Space Taxi, or: Please stop neglecting well-designed missions.

[DeniMori]

Railjack and archwing are some of the better pure space shooters out there right now industry-wide. They do things games like Star Citizen promise but never deliver on, or games like Elite: Dangerous deliver but only at the highest levels of play. The combat is quick and snappy, the fights diverse and interesting, and railjack in particular delivers a level of ship customization and teamwork rarely seen in an industry too focused on individual play.

Despite that, it almost feels like DE is ashamed of these systems. There are only 4 archwings (well, 5 if you count Odo and Odo Prime separately), only one railjack skin, not a single archwing mission from Pluto onward, and - worst of all - the amazing system that is railjack is now largely just a glorified taxi service to normal boring missions. Like... if I wanted to do a standard Interception mission, I would just go to Xini. The idea of an away crew is not a bad one, but they should be an integrated part of the mission similar to the missile platforms etc, not a whole separate, worse mission slapped on the good stuff that the entire crew is literally forced into. It feels like a fun tax, a punishment for enjoying and even preferring the space combat aspect of this space ninjas game. If that means people will whine about not being able to get archwing/empyrean stuff, fine, whatever, either make an integrated away crew for those people or even just make empyrean loot available elsewhere. It's okay to have systems that only exist for people who enjoy them, and I think this thing - where you try to make everyone do everything - only makes things less fun both for players who enjoy and players who dislike space combat.

Take guidance from how k-drive is handled. Yes, Yareli is a bit neglected and that makes me sad, but the only things locked behind k-drive are k-drive related stuff. If you hate k-drive, you're not going to enjoy Yareli, you're not going to want all the k-drive mods, so the presence of those systems does not obligate you to engage with them. I think that's a really good approach to alternative gameplay loops, and would be highly in favor of seeing a repeat in railjack and archwing. Archwing could be fully subsumed into railjack and given a greater diversity of archwings, maybe even with a frame with an exalted archwing attached. But if nothing else, if you aren't going to let me play railjack in ground missions, please stop making me do ground missions in railjack. Either fully split them or fully integrate them, but not this half-measure where only one side is has the other tacked on.

Edited September 29, 2023 by DeniMori

[tel__arin]

i too would like see more railjack content. they need a new endless gameplay loop, something like a defense or a survival where the team defends the railjack.