More Railjack Thoughts

[H0B0Z]

I was a crew chief on a large, multi-crew, cargo helicopter in the military.

It's exactly what you would imagine. Lean on big gun while looking out window for obstacles and threats.

But we had plenty of other additional tasks:

• Monitoring mechanical function of the aircraft - Not just looking at gauges. Sounds, Smells, etc. You could diagnose problems, literally, through the seat of your pants (vibrations).
• Monitoring System Fluid Quantities - We had methods to fill up fluids in-flight if needed.
• Assist pilots with Navigation - Routes were pre-briefed so you could be on the lookout for landmarks and significant terrain features.
• Internal Cargo - Loading, Unloading, Monitoring in Flight (think bullets/beans/band-aids)
• External Cargo - Sling loading things under the aircraft via hook. The pilots can't see under the aircraft so we literally talk them into position in a hover for ground crews to hook the slings.
• Loading Passengers (and all the ways to unload them) - Rappelling, Fast Rope, Parachute (static line and freefall), even pushing out a small boat and jumping out after it.
• Executing Emergency Procedures - Securing affected systems, troubleshooting, firefighting.

But most of the time you were leaning on a big gun looking out the window for obstacles and threats. But there were always things to be thinking about, monitoring, tweaking. etc. Going through checklists in your head, thinking of worst case scenarios and how to respond, just trying to stay busy and be efficient because, lets face it...staring out a window (even with a machine gun at your finger tips) gets boring. 

The extra tasks and upkeep inside Railjack are cool, i get that some people dig that gameplay, I did it real life and loved it. But with all the insanity going on in and outside the ship the biggest hurdle to Railjack is going to be communication. Clans and friends that play together, know each other, communicate well, are going to LOVE Railjack. Folks that can't even key their mic or type in chat when directly asked a question are going to have to come out of their shells or find something else to do. 

If Railjack has more going on besides go here, kill this, you're going to need to have crew coordination to be successful. If what was shown during the Dev Stream goes live (piloting/archwing/fire fighting/resource mgmt/target calling/boarding parties/away teams/BFG) people are going to have to start opening their mouths and engaging with their fellow Tenno.

Edited December 9, 2019 by H0B0Z

[Miser_able]

They also showed during the stream that there is a menu where you can "command" a player, and Cy will inform them. 

So instead of me having to type out, "so and so, go board the enemy ship", I'd just click their name and click that command and Cy would tell them. 

[ExcaliburUmbra]

9 minutes ago, H0B0Z said:

DE has solved this problem because every mission is going to be a worst case scenario.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Especially since several devs have even claimed on the Devstream that soloing is quite possible, just not optimal. The reason things seemed so hectic on the stream was because Rebb essentially brought an barely-upgraded Railjack to a higher level mission, and this was compounded by their...interesting positioning decisions during the firefight.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been wanted Warframe to have more interesting and meaningful co-op for awhile now. But I doubt missions will get as intense as we saw in the Devstream, assuming the players are at least decently prepared.

[Steru]

10 hours ago, H0B0Z said:

people are going to have to start opening their mouths and engaging with their fellow Tenno.

In a cooperative mode it is kinda expected and required.

I remember when raids used to be a thing in this game and communication was particularly helpfull to coordinate

I know that some people are just fine on their owns or have issues talking to other people, but as DE said in the last devstream, the beginning of empyrean (2nd part) will be heavily cooperative.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Steru

[H0B0Z]

4 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

They also showed during the stream that there is a menu where you can "command" a player, and Cy will inform them. 

So instead of me having to type out, "so and so, go board the enemy ship", I'd just click their name and click that command and Cy would tell them. 

Where were the radial menu commands for:

• There's a crewed ship directly in front of us.
• The fires are getting out of hand, can we disengage and pull range while I catch up?
• I'd prefer to just blow up that ship instead of boarding it.
• Stay on the waist guns and focus on fighters the crewed ships are too far away to be a threat.
• Hey guy in the archwing, better get back on board, I'm about to blink away from this swarm of fighters.
• Get off the BFG. I know this mission pretty well and I'm saving it fore the last wave.
• All three of you are out in archwing can one of you volunteer to come back and do damage control?
• Did you see that valuable resource we just passed?

I could go on for quite some time.

The point is, if DE wants these extra bells and whistles (which I think are pretty cool if done right), good comms are going to become increasingly important and a basic radial menu isn't going to cut for the amount of insanity that was presented during the Dev Stream.

[H0B0Z]

In a post about communication OP demonstrates that good communication is actually difficult by failing at it.😋

It's not my intent to call out Tenno for not being extroverted, for not wanting to use voice comms, for not wanting to be social. My wife frequently describes me as antisocial...and the shoe fits. I also generally play public groups. I typically have nothing to say. Maybe a gg after a mission. 

What I said applies to me as well.

I guess the point is DE is going to have to walk a fine line here. Task Overload is going to require good communication to avoid frustration. Task Underload is going to be boring.

That was my point.

I hope I have communicated it better.😉

[velsomnia]

56 minutes ago, H0B0Z said:

Where were the radial menu commands for:

• There's a crewed ship directly in front of us.
• The fires are getting out of hand, can we disengage and pull range while I catch up?
• I'd prefer to just blow up that ship instead of boarding it.
• Stay on the waist guns and focus on fighters the crewed ships are too far away to be a threat.
• Hey guy in the archwing, better get back on board, I'm about to blink away from this swarm of fighters.
• Get off the BFG. I know this mission pretty well and I'm saving it fore the last wave.
• All three of you are out in archwing can one of you volunteer to come back and do damage control?
• Did you see that valuable resource we just passed?

I could go on for quite some time.

The point is, if DE wants these extra bells and whistles (which I think are pretty cool if done right), good comms are going to become increasingly important and a basic radial menu isn't going to cut for the amount of insanity that was presented during the Dev Stream.

Yeah I called that out in another thread, the only time we even saw the radial menu was just to show that it was there. They obviously thought it was vital enough to be in the first release and yet they didnt use it a single time for the rest of the stream.

[master_of_destiny]

I want to ask everyone to stop for a moment, and just remember when this game had an identity rather than a truck load of mechanics held together by duct tape and spit, that kind of fit a generic theme.

 

Now that we've all had a moment of Zen, let's be real:

I don't have to rebuild a warframe on death, I never lose weapons when I die, and I don't have to hoard energy and ammunition when I want to start the next mission with everything.  This conceit to a good gaming experience over realism is functionally required, because having to grind out and build so much would have killed this game in the cradle.  Those of us who have been around a long time remember when you could buy lives, which renewed every day.  Yep, you could pay real money to respawn if an enemy one shot you because of scaling.

 

Nobody wants random groups to require skills that we cannot assume reasonably exist in most people.  To be fair, engineers exist.  The catch is that most non-engineers hate engineering tasks like monitoring and controlling things.  This is why Candy Crush is ubiquitous, but Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is an extreme niche.

 

4 person team.  Take out a pilot and gunner, and you've got 2.  Take out a repair monkey, and you've got 1.  How many people want to get onto a flying death machine, and make sure that power is balanced.  You'll note even DE carved this management mechanic out.  What you're asking for it to add micro-management into a horde shooter.  If you want that, please go find some other game.  It's not that I don't see the appeal, but you're going to a burger joint and ordering a falafel.  It may be cool on paper, but there's a reason shows like Star Trek focused on anybody but the red shirts and sanitation engineers.  Yes, I'm aware Voyager did exactly that, and if it was on Voyager and not copied from other sources it was demonstrably bad.

 

I'd like them just to release a competent system, but realistically I'll settle for not a dumpster fire.  Barring that, I'd settle for something that doesn't require a month of research to do anything but get my crap pushed in by low level mooks.  My bar is set low.

[Kaotyke]

13 hours ago, ExcaliburUmbra said:

I’ll believe it when I see it. Especially since several devs have even claimed on the Devstream that soloing is quite possible, just not optimal. The reason things seemed so hectic on the stream was because Rebb essentially brought an barely-upgraded Railjack to a higher level mission, and this was compounded by their...interesting positioning decisions during the firefight.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been wanted Warframe to have more interesting and meaningful co-op for awhile now. But I doubt missions will get as intense as we saw in the Devstream, assuming the players are at least decently prepared.

Check your friends list or if any squadmates are named "Leeroy".

If "Yes": For the love of Void, do NOT let them pilot!

[o0Despair0o]

The problem is that the majority of people in PUGs are tryhards who won't take orders from anybody except their mother.

[velsomnia]

I'm conflicted on it all, I have played long enough to see this game go from being purely solo due to the lack of being able to find squads anywhere to what it is today where we can usually find squads for anything. However the trade off for that increased coop experience has been more players that just do whatever they want. It really comes down to the fact that way back we played Warframe because we believed in it and understood how it needed to be played whereas these days its just another looter shooter to most players, I dont think they realize that their wrong actions do indeed have consequences on the rest of the squad in a big way. So yeah i'm fully expecting railjack to promptly faceplant because of the toxic randoms that just cant understand that the game is built on a win together or lose together philosophy. Those of us that will enjoy railjack though are the ones that understand the principal of winning together and those are all people that are going to be in private squads. Open play is going to be a total dumpster fire. 

[H0B0Z]

9 minutes ago, o0Despair0o said:

The problem is that the majority of people in PUGs are tryhards who won't take orders from anybody except their mother.

Meh. That hasn't been my experience at all.

My interactions with other players run the full spectrum of "gamer archetypes", but as a whole, most people in my squad are there because they have the same goal in this particular session that I do. Everyone wants to just get "X" done and get to the extract so they can queue up for the next mission. I pretty much exclusively play PUGS and I'm having a hard time recalling an instance of "toxic" behavior in 1500hrs of playing.

I just have a feeling Railjack is going to change that.

Like opening Pandora's box.

Edited December 9, 2019 by H0B0Z

[velsomnia]

4 minutes ago, H0B0Z said:

Meh. That hasn't been my experience at all.

My interactions with other players run the full spectrum of "gamer archetypes", but as a whole, most people in my squad are there because they have the same goal in this particular session that I do. Everyone wants to just get "X" done and get to the extract so they can queue up for the next mission. I pretty much exclusively play PUGS and I'm having a hard time recalling an instance of "toxic" behavior in 1500hrs of playing.

I just have a feeling Railjack is going to change that.

Like opening Pandora's box.

The problem with railjack is that it is just to busy, there are more tasks that have to be done than there are members in a squad. It's going to take near perfect communication to properly rotate between jobs to keep things running well. For one thing you pretty much have to have a dedicated fire fighter and a dedicated pilot so there is 2 out of 5 squad members out of commission. Then you should have both your side guns manned at all times to be picking off fighters which means you only have 1 squad member left unless you want to start leaving side turrets unmanned, that last member would need to start manufacturing jobs, compact resources, fire the main cannon when crew ships are in sight, and fly out in archwing if resources wont drop to craft cannon ammo. Thats a pretty optimal crew placement if everyone does exactly what they are assigned to do, in reality here is what will most likely really happen. You queue up to form a crew with your really nice railjack that is all decorated and the mission starts with people joining, instantly you get the guys that are like wow I have never been in a railjack before and proceed to run around and look at absolutely everything (bonus points if they start pushing buttons or asking a million questions about what everything does), starts begging to pilot the ship because they dont have a railjack and want to fly one and then proceed to suck at actually leading a target or worse try to ram other ships as a way of destroying them. If you can get them to follow orders you still have the problem of maybe they cant actually lead a target well enough to be useful on guns and have an underleveled archwing that cant survive even boarding the crew ships. More than likely the newbies are going to hop out in archwing and die over and over again which is going to require people dropping what they are doing and going out to res them so that they can promptly die again (Once again bonus points if they get annoyed with how much they are dying or annoyed at everyone telling them what they need to do and consequently drop squad) end result will be total party wipe due to a destroyed railjack. The mode is so unforgiving that even as devs they couldnt prevent the ship from dying multiple times, dev mode had to kick in and refill the health so many times.

[H0B0Z]

7 hours ago, velsomnia said:

The problem with railjack is that it is just to busy, there are more tasks that have to be done than there are members in a squad. It's going to take near perfect communication to properly rotate between jobs to keep things running well. For one thing you pretty much have to have a dedicated fire fighter and a dedicated pilot so there is 2 out of 5 squad members out of commission. Then you should have both your side guns manned at all times to be picking off fighters which means you only have 1 squad member left unless you want to start leaving side turrets unmanned, that last member would need to start manufacturing jobs, compact resources, fire the main cannon when crew ships are in sight, and fly out in archwing if resources wont drop to craft cannon ammo. Thats a pretty optimal crew placement if everyone does exactly what they are assigned to do, in reality here is what will most likely really happen. You queue up to form a crew with your really nice railjack that is all decorated and the mission starts with people joining, instantly you get the guys that are like wow I have never been in a railjack before and proceed to run around and look at absolutely everything (bonus points if they start pushing buttons or asking a million questions about what everything does), starts begging to pilot the ship because they dont have a railjack and want to fly one and then proceed to suck at actually leading a target or worse try to ram other ships as a way of destroying them. If you can get them to follow orders you still have the problem of maybe they cant actually lead a target well enough to be useful on guns and have an underleveled archwing that cant survive even boarding the crew ships. More than likely the newbies are going to hop out in archwing and die over and over again which is going to require people dropping what they are doing and going out to res them so that they can promptly die again (Once again bonus points if they get annoyed with how much they are dying or annoyed at everyone telling them what they need to do and consequently drop squad) end result will be total party wipe due to a destroyed railjack. The mode is so unforgiving that even as devs they couldnt prevent the ship from dying multiple times, dev mode had to kick in and refill the health so many times.

I'm not too concerned about the difficulty displayed in the dev stream. That can be tuned. Also, they admitted that their Railjack was poorly fit for the level mission they chose. I'm more concerned about just how much information there is to observe, process, and react to. Then decide "Who needs to know what I know and what I've decided to do with that information" so they can react accordingly. Otherwise you have four people with the same goal, but tackling it if four completely different ways. Each additional person operating on the same page increases the chances of success quite a bit and no one is going to be on the same page once "side tasks" start popping up without good communication.