Railjack player assitance.

[TheMostFrench]

After getting into Railjack and figuring out the basics within the game (before using external wikis) things like what omnigel and revolite are, it's my opinion that there needs to be more attention brought to things like critical hull breaches. After playing a few dozen missions, working out what to do and getting all of my intrinsics up to level 5, I have a good idea of how things work. Now sometimes I will join other crews, or have people join me but most of the time they will look pretty lost.

I think that having just 60 seconds to avoid a complete mission failure is way too much pressure on new players who aren't sure what to do, and it's not enough time to explain. Maybe not so bad once you build up your Railjack with better equipment and avionics, but definitely hard to handle at first. If you get to a hull breach and discover "Oh no, I don't have enough revolite to fix this" you need to go to the very back of the Railjack to forge more, but if you don't get back to the breach in time to fix it then everyone loses, and it isn't much fun.

Even once you figure out what to do, sometimes you can't forge revolite because forges are all on cooldown, and the people who used the forge last aren't doing repairs because they've left the ship to do other things, and don't have a fast recall intrinsic to get back in time to help.

Once there is a game over, my experience has been that everyone just leaves the group, and some will specifically blame the host before they go, no matter what happens. It's a bit toxic.

Here are a some suggestions for how we might assist new players to understand what they can do to help, and how to make the gameplay less stressful. These suggestions are based around my experience of playing with pickup groups. I have read a few threads where people have said that all the content is 'too easy to solo' - but that hasn't been my experience, so I can't relate to that yet.

They are not all intended to be implemented at once, some might work better than others:

- Have a default binding for the Omnitool (PC) instead of needing to set one. The Omni can be placed in the gear wheel, but I had to go into options to set it to a button. Just give it a default button so that you can have a simple tooltip that explains "Press [button] for your Omnitool. When loaded with revolite fuel, this device allows you to fix any damage on the inside of the ship (breaches, fires, electrical damage) by shooting revolite at it". This could be the basis of a tutorial that demonstrates each damage event, how they affect the Railjack, and how to get more revolite.

- When there is a hull breach, anyone in a gunner seat gets a LARGE, OBVIOUS warning in BIG TEXT across their screen saying something like "THERE IS A HULL BREACH, FIX IT WITH YOUR OMNITOOL OR THE MISSION IS A FAILURE" so that they are encouraged to get out of the gunner seat, because sometimes people turn off the game sound and listen to something else (music, podcast, etc) and might miss the alert or not notice the timer counting down. IMO the pilot should be encouraged to keep moving so that they can get out of firing range of dangerous enemies instead of having to go do repairs. I have played missions where I have had to warp across the ship to forge revolite, then warp to a breach to fix it, then warp back to the pilot seat. It's completely doable, but we lose that brief invincibility. When we can't move we end up getting another breach again very soon.

- There should be a visible trail directing people on board to the critical hull breach so that they fix the correct thing. This is because I have seen people get lost, or fix the wrong thing then go back to what they were doing without fixing the breach (e.g they put out a fire and assumed that was the problem because Cy will congratulate them). A hull breach can be on a different floor, or in a part of the ship the player doesn't normally visit, like the very top floor isn't a place people need to go until they can use the AW Slingshot. Very new players also might not understand how the forge works, or ever visit it during a mission.

- Let us see how much reovlite is left in our Omni at all times, so we know before anything happens if we need to forge some more.

- Make enemy boarding parties carry small amounts of pre-made revolite that doesn't need to be forged. It fills the Omnitool like a regular ammo pickup. This rewards people for killing the boarders faster. If a pilot or gunner kills a ram sled before it boards the Railjack, some revolite drops into space and is distributed to anyone on board.

- Similar to above, enemies killed on crewships have a chance to drop small amounts of revolite. This is because they would have an interest in repairing their own ships (if the Grineer don't, I expect the Corpus would once they get added).

- Give the Railjack a system of 'revives'. Some kind of system like "1 or 2 strikes and you're out" before the mission fails completely and Cephalon Cy pulls you out. Maybe he could warp you some distance away from enemies first instead of just failing completely. This gives you all a chance to reorganise. Archwings in space might get teleported with the Railjack, same for Tenno in enemy ships and structures I guess (like a 'soft fail' so everyone still gets punished but not ejected from the mission).

(I understand that the current system is very forgiving as long as people know what they're meant to be doing, but until that point things can just go completely wrong for no reason because people stopped paying attention, like the pilot parked too close to a turret when they went inside an enemy base and no one decided to get in the pilots chair to move the Railjack out of range.)

- Let some Warframe abilities fix certain types of damage instead of always needing an Omnitool: e.g Inaros, Frost, Zephyr, Hydroid could all be able to put out fires (smother with sand, freeze it, blow it out, extinguish with water), Volt, Vauban, Mag can fix electrical issues. For the sake of balance, you always need to use an Omnitool to fix hull breaches (otherwise people would always bring a specific Warframe to protect the Railjack from critical mission failure).

This could mean that on higher difficulties that some types of damage can spread and become more dangerous because there are more ways to deal with them e.g bigger fires.

 

[Lokidus_Prime]

There are a couple things in here that are interesting ideas, but there are many other points that I disagree with.

1- 60secs is more than enough time to fix hull breaches.  Part of using the railjack is managing the forge and its resources, and if a team gets caught not having enough revolite to deal with a hull breach, then that's typically a direct result of forge/resource mismanagement.  No other forge item is nearly as mission crucial other than revolite so that should always be top priority, though with certain avionics Flux energy can help save your skin too (namely Void Cloak for getting some breathing room).  Knowing which hazards to prioritize (namely fires due to them preventing railjack from regenerating, and of course the big red hull breaches), especially early on in the mission where you might not have resources stockpiled in the forge yet can help too.

2- having any sort of revive system for the railjack would just make it way too easy and remove any sense of consequence and/or need for forge+resource management

3- Having big giant red text splash on the screen to signify hull breaches would just be too obtrusive - the game already notifies you in several ways that there is a critical hull breach - there is a fairly loud and distinct sound that plays, Cy says something about it, it tells you in the upper left corner with other mission info "Catastrophic Failure Imminent" with a timer counting down, all on top of the railjack being at absolute minuscule amounts of health.  It's not the game's fault if players choose to ignore the warnings that the game is giving about the hull breaches, whether it be turning off game sound, etc, especially when there are multiple ways that hazard is communicated.  That said, i do think some sort of screen effect, like wind streaking across your screen or something less obtrusive than giant red text, would be a reasonable addition as a visual hull breach indicator.

4- having a trail showing where the hull breaches are at feels pretty unnecessary.  The large red hull breach icon on the minimap shows exactly where it is, which if you toggle on the overlay map, shows the entire railjack layout and makes seeing its location that much easier.  The railjack isn't that big, and doesn't take long to get familiarized with its layout - free roam exists as a risk-free space to do this in.

I do agree that the Omni tool should have a default key to be bound to, and the amount of revolite/munitions you have should be displayed in the railjack's Tactical menu somewhere.  Certain warframes being able to interact with fires/electrical hazards could also be an interesting addition.

 

Overall the issue seems to be with the OP running into many players where they just don't know what they are doing and/or just aren't paying enough attention to the mission.  Instead of adding in a bunch of hand-holding mechanics, more information about the railjack should be added into it's codex page to explain it's mechanics more in-depth, which the player should get pointed to after completion of 'The Archwing' quest.  Until then, it wouldnt take much time for players experienced with railjack's content to take the time to explain to newer players what the basics are - when starting a mission, the railjack usuuaallyy spawns far enough away from enemies to not aggro them instantly, at which point the pilot could take the opportunity to move the railjack to a farther, safer distance to explain (i have done this on several occasions, and even taken them on lower level earth missions for them to get the hang of it).  Though, this is also a reason that I still firmly believe that railjack missions should be intrinsic locked for everyone, not just the host - to prevent people who are new and unfamiliar with railjack from jumping straight into veil proxima missions where people are expecting their crew to know what they are doing.

People who sit there and ignore the host (aka the railjack owner) and mess with the forge and haphazardly waste munitions/flux energy and such is a legitimate problem though, and there should be some sort of control that the host has over their own forge and resources to prevent abuse.  This also goes for giving the host control over the pilot chair, and being able to force uncooperative people off of it (definitely had random people who have no idea what theyre doing immediately hop onto the pilot chair and then refuse to get off and drive off into the middle of nowhere, next to a ship-killer platforms, or something).  Mission voting should also be implemented for railjack missions, so that one guy who randomly gets to the navigation first can't send the entire squad somewhere everyone else might not want to go.

 

 

[TheMostFrench]

4 hours ago, Lokidus_Prime said:

Overall the issue seems to be with the OP running into many players where they just don't know what they are doing and/or just aren't paying enough attention to the mission.  Instead of adding in a bunch of hand-holding mechanics, more information about the railjack should be added into it's codex page to explain it's mechanics more in-depth, which the player should get pointed to after completion of 'The Archwing' quest.  Until then, it wouldnt take much time for players experienced with railjack's content to take the time to explain to newer players what the basics are - when starting a mission, the railjack usuuaallyy spawns far enough away from enemies to not aggro them instantly, at which point the pilot could take the opportunity to move the railjack to a farther, safer distance to explain (i have done this on several occasions, and even taken them on lower level earth missions for them to get the hang of it).  Though, this is also a reason that I still firmly believe that railjack missions should be intrinsic locked for everyone, not just the host - to prevent people who are new and unfamiliar with railjack from jumping straight into veil proxima missions where people are expecting their crew to know what they are doing.

People who sit there and ignore the host (aka the railjack owner) and mess with the forge and haphazardly waste munitions/flux energy and such is a legitimate problem though, and there should be some sort of control that the host has over their own forge and resources to prevent abuse.  This also goes for giving the host control over the pilot chair, and being able to force uncooperative people off of it (definitely had random people who have no idea what theyre doing immediately hop onto the pilot chair and then refuse to get off and drive off into the middle of nowhere, next to a ship-killer platforms, or something).  Mission voting should also be implemented for railjack missions, so that one guy who randomly gets to the navigation first can't send the entire squad somewhere everyone else might not want to go.

You pretty much nailed how I feel, but it goes a bit further for me.

One technical issue I have is constant chat disconnection with no warnings, which makes it hard to keep in contact with the team. I also play in the Oceanic and SE Asia zones which have best ping and player numbers for me, but a good number of people I encounter don't speak english.

As you say, a person can figure a bunch of things out in free flight mode, like the internal layout and where some of the things like AW exits and the forge are. Some kind of short tutorial needs to exist, maybe a series of short videos similar to what has been created for all the Warframe abilities - stuff that helps to understand the INTERIOR of the Railjack and explains exactly what happens when you use the forge, or what the different types of interior damage do to the Railjack.

However, in regards to your comment about adding hand-holding mechanics, I really feel as though the seriousness of something like a 'catastrophic failure' is still not communicated properly, or taken seriously enough. There might be four people on board: so who is responsible for fixing it if there is no communication during a mission? If there is one pilot, two gunners, and and a person in artillery, and everyone thinks to themselves "This sounds serious, but someone else will take care of it while I shoot the enemies" or "Why should I have to fix it when there are three other people? I'm having fun doing what I'm doing."  then it is guaranteed to be game over.

It is especially tricky when something like the artillery gun and the pilot require a bit of coordination, since the crewships are most likely to be the thing to immediately cause another hull breach, I would argue that the gunners should be the one to take the responsibility.

Also, my experience in public groups has been that once one person starts fixing things, then that person becomes solely responsible for fixing everything even if their engineering intrinsics haven't been levelled up. This was definitely my first experience, and ironically it was how I learned to use the forge and actually figured out what revolite was when I started playing. After I ran out of it and couldn't repair anything anymore - panicking and reading "Ummm..umm..uhh REVOLITE! Yes I NEED THAT" and getting back to a breach with like 2 seconds to spare.

It was not immediately clear that I had to 'hold down' the mouse button on the revolite to forge it. The first time I ever tried to forge, I clicked it rapidly but nothing happened, so I exited the forge thinking it didn't work for me yet, and there were several low level mission failures in the Earth Proxima where I just accepted "This is impossible to beat on my own right now". This is the new player experience when things aren't explained fully, and why free flight or playing solo don't always help that much. Entering a new game mode with a very minimal understanding of what to do, and possibly being handed a 'you have 60 seconds before you fail the mission completely' warning within the first 2-3 minutes of play is definitely a lot of pressure, especially when once you fix that breach, a new one could appear again straight away.

After you get a bit of experience, and playing in a group - If the 'catastrophic failure' timer gets down to about 20 seconds, and someone has to type "Is anyone fixing the hull breach?" that might not be enough time if a person gets to it, and like in my OP, they discover they don't have enough revolite to fix it. It takes at least 8 to 10 seconds to use the forge because of the animations, then clicking to fill up the Omnitool, plus travel time when warping around inside the ship (if you have the warp intrinsic you might still get warped to the top of the ship when the breach is on ground floor or vice versa). This is why I feel like there needs to be a more obtrusive 'GO LOOK AT THIS NOW' warning and/or directions to the breach.

There are also 'Regular' hull breaches (ruptures?) and 'Catastrophic' hull breaches which look the same, and again I've experienced situations where a person will fix one but not the other. Even with a big announcement from Ceph Cy, and a timer on the screen, some players still don't always seem sure what they're meant to fix. At the very least, the catastrophic breach should LOOK the part - like a gaping hole that lets you see out into space.

[Lokidus_Prime]

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

-snip-

I definitely agree that something should be done to help newer players understand how things in railjack work - adding in videos into the codex to demonstrate various mechanics, and/or having a mini tutorial quest that unlocks in the codex after players complete 'The Archwing' quest, that takes em through the railjack without requiring the player to own one, explaining the stations and showing their locations, hazards what they look like and what they do, the basics of resource management, intrinsics and where to access them, especially if they don't have their own railjack built yet (stuff like this should be done for several other aspects of the game too, but that's besides the point...).

You do also bring up a great point that I had not considered before - the possibility of ending up in squads where other people may not speak the same language as you, which results in communication difficulty in a game mode where communication is fairly essential.   In that kind of situation, you'd practically have to go in prepared to manage everything solo in order to have the best chance of success, which does not typically result in a pleasant group experience for the person doing everything.  What could be a potential solution is to have some sort of pre-made basic commands/phrases you can send to other players that, at the very least, would have the text translated into a player's respective language just to have some sort of basic communication with others.  I think you can already sorta do something like this in the tactical menu with Cy, but i haven't messed with it very much personally have only ever really seen it used when goofing off with friends, and not sure how well it works in its current form as a solution to any language barriers.

[TheMostFrench]

After playing some more since I made the thread, the difference between playing with people who know what to do and understand the mechanics vs playing with people who don't, is staggering. I also get the feeling that people who understand how to upgrade their Railjack with avionics (especially to increase the hull and shield strength) will find it much easier and have more fun instead of the experience of constantly dying.

When I made the thread I had been playing with people in Earth proxima who I have to assume had maybe just started Railjack? They all seemed a bit lost, but after a bunch of games in Veil proxima, people in the games I played knew exactly what to do and what targets to prioritise, how to position the Railjack, etc.

I guess everything I said about difficulty and understanding would be solved by having a proper tutorial. There are some unique differences in managing upgrades, like how Avionics are unique to the Railjack but Intrinsics are unique to the Player.

If a new player understood this difference, they could realise, for example, that someone else can jump in their artillery gun even though they can't use it themselves. That means they should stop trying to fly the Railjack like a space fighter and help the artillery to aim at a crewship.

When people know how to do this, 6 crewships will die in under 2 minutes, and the missions are a breeze.

 

[Tulak391]

1. New players are enough to line up the M key
2. chat is something unknown
3. I don't have a guner at 5, so why do they cast themselves?

 

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

On 2020-12-12 at 4:00 AM, TheMostFrench said:

After playing some more since I made the thread, the difference between playing with people who know what to do and understand the mechanics vs playing with people who don't, is staggering. I also get the feeling that people who understand how to upgrade their Railjack with avionics (especially to increase the hull and shield strength) will find it much easier and have more fun instead of the experience of constantly dying.

When I made the thread I had been playing with people in Earth proxima who I have to assume had maybe just started Railjack? They all seemed a bit lost, but after a bunch of games in Veil proxima, people in the games I played knew exactly what to do and what targets to prioritise, how to position the Railjack, etc.

I guess everything I said about difficulty and understanding would be solved by having a proper tutorial. There are some unique differences in managing upgrades, like how Avionics are unique to the Railjack but Intrinsics are unique to the Player.

If a new player understood this difference, they could realise, for example, that someone else can jump in their artillery gun even though they can't use it themselves. That means they should stop trying to fly the Railjack like a space fighter and help the artillery to aim at a crewship.

When people know how to do this, 6 crewships will die in under 2 minutes, and the missions are a breeze.

 

You must be new to Railjack — most of us hit 10-10-10-10 a few weeks after the launch of Railjack.

Damn, that mode is fun.