A Critical Summary of Warframe's Monetization Methods

[Atkana]

Part of the reason that I have difficulty with recommending Warframe to others is because of the list of caveats it comes with from how the game is monetized - especially having to explain how to avoid the predatory traps that specifically target new players. So, I thought as somebody who is somewhat informed about game industry practices, it might be useful for me to do a writeup and explanation of all the monetization strategies used in Warframe that I'm aware of (so I can just link to this post instead of having to explain everything :P). My intention behind all this is to inform prospective players, as well as enlighten or remind existing players about the facts (I'd honestly forgotten about a decent amount of this, myself!).

Before going into this, please bear in mind:

• You can both like, and be critical of a thing that you like.
• Valuing and making affordances for something is subjective. You might personally give more or less slack to the monetization of a product because of your own reasons, such as a game being Free to Play ^{(though I'd personally suggest challenging that idea given that the a good portion of the highest grossing modern video games are Free to Play titles, but I digress :P)}. This list is to inform customers, so they can make their own judgements.
• For all the topics that I discuss, there can be or are legitimate positive reasons for their inclusion in the game. I will only be focusing on the points that negatively impact the customer, as that's what I consider most important (sorry if I come across as a downer ^.^;)

I'll be including a brief description of each strategy, followed by examples about how/why they are employed in Warframe. Note that information written like this is about things that used to be in the game, but no longer are - I thought they might be interesting to include as a matter of perspective. Without further ado, here we go:

Premium Currency
Using a special in-game resource that can be bought for real-life money, and is generally used for purchasing from in-game stores. One universal effect that premium currency is that it obfuscates the actual real-world cost of purchasing items from the customer.

• A common strategy when selling premium currency bundles or items is to set the costs so that the items can't quite be purchased with the amount given from a bundle, leading the customer to have to pay for the next tier of bundle (spending more money) in order to get the necessary premium currency. Examples of this in Warframe include: the boosters, orbiter segments, weapon/warframe slots (over multiple purchases).
• The vast majority of free currency (including resources required for crafting) cannot be traded between players, while the premium currency can, leaving it to be largely the main good required for trading.

Confusopoly / Spending Traps
Intentional obfuscation or being misleading to trick customers into spending more money they might otherwise have spent.

• The premium currency price of rushing the crafting of certain items is usually pretty high compared to the value of the item itself, ranging from bad value to legitimately negative value. For example, it costs more premium currency to rush building Excalibur and his parts (while also spending in-game resources in the process), than it does to buy Excalibur from the in-game market (with warframe slot and orokin catalyst included).
• Most in-game resources (including credits) can be bought from the market for premium currency, however the rates that are charged are incredibly high compared to their actual value.
• Many overpriced market deals, including buyable resources, credits, and mods (as well as the high cost of rushing), are presented to new players early on, and have the effect of setting their expectations about the value of the premium currency as much less than it actually is. This (intentionally) leads them to spend their free starting currency before they understand its value.
• The fact that slots exist and must be paid for with premium currency if a player wants to gain new warframes, weapons, or companions is left for players to discover further into the game, giving them ample time to have already used up their starting currency, and leaving them to have to spend money to continue playing with new stuff (without selling items they already own).
• The market price for purchasing standard Warframes is often higher than purchasing their (objectively superior) Prime versions through trade from other players.

Time Pressure Deals
Applying time-limited deals to pressure customers into spending.

• Darvo deals - Every day, a market item is given a random discount and presented to every player to buy. They are given a limited stock value which is displayed to the player, pressuring them to make a purchase before other players buy out the stock.
• Prime Access + Unvaulting - Every so often, the set of available prime items and frames are rotated in and out. Gaining the Void Relics (lootboxes) containing the parts for those items is no longer possible through in-game loot when they are rotated out, meaning outside of trading for players and using up the copies of the relics they still have, players may not be able to get the parts they need. Items retired into the vault might not become available for months or years at a time, giving a pressure to try and acquire the items while they are available. Capitalising on that are Prime Access + Vault bundles, which give access to all(?) of a particular set of currently unvaulted items in exchange for real-world money.
• Platinum discounts - As part of a reward for logging in daily, players are occasionally given limited-time discount codes that can be spent when purchasing platinum bundles. Console players get a similarly limited-time discount for market purchases instead.

Lootboxes / Gambling
Charging of money to give customers a random chance of gaining rewards.

• Void Relic packs are available in the market for premium currency. The relic pack gives the player a random set of 3 Void Relics, which themselves are then opened for random rewards. It's buying a lootbox of lootboxes.
• Previously, mod packs were sold for premium currency, giving players a random set of mods as rewards.
• Previously, players could spend premium currency to randomly re-roll the appearance of their pets. While this method has been removed, the same effects of re-rolling via premium currency can still be achieved today, however: slightly more menuing is involved, the chance of getting the desired result is worse, and the premium currency cost for doing so is much higher.

Hook, Habit, Hobby / Subscription
Using specific strategies to draw players in and keep them coming back. The ideal end-goal is to reinforce this habitually until the player considers playing the game a hobby itself (with the spending that brings). (You'll notice I'm stretching the actual definition of this term a bit).

• Timers involved with crafting (and other systems) encouraging returning to the game at a later time to get their items.
• The amount of standing (and some other resources) players can gain in a day for each syndicate is capped, require players to come back another day to continue progression.
• Nightwave provides daily and weekly missions to complete. Missing out on too much of a Nightwave season can mean being unable to gain the exclusive rewards.
• Boosters (often paid for with premium currency) come with a timer attached, encouraging the player to play as often as possible for its duration, in order to get the most value out of their purchase.
• Many of the game's systems require grinding or substantial time investment, which in turn motivates players to return to play in part because of sunk costs.
• Sorties largely give the best rewards, and can only be completed once per day.
• Arbitrations are similar, but hourly.
• The day-night (or equivalent) cycles used in the open world to restrict certain events to particular times encourage players to plan their time around the game if they want to play certain content (like Eidolon hunting).
• Resource drones can be deployed to passively farm resources, but require resetting in-game after some time in order to get them running again.
• Previously, if a player lapsed for several days without putting their pet into stasis (an act that was discouraged due to the wait times involved), their pet would be killed and permanently deleted.
• Previously, time-limited alerts were special missions with exclusive random rewards. Players were encouraged to often come back to check current alerts to avoid missing out on desired rewards.

Whaling
Intentionally targeting and enabling players who spend large amounts of money on the game.

• Prime Access - Every 3 months or so, new prime items become available, and with them comes a special bundle including all of them, as well as some extra exclusive accessories which can only be purchased as part of these bundles (and during its prime unvaulting, which is a similarly-named but different thing). The price of the full bundle $139.99 USD, which is roughly the cost of 2 full-price "AAA" games ^{(or 9.3 Hollow Knights - my favourite unfavourable metric :P)}. The affinity and credit booster included in the packs lasts 90 days, so basically until the next Prime Access is available, suggesting that the system is geared towards repeat-buyers (like a pseudo-subscription model).

Paid Mods / Community content storefront
Selling of content created by the community.

• The Tennogen system allows members of the community to create and vote on new cosmetics to be added into the game. If accepted, they are available to be sold in-game, with some of the money going to the cosmetic's creator, while the rest goes to Digital Extremes (and Valve presumably taking a cut).
• The cut that creators make is 30% of the sales. For some rough comparisons on similar-ish topics:
  • Cosmetic creators for Team Fortress 2 used to receive 25% of the sales of their items, though that is no longer true. Nowadays they make less than 7%.
  • On the topic of Valve, creators selling a game on the Steam store get 70% of the sales.
  • Throwing a curveball and instead of using the Epic store revenue share, I'll point out that sellers on itch.io get 90% of the sales, but are free to completely edit that value, even to 100%. Sorry, I think I'm getting a little offtopic... :P
• This point is up for debate, but one criticism of this system is that it allows companies to exploit cheaper labour rather than producing content themselves. Judging by how Tennogen skins generally make up half or more of the available cosmetics, one could argue this might be the case in Warframe.

Cosmetic Monetization
Charging real-world money for in-game cosmetics. One aspects of selling cosmetics is that they can be advertised and used to silently socially pressure others into buying them, simply by one player buying and wearing them.

• With the exception of a few items, the majority of cosmetics available in-game can only be purchased using premium currency. Some other cosmetic items - like Tennogen and Prime Access/Vault bundle exclusives - must be paid for directly with money, rather than premium currency, meaning they can't even be purchased by people who pay their way by trading for premium currency.
• Available colours are restricted and sold in sets (largely) for premium currency, rather than colours simply being freely selectable.
• These purchased palettes can't be used to change the fur colour of pets, which use their own system of colour palettes that must be purchased separately (mostly as part of premium currency bundles from the market).
• "Fashionframe" is the concept adopted by the community involving decorating one's warframe with the best cosmetics (similar to what's done in other games e.g. "fashionsouls", "fashionhunter"). While probably not intentionally started to encourage a culture of spending money on cosmetics by the players who participate, the developers - who profit from said culture - also public encourage it.
• For certain purposes, players are forced to travel to social hubs, where they encounter other players, and their decorated Warframes (reinforcing / normalizing the idea of purchasing cosmetics, even just by their presence).
• The end of mission screen was also recently changed to put player's cosmetics on front-and-centre display.
• Previously, cosmetic helmets also had a mechanical impact on stats. They can still be accessed to this day as "Arcane" helmets, which take up an arcane slot when equipped, but their effects are generally much worse than that of an arcane.

Pay to Skip / Pay to not be inconvenienced
Giving players the ability to pay real money to skip parts of the game. Oftentimes, the game's design is intentionally pushed to make not doing so unsatisfying, in order to encourage spending.

• Boosters are available for premium currency, which can individually boost the rate of gained affinity, credits, resources, and resource drop chances.
• Previously, mod drop chance boosters were also available, though instead of being part of the in-game market and using premium currency, they could only be bought with money as part of a prime accessories bundle (costing $49.99 USD) for a 7 day booster.
• Timers are introduced for crafting (and some other systems) to delay gaining items by a number of minutes, hours, or days. An option to spend premium currency is included to skip the delay is included.
• Some level of restriction prevents players from "skipping ahead" by buying items beyond their Master Rank from the in-game market. However, this can be circumvented in some cases by spending much more money to purchase bundles that contain the desired items, which have no Mastery Rank restriction.
• Newly released warframes have been locked behind increasingly more time consuming in-game grinds to acquire them (including real-life time gates). As such, players who want to play with them on release are incentivized to purchase them for premium currency in the market.
• Many in-game resources required for tasks such as crafting can be purchased for premium currency from the market. Trading of almost all crafting resources between players is blocked, meaning a player's only option is to buy them from the market if they want them immediately.
• Sets of mod and cosmetic configurations are restricted to 3 different options per item / weapon, with the option to spend premium currency for more.
• Slots for additional loadouts - saved configurations of warframes, weapons, cosmetics and mods all in one for quick switching - can also be bought with premium currency.
• Previously, revives were a limited daily resource. After expending them, players had to spend premium currency if they wanted to restore them.

Too short, want more; If you'd like to learn more about some of the practices I've touched on, I'd recommend doing so straight from the horse's mouth by checking out the thoroughly depressing, and oh-god-I-can't-believe-this-is-all-real presentation "Let's go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play". It briefly summarises a lot of topics that you're probably encountered in some form, including some Warframe-relevant things that I might not have mentioned.

If you notice any mistakes in this post, or things that I've missed, drop a comment and I'll make an edit it c:

[Traumtulpe]

Let me summarize that for you:

"It's free to play."

[Hardwood]

I only have two issues with Warframe monetization.

 

1. The ridiculous Riven market which DE fosters and grows with each insidious, greedy decision they make surrounding it. The Rivens don't even begin to fill their stated purpose, mainly they just drive platinum sales.

2. Forma. It was bad enough when we needed multiple forma on every item but now they've released these BS level 40 weapons that require 5 forma each despite the fact that there is no mod setup that could ever use that much space. If you want mastery or focus lenses or to be a completionist you have to literally waste forma on these trash items and since you get 1 forma a day it pushes tons of platinum sales.

Everything else is fine, the game is free to play. They have to make money, they just shouldn't be allowed to be predatory.

[HoustonDragon]

16 minutes ago, Atkana said:

Void Relic packs are available in the market for premium currency. The relic pack gives the player a random set of 3 Void Relics, which themselves are then opened for random rewards. It's buying a lootbox of lootboxes.

You can buy these via Syndicate reputation also for free. Along with the glut from Deimos bounties, I'm swimming in relics all the time.

 

I will say, DE is generally good about the monetization with platinum, but I was very annoyed at the Son tag/token shop for grinding that rep. The conservation system is badly set up on Deimos and buggy enough as is without forcing folks to blow cash on it. The other gripe is that the Warframe/weapon blueprints are not default to be bought with credits on the Marketplace, so I personally didn't know about that for the longest time.

 

Especially for people working on their Mastery ranking, there should be some better indicators that people CAN buy and farm the blueprints directly versus ONLY buying with plat from the market.

[(XBOX)CaptainSeth5423]

Lol who buys void relic packs

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Even I knew not to buy the stuff on the market place when I was new. Yea, it's important to tell new people not to buy anything on the market, but many games have this stuff now. You have to be a smart consumer (hence the mature rating) and feel things out before you go spending plat like crazy.

Videogames are not charities, and they never will be. 

If you plan to play the game for a few years, buying a small amount of plat is plenty to get you started until you can reach a point where you can sell your own stuff. Spending even 40 dollars on plat over 2 years is a massive ROI for the entertainment provided.

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, Hardwood said:

I only have two issues with Warframe monetization.

 

1. The ridiculous Riven market which DE fosters and grows with each insidious, greedy decision they make surrounding it. The Rivens don't even begin to fill their stated purpose, mainly they just drive platinum sales.

2. Forma. It was bad enough when we needed multiple forma on every item but now they've released these BS level 40 weapons that require 5 forma each despite the fact that there is no mod setup that could ever use that much space. If you want mastery or focus lenses or to be a completionist you have to literally waste forma on these trash items and since you get 1 forma a day it pushes tons of platinum sales.

Everything else is fine, the game is free to play. They have to make money, they just shouldn't be allowed to be predatory.

You don't need Kuva weapons. There's plenty to use without them. 

[Emolition]

lol for real ? Should we remove platinum and have them spend money making the game for us the next 5 years with no income just so we can buy everything for credits in game?

This is not a 120 dollar game its free they need you to buy something unless you rather buy tokens to access missions and get 2 free tokens per day only that a new model starting up in a diffrent game sounds fun. Run out of tokens no more missions.

[elmetnuter]

Now, take any $60 to $100 games and add all of your points. EA is laughing in stock money. Monetization is what keeps the lights and salaries on at DE.

[Aldain]

3 hours ago, Hardwood said:

The ridiculous Riven market which DE fosters and grows with each insidious, greedy decision they make surrounding it. The Rivens don't even begin to fill their stated purpose, mainly they just drive platinum sales.

Here comes the Riven mafia to tell you how "wrong" you are.

But seriously, I can't wholly blame DE for the Riven market, it is mainly the greed and insanity of the playerbase that caused it to spiral out of control.

[Hardwood]

18 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Here comes the Riven mafia to tell you how "wrong" you are.

But seriously, I can't wholly blame DE for the Riven market, it is mainly the greed and insanity of the playerbase that caused it to spiral out of control.

 

Sure, but when they realized how lucrative it was they leaned in to it. All while asking us to praise them for not (directly) monetizing rerolls.

[Aldain]

Just now, Hardwood said:

All while asking us to praise them for not monetizing rerolls.

Being perfectly honest I might not praise them for it, but I'll at least nod in modest approval that they didn't take the full EA approach.

The real question is how much new plat do Rivens actually move? Or is is just this perpetual cycle of players moving already purchased plat between each other?

I'd guess that it mostly leans towards the latter, especially among the people who spend 1000s of plat on a single riven, however the slot costs are likely where DE does get most of their new plat sales for.

[Kaiga]

Have you lost your goddamn minds? This is one of THE BEST games in terms of monetization, as not only is nothing mandatory to gameplay MTX-only, but you can earn the premium currency through trading items earned in-game.

Warframe does it really well compared to other games, I'm MR28 and I've never once felt shafted for not buying something. The riven hoarding situation is one thing, but in terms of general monetization this game is really forgiving.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

4 hours ago, Hardwood said:

I only have two issues with Warframe monetization.

 

1. The ridiculous Riven market which DE fosters and grows with each insidious, greedy decision they make surrounding it. The Rivens don't even begin to fill their stated purpose, mainly they just drive platinum sales.

2. Forma. It was bad enough when we needed multiple forma on every item but now they've released these BS level 40 weapons that require 5 forma each despite the fact that there is no mod setup that could ever use that much space. If you want mastery or focus lenses or to be a completionist you have to literally waste forma on these trash items and since you get 1 forma a day it pushes tons of platinum sales.

Everything else is fine, the game is free to play. They have to make money, they just shouldn't be allowed to be predatory.

The only other concern I have is brand related.

The brand was always about the movement and combat and power and aesthetics associated with it.  An awesome journey that seemlessly tied to progress, even if it took weeks to get something specific.

It’s not that way anymore.

The long grind for me was quality entertainment.  

With each update dating back months and years now, they’ve introduced mechanics...more becoming mandatory, that circumvent the brand.

It’s called Warframe.  Space Ninjas. An awesome story-verse.

Let me do that to progress.

I’ll reward you, DE, with money if you do that.

I absolutely WON’T pay to circumvent content that should be enjoyable but isn’t because it lacks brand integrity.  I won’t pay to avoid pain and frustration and set to tasks that do not value my dollar or my time because a timesink is needed or a usage number.

 

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, Aldain said:

Here comes the Riven mafia to tell you how "wrong" you are.

But seriously, I can't wholly blame DE for the Riven market, it is mainly the greed and insanity of the playerbase that caused it to spiral out of control.

Condition overload, 60/60, and Primed mods are more important than rivens. Not everyone is chasing Vectis Godrolls. Just because someone abused or gets abused by a system doesn't make it bad. It makes those individual parties involved bad. I.e. a particular human can be the issue, not the purple card itself. 

I did go through a period of kuva addiction, but easily quit chasing kuva no problem and still enjoy the game just fine.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I'll start by saying two things:

• I think Warframe is one of the most reasonable, non-predatory free-to-play games currently on the market.
• It's still worth criticizing the parts of monetization where Warframe could improve.

Now, to your post.  OP, this is obviously my subjective opinion, but I think your post is made lesser by the lack of nuance it contains.  I was kind of a bit with you until the Cosmetic Monetization section, which is where you completely lost me.  For example:

3 hours ago, Atkana said:

The end of mission screen was also recently changed to put player's cosmetics on front-and-centre display.

I understand what you're getting at here.  You're saying that there's a connection between seeing cool Warframes and wanting your own Warframe to look cool, which will likely require platinum.  And that's a reasonable idea to consider.  But you've put it in a list with things like:

4 hours ago, Atkana said:

Darvo deals - Every day, a market item is given a random discount and presented to every player to buy. They are given a limited stock value which is displayed to the player, pressuring them to make a purchase before other players buy out the stock.

When I compare the above two "critiques", one of them leans much more towards "manipulative" while the other leans much more towards "benign".  Yet they are both presented the same way in a list of "bad things".  And honestly, that makes it a bit hard to take this list seriously; I don't want to spend my time reading a long list of bad things in Warframe only to find out that half of it was stuff of the same caliber as "end of mission screen".  Which is a shame, because there are some genuinely worthwhile considerations in this list, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone for not wanting to hunt for them.  A little nuance would go a long way.

It's also a rough list because it's focusing exclusively on monetization and psychology that could lead towards payments.  I feel like I could take a similarly pessimistic view of Warframe as a whole:

Warframe is a game you can play for free, and it's fun because the developers want you to spend your time playing it, because if you spend time playing it you're more likely to use microtransactions which gives them money.

The above statement is true, but it's not the whole truth.  It's important that Warframe be fun to play so that people play it and then spend money, yes, but it's also fun because the people who make it genuinely want to make a fun game and they want people to enjoy playing their fun game.  And while the desire to be financially successful is surely an aspect of many of the decisions the team makes (I can relate, because I like to eat, too), I think it does the developers a disservice when we solely focus on that monetization, because it removes the humanity and the positive energy they pour into their work.  Warframe is not simply a get-rich-scheme.

And to be clear, I don't think that's what your post is trying to say.  It seems like you found an interesting video that introduced you to some new ideas about psychology and monetization, and you started noticing things in your life that fit into the new frameworks you had been presented with.  This is great!  But I feel that in your eagerness to explore and share these ideas, you accidentally focused on them to the exclusion of all else.  For example:

4 hours ago, Atkana said:

I'll be including a brief description of each strategy, followed by examples about how/why they are employed in Warframe. 

Quite simply, you are over-reaching here.  You do not know how or why any given design decision was made in Warframe, and I think it's disingenuous to suggest that you do.  Every decision generates both intended and unintended results.  None of us track all the variables all the time.  There's simply too much.  And games have a lot of variables.

Let's go back to that mission end screen, for example.  I think it's entirely possible that everyone involved in the design of that screen was thinking "this looks cool and I think players will like this" and nobody on the team thought the idea "this new screen will manipulate players into spending more".  I can't say whether that's what happened, but it seems like an entirely reasonable possibility.  And of course, maybe that's not what happened.  Other ideas can be humored and considered, sure.  But it is unkind to suggest that the reason just about any given aspect of the game is there (even if it does result in more player spending) is due to a desire to make money rather than a desire to create good content.  Again, obviously DE does want to make money, they need to be profitable to keep making the game and to keep paying for basic necessities.  But it's unfair to say that this need has been calculated into every single interaction players have.

Finally, your post seems to be coming at this from an angle that any monetization or psychology that leads to payment is negative/bad.   I feel like the discussion is necessarily incomplete without presenting an alternative.  Are there any aspects of DE's monetization that are positive?  Or should they do something different entirely? Because monetization needs to be part of the game; without that, there are no developers, no servers, and no Warframe.  If everything in your list was removed, I don't think there would be a game left.

The thing is, I in many ways like the discussion and/or consideration you're attempting to kick-start.  I just think that you could do a fairer job of discussing the topic.  I hope I've done a good job of making this criticism constructive. Best of luck!

[NecroPed]

In regards to tennogen, I have read that at least 4 tennogen artists have become employees of digital extremes and tennogen was the first step towards making that happen.

I don't really like how much they cost, I'd prefer they be bought for platinum because it is easy to get and doesn't have to cost you real money if you trade for it, but it wouldn't really support the creators unless DE paid them directly per sale.

In saying that, I've bought a couple so far and they're some of my favourite skins in the game. And I'm happy knowing it's directly supporting the creator of the item. It's not something I buy often as I think it's a bit much to spend at one time on a single item, and I tend to only buy platinum with discounts or in packs with the occasional $5 plat purchase with no discount. But, I feel like this is something that should be taken out of the discussion of what is bad about monetization in warframe because it has far too many benefits that outweigh the negative; cost.

 

 

Rivens I can understand being annoyed with but the value of rivens has been solely decided by the player base. I've disregarded the 'value' of rivens almost entirely and made several hundred if not well over 1,000 plat selling a few rivens. I also own 40 or so rivens that I either use or will use when I have the weapons or rolls that I need. I think rivens are a fantastic thing and any annoyance with the price is entirely on the playerbase for justifying sales at that level. I would never justify buying a riven for 1,000 or more platinum. But a lot of people justify spending far more than that. I've not once seen an item in the market that cost that much (Maybe some packs with a lot of stuff getting close to that amount).

[BloodKitten]

the only problem i have is the tennogen on pc, otherwise the system is completely fair.

to solve the tennogen would mean making the plat on PC have a third filter wich is platinum bought by the active user (wich would be the last thing on the list you would spend, the first being gifted plat and second would be traded plat, but again, probebly more trubles then its worth)

(edit, fully aware this methos have it's issue with legality and agreement with steam workshop, as for creators getting paid it would still be the same % only more since it dosent go to steam, but again, would be breach in agreement wich is what is hapening with epig and apple.)

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

I really really do not like rushing. Its too "pay to win". The fact that it is clear that the long times to craft are purely there to incentivize plat spending disgusts me.

 

This topic really well summs up all of DEs various ongoing attempts to get more and more money out of players.

[Rebore]

Warframe 100% is Free 2 Play in which you can even farm the Premium currency but that comes at a huge price that you pay in waiting. There are timers on everything in the game, some you can't bypass but some in which you can by using Platinum the prime currency. Honestly the prices are kinda high an then you have DE locking things behind Bundles Only in which if you want those color palettes or that one skin but it happens to be in a bundle and it is locked in the bundle only offer makes you pay even more just for that one item. The price for even frames is stupid high even compared to the total price if you bought all the primed warframes. Buying all frames in the market is 11k+ plat but it would be like 5k or even less to buy every primed frame because some cost like 30 or less which is sad. Now on to the rushing costs, you can legit wait 22 hours an then login to see that your item is not done building & you decide to rush it but the base rush amount was 50p at 24 hours but now at 2 hours left it is 26p. There is no balance for rushing, they still screw you on that as well. There was even a few hours left for one of my subsumes and it was still 50p but that might have been a bug/visual bug when it just came out like a minute after. In all I am fine with the ability to Buy/Rush things but the price is there to screw you specially on the rushing prices, 1 minute left S#&$ pay 13p or I forgot what the price was for what I looked at it but it was high for 1 minute being left. F2P + ability to farm the prime currency = you get dunked on. For me it does not actually matter I have plat, I am maxed, I wait for everything 99% of the time it is more just the idea that we are getting screwed over with prices.

[Tesseract7777]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

Condition overload, 60/60, and Primed mods are more important than rivens. Not everyone is chasing Vectis Godrolls. Just because someone abused or gets abused by a system doesn't make it bad. It makes those individual parties involved bad. I.e. a particular human can be the issue, not the purple card itself. 

I did go through a period of kuva addiction, but easily quit chasing kuva no problem and still enjoy the game just fine.

I don't use rivens. I completely ignore that part of the game. 

If I felt like it, I could still make plenty of setups that could go endless for hours... I just don't really enjoy playing the game that way. 

People choose to become obsessed with chasing the best rivens, but they aren't necessary. I always feel frustrated when I see people posting in PhP about how they need/have their "god riven" for Vectis or whatever, and seem helpless without it, or if using it "doesn't work'. It becomes a subsitute for truly understanding all the game mechanics and tools we have, just another hack to spend a bunch of money, or get lucky, and try to faceroll.

People find something a riven doesn't faceroll and don't know what to do becuase they forgot to learn to play the game. Too many players who started after rivens were created don't remember the old days, and place too much importance on riven rolls and rivens in general. 

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

6 minutes ago, Rebore said:

Warframe 100% is Free 2 Play in which you can even farm the Premium currency but that comes at a huge price that you pay in waiting. There are timers on everything in the game, some you can't bypass but some in which you can by using Platinum the prime currency. Honestly the prices are kinda high an then you have DE locking things behind Bundles Only in which if you want those color palettes or that one skin but it happens to be in a bundle and it is locked in the bundle only offer makes you pay even more just for that one item. The price for even frames is stupid high even compared to the total price if you bought all the primed warframes. Buying all frames in the market is 11k+ plat but it would be like 5k or even less to buy every primed frame because some cost like 30 or less which is sad. Now on to the rushing costs, you can legit wait 22 hours an then login to see that your item is not done building & you decide to rush it but the base rush amount was 50p at 24 hours but now at 2 hours left it is 26p. There is no balance for rushing, they still screw you on that as well. There was even a few hours left for one of my subsumes and it was still 50p but that might have been a bug/visual bug when it just came out like a minute after. In all I am fine with the ability to Buy/Rush things but the price is there to screw you specially on the rushing prices, 1 minute left S#&$ pay 13p or I forgot what the price was for what I looked at it but it was high for 1 minute being left. F2P + ability to farm the prime currency = you get dunked on. For me it does not actually matter I have plat, I am maxed, I wait for everything 99% of the time it is more just the idea that we are getting screwed over with prices.

Ever notice how the game makes little no to attempt, and even lock you out of trading when your new?

Ever notice how all the trading options are purely player driven, with DE staying as hands off as possible?

Ever consider that those are intentional, to reduce the usage of trade chat to earn plat ingame?

[Rebore]

6 minutes ago, (PS4)ForNoPurpose said:

Ever notice how the game makes little no to attempt, and even lock you out of trading when your new?

Ever notice how all the trading options are purely player driven, with DE staying as hands off as possible?

Ever consider that those are intentional, to reduce the usage of trade chat to earn plat ingame?

Yes and your point is?

What you said has no point on what I had just said.

Prices in the market that DE controls ( Market in the ship not the market of the trade chat ) are stupid high & not balanced more unbalanced to screw players over who decide to rush/not farm.
 

[DissentWomble]

Saw point about lootboxes.. sees relics and modpacks being mentioned..

I'll just assume the rest is rubbish.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

11 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I don't use rivens. I completely ignore that part of the game. 

If I felt like it, I could still make plenty of setups that could go endless for hours... I just don't really enjoy playing the game that way. 

People choose to become obsessed with chasing the best rivens, but they aren't necessary. I always feel frustrated when I see people posting in PhP about how they need/have their "god riven" for Vectis or whatever, and seem helpless without it, or if using it "doesn't work'. It becomes a subsitute for truly understanding all the game mechanics and tools we have, just another hack to spend a bunch of money, or get lucky, and try to faceroll.

People find something a riven doesn't faceroll and don't know what to do becuase they forgot to learn to play the game. Too many players who started after rivens were created don't remember the old days, and place too much importance on riven rolls and rivens in general. 

Yea I agree. I wasn't here in the beginning but I know what it's like to be dependent on ciphers for example. I took time out of my play time to run a buncha corpus spys to figure them out. I actually got to use that knowledge and help my team in the Ambulas sortie a few days ago.