What’s so special about Warframe anyway?

I don’t know why, but I seem to be a very seasonal kind of guy. It always happens during winter that I pick up Black Desert again, for example.

The month of August, on the other hand, obviously does something with me that makes me miss playing Warframe. So here I am, still doing my daily stuff in Lost Ark, but dedicating the remainder of my gaming time fully to being a Tenno once more. Man, what an awesome game this is!

The other day I left a comment to one of Naithin’s posts, saying that Warframe is most likely the only Looter Shooter I’ll ever need, and while there is some hyperbole to that it’s pretty spot on at the same time.

The thing is, Digital Extremes’ masterpiece has spoiled me in some fundamental ways, and whenever I play an even remotely similar game I can’t help but compare the two. As you’ve probably gussed by now, Warframe always seems to come out on top in some – to me – very important respects.

Warframe in 2023 – now also with horsies

Unsurprisingly the first thing that comes to mind is the game’s unparalleled pace and fluidity. Everything is so smooth and, if you want it to be, blazingly fast that playing any other game afterwards feels like walking through molasses.

I get that this isn’t to everyone’s liking, but I love it so much that it’s become really hard for me to settle for less, so to speak. If your Looter Shooter doesn’t let me double jump, bullet jump, glide and run alongside walls it’s gonna have a hard time winning me over.

Another big contributor to this quick pace is the fact that, bosses aside, enemies aren’t bullet sponges. I mean, sure, at certain points in your progression you will face considerably tougher opponents, but those aren’t meant to stay that way forever. Instead they’re there to nudge you towards rethinking your loadout and strategy to get stronger, and once you’ve done that even the hardest (normal) enemies become pushovers again.

Yesterday I played one of the game’s endless mission types for about 45 minutes or so, and when I extracted I had defeated just shy of three thousand (!) mobs. It doesn’t always have to be this extreme of course, but let me tell you, I absolutely do not have the patience anymore to shoot each single enemy in the face half a dozen times before they finally decide that I have, in fact, killed them.

Another aspect of the game’s design that I love to death is the enormous complexity, and the freedom that comes with it.

With over 50 ‘frames to choose from, who knows how many weapons, over a thousand mods, companions, arcanes, Forma, focus schools, archon shards, Helminth abilities…it is 100% safe to say that you will never, ever meet another player who is using the exact same loadout as you do.

It’s not that this doesn’t really have much influence on gameplay either – quite the contrary. For example, my Xbox-based buddy and I play the game very differently. He likes to shoot stuff – even his melee weapon of choice is used to nuke the entire site from orbit, basically. I use guns and blades too of course, but I tend to rely on strong warframe abilities much more often. Hence I’m regularly seen playing ‘frames like Gara, with whom I’m usually running around, killing everything by just touching it, without firing even a single shot.

Not only do our tastes in how we like to fight vary, we also enjoy different kinds of missions and gameplay. Before crossplay was implemented we used to play simultaneously but individually, and while he was, say, running two dozen void fissures to crack open relics for Prime parts, I was meticulously searching every nook and cranny for well hidden loot caches in certain missions to find rare mods.

Which is great because this not only means that each of us can play the game exactly how we enjoy it the most, we’ll also be able, should trade between platforms finally be enabled at some point, to help each other out with stuff we don’t like to farm for ourselves. I already have a couple of harder to get mods stockpiled for that occasion, and he keeps surplus Prime parts in store for me in turn.

I always get a kick out of finding one of these

There’s one more thing that puts Warframe way ahead of the competition for me – the loot. It just works. Again, for me.

In his reply to my comment mentioned above Naithin said this about Warframe:

Sure, there is shooting and there is looting, but there isn’t loot, you know? Mods sort of play that role and it isn’t quite the same as getting that one legendary or unique that will enable the build you want.

I absolutely get that, but here’s the thing: finding those legendaries or uniques happens so goddamn rarely in most games! Playing for an hour or two and not finding a single shiny (that I actually need) can feel like a waste of time to me, even if the gameplay itself is enjoyable. Even Diablo II, one of my all-time favourite games, is guilty of that.

Of all loot-centric games I’ve played Path of Exile and Warframe are the only ones that have always managed to make me feel like nothing I do is ever a waste of time.

Getting that sweet dopamine rush by finding a really rare and great thingy is awesome, sure. Warframe has those too – just the other day I finally got my first copy of Hammer Shot, a pretty strong mod for primary weapons that has a measly 1% drop chance at the end of certain missions which you can only do a couple of times per day.

Click to enlarge

For me it’s much more about the little things though. Like I said, I have a desire to feel productive, so even if I do not find that rare item I’m looking for, it still feels good when I at least have a plethora of other useful stuff to show for it.

Look at that screenshot above – in addition to Hammer Shot I received credits, Endo, some other mods that I can give away or turn into more Endo, various resources to build stuff with or feed to the Helminth, syndicate standing, and XP for four different focus schools. So even if Hammer Shot hadn’t dropped I wouldn’t have come up empty, which is just the way I like it.

So, yeah, those are just some of the things that make Warframe special to me, and as of yet no other game I’ve played has come even close to it in these regards.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 5