Railjack: Railjack 4.0 Suggestions

[Joezone619]

Even after the release of corpus proxima, railjack is still nowhere close to accomplishing the primary goal it set out to do, connect the game. now after corpus proxima, railjack feels more disconnected then ever before, and not only has the issues it did before, but more issues we warned DE the update would bring. Unfortunately, i suspect corpus proxima was almost done by the time they showed us anything about it, and they were too busy with other projects to change anything. Now that tennocon is over, and they showed us what various things they have been working on, and how finished those things seem to be, I believe it is time to take another crack at railjack.

 

First off, lets start with what I'd like out of railjack. My opinions on what it should be.
-A space ship-to-ship focused gamemode.
-Encourage teamwork among players.
-Unique compared to normal missions/other gamemodes.

With that in mind, I propose my suggestions for a railjack 4.0 rework. (on a side note, i'm pretty sure corpus proxima should have been 2.0, but DE labeled it as 3.0 so here we are with 4.0)

 

-Unlink railjack energy from warframe energy/Keep them separate.

This only encourages the use of very specific and few frames, and the mass use of large energy restores. If you get rid of
the use of energy restores, those frames will be the only ones used, get rid of their practicality, and your back where you
started anyways.

 

-Relink squad-wide foundry/Make the foundry affect the entire squad again.

I have no idea why this was removed in the first place, especially considering railjack was supposed to "connect various
parts of the game" -DE Steve. Keeping it sperate per person not only makes the game feel more disconnected, if a player needs
more of something, they need to go all the way back to the railjack to make it, instead of having their teammates help them and
you know work as a team.

 

-The corpus prixma gamemodes need to be remade/Change the gamemode in corpus proxima.

Exterminate, sabotage/volatile, survival, defense? these are all normal star chart missions, IMO nothing from the normal star
chart should be implemented into railjack when it comes to gamemodes, because then why bother with railjack at all? Its more
efficient and effective to just do a normal survival fissure instead of a survival void storm, which brings me to my next point.

 

-Fix up void storms/Change and alter void storms.

The most pressing issues I have with void storms, is the small swirling portals that appear, blow up, and instantly kill you.
These need to be removed, as well as the visuals pointing towards them. I see none of these in void fissures, and we asked 
for void fissures in railjack, not something different in railjack. Other issues include it not being rewarding enough, for the time
spent as compared to fissures, but for me the primary issue is the differences between void fissures, such as the damaging portals.

 

-Railjack gamemodes should be made more like skirmish/Railjack gamemodes should always have you interacting with the railjack itself.

My biggest pet peeve with corpus proxima, is that the gamemodes added just dilutes railjack to normal missions, making it nothing
but a taxi for the player. We need to be interacting with the railjack, 100% of the time, not just for the beginning and then go do a normal
mission and be back by lunch.
 

 

-The plexus should be removed/All squad-mates should take after the hosts plexus setup.

The plexus is something i believe really harms railjack. Having your own railjack setup on other people's railjack, just encourages players to seek out fully ranked out players, leaving all new players behind in the dust. This makes railjack extremely difficult and unfriendly to new players. So one way to fix this, is to make the entire squad take after the host's plexus setup.
 

 

-Add an option to host/Add an option to use your own railjack when matchmaking.

One thing most, if not, all players can certainly agree on, is that you should be able to use the railjack you've spent time and effort on building, refining, upgrading, and modding. All the efforts of which are thrown aside when your forced into other people's railjack.

[(PSN)Etheral_Synergy]

"heres my suggestion for railjack 4.0..... undo railjack 3.0"

dunno i kinda enjoy alot of (not all of) 3.0 and corpus missions are a nice just remixed way to play core warframe, would definitely like some railjack exclusive modes but like thats what grineer nodes are for. We got like 100 skirmish nodes just make some new game modes and swap some in. Some people wanted more core warframe in railjack and thats fine, and they isolated that to corpus nodes only as well.

The use of warframe energy is kinda iffy but you really dont need to use large restores when the ability to craft energy in foundry exists. Could definitely be improved by standardising energy capacity in some way during rail jack missions. Flux energy was definitely okay though and I wouldnt mind its return in place of warframe energy. I would definitely change my mind if resources became relinked again though especially with the ramping avionic cost as people would just drain the ship in seconds without realising. definitely a one or the other for me.

Speaking of yeah I do definitely prefer linked resources for stuff like munitions, dome charges etc as these are alot harder to uselessly burn through to force the forge into business. I do think revolite capacity would need to become JACKED though as failures would happen alot due to all forges being busy especially if flux came back. My main gripe with the new system is volatile, like why cant i replinish dome charged for my guy taking out reactor week points, it just feels odd for them to have to hop out and someone else hop in.

While the explosions in voidstorms can be annoying and I could see them getting a nerf, shield gating helps just negate them and if you arent camping a room in a survival or something and are actually moving theyre pretty fine and can be destroyed pretty easily by gunfire. Its nice to have something to seperate them from fissures and while I can see them being annoying to some players like why ask for their complete removal. More longetivity on each stage of the storm would definitely go along way though as it hits 5 so quick. Also the visual makes it so easy to identify iif you're in the blast zone its like a grenade indicator on steroids with like a 10 second warning.

I agree there needs to be more teamwork but also dont remove the plexus lol, the plexus doesnt even affect teamwork if anything it encourages it as even though theres alot of base mods youll just want on there alot can specialise to certain roles like engineer, gunner, dome cannon gunner, pilot. If you remove plexus you just get an uspecialised team of 4 that all have to individually figure out what ass backwards config the host has and how to best utilise it only for it to be modded to one thing that all 4 of you cant do productively at once.

It also literally does the opposite of "leaving newer players in the dust", with my own fully upgraded mods i can make a mk1 gun usable at the level the newbie will have loaded into and my battle avionics even at base values will wreck most levels of RJ. Where as if i load into a newbie host without a plexus im going to leave immediately as all gear will feel horrible, or the mission will take 15 minutes.

as for being forced into others railjacks yeah that does feel kinda annoying time to time would love to be able to choose host or join which is a more wider requested change and would do some good but certainly understand the worries around matchmaking. But you wanna know what I do carry over? oh yeah my plexus and all the credits, endo and forma I've invested into all the mods i spent all that time collecting would be a shame if i lost that and was forced to lose all unique bonuses i earned when not hosting.

[Vahenir]

43 minutes ago, (PSN)Etheral_Synergy said:

My main gripe with the new system is volatile, like why cant i replinish dome charged for my guy taking out reactor week points, it just feels odd for them to have to hop out and someone else hop in.

You can if you craft dome charges, or anything else in the forge, as everyone gets it. Specifically a full refill plus one maximum capacity for dome charges. 

 

As for the abilities and energy, personally i would just get rid of railjack energy completely and have all the abilities on a cooldown instead. Something on the plexus or railjack reactor can improve cooldown rates for those that want it.

Being able to force hosting is also a bit of a double edged sword, on one hand it lets people bring their own stuff. On the other, everyone wants to bring their own stuff and thus makes finding a group even harder. Personally i prefer to do archwing and side objectives myself so i would usually rather not be the host. But its already hard enough to find a group, even for stuff like void storms. I know that in my specific case it would become easier to find a group of course.

There definitely needs to be corpus skirmish missions and id love to see new ones in the skirmish type where its not just a normal mission after a brief railjack mission. A team thats on point with a void storm and going for the skirmish mission type can easily clear it in just around 4-5 minutes per round. Which is not that bad in my opinion as its far, far less dull than chaining captures. Especially given the rather large endo rewards and corrupted keys in void storm missions as well. The explosions could definitely use some tuning down or outright be removed as well as they are kind of annoying to squishier frames. 

I can also say that the moment that "teamwork" becomes anything more complicated than it is now is the moment where people start going solo or premade only. This is because some players are just terrible or just there to leech exp or whatnot. Its already a bit of a problem as the NPC crew is just too good compared to real people. They have aimbot levels of aim as gunners and infinite revolite as engineers. Especially gunners are so much better than any human player i have ever seen that if there was an old skirmish mission without a side objective you'd be better off with just one other player to man the forward artillery over a full squad. 

I suspect the only way to make railjack really work would be to entirely remove the team side of it and give everyone on the squad their own ship and crew. Then add different ship types etc in the store and as drops as if they were warframes. That way people can bring and gear their ship the way they like all the time without breaking teaming.

[Gaxxian]

I know that i come late to the party.... but i was about to write a very similar thread when i found yours, so instead of duplicating the topic, i will bump this thread and add my comments.

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-Unlink railjack energy from warframe energy/Keep them separate.

This only encourages the use of very specific and few frames, and the mass use of large energy restores. If you get rid of
the use of energy restores, those frames will be the only ones used, get rid of their practicality, and your back where you
started anyways.

I completely agree. To add into the injury, using Lavos would let you spam RJ abilities with no cost, just awaiting 10 sec CD for each one... and if 10 sec its too long for you, u can pick Harrow, cast a very long Thurible and then just spam Seeker Volley / Shatter Burst, since you will replenish your energy with each use.

Since you arent using WF powers, then why are you using your WF energy? This will being linked to the reactor would have more sense and could add another interesting layer to reactors balancing max energy / energy recovery for each house.

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-Relink squad-wide foundry/Make the foundry affect the entire squad again.

I have no idea why this was removed in the first place, especially considering railjack was supposed to "connect various
parts of the game" -DE Steve. Keeping it sperate per person not only makes the game feel more disconnected, if a player needs
more of something, they need to go all the way back to the railjack to make it, instead of having their teammates help them and
you know work as a team.

Again, i agree. Its stupid having to leave your position as a pilot / gunner to use the forge because u need munition or something. Moreover, it makes the game feel singleplayer... why playing with pubs when if i can play SOLO and do the SAME thing with the SAME efficiency? I dont need a team with that.

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-The corpus prixma gamemodes need to be remade/Change the gamemode in corpus proxima.

Exterminate, sabotage/volatile, survival, defense? these are all normal star chart missions, IMO nothing from the normal star
chart should be implemented into railjack when it comes to gamemodes, because then why bother with railjack at all? Its more
efficient and effective to just do a normal survival fissure instead of a survival void storm, which brings me to my next point.

I have returned to the game after a time out, and I almost died when I discovered this in a defense of Pluto Proxima. Like... seriously? All that thing outside here to ending with just a NORMAL defense mission with the exact same parameters? The RJ even turns immortal, so you dont even need to come outside or nothing.... u shouldn't do a Scort mission or something like that where u need to defend a tenno ship from enemy fighters or something? No? Seriously?

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-Fix up void storms/Change and alter void storms.

The most pressing issues I have with void storms, is the small swirling portals that appear, blow up, and instantly kill you.
These need to be removed, as well as the visuals pointing towards them. I see none of these in void fissures, and we asked 
for void fissures in railjack, not something different in railjack. Other issues include it not being rewarding enough, for the time
spent as compared to fissures, but for me the primary issue is the differences between void fissures, such as the damaging portals.

Being able to end one without losing my vision would be good enough to me -___-

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-Railjack gamemodes should be made more like skirmish/Railjack gamemodes should always have you interacting with the railjack itself.

My biggest pet peeve with corpus proxima, is that the gamemodes added just dilutes railjack to normal missions, making it nothing
but a taxi for the player. We need to be interacting with the railjack, 100% of the time, not just for the beginning and then go do a normal
mission and be back by lunch.

Thats the same thing as before. And again, yeah, that should be changed to new mission modes.

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-The plexus should be removed/All squad-mates should take after the hosts plexus setup.

The plexus is something i believe really harms railjack. Having your own railjack setup on other people's railjack, just encourages players to seek out fully ranked out players, leaving all new players behind in the dust. This makes railjack extremely difficult and unfriendly to new players. So one way to fix this, is to make the entire squad take after the host's plexus setup.

That part its the worst of the new RJ to me. I will explain.

You make your own RJ, and choose the equipment / weaponry loadout for it AND choose the integrated mods into the plexus that works with THAT loadout. Imagine having Glazios into your ship, that benefit a lot from a plexus built around critical mods + Turret velocity. But then appear people without those mods. Or viceversa, you go with your plexus critical turret damage build into a ship with turrets that have 5% critical chance.

That can and will happen too with mods that are useful or not if your ship have shields above X% or if your ship is damaged... since you pick the equipment for the RJ and YOU know the mods that will work for THAT specific loadout, the integrated mods of anybody else shouldnt apply. I mean, the plexus its like 65% of the RJ build, but the owner doesnt have any power into that? Its a bad joke.

Again, another point that pushes people into play SOLO, since at least NPCs will use the correct mods for your RJ. And if somebody thinks that it helps to specialize your role, i will tell that i cannot with the current random matchmaking. How do you know that your rol isnt covered already? How do you know if you will be the RJ owner or a crewmate? You cannot specialize against the unknown (imagine picking a mod loadout without knowing with which warframe would you play), so at the end there are just 2 viable builds, full gunner and a balanced for covering any role.

TLTR: Battle and Tactical mods applying into each person its ok, but not the integrated, since the RJ knows which mods will work with the choosen loadout.

En 25/7/2021 a las 19:01, Joezone619 dijo:

-Add an option to host/Add an option to use your own railjack when matchmaking.

One thing most, if not, all players can certainly agree on, is that you should be able to use the railjack you've spent time and effort on building, refining, upgrading, and modding. All the efforts of which are thrown aside when your forced into other people's railjack.

Since the actual mechanics pushes the people into playing SOLO with bots, this change alone wouldnt help into finding games. But as a whole i can see it working.

[--END--Rikutatis]

I still have these faint hopes that Corpus Railjack was just a testing ground for the future when DE finally manages to fully integrate Railjack into the normal Star Chart as this "Sea of Thieves-like" method of transportation between the planets/missions (optional ofc, for those who like it). You know, what they promised Railjack would be all those years ago when they first announced it. 

But being more realistic I fear it was just the sad and frustrating compromise between what they promised/wanted and what they can realistically deliver with their engine's limitations. 

That said, Grineer Railjack is still one of my favorite game modes in WF, together with SP and Arby's. I hope they expand on it at least.