Warframe is the best imperfect game I've ever played

  Warframe is a bit of an interesting game. Everyone I’ve talked to has either vaguely heard about the game or has sunk way too many hours into space ninja simulator. As I am writing this article I think it’s safe to assume I am part of the latter. I first found the game way back in 2013 back when I didn’t have enough perspective to realize how cool it would’ve been to buy an Excalibur prime founder pack, a part of my life I regret until this day. Joking aside, the game has been a part of the gaming side of my life for the better part of 10 years now and I can only hope that it will continue to get better and better. 

Something most veteran players can acknowledge is that the game kinda sucked when it first came out. I remember how the game had this really cool parkour system, but was limited by clunky physics and a stamina bar. There was a lot more in the way of pay to win mechanics, lack of actual meaningful content, and some frames just not feeling that good play. Like seriously, Excalibur’s first version had an ability that was just a super jump. He didn’t even have his exalted blade! It was kinda ridiculous. I applaud anyone who believed in the game enough back then to buy a founders pack. Without them we probably wouldn’t be as far as we are today. I think one of the joys of playing the game for so long is being there to see the game fix a lot of its issues. The dev team has always been super chill and mostly transparent about the things that are wrong and how they are trying to fix them and honestly they’re pretty real for that.

I think Warframe also kinda embraces something that a lot of other games are afraid to do: powercreep. After 53 warframes as of writing this, there have been very few substantial nerfs to anything in this game. Not to say there haven’t been, but for the most part if a frame gets changed it’s normally a buff. Has that led to certain frames just forever being busted? Yes. Has that made some frames feel left behind or outclassed despite buffs? Yes. But the cool thing underneath it is that all frames are able to remain somewhat viable in even the most endgame content the game has to offer. In exploring builds I find that every frame has at least one build that can at the very least push to the endgame. Not to say that every frame can do it easily and some definitely need help from the subsuming system, but every single frame is viable. The same is also true for a majority of the weapons. Unfortunately some weapons just won’t cut it, but I don’t think endgame players are looking to take their mk1 kunai into a steel path mot endurance run. 

I’ve also been really impressed by the game’s narrative. For the first few years there wasn’t really a story to the game, you were just a robot ninja trying to bring order back to the shattered galaxy. It all changed during the second dream update. That single update could probably go on my top 10 list of most impactful and awesome game updates of all time. On a gameplay and narrative level that update was the start of what warframe is today. The feeling of seeing the operator for the first time and actually understanding what we were is a feeling I won’t forget. Everything from the music, the writing, and the cutscenes was all perfect. Like if you have the chance go back and play the quest again. It was like their promise that the game would begin to have a cohesive narrative from then on. For the most part it did, with the latest stuff from Duviri and New War, the game has consistently told a great, albeit confusing, story.

So how am I feeling about the game today? As someone who has been in the endgame for more than a few years now I have two things that are keeping me playing regularly. The first one is my friends, they got into the game pretty recently and I’ve been happy to sort of re-experience everything the game has to offer by helping them. They’ve told me that without someone being there to help them their experience would be a lot different. As someone who did have to spend a lot of the early game alone I can definitely agree. The new player experience, even though it has gotten better, still needs a lot of work in making sure the player actually understands what they are doing and how they should be moving forward. It’s just really cool to have a group to play the game with and I’m not sure if I could go back to being 100% solo anymore. The second thing is buildcrafting. A small goal of mine is to have every frame built to some degree. The main reason is that I like having tools. I used to only have like 1.5 builds, but with how varied the content can be nowadays I want to make sure I can come into every mission with the tools I need to succeed. That’s a more gameplay driven motivation, but I now have a very large part of the roster built and I’m happy for it. So I guess a good conclusion for this discussion would be that I think Warframe is a wild game that has more good things to offer than bad things and I would encourage you to try it if you are at all interested in mmorpgs or are tired or destiny(kek)

Thanks for reading my stuff if you’re here! I know this probably isn't a super substantial discussion, but that's not really the point. I'm just glad to put down my thoughts at the time and if I think of more or want to revise that will come in the future. If someone can start the game based off of my words here and come to enjoy it then that will be all the more perfect for me. More to come tomorrow as always!