The kind of game Warframe is.

[Atlas_II]

It seems to me that DE has spent the last couple years trying to make Warframe into an open world game, a space ship game, or a narrative game. All of these I respect to a degree because of its ambition, its that ambition that took Warframe places. But none of those direction really play to Warframe's strengths.

At its core Warframe is a complex modding system to increase the power level of your warframe's chosen build, maps with modular tile sets, and hoard mode style mobs. Warframe is an endurance game based around the vertical progression of making yourself stronger and stronger. Warframes, weapons, pets, and subsumed abilities all contribute to a temporary horizontal progression as you discover a new build utilizing new combinations of abilities, mods, and weapons, but the meat of the game's replay-ability and life span involves pushing the limits of your frame.

If you have a build for your favorite warframe that you are excited about and want to make use of its full power and find its limits, you don't go to a story mission, you don't go to a bounty, and you sure as s*** don't go to railjack where the quality of your warframe's build may not even come into play... you go to mot, a survival mission, disruption, an open ended endurance mission of some kind. Warframe's core loot system is an A B C loot roll system that requires you to keep going and going to try your chances at loot rolls.

Again, space ships and semi open world bounties with fishing and mining are pretty darn cool, but my question is why hasn't Warframe been building on the basics of the game, connecting all these new systems together so that they can all benefit from the strengths of the game?

 

What do others think? What stories do you have about endless survival missions with the buds? What broken builds did you make?

[o0Despair0o]

Just now, Tenno245251 said:

complex modding system

I wouldn't call it complex, but rather grindy.

I mean, all you need to know is what each stat actually means. The rest explains itself.

[EmberStar]

15 minutes ago, Tenno245251 said:

What do others think? What stories do you have about endless survival missions with the buds? What broken builds did you make?

Not that it matters (or that anyone cares, if I'm honest.)  But I don't have those stories.  I play solo whenever possible, which is a lot.  And I don't do endless missions for fun.  At most I'll do a few "rounds" of Defense or Survival to try to break open relics.  Then I'll remember that I don't particularly like either mode and go do something else.  I have literally about a thousand Neo relics now, and they breed faster than I can get rid of them.  :(  Not at all helped by getting them as "wave 5" rewards in Rift Surge missions quite a lot, so even when I'm *trying* to get rid of them I end up with even more.

[trst]

Warframe is a "looter shooter" with the only core is to kill enemies/comple missions for resources and random drops to then use said resources to craft/buy new gear or upgrade existing gear to use when repeating this cycle. All a series of micro and macro progressions layered together. To expand upon this "core" would just mean more frames, weapons, companions, etc with more enemies and environments to fight them in which is all content we're always getting.

Open worlds are an addition to the core by just giving us a new environment to muck about in. While Railjack is drastically different from the standard methods of play all of the interactions with it and the gameplay is also more of the same (you're still gathering resources to build new weapons and "mods"/resources to upgrade your Railjack).

Connecting various part of the game isn't something players have put much thought into beyond wanting more reasons and incentives to play certain parts of the game more. The whole idea of "connecting" something like Railjack to the rest of the game would make it feel less out of place and tucked into it's own corner but ultimately wouldn't accomplish much besides making people invest more time into it. Which is also something that would be met with a lot of backlash due to others not wanting to be "forced" into it despite it again being more of the same gameplay.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

"What do others think? What stories do you have about endless survival missions with the buds? What broken builds did you make?"

Me n muh buds were crackin mad natty lights and my buds n me had 2 Nyxs to strip mad armurz dawg. Then my other buddy with his crazy mad skills Bramma blew em all up with like...the mad quickness dawg.

[FRTE_Ret5o]

Do not forget the comunity content, such as fashionframe😆

This is also a core part of the game, the people that plays

[BahamutKaiser]

False dichotomy. I play for the acrobatics, and the existing gameplay can be expanded to a great variety of modes rather than slaving to existing features. 

[vegetosayajin]

16 hours ago, Tenno245251 said:

If you have a build for your favorite warframe that you are excited about and want to make use of its full power and find its limits, you don't go to a story mission, you don't go to a bounty, and you sure as s*** don't go to railjack where the quality of your warframe's build may not even come into play... you go to mot, a survival mission, disruption, an open ended endurance mission of some kind.

idd, this is pretty much the core game
This needs positive attention and "upgrades", not open worlds, railjack or anything else.

[Loza03]

18 hours ago, Tenno245251 said:

What do others think? What stories do you have about endless survival missions with the buds? What broken builds did you make?

Very few good ones. And certainly none of them have anything to do with the repetitive slog that is the gameplay.

In fact, only one springs to mind, and it wasn't even in endless survival. Hostile Mergers, and my successful run of a silver trophy with some people I found in recruiting. Co-ordinating key activations, hunting down the Demolysts and then collapsing on them as balls of death and murder desperately trying to kill it before it reached the conduit... avoiding this one enemy bugged so that it didn't despawn and was invincible... that was one of the rare 'good times' I have with an endless mission.

 

Warframe is ultimately a looter shooter, and I personally believe that Railjack (and consequently Archwing) should be implemented as the focus, at least going forward. Not necessarily - or quite frankly definitely not - the entire focus of the game, but it provides the most variety in gameplay types and consequently, the greatest of content for you to show off your cool stuff and mess around with it. In theory, Railjack has the potential to push multiple builds to the limits. Your frame's build through boardings and away portions, your archwing's through hypothetical archwing-focused segments (these could be justified as Points of Interest which load Archwing tiles rather than on-foot tiles, or by areas which your Railjack can't function in until disabled) and your Railjack's build through areas of it's significance. This is definitely more potential than practice as of now, of course, but that's my opinion

[(PSN)robotwars7]

to, me it's a space ninja simulator with grind and bugs. DE's focus tends to keep shifting over time, but as long as the core gameplay stays enjoyable, I'm happy to just sit back and see what the future holds. I would like more Railjack though, and it's probably coming once Deimos part 2 and Corpus Liches are out. 

[SneakyErvin]

Everyone plays for different things, that doesnt change that the additions that have been implemented lately (open zones, railjack etc.) are things that have been envisioned from the very start of the WF project, it just wasnt possible to make it a reality then. Railjack has been experiemented with since the introduction of Archwing, just to dip the toes in the space combat water, but the real idea didnt get a trial run until Empyrean and the actual RJ was released.

So currently DE tries to implement all of that which they've actually wanted all along. 

[AlouetteSK]

Used to call it a looter-shooter, back before when the only alternate game mode was Archwing.  I would now call this game more of a sandbox.  Lots to do and play with, but nothing truly integrated enough to call it a great game, just a pretty good one.  DE tosses in more toys for the players to play with based on their whims, rather than some clear vision of the game.