Suggestion: Railjack-only missions featuring higher difficulty.

[Tremidine]

Let me start with saying this has been requested before, and I will be linking a few threads that mentions this, simply to hit home how requested (or talked about in general) this has been.

 

I love Railjack! Honestly one of my favorite things about Warframe. When I want to play Railjack, its usually because I want a break from normal gameplay. I think having the missions where one or two people have to get out periodically for a separated objective is fine, however, forcing the entire crew out to do a regular mission is just not the call in my eyes. At least, not for almost every single mission in Railjack.

When Railjack first released, it was obviously incredibly buggy which is regrettable, but one thing I DO miss is how HARD they were. You would be SWARMED by enemy fighters, to the point where it was almost necessary to have 2 people on turrets. The Railjack upgrades were highly important because of how much damage there was to the ship, and how much damage enemies took. Making things at the forge costed a considerable amount of materials, sending someone out to board a ship meant one less person on the ship for gunning and engineering. Hazards occurred much more often, sometimes forcing the engineer to decide which hazards to fix first, and requiring them to be familiar with the negatives of each. Having a dedicated engineer role used to be an actual tactic. Abilities on a Railjack used to be much more important. 

My point there is, all decisions had weight to them. There was a huge difficulty factor. Asking your squad questions like "do we need more energy or should we invest in dome charges instead" carried a level of consequence. It determined the flow and playstyle of battle. Now, hazards almost never happen, so no one needs to be an engineer anymore. The resource gain is so aggressive, and the cost is so low, that the forge carries no consequence anymore. Abilities on Railjack can be spammed and have no real value to them anymore other than just spam swarm missiles over and over. Dodging the Railjack with an experienced pilot and kiting enemies used to be necessary.

The Railjack experience now is so brief and so easy that I never even felt like I was playing Railjack. These days, whenever I'm showing the ropes to someone who is new to Railjack, I tell them about all the different factors. And each one I tell them about, in the back of my mind, I realize I'm preparing them for something that is just not a thing anymore.

"Here is the forge and how it works" (hmmm they will never need this anymore)

"Here is all the types of hazards" (hmmm they will never see these)

"Here is all these cool maneuvers you can do as a pilot" (Hmmm they will never need these)

"The omni requires Revolite, you can make it at the forge" (There is a pattern here)

It gets to the point where I realize that all these cool features are completely unnecessary now. If not for a certain intrinsic level being required to access later mission nodes, you could literally have a squad of people who are completely new to Railjack doing the very highest level space fighting and they'd not even break a sweat.

Possible rebuttals/counter-points that I will be quickfire answering here:

Q: But the rewards weren't good enough for the difficulty!
A: Is that a problem with the rewards or the difficulty then?

Q: Railjack was never difficult!
A: I disagree, but if that is your opinion, then my point stands. Make it more difficult.

Q: No one does Railjack / DE cant justify making those changes.
A: That is an incentive issue in my experience/opinion, and one that can be fixed by a combination of extra rewards and/or difficulty, or any combination of other kinds of changes.

Q: DE can't justify only having one type of gameplay in side content, every mission must have the Warframe gameplay (i.e Railjack Exterminate, Railjack defense, Etc.)
A: What about Archwing then? There is still Archwing-only missions and lots of them.

Q: Keep dreaming, they'll never change Railjack like that.
A: Okay.

Q: Railjack sucks, I'm glad its not important or needed.
A: Okay.

If you have anything I didn't answer here, I'd love to hear it.

 

 

[Pakaku]

I used to like Railjack when it did its own thing, with the skirmishing and the unique asteroid/ice bases. I lost interest immediately when I realised it was turning into a glorified waste of time before entering otherwise normal missions. It's like DE just gave up when they realised their years or so of work wasn't paying off. Now where have I seen that before...

[(PSN)IdoThea]

I find RJ already having good difficulty. Enemies especially on Veil Proxima do tons of damage etc.

I think many changes were made as QoL. Turrets used to be on sides etc. but that would become annoying if you had to run from side to side especially if you are not coordinating with pilot.

 

[Kaggelos]

On 2022-11-02 at 11:55 AM, Pakaku said:

I used to like Railjack when it did its own thing, with the skirmishing and the unique asteroid/ice bases. I lost interest immediately when I realised it was turning into a glorified waste of time before entering otherwise normal missions. It's like DE just gave up when they realised their years or so of work wasn't paying off. Now where have I seen that before...

Their RJ rework was partly based on community feedback back then. One of those suggestions was including regular missions into them. Soooo, i really think that's on us too

[quxier]

On 2022-11-02 at 10:33 AM, Tremidine said:

Q: DE can't justify only having one type of gameplay in side content, every mission must have the Warframe gameplay (i.e Railjack Exterminate, Railjack defense, Etc.)
A: What about Archwing then? There is still Archwing-only missions

You know how old Archwing is?

Quote

Update 15.0 (2014-10-24)

• Introduced.

It was time where there weren't Necramechs nor Operators. Operators were introduced 1 year later:

Quote

Update 18.0 (2015-12-03)

• Introduced.

Before all this Open world (and archwing in open world), Archwing mission weren't popular.

On 2022-11-02 at 10:33 AM, Tremidine said:

and lots of them.

No, there are not many arch-mission. There is only 9 missions. Not even one for each planet.

 

You cannot just create new game mode or very different character and expect people to like it. With core frame + addition (e.g. frame + OP) you have at least some part liked. With standalone modes (RJ only, archwing) or characters (Mechs doesn't mesh well enough with current frame/op ecosystem) you are just shooting blindly. And what people do when they hate that standalone part? They raise a complaint. What if you have reward with that mode? They will get angry - and righteously so. We play warframe not some random game.

[CrownOfShadows]

Railjack is awesome, and I'd love to see it expanded. They made SO many QoL passes and really got it into a good state, but like you said, in the process they also ended up dumbing it down a lot. Unfortunately, they seem winded but have a few final yards still to go for a touchdown - RJ still suffers from some painful lingering problems. It's really close to being silky smooth, they just need to buckle up and finish what they started, and hopefully while they're at it make some fresh content.

I disagree slightly that any 4 noobs can jump into veil proxima - every once in a blue moon I get onto a RJ that's fresh out of the factory and I remember just how miserable it is when nothing's upgraded and you have hullbreaches every 0.1 seconds, your turrets all suck, and you have paper hull/shields, and you have no intrinsic levels or shortcuts or Nautilus or anything. Also, the RJ enemies - not taxijack, but the actual RJ specific enemies you encounter on the missile batteries and stuff - i've never looked up their actual scaling but they are pretty gnarly out in the veil - sending an MR 15 out to fight them will not go well.

Anyways, I'd love both more RJ and harder RJ. IDK how you'd make it so all the systems need to be used effectively, but tougher and more varied space enemies would be welcome. A little less fodder, a little more elite. A ship version of acolytes or something that really makes you worried. Crew ships are lumbering dullards that pose no direct threat, and none of the fighters can actually hurt us in any meaningful way. More original RJ content would also be most welcome - the ones we have are pretty good. I have things I don't like about Orphix and Volatile, but with some help they could be actually enjoyable. Taxijack is a bummer, I'd actually prefer to see it removed, swapped out for fresh modes. A stronger emphasis on the RJ itself, in combat, would also be welcome - like if the pilot was not just our taxi driver but had to be actually careful about where and how they flew that'd be good. Also I've always, from the very beginning, wished for archwings to serve some good role in this mode, beyond their simple travel utility.

I'd love RJ modes that focused entirely on RJ combat. I saw someone recommend RJ survival that is just endless fighting - and while that seems like it would get boring I'd actually prefer it over taxijack survival. If we had no imagination we could also implement RJ defense, interception, spy, defection, and disruption using nothing but RJ and archwings - and I'd totally be down for those - at least they'd feel different - but surely we're all smart enough here to come up with some more original ways to use RJs.

[Symbiont]

tl;dr but i agree, more railjack

[Liv.Somik]

Railjack 1.0 was the best. It was refreshing to have a challenging game mode that requires 4 players to work together in different roles. I loved doing every part of it even when I was just staying on the ship repairing and crafting. It was intense, challenging, and most of all FUN. 

I felt like being kicked in the nuts when Railjack 2.0 basically stripped everything good about Railjack. I literally NEVER played Railjack after 2.0 because it's just BORING as hell now.