Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Review] Warframe: A Compelling World with Addictive Twitchy Action
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Have you ever dreamed of zipping up a space ninja suit, pulling out a machine gun, then running up some walls while shooting robots? This is the promise of Warframe, a third-person free-running shooter developed by Digital Extremes. The game has an excellent pedigree in the shooter genre: Digital Extremes had a hand with Epic Games in developing the venerable Unreal series of FPS games. With Warframe, they’ve added some MMO-style looting, crafting and social mechanics to the mix to create a sense of community and progression. The game is currently listed as being in open beta, a status it’s been in for almost a year. Since they’ve updated the game twelve times and feel comfortable asking for the price of a AAA boxed product through their cash shop, we thought it might be time to take a look and see if they are delivering the alien ninja goods.
Read more of Pete Schwab's Warframe: A Compelling World with Addictive Twitchy Action.
)
Comments
but other than that i think the game is really good have been playing the hell out of it lately.
I enjoy this game immensely and have put some money into it for currency to get certain things. I do agree that the prices for warframes and guns is high but personally I think it should remain so. Part of the allure of the game is working towards getting those things for yourself and if everything was cheap to buy there would be no actual reason to play at all since you would have nothing to work towards. The grind can still be quite punishing however so I think a middle ground would be beneficial.
They have a lot of quite immense changes in the pipeline too that from their descriptions sound like they will quite drastically change it from what was reviewed above. I imagine the release review will hardly share any similarities with the beta one at all.
Played it on PS4 and they actually had a starter package with some coins and stuff for Playstation Plus members.
It's something nice to pick up and play quickly if you're in the mood for 20 minutes or 30 minutes of gaming, but I never really feel hooked enough to keep going more than that.
As far as the grouping goes, I find that as long as you're with noobs, it's fun. However, all too often I get caught up with groups who end up leaving me in the dust to fend for myself. Effectively, you could just put your controller down and walk away and contribute the exact same as you would if you were actually playing.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
I played it briefly, but was unable to answer the question of "what does this game do that another doesn't do better?" The only things I could think of were random levels, but even that system seems to fail pretty regularly.
I can't help but feel like this could have been a much better game if it were funded properly from the beginning, and released as a paid product rather than F2P. Right now, it's just an excuse for them to release a game in Beta and make some money.
You make me like charity
I think those prices are for people who absolutely cannot help themselves. Weapons themselves are redicuously easy to craft. It just takes the materials, which are usually very easy to farm, and 12-24 hours of build time. The only thing you need are slots, which are very reasonably priced.
I cant help but get the feeling that the entire point of the game is to not use the cash shop to get stuff. Buying everything from the cash shop seems to leave no game left to play, except maybe mod farming. Make no mistake, this is definately a farming/grinding game.
Most of the maps are the very definition of grind.
Hell, most of the time I play, I hit farming runs that leave me in the dust thanks to speed boosters, clearing the end-boss and evac'ing before I can even find my bearings... Usually leaving a swarm of spawned enemies in their wake that they just outrun.
This article feels like you haven't played extensively. Yes, there can be problems with wall running/climbing, etc. But when I started out, I was pathetic. Pathetically pathetic. Now I am slightly on the good side of mediocre, all due to practice! They've been slowly rubbing off the rough edges of the map parts that hinder the movement. Oh, and important sections of terrain do show graphic signs of use, usually streaks and scratches, pointing to the areas to climb/run.
In the trading situations, you can trade with others as long as one of the two people has access to a Dojo.
The map indicator issue can be one of several things. Speed demons who run way ahead of everyone sometimes cause the directional indicator to move off your minimap. (The bastids!) When some of the goals of the mission are met, the indicators can switch. Sometimes there are multiple things to do in a mission, with multiple indicators.
Most Warframes and weapons can be found in-game, or gotten through the ingame market, or through special events. I've got 13 Warframes now, all gathered through ingame drops. (Though that Banshee Helmet did take forever!). The cash shop is for impatient people. They subsidize the game for the rest of us. I had enough fun playing Warframe that I actually spent some money for platinum, to help support the Devs. And this sort of thing isn't even my usual interest.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
As a casual gamer and pure veteran of Warframe, I find that this game isn't for the faint of heart. It's very essence is the bane of impatient fools and cry babies. If you have trouble waiting for results and prefer instant gratification along with hand-holding quest trackers then please steer far away from this game.
The developers have found a perfect balance which allows the game to trim itself of weak and lousy members -- only the strong persevere.
And to clear the air, spending money on this game is trivial. I've unlocked almost everything without spending more than a few dollars. The ONLY two things that require platinum are weapon and warframe slots; surprisingly, these are the cheapest items on the market. Everything else can be attained through gameplay at a reasonable rate with the right group of friends, also the wiki is your best friend for this game and expect to do research.
^ Yeah, this type of attitude will surely bring in new blood.
But listen to the essence what he says, even if he couches it "I'm leetsauce" verbage. The game's a grind, and unless you're willing to grind, you aren't going to enjoy it.
I've been quite enjoying the game over the last few months. But one of the things you should have mentioned is the problems with the peer to peer hosting system. When it works, it works well. When it doesn't... You don't even want to know...
Host migration errors can dump you back out into the lobby, or just freeze (then you have to kill process). Of course, you lose anything you might have gained, if they hit at a bad time. Such systems work well for some countries (like South Korea...), but have problems in others (like NA).
Over all, the game is great, and I quite enjoy it. But much more attention needs to be paid to the peer to peer system.
Long warframe player here, i do suppose ~9 months.
- the cash prices for frames and wp^ns are high, yes, extremely high. But that is, in fact, a good point, because all those are dropable and craftable ingame. There are also palette colors, and skins buyable in cash shop; plus the regular xp/cash/resource boosters. The cash shop is mandatory. Almost totally!
Just need a few plats for the weapons and frames slots. And some more to buy a few orokin catalyst and reactors.
Added to this, the new trade system allows every player to earn plats by trading rare mods/prime stuff and buy anything they will ever need without spending a $. Just play, loot, trade, win.
- Bugs: warframe is full of bugs. The more annoying is that some of those bugs already existed 6 months ago ... but each patch come with it's load of debug and fixes. And currently there is ont patch per week. on wednesday.
- Finally, it happens that concerning the development plans, DE seems to be listening more to casual and whinners than founders and hardcore ... i'm affraid there is an unwanted "world of warc'raft effect" coming soon ... with ultra casualization and simplification of the game.
- Finally, the really more annoying "bugged feature" in my opinion: No dedicated servers! All games are p2p, and the netcode is so poorly optimized, you need ~150ko/s to host without issue a 4 players survival.
This review seems pretty fair.
I disagree with the problems the author experienced with his parkour, it's really quite easy to get to locations that you're meant to get to, comes down to player experience.
I hope people don't look at this review and decide not try it based on the 6.6, the rate at which DE pumps out its updates and overhauls existing mechanics puts most developers to shame, it's deserving of its open beta status for this reason since they're still in the middle of changing core game mechanics that players felt needed it, and I respect DE a lot for it.
I think this game needs to be re-reviewed. This review is highly inconsistent with other games on the market. For example, aesthetics. Tell me, how this game is rated a 7/10 where ____ are rated near 10 and they have many graphic issues (I'll list one and other's can fill them in, SWTOR scored a 9 on aesthetics). Additionally, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it is still in open beta.
Just as adenbrazza said, DE is one of the most dedicated developers out there willing to seriously reconsider gameplay mechanics and introduce new content on a regular basis. So, as usual, don't trust the reviews on this website and give it a shot yourself. You may not like it (like the reviewer), but this type of game might just be right up your alley. Personally, I enjoy how it appeals to casual gamers, how you can literally hop in and start playing whenever.
P.S. Someone do a real review please!
I agree. I've only been playing a few days, so to early for me to give a real review, but already enough time to be pretty sure the reviewer had less time playing than me. The individual scores in some areas make it seem as if the game is being reviewed on an artificial curve, where the AAA titles get their scores boosted and the small indie titles get deductions.
This is a good looking game, with smooth combat and much better character animations than some of the recent AAA titles reviewed recently to much higher scores.
This may be a niche title that is more FPS than MMORPG, but the quality, visually and game play wise, is as good or better than many AAA MMOs we've seen in recent years.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
You could put that same reply into any f2p and you'd be just a typical " it has to be sub or nothing" person. Why is it any different here ?
Subs use time sinks to extend game play, that's the last feature this game needs more of.
I've now logged 225 hours with the game and my scores would be:
Aesthetics 9
Game Play 8.5
Polish 9
Longevity 8
Social 7
Value 7.5
Overall 8.5
The MMORPG review was fair on the last three, but completely low-balled the first three extremely unfairly. The game looks great, it plays great and it's a very polished product.
It is grindy, but in a similar fashion to the way World of Tanks is grindy. It's a fun grind though and there is a lot of horizontal progression, via making and leveling up new warframes and weapons. Getting a warframe or weapon to rank 30 isn't a big deal. The long term vertical progression is largely via the acquisition and powering up of the various mods. Some mods can be fairly illusive. Some are fairly easy to max out, others have a steep progression curve. (Luckily, you can power up most of those to at least the half way point before the cost in time and effort start to require great real work).
The only thing I don't like is a few elements of the cash shop. Platinum, the cash shop currency, is expensive when not discounted. You do get a daily spin for a log in reward that can include the occasional 20% off on platinum, or the rare 50% or 75%. This makes things more frustrating, as you are at the mercy of the RNG gods as to when you might get an opportunity to by platinum at a reasonable rate.
Most of the cash shop offerings are time saving or cosmetic. You can purchase some weapons or warframes with out having to find the blueprints and build the components, but they come unranked and the player still needs to rank them up via play. There are the obligatory xp and loot boosters. Color palettes, cosmetic armor addons, etc...
The exception is the Orokin Reactors and Catalysts, which when plugged into warframe or weapon, respectively, double the base mod points at any given rank. This is a big power advantage when leveling up and when the frame/weapon reach rank 30. These almost never appear via game play and almost always need to be purchased.
On the plus side, they are cheap. $10 will buy you 7 Reactors/catalysts at 20 Platinum a piece. If you get a platinum discount via the daily login andor by Platinum in bulk, the economy becomes much better. Also, if you play enough, you will eventually find mods that can be traded to other players, in game, via secure trades, in exchange for platinum. (Unfortunately, that is the only way to gain platinum other than buying it).
If the base cost for platinum was cheaper, RNG discounts were less impactful, and Reactor/Catalyst blueprints where somewhat easier to get, though still rare, via game play, what reservations I have on the business model would be greatly reduced, (and the game would likely make more money by being perceived as more fair and with players being able to purchase platinum when ever they want, rather than having to wait for a discount to make the value reasonable).
It's a beautiful, fast paced, often exciting grind of an FPS/RPG that definitely deserved a better score than the one it was awarded.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
