Railjack needs work, but hell! It's fun!

[Vespilan]

First of, I am aware that there is a megathread on mission difficulty feedback. I don't think this is about that. This thread is more of a game-design feedback.

Railjack is a lot of fun but its far from perfect. Here are my two cents;

Major flaw
The one, single gigantic major flaw I find in railjack is the one that alot of new Warframe content seems to suffer from; Isolation. Disconnection. The way it is now (though we do, of course, not know what awaits us in phase 3) railjack might aswell be a completely seperate game. Ressources you had prior to railjack find little use here, nor are ressources from railjack really useful anywhere else. Similar applies to the leveling system (intrinsics) the moding system (avionics) and, naturally, the ship components; They are completely disconnected and function very differently from what we are used to. 
You could completely ommit railjack and go through the main game just fine.
Why is this a bad thing? Without integration into "the main game" railjack is a minigame at best and will die down once the hype does or once you have maxed out your railjack. It will become just another book on the shelf like archwing missions, conclave, frame fighter or lunaro.

Minor flaws
There are a few minor flaws I found that need some polish. They are not gamebreaking, by far, but I think that including these few changes would help railjack to be played the way it was intended to be played; Fast paced, yet tactical.

- Avionics should be marked as installed or be unable to be scrapped entirely in the scrap screen.
- Gunners and pilots should be able to see the ship stattus (i.e. whether there are fires). Same goes for tenno in archwing so they can see whether the ship has need for them
- Railjack weapons (with the exception the cryophone one (catchmoon-ish projectile)) should be hitscan given how quickly enemy ships manouver.
- Pilots and gunners should be able to waypoint mark targets (i.e. crewships) 
- Change crewship destruction from just destroying the cell to a hacking console maybe to prevent accidental destruction of a crewship
- Forge stations should be managable from a central point in the forge room (engineer perk maybe?) instead of having to pull each one out individually.
- Downed allies in archwing should be able to use the omni to get back to ship when "Recall Warp" is unlocked.
- Safety hazzards on the ship should be marked even without the omni tool selected
- Cephalon Cy should have some dialogue for all tenno when;
--- The pilot seat empty
--- There is only one tenno on the railjack
--- There are no tenno on the railjack
--- The crew ran out of /is almost running out of revolite
to make coordination in pubs easier.
- Players should be able to modify their own railjack from another dojo's console

Why I love railjack
It may sound like I contradict myself with this, but railjack is a nice change. It being so vastly different than regular gameplay is yet what makes it so interesting, though I do still think it should be integrated into the main game more. 

- As tenno, we are used to tight halways or a relatively compact "open world" whereas railjack does really give a sense of endless space I enjoyed quite alot.
- Main gameplay suffers from the "enemy hordes constantly charging at you" issue which is abscent in railjack. When in space, you have about 10 enemies on your screen at most which is hectic enough already. Fewer enemies but alot beefier. I like it
- Constantly switching between mods of transportation breathes action into every second.
- Every player counts and everyone can make an impact when setting their priorities right rather than just blindly following the mission objective.
--- Learning to set these priorities yourself is something I enjoy too



All in all, I give empyrean a 7/10. While there are some flaws, they are, to me atleast, greatly overshadowed by just how fun the gamemode is. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Vespilan

[Letter13]

This is some good feedback.

[Vespilan]

Also people completely ignoring their crew and leaving the mission immediatly when the boss does not drop the Penannt /Quellor weapon blueprint should be adressed urgently. 
Maybe replace it with an unidentified cache drop which can be resources aswell as the blueprints and is revealed at the end of the mission?

[Awazx]

This version of Railjack is a 4/10.

• 1. The game system is disconnected from the rest of Warframe.
• 2. The ship's armament technology is more typical of what is seen in WWII than of the most advanced civilization of its time (Orokin).
• 3. The avionics system is confusing, redundant and copies the problems of the Warframe mod system. It seems that developers have not learned from their mistakes in 6 years.
• 4. The intrinsic system is absurd and inefficient. It is absurd because it includes "skills" that should be universal without the need for an intrinsic (needing an intrinsic for drift maneuver is ridiculous) and is inefficient because as you level up, less interesting / useful are its skills.
• 5. The Railjack is poorly designed inside. It is an uncomfortable maze through which to move and move.
• 6. The weapons are not only outdated and ridiculous for space combat, they also discard any capacity for customization or improvement (as in the weapons we already have in Warframe).
• 7. The entire MK system (I, II, III) is unnecessary and redundant making once a type III component is achieved, all I and II are automatically unnecessary garbage that will never be used again (I have my MK III Sigma reactor and I'm still wondering why I was forced to investigate types I and II first. It's ridiculous.)
• 8. The RNG + RNG + RNG system to get new components is how to say it ... an insult to the time spent by the player?
• 9. The missions are repetitive and tedious.
• 10. The mechanics of instant healing of ships in Velo is the most ridiculous and absurd thing I've seen in Warframe.
• 11. Personal opinion: Railjack is ugly. It's the ugliest spaceship I've ever seen.

And I could continue ...

And yes, the first games are very funny, but it's not Warframe. It's like playing another game and it's fun initially, but it ages very fast.

 

Edit: add 11 point.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Awazx

[Vespilan]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Awazx:

5. The Railjack is poorly designed inside. It is an uncomfortable maze through which to move and move.

Making it smaller would kind of void the point of it being a real, huge #*!%ing tenno space ship and not just your landing craft with guns strapped on. Once you have the layout figured out, it's alright in my opinion since there really are only five places of relevance you want to navigate to in your railjack; The cockpit, the sidearms, the slingshot, the foundry and the exits. Since the exits are about everywhere in the ship it's not even hard to navigate to them. 
 

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Awazx:

2. The ship's armament technology is more typical of what is seen in WWII than of the most advanced civilization of its time (Orokin).

Oh yes, the glorious times when they used lazer-pulse rifles, straight up lazer beams or giant ice-throwers against their enemies in WWII, who doesn't remember.
What exactly did you expect for weaponary?
 

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Awazx:

10. The mechanics of instant healing of ships in Velo is the most ridiculous and absurd thing I've seen in Warframe.

Railjack health in general needs to be touched upon. Right now, if you have someone on the ship who knows how to seal hull breaches and the foundry has the materials to craft more revolite, you are literally invincible. This completely removes the need to build for hull /shields.
My suggestion is this;
1. Drastically increase railjack armor /decrease enemy damage. 
2. Slightly increase hull /shields.
3. Remove 1 HP invincibility. Once the railjacks HP hit 0 its game over.
4. HP can be restored through eradicating safety hazards in the ship in addition to regenerating over time, as is now. The maximum capacity is determined by hull ruptures with each rupture decreasing the maximum HP by 20% (unmodded base hull). 

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Awazx:

11. Personal opinion: Railjack is ugly. It's the ugliest spaceship I've ever seen.

Hey, leave our space dolphin alone!
Tbh though, that one skin that was released for the railjack the day it released is how I would have loved it to look like. The one which drastically changes the railjacks shape. To bad they cost ridicolously much platinum...

 

vor 11 Stunden schrieb Awazx:

And yes, the first games are very funny, but it's not Warframe. It's like playing another game and it's fun initially, but it ages very fast.

Yeah this is really my biggest point of criticism. It's so disconnected it gets stale real quick. Once you have the Shedu there is literally 0 reason to go back into railjack. Other than to farm Shedu parts and sell them maybe.