(PC) Empyrean: Railjack Matchmaking Feedback Megathread

[Drasiel]

Please add a mission vote option before launching railjack. I have been repeatedly dragged Into missions as the host with the railjack because a pubby is able to start a mission with no input from host or other squad members. I did not want to go into mission I wanted to:

-upgrade my railjack

- upgrade my intrinsics

- grab another clan member for the next mission

But nope random pubby just starts another mission. 

[Foefaller]

I feel like matchmaking needs three things

First is a "wait for players option" where you stay warping forever until another player joins. Alternatively, have the Railjack start in some sort of stealth mode (or at least outside where any fighter craft will patrol) so you can wait for more people to come after the mission officially starts.

Second is, if you want to bring your own railjack to a public mission and don't have any party members, some sort of popup warning if there are a significant number of captains that are currently waiting for crews. Most times I go public with my own railjack I either have to abandon or go solo because *noone* shows up, and while I know there are some matchmaking issues going on, I wonder if it's because there are much fewer than 3 potential crew members for every captain who wants to bring their own ship. This might be less of an issue once NPC crews are a thing, but I'm betting a lot of people would still rather be with other players, and would like to know if they would be better off joining someone else's ship, or at least be aware they might be sitting around for a while before fellow Tenno show up.

Third is voting for navigation, or at least a way to nope out of another mission without aborting. I've been lucky enough that most groups either ask or simply go to drydock instead of just doing mission after mission with no input, but I know I'm probably the exception, not the rule.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Foefaller

[VoadorHolandes]

So many little problems. Random fail states, getting stuck during warp jump etc. You roll a dice everytime you extract or change mission. Can't accrue resources because of it.

[0Midas0]

7 hours ago, Foefaller said:

I feel like matchmaking needs three things

First is a "wait for players option" where you stay warping forever until another player joins. Alternatively, have the Railjack start in some sort of stealth mode (or at least outside where any fighter craft will patrol) so you can wait for more people to come after the mission officially starts.

Second is, if you want to bring your own railjack to a public mission and don't have any party members, some sort of popup warning if there are a significant number of captains that are currently waiting for crews. Most times I go public with my own railjack I either have to abandon or go solo because *noone* shows up, and while I know there are some matchmaking issues going on, I wonder if it's because there are much fewer than 3 potential crew members for every captain who wants to bring their own ship. This might be less of an issue once NPC crews are a thing, but I'm betting a lot of people would still rather be with other players, and would like to know if they would be better off joining someone else's ship, or at least be aware they might be sitting around for a while before fellow Tenno show up.

Third is voting for navigation, or at least a way to nope out of another mission without aborting. I've been lucky enough that most groups either ask or simply go to drydock instead of just doing mission after mission with no input, but I know I'm probably the exception, not the rule.

In my opinion, only the host/owner should get to use navigation. Pubs should just get to request missions by clicking on them, but if the captain doesn't approve, it shouldn't happen. 

[Hira_Seraphim]

There needs to be a way for players to leave a Railjack by themselves that isn't Abort Mission and thus costing them all their rewards. If the host decides a person wanting to leave isn't worth their own time on loading screens, that person's screwed. If someone wants to jump into the next mission, but the host decides to spend an hour looting every resource on the map, that person's out of luck. That's not an acceptable state.

[0_The_F00l]

Issues on client side mostly.

Not getting some of the rewards at times,even mission rewards.

doors not opening ,

Ground Weapons doing unmodded damage,

Lag (probably) causing projectiles to miss enemies.

 

Would definitely be better if i am allowed to leave a mission instead of having to depend on the host to return to his dojos dry dock.

Would be nice if there is customization option in the rail jack itself instead of the dry dock each time.

 

[d00glies]

There's a pretty big issue with the final Earth mission, the one that drops the BP.

People just join the mission and leave immediately if there is no galleon. If there is a galleon they rush to the galleon, kill the boss, and if a BP doesn't drop they abort mission.

The way these BP drops work in railjack missions encourages S#&$ty player behavior for people who are just trying to do the mission.

[waskely]

Launching from Dojo in someone else's RJ gives permanent weird lag, all RJ movement is jittery, all doors/intractable objects will be slow to respond, operator transference gets a cooldown? cant return to frame after using it for 5 seconds. Tested this with randoms, and even launching from my own dojo with a clan mate had the same effect.

[zuraja]

14 hours ago, d00glies said:

There's a pretty big issue with the final Earth mission, the one that drops the BP.

People just join the mission and leave immediately if there is no galleon. If there is a galleon they rush to the galleon, kill the boss, and if a BP doesn't drop they abort mission.

The way these BP drops work in railjack missions encourages S#&$ty player behavior for people who are just trying to do the mission.

Just make them end of mission rewards.  It would also help with the issue of ground segment loot being individual pickups instead of shared like everything else.

[Jiminez_Burial]

A mission state reset on host migrate that doesn't also restock your revives is BS.  Had cleared the obj with a group and while looting resources from asteroids the host disconnected meaning we had to fight the 90 Fighters and 6 Crewships again.  I was down to 2 revives from before the migrate and I ended up dying out in space when trying to enter the RJ.  Server issues + mission state reset on Host Migrate is a big reason I wanted RJ to have the possibility for solo'ing at release.  DE, don't ever do this type of mission design again unless you've sorted things out.  You know it brings all the connection issues to the forefront and means people can lose considerable amounts of progress.  Combine that with your deceptive Update Notes (referring to the scrapping of repaired parts not returning the resources used but rather only 50% of them) and many of us are just getting sick of this update.  I want to enjoy the update but when we're forced to run headlong into significant issues meaning progress/resources being lost for 3 hours straight, it seems like an impossibility

Edited December 16, 2019 by Jiminez_Burial

[gluih]

The way the end of missions works should change imo.

Everybody should get a vote on what to do next, similar to how normal missions work.

Also being able to leave or stay at the end of the mission independent of the host would be nice. That way people who want to loot resources can do that, while the rest can do another mission.

[fr4gb4ll]

railjack:

if you don't change the galleons and bases to be reenterable after the captain/commander is dead, at least don't allow players to join a mission after they are taken out. not only are those players who join are annoyed, also the ones in the mission are since they repeatable have to respond (if  at all) to the question about the status of the captain. and also don't forget that many host shown latency problems when a new player is in the process of joining a match - don't make this a problem of the host, since you allow potatos to be one...

removing the restriction of entering the ship after the captains death, would sure be the best and most logical course of action - since i miss any reason why we should not do so anyway.

[BrazilianJoe]

Let the host set some ground rules for the mission: 

Minimum roles: free, 1, 2

Free would be the current mode, where players can do anything and just organize as they want.
Require 1 role: Requires each player to commit to do at least 1 role. Players are still free to do anything, but this will communicate the team tha e.g. t if there is a fire, one player commited to the engineer role, and that player should be the one to go and fix it. Same would apply to other roles.

Require 2 roles: same as above, but each player commits to 2 roles, so they can adapt to situations without being yelled at. 

The role commitment should not block any player actions, it is just a helper for player to organize on game strategy bypassing the language barrier. 

The good thing about setting roles is  that it becomes an assessment tool for player performance while fulfilling their specified roles.

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by BrazilianJoe

[fr4gb4ll]

On 2019-12-15 at 5:35 PM, 0_The_F00l said:

Would definitely be better if i am allowed to leave a mission instead of having to depend on the host to return to his dojos dry dock.

i would be, IF there wasn't the problem with host migrations being a pain in the arse for every game mode in general and railjack in special (atm at least). already it's damn annoying if the host leave or crash during a mission of railjack and the mission becomes fubar or worse - sure, sometimes it can help to 'fix' some of the bugs (like a missing crewship) to be circumvented, but that is an exception to the rule of host-migs being a game-hazzard in warframe.

sad as it be, best way is to abbort the mission right when you notice being connected to a toaster without any rewards you might lose then.

[fr4gb4ll]

1 minute ago, BrazilianJoe said:

Let the host set some ground rules for the mission: 

Minimum roles: free, 1, 2

Free would be the current mode, where players can do anything and just organize as they want.
Require 1 role: Requires each player to commit to do at least 1 role. Players are still free to do anything, but this will communicate the team that if there is a fire, one player commited to the engineer role, and that player should be the one to go and fix it. 

Require 2 roles: same as above, but each player commits to 2 roles. 

The role commitment should not block any player actions, it is just a helper for player to organize on game strategy bypassing the language barrier. 

The good thing about setting roles is  that it becomes an assessment tool for player performance while fulfilling their specified roles.

 

as good as that sounds, i see no way to implement this in the game and make also sure the players do as they should. what shall the host do if they ignore they role? getting the sole kick-player-option? i think we all know what that would lead to, right? it's also not possible to 'glue' a player to a specific place since some amount of flexibility is necessary after all.

lucky enough, this game mode is one that get more experienced player in and those tend to be far more reasonable... more often than not at least.

well, i think you might play at the idea of something like... clicking on the players name in the tactical ovreview and selecting a role for them, right? if so, it might be what DE has in mind for the upcoming 5th. command intrinsics - since we might have to put npc's to specific roles too then (i guess so at least).

[CedarDpg]

Hi! A few things...

1) We should be able to form a squad of as many or as few people we want and begin a Railjack mission. Matchmaking can then either dump the squad into another open squad, or people can fill the empty slots in the preformed squad...like normal mission matchmaking does already. That way we can invite a friend and go together into a mission already in progress if space is available, or alternatively start the mission as host if there isn't space in another squad. Currently if you have a squad of more than one person and want to join an active squad, the individuals get split up and both usually join separate squads, or sometimes one gets in and the other gets dumped back to their orbiter.

2) That warning about needing to go to Dry Dock to start a mission is kind of obnoxious after a bit. Kind of like when you run Phorid assassinations and you have to watch that cutscene every time. Gets old after a while. 🙂 Missions should not require going to the Dojo every time, and I believe you can access them from the fast travel menu/interactive Railjack item in the orbiter, so the warning about the Dry Dock is kind of moot. Additionally, most of the times I'm alone or in a preformed partial squad, I want what I mentioned in #1 anyways.

[MysticDragonMage]

On 2019-12-13 at 1:17 AM, Midas said:

Please include a role selection before entering matchmaking!!! It is super important. Once in mission specify the role for each player!!! Thankfully I am in a decent clan and do not have this problem!

sure, that sounds nice, but admittedly restrictive and demands a revisit of the intrinsics system. i would support it though, if they made it work. the question is just how.

 

a tactical role should be blended in with engineering/support. this would be the player that guards the ship from attackers, manages the forge, and repairs the ship from damage.

the Pilot should always be behind the helm. intrinsics upgrades hardly need to be touched.

the gunner role would be a two person job. gunners would be in charge of dealing extra damage from either the side guns or archwing as well as board enemy ships and hijack or destroy them from within.

[ArkThanatos]

NOTICE PLEASE!: RJs are Slower than indicated
not really to do with Matchmaking  BUT that as it is. The movement speed on Railjacks is FAR below advatised speed. My railjack engine rating is 387m\s. but it takes 4 seconds to cover that distance and a little over 2.5 with boost. SO your engines are actually moving far below thier intended speed. check it out for yourself, take note of your engine speed and have a look in mission (measure it against a static objective) we are ALOT slower than we should be. so even with speed mods and engines you are constantly going to be moving slower than stat page indicates... sorry just had to drop this somewhere it could be seen

[Kaadu]

General:
I'm using the Oceania region, so I'm living in a preview when the US players lose interest in railjack. No idea what will happen to Oceania when we lose interest.
Having all the railjack maps being the same thing but at different levels makes it hard to find a game since players spread out. But at least you can rapidly click through nodes to find something I guess?

Currently, hosting railjack seem to fill players in a minute or so. But it is kinda important to have a team. Hopefully solo is more viable before people move on.

When current players either move to higher levels or stop playing. How do new players join games if they can only select the first earth node?
Maybe when joining there should be a 'just join anything on this planet' button. So at least new players can join as long as people are running earth.

Maybe need a standard mission vote option when starting a new mission from the nav console. And let players leave if they want to stop.
It would make it consistent with the current warframe orbiter missions and the plains bounties.

You can't join an existing group as a group of three or less players. But groups are always hosts in the rest of the game so I'm not too fussed.

Bugs:
It doesn't give an option to rejoin the game after crashing. (as host). This is pretty bad. After the mission is locked due to objective completion, the spot should be waiting for the crashed player to rejoin.

Host migrations bug out mission progress, bug out crew ships, players can bug out easier. It seems like after a host migration the mission becomes cursed.

When do players leave?:
One of the problems is that there isn't any clear point where a person should leave. I guess they should abort after starting a mission if they don't want to continue?
BUt it would maybe help if there was a standard mission vote (used everywhere else in warframe) or when the new mission is selected, other players can choose to continue or leave.

Also if a person doesn't want to do a post mission loot-a-thon, there is no way for them to leave without forfeiting their items.
I guess after a mission is complete, as a non host you should be able to leave via the navigation console. It's kind of like a bounty on the plains, you can just drop the group and walk out if you don't want to stick around.

Idle players:
The last issue that could use improvement is how to kick idle players. It's not a big deal in the rest of the game since you really only need one person to carry the team. But a dead weight idler in railjack is actually a problem.
Of course if there is just a vote kick function, that would be open for abuse. Maybe only allow kicking if a person is "idle", then add the option somewhere (in the tactical menu?, that is available without intrinsics from the console between the turrents).

Edited December 17, 2019 by Kaadu
added: how to new players join when no one runs earth mission 1

[kuryux]

Matchmaking is working fine, but since we cant host directly when we dont find a game going on a specific node it would be great if we could simply queue for any game we have unlocked in that planet.

Example: I wanna farm saturn, instead of clicking every node trying to find a game going, I click a single place and queue for any game going on that planet

[Audbot]

I've had a lot of good experiences so far, with both joining crews and hosting my own, but I'd like to echo a few of the requests above:

• When hosting, having a way to get a full crew before starting a mission, rather than jumping into a mission you can't necessarily handle on your own and hoping you pick up people along the way before you get overwhelmed.
  
  Having some sort of "staging area" node on each planet and/or matchmaking per planet rather than per node both seem like good ideas.
   
• Distinguish between "combat" groups and "mining" groups. Because some people want more space battles, and some people want to methodically get as much out of each area as possible, and ending up in the wrong group isn't a great experience!
  
  (I'm posting this in the "matchmaking" thread since it's a matchmaking-related problem, but I wonder if the solution might be somewhere else -- either as part of an economy change, or with more variety of mission types so it's easier to match into a crew doing the kind of mission you want. So it's not an easy, obvious fix, but it's still a problem that's worth mentioning.)

Thanks for reading!

. . . 

As an aside, I'm not sure if "role-based" matchmaking is actually necessary? As far as I can tell (in missions up through Saturn, at least) in pickup groups things seem to shake out as:

1. Helm. Whoever owns the ship has dibs on flying it, since it's their ship.
2. Damage Control. Someone needs to stay on board to put out fires and fight boarders.
3. Archwing. Someone needs to go outside and blow up crew ships.
4. General. The final player mans a turret and pinch-hits wherever's needed.

[Edit: In contrast, roles you don't need to make sure you have are:

1. Artillery Gunner. The artillery turret isn't stabilized, which means you can't hit anything with it while the ship is moving anyways... which means using it's generally the pilot's job.
2. Forge Operator. You don't need to run forges that frequently or urgently, usually! Anyone can usually handle this during a lull in the fighting.
3. Away Team. Because point-of-interest objectives require cooperation between the away team and the railjack crew, and the railjack crew is usually buried under enemy ships until the Exterminate objectives are complete, away-team objectives tend to get handled after the main fight.
4. Tactical Support. In missions I've done so far, stuff tends to go so fast and everyone's so busy that I don't get a lot of chance to use the Tactical abilities! I can see them eventually being useful if a point-of-interest gives the Away Team has something like a Defense objective... at which point this also probably defaults to being the pilot's job, if they're staying behind to mind the ship.

The takeaway here is that the host/captain/pilot tends to need to have a lot of Intrinsics unlocked... but since they're also responsible for outfitting the ship, it's likely that they're the most Railjack-invested anyways. Everything else is stuff that Intrinsics (such as Tactical's convenient teleporting) are helpful for, but which players won't really to be in a situation of "sorry I can't do [x] because I don't have [y]," so for the most part anyone can do any job.

This might change at Veil Proxima, where missions get much harder, Intrinsic costs get much steeper, and there's (possibly) more variety of objectives? But so far, after a player's first few missions, any random group of players seems like can probably handle everything the mission needs without needing role-specific matchmaking... as long as they actually do any amount of communicating to make sure someone's got the three major roles covered.]

Edited December 18, 2019 by Audbot
Clarified last section into a list of "roles you don't actually need."

[ESYLD]

Please have a way for members to Leave Squad after mission completion.  It is a miserable experience being a contributing crew member and then having all rewards yanked from you if the Host decides to AFK and you have no other option other than Aborting Mission, or if they disconnect, leaving you with an endless load screen.  Please have a Mission vote or allow players to "Return to Orbiter" following mission completion.

[Olmian]

Could you give us the option to split from group like we can do when in the Plains or Fortuna? I am getting sick of Troll/Griefing Hosts (AKA: Captains) refusing to finish the mission so only they get the resources after everyone else leaves by aborting mission because they refuse to click in the navigation that ONLY THE CAPTAIN CAN INTERACT WITH? Pretty plz?

OH! And since i´m already talking abought Trolls/Griefers... why no "Griefing" option in the Report options? Most of these trolls feel very empowered because they know we can´t point their bad behaviour because we can´t say they are spamming, harrassing etc, since if we use the report for the wrong or unrelated thing than it´s us who can get penalized... or maybe griefing is a kind of harrassing for the report system? I don´t know, it´s not clear, and i´m afraid to get my account penalized if i even try...

[80think08]

This might have been overlooked.

[ReclusiveMerc]

Only extraction options are whenever the host decides to let you leave, or you abort the mission and lose your loot. Epic.