Raljack Killed Warframe?

[Flex238]

Ever try to join a Railjack mission? More often then not, you will find there is no group available. Which means most people are either playing with pre-formed groups, playing alone or just not playing the mission at all. I think people just aren't playing this game mode much. Stacked on top of this disinterest, are the absurd levels of grind and RNG, making it even more unappealing. When you finally finish your Railjack quests and everything is forged, you are greeted with the most  tedious missions, where your Railjack is ineffective and you're forced to use your Archwing in order to make the starting experience some what bearable. All of this has turned many players away and most choose to not even bother with Railjack at all.

I come from a tightly knit clan, we have a handful of members, we run Nightwave every week, do Sorties daily and choose to experience all the new content when it drops as a clan, with one exception... Railjack. My clanmates would rather play entirely different games then invest time into Railjack. My clan went from being very active on a daily basis, to practically dead in a matter of days after Railjack released. I suspect this might be the case for many "end-game" players and clans as well.

This has been my experience and supported by my opinions, but surely with all of DE's tracking data they can see the trends and I hope they turn this around.

[Myscho]

Or just waiting untill DE hit "balance pass" on repair resource cost, resource gain and some silly % drop chances

[NightmareT12]

I do really think there's a matchmaking bug, because sometimes the game thinks, kicks you, then if you start spamming you'll eventually join.

[Duskham]

The game is very far from being dead, and well... i only play with my own Railjack and do pubs runs (i dont like using the recruiting chat, 2 much work) and everytime i go to a node the squad gets full pretty fast, when DE come back from the break probably they will fix the bugs and economy and even more ppl will be able to acess this mode (and there is a lot of RJ content being said to come early this year too...)

Edited January 1, 2020 by Duskham

[LSG501]

While I wouldn't say it killed warframe, I would say that it's quite divisive, there are some who absolutely love it and some who are basically doing because they want the weapon/mods.  Then there are others (like me) who still don't see a reason for it to have been added (I feel the maps with a bit of tuning would have been great for just archwings) or just not that bothered about farming it in it's current state and as such not in any rush to do it and completely happy to wait for any future updates which 'might' improve the farming/grind side of it.

Then you have this minor thing called christmas and new years....

[Zelmen]

This sounds more like the clan burned out then anything else. Clans like that don't just disappear over night

[Quimoth]

It has more to do with one or more of the following reasons:

1. The railjack we have gotten is another island of resources and systems, it isn't the big integration of everything like they said it would be. This MUST change and I am pretty sure they will. The difficulty of pulling such a thing off was clearly something the team underestimated. I just sincerely hope that they realize that just like with the 2 open worlds we've gotten you cannot just make another island of content and expect everyone to love and keep playing it.
2. Railjack is full of bugs, even outside of railjack missions huds are dissapearing and the general experience whilst playing warframe has not improved.
3. Railjack has quite a big RNG on RNG on RNG layer that already was one of the big concerns with a lot of players ever since the old blood came out.
4. Railjack is the second "big" patch that doesn't meet the expectations of most players. It is also the second patch with more intense and long lasting grind. (third if you count rivens, I think most agree they've had less impact and less grinding than these last 2 failures of updates)
5. Railjack lacks a good tutorial/guide on what is available and what it can be used for. I do not think everybody is aware of all the niches and systems in railjack and most can't be bothered to find out given the bad state railjack is in.

Does that mean the game is dead? no, not even the slightest. I'm expecting DE to work hard on making railjack more like the new centerpiece of warframe that connects the different islands of content in a meaning full way. I also hope they take time to look at ways to make railjack and lich grind more enjoyable and forgiving. e.g. reduce RNG and improve its systems to be enjoyable, not a sink for our valuable time.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Quimoth

[MaxTunnerX]

The idea of a Railjack is pretty awesome in my opinion. I always wanted to fly an actual ship in WF, not just imagine flying it, its all the better that you can walk around in it. Hell, its much bigger than I would expect on the inside. However, apart from the usual thing that happens to brand new content (aka imbalance and bugs), which gets sorted overtime, there is this thing I dont like about great ideas vs DE. It seems to me that every time an awesome great thing is made for WF, its only half done, or something like that. Like when they introduced the open world, which in fact is just a normal, albeit much bigger map, for which you have to queue up at the door and stuff. Same seems to be the case of the Railjack, where we have this awesome thing, yet we cannot fly it where we want, its again just some added extra missions only for the Railjack. All content needs to be connected somehow, not be divided into segments. Let us use the ship to travel manually to the planets and their missions (perhaps shoot some asteroids for resources on the way), thats what ships are for. The space doesnt need to be realistic, it can be quite small, but connect the planets into one big world, dont make it so normal space and Railjack space are different kinds of space.

As for matchmaking, I havent noticed any problems, unlike 80 % of normal missions, which dont get played cause there is 1 or 2 per planet that is/are the most profitable so people spam them and never play the rest unless they want to play them once to unlock the nodes.

Edited January 1, 2020 by MaxTunnerX

[Awazx]

hace 11 minutos, MaxTunnerX dijo:

(...) there is this thing I dont like about great ideas vs DE. It seems to me that every time an awesome great thing is made for WF, its only half done, or something like that.

Yes. Everything in Warframe feels exactly like that; Great ideas, made in half.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Awazx

[Blacque]

What's killing Warframe for me after 6 years of playing, is having a mission aborted because the item in question wasn't spawned.  The Shedu and Ephemera spawn rates are whatever they are and I could care less.  However, the fact that you have to defy the mission in nearly 90% of the cases.  IE: Park your rail jack that you've spent hours and resources souping up just to survive in the veil.  Then bypass everything to get to sentient-land which I would love to hang out and explore more (Inb4 solo it) only to enter and have host migration hit because "No ephemera I'm out,"

Granted part of this is a player problem and that's a pet peeve.  However, the cold truth is that in a looter shooter, the players are going to do the shortest, easiest way to get what they want.  This is why the drop rates are so abysmally low in many cases I suspect.  In spite of that, the mission could be tremendous fun, if it weren't for the "Hidden goodies," that may or may not be present.

Every time I enter the Veil Proxima to hit a sentient node I'm met with this stupidity and it absolutely KILLS my desire to play the game any further.  So this'll be the fifth time I've tried to do the sentient outpost to soak in the atmosphere, only to have a host migration, be left stranded, glitched, or just flat out dead for whatever reason, with the foreknowledge that my exploring won't even yeild fruit.   So again I'll be logging off.

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, Quimoth said:

 I also hope they take time to look at ways to make railjack and lich grind more enjoyable and forgiving. e.g. reduce RNG and improve its systems to be enjoyable, not a sink for our valuable time.

The thing is that (especially) with the last few updates it seems that DE sees these excessive amounts or multiple layers of grind as a acceptable (yes I know some are saying it's the hema again, sort of testing player limits but I'm not so sure) and is ultimately what they see as 'replayable end game content'.... in essence end game is a massive repetitive grind to get the 'golden egg' reward(s) which are then used to basically do the same thing all over again, just with stronger weapons.... 

What makes it worse is that it didn't even start with railjack, we got stupidly low drop chance on those Jupiter puzzle rooms for those mods and new mod additions to arbitration were stuck in the drop table not in the store for vitus (many of us complained, nothing done). 

Then we also have liches, which as we all know not only have their multiple layers of rng/grind, they also have the necessity of 5 forma on each weapon for their full xp and no other gain other than capacity....  and lets be honest the released version of liches doesn't look like they spent much time on the actual game play side of things, or rewards (they're a 'copy paste' skin with some stat changes in all but 3 cases...) if I'm being totally honest. 

If I'm being honest, I'm not sure DE can make 'replayable end game content' that doesn't revolve around rng and grind. 

[ShortCat]

14 hours ago, LSG501 said:

If I'm being honest, I'm not sure DE can make 'replayable end game content' that doesn't revolve around rng and grind. 

I will take it even further and say - I'm not sure DE can maky any game content.

I am one of those guys, who played RJ half through Saturn, then 1-2 hours after patches to see whether the game mode is playable, and then never touched it. I play Warframe, because I enjoy gunplay, can have fun with melee system as well as space magic. RJ at its core is not what Warframe was for me for the last 7 years. If I wanted to play a space simulator, I would play one; not this half-assed, bland skeletton of a content.
RJ was announced ~2 years ago and all we got is:

• an Exterminate mission x25 with whole 4? enemy ships and a selection of 4? RJ weapons.
• UI is convoluted, style over substance and not practical.
• Intrinsics are filled with dumb stats, place holders or features, which would be base in any other game, just to reach a count of 10.
• Broken economy as well as balance
• Amateurish design decisions like: not shared loot between on ship and out of ship crew members!!!!!!!!!!!!; space snake to collect scattered loot; refining; broken RNG stats, when T3 gear can roll worse than T1; purpose of tiered gear in general, given how expensive repairs are, not one same person will even bother with Earth drops; complete disregard of already available gear (here AW and AW weapons)...

Where did development time & resource go? I am sure not to create 4 ship models, a skybox, an UI menu and some rooms, which were pulled out from Grineer tilesets. Obsidian jump-started Outer Worlds in that time. What is going on there?

[LSG501]

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Where did development time & resource go? I am sure not to create 4 ship models, a skybox, an UI menu and some rooms, which were pulled out from Grineer tilesets. Obsidian jump-started Outer Worlds in that time. What is going on there?

I'm assuming (more accurately hoping) there is more to come for railjack that didn't quite get finished (more archwings for example) but I suspect most of the time went into DE making the overly convoluted micromanagement system more than once, they already said they ditched the original shown at tennocon (who would have thought that something like that wouldn't work in warframe..... most players) and then working out the systems which we'll end up grinding out.   Mind you I've literally touched it for the first day or two after release and am just ignoring it until DE does something to fix the issues that most players have... I'm also like you I came for the warframes and PvE, not 'pirates in space' (which railjack is basically when you think about it....)

I also kind of feel similar about liches, apart from a random part generator for the liches there isn't really much to it and considering how long all this has been being built for I just don't see where the time went if you get me.   Railjack and liches sure don't feel like '1.5-2 years' of work if you get me. 

I've given up expecting a decent UI from DE, they clearly haven't got anyone in house who specialises in UI and UX design, and it's made even worse when, like me, you do have a background in design and have done UI/UX before.... Hell I've chatted with other clan members about improvements to UI stuff in game and some of the things they suggest to me are just basic they should already be in game type things....

Edited January 2, 2020 by LSG501

[ShortCat]

14 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

...they already said they ditched the original shown at tennocon...

It would not surprise me, if the Tennocon presentation was just a tech-demo and DE stuff experienced that one Bioware moment.

[LSG501]

Just now, ShortCat said:

It would not surprise me, if the Tennocon presentation was just a tech-demo and DE stuff experienced that one Bioware moment.

During tennocon they showed the control panel where you would shift stuff around mid battle to manage things like energy and the likes which would run out.... anybody who plays the game regularly could see that wasn't 'right' for warframe..... so they had to rework that (it basically got moved to the 'mod page' on the control panel in docks) and we ended up with what we have now including the need to build resources and put out fires mid battle instead (both annoying imo)

[sam686]

Too many Empyrean mission dots on navigation with one mission type, "Skirmish", which may have slow down matchmaking way too much. Most of them are just the same thing with different enemy levels.

The "Free Flight" have mostly nothing, no enemies, no materials. The good old Plains of Eidolon "Free Roam" have some enemies and some materials.