Railjack: is it worth the dev time to fix/polish?

[IIDMOII]

They have a decent foundation to build on with railjack. Though I'm concerned if it's worth it.

While I had fun for about a week, the novelty has worn off and I'm starting to question the amount of work involved fine tuning and adding on to it. I would hate to see the core game be ignored for this.

I'm just not sure the railjack loop is exciting enough to sustain itself long term. I'm already tired of it and have gone back to the core game. It's repetative, exhausting, unbalanced and ultimately unrewarding. That micromanagement loop can't compete with the ground game, no way. 

The amount of fixes, changes and total reworks necessary to make railjack not suck 6 months from now is staggering. I'm not convinced it's worth it when there are so many other issues. 

My biggest concern though, is that DE is stubborn about it because it's their baby and force railjack all year long by locking stuff behind it.

 

 

 

[Test-995]

It's not like DE can fix "other issues" by ignoring railjack.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I bloody well hope they do fix it! mainly because there are players who have already invested a lot of time and effort into Railjack. sure, I'm a lowly crew-hopper when my Clan isn't around, but I still intend to keep playing Railjack content. for all it's flaws, it's actually really good, and it's different to what we see in a lot of other games. I was kind of wanting AC4:Black Flag in space, and while it's not quite what we got (no sea space shanties I guess), it's pretty good. with all the main bugs patched, a few changes to the resource economy and more Zones to fight in and go up against new enemies, Railjack has a chance to be a major success where Archwing failed, I don't want DE to totally give up on this mode once The New War is done.

[TARINunit9]

5 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

I'm already tired of it and have gone back to the core game. It's repetative, exhausting, unbalanced and ultimately unrewarding. That micromanagement loop can't compete with the ground game, no way. 

That sounds like the rest of the game to me

I can't find a single flaw in Railjack that didn't exist in some form before Railjack. Damage sponge armor-laden enemies that will just surround and overpower you unless you pass the "gear check" and kill them the second they spawn, and 90% of playstyles are just too slow or filled with micromanagement to bother using? Yeah, welcome to Warframe. I love it and have been playing it for years regardless

7 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

My biggest concern though, is that DE is stubborn about it because it's their baby and force railjack all year long by locking stuff behind it.

You might want to save time and pull your hair out right now, because that is EXACTLY what they are going to do

[yarl5000]

I think the plan is for railjack to slowly become the main game play loop.  They said they want it to be the connective tissue for the game and for it to be more important.

[T.Hoagie]

I think so, I rather enjoy railjack. At least when it works properly, and I have a decent team.

[Paradoxity]

Absolutely. Railjack offers an incredible amount of potential, especially if DE gets away from their phobia of servers and starts to get us to the point where we can get more than 4 people playing together. But even with that limitation, we're seeing just the bare surface of what Railjack can do- the ability to transition between ground combat, archwing, and the railjack itself is impressive as hell and hints to some amazing gameplay in the future. 

[KnossosTNC]

All indications are that DE are planning to double down on Empyrean for 2020. It's not so much that it's "their baby" as "what Warframe was originally meant to be." They pretty much admitted it in the last Devstream.

So yeah, I don't think this is a relevant question.

[Serafim_94]

The only way to make it worth fixing is to fix it. Core is awesome. Now get it rid of problems.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Without squad link it's going to become just another island. That's why the only thing I was really excited about was that feature. Of course, that's the thing they had to push back, along with any quests.

[BDMblue]

I don’t think “damage sponge” enemies are a problem. So I remove that from needing a fix. I feel late game content needs late game builds not just invariability stages.

but on Railjack I think it’s worth it. Once the missions change to not always being exterminate. Could have new missions, Tenno in a ship stealing components and ejecting them to space while the Railjack is out side trying to pick them up and survive the  onslaughts of ships trying to take it down. I’m hoping we get 8 player missions with it and 2 Railjack crews.

just adds verity to the game. 

[-skimmer-]

The foundation is solid, lot of stuff can be done with that.

Imagine if they did something like Descent  dungeon crawler mission type

Edited January 3, 2020 by -skimmer-

[OvisCaedo]

I'm not really interested in railjack in the slightest, but DE has seemed VERY insistent that it's going to be the future of the game. So I don't think they can afford to NOT spend dev time fixing and polishing it.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Oh yeah because they’re totally going to just stop working on this system after they literally just released.

[HintOfMalice]

24 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

It's repetative, exhausting, unbalanced and ultimately unrewarding

So is the thing you rushed back to.

I don't know man, I think Railjack missions in a bubble would just be Archwing 2.0 but that's clearly not the route the are taking. Integrating Railjack components, Archwing components and Warframe compenents of a mission together to make one coherent sequence seems to be the next beast that DE intends to tackle. And honestly, I'm pretty optimistic about it. Sure, of course a lot of work needs done. But I think this is a strong foundation with a bright future.

[Awazx]

hace 17 minutos, -skimmer- dijo:

The foundation is solid, l

Empyrean is a solid base, yes.

It is also a solid base PoE, Vallis, Lich, Conclave, Mods, Weapons, Unions, AI pets, maps, missions ... everything in Warframe feels a "solid base" that never completes and never reaches its full potential.

[xBloodySin]

Yes, it is, and I sure hope they do. I'm fine waiting to get some other planet with the same missions from the star chart in at most a different tileset.

[Loza03]

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer? They can add most other gamemodes to this retroactively, at least non-endless ones, and expand upon them in numerous ways, because they can add access to tilesets through Empyrean as we know from the Assassinate modes.. Empyrean has three components, Railjack, Archwing and On-foot, which means that any mission, unlike regular gameplay, can be a mixture of all three, and that mixture need not be equal. An Empyrean-focused mission could be 10% Railjack, then 45/45 split between Archwing and Ground, justified by intense cover or the entrance spaces being too small. Or entirely Railjack and Archwing. And don't even get me started on Raid potential.

 

Financially, it makes sense too. DE is a business, and expanding the elements in play expands the revenue streams. We already have Empyrean's pay-to-skip equivalents (since it doesn't use the foundry and whatnot), but even with that out of the equation, on-foot gameplay has you bring a Warframe, your Operator, Four weapons (including Arch-gun) and a companion. With Empyrean, you add two more weapons (space arch-gun and arch-melee), the Archwing and the Railjack. That's a lot more skins, potentially Sugatras and Armour (depending on how DE slices it). As the game becomes bigger it becomes more expensive to both run and develop for, especially the latter. Whilst Empyrean will likely increase costs, it opens more potential revenue streams for DE. Yeah, Archwing exists, but if nobody uses it, then nobody will buy cosmetics for it. More Empyrean = more Archwing.

[SordidDreams]

32 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

because they can add access to tilesets through Empyrean as we know from the Assassinate modes

Can they, though? I'm skeptical. The indoor maps in railjack are smaller, with fixed layouts and a smaller number and variety of enemies than standard missions. I suspect that's because the game also has to hold in memory and continue processing what's going on outside in space, which frankly seems like a total waste if all you're doing is flying from your ship to the indoor tileset in order to do a standard mission. I have my doubts that they're going to be able to fully recreate standard missions in railjack due to hardware limitations, and even if they did, having to fly through space to get to them just seems like a needless chore the game would be better without.

What I do want to see is railjack's seamless loading integrated into the regular game. That stuff is seriously impressive. Select a mission from the star chart, fly through the void (hidden loading screen), go down the ramp, boom, you're in an enemy ship. And at the end, instead of that revolving cylinder cutscene, you also just have a door leading back into your Liset. The ramp raises behind you, you fly through the void, the ramp lowers again to reveal your Orbiter's interior. No hard loading screen anywhere, ever again. That's what this update should've been IMO, an enhancement to the actual game of Warframe, rather than a crappy knock-off of Guns of Icarus tacked onto it.

Edited January 3, 2020 by SordidDreams

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

1 hour ago, Paradoxity said:

an incredible amount of potential,

Warframe since 2013. At this point it might as well be an official Warframe meme. Like instead of Warframe "ninjas play for free", it should be,  Warframe "a game that will always have incredible potential". 

Edited January 3, 2020 by (XB1)MandlorPrime

[IIDMOII]

39 minutes ago, KnossosTNC said:

All indications are that DE are planning to double down on Empyrean for 2020. It's not so much that it's "their baby" as "what Warframe was originally meant to be." They pretty much admitted it in the last Devstream.

So yeah, I don't think this is a relevant question.

Their vision and 26+ million registered losers' vision aren't likely to align this late in a games life cycle. Sorry, not after 7 years of investing in the game without it. 

I would say right up until the update that magically fits railjack into the rest of the game, it's a pretty valid concern.

Those of us that don't share their retcon vision of the game would like to know if we should pack our things. Musical fires isn't everyone's jam.

 

[SordidDreams]

1 hour ago, KnossosTNC said:

"what Warframe was originally meant to be."

That sounds like some George Lucas-level revisionism to me.

[BornWithTeeth]

They have to. Empyrean is the thing they're hoping will transform the game. Now, I like Railjack, but I am 100% aware that it is not what one would call 'good' right now. It's very limited in gameplay, and once you can do the Veil, all it offers is grind more extreme than almost anything else in the regular game, for incrementally better gear, or possibly just tier 3 gear that sucks harder than tier 2 gear for some reason. Railjack components are worse than Rivens in that respect.

 

Things Railjack needs:
- A balance pass for component stats.
- More build flexibility, as opposed to just cramming on as much Hull, Armour, Speed, and Damage as you can into your Integrated slots, and then carrying one of the two useful Battle avionics.
- A long, hard look at exactly what the hell the different sources of gear are supposed to be about.
- More varied mission types.
- A really careful assessment of how they intend to balance gameplay and rewards for Railjack crew vs away teams. Right now, the meme (not as in joke, but as in persistent idea) among the community is that the purpose of the Railjack is to be parked as far from combat as possible and then you just do everything else in Archwing. That came about because Railjacks at launch were trash, an people could just use Amesha for everything, and now the most common thing to see is all public players just having nothing to do with the ship. That has absolutely blown up in DE's face spectacularly. The mode about spaceship battles immediately turned into Archwing. Even though a fully ranked Railjack is actually really good! Crying shame.
- The big one: integrating the various systems. Right now, Railjack is yet another gameplay island, isolated, pretty meaningless in the context of the rest of the game. Now, the thing DE need to be aware of that integrating Railjack into the rest of the game, using it as the 'connective tissue' of a remade game world, is both highly necessary and going to make people who had a bad experience with Railjack over the last month rage the eff out. See also the thread which featured people talking about how integrating Railjack into the New War would be the worst thing to have ever happened in the history of pixels.
------ Therefore, Railjack needs Squad Link brought in, and needs to have a more elegant way of transitioning from Railjack missions into ground missions and back.
--------------- Then, they have to integrate Kuva Liches into it, and I'm gonna say this now: DE starting with Kuva Liches as singular long term antagonists who take weeks to bring down and then caving and instead making them into what is basically an extended Sortie taking a few hours of grind was a cowardly move which is going to have negative repercussions for quite a few updates down the line. There were much better ways of doing this, but they did the fast, easy option, and now Liches are yet another incredibly shallow game system which is surface 'inspired' by a feature from a different game, but which didn't properly learn and replicate the good bits. Bite the bullet, DE, turn each individual Lich into a long term mini-campaign, allow each Lich to live for weeks, adapt and change along the way, and let the player gain rewards and setbacks periodically while fighting them.

 

 

 

EDIT: About that last one, it's annoying. DE already had a model for how to timegate progress through mini-campaigns while offering players periodic rewards, so that a player starts at zero and might only reach the max progression a couple of weeks later, but will still pick up a reward every few days along the way. When they introduced Liches and basically said "Yeah, we knew players are impatient and would hate to have a nemesis stick around for ages and ages," did they completely forget that the game features Nightwave and Syndicates? Jesus, just make each Lich into its own semi-unique Syndicate! Give it several tiers, and make it so that a player cannot progress more than one tier per week! Make it so that reaching each tier requires disrupting the Lich's operations, killing their lieutenants, and then facing the Lich at least once! At each tier, give the player some kind of mechanical reward, and let the Lich itself change stats, powers, and tactics.

Edited January 3, 2020 by BornWithTeeth

[Paradoxity]

15 minutes ago, (XB1)MandlorPrime said:

Warframe since 2013. At this point it might as well be an official Warframe meme. Like instead of Warframe "ninjas play for free", it should be,  Warframe "a game that will always have incredible potential". 

Yeah, that's the catch, no argument there. 

Honestly, DE needs a common-sense fairy, or someone to just hold their feet to the  fire and make them stick with something till it's done. And I don't for a moment, buy this whole 'we have to always be  making new content' crap they claim- I'm willing to bet people would come back to play if they heard that... IDK, kitguns, say, were being  vastly expanded and refined. Or zaws. Or pets. Or anything, really. 

[KnossosTNC]

26 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

Their vision and 26+ million registered losers' vision aren't likely to align this late in a games life cycle. Sorry, not after 7 years of investing in the game without it. 

I would say right up until the update that magically fits railjack into the rest of the game, it's a pretty valid concern.

Those of us that don't share their retcon vision of the game would like to know if we should pack our things. Musical fires isn't everyone's jam.

 

That's game development since the beginning. Devs have ideas, implement it, players give feedback, devs improve. Nothing new for Warframe or any other game.

Validity is irrelevant. DE are going to double down on Empyrean. Asking whether they should serves no purpose.

Again, as I've been saying for months, it was their original vision of the game all along, they just didn't have the tech or resources to implement it until now. "Retcon" suggests they got the idea later and suddenly decided to change the game because they felt like it. As videos and articles documenting the early days of Warframe I've seen hinted, this has been on their minds from the beginning. Devstream 135 outright confirmed it.

You do what you must. It's none of my business.

23 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

That sounds like some George Lucas-level revisionism to me.

See second-to-last paragraph above.

Edited January 3, 2020 by KnossosTNC