Glaring flaw with Railjack Objectives

[DrakeWurrum]

I've been farming the final node of Saturn for resources, and possibly drops (So far all I find is Zetki, which I just scrap immediately, because screw heat accretion). In my latest Public mission, with myself as Captain mind you, I encountered something very surprising that... I hadn't yet seen.

One guy joined the group. Immediately jumped out of the ship. And he flew straight to the asteroid base objective, where you kill a commander. He killed the commander... and then he aborted mission, leaving the group. Didn't interact with anything else in the mission.

It took me a moment to realize it happened, but I can guess exactly why: He's looking for the Quellor and Pennant blueprints. And they didn't drop.

This feels like a glaring, even toxic, flaw to the game mode. I mean, it's good news that (according to the wiki) these blueprints are a squad-wide drop. But this just cannot happen. This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be prevented for co-op content to work.

I really want the objectives that call for killing a Commander to be locked behind the objectives for at least taking out Crewships, if not every other objective.

Edited December 23, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[(PSN)N7_Dredgen]

It's not just a problem with Empyrean tbh.  People do it in all game modes where there is potential mid-mission drops.

Another one is people who join Lich missions, get all the murmurs, and quit right away.  

[DrakeWurrum]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Zuzu_with_a_Z said:

It's not just a problem with Empyrean tbh.  People do it in all game modes where there is potential mid-mission drops.

Another one is people who join Lich missions, get all the murmurs, and quit right away.  

I'd suspected as much, but at least in many other game modes, it... really doesn't impact anything. It's still something that needs addressing. (Murmurs are a huge problem in many ways to begin with)

Empyrean's team-oriented setup makes it more problematic. I was sitting in front of the Shipkiller objective, wondering why nobody was handling it, only to realize he was in the asteroid base. Everybody else was busy handling fighters/crewships.

Ultimately, we got the mission done, somebody replaced him quickly, but... it was still rather frustrating to the rest of us.

Edited December 23, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[Gaxxian]

They need to do the drops visible at the end of the mission, like with bosses. Same for Shade parts.

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

It took me a moment to realize it happened, but I can guess exactly why: He's looking for the Quellor and Pennant blueprints. And they didn't drop. This feels like a glaring, even toxic, flaw to the game mode. I mean, it's good news that (according to the wiki) these blueprints are a squad-wide drop. But this just cannot happen. This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be prevented for co-op content to work.

There are actually a few problems stacked on top of each other here. For one thing, the acquisition method Quellor and Pennant is ass. Their blueprints are random drops from a randomly-occurrring side objective. OF COURSE people looking for those blueprints will abandon their team, go try and leave if they don't get them. That's why important items often drop as "unidentified," but even that only works when AN item always drops and you're looking for a specific one. For those two weapons, their blueprints either drop or they don't - no way to hide that. I'm of the opinion that these things should have either been a mission reward for Skirmish... Or just a Clan Dojo research project. Let us research them and get their blueprints the old-fashioned way, but require Railjack resources to craft. They did this for the Exergis and other Orb Heist weapons, I don't see why they couldn't have done so with those things.

Secondly, yes - people leaving the Railjack and rushing over to the Point of Interest is a common problem, even when it's not for those blueprints. I'm not sure why - maybe these people think that makes the mission faster in some fashion? The trouble is that when one or two people leave like this and travel 15 Km off to do what amounts to a separate mission, it tends to leave the Railjack itself undercrewed, and often leads to mission failure because of it. Now granted, I'm endlessly aggravated at the "three people in Archwing and me alone in the Railjack" problem which seems so prevalent in general, but Points of Interest seem to make that so much worse. Especially when it's practically simply much easier to tackle those once we've chased off the fighters and capital ships. I would very much like for Point of Interest objectives to only trigger once the "kill" objectives have been complete - once we've secured the sector and can devote our attention to a much more complex objective.

[HaxosawrusRex]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Their blueprints are random drops from a randomly-occurrring side objective.

The only node for it thats rng for the commander obj is the earth proxima. Saturn and Veil both have a guaranteed mission spawn. 

[Steel_Rook]

10 minutes ago, HaxosawrusRex said:

The only node for it thats rng for the commander obj is the earth proxima. Saturn and Veil both have a guaranteed mission spawn. 

I stand corrected. The reason I brought that up was more to highlight that players will join, roll the dice and quit if they don't get what they were after in order to maximise their chances. It's why I feel the Railjack weapons are better earned through Clan Research for the Blueprints and then a large sum of Railjack resources to build, possibly resources from the Veil.

[Tsukinoki]

26 minutes ago, HaxosawrusRex said:

The only node for it thats rng for the commander obj is the earth proxima. Saturn and Veil both have a guaranteed mission spawn. 

Actually it is RNG for other proximas as well.

For example the best farm for Levan/Vidar MK3 engines/reactors/shields is Gian in Veil.  It has a very low chance of spawning side objectives meaning you just have to deal with 90 fighters and 6 crewships the vast majority of the time.
It makes it much faster to farm out the 2% mission drop parts.

I've also seen the commander objective not spawn in a number of other nodes.  Some nodes I get a Pulse Turbine and a Missile Platform.  Or a Pulse Turbine and a Ship Killer.  None of those side objectives have a commander in them.

Sure it is far more likely to get a commander side objective in those proxima locations, but its never guaranteed.

[HaxosawrusRex]

2 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

Actually it is RNG for other proximas as well.

 

Kaisos rest on saturn, and Flexa in veil always spawn the commander obj. I've been running them nonstop since launch and have yet to see an instance where it does not spawn. I wasn't referring to any mission rewards so i'm not entirely sure why you're bringing that up. 

[HaxosawrusRex]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I stand corrected. The reason I brought that up was more to highlight that players will join, roll the dice and quit if they don't get what they were after in order to maximise their chances. It's why I feel the Railjack weapons are better earned through Clan Research for the Blueprints and then a large sum of Railjack resources to build, possibly resources from the Veil.

I completely agree that they should be clan research. Having players instantly dive for the obj and quitting is honestly irritating to me especially when farming in veil.

[Bhyd]

3 minutes ago, HaxosawrusRex said:

I completely agree that they should be clan research. Having players instantly dive for the obj and quitting is honestly irritating to me especially when farming in veil.

So that's why people join in and drop out in a matter of seconds... Quite infuriating I agree.

[Pie_mastyr]

I'm actually kinda okay with it, but only because it is one less objective I gotta worry about. Usually when I do these missions I have half the squad go take care of the away crew objectives while the engineer and pilot hold down the fort.

But now that I am at the point where I want to farm for these weapons, I just play solo with some mk3 engines and forward drift my way to the objective. If you are fast you can complete the assassinate in well under a minute then tele back to repair the inevitable hull breach. If you have the cloaking and hull breach pausing avionics it makes it even easier to complete the assassinate. Unfortunately getting to this point requires a decent amount of investment into both a personal railjack and lvl 5 intrinsics on command and pilot 

[DrakeWurrum]

On 2019-12-23 at 8:44 AM, Gaxxian said:

They need to do the drops visible at the end of the mission, like with bosses. Same for Shade parts.

That would certainly get the job done.

21 hours ago, Pie_mastyr said:

I'm actually kinda okay with it, but only because it is one less objective I gotta worry about. Usually when I do these missions I have half the squad go take care of the away crew objectives while the engineer and pilot hold down the fort.

My issue is that, when this happened to me, I had gotten to the other objective, I think a "Shipkiller platform" which calls for someone outside to take down radiators in coordination with the away team, before he even reached the asteroid base. So I'm sitting there as pilot, wondering what the hell is going on inside, when suddenly the commander is dead and he's leaving the group.

If this is going to be a team-oriented game mode, they need to do better at making sure people work as a team, instead of people just gunning for the one thing they actually care about and leaving the group when they don't get it. It's toxic to the game mode.

Edited December 24, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Warframe isn't setup for this kind of reward system to only see loot after the mission is over. Making the parts a node specific reward just means all other node in the proxima is less appealing.

[DrakeWurrum]

8 hours ago, (PS4)jaggerwanderer said:

Warframe isn't setup for this kind of reward system to only see loot after the mission is over.

False. We see this with drops like Miter, and drops for Warframes like Nidus, Rhino, Mag, etc. Specter BPs, as well, aren't rewarded as drops, but upon mission completion. Also when you open up Caches, you don't know what the rewards was until the mission finishes.

That's just off the top of my head. It's not new for Warframe.

Edited December 25, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[Ham_Grenabe]

On 2019-12-22 at 9:23 PM, (PS4)Zuzu_with_a_Z said:

It's not just a problem with Empyrean tbh.  People do it in all game modes where there is potential mid-mission drops.

Another one is people who join Lich missions, get all the murmurs, and quit right away.  

Does that even work? In my experience, murmurs are treated like mission loot - you lose them if you abort or fail. (I had a mission yesterday where I discovered the final Requiem Mod, and then failed - I think the Lich one-shotted the mobile defense console, and I lost the discovery, and had to run another mission to get it).  

Edited December 25, 2019 by Ham_Grenabe