Question about Warframe

[Trunkage]

Before I start. I'm not adverse to grinding. I've been playing ESO straight for 4 years. I clocked 800 hours on Borderlands 1 and 2. 400 hours on Payday when they only had about 15 maps. I never once felt like this was too much of a grind.

But I've been playing Warframe for about 20 hours. I have never felt a game so grindy in my life.

So many repeated maps. I swear there is only 3 each planet. I can't gain or develop any interest in whatever is happening in the story. They set up a bad guy which I killed in two missions. It all seems so pointless to me.

Is this what Warframe really is like? Or have I just not seen the good stuff yet.

 

[Saelune]

Warframe is garbage at guiding new players. You best find a buddy to show you the ropes.

 

[Asita]

Well to the question of grind, the playerbase has a saying: "the grind is real". Maps are semi-randomized tilesets, and your levelling is tied to ranking up equipment, and a lot of the equipment you'll acquire is acquired by repeating various missions for drops. For instance, while its main blueprint can be acquired for credits from the market console, to get the three requisite component blueprints for the Rhino warframe you need to beat the Jackal boss several times (6-7 on average).

To the question of story...the first major antagonist you saw (Vor) is actually small fry, a former admiral demoted all the way to captain. And if I'm being perfectly honest, the early game tends to meander a bit when it comes to story. At that point it's largely content to just to get you to new places. The story starts to pick up in earnest around...I want to say the quest "Natah", wherein it introduces ancient foes and starts earnestly going into the backstory and lore behind the game.

Cards on the table, a lot of the story in Warframe is tied to ancient history and puzzling it out. You might have started scanning Cephalon fragments, for instance. You might be surprised to learn that when you complete a fragment image you can find a hidden audio file by scrolling over a particular part of the image, in which Ordis describes his origins. Similarly, the fish statuette scans in the Plains of Eidolon tell the story of how the market town of Cetus came to be. And the glass shard fragments tell the legend of Gara's stand against the Sentients assaulting the Unum.

And for what it's worth, that's something I actually appreciate. While it's obvious that the devs never expected Warframe to take off as it did and that the early game is sparse, there is something enjoyable to me about gradually learning about the Orokin empire, the origins of the Tenno and how the galaxy changed in the absence of both.

 

[meiam]

Every few months I feel like going back to warframe but every time I remember the insane grind (although I haven't played for years at this point so some of this might be outdated), the problem is you don't just grind for the gear, you grind for parts of the gear and the blueprint and then you have to wait irl hours for it to be crafted. Also as you go up in level you get even more stuff to grind for, like little floating addon and such. Some of the stuff you have to grind for is also kinda outdated, like the archwind (unless they revived the concept at some point, when I played it was obviously an abandoned concept). You also have to grind for key to some later level.

On top of that if you ever change frame (class) you start with basic level ability, so you have to grind some more just to get your ability to a point where they're usable.

 

[sXeth]

So many repeated maps. I swear there is only 3 each planet.

Two (if you're lucky). For a more detailed reply.

Spoiler

Warframe procedurally generates most (not all, Defense missions are always the same, story missions have their own specific layouts, and the two open world zones in Fortuna and Plains of Eidolon) missions.

There's a ship tileset for each enemy faction, alongside a special Grineer vs Corprus tileset thats only in Invasion missions,

Other then that EArth has the forest set, Venus and Pluto both use Ice Planet. Mercury and Sedna use Grineer Mines. Mars has its own. I forget what Phobos uses, it might be all Corprus ship. Ceres has the sludge factory. Jupiter is Gas City. Saturn is generic Grineer ship. Uranus has an undersea lab tile (that can appear on Earth occasionally), Neptune is Corprus ships again. The Void has its own tileset. And there's 3 spoiler locations with their own tilesets (though 2 are very similar to Void)

I can't gain or develop any interest in whatever is happening in the story. They set up a bad guy which I killed in two missions. It all seems so pointless to me.

It picks back up on Uranus, mostly. Mars has a quest (check your Codex for quests available). But much of the early game is kind of filler which had backstory, but it was in events that are only really archived on the wiki (Putting event storylines back in as quests is one of the endless to-do lists the devs have). Speaking of that Uranus mission, to unlock the quest you have to scan the weird new enemies that start showing up, which I don't think is well covered in the game.

Is this what Warframe really is like? Or have I just not seen the good stuff yet.

I wouldn't call Warframe's narrative and context necessarily lacking. But it is very sparse in its presentation. They're actually in process of revamping the new player experience with some better lore integration. A lot of the main gameplay loop is doing generic missions to get stuff to build better stuff or mods to make better stuff to kill stuff more efficiently to make stuff.

New Warframes do have some of their own lore and sometimes quests to them (which is up around Pluto for many of them, unfortunately). Fortuna on Venus and the Plains of Eidolon have their own lore and story, leading up to the big boss fights with the Profit Takers and Eidolons (though you won't be able to fight an Eidolon until you've completed the War Within quest which is up at Pluto, in one of the more bafflingly out of order parts)

Nightwave if you've stumbled across it (the radio in your orbiter if you haven't) is mechanically, a daily/weekly challenge system to unlock some stuff (including previously unavailable for free Warframe/Weapon slots (though not many). It has its own little tidbit of lore as well, which is supposed to be expanded upon as the season rolls on.

There's also various scannables around that add to your codex. And if you want another bit of extra lore, you can get missions from Simaris in the relay to do research (you have to go a terminal behind him), which adds another trickle.

 

[Saelune]

Warframe just had a garbage update. Ugh, DE 'If it aint broke, we'll break it'.

 

[Erttheking]

Warframe just had a garbage update. Ugh, DE 'If it aint broke, we'll break it'.

What? Nightwave or Buried Debts? I think the backlash against Nightwave is a bit overblown and I'm not seeing any major complaints about Buried Debts. If anything I'm seeing nothing but high praise for how melee got reworked in Buried Debts, if some complaints that the new quest is poorly explained.

 

[Saelune]

Warframe just had a garbage update. Ugh, DE 'If it aint broke, we'll break it'.

What? Nightwave or Buried Debts? I think the backlash against Nightwave is a bit overblown and I'm not seeing any major complaints about Buried Debts. If anything I'm seeing nothing but high praise for how melee got reworked in Buried Debts.

I have seen a lot of criticism, and I agree with them.

I managed to find a stance mod for my Nikana that is close enough to the old way, but the rest of them suck and one of them keeps launching me across the room. It also messes with my guns and I dont want that. I also had to adjust my control set up cause it wasnt letting me aim my guns, but instead was doing that thing where you like, charge your melee weapons with energy.

And DE if nothing else needs to stop making new stuff that messes with everything and work on fixing the huge mountain of broken and dead features. Quick Melee wasnt one of them.

 

[Erttheking]

Warframe just had a garbage update. Ugh, DE 'If it aint broke, we'll break it'.

What? Nightwave or Buried Debts? I think the backlash against Nightwave is a bit overblown and I'm not seeing any major complaints about Buried Debts. If anything I'm seeing nothing but high praise for how melee got reworked in Buried Debts.

I have seen a lot of criticism, and I agree with them.

I managed to find a stance mod for my Nikana that is close enough to the old way, but the rest of them suck and one of them keeps launching me across the room. It also messes with my guns and I dont want that. I also had to adjust my control set up cause it wasnt letting me aim my guns, but instead was doing that thing where you like, charge your melee weapons with energy.

And DE if nothing else needs to stop making new stuff that messes with everything and work on fixing the huge mountain of broken and dead features. Quick Melee wasnt one of them.

Could you please share it with me? Your criticisms are kind of on the vague front.

 

[Saelune]

Warframe just had a garbage update. Ugh, DE 'If it aint broke, we'll break it'.

What? Nightwave or Buried Debts? I think the backlash against Nightwave is a bit overblown and I'm not seeing any major complaints about Buried Debts. If anything I'm seeing nothing but high praise for how melee got reworked in Buried Debts.

I have seen a lot of criticism, and I agree with them.

I managed to find a stance mod for my Nikana that is close enough to the old way, but the rest of them suck and one of them keeps launching me across the room. It also messes with my guns and I dont want that. I also had to adjust my control set up cause it wasnt letting me aim my guns, but instead was doing that thing where you like, charge your melee weapons with energy.

And DE if nothing else needs to stop making new stuff that messes with everything and work on fixing the huge mountain of broken and dead features. Quick Melee wasnt one of them.

Could you please share it with me? Your criticisms are kind of on the vague front.

I just want to hit the things, I don't want to do 100 backflips or wild swings, I just want to stab the thing in front of me, and I want to use my gun the rest of the time. If I want to switch to the game's melee mode, I would, but I don't want to, so I don't.

 

[sXeth]

I just want to hit the things, I don't want to do 100 backflips or wild swings, I just want to stab the thing in front of me, and I want to use my gun the rest of the time. If I want to switch to the game's melee mode, I would, but I don't want to, so I don't.

Doesn't shooting the gun just take you back to gun mode? Haven't gotten BD or Melee 2.whatever yet on console to try myself.

I haven't seen anything on the reddit but one glowing praise topic for the melee. Most folks are up in arms about Hildryn being a max rank Vox Solaris thing (which has apparently already been announced to move down to the 2nd rank)


I'd imagine its possible your custom control layout just has a weird overlap happening (I wouldn't doubt mine will too, since I flipped a bunch of the melee around so I could aim the gunblade on a controller).

 

[Asita]

I just want to hit the things, I don't want to do 100 backflips or wild swings, I just want to stab the thing in front of me, and I want to use my gun the rest of the time. If I want to switch to the game's melee mode, I would, but I don't want to, so I don't.

Doesn't shooting the gun just take you back to gun mode? Haven't gotten BD or Melee 2.whatever yet on console to try myself.

Correct. Explaining it through the mouse and keyboard: Under the prior (default) keybindings left click was shoot, E was melee, switching primary and secondary was done through tapping F, and switching to dedicated melee was done by holding F, and under dedicated melee channeling was done by pressing and holding left click (the fire button).

Under the new system, most of that is the same, but pressing and holding F to switch to dedicated melee is no longer necessary. Press E and you're in dedicated melee, and you switch back to your ranged weapon by hitting left click. This of course means that channeling changed a bit, now being a toggle with the mouse wheel.

To Saelune's point about zoom: under default keybindings, that's right click, and remains the same.