Early Archwing gameplay footage. Taken from last Friday’s dev livestream, about 45 minutes in, along with some commentary. Looks like it could be awesome.
Also, apparently Warframe has been released on Xbone, for whatever that’s worth.
It looks like pure eyecandy, but shallow, but I suppose they will slowly add to it to flesh it.
It could be hilarious in a team of 4. People don’t usually play “spaceships” in coop on the internet. Theres more fps’s, way more, than ships games.
Theres a “garfield withouth garfield” joke in here somewhere, because is Warframe without the *frame part. Don’t seems like you will be able to use your frame powers. But who knows? maybe they invent a new serie of powers or something.
On the current state looks like something you would play 5 min, and never again. But very pretty.
It will have its own progression system. There are three different ones to start, and their abilities replace the warframe abilities while active.
A while back in the Destiny thread someone asked if Warframe was a good alternative to Destiny since Destiny has really mixed reviews and is somewhat light on content. This piqued my interest since until now I have completely ignored Warframe. I have been playing Destiny and moderately enjoying it, but I was wondering if Warframe offers an interesting experience, meaty content, etc. Does the F2P model have a negative impact on the game design?
Thanks for your thoughts,
Todd
Warframe is pretty much Grinding: The Experience: The Video Game, but it’s by no means un-fun. It’s very pub friendly (so you don’t need to be in a clan unless you want to do super high-end content), and if you decide to plunk down a bit of money when the starter/item packs on Steam happen to be on sale, you can get a pretty decent deal on some in-game currency to partially mitigate the grinding.
I enjoyed it for the hundred or so hours I put into it, and I admittedly haven’t played in a while (especially since the recent UI update that so many people were upset about), but you could do far, far worse in the world of F2P than Warframe, and you definitely don’t have to spend any money just to enjoy it.
I’m in the same boat as Todd. You could call me Warframe-curious. Otagan, how does it compare to Destiny in terms of the moment-to-moment gameplay?
-Tom
Warframe can be played and enjoyed without spending money, although it’s structured so that if you play it a lot you’ll probably want to throw a few bucks their way. The progression system is tied to Mods you can equip on weapons and your warframe itself and these are found as drops. Fusing duplicate mods together or another type of mod called a Fusion Core increases the power/level of the mod. These you find through just your regular course of play.
The game game is made up of multiple different planetary bodies in the solar system, which are each then broken up into different Sectors. For example, Earth has somewhere around 10-12 different sectors. Each sector has a different mission type associated with it. There are missions where you have to rescue a hostage, missions where you assassinate a boss, missions where you have to hack terminals or defend locations, among others. Each planet and/or sector is controlled by one of three enemy factions: The Corpus, the Grineer, or Infested. They each have their own monster types with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Your goals in Warframe are typically crafting new warframes and weapons. Warframe is very, very wide in terms of progression and customization. It’s far, far deeper than you’d expect in a shooter but wider and more shallow than you’ll find in a game like Path of Exile. The width of the progression is collecting the various warframes and weapons you want to play around with as well as finding the various Mods which you can use to customize and enhance your build.
Each warframe has different base characteristics such as Health, Shields, Armor, Energy (mana), and movement Speed. They also each have four unique abilities. There are fragile “mage” type warframes, big beefy warframes, stealthy warframes, etc. This is further complimented by choosing a Primary, Secondary, and Melee weapon for your loadout. The guns in the game range from typical sniper rifles, shotguns, and machine guns, but also include a lot of sci-fi stuff. The Phage, for instance, is a bio weapon that shoots out 7+ tentacles in a wide fan. The longer you zoom in, the tighter those tentacles pull together. So the wide fan is useful for spraying a bunch of baddies that are surrounding you while zooming in makes it more effective at a greater distance or at focusing on a single target. There’s also bows and flak cannons and flame throwers and rocket launchers and disc guns and bio goo weapons and all sorts of other things to play around with.
Crafting warframes and weapons require a blueprint as well as needed materials. Blueprints can either be purchased from the market with in-game currency, researched at your Clan dojo, or found during missions, depending on the specific blueprint. Each planetary body has 4 resources available at it, so what you are trying to build can influence where you decide to spend your time playing. This is what Otagan is referring to with Grinding, although it never really feels bad to me because the gameplay is quite a lot of fun. You’re a space ninja, so that means wall climbing, slashing enemies’ legs out from other them as you slide past, doing backflips off a balcony to knock down enemies below you, etc.
So where does the F2P come in? You can outright by a Warframe or a weapon you really want, but I would strongly advise against doing so (at least often) as it pretty much takes away the purpose of playing the game. I haven’t purchased a single weapon or warframe with real world currency.
The main use for real world money to me is purchasing extra weapon and warframe storage slots and what are colloquially known as “potatoes” in game. I mentioned Mods earlier. These mods are things like adding various elemental damages to your weapon, increasing your sprint speed, adding health to your warframe, etc. You’re limited by what mods you can put on by both number of slots as well as “Mod Capacity”. Each Mod costs a certain amount of capacity. These “potatoes” are installed (permanently) in a warframe or weapon, which increases the mod capacity (although not the number of slots). I think they’re something like $1 or $2, but they can also be found within the game occasionally.
In terms of spending cash on the game, I tried out Warframe and really enjoyed it so I ended up buying a $40 or $50 pack, which I’ve used on purchasing potatoes and inventory slots. I have nearly every warframe (17 out of 20, I believe) and a significant number of weapons, but still have currency to burn. So it’s not as ludicrously generous as something like Path of Exile but I find it’s very reasonable.
I’m not qualified to speak on any Destiny-related matters, unfortunately. I can only speak to Warframe on its own merits, but generally agree with Kevin’s summary and assessment above and would be happy to answer any specific questions floating around out there.
Actually, I asked what Destiny brought me a Warframe player.
Yup, I’m with Kevin - spending at $15 or so buying some weapon and warframe slots gives you a lot more options, but you absolutely don’t need to do that for a few weeks.
Levels are procedurally generated, but there’s…almost a dozen tilesets now, most of them very varied. It’s designed for it too - no, you won’t be exploring a world per-se, and it repeats, but it’s all nicely laid out, etc.
And there are loads of weapons. Loads. We just got a freeze ray gun and a microwave beam pistol, bows are pretty viable, throwing knives, fire blades, whips, sword and shield…something like 140 weapons.
On the down side, on the PC the UI pretty much sucks. Try it on the PS4 or XBox 1.
Warframe-curious…what is the appropriate abbreviation for that when I post my singles add? ;)
Thanks Otagon, KevinC, and Starlight, this is helpful (and a lot to digest!). I know this is really subjective and a matter of taste, but does the gunplay and shooting feel satisfying? Since it is free I may try it if my interest in Destiny starts to wane.
On the down side, on the PC the UI pretty much sucks. Try it on the PS4 or XBox 1.
Shoot, I don’t have a PS4 yet, but I might get one in a month or 2.
-Todd
I think so, yes. It’s also one of the few shooters out there where Melee is meaningful and powerful.
All platforms should have the same UI by now, or they will soon. And new players probably won’t hate it as much as the older players who remember the previous UI.
I’d add that the movement system can let players pull off some very cool moves. This video is old, but it gives an idea what parkour can look like in Warframe. The mix of guns melee and parkour is Warframe’s strong point.
But the controller is not the same. And there are basic issues with it on the PC, using a keyboard and mouse. (And some basic issues still, which mean I’m still logging in maybe twice a week)
Also, they’re apparently using a different and non-sucky text rendering engine on consoles. (The same one used for in-mission text, which is fine on all platforms, and no I have no idea why…)
I know you’re probably more sensitive to these things because UI is your thing, Starlight, but for a pleb like me, I’m not really having any major complaints about it. I get the frustration because there were things that were faster to do on the previous UI, but hopefully they get there eventually with the new one. All in all, I find it fine to work with.
I played Warframe back in the early days – I wanted to check it out because it’s made by The Darkness 2 guys, and I love that game – and had a lot of fun for a while. I’m sure it’s changed a lot since then, but for the cost of free it’s well worth downloading and checking out for those WF-curious.
Yea, I played a lot a year ago but took a long break until recently. I was shocked at how much they’ve added. Space combat is up next, probably in a month or so!
I’m out of my honeymoon period with it. In the end, the gameplay, although good and fun, is limited and repetitive.
While I’m well aware that trying to skew the gameplay as it stands anywhere near being MMO friendly would be disastrous (in the sense of a misuse of resources), ideally, what I’d like to see is the current gameplay pretty much as it is be embedded in a larger, true MMO context, so that your life as a Tenno had extension outside this particular gameplay, and there were other things to do. (e.g. what are the “colonies” like? what would it be like visiting the rebel faction - the Red somethings - in one of their secret bases, with anarchic Mos Eiseley type bars and stuff like that?)
I think that if the gameplay as it stands (more or less, obviously some refinements are still possible here and there) were more or less like the “newspaper” missions in CoH (jump-in bread-and-butter teamed gameplay), but there was a whole MMO outside it that fleshed out the lore and virtual world, with many more mission types both solo and teamed, it could make a really awesome MMO. I hope that if the game is a success and they’re able to hire more people, they maybe try and extend it in that direction.
IOW, I think the lore and virtual world that’s suggested by it, has legs - accidental though it may be. It has charm, and could be fleshed out to good effect into a full-blown virtual world.
Yes, more meta or wider game outside of individual missions would be very welcome. They do seem to have moved in that direction to some degree with the addition of Clan Dojos to build, Dark Sectors and clan territorial ownership, that sort of thing. They introduced the Liset, although there’s not much more to it than an interactive UI at the moment, and there’s supposed to be player hubs being added in the near future?
But yes, I agree, I quite like the how the game plays but I would definitely appreciate more substantial context to the individual missions and moment-to-moment gampelay.
IMO Destiny>Warframe, and by a margin. But perhaps it depends on what you’re looking for.
Warframe’s shooting, melee, and movement mechanics all feel sloppy compared to Destiny’s ultra-refined systems. Destiny also has more refined environments and better visuals. Warframe could conceivably beat Destiny on narrative/story – both games were far-future sci-fi with random terms and concepts, but Destiny’s stuck with me as being actively horrible whlie Warframe’s was simply forgettable.
Both are very similar games, and it’s not like anyone who has a problem with Destiny’s repetition will find Warframe any better – in fact it’s far more repetitive. In my mind, Destiny ramps up most of what Warframe came to market with first, and also stripped out most of the F2P elements in leiu of a big up-front purchase.
For the record, I don’t think Warframe’s bad. I’ve played it a bit and went back to it every now and again. But now that Destiny’s out, I’m not sure why I would ever go back to Warframe.
New event going on this weekend. Quite nice. Found a lot of hidden areas in the derelicts.
I heard complaints about Destiny reusing maps, at least in Warframe they are sort-of-dynamic in that you get variations of layouts/asset-connections on the same tile-set for each load (most of the time) which helps a bit. + Destiny has a subscription does it not? (i.e. “PSN” or “Ads-in-your-face-Live™”)