Raijack accesibility - where is it?

[supernils]

So there is this event, but I can't even participate because as of now Railjack is a black box for me.

My first rail jack experience was quite miserable. You can argue that Railjack is a squad experience, but so is Warframe generally. The first normal missions on earth are slowly leading the player into the game, being very easy. Players can get familiar with the game, without a squad of veterans rushing through everything. But with rail jack it is different. I'm just blown away by its complexity, I don't know where the #*!% to go and what the #*!% to do. All those consoles and menus, am I supposed to interact with it right now? I don't know why there is literally no guidance at all, why isn't it so that you unlock features over time, with each feature being explicitly introduced to the player, like in so many other games? Why can't Ordis help me out, isn't he supposed to be my little helper? Or let it be Sephalon Sy (?), but that guy has shut up ever since I finished the Railjack.

I can't find reason to try again, because doing the same with expecting different results is insanity. I'm just waiting for DE to streamline the experience, like they did with Kuva Liches eventually.

And I don't remember where but "Railjack accessibility" was announced for this update. I thought great, maybe I can find access to this world of content, but no. I'm left to participate in ground missions (which when I tried yesterday were all canceled? Corona lock down in Warframe?).

I get it, why can't I just watch Youtube tutorials and read the Wiki like you did, right? Because I just want to play the damn game, and that should be possible without consulting third party to gain access to it or get carried by players who did exactly that.

[supernils]

I'm really curious for the numbers, but I already read that apparently it's hard to find a rail jack squad for the event - I'm not surprised.

You should have seen this coming, DE. The Scarlet update should have been your Railjack polish. The one where you get those lost players on board.

 

[Doc-Orange]

Yesterday it was absolutely no problem to find a Railjack squad. I was in European region.  

[supernils]

Oh and by the way, I need 3, three attempts to gain access to Warframe itself. The first time I just didn't know what the #*!% to do (go to cockpit, start mission), the second time I didn't understand the game play loop yet, the reason to play. That's why I only really started playing Warframe years after.

 

[Yasha-7HS]

Blown away by its complexity? I did the entirety of Earth solo, you go forward and you shoot enemies. They damage the ship, you ignore it until it's critical, repair everything, and then continue to fly forward and shoot enemies. The only difference is when you get more things, it becomes slightly less linear. You... Press one of three buttons to use powers, like you've been doing for the rest of the game. You gain a second level of boost that makes you slightly faster. You gain a slingshot, which shoots you out of it to get into crewships, which just follow regular gameplay of sabotage missions.

It's not like we're talking actual dogfights in something like Planetside 2 and reverse corkscrew maneuvers, railjack is straightforward.

Not to mention, there is a node called free flight. You're talking about just wanting to "play the damn game" yet you couldn't just go into the one node that is clearly labeled for you to get familiar with the ship? Like everyone else did, day one, I went into free flight, walked around my ship to know where everything is, what it's doing there, and how to use it. It took all of ten minutes. All of the other systems took seconds to understand.

The largest problem with railjack accessibility were the resources that new players didn't have. That's what they fixed. 

15 minutes ago, supernils said:

Oh and by the way, I need 3, three attempts to gain access to Warframe itself. The first time I just didn't know what the #*!% to do (go to cockpit, start mission), the second time I didn't understand the game play loop yet, the reason to play. That's why I only really started playing Warframe years after.

It sounds like this just isn't the game for you, then. 

[supernils]

3 minutes ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

repair everything

How? That's how my first mission failed. Game doesn't tell you where the fire extinguishers are, or that you even need to use them, or how.

And I did the free flight node first.

I mean everyone has different intuition, what works for you apparently doesn't work for me, and there are probably things where it's vice versa. In other words, you think like the game designer. Good for you.

 

3 minutes ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

It sounds like this just isn't the game for you, then. 

lol that sounds kinda elitist, like the game was only for intellectuals like you. You want to believe that? Anyway I'm over 1000 hours in now and I love it. It's just that everyone inlcuding DE knows that the game has a terrible new player experience. It's kinda sad that they don't have this down after so many years, looking at this update.

[Zebiko]

Best mission types are the ones that feel fun to play solo AND in a group. Those missions don't need scaling and are streamlined. These are extermination, capture, mobile defense, assassinate, etc. They don't give much choice in what the player can do. Endless type missions can be frustrating in scaling, or party members doing something you don't want them doing (such as running out of affinity range, or leaving too soon, or not leaving soon enough). 

Problem with railjack, is that it was designed for group play only, because the devs didn't think the mode could be balanced or fun for both solo AND group play. But people don't change how they play unless there no other option allowed. So there are many frustrated players trying to do content in an unintended way, and scaling is off if you don't meet the player count meant for it. 

And that brings me to the topic of devs vision vs player vision, and how that can cause strife. But that's too far from the topic. 

[KnightKrawlur]

1 hour ago, supernils said:

lol that sounds kinda elitist, like the game was only for intellectuals like you. You want to believe that? Anyway I'm over 1000 hours in now and I love it. It's just that everyone inlcuding DE knows that the game has a terrible new player experience. It's kinda sad that they don't have this down after so many years, looking at this update.

The game is lacking in new player directions, as you said even DE agrees with that.  But Railjack came with zero instruction.  It's so lacking that the various terminals aren't even shown on the map.  I had to walk around the ship and approach every object to figure out if it did anything.  It reminded me of roaming around in games like Wolfenstien back in the DOS days spamming the spacebar while running face first into walls looking for hidden stuff.

I'm often critical of DE, maybe too much so.  I just find it sad they don't put more effort into polishing an interesting and fun game.

My thanks do go out to those folks on the forums, wiki pages and streamers that spend so much time figuring out odd systems and saving the rest of us time and headache. 

 

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, KnightKrawlur said:

The game is lacking in new player directions, as you said even DE agrees with that.  But Railjack came with zero instruction.  It's so lacking that the various terminals aren't even shown on the map.  I had to walk around the ship and approach every object to figure out if it did anything.  It reminded me of roaming around in games like Wolfenstien back in the DOS days spamming the spacebar while running face first into walls looking for hidden stuff.

It was even more fun in the beginning, since Forge terminals consistently failed to show their holographic display, so I had to just try all the forges and GUESS as to which ones were usable. I had to manually find the Slingshot Catapult on my own, since it's in a portion of the ship that doesn't look accesisble... And the only reason I even knew that thing existed is I'd watched the Dev Streams. I had no idea how the damage system worked or that there were different kinds of breaches, either. Someone earlier in the thread claimed "You ignore the damage and just fix the critical ones." OK, but as a new player, I had no idea which ones were critical and which weren't. It took me a long, long time to realise that my Railjack's health is basically irrelevant, and that I can only die from a critical breach. I still don't know what non-critical breaches do.

Railjack needs a tutorial - a proper one where Cy gives you full Intrinsics and walks you through all of the systems. This is the Helm, this is how you control it. With this skill you can boost. With this skill you can Railjack bullet-jump. These are the guns, this is the Forge, this is how you fix breaches, fires do this, electrical fires do that, etc. There's no harm in offering tutorials and documentation. Elitist players can always skip that to feel better about themselves, but the mere mortals among us could use the help so we can actually engage with and enjoy these systems without having to blindly stumble our way through them, constantly Alt-Tab to the Wiki and STILL not know basic functions dozens of hours in. For reference, it took me until MR9 to learn that I could bullet-jump UP rather than just forward, and it took a bunch of googling to figure it out.

I get that DE kicked Railjack undercooked and unfinished out the door because of whatever internal mismanagement reasons so OK. Fair enough. But if they're going to start pushing it into events and actually using it for anything important... Maybe add instructions first? Maybe finish the damb thing before you start using it?

[supernils]

3 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

since it's in a portion of the ship that doesn't look accesisble

That said, the ships interior layout is also terrible, usability wise. Super confusing.

[Steel_Rook]

Just now, supernils said:

That said, the ships interior layout is also terrible, usability wise. Super confusing.

It's actually simpler than it looks, but it IS counter-intuitive. Specifically, the amidship section throws a lot of people off because the "main path" through the Railjack shifts a level. If you're coming from the Bridge and the Gun Deck (which is where you spawn), you need to drop down a level in order to reach the Forge at the back. Most people will intuitively stay on the same level while moving back, and so find themselves in the dead-end Reliquary Drive section, instead. With no experience navigating the ship, this often leads to confusion and prevents people from trouble-shooting, realising that there are different paths on different levels.

It's too late in the game to be changing the Railjack interior to any significant degree, but I personally fee it would benefit from a Black Mesa style "guide line" painted on the floor. Draw two lines on the floor from the Helm past the Turrets, through amidship, down the ramps, through the passageways, into the hold and past all of the forges. Match them to an interior colour different from the one tinting the floor so players have the choice of what colour that line is. It might not solve the issue, but it would help.

[Shalath]

3 hours ago, supernils said:

How? That's how my first mission failed. Game doesn't tell you where the fire extinguishers are, or that you even need to use them, or how.

If your gear wheel you will find an Omni Tool. Select to equip and then aim at a breach/fire/electrical hazard and fire. You have to move your crosshair a bit sometimes.

[Yasha-7HS]

7 hours ago, supernils said:

How? That's how my first mission failed. Game doesn't tell you where the fire extinguishers are, or that you even need to use them, or how

Maybe it's that I played on the first day, when it appeared in the context menus for pick-ups but I noticed it immediately and found it immediately. 

7 hours ago, supernils said:

lol that sounds kinda elitist, like the game was only for intellectuals like you.

The game is only for intellectuals like me.

If you have intense frustration from trying to figure out very simple things from the Railjack, the game isn't for you if you're unable to teach the game to yourself through inspection. It's a "Beta" which while not openly plastered on the front page of the website anymore, is still quite relevant to the fact that the tutorials are to be given after the systems in place are deemed to work properly. 

7 hours ago, supernils said:

It's just that everyone inlcuding DE knows that the game has a terrible new player experience. It's kinda sad that they don't have this down after so many years, looking at this update.

We could pull up one dozen threads from every year this game has existed on how poorly the game introduces mechanics; threads like this don't help. At most, it's venting with no clear indication of what you needed to actually know how to play Railjack other than slowing down the already slow progression of Railjack. There are myriads of better threads and better videos that explain concisely the problems with Railjack's introduction and gameplay mechanics. Not to mention the mega-thread, which is still there.