Warframe 2017

[TheFeniX]

Link to the original thread.

Has this game really been out for almost 4 years? Damn. Well, it's nice to have an F2P MMO you can drop for a year at a time and not be totally out of the loop. We started back in around the beginning of this year and have been having a good time. I think the game deserves a new "review."

Graphics and Aesthetics: still "A F2P game should not look this good." While earlier Warframes and weapons suffered from some design issues, the latest creations are some top-notch work. Such as, Frost Prime (a ++ version of the original Frost Warframe and the first publicly available Prime Warframe) was aesthetically way too similar to the original with just what looked like the helmet from a popular enemy you found. While still a great Warframe (I use to this day), it gets put to shame, design-wise, by some of the newer Primes. DE (or whoever they pay for their model work) has improved vastly over the years. While older designed look "dated," it's nothing like going from Legion to classic zones in WoW. But it is noticeable.

The UI and other non-combat gameplay aspects have really reached a "finished" level. This game could get "released" at this point as there's very few placeholder settings that I can find.

Gameplay: many "original" missions are either untouched or just been "spiced up." There's been some new areas added with the story quest. New enemy units. But the core gameplay of Cyborg Ninjas in Space is still there. The original thread covers most of this.

Progression: They've "streamlined" the new system. The star chart has been overhauled once again and looks professional if not a little hard to read at times. You now complete missions and challenges on a planet to unlock the junction and head to the next one. Rewards for new Warframes contained in "quests" have been mostly taken off the market and put into this progressions system. New "powers" have been added indepedent of the Warframe but require you to complete sections of the "Main Story" quest.

Plot: There's a plot now. It's.... pretty fucking stupid, but points for semi-originality. I will spoiler it, but it's not exactly Asimov here. Spoiler

Turns out the Warframes (while alive and having some "sort" of self-awareness) are actually remote controlled suits. They were designed by the Orokin as mediums for the power of the Tenno.

The Tenno are Orokin children who got lost in the void while on a ship. All the parents either died or went insane and had to be put down by the kids with their new powers. These powers, when used natively, could kill the user or drive them mad. So, they were put into kind of a coma and in pods that let them "dream" and be used as war machines by the Orokin, by channeling their power through Warframes. Then the Orokin got their teeth kicked in by the Sentients and the Tenno were lost for a while until reawokon by the Lotus.

The Lotus (originally tasked with killing the Tenno) "adopted" them all because (I shit you not) she was barren. She is not originally "human," but it's debatable if she is now.

The quests center around the Sentients coming back and trying to kill the Tenno after one gets dug up by some dumbass Grineer. You end up bringing the Moon out of the Void. This is where the Lotus hid the Tenno kids and their Transference pods (their Wireless Access Points to the Warframes) because the Void is cancer to Sentients. So, the Stalker shows up because he's a Tenno (but super-duper Edgelord because he couldn't handle the idea of his powers) and starts some shit. You kick his ass and things continue on.

You the get to customize your 14-year-old super-space god and Jesus this is some uncanny valley shit.

Then the "War Within" happens but that quest is awful both from a gameplay and story-telling standpoint.

[TheFeniX]

Double post because the new forum doesn't like double spoilers:

Concerning "The War Within:" Spoiler

Grineer space bitches try to mind fuck you and steal your body. But you have a vision quest and the guy who you thought was your friend but betrayed you is actually STILL YOUR FRIEND and your vision quest unlocks more super-tenno powers and gives you the ability to pilot a Warframe without a pod and also teleport to it any time.

You learn this by running around in a vision quest as a 14-year-old kid

BY YOURSELF FOR 30 MINUTES IN A GAME ABOUT CO-OP CYBORG SPACE NINJAS. But then you unlock Glast Gambit, which is fucking awful as well, but it gives you the Nidua blueprint, which you still have to farm the parts for.

Lame, but Nidus (an infested Warframe) is super-awesome and ridiculously OP.

[PREDATOR490]

The game is good, way better than one would expect it to be. The developers seem to be a bit more interesting with the regular streaming of chats and them actually playing the game.

Story wise - This game is awful and really confusing. When it launched it was basically space ninjas fighting people for no apparent reason - Not very intriguing but it got the job done

Now - I kinda wish they stuck with leaving it alone because now it is so weird and convoluted that I just gave up. It really feels like a hilarious attempt at trying to fashion an RPG out of the pieces in Warframe which do not mesh easily into that kind of framework. Not to mention in some areas it literally breaks the entire game.
Spoiler

Warframes are now basically remote controlled drones.
Operators are able to remote control them.

Thus, now we have Warframes that have genders for no reason and it gets a bit silly that somehow no operator knew that warframes were empty power armour to begin with ?

At no point when the player is jumping from one suit of armor to the next... the Operator does not realise he is not in the armour
or
The game essentially has the Operator always know but this was hidden from the player until pretty late in the story chain

Not to mention the Stalker seems apparently unaware of his own nature. I find that even more stupid.

Balance - Sadly, this game gives into power creep pretty heavily in the form of introducing new equipment that usually ends up being OP so people buy it THEN they nerf it before bringing out the next OP item. The Nidus is the latest example of this.

The game can be pretty fun to play but I do find the balancing starts going out of whack on the endless missions.
In theory, these missions are supposed to ramp up over time but it seems like around the 15 - 20 minute mark enemies start getting boosted to levels that are unreasonable.

Regardless, the game is very repetitive and feels like a very circular grind.

You do missions to get parts to build new weapons and warframes
You have to level these weapons and warframes individually to level up
You level up to get more weapons and warframes to build
After a point, the only thing left to do is grind more mastery by getting equipment you will not want to play with

The rewards for leveling up Mastery really cut off at about 14 unless your going for the Riven bullshit or just prestige.

Other than that, the game resorts to grinding against the RNG mechanics to get the rare equipment that will allow you to grind more.

RNG / Mechanics - This game looks pretty and plays pretty well but some of the shit in this game is horrifically bad. The random rewards and looting in general really annoy me. The game is dominated by the Co-Op aspect but people have to pick up loot individually during a mission and looting requires you to run around like a vacuum cleaner to pick things up if you want to actually get stuff.

4 Years on and I would have expected this game to have streamlined looting to be as fluid as the combat. Players are meant to be combat focused ninjas yet a good amount of time is spent running all over maps picking up shit from enemies that other players on the team have killed.

[TheFeniX]

Snip Story Stuff

I think a lot of this can be explained by the character being "groggy" after being woken up by the Lotus in the beginning and just blindly following her due to a couple factors such as side effects for the long stasis, not knowing what's going on, and general naivety. Teshin makes numerous comments about this during either Natah or Second Dream (which I can't recall). Those quests are a lot about the Tenno and the player coming into your own and taking a bit of control from the Lotus.

I will grant that if you've been here since day 1, it's kind of grating. But if you don't treat it as an addition, instead as something that's always been in the game (you've just been playing early access), then it grates a bit less. So, "Once Awake" should be the Tenno with one Warframe fighting his/her way out. Then questions would start to come (and be answered later) as you acquired and controlled new Warframes.

Balance - Sadly, this game gives into power creep pretty heavily in the form of introducing new equipment that usually ends up being OP so people buy it THEN they nerf it before bringing out the next OP item. The Nidus is the latest example of this.

Yea, Nidus is super OP (I love him so much), but a lot of that is because he's so fucking well designed compared to some other older Warframes requiring reworks to make them viable (Rhino, for just one example). All of Nidus' abilities work together. So when he's played correctly: he's god damn immortal.

I still use my Tonkor even after DE has nerfed it numerous times. It still does work, which is usually where DE cuts off the nerfs. They don't make you toss anything in the garbage (at least, not that I've dealt with), they just tone things back, sometimes for stupid reasons. But, unlike Payday 2, I've never had to vendor something that turned into complete trash.

The game can be pretty fun to play but I do find the balancing starts going out of whack on the endless missions.
In theory, these missions are supposed to ramp up over time but it seems like around the 15 - 20 minute mark enemies start getting boosted to levels that are unreasonable.

Yea, there's a huge ramp-up right around the 17 minute mark I've noticed since coming back. We've been doing more Dark Sector Survival to level and get loots and I've noticed a major increase in tankiness at that point. Honestly wish I could start more missions at that point.

Regardless, the game is very repetitive and feels like a very circular grind.

Grindframe: Grind to unlock more stuff to grind. At the least, they give you multiple different activities to grind. A big reason for me quitting WoW (and other MMORPGS) was because they narrowed the grinding-field so much. At the least, DE added more grinds.

And removing Relics from being void exclusive (and being able to pug them) was a great rework of a boring system. That was the reason we quit last time: spending 95% of our time in the Void doing endless Keys hoping for Prime parts.

RNG / Mechanics - This game looks pretty and plays pretty well but some of the shit in this game is horrifically bad. The random rewards and looting in general really annoy me. The game is dominated by the Co-Op aspect but people have to pick up loot individually during a mission and looting requires you to run around like a vacuum cleaner to pick things up if you want to actually get stuff.

Taking "Vacuum" from Carrier and giving it (as a mod) to all sentinels was a band-aid solution. And it makes it's excruciating when a Napalm or Bombard shows up and two shots him, leaving you with jack shit the rest of the mission.

I missed the boat on Maiming Strike for the Acolytes. Sucks, but what I like about Warframe is I don't NEED any of that. My collection is enough to get the job done in any situation. Other than that, you're right: it's mainly just bragging rights.

4 Years on and I would have expected this game to have streamlined looting to be as fluid as the combat. Players are meant to be combat focused ninjas yet a good amount of time is spent running all over maps picking up shit from enemies that other players on the team have killed.

There's more than enough people on the forums to call out those asking for QoL improvements such as what you're talking about as "lazy" or "entitled." It's quite amusing to hear their justifications.

[PREDATOR490]

Trying to suggest any improvement on the Warframe forums is like pissing into an oncoming wind and the results are nothing but toxic replies from the community.

This game is very casual and I admire how it has managed to make a really unique way of allowing players to earn things for free or pay to skip some of the grind. That said, if your not on the wagon of wanting to get to the highest mastery rank for no real benefit or a collectivist then the game dies very quickly. The game encourages and expects you to collect everything, play with everything and waste the majority of your time grinding to get everything.

I have sunk quite a lot of time over the years into this game but I usually end up taking substantial breaks when during a relapse I finally snap out of it and get a moment of clarity about what I am really doing. I came back at Christmas as Mastery Rank 12, by the start of Christmas I am Rank 19. Looking back, all I have achieved is a rather tedious slog through a horde of equipment that I did not really want to play with to increase a number that I did not really need to increase.

[TheFeniX]

This game is very casual and I admire how it has managed to make a really unique way of allowing players to earn things for free or pay to skip some of the grind. That said, if your not on the wagon of wanting to get to the highest mastery rank for no real benefit or a collectivist then the game dies very quickly. The game encourages and expects you to collect everything, play with everything and waste the majority of your time grinding to get everything.

I have to give them credit for the system designed to accomplish that. They've done a decent job spreading out both the timing of the breadcrumbs, but also offered enough different lines of them to maintain some semblance of originality.

Can you believe I got annoyed I had to learn the new Lua Spy missions they added? They gave me free content and I was annoyed till I realized how stupid that was. Now, certain content is kind of lame (like the Kuva stuff or their mishandling of Archwing, among other things), but what I like about Warframe is that I just don't have to do certain grinds if I don't find them worth my time.

I find this refreshing in a time where many games are narrowing the scope of their content and gutting whatever tertiary content they deem unimportant. Such as WoW gutting everything besides Raids and Mythics to make Diablo 4.

I have sunk quite a lot of time over the years into this game but I usually end up taking substantial breaks when during a relapse I finally snap out of it and get a moment of clarity about what I am really doing. I came back at Christmas as Mastery Rank 12, by the start of Christmas I am Rank 19. Looking back, all I have achieved is a rather tedious slog through a horde of equipment that I did not really want to play with to increase a number that I did not really need to increase.

I've found this is the way to play Warframe, especially if you have friends, rather than being one of those old-hat guys who hangs around relays showing off his MR. Sometimes I actually feel bad mine's at 20. But I enjoyed a lot of my time getting there because I never "pushed" weapons I didn't like and only a few Warframes were a huge turn-off to me (Limbo for one).