Railjack and the problem of a random crew (with solutions)

[SmokinDice]

SO, I have recently finished my Railjack to be a very good version of all MK3 parts and started to be a captain myself.

before that I basically exclusively joined in to groups, I met some pretty awesome people, awesome captains, that explained alot about the game mode to me, which parts to look out for, what is important on a mission and so on. I alsmost always had a pretty nice experience, I did my job well and tried diffent things out, I tend to focus on the important parts of the mission, finishing the objective and taking down crewships, as these are hard for the pilot to do solo while fighting hoards of enemys and protecting the ship. when there was a captain who wanted to farm the area I gladly took part in it as materials are always needed, and I also took part in farming seasions for zekti bullwark and stuff. great times!

but I also heard story about people sometimes completely screwing over a run or make it really really hard.. or outright make any mission a pain, not because they dont know, but they either screw around on purpose, dont speak englisch or dont talk at all / are on dnd /are afk. I had a hard time believing all this, but now that I am a captain myself... I am annoyed to a point where I not only write this thread, but ALSO for the FIRST TIME ever, have people on my ignore list in warframe... and I think this is a really really bad thing. As I usually love this community and I am proud of it not beeing toxic at all and always helpful and beeing part of it.

I ran into alot of those issues, had someone piloting the ship and just flying of into space ( he was on DND of course) and we could do nothing about it, I had people spamming abilities and artillery randomly and no talking would help to make them stop. 

this is a really cooparative game mode and communication is key.. and if people dont listen or are not willing to talk, you have to be able to make them listen, no matter what.

 

I dont know other peoples opinion on this, But I think a Captain definitly needs more control over the crew in this gamemode, its your ship, and your investment, your ressources, and people in my opinion should be respectful of that, I know that I was, and I was glad to have them explain things to me and let me tag along in their ship.

 

my list of problems:

-people beeing able to use all abilities as much as they want.

- people beeing able to use artillery as much as they want.

-people beeing able to pilot the ship and no option for the captain to get them off the seat.

.people beeing able to use the navigation console and just randomly start any mission they want.

-people just beeing afk

-people just trolling around and gettign away with it without punishment

 

these are REALLY big concerns and problems I have with the game mode right now. And I think we need more drastic solutions for that.

 

here are some Ideas I really wish we could get:

 

FIRST, the ship owner needs special buttons in the tactical menu where they can activate or deactivate the ability for crew members to use: artillery, Railjack abilities and tactical deployment of warframe abilities. so the ship owner can decide seperately for these three things if crew members should be able to use them or not, because all these things cost ressources and it is so sad for me to say that so many people just dont listen or are on DND. when I have my ram active, I dont want people to just shoot it away all the time randomly just because they want to press buttons.

Second most importnant thing, a special button in the tactical menu for the ship owner that allows him to immediatly get control of the pilot seat and teleporting anyone using it behind him or swap places.

these things NEED to happen! ASAP please!

also I think its weird for warframe than a single person can just start a new mission on its own.. why dont we have a good old voting system? so everyone needs to accept the new mission or at least 2 people. and only the captain can start a timer for a new mission to begin.

(ofcourse flying to the dry dock should always be possible after a while)

 

then there are more controversial things I woul like to see.. something similar to the prison on sea of thieves.. a whole new system where you can massage someone, and they HAVE TO respond in about 10-15 seconds, if they dont, they get imprisioned in the back hall of the ship, where you can just transition between the three floors, and doors will no longer open for them, so they cant access anything important or anything to interact with, but at least they can die to invading grineers or defend the ship or lose. this ofcourse could be reverted at any time. this would get rid of any afk people or troll immediatly, so they can just leave the game or suffer.

 

and then also between missions, you should be able to remove members from your crew seperatly, I dont want to screw them off their rewards, but after they get them I would like to remove some people sometimes where they only troll but I like to keep others around.

and then also there should be an option for the crew ofcourse, where they can massage the captain, and HE has to respond, and if he doesn't he gets taking out of the pilot seat so a captain cant be afk either (never seen that though)

 

I really enjoy the game mode and it is super fun with nice people!

and although there are much more important things to do with railjack, like more mission diversity and more content to do (even on earth we need more than just skirmish),

I think these problems are the most frustrating part about it right now, and they can be fixed right now! 

so please do 🙂

 

/greetz SmokinDice

Edited March 23, 2020 by SmokinDice

[MetalGrayFox]

53 minutes ago, SmokinDice said:

I dont want people to just shoot it away all the time randomly just because they want to press buttons.

🤣🤣 relatable! I just play with clannies mostly or organised squads for a lot of the reasons you listed.

As much as I would love to hope some of the points you have raised will come to fruition in some form someday (I like the prison idea a lot!), as you say there are some bigger concerns with the game mode being only skirmish for the most part which need to be addressed first.

Welcome aboard Captain!

[SmokinDice]

for the artillery there could also be new voicelines for Cephalon Cy and features and notifications.. Imagine it something like this

-Tenno enters artillery

-Cephalon Cy: "Tenno entering Artillery, Captain, enable firing sequence"

-the pilot gets a new overlay on his screen where he needs to press a button to "unlock" the artillery for 1 shot. (if he doesn't, the tenno in the canon gets put out of it after 20 seconds)

-when the button is pressed the tenno can fire the artillery.

-cephalon Cy: "Artillery ready to fire, Vanquish them"

-case 1: target crewship is down. cephalon Cy: "Target annihilated, dropping tenno out of shooting range, this, was satisfying." tenno will be removed out of the artillery gun

-case 2: target crewship still lives. cephalon Cy: "Target hit, we are on their radar now, watch out crew, they are coming for us" the crew ships spawns a grineer capsule flying towards your ship.

- in case 2 the button will reapear for the pilot, so the gunner can shoot for one more time.

if you are solo this is obviously disabled and you can always shoot if you want to

 

 

this will have 2 positive impacts on the game. 

first the canon can not be fired randomly anymore, saving ressources

second, the pilot gets a notification of what the crew wants to do, so he can adjust and look towards any  noticable target.

Edited March 23, 2020 by SmokinDice

[32768]

7 hours ago, SmokinDice said:

ALSO for the FIRST TIME ever, have people on my ignore list in warframe... and I think this is a really really bad thing.

Haha, welcome to the club, once you get used to ignore feature you will wonder how did you live without it before.

The stuff you are talking about been out there for months, now they are launching entire operation on this like it's nothing special. I don't know, at least it isn't crashing twice in one mission now, hopefully more discussion will help to address railjack issues, good luck.

I personally think we have to wait until they finish with their own plans for railjack (squad link etc etc) then maybe (hopefully) they will have time to fix stuff people are complaining about.

P.S. Other people using starchart is actually something they "fixed", it's not a bug, it's expected behavior (so to speak), it's in some patchnotes. 

[Ecalyptusss]

I dont think, these things are a priority man, i understand, that can be annoyed but devellopers have a lot of plan for the moment.. i hope, they will do a lot of changement later about this.

(sorry if my english isn't good)

[Chicken-Biryani]

Random crew? No thanks, I do solo, it may be slow and harder, but at least I don't get to spoil my mood because of someone else. 

Also I am eagerly awaiting the update when liches can be used as crew! 🙏

[antiquadr]

Hello,

I'm driving my ship almost every day for two month now, and I've seen everything you are writing about. Glad to hear you like this game mode too. What should I say, you know

Quote

this is a really cooperative game mode and

problem here is exactly with peoples, not with ship stuff or game mode or abilities. People would be good or bad it is their choice, you can't do anything about that. If they want, no matter what button DE gives you, they'll find another way to troll, abuse, etc. DE can't give you the button to "Make people better".

Only a solution I found for myself, as this is my ship and because of that one thing I definitely can do: I wish them good luke and cast a host migration.

You do not have to cooperate with people who don't want to cooperate with you.

Edited March 24, 2020 by antiquadr
fix grammar

[(PSN)Vodka_Vision_]

3 hours ago, Nehra96 said:

Random crew? No thanks, I do solo, it may be slow and harder, but at least I don't get to spoil my mood because of someone else. 

Also I am eagerly awaiting the update when liches can be used as crew! 🙏

I can't wait for that to never happen!

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Feel there's a couple problems here... The fact the ship has a common ressource pool is one. I think each player should have it's own ammunition and resources, meaning what you shoot is what you use up, and it's your call if and when to refine... You craft your own payload and repair gel, and it's your share you're wasting and not everyone's ammunition.

Second there's rather major problems in terms of roles in Railjack. The pilot has by far the best experience, since he can move the ship and shoot from the front, he's the best positioned for most abilities, and he's basically in charge. Thus , it's understandable that some people will attempt to steal control away from the player / host. The design is that the ship is everyone's property, but to me it's a little aggravating that someone can hijack your ship and never lit it go, then waste his time running in circles and making the mission take five times longer.

As for other roles, Gunners have to suffer through a side view and they have a much harder time hitting targets overall, grabbing the leftovers the main turret cannot get, making many people skip gunner altogether. We need better side turrets, maybe with better range or a way to give them better tracking to compensate. Nobody wants to be a full time gunner i feel.

Engineer starts out as a very essential job, but as your get better as a host and get more avionics and the remote repair perk, it becomes pretty irrelevant. Heck, you can just remote repair critical breeches every now and then and basically ignore the bulk of internal damage for entire mission. Plus it kinda sucks as a playstyle, gets old extremely fast if it's all you do , and by the time you reach a high level , you would have probably done your fair share of it and be sick of it.

Then there's the crewship infiltrations, who also tend to lose importance once you have avionics that give you enough DPS to use the tunguska cannon, in effect not even needing foot soldiers to get in there. Worse case scenario, you as a pilot can teleport , catapult and be back in the RJ before dinner...  Making that role kinda redundant. Good crewship infiltrators are sadly rare, and i've come to have to rely on myself to take care of them nowadays, since the crew somehow never seems to spot them and attempt to take them out. Besides, I find it much cooler as a concept to briefly cloak your ship as you infiltrate as a pilot than having dedicaed people doing this.

Archwing support isn't really possible since there's all these dumb oneshot enemies and it's about as fun as getting your tooth pulled. They need to redesign the whole archwing combat so all guns deal good damage, all archwings are viable and fun to use, and it's a good alternative to RJ combat. Right now it's only good for earth and saturn when your RJ is as durable as a paper towel in the beginning.

Base infiltration and enemy killing is also not fun because enemies are way too tanky thus annoying to take out. As for base infiltration, when you get into a base, your goal is to do the objective as fast as possible. Since enemies are a little too tanky, you tend to ignore them because you don't want to fight them, as it will take too long clearing the area. Why would I clear a crewhship if I can just blow the core and be out ? My RJ crew is waiting for me , I have no reason to stick around, making the role kinda pointless imho. If you intend to make these type of scenarios, it needs to be stuff like mobile defenses or excavations. Give a reason for the infiltration to stick around for a while, maybe spy missions, something that requires a degree of sophistication. And if enemies would be less tankly, you would do like in most missions and just maul them with melee weapons, making infiltration more engaging.

So yeah, I think the best course of action with railjack would be to slowly move away from a 4 player crew model, instead focusing on a single user per railjack with a command intrinsic crew of misfits doing the booring stuff ...That way everyone gets to play their own RJ and nobody is doing menial tasks like ship upkeep.

There's some autopilot and cloaking that occurs when you leave your ship, going on a side turret removes your lich friend from it and activates a special hyperdrive turret that really wrecks when ship is immobile, so a pilot would often leave helm to switch to turret gunner for raw dps phasese , since a ship is immobile where after ten seconds without moving, a hypershield pops to divert many projectiles and turrets gain increased damage as reactor power is no longer needed for propulsion and is fueled to the side turrets.

Before starting mission, ideally you get a choice when starting of the following options:

A - I'll pilot my own ship

B - I'll join someone else's ship since I don't have one or mine isn't good.

Thus you either get 4 RJs, 2RJs and 1RJs per match, maybe depending of gamemode, maybe based on player preference. You can already technically have 1 RJ and 3 Grineer Galleons, so i'm pretty sure the engine can handle four player using RJs simultaneously.

So yeah , that's how I would fix RJ... Plus they need to redo the whole starchart where each node on ground or on a ship has an associated RJ mission to get there, and add some squad link.

Edited March 24, 2020 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[Acos]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

Base infiltration and enemy killing is also not fun because enemies are way too tanky thus annoying to take out. As for base infiltration, when you get into a base, your goal is to do the objective as fast as possible. Since enemies are a little too tanky, you tend to ignore them because you don't want to fight them, as it will take too long clearing the area. Why would I clear a crewhship if I can just blow the core and be out ? My RJ crew is waiting for me , I have no reason to stick around, making the role kinda pointless imho. If you intend to make these type of scenarios, it needs to be stuff like mobile defenses or excavations. Give a reason for the infiltration to stick around for a while, maybe spy missions, something that requires a degree of sophistication. And if enemies would be less tankly, you would do like in most missions and just maul them with melee weapons, making infiltration more engaging.

I notice my go-to role when joining another team seems to be the "ground support" guy since otherwise nobody tends to do it or maybe they're too scared to get out of the ship. Fly up with my AW shields ablaze, get into the back, use a Rubico Prime with punch through to shoot through the door into the reactor/core/whatever, then hop off to the next one. 

I like the idea of the enemy boarding sequence becoming a bit more sophisticated so it feels a little less routine. Mobile Defense, Exterminate, Spy, there's a lot of little mini-game things they could choose from. At very least I thing taking out the core should require a small hacking sequence like a regular Sabotage so you can't just snipe the weak spot from the hangar. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

bear in mind that putting safeguards in and restricting thigns can also be abused, there may be times where someone really DOES need to use the artillery but the captain ignores them for whatever reason. it would just encourage toxic behaviour of a different kind.

right now your best bet is to just Solo or take friends, and I say this having had decent luck when it comes to randoms. recruiting can help as well. once Command Intrinsic appears it will be much easier for Solo players; I just hope the AI won't be garbage, but if DE take their time and don't rush, then it should be OK. 

[MPonder]

18 hours ago, SmokinDice said:

I had a hard time believing all this, but now that I am a captain myself... I am annoyed to a point where I not only write this thread, but ALSO for the FIRST TIME ever, have people on my ignore list in warframe... and I think this is a really really bad thing. As I usually love this community and I am proud of it not beeing toxic at all and always helpful and beeing part of it.

This is a really cooparative game mode and communication is key.. and if people dont listen or are not willing to talk, you have to be able to make them listen, no matter what.

these are REALLY big concerns and problems I have with the game mode right now. And I think we need more drastic solutions for that.

The illusion of Warframe having a nice community is created by a game with almost 0 needs for cooperative play. Put some real cooperative game modes in the game and you can trully see what the community is. Everygame has people that help others btw.

I hope Scarllet is really a cooperative mode, to see a lot of threads like this.

[32768]

3 hours ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

right now your best bet is to just Solo or take friends, and I say this having had decent luck when it comes to randoms. recruiting can help as well. once Command Intrinsic appears it will be much easier for Solo players; I just hope the AI won't be garbage, but if DE take their time and don't rush, then it should be OK. 

Taking a friend to railjack might lead to some bad blood between you and your friend, and you need 3 friends, or one friend and two randoms, which isn't very different from just playing with randoms. That being said, i played with randoms all the time and 99% of the time it is fiiiiiiine. But that 1% is discarding everything good about railjack (with randoms). Nowadays even if someone asks in alliance chat if someone want to do railjack i'm hesitant to say "yes" even though i would like to, but i guess i'd rather prefer to play solo.

 

2 hours ago, MPonder said:

The illusion of Warframe having a nice community is created by a game with almost 0 needs for cooperative play. Put some real cooperative game modes in the game and you can trully see what the community is. Everygame has people that help others btw.

I know right? It's even less understandable why would they destroy this amazing feature of Warframe: if you don't feel like playing with others - just go solo and play as you like. But not in railjack, you just can't escape that infinite loop of repair - kill boarders - put out fires - repair - kill boarders - ... Every time i return to railjack from crewship, there are like 20 greener dudes wrecking everything and a critical failure in progress.

If they would add NPC crew and exploration-type missions (just like what they showed on TennoCon) i would probably live in railjack, but somehow they think it would be better if they lock railjack behind dojos, tens of thousands of mats required for researches, and then drop some random dudes into my railjack.

I guess they know better, they have all the numbers, how many people are playing railjack and how they play it etc etc.

[32768]

By the way, this is how boarding should have looked like in my head. Of course there should be tenno in ramsled, not some greener scoom. Why those stupid grenner even brief air in my railjack? It's not for them.

 

[CaptainMinty]

13 minutes ago, 32768 said:

snip

A fellow battle brother! We are the Emperor's fury!

As for the random crew issues, I've always been a silent mook on a ship due to my internet issues. I turn off voice comms because it is horrible to hear them due to the high latency. As such, I default to a state of repairing the ship and maintaining supplies. If I need more repair goo, and don't have the materials, I'll go get them. If I don't have anything to repair, then I'll man a side gun to give support. I don't like to pilot because frankly I don't know how my lag will affect how the ship flies. If I'm the only one on board, I will, but other than that no. I always listen to the rest of the crew's text chat and have no problem jumping off a station to let someone else use it. I never use the forward artillery, nor any ordinance. I don't know if I've been considered a good crewmember, but I had worked to be one. I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to be a useful member. The host is graciously providing a Railjack for you to use, and you should treat it like such. Care for it. Especially if the captain is new. Keep them afloat. They'll find out that Railjack is actually a fun gamemode if you have one or two players to give you a hand.

I say this, being someone who basically used other players to farm resources, wreckage, and mods for me so that I, with my dinky Railjack, didn't have to. And having been carried by others with bigger Railjacks, I am now the one who has a beast of a Railjack. Except I can't pay that favor back because I have the latency of a demon, and anyone cursed to be on my ship will never, ever, have a good time. Except for me.

[Luciole77]

After so many frustrations with public games and "friends" I built my railjack to play alone and after more than 2 months playing I reached a stage where I don't need anyone else to help me. I do anomaly and missions if both appear in less than 40 minutes ... and I see many matches taking more than an hour or more to complete. I am well thanks, highly trained, maximum efficiency.

I'm having more fun than ever ....! It is the pure truth. I do everything in my time, explore, kill, try without anyone getting in the way.

Public games on the warframe are things that most irritate us ... that's the ultimate truth.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Luciole77