As a continuation of my exploration of Warframe, the good AND the bad I made a bullet point list in my previous post. It was a pretty long list so not going to copy and paste it but use that as my step off for my “balanced and fair”, “reporting”. Ahem.
First, a distracting, beautiful new skin that I received. (as with all of my blog post pictures – click on it to enlarge in a new window)
That is my same old, Frost Prime Warframe with the new skin, and using my Shade shader pack (which is basically black to white options, and greyscale in between). The art style is really growing on me. That guy me – looks absolutely amazing. I mean, horns! With dangly earrings!
As a comparison, here is the stock Frost Prime skin:
Which is also very cool, but at the end of the day isn’t robo-antler-guy. The new skin is downright intimidatingly cool. The sad part about how I got this skin is that it was from not watching Twitch streams. Warframe gave me the Frost Prime skin for linking my Twitch account to my Warframe account after doing a free, Amazon Prime trial (still live right now, if you want a free Warframe). They also have a promotion going on right now that if you watch Twitch streams of Warframe you get a free in game item every time that streamer gets an in game achievement. There are streamers literally chain running new characters and getting 50+ achievements per hour, and then starting fresh again. The ‘feels like cheating’ part is that I just keep multiple Twitch streams open in the background while I work (or play) and the rewards roll in.
To be fair, 95% of the rewards are junk – fireworks, etc. And there is a limited reward set – I have received the same Rifle Blueprint over 100x already. On the good side, there is a whole bunch of cool things as well that I have received – from an in game Laser Beam Sential (Wyrm), to useful items to craft with, the Shade color back, and the Warframe Skin. Obviously they have done the math but my logins look like this now:
Yup, 55 free items for not watching Twitch. I am sure they have done the math on it all. I also do not, for one bit, feel guilty or wrong about this. The truth is I am loving this game so much that I did give the company money. I got a 50% off Platinum (in game currency only available by spending real money) as a login reward so the $55 dollar CAD purchase I was going to make cost me half. It’s a good, Steam style system. I’ll probably spend more next time I get that perk. Supposedly there is a 75% off one too.
The next “good” thing on my bullet list is customization. There are literally hundreds of colors available (many for purchase, mind you) I only own the base colors and the Shade pack and here are a bunch more:
Customizers, eat your heart out. There are 5 shade available options on your Warframe (including power colors) as well as multiple options on your weapons, capes, Sentinel (fighting pet). Those aren’t even ALL the colors, that list above was from an old Reddit post I found from two years ago. There are actually 25 in total. Many people call Warframe “Fashionframe” and for good reason. You can customize everything, and the results can be stunning. I received a free Sentinel from Twitch called a Wyrm. I also received a free ‘mask’ for the Sentinel. IT was funny, because on it’s own it looks like a little machine that flies around and does things for you in game (looting items within range, attacking bad guys with whatever customized weapon you have given them, etc.) Here he is with his mask on:
Cute right? In a Voodoo, I am going to kill you kind of way. The green eyes, of course, are customizable. I also left up the fact that there are 7 tail options. Yup, you have the choice to add 7 tails to the little robot flying around your head looting and killing stuff for you. Tails. I find that a bit overkill on one breath, and in the other think the Para Sentinel Tail would look lovely on my Wyrm.
The true beauty if the game and customization is the Warframes themselves. Not only can you customize colors and dozens of options per frame (helmets, shoulder pads, leg pads, you name it – it is customizable) but the 34 current Warframes in game all offer different gameplay styles and abilities – and all form your core player. I have grown more and more in favor of this kind of progression. I am building my third Warframe currently (Rhino) and when it is ready, I just swap out Frost, and can keep using my high level weapons, addons, money – everything to move forward. It is a part of my character – not a new one – so no going back to square one everytime you get a new frame.
There is something for everyone here, all wrapped up in a tight, beautiful gameplay package. I have read people on Reddit learning new things about the game after putting in over 1000 hours already. I bet they don’t have everything in game yet either.
I mentioned I bought Platinum and my goal was to spend a little bit to get the automatic scanning Sentinel to fill out my Codex in the hopes that will give me backstory. It cost 75 to buy and I happily equipped him (it?), the mask, and went in game. Sure enough you could hear the scans going off every 3-4 seconds as I fought and after a few hundred scans I rushed back to my Codex (it’s available on the ship) to see what I had learned – and it was nothing that I had wanted. Sure, it had a cool model that rotated and showed what kind of damage it did, what kind of damage it was weak too, and also what loot it could drop – but no backstory or explanation. I was really looking forward to that part. The interest is still there to scan everything automatically now of course because hey, the completionist in me is happy. I am only on my 5th Planet (out of 17) so still holding out hope things get some clarity. The people building this game put in so many things that are very interesting but I still don’t know my purpose, or the purpose of the enemies that I am fighting.
What I do know, is that I can (and do, if I do say so myself) look good doing it.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.” In space. Shooting things. Buying tails.
I “supersized” with Twitch. The gear it gives is significantly stronger than the base gear. I tried playing solo and then in a group. There are some missions where it works, others where it doesn’t. Assassination is fine solo, Capture I don’t think that’s even possible. I’ve lost rescue missions because of others. Really is mission dependent.
I think one of the largest issues I have is the control set. There are specific movements that dramatically increase mission success chance. There are missions where it just isn’t possible to beat if you’re on an X/Y axis – you need to wall climb to pass some gates. The bullet jump in particular…that thing just cuts maps in half. If the game is treated like a regular FPS, it’s a bad time. If it’s treated something like Titanfall, where the movement and the map themselves are pieces to use, it makes for a fun experience.
The Prime frames and weapons come with an Orokin upgrade which doubles the mod points your have on them – you can build those later on to upgrade your base suit to be more powerful as well.
Problem with joining a game 4 years in is all the complexities they have advanced the game. Figure out something new every day.
Solo missions when you control the pace you can be more old school FPS.
Vehicle missions are pretty cool. More on that soon 🙂
Dude, unlock the Halloween palette, it’s at the very bottom of the market options and available for 1 credit right now.
Between that and the Shade palette which I was also lucky enough to get, I am in seventh heaven with my warframe colorization (mostly all shades of black with orange energy that look like flames – wot, it’s realistic to be a shadow ninja, it’s more camouflage than abstract color splotches…)
Thanks for covering Warframe. I’ve been wanting to knock out a post on it some time, but I can’t deal with two grindy games on my plate right now and still blog.
Wow didn’t know it was a credit. I’ll grab that for sure!
I’m loving WF and figure I have a couple weeks worth of posts (at least…) 🙂
What’s your other grindy game?
GW2 Halloween has turned on the grind gauge right up to High, at least if you’re crazy about 25 AP each chievo like I am. 😉