Was Railjack worth it?

[Teljaxx]

Though Empyrean may be a free update for a free game, it isn't completely free in the end. There are costs other than monetary.

It took over two years since it was first announced to even get 1/3rd of the update. Was it worth the wait? Was it worth enduring the dearth of other meaningful updates in the meantime? Will it be worth the wait to get the rest? While DE has been focusing most of their efforts on Empyrean, the rest of the game was left to rot. Is the new and different gameplay worth the degradation of the old?

Personally, I haven't even bothered trying anything related to Railjack yet, because everything I have seen and heard about it doesn't seem worth it. Just like pretty much everything else lately, it has been a poorly implemented and unfinished mess. So the inevitable grind just plain isn't worth the reward. And worst of all, it isn't even Warframe anymore. Archwing failed because it wasn't Warframe, and now Railjack has doubled down on that and gone even further off the path.

So what do you think? Will Railjack ever carry Warframe to the stars? Or would it have been better off staying grounded, and improving upon what we already had?

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

It was because I can have some degree of fun. But it also wasn't, because if DE had higher standarts on this and made a greater effort to deliver quality rather than advertising I'd have had a much, much, much, much bigger blast with Railjack. Apply the same logic to most events, Liches - and most likely the upcoming New War and Duviri, since this seems like a guaranteed and regular issue by now.

Edited January 16, 2020 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[k05h]

vor 26 Minuten schrieb Teljaxx:

So what do you think? Will Railjack ever carry Warframe to the stars? Or would it have been better off staying grounded, and improving upon what we already had?

Personally I could have done without railjack and do not think resources invested were worth the result. I would have preferred if all these resources were used on the new faction and a new "planet", two or three (even small) story additions and cleanups of existing content. 

Edited January 16, 2020 by k05h

[Viges]

Was Railjack worth it?

No.

[Goodwill]

Nah, Warframe is years past its prime. Even if DE fixed everything and made it a complete product, it still wouldn't be anymore popular. What Warframe is doing is settling into its niche which inevitably will mean much lower player counts. DE will need to accept and adjust for that accordingly.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Goodwill

[Gabbynaru]

Yup. Because for the first time in forever, DE made something that was fun first, grindy second. Yeah, it's grindy. But I don't give a f*ck, cause it's freakin' fun. The hardest grind in the world can be overcome with ease if it is fun to do it, and DE finally figured that out. Hopefully this design phylosophy will extend beyond Railjack and into the main game and updates to come.

[Ham_Grenabe]

Well, when I watched that Tennocon a hundred years back, I thought "Hey that's kinda cool." Then I promptly forgot about Railjack until late November-ish, when there were tweets about progress they were making. 

So I wasn't waiting for anything in particular. I was entertained by some of it, and disappointed by the level of instability and the sky-high grindwall that rapidly became known.

I have had some fun with the game mode, but once you've played a couple Earth missions, you've seen everything the mode has to offer currently -- you'll be doing the same thing in the other Proxima, the enemies just have more health. So the honeymoon period was short. Now, DE is on the hook to deliver not only fixes and corrections, but a shedload of new things to do to make it interesting to play again. If they can do that, it'll be worth it. If they can't...well, it'll just be another Archwing.  

[Goodwill]

Just now, Gabbynaru said:

Yup. Because for the first time in forever, DE made something that was fun first, grindy second. Yeah, it's grindy. But I don't give a f*ck, cause it's freakin' fun. The hardest grind in the world can be overcome with ease if it is fun to do it, and DE finally figured that out. Hopefully this design phylosophy will extend beyond Railjack and into the main game and updates to come.

I'm with you. Although I'd say the idea is fun and I'm looking forward to continual development. But I really love Railjack because it simply aligns with my niche. I'll give them props for also making so you could still solo with Railjack and you don't feel locked into doing it in a squad.

[mrrobotto67]

For me, it was worth it. I have tremendous ammounts of fun. But with that being said, DE still needs to work on the bugs, polish some stuff, expand Railjack/Empyrean to the core gameplay so it doesn't feel like an island and part 3 of Empyrean (which the name was "find answers")

[Fl_3]

All in all, I'd say it was worth it, but rushed the rushed release of unfinished content seems to be something that DE is willing to do more and more often and, in the long run, it can only damage the game.

For a lot of people Empyrean isn't considered to be fit for purpose, and, with the lack of balance and the sheer amount of bugs it's easy to see why. But, it has the potential to be something amazing, far more than the broken concept of Old Blood will ever be.

I'm hoping that Old Blood and Empyrean are both going to have the hell patched out of them to turn them into something worthy of being part of Warframe and not just another piece of content that's going to be ignored once we all have whatever drops we can get from it.

Balls in your court DE, don't drop it.

[JackHargreav]

For me it was worth it.

I always wanted the game to grow and become more than just corridors connected to other corridors.

With the recent fixes the game mode became much more worthy of my time too. Finally no one has to deal with 50 avionic vidar reacotrs. And maybe the engines will get the same treatment too.

I'm excited to see how this game mode will grow. If it will. If DE won't abandon it. I really hope that won't happen.

[redindy]

For me no, but than again I hate 3D space games with those kind of controls.

[(PSN)AllOrNothinDays]

No imo. I was glad when they decided not to go with another open world but when you think about it, this kind of is an open world, just a space one. It just had the luxury of being more random with what I called controlled chaos IE broken up style debris that look exactly the same each map.

 

If this release dinged up DE in any way then I hope they at least stop and look at what they're doing so some good can come of it. I'm honestly a bit worried after the kuva lich system, railjack, and now how nightwave has kept going and going like there was nothing planned for it. I'm now beginning to think they were better off with alerts for many reason on top of they didn't have to manage it as much compared to nightwave and it feels like more content they can't maintain, just like primed mods and more where they run out of ideas or just don't have enough people to keep it going. Regardless, if any good comes of this then it will be a positive if they can turn it around.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Teljaxx:

............. Personally, I haven't even bothered trying anything related to Railjack yet, ....................

what??? i dont like empty trash talk...

and respect devs work!

[FoxyKabam]

1 hour ago, Teljaxx said:

Will Railjack ever carry Warframe to the stars?

I seriously doubt it and would love to be wrong, I have 0 faith DE is capable of this.

1 hour ago, Teljaxx said:

Or would it have been better off staying grounded, and improving upon what we already had?

That probably would have been the smart choice long term.

what would liches have been like had they not been rushed?

the state of melee? could it have been a full 3.0?

maybe DE could of salvaged profit taker, reworked a couple of bosses (phorid and friends)

[(PSN)oblivion_13test]

For me it's the most fun thing in the game since eidolon hunting and it's perhaps a bit more accessible than eidolons. At the end of the day space ninjas need some things to do in space and once fixed we have a good foundation for things to come. 

[Toppien]

yes, kinda

[TheFBD]

3 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

So what do you think? Will Railjack ever carry Warframe to the stars? Or would it have been better off staying grounded, and improving upon what we already had?

I think it's dead content already. And no hotfix or balancing act will get players back into it. Just imagine with the development power of over a year what we could've gotten instead. Melee 3.0. Descent lich system. Third orb mother fight. Maybe even another cinematic quest or two. A new planet (as someone suggested in this thread too), yeah, even a new faction. Look at what we got instead. There's only one answer.

[(PSN)Apoleon_amarr]

You mean the demo that we have now? Yeah, pretty fun for just a demo

[(PSN)robotwars7]

4 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

So what do you think?

I think it has potential, but it fell flat on it's face on launch for a number of reasons. mostly DE being impatient and trying to cash in on something half-baked, then not have to fix it until weeks later. it still seems like they have the finished product, but cut off a piece and shipped it early without testing it to satisfy the masses; this should never have even been considered as an option, and we can see why now: major backlash from players, many quitting (if only temporarily), and an overall negative atmosphere on the forums because of it. they should have just waited until after the holidays to start rolling out Railjack, or make us wait until March or whatever but drop the ENTIRE expansion in one go, making changes to it when needed for the rest of the year.

DE should probably also focus on actually fixing some other existing systems, particularly Liches, which most people aren't satisfied with. we also need Squad link to be tested (yes, TESTED, not rushed out the door the moment it looks stable, actually tested thoroughly and then only released when ready, and still closely monitored by the devs after) at some point, then maybe with remaining time we can get the 3rd Orb mother fight and Corpus Liches and Railjack Missions. the devs need to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to updates; I'd rather get just a few large, amazing updates that add a lot to the game in a year than see them trying to runs updates out every couple of months and barely have time to go back and fix things.

I'm by no means a game development expert, but I've sussed out one thing: there's really no replacement for actually putting in the effort and taking the time to get things right.

[NocheLuz]

Short answer : No.

Long answer : It's not really worth anything right now. It's just a new game mode. Even if DE try to hide something behide it, it would be just another Sanctuary Onslaught or Arbitration. That needed a lots of preperation and a lots of time invested in it. Also, since it's a squad gameplay. It is almost impossible to play Solo casually. But in the future I think there will be an update that make Railjack Soloable casually.

[Talinthis]

Not right now it isnt, no. Took em a month to fix the bare basics that shouldnt have made it into the release in the first place

[Luciole77]

i just want a option to play solo without lift my ass from my chair to kill crew or repair the ship....waiting for commander intrinsic. If not.....

[Teljaxx]

16 hours ago, Fl_3 said:

I'm hoping that Old Blood and Empyrean are both going to have the hell patched out of them to turn them into something worthy of being part of Warframe and not just another piece of content that's going to be ignored once we all have whatever drops we can get from it.

Balls in your court DE, don't drop it.

I would love to have faith in DE to actually make things better. But their history proves otherwise, because they have basically never actually finished a single part of this game.

Just look at the Corrupted. They were added in what? Update 8-something? And yet six years later, they are still using the same placeholder weapons they always have. And when they added new voices for the male units, they promised new female voices as well, but somehow never got around to that part. Sure, neither of these is a huge, game ruining problem, but it is a perfect example of DE's attitude and practices overall.

They only ever release patches for something until the next big update comes out. They they shift all their attention to that, and forget everything else. So I would bet that Railjack will only be worked on until Planes of Duviri or New war comes out. Then it will simply languish in whatever hopefully good enough state it ends up in.

They also tend to ignore all the little problems until they become huge and impossible to fix. But that's another topic...

15 hours ago, fuffi2milka said:

what??? i dont like empty trash talk...

and respect devs work!

This isn't empty trash talk. You don't always have to play a game to know its bad. I don't think its worth going through the 36 hour unskippable wait, plus whatever grinding I would have to do on top of that, just to access a gamemode that I can't even play solo (AKA, the way I most enjoy this game). I will probably try it out whenever they get around to adding solo support. But until then, its not worth my time. Not when I have so many other games I could be playing instead.

And I respect good work. Way too many people try to excuse incompetent game design by saying "But making games is hard!" You know what else is hard? Basically every job ever. Building cars is hard. Running a restaurant is hard. And if those people do a bad job, you better believe they'll catch hell for it. Shoddy work is Shoddy work, regardless of the industry. So a developer releasing a broken and unfinished game update doesn't deserve pity, and it certainly doesn't deserve defense. It deserves criticism.

I am not saying any of this because I hate DE. I am not angry at them, I am disappointed in them. I know they can do better than this. But if we praise them for releasing garbage, they'll never have any reason to do better.

16 hours ago, Goodwill said:

Nah, Warframe is years past its prime. Even if DE fixed everything and made it a complete product, it still wouldn't be anymore popular. What Warframe is doing is settling into its niche which inevitably will mean much lower player counts. DE will need to accept and adjust for that accordingly.

This is the inherent flaw in the "live service" development model. The game is designed to be infinite. But nothing is infinite. And in trying to achieve this impossible goal, they inevitably end up making things worse and worse, until the game fizzles out and dies. And the more desperate they get, the more extreme the changes. Adding completely new things in an attempt to draw in an even bigger audience. But this usually only serves to drive away their oldest and most dedicated players, because the game ends up transforming into something completely different than what they originally fell in love with.

And that is one of my main problems with Railjack. I don't play Warframe to crew a spaceship. I play warframe to parkour around and shoot things. And yet, because it is their newest baby, DE will be focusing on nothing but that for the foreseeable future, and they rest will rot away in the meantime.

Developers only have limited resources to work on their game. The more different things they add, the less quality you can expect from any of it. I would much rather play a nicely focused game that does one or two things extremely well, than a super eclectic game that does many things poorly. Unfortunately, live service games almost always end up being the latter.

[Goodwill]

21 minutes ago, Teljaxx said:

This is the inherent flaw in the "live service" development model. The game is designed to be infinite. But nothing is infinite. And in trying to achieve this impossible goal, they inevitably end up making things worse and worse, until the game fizzles out and dies. And the more desperate they get, the more extreme the changes. Adding completely new things in an attempt to draw in an even bigger audience. But this usually only serves to drive away their oldest and most dedicated players, because the game ends up transforming into something completely different than what they originally fell in love with.

And that is one of my main problems with Railjack. I don't play Warframe to crew a spaceship. I play warframe to parkour around and shoot things. And yet, because it is their newest baby, DE will be focusing on nothing but that for the foreseeable future, and they rest will rot away in the meantime.

Developers only have limited resources to work on their game. The more different things they add, the less quality you can expect from any of it. I would much rather play a nicely focused game that does one or two things extremely well, than a super eclectic game that does many things poorly. Unfortunately, live service games almost always end up being the latter.

I originally played Warframe because of the how it was initially balanced. Unlike other people here, I loved the stamina systems and how abilities didn't take front and centre.

Honestly, I'm opposite of you. The main reason I still stick with and support Warframe despite it's best year being way in the past is because of the new things DE tries. If DE didn't try new things, I probably would've dropped Warframe at Parkour 2.0. That was when Warframe died for me. Ever since they removed that, the core gameplay never felt fun again, playing the game felt arbitrary. I like the new things DE adds because it takes my mind off of the poor core game. Unless DE decides to bring Warframe back to form of pre-parkour 2.0 (I can live without the stamina bar but back then it actually felt we were space ninjas and that we were fighting a losing battle. Now I wonder how we haven't wiped every single faction off the face of the universe yet).

I'm here for the long run either way and I'll most certainly be here when the plug is pulled.