Orphix Missions are Bad and Make Everyone Feel Bad

[SimulatedKnave]

I posted a version of this over in the reddit a while ago, but having played more Railjack and a few more Orphix missions since, I have some further thoughts.  

1) As implemented, they don't make much sense. The Corpus having Necramechs lying around their ship is just odd. Also, this means Necramechs are found two places in the game - Deimos, and Corpus ships in one specific mission. That's silly. Also, their integration into the New War is completely unexplained, which isn't exactly ideal. The Wiki explains it, but there's literally nothing to explain what the hell an Orphix is, why it does what it does, etc. 

 

Most of the time (at least in my limited experience) you end up evaccing as Sentient control spikes hugely because you can't reach certain resonators. Then Cy tells you how you wiped them all out. Plus the Necramechs just lying around the ship (though they're often frustratingly hard to find). It's...dumb. More than any other part of the game, it feels like a game. And not a good one. 

 

Also, if the Corpus are not on the same side as the Orphixes (Orphices?) (and it is notable that I am still not clear on that), it'd be nice if they shot them sometimes. As opposed to always shooting me. I very rarely die in Orphix missions, but it's very ungrateful of the crew nonetheless. 

 

Even the Necramechs fitting through the doors is...well, it doesn't feel like they actually fit, scraping effects notwithstanding. 

 

2) The design makes them extremely difficult, at least with default Necramechs (and even with player-created ones). The Orphix spawns are incredibly quick, the scaling seems to be broken (in that whether there are four players or one, things seem to happen at the same rate with the same quantity of enemies), and there is minimal guidance about what to do (I still have no idea where to shoot to consistently damage an Orphix). Also, the resonators often spawn in places unreachable by the Necramech. Or don't mark themselves on the map properly. This is not ideal in a map like a Corpus ship (nor is the amount of jumping sometimes required, given how bad Necramechs and Operators are at that). 

 

Proposed solutions: 

Them blocking progress through Railjack is a problem.  Getting a Necramech is extremely involved and not really necessary for Railjack other than this one mission. A single Orphix mission per outer-system planet (including some Grineer ones as well), that didn't block progression to the other missions, would be interesting (especially if there were some unique rewards for them). The current implementation is unpleasant and stressful.

 

If they're in Railjack, especially if blocking other missions, it shouldn't be an endless mission.  Have two or three per mission, they spawn when they spawn, and if the sentients they spawn kill everyone that's fine.  This has two advantages: first, Cy's comment about wiping them out actually makes sense.  Second, and more importantly, you can feel like you actually WON THE MISSION as opposed to running away from infinite Sentient forces.  

 

Another problem is that sticking them in Railjack makes it hard to practice them, since you have to run a railjack mission every time first. Adding them to the starmap (or as an alert or something) would help with that (and also mean you'd have more people available to help with them, since Railjack isn't exactly well-populated at the moment).  

 

I also think one on Lua or Orokin Towers or what have you could be a lot of fun.  Notably, those areas have a ton of open space, which makes running around in a Necramech a lot more practical. And resonators less likely to spawn in unreachable places.  

[Quimoth]

You shoot the oprhix at its opening after dealing with its pylons, it actually is told to kill the pylons but i guess listening/reading what is said is hard.

Also, while railjack was added before mechs were, mechs can be obtained pretty early on. The Orphix are meant to be a challenge and you actually CAN defeat them without a mech.

The Oprhix missions being endless however is indeed a weird thing, it would make more sense if the mission was done at one point. Somewhat like how you could do a maximum of 20 Condrix during Operation Scarlet Spear.

A non-railjack version of the Orphix mission could definitely help. This mission could not take place in an orokin tower (due to those being inside the void) and it makes little sense for the sentients to attack the infested in an orokin derelict.

With the new war around the corner, obtaining and leveling your mech is a thing you should be doing anyway. After/during the new war quest I expect to see some form of a sentient invasion that the tenno need to stop similar to Operation Scarlet Spear or Orphix Venom. We already know that we are supposed to destroy a Condrix in the plains of eidolon as the grineer named Kahl.

[cute_moth.npc]

It's unfortunately "the event explained everything" with a nice story cutscene and everything - players who missed the original intro though have no idea who on earth Alad V is or why he's suddenly a Mutalist, whatever that is, or what an Ambulas is, or Corrupted Vor, etc. They have kinda a habit of doing this.

Necramechs literally don't fit in the maps, it's true.. They also literally don't really fit in, period. Voidrig has 2 superbly mediocre skills for example, 1 that's just for survival, and then 1 that's completely bonkers broken compared to most stuff in the game which is probably why they won't put it in the rest of the game now.. Their design wasn't well rounded for integration to begin with. They're kinda fun in the right context but poor foresight for integration made the proposals they had to put Necramechs into normal missions basically fall apart after their trial run in Orphix Venom.

I really liked Orphix Venom as an event in retrospect but you're right, the super long Railjack intro on the non event version makes wanting to do the mission really undesirable. In the event, you literally just started on the ship and went straight to it. Now you have to do like 15 minutes of Railjack just to get inside and start the actual mission you want to do, every time. It put me off from going into the game mode anymore at all.

I think they basically designed it to be so difficult to get into because it's the only alternative in the game to getting Eidolon arcanes aside from doing hunts, but between the unnecessary bloat of a long railjack mission slowing you down and the spawn rate basically being broken it just means spending 15 minutes to maybe get 1-2 rotations that *might* give you a random arcane.. They made the call to introduce Orphix as a regular game mode which I kinda like the concept of but then turned around and made it not worth doing, basically.

[Lutesque]

4 hours ago, Quimoth said:

You shoot the oprhix at its opening after dealing with its pylons, it actually is told to kill the pylons but i guess listening/reading what is said is hard.

Sigh.... Why do you do this ? 😐

 

[Vaz2017]

It's so odd that Corpus ship interiors are where DE decided Necramechs belong. I mean, it's not so odd in the context that they developed Corpus Railjack alongside/right after they developed Deimos, but... They don't fit through the doors!

[Quimoth]

3 hours ago, Vaz2017 said:

It's so odd that Corpus ship interiors are where DE decided Necramechs belong. I mean, it's not so odd in the context that they developed Corpus Railjack alongside/right after they developed Deimos, but... They don't fit through the doors!

They actually do fit trough the doors, grineer round doors are much smaller and would get your mech stuck. The only doors a mech struggles with are the tiny side corridor doors that you do not need, just fire a few nukes down so those pesky corpus are all dead and move on.

[SimulatedKnave]

Quimoth

I read and listen just fine, actually.  You'll notice I complained about the poor spawn locations of the resonators.  From context, one could thus conclude that I know that you need to kill the resonators.  That's explained fine.  

I've watched a lot of Orphixes.  The vulnerable spot is not particularly obvious.  Especially with a Mausolon throwing bloom all over your screen (blue vulnerable spot+blue bloom  everywhere seems a bad combination).  Also, I've definitely shot the same spot as other people were shooting and not done damage while they were.  Now that I finally have a Necramech I'm going to be trying it some more.  

As to them being meant to be a challenge: putting something "meant to be a challenge" in the middle of normal progression is dumb.  And while yes, it is possible to defeat them without a mech, it is significantly harder.  It also would require a better-than-the-Mote amp.  While all non-Mote amps are better than the Mote amp, since the Mote amp is awful expecting people to have invested heavily in that aspect when they get to an Orphix mission is unwise.  That's another post, though.  It is unfortunate how much all these issues interlink (railjack has issues, which are aggravated by the getting-a-Necramech issues, which are aggravated by the unusability of Operator mode at low levels, and so on...)

Re the mission design: according to the wiki there's actually a maximum of 36, but I feel like that's functionally endless given that's a playtime of 2-plus hours.  I feel like three to five Orphixes would be plenty - if you don't stomp them quick, you could be buried under Sentients.  As-is, even playing extremely well, it seems like you would be barely able to keep ahead of what's going on.  Sometimes that's fun.  Not in this.  

Re a non-railjack one, Lua would really seem to be the best fit for it, honestly.  It makes sense for there to be surplus Necramechs there, it makes sense for the Tenno to be trying to defend it, it makes sense for the Sentients to be trying to attack it.  If they need other forces involved, do it in a Grineer-Corpus Crossfire and have three factions shooting at each other plus the Tenno.  Lots of open spaces, but a few small ones.  Or just litter the place with Sentients so there's something to fight outside Orphix bubbles.  As a Lua-specific mission I think these might have been a lot of fun.  I suspect you could even put it all together using existing resources.  Railjack Lua would have required more effort (though I think it also was probably doable fairly quickly).  

Re the Void: we've had Sentients in the Void in other missions, as I recall.  Or have the Tower temporarily pulled out of the Void by some chicanery.  Towers certainly can exist outside the Void, and things can get moved in and out of it, so there'd certainly be precedent.  Though obviously the Sentients manipulating the Void to that extent would perhaps be something they don't want to do storywise.  

Re derelicts I was actually referring more to the Derelicts in Railjack missions, which tend to be much more open and spacious.  Though obviously it'd need to get a bit bigger.  A standard Infested Derelict mission is too winding and I think it'd have all the problems of the current ones, but worse.  Though at least there it makes somewhat more sense for the Infested to be trying to kill you but ignore the Sentients flying around.  

Now that I think about it, it doesn't make a ton of sense for them to be attacking a Corpus ship in this fashion either, as far as I can tell.  Much more efficient to just blow the thing up.  Sigh.  

Regarding how getting a Necramech should be a priority.  I've done so.  That's another post.  Suffice to say that getting it is at least somewhat obscure (why do I need to use transference to go in and talk to Loid?  And how am I supposed to KNOW THAT?) and involves farming an annoyingly buggy area with poor balance and a colour scheme that gives me a headache and makes things incredibly hard to see.  You have to make a seriously concerted effort to do it.  I spent plat to get the parts, and it STILL took far more work than getting the railjack did.  And is mostly useful in Railjack, for that matter.  

Compare the process of getting a Railjack to that of getting a Necramech.  For Railjack, you play through six missions, then do some brief crafting (I liked the one hour times, myself. Made it feel like I was actually building something). They're slightly different than standard missions. They have individualized and unique voice acting and you unlock a tragic story of betrayal and loss.  For that, you get a spaceship, the potential of crew, a bunch of new mission types and locations, and further unique content with Cy.  Seriously, listening to Cy snark about my enemies is just wonderful.  

To get a Necramech...you grind Vaults.  And you grind the right Vaults in the right order, because only one level of Vault missions drops the parts you need.  And good luck killing a Necramech without another Necramech along.  You grind the vaults over and over and over, for the parts you need for standing to level up, and for the parts you need to unlock the Necramech parts unless you buy them with plat.  You need 10 Orientation Matrices and 15 Ballistic Matrices.  That's 17 vault trips.  Probably more.  Same enemies, same objectives each time, and swarms of Deimos Infested spawning endlessly and bloom in your face.  For this...you get a Necramech, which is useful in certain situations (mostly Railjack).  That's a part of the game that looks almost optional.  It's apparently supposed to be integral.  That's terrible design.  

The question is not why it took me so long to get a Necramech.  The question is why I like the game enough to have bothered.  

Also, free advice: complaining about what people should do is never productive.  The problem is ALWAYS the game, not the players.  Sometimes the problem is that the game makes insufficient allowances for the players being stupid, but the problem remains the game.  A perfect game with no players is not a perfect game.  If the designers want certain player behaviour, they need to reward and encourage that behaviour.  Orphix missions, as implement, are miserable and make me sad.  Probably not what they were going for.  

[SimulatedKnave]

17 hours ago, Twin_Fawn said:

It's unfortunately "the event explained everything" with a nice story cutscene and everything - players who missed the original intro though have no idea who on earth Alad V is or why he's suddenly a Mutalist, whatever that is, or what an Ambulas is, or Corrupted Vor, etc. They have kinda a habit of doing this.

Necramechs literally don't fit in the maps, it's true.. They also literally don't really fit in, period. Voidrig has 2 superbly mediocre skills for example, 1 that's just for survival, and then 1 that's completely bonkers broken compared to most stuff in the game which is probably why they won't put it in the rest of the game now.. Their design wasn't well rounded for integration to begin with. They're kinda fun in the right context but poor foresight for integration made the proposals they had to put Necramechs into normal missions basically fall apart after their trial run in Orphix Venom.

I really liked Orphix Venom as an event in retrospect but you're right, the super long Railjack intro on the non event version makes wanting to do the mission really undesirable. In the event, you literally just started on the ship and went straight to it. Now you have to do like 15 minutes of Railjack just to get inside and start the actual mission you want to do, every time. It put me off from going into the game mode anymore at all.

I think they basically designed it to be so difficult to get into because it's the only alternative in the game to getting Eidolon arcanes aside from doing hunts, but between the unnecessary bloat of a long railjack mission slowing you down and the spawn rate basically being broken it just means spending 15 minutes to maybe get 1-2 rotations that *might* give you a random arcane.. They made the call to introduce Orphix as a regular game mode which I kinda like the concept of but then turned around and made it not worth doing, basically.

Yeah, the stuff re Alad V is...well, it's explained a bit.  Not enough.  I'm far more confused by why he seems to become a Mutalist then NOT be a Mutalist again. That's just confusing.  I think this is one of the more egregious examples, though.  When I'm blowing up Ambulases and Corpus members are sniping back and forth at each other, I can get that there is a wider context I do not currently possess.  When people start screaming at me about Orphixes and I have ninety seconds to solve the problem before another one spawns, I am deeply confused.  Is there some kind of collection of story cutscenes somewhere?  The wiki summaries don't really do it for me.  

 

As I noted to Quimoth, I think as a Lua mission this'd be awesome (also would make more sense there if it's supposed to be a way to get arcanes).  As-is...ugh.  

 

Even now that I've got a Necramech, to run an Orphix mission as implemented I'm gonna need to find at least two other people with one as well.  Who also want to do a Railjack mission.  That's a BIG ask.  Eidolon hunts are quicker, or at least a lot less annoying.  

[Lutesque]

15 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

Quimoth

I read and listen just fine, actually.

I wouldn't respond to someone who made a comment like theirs.... Feels like obviously Bait to me...

17 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

 

As to them being meant to be a challenge: putting something "meant to be a challenge" in the middle of normal progression is dumb.  And while yes, it is possible to defeat them without a mech, it is significantly harder. 

I reckon it would require quite alot of things... Similar to Eidolon Hunts 😱...

22 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

It is unfortunate how much all these issues interlink (railjack has issues, which are aggravated by the getting-a-Necramech issues, which are aggravated by the unusability of Operator mode at low levels, and so on...)

Yep... I first found about this when someone was describing the process of trying to get rid of their first lich.... It's just one thing after another...

I didn't have to go through it because I was new War Ready before Liches existed but for the players who only Completed the War within around the Time of Sisters of Parvos update were in for a quite a long grind ahead them....

29 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

(why do I need to use transference to go in and talk to Loid?  And how am I supposed to KNOW THAT?)

This kinda sort of wasn't an issue in the War Within because the Prop used in that quest was then placed right outside of Onkko's cave to clue you in on what you have to do....

But because he's s cave is so far off the beaten path it was all for naught as most players wouldn't even see it in the first place....

21 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

Even now that I've got a Necramech, to run an Orphix mission as implemented I'm gonna need to find at least two other people with one as well.  Who also want to do a Railjack mission.  That's a BIG ask.  Eidolon hunts are quicker, or at least a lot less annoying.  

Agreed... Not by much though....

Funnily enough you can use Mech's there too 😁 !!!

[SimulatedKnave]

22 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

I wouldn't respond to someone who made a comment like theirs.... Feels like obviously Bait to me...

Such cynicism.  

 

23 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

I reckon it would require quite alot of things... Similar to Eidolon Hunts 😱...

I've tried it on occasions where the default mechs wouldn't spawn (though not willingly).  If the Corpus shot the Sentients instead of you, it would be theoretically doable, especially with a non-Mote amp.  But probably not in the time limit given.  

 

24 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

This kinda sort of wasn't an issue in the War Within because the Prop used in that quest was then placed right outside of Onkko's cave to clue you in on what you have to do....

But because he's s cave is so far off the beaten path it was all for naught as most players wouldn't even see it in the first place....

Oh, I remember that search.  It was not ideal.  But at least there I knew I was supposed to be able to find the damn place.  The Necraloid Syndicate I just assumed I hadn't unlocked something yet, because I'd fast travel and hit a blank wall.  

 

25 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Agreed... Not by much though....

Quicker, no.  Less annoying?  Oh yes.  No railjack hoops to jump through, no mediocre Corpus Captain voice acting, no constant stream of new Orphixes, and you can use a variety of different frames, weapons, etc.  Oh, and you can find a damn group.  

[Lutesque]

35 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

Such cynicism.  

I can't help it... I've been Burned before...  😁...

37 minutes ago, SimulatedKnave said:

Quicker, no.  Less annoying?  Oh yes.  No railjack hoops to jump through, no mediocre Corpus Captain voice acting, no constant stream of new Orphixes, and you can use a variety of different frames, weapons, etc.  Oh, and you can find a damn group.  

i guess when you put it that way then it is quite alot...

[Wheelhouser]

The Orphix Venom event was much more enjoyable than the Corpus Railjack Orphix missions (my personal feeling is that the Corpus Railjack missions are, overall, the worst designed missions in the game, as they're just regular missions with Railjack taxi at the beginning - but I LOVE the Grineer Railjack missions they're actual Railjack missions).

The tuning in the Corpus missions is way higher than the event was.  Other than completing them each once, there is nothing desirable to me about the missions in the game now.  The desired drop has way too low of a chance, and needs way too many rounds and is tuned way too high for it to be viable as an alternative to even pugging a tridolon cap bounty.

The only issue with the event was host migration losing affinity, and the extraction timer resetting if you were wanting to leave but others weren't (to my knowledge these bugs were never fixed in the event).  But the missions in the event were pretty fun.  These Corpus missions are not.

[Vaz2017]

On 2021-12-09 at 5:59 AM, Quimoth said:

They actually do fit trough the doors, grineer round doors are much smaller and would get your mech stuck. The only doors a mech struggles with are the tiny side corridor doors that you do not need, just fire a few nukes down so those pesky corpus are all dead and move on.

Yes, we can move them through the doors, but they don't visually fit. Massive clipping.

[Stafelund]

It is really bad. The derelict necramecs are more of a hindrance than a help. The animation when you first start them up, and they tend to block YOUR necramech, and they seem to have an insane range so when you press 5, you may end up riding them by accident if you temporarily exit out of your mech. It made me lose the round. That's the exact kind of thing AVGN would harp and make a meme of. The tileset isn't really suited for a mech, this orphix thing needs its own tileset IMO, like a space platform.

[Lutesque]

So me and some Random Dude actually managed to Clear Erato (Veil Proxima) so I don't have to do this mission Again....

This is literally the only Railjack mission I can not Do Solo.....

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

"Hey, you need 4 people to do this mission. Because you need 4 people to do this mission, no-one's doing this mission. Have fun." Seems like a mistake DE has made before and didn't learn from. Incredible.