I mean, if it’s PVE then yeah, it can works. Games like Fallout 76, ESO, Warframe, all can be played alone, while PVP multiplayer only games will suffer significantly if the playerbase drop below certain threshold.
Fo76 expansions are still coming every quarter, all free
I keep trying to get into this game but there is sooo much base building at the beginning… I just wanna play the fun stuff!
Also co-op mission progress makes no sense when playing in a group (only one person gets the progress?)
Free content is always great news tho!
You don’t need to do much base building, just throw some crafting stations in a box and call it a day.
For co-op everyone progresses in that same quest unless it’s instanced
I haven’t played since 2021 and some BoS DLC came out. Wonder how hard it would be to get back into it.
Pretty easy, when I started playing again I used the special stand to respec. I’m now stealth explosive but I now realise stealth doesn’t apply to explosive damage
Not only that, live service titles are absolutely tone deaf when it comes to respecting the effort of their players.
It doesn’t stop Steve from being right with his statement, though, but his understanding of what a live service game’s monetization model should be has shown to be two or three parallel universes ahead of what the “triple A” projects usually do.
Hell, paying real money can only skip you through the first dozens of hours of the tutorial. After that, paying effectively only allows you to get cosmetic options.
I remember when Warframe had Pay For Revives. Not sure if that was Steve.
But many things in Warframe are much more player friendly these days.
There’s an interesting interview by NoClip which shows the early development phases of Warframe. They were stumbling their way around many new mechanics that come with a live service game.
They don’t mention the daily revive system, but it’s clear that in the game’s progressive transformation from “tactical shooter” to “horde shooter”, that system had to go. I don’t remember if there were many complains about the system back then, though.
Love the guy, but he also misses over that warframe has monetizion that beats the pants off of all of the others.
Hey, at least it’s not P2W… right?
You can buy weapons and prime frames, so I guess it depends on your definition of “win” but I’d argue that yes, technically it does. The larger issue of WF however are the layers of FOMO they have that turn the entire game into a job / chore that you have to attend daily, which is ultimately why I left it, even though the core gameplay itself is definitely fun. Frankly why I probably won’t play their other game either because it is almost certainly going to follow the same live service formula as WF.
It would be nice if games didn’t maliciously try to put hooks into players at every turn. But you can learn to balance it.
I have a Dojo with just my group of friends. We build it out with just what we need to progress. We play for like a month every few years, when the itch hits.
FOMO is damn near gone from Warframe now, aside from Baro. I’ve been playing for over 8 years.
Since when?
Since Prime Resurgence, Nightwave rework, Baro Tennocon relay and cyclic event schedules. The only way to truly miss something in this game is to willfully ignore it.
I don’t know if there was another nightwave rework, but he one somewhat shortly after its release definitely did not change anything about the fundamental core issues of the whole thing. Baro isn’t new and prime resurgence sounds like yet another grind layer, but their description is too obtuse to really understand anything.
Prime resurgence is a less predatory version of prime vault. It allows free players easier and more precise access to unvaulted items, including armor and accessories that were previously impossible to get as a free player.
See the price drop for Glaive Prime today. Dropped off a cliff because its unvaulted.
I agree with most of the stuff you’ve said expect the FOMO bit - there are three very specific items that are never coming back for obvious reasons, which are irrelevant to the overall story and hardly affect anyone’s enjoyment of the game. Every other item has eventually come back.
Edit: on a second read, you mentioned the game is P2W. That’s definitely a way to say you’ve not played the game, so now I’m angry I spent half a minute writing my comment.
My playtime for WF is in the 4 digits and I was at a fairly high rank at the time, but thanks for the attempt to dismiss my points. Yes, being able to directly buy equipment is the very definition of pay to win. And yes, the game is several layers of FOMO, regardless of your denial. One being artifacts / vaulting, which is a way to keep you log in and grind specific garbage missions. If you don’t, or if you’re plain unlucky, you miss your chance for many months (unless you pay of course). Another are the various faction caps, which there are many, again to keep you logging in to grind it up. If you don’t, you won’t be able to keep up with the reputation that is needed to progress through various gear to progress through various content. This was all already bad enough, but the fucking cherry on top of that was adding their form of a FrEe battle pass, as if that’s somehow a good thing. Yes, now the game dictates even more what you have to do (and where), instead of letting you do what you want to do. Because if you don’t, you won’t progress through the tedious, grindy and completely brain dead battle pass journey, missing all the rewards. “BuT DaRkThOuGhTs, ThOsE ReWaRdS cAn Be EaRnEd EvEn In LaTeR sEaSoNs!” No. Just no. You’re just adding more chores to the already way too long list of completely pointless and dumb chores. That’s not making it better, it’s making it even worse, because you’re just increasing the list of shit you can’t get. Luring people in artificially like this, by triggering their FOMO, are predatory dark patterns. If you want me to keep coming back to play your game, then just provide a fucking enjoyable experience. All those things do exactly the opposite of that, and thus I quit.
Also 4 digits playtime here, but that is irrelevant.
You’re not wrong, but you are confusing dark patterns with p2w. Sadly they all do dark patterns now. Even Deep Rock Galactic is loaded with them.
I’m not confusing the two at all. https://www.howtogeek.com/771884/what-is-a-pay-to-win-game/
Sad to hear about Deep Rock Galactic. Never appealed to me with the cartoon graphics, but I always heard how it was such a good example of a model and how they’d add their seasonal rewards simply into the regular loot / rewards, making them easily accessible for those who missed it.
Its the same mechanic you describe above.
If you miss it in the free battlepass, it comes back later in a random chance per mission to get a single drop.
You’re arguing in bad faith by praising DRG for using the exact same system Warframe uses.
you miss your chance for many months (unless you pay of course).
Which is absolutely different from the actual predatory FOMO mechanics that are in place in many other MMOs. You seem to be overlooking the fact that, again, all those items are coming back eventually to the game.
If anything, you could have made a case for vaulting well before relics were introduced into the game and I’d have completely agreed. This is not the case for many years now.
You also mention “faction caps”, which have absolutely nothing to do with FOMO, as their rewards don’t rotate, again, except for relic packs.
FrEe battle pass […]. Yes, now the game dictates even more what you have to do (and where), instead of letting you do what you want to do.
You are pointing out generalities that are defeated by a cursory play through. For starters, Nora Night does not stop your progress whatsoever nor does it add any impressive improvements to your play through. Furthermore, some of the tasks are done automatically (bullet jumping, killing enemies, completing missions). Finally, most of the rewards are alternative (cosmetic) helmets, and again other cosmetic goodies.
You could have made a point of the arcane Warframe helmets, which modified some stats of your Warframe and were taken back in favor of streamlining the Arcane system. I could have maybe agreed that that’s a form of FOMO, if you really wanted to min-max your strategy.
Finally, the “cherry on top”, as you’d put it, is the fact that you talk of yourself as having been “fairly high rank”. Everyone and their mother knows that mastery rank provides little to no insights as to your skills, just the fact that you spent time leveling weapons.
For all these reasons, especially your failure to acknowledge the fact that there were FOMO mechanics that are no more for many years, allow me again to dismiss your alleged game experience. It clearly is not showing in the way you write any of your arguments.
Which is absolutely different from the actual predatory FOMO mechanics that are in place in many other MMOs. You seem to be overlooking the fact that, again, all those items are coming back eventually to the game.
Completely irrelevant as long as it triggers FOMO. Honestly, in general “other’s do it worse” is just not a good argument to make, ever. But it is a very typical one of people like you who excuse such practices because they like the game and see any criticism on it as a personal insult.
If anything, you could have made a case for vaulting well before relics were introduced into the game and I’d have completely agreed. This is not the case for many years now.
No? The multi layered RNG aspect of relics literally makes it even worse. RNG on whether you even get relics in the first place while you grind, and then another layer of RNG on whether you get the reward that you want out of them. I went through years of missing out on certain parts because of this.
You also mention “faction caps”, which have absolutely nothing to do with FOMO, as their rewards don’t rotate, again, except for relic packs.
It’s a predatory tactic to keep you in the game. Learn to read.
Everyone and their mother knows that mastery rank provides little to no insights as to your skills, just the fact that you spent time leveling weapons.
Who the fucking shit talks about SKILL?! What in the flying fuck are you actually on about? You gotta be trolling or fucking dense. The whole point was to provide context for my playtime, which you yourself were just questioning in your earlier comment. WF has never had anything to do with skill, but I guess you had to prepare for some 1337HaXXoR shit in your next comment or something.
I’m not gonna bother with the rest of your non argument text wall that clearly conflates P2W with FOMO and other points and throws around underhanded insults. Maybe try to focus a bit the next time you try to argue with people because this is just unhinged and weird.
I’m out.
you miss your chance for many months (unless you pay of course).
Which is absolutely different from the actual predatory FOMO mechanics that are in place in many other MMOs.
Nah man, that’s exactly what FOMO is.
You’re not missing out, because it’s coming back.
A lot of people struggle to understand that a lot of the fun of warframe is in the progression. There really isn’t a lot to do that’s interesting when you get into the endgame, so paying to progress faster ultimately takes away some of that fun.
Now, there is plenty of fun to be had building and trying out new weapons, but that does get old without a goal to reach for while using them.
Also, very few people actually play the PVP mode. I’ve never touched it myself and I’m in the endgame.
So from an outsider who doesn’t understand this, they see that players can pay to progress faster and think it’s pay to win - because in most games it is.
It’s Pay 2 Win, not Pay 2 Fun. For everything else, see my other comment.
Depending on your definition “pay to skip” = “pay to win”.
It arguably isn’t anymore, although it looks like it is. Yes, you can buy prime frames and weapons, but can’t buy the mods or arcanes directly from the game to outfit them. Even then, prime weapons on their own are not the best in the game by a long shot, and a prime warframe does not guarantee it being “meta”.
The weapons that are the best are locked behind story quests, and even once you unlock one of those vendors, only one of them that you can buy with platinum is any good.
They were considering adding a destiny style story skip, but when they asked for feedback it was so negative they immediately relented.
you can buy prime frames and weapons, but can’t buy the mods or arcanes directly from the game to outfit them.
How is this not the opposite of a pay to win mechanic? Either you play the game to find the mod or find someone to buy the mod from.
An even cooler thing is operator progress, whereby no amount of paying can take you through.
The whole prime access is a p2w mechanic that prior to Liches was arguably considerably more important.
Now with Lich, Sister and Railjack weapons that are all play-only access.
Galvanized and Prime mods you can’t p2w.Nevermind the whole Steel Path and incarnon adapters, where while a small set is plat available, and the only good weapon in that set is the Angstrum, and aforementioned Galvanized mods.
I don’t 100% agree with prime access being pay to win. It’s mostly pay to skip, you can use your platinum to buy pieces from other players for normally far less than the frame and weapons in access as well. I spent 5 bucks to get a protea prime from a clan mate knowing I wouldn’t have time to grind her and had tons of platinum (premium currency) from other trades with players. And I’m really bad at trading with players.
It helps that it’s not really pvp focused or competetively co-op.
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Live service gaming is having a bad time? Damn that’s crazy.
goes back to ROM hacked Armored Core 3
The end state of all live service games is to be thrown away.
Thing is, that’s how a lot of people treat games. They play them for a few days when they come out to extract the novelty of the new experience. They get annoyed that it isn’t as novel or new as when they were kids and experiencing it for the first time. Then they buy a new game. Rinse and repeat.
Games as a service just take advantage of that by promising that experience but in one convenient package: We’ll change the game every now and then to keep you interested instead of satisfied.
If a game is done well, it’ll stick with you. I’ve replayed Psychonauts so many times over the years, and I just finished another playthrough tonight.
All that means is that in pursuit of being one of the astoundingly few games that, even with updates, will keep people playing for years, they designed a game that won’t be around in a few decades for you to revisit.
Warframe has always been Barbie for mech weeboos. 🤌🏽
No, it’s animal crossing for metal gear rising fans. No, seriously. The core gameplay loop is farming for items to fill out your mastery index so that you can increase your mastery rank. Animal Crossing is basically slowly collecting items to fill out your Nook catalog. They’re basically the same. Warframe even has fishing!
Fuck, really? Fishing? Christ on a scooter, WTF.
Spear fishing. The cool fishing.
Don’t forget mech-eel body possession fishing!
What’s this now? Last time I played was probably in 2019 because the pile of shit was growing faster than I could farm it, and I got burned out because I was starting to miss out on stuff. Normal gear got put aside for prime gear when new primes dropped, which got set aside for event stuff when new events dropped, and there was enough event stuff that I started missing prime versions of my favorite frames and weapons. Last thing I remember was they had just started doing Nightwave stuff. I did some of that and then got upset because I missed a prime frame or two before they got vaulted, got discouraged and quit.
(Tbh I find it kinda amusing that DE is the one calling other devs out; yes, warframe has been an extremely successful “live-service” game (remember when they used to call it an MMO?); however, based on my past experience it seems like Warframe is (or was) at it’s breaking point in terms of having too much to do due to time-gated content).
My space dolls are very pretty, i’m not even gonna try to argue against it
This is a bit frustrating to hear from him considering this is exactly what he did with Wayfinders when he became CEO.
Wow, just looked into it cuz I hadn’t heard about that. And yeah, it looks like that’s exactly what he did a month after becoming CEO. In fact it looks like they closed the entire publishing side of the company and possibly laid those employees off. Super disappointed to hear that from the studio behind such a beloved game
Anthem was dead well before two years. They just straight up stopped updating it after like, 1 content patch.
Space Daddy knows best
That’s a good thing if it brings the company down. Less garbage released.
Company proceeds to be purchased by microsoft
The whole concept should just die already.
I used to hold the Warframe world record for fastest “100% achievements” at just over 1,600 hours (mind you, I wasn’t rushing).
I stopped playing shortly after Deimos released (late 2020). Is it worth revisiting?
I came back to the game half a year ago and I’ve been enjoying every update since. Seems like you enjoyed the game before, so I’d say it’s definitely worth a try.
We have some really cool stuff coming up this year, too.
Well… coming up 25 years ago.
Well, yeah. If you like storymode, it gets good after Deimos. Pretty sure new locations like these came out in the meantime. There are some very surprising things too, so give it a whirl for sure.
The main quest is pretty good, at least! The New War came out and resolved, same with Duviri and the return of the Zariman. I’m currently pretty excited for the actual for real 1999 timewarp featuring John Excalibur himself.
As for gameplay, I think its been on an upward trend since deimos. New warframe grinds usually come with a pity currency if you just can’t get a part to drop, and focus farming is a lot less of a pain.
Fellow 100%er (up to 0.7% of players now). Can’t say I did it fast, as I didn’t care until I ran out of things to do, but likely 2.5k hrs before I did it, now 4k hrs in and it is still a go-back-to game for quick 30min runarounds.
They’ve been having nothing but wins for a year or two. Games at the best point it’s ever been imo! It’s actually a game I recommend now, though the rough point is still frame/weapon slots.
I always forget about slots… It’s a real stain on the game’s appeal for any collectors out there. It always feels bad to realize that you’ve got to put premium currency in or trash one of the items you had to grind out.
There’s a decent amount of slots for free through nightwave, twitch drops/gifts of the lotus of weapons/frames etc, but not enough to go the whole game on certainly, and new players won’t know how to get them. I’m LR4 without spending any money because I traded for plat a lot to buy slots, but that’s not something I expect people to do as a normal thing
Completely serious here: not only is Warframe the best free game I’ve probably ever played, but it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s honestly incredible how much love and hard work have gone into that game and I’ve never had to spend a penny to have hours and hours of enjoyment and if I hopped on today there would be TONS of content for me I’ve never even experienced yet. Warframe fucks, big time.
Good
