way out of there to avoid damage? Pretty much none of the other enemies have been designed with mobility in mind. Not unless you count constantly being on the move and not even noticing grappling hooks and charging enemies. Tusk Grineer mortars could have been a good addition... If they'd marked the ground where they're about to fall. I suppose Terra Corpus grappling enemies (and grappling enemies in general) could have been a good addition... If they telegraphed their moves in any real way. Hell, why do Bombards still have homing missiles? Wouldn't THAT be the first thing to go if you want players to stay on the move?

    Jupiter was a step in the right direction, a lot more steps are needed to really get us somewhere with parkour in the tilesets.  As you say, with the exception of a couple of rooms, you can still just run through the whole thing on the floor.  Strong agreement on the enemy design issues.  I would love to see those ground markings from the Corpus mortars ported over to the Grineer mortars, and removing bombard homing might help.  Even if you could just break the lock by bullet jumping it'd be more interesting.  Add in a visual cue that you're been locked onto, perhaps, like with Ballistas. 

    I've also wondered for a while if giving enemies more mobility would encourage use of our own.  It'd almost demand that tiles be designed for it, but having to pursue enemies that can move vertically could be a way to get our own feet off the ground.  The Infestation might be a good candidate for that.  I could see crawling on walls fitting them very well thematically as well as possibly making them a greater threat.  They rely almost exclusively on melee attacks, after all.  Having them able to come at you from any direction and any angle might make them more interesting to fight.  I was very disappointed when Zealoids didn't become a part of the game at large after Arlo's Nightwave wrapped up.  Infested that could use the arsenal of Infested weapons we have available is a missed opportunity in my opinion.

    3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    Railjack is... An odd situation. There are advantages to moving the ship, certainly, just... Not many. Moving the ship doesn't seem to reduce incoming fire from Fighters. I don't know if they use hitscan weapons (it feels like they do) or just very fast projectiles, but I've never successfully dodged any of it. You'd think movement would be crucial when dodging the main guns of Crew Ships - the ones that hurt by far the most. Nope! Crew Ships fire homing projectiles that you can't really dodge. I mean, you kind of can with the slide, but they fire continuously so it's kind of pointless to bother anyway. Plus, we always have, like, four Crew Ships on the map anyway. Additionally, the Railjack is really sluggish outside of boost, and Boost is both limited and not that fast anyway. Maybe I could improve that with movement-specific build, but... Well, loot availability. And then there's the Slide, aka the Railjack Bullet Jump. For one thing, it's awkward to trigger, having to trigger a dodge THEN boost. It's effectively a much, much faster version of Boost, you can boost in all directions and it ends with an awkward shut forward regardless of the direction you're facing. Personally, I would ditch Boost entirely, make Slide the new Boost (i.e. using the Boost control inputs), get rid of Dodge entirely and replace it with the "end of slide shunt" but in all directions. That ought to make the ship feel a lot more numble and cut out a lot of pointless complexity that barely ever gets used.

    Odd is right.  For a solo player, the advantages of movement are insignificant.  Like you say, moving doesn't let you dodge incoming fire, especially not from crewships, so your time is better spent destroying them and just tanking the damage.  What other choice is there?  You can't outrun the enemy because they're faster, you can't out maneuver them because they're more maneuverable, you can only outgun them or board them.  I'll admit that I'm not sure what changes would benefit boost.  It's a situation where I'd need to be hands on with the alternatives to judge which approach is best.

    3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

    The thing is, though, that I as a pilot have been able to pull off some pretty cool stunts every now and again - when I care to engage with the system. I've used mobility to pull away from Ramsleds, giving my side gunners time to shoot them down, I've chased down fighters for easier shots on them (they fly away from you when you chase them, around you when you're stopped), dodged missiles and such. Unfortunately, it is as you say - Railjack combat is reductive because very little of this complexity is worth engaging in, very little of it is in any way communicated to the player, and it's all too often better to use cheap tactics over trying to be fancy. SO MUCH of Railjack's performance is tied up in Avionics and other gear that the starting ship is basically worthless... And that's people's introduction to it. It's like DE learned not a single thing from Operators and Focus...

    Ramsleds are, in my experience, best dealt with via homing missiles.  If they're too close for that, I just let them impact and deal with the boarding party.  That does remind me of one of my earliest disappointments with Railjack: Galleons.  The first Galleon I encountered was exciting.  When Cy told me that there were missiles incoming, I was ready to have to fight and fly my way through a barrage of incoming fire to reach my goal.  Then I watched the small batch of missiles launch, travel very, very slowly in my general direction... and then self destruct three kilometers short of my ship.  Over and over and over, missiles would launch, Cy would yell, and then the missiles would just give up and go away.  Disappointing is not a strong enough word.  You know what would encourage me to fly my ship around?  If those Galleons and missile platform objectives would actually send out periodic barrages of long range missiles that marked the battlefield like those Corpus mortar moas, albeit in three dimensions.

    Avionics are a particular gripe of mine.  I've seen comparisons to starter warframes, but I don't think that comparison holds water.  For one thing, the tutorial is balanced with the starter warframe's modless status in mind, which railjack really isn't.  Plus, there is a fundamental difference with their abilities.  Warframes come with a single ability unlocked and three more that become available as you use the frame.  Railjacks come with no abilities.  I got halfway through Saturn before I found my first battle avionic, and it ended up being less useful than spending my capacity on mods that made my railjack able to withstand a light breeze.  It have found a couple of more since then and they've all met the same end: collecting dust in my inventory.  I'm aware that avionics like Particle Ram and Void Hole can be very powerful, but those aren't the ones I've found.  As it stands, there's an entire aspect to my railjack that I was first prevented from using, and then discouraged from using, and then prevented again when I absolutely could not progress any further without devoting all my capacity to survival and turret damage avionics.  Capacity I can only hope to increase by fighting harder enemies, which means I need survivability over all else, which just reinforces the decision to never use battle or tactical avionics ever.  I can't even put in an orokin reactor to alleviate the issue, I have to grind for a ship reactor drop from the hardest railjack enemies available.  Is essence, I can have my battle avionics when I've proven that I don't need them and when there's nothing left to use them on.

    It's worse than not being encouraged to use railjack's complexity, I'm actively encouraged not to.

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