Railjack Changes: Accessibility, Solo Gameplay, And Future Expansion

[Jamescell]

General Accessibility: I dove deep into railjack recently, and I love it. I love the potential that it has to expand the underlying game and connect what are currently islands of content with poor world-immersion. After playing off other people's railjacks and quickly hopping up to the highest level content for the best gear, I tried bringing my over-level-ed railjack to some of the most basic missions and had it absolutely handed to me by the weakest enemies. Since then I've learned essentially everything about railjack there is to know, and I would have no problem completing these missions now even with low level gear, but there are still some serious issues with how solo play works, and while DE has side-stepped these concerns by promising another intrinsic tree that will probably give players an AI crew, I've always thought the enemy faction specters and kuva lich friends were extremely corny, both visually and thematically. Furthermore, from what DE has suggested about this future tree, abilities related to an AI crew don't fix the underlying confusion and difficulty of railjack to access and understand. 

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This has always been a problem of DE's though. Assuming that player's won't mind having to go elsewhere to understand the game mechanics that are thrown at them. I generally think that there's a significantly negative impact to player retention and player enjoyment of the game when they are constantly being told to work through things they don't have a proper introduction to. DE has improved these issues overtime, but even after playing the game forever, I find myself having to comb over the the wiki or the update notes to understand new features work. 

Furthermore, it is extremely strange how gated railjack was designed to be. Considering that DE's original dream and intentions were to incorporate space-ship combat into the base game (but didn't due to resource and time constraints), and considering how fundamental and connective of an expansion to the game-experience railjack could be, Railjack should be fundamentally incorporated into the earliest content and player experience. Players should be introduced to the new player experience, shoehorned into archwing, and then presented with a story/tutorial mission that introduces railjack in a non-time-gated way. Players shouldn't need to do some silly repetitive salvage and building quest; just give them the railjack like how the liset is given to the player as a fundamental tool and part of the experience. 

Whatever this mission would be, it would ultimately boil down to the player being threatened, finding the railjack, and being walked through how to use it (and ALL of its features) by either the cephalon or the lotus in order to neutralize some threat. In order to properly implement this type of expansion, introductory enemy levels would have to be adjusted, and unlocking fundamental mechanics like the slingshot, forward artillery, and tactical teleport would all be available to begin with. Furthermore, the railjack should start with a really weak single tactical avionics and single battle avionics.

It would then be very important for railjack to no longer require the dry-dock in order to be used or customized. Instead, players should be able to customize their railjack whenever a mission is completed (missions should complete after all objectives are finished, and should not require players to jump to another node) or just generally when there is no active mission like in free-flight mode. Crew members would be able to customize their own railjacks while on board as well during this time. Having to return to the drydock every so often gets tedious, and really serves no purpose besides gating the content behind the dojo, as well as making the railjack experience more chopped up and less immersive for players.

To add to this flexibility, players should be able to leave a mission at any time by simply using the ship navigation to move to another node, which would fail the current mission. If the host does this, there would be the option of joining a new node as a crew member, joining the node as railjack pilot (and leaving behind the current crew), or joining the node as the railjack pilot and the current crew. The last option would require a unanimous squad vote. Crew members would also be able to leave the current node for another, but would only have the option of joining the node as a crew member, or leaving behind the current squad and joining the node as the railjack pilot. 

 

 

General Changes: While I've already addressed accessibility, I think there are also some really important changes that could be made to improve general gameplay, and the experience for solo players.

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Controls: There's no reason for the tactical sprint of the railjack to be a separate key from the sprint key. Holding sprint will accelerate the ship, but doesn't have all the functionality of the "L" keybinding for my tactical movement. There's no reason I can see to have the sprint button separate from the fighter button. Furthermore, I think it's really important that there are separate key bindings for piloting the ship and manning the ship stations, so players can customize those how they want without affecting their normal key bindings. 

Roles: Two main things I noticed very early on in my railjack play through was how useless the side turrets are, and how boring the forward artillery role is. As the forward artillery guy, you have no weapons besides the extremely powerful but resource-limited FA charges. As a result, you just sit there, waiting for the mission to draw close to the end so that all the screwships spawn in and then you have a brief moment to shine. Since no one uses the side turrets later on, I think that combining the functionality of the FA and the side turrets would really make the gunner role more interesting. When a player enters the FA cockpit, they would be able to fire both side guns with the primary fire, and the FA with secondary (or vice versa, doesn't really matter if there are custom key bindings for railjack). The FA field of view would now be 360 just like the side-guns, but there would be a clear marker of which way is forward, and a visual indication of the range of the FA in the larger FoV. The FA would not be chargeable until within that subset FoV, and if the player aims out of that area while charging it will cancel the charge. This combination of the FA and side-guns would give the gunner things to consistently do without constantly having to switch out of the cockpit. Perhaps the side guns could still be optionally manned, but when not manned the FA gunner can control them. 

Teleporting: Give players a way to quickly return to objectives they have marked or that their teammates have marked. The easiest way to implement this would be through the tactical menu, adding 4 new markers that only appear if a player has set a teleport waypoint. Clicking on the waypoint would then teleport any squadmate to that point. This points would not work in space, only on enemy ships and asteroid stations and general away-areas. This would especially help solo players that have to complete missions requiring constant back and forth as well.

Tactical Menu: The tactical menu should not have the tactical avionics. Tactical avionics should be keybound just like the battle avionics, and their cooldowns should be displayed in the main HUD when piloting or in the gunner seat. Furthermore, Warframe assist abilities from the tactical menu should cost Warframe energy, and not flux energy. I might actually use these abilities if they cost warframe energy, whereas at the moment they just aren't worth it. Furthermore, the tactical menu should show all players the status of the forge cooldowns.

Flux Energy Flexible Control: There are a few changes that I think would make solo play a lot better. The first is giving railjacks a low innate flux energy regeneration. This could be a low amount, but would allow the player to exchange flux energy for remotely manning the forges from the tactical menu, pilot seat, and gunner seat (recipes would still require the resources). The pilot could also man the FA with a tertiary fire key (again would have its own keybinding) but this would also cost flux energy. Perhaps the flux energy regeneration rate could increase the less players there are, not sure.

Dead Cloak: Railjacks should have a tactical menu default cloaking ability that shuts down all the ship systems besides the tactical menu camera sharing and tactical menu warframe abilities. This would prevent the ship from regenerating health or moving as well. What this would do, is allow players to remove the constant pressure of keeping up the railjack, in multiplayer this could allow for the actual supportive gameplay DE advertised in the original tennocon preview, which players just don't do when trying to constantly keep the railjack alive. More importantly, however, this would allow solo players to take care of away-mission objectives without having to worry about their ships being destroyed. This combined with the teleport waypoint functionality would do a great deal to make railjack feel like a legitimate experience for solo play (which I think is important especially if the railjack content is to keep expanding and is to be introduced earlier on in the game). 

Based on the changes above, if balanced right, multiplayer squads would still be potentially much more efficient, avoiding players from feeling pressured to do solo railjack for efficiency, while also immensely increasing the flexibility of the experience when playing solo. For an average railjack fighting competitively leveled content, a solo player is at times just required to do too much back-and-forth, even with the quick teleporting. These changes allow players to forego the back and forth in exchange for flux energy, which when playing in solo would be a more reasonable tradeoff, especially if the base flux-energy regeneration rate was increased for solo play, or perhaps scaled based on the number of players in the squad to prevent a weird jump between solo and duo. 

Side Note: I've noticed I never have enough resources to make more FA charges and sometimes even flux energy in solo play. I'm not sure why this is, as I kill many enemies before running out of either. Perhaps the forge resource pickup rate is only 1/4 in solo? I've experienced this consistently enough to think that it's not a fluke. Whatever the cause, this should really be addressed. 

 

 

Immersion and Expansion: If all the changes above were implemented, Railjack would not only be more accessible and welcoming to new players, but it would also be more flexible, intuitive, and immersive. With those key changes out of the way, DE should then turn their attention towards expanding the experience as the connective tissue of the game.

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Players should be able to call in their orbiters after completing missions or when there is no mission active, and seamlessly travel between the two by flying through space. This feature could be expanded so that there are free roam areas over every planet, so that when when we finish a mission on a specific planet, and our orbiter window shows us the view of that planet, we can then actually exit our orbiter because it actually exists in that corresponding free-roam space. This would give players more context and location. Just as the orbiter gave us a place to call home and exist out of missions, the orbiter itself should give us a sense of place and context in the actual solar system itself.

These free-flight areas would have procedural generation, but railjacks would also be given a scanner that allows players to track down specific activity types (essentially informal quests). The amount of floating debris and large space-assets would be further expanded on. These free-roam areas would allow for a stronger linkage between railjack content and normal content. Various activities could provide a mix or assortment of railjack resources and/or normal game resources. For example, finding large mineral fields or profitable asteroids could allow players to perform a space-salvage missions that yield both resources always in demand, as well as mineral based materials. Orokin tower fragments could feature puzzles that when solved open small portals to vaults in the void that players can enter to receive a chance of collecting a void relic and/or traces and/or endo and/or ayatan sculptures. Infested derelicts could offer players abandoned caches of resources, high-profile capture targets with their own escort fleet could offer exciting in-space capture missions. Players could come across civilian outposts or merchant ships under siege that allow for either space-defense missions or away-defense missions on the outpost. There are plenty of possible activities that would function as essentially quests but in space, with all sorts of reward table balances that allow players to reasonably progress and collect resources without feeling too much pressure or force to do one specific repetitive task to farm for a specific thing they want. 

The ambition of these areas could be even further expanded as a way of reworking mission selection. Instead of having specific nodes, the railjack mission map could simply have each free-roam area as a location, and players would be able to choose level ranges for each of those locations. Perhaps the level scale-selector could even be changed in-game so long as players aren't actively in a mission to allow for better matchmaking flexibility. Once players are in one of these areas (they always would be because the orbiter would exist in actual space), they can use their railjack to scan for a specific mission type, at which point other people looking to be crew for railjack at that level range/mission type would be matched with the host, and the void travel loading screen would commence. However, after the mission is complete the crew would be able to either queue up another mission, or simply fly away and find procedural-generated content to play from free-flight. 

This free-flight could also connect players with normal missions as well that take place in space. For instance, players could also scan for normal missions, which would scale to their current level settings, and the map would match whatever region of free-roam space they're in. For the grineer this would be a galleon or asteroid station, and for the corpus this would be either the gas-city tileset or (everywhere else) the corpus capital ship. The player could choose to either launch the mission from their railjack, warp to the nearby location, and fly in using their archwing, or launch their liset like a normal mission, in which the player would return to the same location their orbiter started in prior to the mission.