This year of warframe (2019 retrospective)

[LarryOtter]

At the beginning of this year DE_Steve asked on Twitter what the community wanted this year for the game and I posted this on the forums : https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1053717-monthly-updates-2019-pls/And now that the year is almost over (at the time of writing this it was still October) I wanted to come back and look if my wish came true.

 

 

January : 

DE just realesed U24.2 THE PROFIT-TAKER in December and even though there was no big update there were 8 hotfixes with at least some small changes.

But in Devstream 122 we got a preview of what’s coming content wise.

DE Anounced that 2019 we will get : 

-3 new warframes

-Deck 12/Exploiter Orb

-Gas City/Amalgams

-Wolf of Saturn Six/Alert changes

-New War 

-Warframe Empyrean < Railjack 

-Planes of Duviri (Duviri Complexe)

-On going Reworks/Upgrades 

-Melee Rework

-New Player experience Rework

Community requests : 

-Prime Trailer 

-Raids back 

-Lore

Which made the Comunity pretty thrilled for the rest of the year still no Content yet.

 

Febuary : 

In February we got 3 hotfixes throughout the month and at the end on the 27th we got U 24.3 NIGHTWAVE in my opinion a great addition to the game with the first season of Nightwave (THE WOLF OF SATURN SIX) the rework of the alert system and a small buff to the muralist quanta.

The First Nightwave season which gave great insentifes for veterans to play Content they otherwise wouldn’t play/go back to like Open worlds and generally made the game feel more Conected even though it was still a little ruff on the edges with the community saying it was a little too hardcore/Grindy over the next few seasons/hotfixes most of that changed and Nightwave Seasons became a great addition to Warframe, overall great month.

 

March : 

At the 8 of March we got the next (and so far last) Spider-Boss 

And a new warframe with U24.4 BURIED DEBTS.

It also came with Warframes first operation in 2019 : Operation Buried Debts.

The operation was pretty Grindy (now fixed) but featured a fan favorite weapon the Opticor Vandal.

The beginning of the melee 3.0 changes with MELEE REVISIT: PHASE 1: "Flow" and it introduced a new cosmetic reward called EPHEMERA.

One week later the second part dropped U24.5 Deck 12

After the community had to find pieces scattered around Fortuna DE realesed the Exploiter Orb/Deck 12.

The Exploiter Orb helped player’s grind threw the standing grind in Fortuna, which can be really boring and time consuming if you wanted to do it the most efficient way.

It is really replayable, Lorewise interesting and is a great addition to Fortuna as a hole.

One of the drops from the Boss was the new warframe HILDRYN she is a solid addition to the game and I don’t have a problem with her.

Also later on Equinox Prime realesed.

Overall a great moth for warframe even though I think that there could have been just one update with the operation and the Exploiter Orb.

 

April : 

On the 6th of April we got U24.6 Plains of Eidolon Remastered with a complete visual overhaul for the Plains of Eidolon, hunting on Poe with new Floofs and new enemies named TUSK THUMPERS that drop Poe resources.

Just 4 days later on the 10th we got U24.7 featuring : a new ATLAS DELUXE and 4 new augments, Secondary Energie colour.

And two weeks after that another update U24.8 with a big arbitration rework, Which the Comunity didn’t really like.

This Month wasn’t really that great for older players because even though the visual rework was great there were no reasons/new insentifes to go back to Poe and Arbitration still needed changes after the rework, so not much Content this Month.

 

May : 

At the end of May we got one of my favorite Updates U25 THE JOVIAN CONCORD featuring: a visual rework of the Jupiter/Gas city tilesets (which look stunning btw) with new enemies named AMALGAMS, the new gamemode DISRUPTION, Operation HOSTILE MERGERS and a new Boss the ROPALOLYST who dropped the new warframe WISP she is not only a personal favorite but also beloved by the Conunity. 

Also a lot of cool new UI and Balance changes.

Defenetly the best Month in 2019 so far and like I said one of my all time favorite updates.

 

June : 

The Month statred with U25.1 which mainly featured TennoGen Round 16 and Relic UI Changes.

Two weeks later we had U25.2 with the long awaited WUKONG REWORK Which made him a top tier frame.

So June was pretty dry of Content with only the WUKONG REWORK being a good addition to the game, but we must remember that U25 came pretty late May so most players still had Content from that Update.

 

July :

In July we had the yearly Tennocon with some great announcements like : DUVIRI PARADOX, More RAILJACK, SQUADLINK, NEW CINEMATIC TRAILER and LICH SYSTEM.

Right after Tennocon we got U25.3 featuring Wukong Prime and NIGHTWAVE SERIES 2: THE EMISSARY which featured some cool new rewards, a catch-up system and was generally less grindy.

On the 18th dropen U24.4 Tenno Reinforcements which came with the QUATZ PISTOL, AMPHIS STAFF,  SHAWZIN and DOMESTIK DRONES.

And on the last day of this Month We got U 25.5 Wukong Deluxe which brought the WUKONG SAMADHI SKIN.

This Month was Incredible with Many Exiting announcements at Tennocon and the best addition in 2019 DOMESTIK DRONES! 

 

August :

On the 8th of Aufust we got U25.6 Augment Tweaks which came with a lot of well made updated/reworked augments which changes many builds and the meta in Eidolon fights (especially Oberon he is really great now).

And on the 29th another update was dropped U25.7 Saint of Altra: Update Featuring  DISRUPTION EXPANSION Which made Disruption into a real gamemode, not just a one of thing DE never touched again like lunaro, with new and Interisting rewards, a new warframe named GAUSS who’s a really fun warframe, LOOK LINK & MOD LINK a great quality of life addition, Rendering Changes, Bow Stat Changes and the HARROW RELIQUARY SKIN.

August was alright, there wasn’t no Content maybe not that much but there were many solid addition to the game my favorite being the disruption expansion and the Look/Mod Link.

 

September :

Except for Hotfix 25.7.6 which brought Arbitrations Revisited which in my Opinion finally Made Arbitration into a good Mode.

Not much happened this Month.

 

October :

On the first day of October DE realesed U25.8 Atlas Prime which came with, you guessed it : Atlas Prime and the controvercial Warframe Looting Ability Changes (which later got reverted).

And on the last day of October came U26.0 The Old Blood mainly featuring : Melee Phase 2, Kuva Lich Phase 1-2 which was maybe a little rough around the edges when it realesed but after a few hotfixes and phase 2 became a really fun and replayable System with a lot of Content (13 new weapons) , even though the community’s reception wasn’t as good with many players criticizing too many rng elements I would still say it’s a great addition to warframe, GRENDEL who I personally not really like, The Parazon, VAUBAN & EMBER REWORK two really great reworks for warframes that needed them, VASCA KAVATS and THE TITANIA EMPRESS DELUXE SKIN. 

Overall this month was great with U26 bringing a lot of cool new Content and i was really thrilled to see the first stuff announced at Tennocon 2019 finally live on pc.

 

November :

On the 22 of November DE Streamed Devstream 133 (Hilarius Stream btw) where they announced IVARA PRIME and later on dropped U26.1 Rising Tide which came with the first part of Railjack the DRY DOCK/RISING TIDE QUEST, ORBITER 2.0, Archwing Flight & Itzal Changes and THE EQUINOX ANTONYM DELUXE SKIN.

So basically no content for most of the month and what we got wasn’t that great but I got pretty hyped for empyrean take flight.

 

December :

After one and a half years of eating we finally got U27 : EMPYREAN: TAKE FLIGHT on the 13th of December. 

It was the buggiest and unfinished update DE ever realesed and personally a big disappointment.

It was not only extremely buggy but it also had way too much rng (if something has a drop chance under 10% it shouldn’t also have rng stats...) the weapons and parts costed too much resources and it came with just one gamemode...

It was also just such bad timing realising the update just before the holidays for no reason (except the game awards which is promo but at which cost ?).

It really needed way more time in the Ofen.

 

 

2019 : 

 

This year started out pretty strong with an update every month till June.

With the wolf of Saturn six being a great update and The Jovian Concord being not only the best update of this year but (at least in my opinion) one of the best updates in general.

I thought this would be THE year for warframe after all the things announced in Devstream 122 and tennocon 2019 but most of the things I was looking forward to were disappointments or weren’t coming this year : Railjack/empyrean (easily the biggest disappointment after waiting since tennocon 2018), The Duviri paradox, lich system (I mean they realeased it and it was alright but it wasn’t as good as promised no month’s old lich with an epic empearyan bossfight), new raids, new player experience, squad link (even though I really don’t care about squad link and think there is no reason/need for this in warframe) and the new war.

It also felt like DE wasn’t learning from their failures they just have too ambiguous projects creating long content droughts which already happened in previous years.

Which made many content creators leave wf and also had the effect that over time the players waiting for the update developed unreasonably high expectations.

They tried to prevent that with more small updates but it still felt like a content drought often which they could at least somewhat prevent by making the game feel more alive/dynamic with More Old/new Operations/Events/Booster Weekends there Are some really old operations that veterans still remember as some of the best operations, or just plague star 2 times a year a d a Fortuna event as good as plague star (maybe something with the door...).

Also there still is no endgame other than rivens even though they often talked about new/endgame rewards.

Aura forms was a pretty pointless reward only used in really niche cases, Umbra forma is a great reward which not only is pretty balanced, nicely functioned in the already established mod system but also gave the player a pretty hard choice, Ephemeras which look pretty cool and are most of the time pretty hard to get, Lua-lense is just another lense which is fine and gelbes me get a lot of focus, riven shards are pretty useless maybe letting you pay 3 or something Riven shards to skip some annoying riven challenges would make them better, Kuva weapons they were pretty cool even though In my opinion not consistently powerful enough for the grind I hope that the Corpus lich weapons get a bit more powerfull and weapon exilus adapters which where pretty pointless because the exilus mods on most weapons are too bad to even build them.

(Just some rewards I would like to see : https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1090173-reward-idea-exilus-forma/, https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1085282-reward-idea/2019 devenitley wasn’t the year of quality (Railjack) but I hope that 2020 will be the year of quality and connection.

 

They now have three different systems they have to connect (open worlds, Railjack and lich).

And with connect I don’t mean squad link I don’t want to be connected to some other mission I just want my mission to be great and don’t have to wait for some randoms to deactivate a shield...

Also finally content I can play for a very long time with good rewards (endgame) maybe a reworked lich system or raids ? (Eidolon Is really fun and a raid like experience which somewhat show the potential for raids in warframe).

To come back to the beginning of this thread no my wish didn’t come true and 2019 wasn‘t THE Year for warframe but maybe 2020 will be now that they have the foundation for railjack and the lich system in the Game...

 

 

thanks for Reading !

[Viridian084]

I'm glad this is here for Archival Purposes, I vividly remember this year and having something to summarize and aid my recollection was a great feeling.