Please Increase Empyrean Player Count to 8

[MJ12]

4 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I've been noticing this too, and it's disheartening, because... hell, I'm enjoying the content, even if it's not perfect.

Even if it's just the missions outside the Veil with this problem... it's gonna be a big problem going forward with this content, and people will just end up going solo always simply because it's more convenient. It'll be a big barrier to any newer players who come along to try Railjack, and run into a wall when trying to start out with it.

IME it's not actually crashing, it's just that people are not pubbing Railjack, which I can't blame them for because being able to trust your squadmates is pretty critical at this junction.

NPC crewmembers can't come fast enough tbh.

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, ES-Flinter said:

But isn't that the real problem? That to many player want to use their own railjack, instead of just joining an other. The last time I played was sunday, but if I remember it right I didn't had any problems to join a group.

Finding other people's ships to play with isn't necessarily difficult, but it's missing the point. Railjacks are not inexpensive and I paid a fair amount of resources for mine, not to mention full week or so it took to complete. The majority of the Railjack progression system is tied into my individual ship, with really only Intrinsics serving any purpose. DE went out of their way to introduce a fairly elaborate progression system which doesn't apply if we fly other people's ships. Besides, mine looks better 🙂 The Railjack system, as I understand it, is designed to allow those of us who have the resources and facilities to operate a Railjack to provide that service to newer players who might not have one. Having to expressly NOT use my own gear brings to mind GTA 5 buisnesses, where playing with friends means NOT working on your own stuff.

With all of that said, do you not realise how bad of a look this is? We're finally given the biggest, coolest, most-impressive toy yet... Which we never get to play with due to matchmaking. Imagine if everyone in your average Void Fissure HAD to use the Host's Warframe of choice. That's about how this comes across.

 

5 hours ago, ES-Flinter said:

It makes sense, but isn't it also the wrong way? Until now it makes more sense to play most of the mission solo, because they are easier than public mission. Maybe it would be wiser to not reduce the amount of enemies for solo games. It would change the playstyle of many player, because they would at first try to think, if they can handle the mission solo. People who know that they are to weak to do it solo, will just switch to public.

No, that would not be the wrong way to go. It would be precisely the correct way to go. Allowing players to play on smaller than full teams means more of us get to actually PLAY the damn mode when crews are otherwise simply not available. More than that, it means more of us get to play Railjack with friends on incomplete teams without having to rely on public matchmaking quite to this extent. It would certainly save me from sitting around my bridge for 10 minutes before I can start on a mission. While Warframe might have the playerbase to support team content, this doesn't apply to niche game modes, which is what Railjack is. Not to mention the fact that DE have already confirmed they're working on a solo-capable version of Railjack to come out somewhere next year.

Long story short, it makes sense to scale difficulty down and allow solo players and small teams to still have a good experience. Those who want to team can always go to public matchmaking. There's no benefit to forcing those of us who don't like to play with pubbies into public matchmaking because even if we DO do that, the experience ends up not being all that compelling. If you think denying me the ability to play with my friends on my ship will in some way improve the public matchmaking experience, the reality is it's simply going to turn me off on the mode altogether. Which it has. I WANT to play Railjack, but I can't... So I don't.

 

2 hours ago, MJ12 said:

IME it's not actually crashing, it's just that people are not pubbing Railjack, which I can't blame them for because being able to trust your squadmates is pretty critical at this junction.

It's the public matchmaking population which matters in this case, though. If Railjack becomes something only available for active clans, then that's going to turn it into an extremely niche activity and so constitute a failure of the system. It needs public matchmaking to survive long-term, which means it either needs a proper matchmaking queue with a wait time, or else it needs to allow small teams to run missions for a period of time before additional players can be match-made into them. Railjack already seems to have either no or very lax restrictions on late-game joining as it is, so permitting a team to start running and then pick up people along the way would be one way to solve the issue.

But like you, I too don't blame people for not wanting to play with pubbies. I don't. Sure, some of them will pick a role and diligently stick to it. In my experience, though, I have a roughly 50/50 chance of being matched with yahoos who'll jump out of the ship immediately and spend the entire game off in a corner of the map doing Lord knows what. Rushers in regular instances are bad enough, but this kind of behaviour in Railjack is outright dangerous.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Steel_Rook

[MJ12]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

It's the public matchmaking population which matters in this case, though. If Railjack becomes something only available for active clans, then that's going to turn it into an extremely niche activity and so constitute a failure of the system. It needs public matchmaking to survive long-term, which means it either needs a proper matchmaking queue with a wait time, or else it needs to allow small teams to run missions for a period of time before additional players can be match-made into them. Railjack already seems to have either no or very lax restrictions on late-game joining as it is, so permitting a team to start running and then pick up people along the way would be one way to solve the issue.

But like you, I too don't blame people for not wanting to play with pubbies. I don't. Sure, some of them will pick a role and diligently stick to it. In my experience, though, I have a roughly 50/50 chance of being matched with yahoos who'll jump out of the ship immediately and spend the entire game off in a corner of the map doing Lord knows what. Rushers in regular instances are bad enough, but this kind of behaviour in Railjack is outright dangerous.

I agree, which is why I said NPC crews can't come fast enough.

[DrakeWurrum]

5 hours ago, MJ12 said:

IME it's not actually crashing, it's just that people are not pubbing Railjack, which I can't blame them for because being able to trust your squadmates is pretty critical at this junction.

NPC crewmembers can't come fast enough tbh.

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Finding other people's ships to play with isn't necessarily difficult, but it's missing the point. Railjacks are not inexpensive and I paid a fair amount of resources for mine, not to mention full week or so it took to complete. The majority of the Railjack progression system is tied into my individual ship, with really only Intrinsics serving any purpose. DE went out of their way to introduce a fairly elaborate progression system which doesn't apply if we fly other people's ships.

Yes, that's the problem right there. Why should I join another person's crew? I have my own ship. All Railjack content is exclusively funneled into making my own ship better. Why should I bother with another guy's ship? Not to mention... host migration is a serious concern, so most people want to be host at all costs. If you could manually choose to host fissure runs, would you do it?
Until they address this, Railjack will be solo only and rely entirely on the Command Intrinsic (once it gets here).

The only way I can think of to fix this is if joining another person's crew gives us some kind of bonus resources or weapon/avionics drops, or something of that nature. Incentive to actually join a different crew that rewards you for not using your ship.

Or else they introduce a role selection crew that is set up so the host with the ship can ONLY be pilot role. So people not wanting to drive would need to join another crew... but that doesn't seem like much incentive, and feels too restrictive.

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[Authoritycat]

1 hour ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Yes, that's the problem right there. Why should I join another person's crew? I have my own ship. All Railjack content is exclusively funneled into making my own ship better. Why should I bother with another guy's ship? Not to mention... host migration is a serious concern, so most people want to be host at all costs. If you could manually choose to host fissure runs, would you do it?
Until they address this, Railjack will be solo only and rely entirely on the Command Intrinsic (once it gets here).

The only way I can think of to fix this is if joining another person's crew gives us some kind of bonus resources or weapon/avionics drops, or something of that nature. Incentive to actually join a different crew that rewards you for not using your ship.

Or else they introduce a role selection crew that is set up so the host with the ship can ONLY be pilot role. So people not wanting to drive would need to join another crew... but that doesn't seem like much incentive, and feels too restrictive.

 

Solo? Where? I play with my clanmates, and there are six of us. Your problems are not universal, and adding the OPTION of more players doesn't hurt anyone. 

[(PSN)shadowclasper]

On 2019-12-17 at 3:00 AM, SpicyDinosaur said:

It's not that hard, ya'll. If you are struggling, come back to it later.

 

8 people would make it trivial and probably insert a ton of extra bugs. 

 

People complain on this forum about pretty much everything. If you are MR6 and dive in, you have to be aware of your limitations and that they go away with time, that or you need to git gud. Whichever you prefer.

 

Improve your ship, improve how you play, actually forma and prepare your archwing. Bring your best weapons and a frame suited to the fight.

remaining a voice of wisdom on these threads.

[SpicyDinosaur]

1 hour ago, (PS4)shadowclasper said:

remaining a voice of wisdom on these threads.

threads? What other thread have I posted on that you have been stalking me in?

 

I never seem to remember anyone's name in these threads. I just post how I feel.

 

There's a lot of us that want things to be at least somewhat challenging, posts like this might get attention and more stuff gets nerfed. Let us enjoy our "endgame." You don't have to participate.

[DrakeWurrum]

9 hours ago, Authoritycat said:

Solo? Where? I play with my clanmates, and there are six of us. Your problems are not universal, and adding the OPTION of more players doesn't hurt anyone. 

I'm not saying that adding the option of more players hurts anyone.

I'm saying that there's little incentive to NOT play solo. Or, more specifically, there's no incentive to join another person's ship instead of just flying your own.

I don't have a clan of buddies, mostly because I'm never really home to even try to build up my clan due to work hours, and I have no desire to abandon the work I've put into my dojo with the wife (so just joining another clan is out). Even if I could put in the effort, my work hours make it absolutely impossible for me to find other players to be online at the same times I tend to be (because I rotate between day/night shift every two weeks).
Thus I have to rely on Public matchmaking for randoms... and why would anybody bother doing it? At first there were plenty of people, but now... I'm basically forced to run my ship by myself. There's simply nobody joining me anymore. I mean, the wife does play too, but not always, and that's still only half a crew.

19 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

And I mean, not enough players in low-level zones is a common problem in MMOs, but Railjack is a bit unique. You NEED a ship in order to run missions, only high-level players will realistically have one, and high-level players will typically be playing high-level Railjack zones. So who's left providing ships for low-level zones? I understand DE not being able to deliver everything, but delaying AI crews and barring solo players and small teams from Railjack all but entirely will hurt the system's long-term viability. Not being able to find teams is the kiss of death for any team-only activity. If you let the playerbase crash hard enough, it may never recover.

Even then, it's content designed with a focus on having a team. While providing Command Intrinsics to make solo more viable, I get a feeling that the content won't really be sustainable long-term if the team part of the content just... isn't there, or isn't actively used by the players. Outside of dedicated groups, like clans, which excludes people who have a hard time actually having a dedicated group, like myself. Lately it's just me in my big big ship... all alone.

And more importantly, the content will feel... unwelcoming to new players, who weren't taking part right when the update hit, but instead come to it months later. If nobody is in the low-level missions, they'll have a hard barrier to overcome to even get the Command Intrinsics. Which means they'll stay away from it, until they can get with a clan that will help them out (if they ever do).

It's kind of an old problem for Warframe, but often there's no incentive for older players to head into lower-level mission areas, and so they end up feeling barren. This will become a real problem for Railjack, unlike the rest of the star chart. We need real incentives to go there, or else we won't.

I think I would've preferred using my Xiphos in X-Wing vs TIE Fighter style missions at this point.

We need incentives to use ships other than our own.
Or, at least, it would be nice if we had some kind of "lobby" where 4 rando players meet up before the mission and either get to vote on whose ship is used, or it's a roll of the dice. I still want to be able to wait for players BEFORE jumping into the mission, allowing us to discuss who wants to do what.

Edited December 21, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[Steel_Rook]

4 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

We need incentives to use ships other than our own. Or, at least, it would be nice if we had some kind of "lobby" where 4 rando players meet up before the mission and either get to vote on whose ship is used, or it's a roll of the dice. I still want to be able to wait for players BEFORE jumping into the mission, allowing us to discuss who wants to do what.

There already IS incentive to use ships other than our own - not everyone has one. The Railjack is a massive undertaking and a significant resource investment. Yes, for those of us who've been around for a while and done most of the things (and sunk a bunch of money into the game, don't forget) the 6 million Credits cost might not be an issue. However, I played with an MR4 player recently who barely had a Warframe to his name. He's not getting a ship of his own, so the only way HE can play is to join other people's crews. As long as the cost of investment in a Railjack remains this high, there's going to be demand for crews from people who can't build a ship of their own yet, or even at all. Unless we want to argue that Warframe is a majority Veteran game (which I don't think it is, even if the forums make it seem that way), then that right there is the incentive.

No, that doesn't change the fact that you can sit in your ship for 10 minutes and nobody will join. I don't think that's an issue of everyone flying their ship, however. Rather, I'd argue that's an issue of a shrinking player base. The first few days when Railjack was the new shiny, you had hundreds of open squads per node. Now you have a handful. The first few days you had plenty of people wanting to explore all the systems and mechanics. Now all anyone seems to want to do is go EVA and play Archwing. I can't get anyone to fly the damn ship, let alone fight fires and boarders. And even the yahoos who abandon ship as soon as they load in don't seem interested in actually playing on a team, because they never seem to actually deal with any of the Crew Ships. At best you might have a jerk who flies off 15 Km from your ship trying to solo the Point of Interest while you're left trying to keep the ship from imploding and failing the mission.

The issue with Railjack is its design calls for teamwork and division of labour, which - and I'm going to sound like an ass here - appears to be outside the capability of this community at large. Ground missions with pubbies are bad enough with everyone abandoning you and rushing off to the objective while making sure to prevent you from killing anything along the way, but at least THOSE missions can sort of work that way. Railjack requires teamwork where those attitudes lead to failure and ragequits. I wouldn't touch "recruit chat" with a 10-foot pole, I've done my time with that in MMOs. However, a friend of mine who monitors that frequently talks about how everyone seems to be looking for engineers because nobody wants to play engineer. People don't want to play a team mode. It's why you don't get a lot of people joining your crew in the team mode.

Well, that and Warframes frankly primitive matchmaking. I don't know how the game's made it this far - I guess small teams and a large playerbase will help. However, the per-node matchmaking system WILL NOT WORK for Railjack. We need a proper role queue, we need a matchmaking system which allows us to wait for a full team as a captain and wait until a captain shows up as crew, we need a way to matchmake for more than one node, etc. The Railjack playerbase at large isn't that small, all things considered. It is, however, badly scattered across the multiple nodes. If Railjack is to succeed as a team mode, we need a matchmaking system which can allow us to search across a broad range of activities, set parameters on the kind of team we're looking for and allow us to wait until a match is found while being free to do other activities.

Ultimately, I don't think DE will do any of those things. They haven't been arsed to implement any kind of matchmaking system more complex than "check for people currently playing the same node." In the long term, I expect the only way Railjack will remain viable is if the mode is made more tolerable for solo players and small teams so as to ensure people can actually PLAY the sodding mode while waiting for a crew to join. I also expect to see difficulty scale with team size for the same reason.

[Cloud]

I totally disagree. Not only playing in 8 will generate much more connection and stability problems, but it will trivialize all the missions removing all the fun within it. What is actually fun of the mode is that there are lot of things to do, and we're just 4, this encourage people to have good communication and push them to manage the time in an efficient way to cover more activities possible. With 8 players, everyone would just have their mini job and think only at that, making the mission just a boring repetition of the same stupid thing.

[(PSN)shadowclasper]

19 hours ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

threads? What other thread have I posted on that you have been stalking me in?

 

I never seem to remember anyone's name in these threads. I just post how I feel.

 

There's a lot of us that want things to be at least somewhat challenging, posts like this might get attention and more stuff gets nerfed. Let us enjoy our "endgame." You don't have to participate.

not been stalking so much as following the discussion on railjacks, might not be you just someone with the same icon as you, but the folks on the forum who aren't absolutely furious with DE over it are few and far between.

Also, an easy solution to the whole issue of people running different areas would be to make it so that the drop rates for certain higher level crafting mats only occur in each area, or drastically increase in one area or another.

Edited December 22, 2019 by (PS4)shadowclasper

[DroopingPuppy]

23 hours ago, Cloud said:

I totally disagree. Not only playing in 8 will generate much more connection and stability problems, but it will trivialize all the missions removing all the fun within it. What is actually fun of the mode is that there are lot of things to do, and we're just 4, this encourage people to have good communication and push them to manage the time in an efficient way to cover more activities possible. With 8 players, everyone would just have their mini job and think only at that, making the mission just a boring repetition of the same stupid thing.

The problem is, you don't realize that railjack requires ridiculous amount of jobs to four of us. Three is the minimum crew of railjack, for one needs to grab the wheel, while at least one of them is need to get the side turret then the other Tenno needs to repair/repel boarders. AND we needs some fighters and boarding crews to get the job done. We needs too much crews already and it is not fun - it is just a mundane job.

[Cloud]

10 hours ago, DroopingPuppy said:

The problem is, you don't realize that railjack requires ridiculous amount of jobs to four of us. Three is the minimum crew of railjack, for one needs to grab the wheel, while at least one of them is need to get the side turret then the other Tenno needs to repair/repel boarders. AND we needs some fighters and boarding crews to get the job done. We needs too much crews already and it is not fun - it is just a mundane job.

If you belive the amount of jobs is too harsh for 4 players is because somebody of your crew probably is not doing properly his job.

it's really simple, and all the tasks can be managed without problems by 4.

Pilot -> drive the ship and use frontal cannon for crewships

Gunner -> use turrets/aw

Boarder -> help with crewships and does objectives

Engineer -> fix breaches and fires, kill invaders if any and in the down times craft revolite and ammo.

You could say that's a lot for engineer! Reality ? crafting is extra fast and proficient since you can forge till 8 stacks simultaneously; Invaders? if you don't insta kill them, you're just not ready for railjack, and for fires and breaches you can lose at max 1 min (if you're slow).

Actually engineer is one of the most fun role, since you have these 3 mini-tasks.

All this without saying that, with a proper team and railjack:

1) the ship rarely takes breaches

2) There are no invaders, cause the gunner insta destroy the assult capsules

3) with no assaults and breaches you just have to craft ammo and can give also an help to gunners.                  

[Void_Ocelot]

Strongly disagree with op. 4 is fine.

[Fevix]

Hard no, for many of the reasons already stated. 

Yes, it's hectic and you have to rush from thing to thing in the beginning, but after playing for some time, I'm easily taking on higher level Saturn missions with just me and a friend, with the only time we lose being when the game bugs out. 

Make sure you're fully stocked up on Revolite before setting off, and make sure the pilot knows to pick up resources as they fly around. One player is more or less dedicated pilot until near the end of the "kill enemies" part of the mission, only getting off the pilot station to help the second player when they need it (EG., they got downed by a boarding party). The other player takes care of everything else: Repairing ship, fending off boarders, boarding enemy crewships to take them out....

The Railjack can't be destroyed by enemy fire. When health drops to a certain point, the Railjack basically becomes invincible for up to 60 seconds while the critical hull breach timer counts down. That's an entire MINUTE for someone to go repair it. As long as you have revolite, you literally cannot lose the mission. 

There's absolutely no need for 8-player Railjacks. That would get very messy very fast. 

[Loswaith]

I would say up to 6 sure, 8 may be a bit much for the game to handle reliably but later on it could be an option.

At the end of the day you don't have to play with more than 4 players, and I'd go so far as to maybe restrict it to 4 for public match making.  If you wanted 5 or 6 go for a premade group, just like you would avoid public if you want to play with fewer than 4 players now.

 

There wont ever be more than a single railjack in a mission however, as when DE started designing this they made it so the world moves around the railjack, not the railjack moving in the world (not much difference really but limits multiple of them).  This is unless they changed that core design concept.

Edited December 23, 2019 by Loswaith

[Fevix]

8 minutes ago, Loswaith said:

I would say up to 6 sure, 8 may be a bit much for the game to handle reliably but later on it could be an option.

At the end of the day you don't have to play with more than 4 players, and I'd go so far as to maybe restrict it to 4 for public match making.  If you wanted 5 or 6 go for a premade group, just like you would avoid public if you want to play with fewer than 4 players now.

 

There wont ever be more than a single railjack in a mission however, as when DE started designing this they made it so the world moves around the railjack, not the railjack moving in the world (not much difference really but limits multiple of them).  This is unless they changed that core design concept.

Actually, neither the Railjack nor the world move. It was explained in one of the devstreams. 

They're using a somewhat old trick, simply keeping track of the Railjack's position (probably with the in-world Railjack's model) and using basically remote cameras to let you "see" out of the Railjack. The Railjack's interior is a static bit outside the level's boundary with a box around it that show you what the cameras are seeing. When you exit the Railjack, you're teleported into the main game area at the proper position of the Railjack's airlock, and when you enter the Railjack you're teleported back to the "Railjack" part of the level. BOth the world and the Railjack interior are static. 

Crewships work the same way. The interior is a static box somewhere outside the level's boundary, you teleport back and forth to it when entering/exiting, and there's a box around it to show you what you should see if you were actually looking out of the windows.

 

Because of this, it IS possible for them to make multi-Railjack games, but then there'll likely be a whole host of other bugs. I'd much rather they focus on the current bugs than add new features. 

Edited December 23, 2019 by Fevix

[DrivaMain]

*Looks at how buggy raids were*

Yeah, probably not gonna happen. Because you need to have a good setup (especially internet connection) to host 8 players sessions.  Increasing it to 5-6 might work, but 8 is stretching too far.

[Authoritycat]

14 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

*Looks at how buggy raids were*

Yeah, probably not gonna happen. Because you need to have a good setup (especially internet connection) to host 8 players sessions.  Increasing it to 5-6 might work, but 8 is stretching too far.

5 or 6 would be perfect, and as stated above, just limit this to clan-only. Regular Railjack missions work "fine" with 4 people. Something like this would be more of a luxury for people who play the game with friends. This change would literally be the single biggest thing Warframe could do to get me and my friends playing and spending more often. 4 players works for the base game, but now they're adding open worlds and space combat. Those are literally different games that don't work in the "corridor shooter" model of the base game. Railjack needs a higher cap for clans and harder missions. Open worlds need a higher cap period, especially in public matches. Players bring life to the game and the open worlds feel crushingly dead with 4 people who are often spread out. 

[Chappie]

Eight players, are not needed, if you aren't going further than your railjack can handle.  I can solo veil if required and not have a hull rupture.

[Loswaith]

On 2019-12-23 at 3:55 PM, Fevix said:

Actually, neither the Railjack nor the world move. It was explained in one of the devstreams. 

They're using a somewhat old trick, simply keeping track of the Railjack's position (probably with the in-world Railjack's model) and using basically remote cameras to let you "see" out of the Railjack. The Railjack's interior is a static bit outside the level's boundary with a box around it that show you what the cameras are seeing. When you exit the Railjack, you're teleported into the main game area at the proper position of the Railjack's airlock, and when you enter the Railjack you're teleported back to the "Railjack" part of the level. BOth the world and the Railjack interior are static. 

Crewships work the same way. The interior is a static box somewhere outside the level's boundary, you teleport back and forth to it when entering/exiting, and there's a box around it to show you what you should see if you were actually looking out of the windows.

 

Because of this, it IS possible for them to make multi-Railjack games, but then there'll likely be a whole host of other bugs. I'd much rather they focus on the current bugs than add new features. 

Thanks for the heads up, that sounds like an interesting way to go about it.

[Twisted_Wisdom]

On 2019-12-17 at 5:41 PM, DariusMcSwag said:

I believe that the solution to many of Empyrean's problems is to increase the player count. Here is a list of ways Empyrean could be improved by increasing the maximum player count to 8.

And what about being able to solo railjack missions?

[Tenno76856]

No thanks. Would make soloing (which it seems to be possible right now) impossible in empyrean which would force solo players to non solo.

[IIDMOII]

Yeah because currently the average hosts connection is able to support 4 just fine.....

Nah. As someone who plays exclusively as a crew member, I can safely say that 4 man squads are barely playable as it is over p2p.

The lag is exceptionally noticeable when using turrets. The shots need to be compensated away from the gunnery lead reticle by wild amounts.

If they ever finally go to a dedicated server environment, then yeah for sure.

 

[ixidron92]

I literally said that the first time the devs tried to showcase railjack gameplay only to fail miserably at everything they were doing and be saved by their invincibility.