Railjack and the future of traveling the system

[GJMakuwitz]

Hey everybody, since railjack won't come out until next year I'd love to give my opinion on how I think we can improve and diversify traveling in the origin system.

 

First thing is first, the railjack must be integrated into the core gameplay of warframe or it'll be forgotten just like alerts, sorties and archwing missions. If it's just another side activity no one will care after a few months. Which is why I'm proposing this huge sweeping change, make the railjack the main way of traveling through the system.

You will no longer spawn in your orbiter, you will instead spawn in either cetus, fortuna or a relay (this will tie into another change I'll talk about later), which ever is closest in the star shart when you log out. The only way you can travel from planet to planet is using your own personal railjack (which will be like a combo of the railjack shown at tennocon and your orbiter) or a clan multicrew railjack. Railjacks can only dock at relays. When you travel between relay to relay you have a chance of stumbling upon a random encounter that you can either run away from or fight in, this will be like the railjack mission shown at tennocon but smaller scale or like a rescue mission on a tileset or what ever.

When your railjack is docked at a relay you can only access missions that are on that relay's planet or adjacent to that planet. for example if you play on PC and you're docked at Kronia you can only access missions that are on jupiter, saturn and uranus. This will mean protecting the relays will be extra important, and the enemies of the tenno know that. Every month or so there will be an attack on a certain relay, these will be special missions/events like having a grineer fleet parked around a relay and you have to play defense missions on the relay or fight some bosses or something like that. if enough support can't be mustered and the relay falls then one of the syndicates will have special missions for us to do over then next month to get the relay back. For example if steel meridian is chosen (syndicate selection won't be random it'll be according to a rotation list) then maybe you'll have some railjack missions where you infiltrate a grineer galleon to free some supporters or do an all out assault using a multicrew railjack on a galleon with other steel meridian AI to capture it. Missions using multicrew railjacks will be mid to late game and should be really difficult sorta like a raid.

I'd also love to have some more nodes on the star chart that are passed pluto and eris that have some special small relays that can only be accessed by multicrew railjacks and that are very dangerous to travel to. These relays will provide access to the end game missions. No more playing hydron to power level frames and weapons you need to get there first which will be hard, also you can't spawn at the small relays you can only spawn at regular relays so if you want to do endgame activities you need to travel there everytime using a multicrew railjack.

 

You might also be wondering other than the relays being docks for railjacks what are they used for? Each relay will have some bounties for you to complete every week sorta like destiny. Bounties will be categorized in sets, easy, medium and hard. The difficulty level will determine what rewards you can obtain once you've finished all of the bounties (sortie style). Each bounty you complete in a set will cause the next bounty to get progressively more challenging, for example if you choose to do the hard bounty set from the strata relay your bounties might look like this:

1. level 60-70 defense mission on earth, stay alive for 20 rounds
2. level 70-80 railjack mission, infiltrate a grineer galleon stationed around lua and kill the grineer boss
3. level 80-100 railjack mission with nighmare modifier, infiltrate the same galleon and destroy it
4. level 100-120 survival on lua with only sentient enemies, stay alive for 30 minutes
5. level 150-200 railjack missions, infiltrate sentient outpost complete 3 mission nodes (defense, sabotage with nightmare modifier and boss)

Hard bounties will replace sorties and bounties found at the small relays beyond pluto and eris should start at level 150 and get even harder. Also relays will increase in difficulty and reward pool as you travel further from earth.

 

Anyways those are some of my crazy thoughts, let me know what you think?

[Firetempest]

4 minutes ago, GJMakuwitz said:

The only way you can travel from planet to planet is using your own personal railjack 

No. Speed is the game. And bogging everything down and forcing people to play basically a new slow Warframe to make a new system absolutely crittical for play is pretty horrible. As a option. Sure. But instant action starchart map should be here to stay.

[Oreades]

Yeah cause all I want is to have to play a minigame any time I want to travel from point A to point B..... that won't get super old super fast. 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

Soo... A mechanic like No Man's Sky? I wouldn't mind as long as it's entirely optional AND has a super-duper ultra jet speed mode. And then to skip we'd just enter in a void portal gateway like in the current loading screen animation. That loading screen would be the same, although I'd suggest coming up with better, more visual loading screens.

But do I see this happening? No, if I am to be honest. As others said the manual travel would get old fast, and even if we added a "see a player out in space" mechanic it'd seem like a lot of time and resources to do a mostly useless thing (pretty, but not really practical). As for the better loading screens I don't know. I feel like some would complain about the rise in minimum settings since this game is supposed to run on potatoes. Not an expert anyway.

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Pauloluisx said:

Soo... A mechanic like No Man's Sky? I wouldn't mind as long as it's entirely optional AND has a super-duper ultra jet speed mode. And then to skip we'd just enter in a void portal gateway like in the current loading screen animation. That loading screen would be the same, although I'd suggest coming up with better, more visual loading screens.

I'm highlighting this part for importance because you said what I was about to post lol. 

Only thing I'd change is the void portal gateway to the solar rail (because junctions and lore and stuff).

[(PSN)robotwars7]

yeah, travelling everywhere manually via Railjack is just gonna have the oppsotie effect of what you want: it'll make us hate Railjack even sooner than we inevitably will once we get bored of it but still have to do it for whatever reason (kinda Like Archwing is now: most of us would rather not, but if there's a Nitain Alert on an Archwing node, many Tenno will reluctantly strap into their barely-levelled Odonatas and do the mission. they don't want to, and they'll complain about it, but Nitain is Nitain.) this is NOT what Railjack should devolve into.

DE's plan to incorporate it onto some missions as well as offer several different mission types that will also have regular gameplay sections seems like a sound plan so far. at least then when public squads involve a mix of lovers and haters of Railjack, those who love it can run support with the ship while those who dislike Railjack can do the on-foot sections, and then everybody gets to do something they like. everybody wins.

but let's just wait and see where Railjack goes first. DE will probably have more teasers for us in 2019, when most of us will have done the Fortuna Grind and start complaining about another content drought most likely.

 

 

 

[DrBorris]

[DE]Steve has said that the intentions of the tech behind Railjack is going to be applied to everything. And by this he meant the whole level streaming stuff. So, basically, you would never see a loading screen (except for the initial load after logging in). When you select a mission, you would just stand up, see some fancy skybox out your window, then jump into the mission. Once this level streaming is made universal, the possibilities are endless with how DE can implement new things. However, at base, the gameplay would be identical to what we have now (just more immersive).

 

The magic behind Railjack is basically that it is just glorified loading screens and 'fake' seamless level switching. Once DE gets that stuff on lock, that is when new gameplay opportunities can happen.

[(PSN)reddragonhrcro]

If anything it should be optional. Some will want to go straight to the point while others will enjoy the traveling aspect of it. I know I'd want it both ways because I would just want to select the missions I want to do if I'm working towards something while at other times I would love to cruise around with the ship and have fun with the crew or solo.

[Veridian]

Warframe does lack in the space department and 3 archwing tiles don't do much. I'm all in for anything that adds to that, as long as it stays optional so it doesn't hinder the rest of the game.

Every time I'm on the star chart I remember the old freelancer game, imagining going from relay to relay exchanging resources and fighting space pirates...

[FlusteredFerret]

12 hours ago, GJMakuwitz said:

Hey everybody, since railjack won't come out until next year I'd love to give my opinion on how I think we can improve and diversify traveling in the origin system.

 

First thing is first, the railjack must be integrated into the core gameplay of warframe or it'll be forgotten just like alerts, sorties and archwing missions. If it's just another side activity no one will care after a few months. Which is why I'm proposing this huge sweeping change, make the railjack the main way of traveling through the system.

You will no longer spawn in your orbiter, you will instead spawn in either cetus, fortuna or a relay (this will tie into another change I'll talk about later), which ever is closest in the star shart when you log out. The only way you can travel from planet to planet is using your own personal railjack (which will be like a combo of the railjack shown at tennocon and your orbiter) or a clan multicrew railjack. Railjacks can only dock at relays. When you travel between relay to relay you have a chance of stumbling upon a random encounter that you can either run away from or fight in, this will be like the railjack mission shown at tennocon but smaller scale or like a rescue mission on a tileset or what ever.

When your railjack is docked at a relay you can only access missions that are on that relay's planet or adjacent to that planet. for example if you play on PC and you're docked at Kronia you can only access missions that are on jupiter, saturn and uranus. This will mean protecting the relays will be extra important, and the enemies of the tenno know that. Every month or so there will be an attack on a certain relay, these will be special missions/events like having a grineer fleet parked around a relay and you have to play defense missions on the relay or fight some bosses or something like that. if enough support can't be mustered and the relay falls then one of the syndicates will have special missions for us to do over then next month to get the relay back. For example if steel meridian is chosen (syndicate selection won't be random it'll be according to a rotation list) then maybe you'll have some railjack missions where you infiltrate a grineer galleon to free some supporters or do an all out assault using a multicrew railjack on a galleon with other steel meridian AI to capture it. Missions using multicrew railjacks will be mid to late game and should be really difficult sorta like a raid.

I'd also love to have some more nodes on the star chart that are passed pluto and eris that have some special small relays that can only be accessed by multicrew railjacks and that are very dangerous to travel to. These relays will provide access to the end game missions. No more playing hydron to power level frames and weapons you need to get there first which will be hard, also you can't spawn at the small relays you can only spawn at regular relays so if you want to do endgame activities you need to travel there everytime using a multicrew railjack.

 

You might also be wondering other than the relays being docks for railjacks what are they used for? Each relay will have some bounties for you to complete every week sorta like destiny. Bounties will be categorized in sets, easy, medium and hard. The difficulty level will determine what rewards you can obtain once you've finished all of the bounties (sortie style). Each bounty you complete in a set will cause the next bounty to get progressively more challenging, for example if you choose to do the hard bounty set from the strata relay your bounties might look like this:

1. level 60-70 defense mission on earth, stay alive for 20 rounds
2. level 70-80 railjack mission, infiltrate a grineer galleon stationed around lua and kill the grineer boss
3. level 80-100 railjack mission with nighmare modifier, infiltrate the same galleon and destroy it
4. level 100-120 survival on lua with only sentient enemies, stay alive for 30 minutes
5. level 150-200 railjack missions, infiltrate sentient outpost complete 3 mission nodes (defense, sabotage with nightmare modifier and boss)

Hard bounties will replace sorties and bounties found at the small relays beyond pluto and eris should start at level 150 and get even harder. Also relays will increase in difficulty and reward pool as you travel further from earth.

 

Anyways those are some of my crazy thoughts, let me know what you think?

Sorry to pour water on your dream, but the devs have already said Railjack is going to be a separate thing from the rest of the Origin system. Probably why its being developed and released separately.

Railjack is basically their way of incorporating some of the stuff planned for Dark Sectors into the game (IIRC). Its basically going to be just another facet of the game, albeit a fairly major one (hopefully).

[Loza03]

Do you think they'd put so much dev time into the Orbiter and then just dump it? They changed the decoration system, added new rooms (some of which are vital to story quests, mind you) and all that. I don't think we'll be seeing it go.

We're keeping that method of travel. They even showed off that we can connect our Landing Craft to Railjacks for access traditional missions, so likely we can jump between Orbiter and Railjack. We need a place to spawn in after all.

That said, I can entirely see Relays acting as the 'Cetus' of Railjack. I doubt they'll be as vital as you suggest they should be, but it only makes sense. The free-roam areas in Warframe have always had a place to act as the hub, and what better place than the space stations we have floating about? If a larger-scale version of the Pyrus Project happens where the Tenno and Syndicates unite to make a large-scale reconstruction effort in the near future, which then serve as future hubs for Railjack 'bounties'. Even in the new relay there's a number of unused doors, and since they no longer have their scrapped plans to expand the relays, that seems to indicate those doors (which lead into the docking area, mind you) are intentional. Railjack docking area perhaps?

[-DG-ShadowPrime]

On 2018-10-08 at 2:55 PM, (XB1)Skippy575 said:

Only thing I'd change is the void portal gateway to the solar rail (because junctions and lore and stuff).

Railjack has a built-in solar rail. Which is used to travel the void portal and stuff

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

8 minutes ago, ShadowExodus said:

Railjack has a built-in solar rail. Which is used to travel the void portal and stuff

Oh! Missed that part I guess, ignore me then 😄