(PC) Empyrean: Railjack General Feedback Megathread

[Vasala]

Please let the

Spoiler

Sentient ship spawn more frequently found it in a pug group recently I helped with the fighting part of the objective but 2 people rushed the ship and cleared it. I tried to go explore it after things were under control but the host returned us to dry dock so lost the chance to get to see the new area as the ship appears to have departed the area again.

 

[Sept3var]

- Railjack salvage repair is too damn expensive, the amount of resources you need even as a ghost clan is waaay to damn high. Its actually easier and faster to just farm 50 plat from relics or whatever and buy the rush repair drone from market.

- Ordinance base damage is too low and the missile speed is too slow.

- In the scrap avionics screen you cant tell which ones you have equiped and which ones you dont.

- Gunners need to be able to lock on to targets, as when the pilot is constantly moving around and void jumping its difficult to aim at anything

-the entire avionics section is confusing as heck, why do we need to upgrade the slot and the mod??

-ship shields dont seem to last very long, never seem to have any shiields at all while in combat

-Hull breaches occur too often

-electrical failures and fires on ship dont really affect anything, they just become an annoyance.

-We need a text feed for all the events happening on the railjack, with the cephalon only highlighting major events like boarding and critical damage.

-some of the guns have rubish heat sinks, and only allow 3-4 shots before they are forced to cooldown

- the mission should be done in stages to prevent people from just rushing the objective so other players get a chance to experiance everything.

-if our salvage is full let us choose what to scrap/replace/drop so we dont lose any good scrap that can be repaired.

-credit rewards need increasing, we spent 6 mill making this thing

-its annoying having to fly around in archwing or railjack to collect loot, give the ship a vaccum by defult so players can enjoy combat more rather then spending ages after combat collecting everything.

[MysticDragonMage]

8 hours ago, Zyion said:

Not sure that would solve the problem as the best way to take down Crewships is to board them. You could put an incentive for people to not use their Archwings as much (hell the current balancing does that plenty), but when jumping into an Archwing is so essential to complete missions, it isn't going to do much to keep people on the Railjack.

what if only a fully charged archwing could board crewships?

my suggestion was mainly for the people who fly in their archwing as an alternative to dealing damage on the side guns or doing anything else on the ship. in reality, they are not doing much damage to the fighters at all and would be much more useful within the ship using the side guns. it does not bug me that people are using archwing to board crewships. it only bugs me when they use nothing but archwing through the whole mission, never coming back to the railjack, and are far less efficient than other crewmembers.

the idea is that a fully charged archwing would make them effective for a short time before coming back for a recharge and help manage the ship. this is also potentially giving someone else a chance to use their fully charged archwing without hurting the crew's efficiency.

Edited December 18, 2019 by MysticDragonMage

[Genitive]

I would like the UI to show what avionics I have installed when viewing all avionics. If there is a way to tell, it's not good enough.

I already sold avionics I had equipped by accident and I would like to avoid this in the future. Going back and forth between avionics window and grid window won't cut it.

In general avionics UI is pretty bad. Information shouldn't be hidden behind fancy icons and boxes. At least allow us to sort these mods by installed (when viewing all the mods).

[Zyion]

21 minutes ago, MysticDragonMage said:

what if only a fully charged archwing could board crewships?

That would be awful given that Crewships hit like an armada of trucks. Delaying the taking out of a priority target would make a mode that is already pretty difficult even harder.

Honestly, the problem isn't Archwing, it's allot of things compounded on top of each other. The high amount of movement of a Railjack combined with the unpredictability of the pilot just makes it difficult to shoot anything in the side guns. So much so that it is generally just easier to jump into an Amesha and slow all the enemies down for easy pickings. The pick up range of the Railjack is also so small that you almost need people in Archwings flying around to grab all the loot. Most of my time in an Archwing is just grabbing the loot that the Railjack left behind. On top of it all, there's no guarantee that the owner of the Railjack bothered to properly upgrade the ship before going on a hard mission. Imagine if you played regular Warframe, but other people got to choose what gear you took. That's what Railjack is like for pugs. The one known in Railjack missions that players can control is their Archwing gear.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Zyion

[MysticDragonMage]

15 minutes ago, Zyion said:

That would be awful given that Crewships hit like an armada of trucks. Delaying the taking out of a priority target would make a mode that is already pretty difficult even harder.

nevermind what i said then.

4 minutes ago, Zyion said:

Honestly, the problem isn't Archwing, it's allot of things compounded on top of each other. The high amount of movement of a Railjack combined with the unpredictability of the pilot just makes it difficult to shoot anything in the side guns. So much so that it is generally just easier to jump into an Amesha and slow all the enemies down for easy pickings. The pick up range of the Railjack is also so small that you almost need people in Archwings flying around to grab all the loot. Most of my time in an Archwing is just grabbing the loot that the Railjack left behind. On top of it all, there's no guarantee that the owner of the Railjack bothered to properly upgrade the ship before going on a hard mission. The one known in Railjack missions that players can control is their Archwing gear.

i think you are connecting one two many strings to the archwing issue. its just saying that you want more predictable flight model, a larger vacuum range, and a more reliable way to be matched with better railjacks. that's all just the common things requested for railjack in general and i dont think the devs would give players any of this for the sole purpose of keeping players on the railjack and not flying around on archwing.

im not disagreeing with any of it, but dont see how anything you've explained connects with people who play archwing on railjack for the sake of having fun on archwing.

[DarkRuler2500]

There are alot of times where you have to transition in Railjack.

• Going inside enemy crewships without Slingshot
• Entering the stations
• Exiting a Crewship/the Railjack/the stations

In all of these situations I am stuck in a "boarding animation" and will easily be shotdown unless playing Inaros or something else tanky.

Please give us a small window of 3 seconds in which we can orientate ourselves to retaliate.

[Zyion]

26 minutes ago, MysticDragonMage said:

i think you are connecting one two many strings to the archwing issue. its just saying that you want more predictable flight model, a larger vacuum range, and a more reliable way to be matched with better railjacks. that's all just the common things requested for railjack in general and i dont think the devs would give players any of this for the sole purpose of keeping players on the railjack and not flying around on archwing.

im not disagreeing with any of it, but dont see how anything you've explained connects with people who play archwing on railjack for the sake of having fun on archwing.

Everything I described is pretty much the reason why I use Archwing all the time in Railjack missions. Being a gunner in a Railjack isn't as fun because it is harder with not much more in the way of effectiveness compared to Archwings. Archwings can just do so much more and you only need one other person on the Railjack to fight off boarders and repair.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Zyion

[AngelWednesday]

This may have been mentioned already but....

I just watched some footage of Tenocon 2018.

And in it there was our Ordis instead of Cy.

Could we have the choice of the Cy or Ordis voice pack please?

I understand if it's a bit difficult to swap them around but quite a few people have been asking for it.

Also could you put some Ordis voice lines in the Rising Tide quest please?

Especially when Cy is requesting extraction from Ordis.

Thankyou for this new and interesting addition to warframe and looking forward to getting round the star map a bit more as soon as my upgrades are ready. 😁💖

[LennyFace]

I just played some Railjack and I've noticed a few things and experienced some bugs. This seems like the best place to drop this, or at least the most convenient.

First: Hosting and Leaving. Railjack holds players hostage. The host mechanic is actually the worst thing that I have ever seen in a mission. In most endless game modes you can extract separately now, and in the rest you can head to extract with one other person and force an end. In railjack whoever launched the ship is the sole arbiter of when the mission ends. If you want to leave, you have to abort - even if your 'mission' is finished. You are forced to leave behind all your loot or go along with someone who doesn't want to leave. I was stuck for 20 minutes while our host flew 10 km out and refused to return because he wanted to look around. I'm cool with people wanting to do that, I'm not cool with a short mission getting turned into an hour-long endeavor because of a mechanic. 

Second: Firepower. The guns on the railjack are absolutely garbage. Even at the lowest level of mission on earth they cannot take out a single ship, even if you fire them to overheat and hit every round. My arch-gun with one mod does more damage than mounted turrets on a full size ship. You only have 13 torpedoes, and they can't even one-shot a drop ship. Multiple regular rifles can on foot. Why is a full-size ship hosting multiple tenno less powerful than a single tenno on the ground? This needs balancing. The turrets on the front and sides of the railjack hit from 0-14 on even the fighters, the lightest enemies in railjack. Also, I've had captured enemy drop ships kill me, so I can only conclude that the enemy guns can kill you when fired by your teammates. 

Third: Health and Armor. Shields are worthless. They always have been and they will be for the foreseeable future. Even frames like Mag and Hildryn are only worthwhile because they have a massive relative shield pool and can replenish their shields to stay alive, or in hildryns case, has shield-gating and can leech shields. The use of shields on the railjack makes our effective health pool only 1000. Which brings me to my next point - the health pool is entirely too small. A troop ship, less than a quarter the sized of a railjack, from the grineer, has 3 times the health of the railjack, and much more armor. In addition it just has better guns. Just flat out. It actually kills things. Why do simple grineer drop ships that I can take out with a rifle on the ground have more health and armor than a tenno battleship? Definitely needs balancing.

Fourth: Maneuverability. Why is every single grineer ship faster than I am in my archwing, and thus exponentially faster than the railjack? I can only catch up to them using blink, and then try to hit them as hard as possible to take them out. They can easily out-maneuver the railjack and make it near impossible for gunners to track them. The lack of corkscrew rotation along any horizontal path means that its extremely difficult to open up gunner line-of-sight to enemies.

Fifth: Pathfinding. The railjack is huge. We don't have third-person, and we can't rotate the ship. You're supposed to rely on your teammates' gunning skills [with incredibly under-powered guns] to protect your sides - but they can't see or predict what you are doing. In the cockpit you don't have good sight-lines and you don't have any indicator where, say, a massive cannon is relative to your position, so you get nailed [in your incredibly under-armored ship]. Then, when you get out of the railjack to deal with the drop ships that you can't shoot out of the sky, or to take out the reactors on the grineer galleon, the markers are horrendous. 

Pathfinding has been an issue in Warframe since day one, and for the most part you learn to sink or swim with it, and outsmart the indicator leading you the wrong way. Most of the time it's just a matter of the marker being unable to differentiate what floor objective is on and thus being unable to determine the actual path to take, or at least being unable to communicate that to players. In railjack it's much worse. The indicator will tell you to enter a base, then tell you an objective is hundreds of meters away - but the marker doesn't appear on the map when you pull it up. The objective doesn't exist. You can explore an entire tile set and never find it. This just needs to be fixed.

Sixth: Feel of the mission. This one might be nit-picky, but it bothers me enough to mention it. I had really high hopes for railjack. It looked so cool! A big ship blasting away grineer, letting me and my pals act like space pirates! Crews on teh ground getting in on hte action and really letting me play with a lot of friends on high-intensity missions. Man, the trailers looked so dope. Instead I'm in a slow, cumbersome, under-powered, under-armored ship which places almost all responsibility on the pilot. It feels like I'm in a worse archwing mission. Especially the looting. It's the exact same as archwing. The vast majority of loot is scattered in containers in debris fields - which is fine and fits teh aesthetic - but I have to fly almost through the loot to get it. I have this enormous ship that basically can't do anything. Why can't it have magnets, or a tractor beam, or even arms to grab loot? Just something that means I can get loot without spending 30 minutes flying around breaking boxes. It's such an enormous disappointment. 

I know this is an early version of the game mode and it will definitely get better, but this was just demoralizing. 

Fifth: The bugs, oh lord the bugs. I'll just include a brief description for each.

- Archwing glitch in which you can't be helped by teammates to respawn [also exists in free-roam on Orb and Plains]

- Respawn from archwing will spawn you flying as though in an archwing, without the archwing rendered, using non-archwing weapons [eg my zaw]

-You can clip into enemy fighters and ships with blink pretty regularly

- As mentioned above, your teammates can shoot you with enemy drop ship weapons when you're in archwing

- Entrance/exit from enemy ships and bases causes both of the above respawn issues.

- A level 20 railjack mission will spawn level 50-60 grineer enemies in the ship [IDK if this is a bug, but it's definitely annoying and misleading].

Other people have mentioned more to me when I was chatting with them, but since I haven't experienced them I won't mention them here.

[Colyeses]

Zetki reactors are entirely useless. Huge Flux reserves, but due to having no avionic capacity, you can't equip the avionics you would use that Flux on. Remove them from the game.

[SpringRocker]

When it comes to using Archwings in Railjack missions they to go together. The feeling I get when doing the missions is that the Railjack is supposed to be the main weapon, force, and focus that the team uses while Archwings are designed to be the small intercept craft. What I'm trying to say is a lot of people talk about how difficult missions are but go into those missions with unequipped Railjacks. With that being said I think Archwings need to be reexamined in the context of Railjack.

- The Itzal used to be the goto for it's quick mobility and invis. After blinks were changed and given to all Archwings (for no energy cost for usage) Itzal lost it's role for mobility. With blink no longer breaking lock-ons or applying brief stuns it was eliminated as a counter-measure/defensive ability. Itzal's Penumbra ability also no longer works; even cloaking then blinking or moving (this is probably a bug as it has been tested and Itzal is indeed still invised, but moving no the less) enemies still track and shoot Itzal. Itzal no longer has counter measures, mobility and counter measures were why people used it.

- The Odonata was known by many as the first Archwing that you get before getting Itzal (sadly, but it's true). It's fairly basic with defensive, offensive, and crowd-control abilities (which is great for a first Archwing). The trouble comes in that it's main ability, Energy Shell, is a great defensive/offensive tool but doesn't protect against attacks that hit the shield in (in Railjack missions). Flares that should redirect lock-ons also no longer work and appear to be broken; having a lock-on, flares out, and blinking away does nothing for the lock-on. Repel is a great ultimate ability, but in Railjack it falls short. The enemy's speed seems to scale with your speed and have momentum when hit by Repel, takes a while to chase/blink into an enemy to use Repel and when you do you're still chasing it for another dozen seconds. Odonata is dated and it shows when a lot of the ability aspects aren't effected by ability mods nor is the tool tip accurate in regards to some abilities (like Energy Shell). Not only does Odonata need to be reexamined and updated but some of the abilities fixed to work with Railjack missions.

- I've never used the Elytron but after looking at what it does it seems that it just does static damage. If it's damage doesn't scale (for more difficult Railjack missions) then archguns will always be better to use so it might be time to revamp from scratch (once again, I've never used it that's just my thought).

- The Amesha is now the Archwing most people are using. It's Watchful Swarm enables it to ignore damage, since this is done by hit rather than damage the ability can be spammed allowing you to ignore as much damage in low level missions as high level missions. While Watchful Sawrm is a good ability on it's own you can setup an infinite energy loop using Vengeful Rush. Benevolent Decoy attracts enemy fire and heals friendlies, this is a good ability BUT players generally use it to cheese low level or naked Railjacks into surviving high level missions (where players just sit with the ship inside the field). Warding Grace is a great AOE crowd control that slows enemies down to almost nothing. The Amesha has damage immunity, a great/persistant counter measure, and AOE cc on channel for enemies. This Archwing has abilities so great that it provides ways of players cheesing missions regardless of the Railjack and out performs all others in all aspects.

 

It's my opinion that Archwings need to have another look along with (possible) bug fixes. There's rumors of modular Archwings on the horizon (similar to zaws and kitguns) but I think these should be fixed first. The Itzal, Odonata, and Elytron are under performing and need to be brought up while the Amesha over performs as it outclasses the others in every way (to the point of cheesing levels) and should also be reexamined.

[Pikachu195]

I gotta say, you just did the dumbest game design I could think of. In order to end a session you have to practically select a mission in railjack, so after a full day of trying to get the SPECIAL ship to spawn in veil proxima, I  finally get it and  while I finish the quest a hotfix drops and now I can't go to the dry dock because why should I be able to finish the mission I've been hoping for the whole day  if a hotfix drops? Please for the love of god either change the way a game session ends/give an alternative/make an exception because now I have to spend another day trying to get it to spawn for me. 


turns out I can abort it , lose every pick-up but still get the final rewards for finishing and the hidden quest, but anything I picked up as drops from fighters/kills/containers is gone. 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Pikachu195

[FoolsFolly]

I honestly wish that Archwings had controls like those of the Railjack, where momentum lags slightly behind aim, and maximum turning speed is throttled. In a 3D space this makes steering and aiming much more intuitive, and right now flying an archwing feels clumsy.

[Cyber_Sheppie]

Here's a bit of my feedback.

The game mode itself is incredible fun, but there are a few things that makes it a bit annoying. The ship feels a bit weak, despite Cy bragging about it being the best in class. Going in along will most likely end in failure as the ship really can't take a beating right now. Friends I play with have resorted to parking far away from the battle, and going in with Archwing, making it really just a more difficult Archwing Mission. 
If the Grineer can have flying bricks(crewships) that can take a beating, why can't we.

Besides this, there's still a few things that irks me with customization. Repair prices for components are steep, and having to repair a component before trying it out makes people go for the Meta, rather than try things out, as trying things out currently is a severe material sink.

Also, it seems the Sungem skin has problems with the Glyphs being flipped. Having an option to flip the Glyph would be really useful.

[Novaster]

Well, I sifted through a few threads and such to see if anyone had mentioned anything about the following and came up empty.

I'm a bit of a codex freak so I have scanned several of the new ships to completion. I thought this might be helpful in seeing which proxima to farm to get certain desirable avionics. For the most part, it is useful but here's my issue and suggestion to rectify the issue:

The lack of information regarding specific variants (House) of certain Integrated Avionics regarding which enemies drop which House variant at which rarity-frequency is... rather lacking.

With some minor detective work, you could figure out the best Conic Nozzle by comparing their effect levels and proooooobably-safely assume the one with the highest effect is the RARE one. So, Conic Nozzle (Lavan) is prooooooobably the RARE drop from the Gyre Flak, and Conic Nozzle (Vidar) is probably the COMMON drop from the Elite Gyre Taktis. The Conic Nozzle (Zetki) is likely the remaining UNCOMMON drop.

But I could be wrong! And I just wantsta know!

It would be nice to distinguish these in the codex drop tables, and not only for nerdy purposes. As they are now, it's a little ambiguous... a player might say, oh, that avionic is more common from this enemy so I'm going to go after it more, and then they'll waste time not getting the best Conic Nozzle.

Clarifying this issue would also probably make Railjack less confusing in general. Players should understand there's variants of the same avionic for several Integrated Avionics. You could compare such avionics to Fury vs. Prime Fury for understanding, I suppose. But having the distinction in the codex + in-mission drop notification as well as the Avionics UI, would be nice!

Besides naming distinction, perhaps we could also see some avionics rarity coloration as we do with mods. Familiar Bronze, Silver, and Gold backgrounds? Yes please.

Eventually this sort of thing gets sorted out on the wiki (by the way good job editors getting a lot of it sorted already!), but it is so very nice for personal planning reasons to have information ready in-game. Then again, the entire Railjack system needs a nice in-game codex and... in the face of that, my issue here seems like a very minor mint on the pillow.

I've added a screenshot combo below to further clarify this issue.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Novaster
avionic, not mod.

[Ikusi_Prime]

On 2019-12-12 at 2:09 PM, [DE]Bear said:

Empyrean: Railjack General Feedback Megathread

Use this megathread to post all of your general feedback about using a Railjack. As a reminder, if you have any feedback about the following specific items, use the megathreads below:

Railjack Matchmaking Feedback Megathread

Railjack Mission and Difficulty Feedback Megathread

Tenno Reinforcements Feedback Megathread

Intrinsics Feedback Megathread

Economy Feedback Megathread

If you have a bug to report, or you think something may be broken, then please make sure you let us know over on the Empyrean: Bug Report Megathread, so we can see them easily and address any issues.

Please remember to keep your feedback civil, constructive and succinct. It doesn’t help us find issues or know what you enjoy if you do not explain clearly what you do or do not like, why you do or do not like it, and what you would like to see differently if you dislike a system.

Have fun, and let us know what you think!

I'm gonna make a separate post about this going into details, but my major feedback is how absolutely terrible Archwings feel in Railjack missions. You get blown to bits almost instantly, even in the low-level missions. It doesn't feel like you're even given a chance to fly around outside the ship. Combine that with the nerfs to Archwing weapons, and there's virtually no point in exiting the ship unless you use the Slingshot to enter the enemy ship, kill it or hijack it ,then teleport back to your ship.

I would like to see Archwings get at least 50% evasion. I'd honestly push it to 75%. The near-perfect accuracy of enemies in Railjack missions is appropriate for shooting at a giant Railjack with well over 2k hit points and 1k armor, but Archwings are tiny targets with far less survivability. They should be harder to hit, but take a beating if they do get hit.

Even better, have a "lock-on" mechanic where enemy ships have significantly less accuracy shooting at an Archwing (like you would expect them to), but the longer they're shooting at an Archwing, their accuracy goes up. It's your job to stay evasive and drop their locks using fancy maneuvers and clever piloting. If you just fly around in straight lines, you'll get hosed, but you would actually have the opportunity to get out and fight in your Archwing when the ship's guns aren't cutting it or you're just trying to help your team on the way to the enemy ships.

That's another thing: Archwing weapons need some oomph in space. There is/was a bug that let you use your standard weapons in space if you use the Slingshot, and they are so much more effective than the giant Archwing weapons. I would have no problem with making them projectiles if the reward for landing your shots was actually worth it, but you have a peashooter that's difficult to aim. Archwing weapons should be comparable to the Railjack's turrets. They're about the same size, and you're not protected by the ship out in space.

Otherwise, the Railjack expansion is a knockout. Sure, there are a lot of bugs and crashes to iron out, but the core gameplay experience is amazingly smooth and fun. You feel like a badass doing backflips through space as you gun down enemy fighters. Once it gets completed, Empyrean will be an incredible accomplishment.

Just improve Archwings. That's all I ask.

[Sador1978]

Not sure this is the best place, but it does say General Feedback.

I am probably not the best one to get off into the weeds of drop rates or meta-analysis.  But I will say this, the missions take too long for what we are being rewarded, both in drops and mission completion awards.  My friend and I have great fun with the mode, but we only have a limited time where our schedules intersect and while we can get stuff done in the regular mode, in Railjack every mission turns into a slog really quickly.  As Brozime has said, it's largely a numbers thing.  I got bugged a couple days ago and had use of my kitgun instead of my Archgun and it was night and day different.  I was literally one and two-shotting stuff that I could barely scratch with my Archgun.

Here's my short list:

• break the armaments up into "Main" and "CIWS" variants and make the forward guns hit harder, track slower and look graphically beefier.  We're piloting a warship, not some gimpy ass aerospace hopper
• adding on to the first, the forward cannons need to have the capability to blow the hell out of larger targets over time, it gets really old playing debris tag with crewships
• the CIWS turrets need some sort of art when you are using them to give reference to the front of the ship and relative bearing, something.
• supply limited weapons, like missiles and the Galvarc, need to be more specialized.  Either quickly dealing with numerous lesser targets or heavily armored single targets, with corresponding lock time and travel speeds.
• the avionics need some color coding or some other indicator between equipped and unequipped

I could go on, but it's really just a few things and it'd be bang on.  Bur right now, it feels like we're flying a prototype that was rushed into use without the proper armament out of desperation and not a top of the line mass produced warship of a borderline post singularity civilization.

I will leave some videos of reference material, some of it admittedly quite old, they don't make a lot of games like what it feels like Railjack wants to be any more.

Freespace 2

 

[Midas]

Make

Spoiler

Sentient ship rotate veil nodes every hour!

If this is a prereq for New War we need access to it at all times

Not to mention the drop rate of the new ephemera from rare crates there for farming purposes

You can let us run it at least once a hour.

 

[GunRaptor9000]

This is going to be a bit personal, but I feel like Digital Extremes needs to know about how this update is affecting some of its most ardent fans.  Thus, I will share the experience that my girlfriend, two clan-mates. and I had during our Railjack misadventure this evening.

All four of us are at least "decent" Warframe players, though it would probably be fair to say that we are on the upper end of "average" to the lower end of "high-skill" in this game.  My girlfriend got me into the game about two years ago....right around the time of PoE's release.  After experimenting and getting the Vectis Prime from the Twitch drops that were going crazy for that release, I was hooked.  This game gave me something that few other games could in my substantial library on Steam...it gave me an ever growing and never ending universe to focus on when I was in extreme pain.  I was in an aviation accident years ago, and ever since, I have lived in progressively worse physical pain due to the injuries I sustained.  Similarly, my girlfriend grew to love Warframe because it provided her with an anchor for her own, very different, medical difficulties.  When she had to move away for professional and family reasons, Warframe became the replacement for going out on dates together and whatnot.  As such, there is a large degree of emotional attachment that goes with playing Warframe, as it has become "our game," for lack of a better term.  We have both purchased, and have continued to purchase, Prime Access when it's something we're interested in, and have multiple Clem noggles and other Warframe merchandise decorating our home now that we have moved back in together.

With all of the above considered, the past year's relatively sparse content has been frustrating for both of us, but there was the light at the end of the Solar Rails in the form of Railjack for which we were holding high hopes.  Further, "The New / Old War" and "The Duviri Paradox" also had us looking forward to the future of Warframe.  We prepared our Dojo, helped our clanmates to level up, farmed liches, and did all kinds of prep in excited anticipation for Railjack, while still tempering our expectations because we recognized that DE was basically giving us a whole new game.  Obviously, bumps were expected for launch, but while watching Dev Streams and Prime Time we could see the confidence DE staff maintained throughout the "content drought," and figured that it was due to their confidence in the product they were cooking up for a year-end release.  I won't lie, this may have somewhat inflated our expectations, but not ridiculously so.

Come Rising Tide....and DE gives us a chore.  Fine, whatever, we need a way to get introduced to Cy and such, but it would be kind of impossible to call it fun or rewarding for players with hundreds of hours spent in the game.  I got it done, she....didn't.  She described it as being as if DE....an entertainment company...was bossing her around.  I would kind of have to agree, as Rising Tide felt more like it was a quest given by "DE" rather than any in-world entity, with ridiculous time gating and little actual reward.  I got it done, we had a Railjack to use, a couple members of my clan mostly got their own Railjacks together, but mine became something of a go-to.  I suppose I got it done mainly because I wanted someone to have one in our clan, as more than one said that they would "get the ship when they could actually use it."  So, rough roll out, but it built some excitement.

Eventually, the Game Awards came around, and we could guess what was coming that night.  We were more excited than Tyl Regor.  While I certainly don't thing [DE]Reb at all poorly represented the game at the Game Awards, it was kind of apparent that most of the stream-chat was Warframe fans waiting for the word to update (which then immediately slowed down), and very little in the way of "hook" for potential new players.  It felt unnecessary, but, who could care?  Railjack was released!  Time to be SPACE NINJA PIRATES!

We try it out....and it's incredibly buggy (a tad more so than anticipated, but DE always fixes their stuff with time), the Railjacks have weaker weapons than the Viper (surely it's just the starter gear), and we get multiple crashes (the real killer) resulting in a very-upset bed partner that evening.  As a result, and in legitimate respect for DE, she decided to avoid the game too much during the period of instability, while I tested out the waters.  Within very short order, I have an almost all MkIII Railjack (despite multiple painfully frustrating crashes and progress-stops that caused a large amount of loot-loss), and she and my clanmates are getting more and more into it.  To add even more excitement, we hear word of a new quest hidden in Veil Proxima, indicated with a blinking icon. 

Come this evening, and I'm having multiple runs that play flawlessly following the hotfixes.  The day was physically taxing for medical reasons on both of us, and seeing that one of our favorite shared experiences had a major event occurring, I got her and two clanmates together for our first Railjack run of the evening together.  Low and behold, I have a blinking icon on a mission node, and ALL OF US GET EXCITED.  We felt as if we were going to get to be a part of the history of our favorite video game....or, honestly, hobby, in the case of gallantblues and I.  The mission starts off great, our teamwork and communication is strong, and we're knocking enemy units out of the sky one by one.  Then, the first sign of trouble appeared, as one of our clanmates encounters a glitch that prevents him from exiting Archwing, and he ends up stuck outside of the Railjack.  As I'm piloting us through the clouds of enemies, I compensate for this by directing my other clanmate and gf to shift their roles, while our glitched friend takes on full Archwing duty.  It's looking like we'll be able to work through this when suddenly I get the "no HUD glitch," making piloting essentially impossible.  Alright...fine.....I have no ship info, no aiming reticle, no target boxes, and no waypoint markers....I can't pilot us anymore because enemies are naturally small and space is big.  To deal with this I have my gf man the gunner's seat and engineering, place my un-glitched clanmate into the cockpit despite his lower skills and unfamiliarity with my ship, and start using myself as a cannonball with the Archwing Slingshot.  This is working *okay* and we cut through most of the enemies that remained, up until the final straw.  During the final phases of the battle, my girlfriend gets the dreaded "black screen glitch" while moving around the ship using her multitool. At this point, all that's left is to go to the anomaly and whack it with a Paracesis or whatever...the big finale we were planning to all do together when all threats were put down.  However, at this point I can't see where it is, one of my clanmates can't land to go in, and my girlfriend can't see ANYTHING.  Of four players, three were critically glitched, and what we expected to be an awesome experience of Digital Extreme's greatest update yet....ended up in all four of us to agree to abort, restart....and give up for the day....or maybe week....or however long it takes to fix the mess we just suffered.  All of us left deflated.  One of our clanmates decided to stop playing Railjack to focus on his lich for the rest of the evening.  The other went back to selling his Ivara Prime sets, putting what just happened behind him for the time being.  Probably being bigger Warframe fans by a large margin than either of our clanmates, my gf and I turned Warframe off and played other games for the evening, as our hype had been thoroughly killed.  I would not be exaggerating in saying that it affected my gf to such a degree that I became concerned about her medically.

I've taken over 30min of my evening writing this not because I am angry at DE, or want to hate on what they have published; quite the opposite.  If I didn't care, i would have just gone and spent my entire evening playing some other game.  I took the time to write this because the relatively small team at Digital Extremes has created and maintained one of my favorite fictional universes, which has in a real way both made my relationship with my partner better, and positively impacted me in dealing with my physical disabilities.  I took this time to highlight that when you release something to your dedicated fans that's unfinished, or even broken, it can impact them in ways you wouldn't expect while pushing release schedules to the left, and figuring that hot fixing will solve the problems. 

I want to see a Warframe that lasts longer than even certain MMORPGs, but if SteamCharts following this update is any indication, I may not see that hope fulfilled.  Unlike with PoE, my introduction to this franchise, there was no celebration around Railjack....it was just kind of slowly....there.  The gaming media only took mild notice of Warframe effectively doubling in size.  But most troubling of all.....in game, while playing.....many random teams I'm with essentially leave the Railjack behind as a liability, and complete the missions mostly with their Archwings.  Railjack, as a mode, is being bypassed. Or, worse, it's not even bringing back old players because they aren't seeing its potential.

As a newer fan of this game, with only two years spent playing, I doubt anyone could call me anything less than one of Warframe's biggest fans.  I know DE ALWAYS fixes their product with updates and hotfixes.  You proved this with Sanctuary Onslaught, with Arbitrations, and dozens of other additions.  However, I feel this was different.  Tonight, we felt failed by DE, as we were denied entry to view the future of the game....and not through paywalls or low-brow milking techniques of other games.  We were denied our part in this game's future for the evening by a poor quality product.  While the other methods would have assured that we never would have been fans, the latter makes us concerned as fans.  We know you'll fix it, but tonight, our experience to be part of two years of buildup died an ignominious death, withering on the vine in hopes that this entire harvest will not be similarly consumed by blight.

So, to the amazing team at DE, I ask you to please push your schedules out farther to the right if you need to in the future.  Your fans cannot and will not be your beta testers.  They will close the game and do something else, for the most part, while a very, very few will come here to tell you that they did not have a good time because it was too full of glitches to play.  We want you to succeed, we actually want to give you our money....but you have got to give us something that works and doesn't cause our significant others' evenings to be ruined, and provide a capstone to already bad days.  We already waited two years to play Railjack, what makes you think we won't wait another few weeks / months / even years? Perhaps calling this "Empyrean: Beta" would have been more appropriate, with a full release in 2020?  I know that would have left me in a far more forgiving place this evening, even if literally everything else had played out the same.

I'm too tired to edit this, and while much of this is "emotional feedback" rather than "technical feedback," I felt the team at DE deserved whatever I could provide this evening for how hard they've worked over the past year.  I want you to have the best shot you can....and so, as one of your biggest and most consistent fans of the past two years, I wanted you to know how you missed the mark rather heavily with this one.  Here's hoping that it's only a matter of days before I get to come back to this post and edit it saying "hey, we tried again after the hotfix and had a great time!" but I won't be overly optimistic, so as not to have unrealistic expectations.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like further remark.  I'd be happy to lend what hand I can.

Edited December 19, 2019 by GunRaptor9000

[Hyohakusha]

Here's a list of the general game state positive/ negatives of Railjack.

+ We get slightly more titanium now.

~ Avionics can be traded, to boost plat transactions obviously.

- Scrap repair costs are still outrageous. No mention of changing this in the Dev Workshop.
- Pustrel quantity per drop is still terrible.
- Even with a booster, general material quantity per drop is terrible.
- Basic essential mods for Railjack survivability have a 1% drop chance off of an enemy with 1/10 chance to drop a mod.
- Mod drop tables for Railjack make no sense in general.
- Actually collecting mods and materials is a massive annoyance, and its incredibly easy to miss them.
- Mission "rewards" still have Ferrite and Rubedo.
- Enemy HP and Armor values are insane.
- Dirac gain was nerfed.

- Crashes, failure to load missions, unable to return to dojo.
- Matchmaking is a mess.
-/+ Loot from interior areas still isn't shared. DE said they're working on it, hopefully this will be changed soon.
- And Archguns are currently bugged with what really feels like a test of a possible future nerf.



Cut the costs to repair scrap guns in half, at least.
Double the pustrel quantity per drop. They're used for omni fuel. We burn them too quickly.
Increase the quantity per drop on materials in general.
Mods like Maxima, Bulkhead and Hullweave should have higher drop rates.
Saturn should have higher quantities of rewards, and better quality of rewards than Earth, same for Veil compared to Saturn.
Drops from enemy ship kills should be automatic pickups, or the vacuum range on the RJ and AW needs to be increased by a very substantial amount. They should also be more visible regardless, and visible from a greater range.
End of mission rewards should only consist of materials pertaining to RJ.
Tone back the 500 base armor and 1.2k hp values.
Increase end-of-mission dirac rewards.

The last four are all bugs/ issues that will hopefully be fixed. Archwings don't deserve to be nerfed any further. There's potential, but the fun aspects of RJ are heavily outweighed by the negatives. A little bump in Titanium doesn't even come close to rectifying those issues.
 

[Borg1611]

This is far from being one of the biggest issues currently, but since most of the biggest issues have already been mentioned a lot, I just wanted to add that I like the idea of the avionics that buff Archwings in a radius around the Railjack, but the existing ones have basically useless values. The radius that they buff in must have been a placeholder value or set when the scale of the maps was different or something. The values of the buffs themselves also seem to be trivial in most cases even at max value with max grid upgrades.

For example, some of the mods indicate that they have a radius of only 60-100m. This isn't even a radius per rank as the radius does not scale. I haven't tested them to see if this is an accurate tooltip, but if it is, that's basically like standing on top of the Railjack and if you flew away from it for like a second or so you'd be out of range of the buff. If I'm not mistaken, enemy ships have an aggro range of multiple thousands of meters and when there's a swarm of fighters attacking a RJ, they're probably flying around you within at least several hundred if not a couple thousand meters.

These Archwing buffs should at least extend to Archwings that are flying around in the same general area helping the RJ. I would say maybe make them at least 1-2k meter radius buffs. Or make them scale with rank and have it like 500m per pip. That would give the high pip + max grid upgrades ones a 5kish radius and let you buff not only Archwings in the immediate area, but also ones that are flying out to meet incoming fighters/crewships (and this would still only be a tiny area of the massive maps).

The actual buffs they provide currently are also pretty weak. I'm not sure the shield or armor buffs would make any meaningful difference in your survival unless you are planning a significant overhaul of the Archwing's base stats. Maybe make them large static amounts of armor and shields that would make a noticeable impact or convert the armor one into a decent damage reduction aura instead of armor%. Currently even Amesha just dies instantly to crewship fire if her 1 is down, so having a decent RJ survival aura for Archwings fighting outside would be nice. Also, maybe add some additional ones that add a healing and energy regen buff.

[Cristovelli]

More feedback, see previous post for continuation

18. Each planet needs its own Free Flight zone, which should more accurately be called something like a Neutral Zone, which serves as a safe lobby for accruing players, where a mission can be voted on like normal.

19. Arch mods need to be added to drop tables in such an arch-centric game mode. I'm getting like Vitality mods and trash yet no archwing/weap mod drops? Add some things like Tellurium as well. Needs to be some crossover with other modes of play besides the speculative Squad-Link. This should not have such a narrow focus of benefit, it needs to tie into existing gameplay. Would be cool to see some of the transitional features like bases and crew ships added to regular archwing missions as well, and some vice versa.

20. The shipkiller base should be able to Death Star kill your ship, perhaps if say you are already suffering from catastrophic failure. Should be a base that can zap you from across the map, putting some heat on you to take it out. Once in range, should be a countdown to destruction to put some boss-level tension on you to deactivate it. If hiding behind an asteroid while it is locked on, it should obliterate your cover and force you to move. The barrage of ramsleds is not really compelling enough, it just feels like a beefier crewship as is.
While exploring that here's some other ideas:

21. Heavily fortified bases with defenses that need to be picked off at least on a facing side so that it can be approached and invaded by archwing. Strategic things like external hangars to be destroyed reducing fighter deployment, fortified gun embankments, radar domes, shield generators, etc.

22. The upgrade and equip consoles, as well as the distant Return to Orbiter console, should be mirrored on both sides of the Drydock. Right now menu exit is most expedient but I would like a convenient and organic return option.

23. Perhaps let visiting crews hang around in the host's dojo even if host leaves. This is good for the dojo, and less frustrating for players who feel the need to insta-bail as soon as mission ends b/c they know they will get kicked before getting a chance to do anything with their rewards. If there is a harm in this, I can't see it. Being kicked while trying to deal with your acquired parts is unfun and encourages crew dispersion, not cohesion.

24. Adding to the above, consider adding a Railjack nav console to the drydock so that lingering players can directly find another crew to join if they wish. I know relays have a mission interface and I'm fairly sure the Observatory has one as well though I have not verified recently. Making the dojos more hospitable would make them more cool. You would still have to basically be "invited" to enter, by merit of having crewed a ship for that clan.
Although if there is some conflict with crew members having access to trade post without having a dojo key, disallow trade consoles in Drydock and lock visitors out of the other rooms when host isn't present. Although IMO this is less cool. I might be confused on this and maybe it's not even an issue, in which case the suggestion is even less problematic wrt to potential exploits.

25. Your very first attention with Squad-Link might should focus on Archwing missions to liven them up, as archwing nodes are frequently dead for finding squadmates, with this new mode you have an easy shot at injecting some life into them.

26. The "Pursuit" archwing mission is basically taking down an Outrider already, but the hitboxes on that ship are brutally small, especially without a very select loadout. Turn it into an Outrider takedown tutorial, with the larger hitboxes of the Outrider model with its new accessories (e.g.: the mini-turrets and vulnerable mine launchers). That might even turn it into a fun mission, instead of an endless hell with a high fail probability for average players at that level.

27. The enemy healing aura thing, I don't know what to say about this hhhhhh it's OP and I constantly find myself alerting the pilot to its mere existence and explaining it

I will add my previous caveat that I am having a lot of fun with this game mode. It's really great even just as a beta, but there are short term and long term things I really hope will happen to make it more coherent with the rest of the game because it IS just that much fun.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Cristovelli

[EinheriarJudith]

just hosted a rail jack and had someone force me back to my dojo...... (cries inside waiting for solo)

[SarusMindfury]

hace 20 horas, renleech dijo:

Have you guys tried to scan the enemy spacecraft?

I followed them with the archgun but finish them with the melee weapon so i got them scanned with the melee weapon mod that scan