Arcwing missions are just more enjoyable than Railjack missions at least on the space combat angle of space combat

[Oreades]

So earlier today there was a steel path AW mission for which the whole reason I joined was the AW logo and wasn't on one of the fakeout Uranus tiles. ngl it was actually kinda fun but I was left recalling railjack which is also in space but I've never found myself really enjoying Railjack missions. 

Coupled with the fact that loading screens make me irrationally unhappy when it comes to games, particularly unnecessary loading screens and that comes into play in spirit a bit later on. 

And I think there are at least two major reasons

• Balance
  • AW missions are actually balanced with AW in mind, they could go a little harder but for the most part at least with the enemy damage they aren't BOSHY levels of "LOL U DIED".
  • The same can not be said for Railjack for which I regularly fear exiting the ship and transitioning out to a corpse floating in space, unless I'm cheesing with an Amesha. You're almost guaranteed to get doubletapped at some at some point, just because. 
• Mission Flow 
  • AW missions are all about space, you start in space, you do things in space and you finish in space.
  • The same can not be said for Railjack. You start in your railjack, because of the balance issues you are heavily discouraged from leaving your railjack and when you do it is to transition into a standard Warframe mission/tile. It ends up feeling like an extended loading screen to a normal starchart mission. Kill 25 ships and 2 Crewships, now play normal starchart defense for X waves. 

AW was one of the first content islands and has never really been integrated into the game. Even Eidolon hunts which existed for little more reason than to make Eidolon hunting faster, eventually they had some porkchops tied to them in the form of Arcanes and Riven transmutors**. The same never happened for AW, even when what could be argued as the perfect game mode for that integration was added to Warframe. 

 

I think it would go a long way to making Railkack a more enjoyable game mode to tackle the balance issue and make more than just the Amesha (because it's uhoh broken) a viable option for engaging in Railjack content. Along with more space related content for Railjack instead of relegating it to an extended loading screen for a standard starchart mission. 

Maybe bonus objectives that specifically involved Arcwing as a primary (non transport) factor. Like exterminate Grineer in an asteroid field that is too dense for the Railjack to enter. Maybe recycling the AW sabatage mission type with some larger scale capital ships. Tho either only works if the balance issue gets resolved. 

 

**Which I would argue should just be a standard part of the game like all other mod transmutation. 

[RobWasHere]

1 hour ago, Oreades said:

AW was one of the first content islands and has never really been integrated into the game.

It was added as a transport and summonable heavy weapons, so sorta is integrated into the normal gameplay (except archwing melee) and you can say AW was a base without Titania would not exist.

AW was too different from on-foot gameplay, less mobile despite flying and limited weaponry, so it was never popular. Also at the start its weapon parts were very painful to farm, with infamous absurdly hard Uranus Interception. After first rework the flight system was changed for full rotation freedom but instead became really disorienting and nauseating for many people to play. It also added 2-point defence, which was really unfair with the spawns and really dumb AI. After that entire AW fell into irrevelancy as failed experiment until revival as a transport on Plains of Eidolon.

Similar thing was with Railjack. At the release, excluding the bugs, it was only piece of content we had that required full squad cooperating with each other. After complaints and excessive grind for modules, it was streamlined and nerfed to the point a single missile swarm takes out half of the number of required fighters to destroy. While I like the RJ gameplay loop, I liked the increased difficulty of old RJ.

Can these content islands be salvaged? They could, but that require dev resources on un-popular gamemode that might or might not be worth to touch instead of adding something new. RJ section was supposed to be a delivery point to normal missions or joint mission for people currently on open world. There was an experiment with cross mission progression (Scarlet Spear event), in my opinion failed one, so I doubt we will see joint RJ-open world ever again.
AW content is already salvaged, with odd prime weapon here and there (Corvas and incoming Larkspur) so I also doubt it will be used ever again as a space section. It could be if the raids would return, but there is little change they will.