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Is Warframe a horde-shooter?


(NSW)Greybones

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28 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

This can be fun... But I'm not sure I can really relate to the desire of making myself less powerful ingame unless I am playing with new players or players that are all on board with these kind of limitations. Outside of solo gameplay these kind of limitations are generally inconsistent to the expectations random players have.

Yeah. Most players are engaging in the power fantasy, so it’s like “I brought my scrappy gun, let’s do this!” and then the map gets wiped clean 😋. Expecting players to not do the powerfantasy is a bit much; they’re having fun engaging in it

edit: …I think? 🤔 It’s hard to tell if they’re someone who’s sick of grinding or if they’re someone who’s loving the gameplay.

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1 hour ago, Leqesai said:

I apologize if I misunderstood your response. It sounds like, to me, you're playing a game that doesn't really interest you unless you make your own fun. This is pretty weird to me, I guess... I don't know why I'd bother playing a game that isn't designed in a way that meets my expectations without a need for self-imposed limitations.

I think I see where you’re coming from and can understand.

That said, there’s a lot of unique things about Warframe that I really enjoy; the movement, the design, the small things like finding an Ayatan Sculpture in some dead end corridor, Railjack, mechs, open worlds, gunplay, powers, lore, mysteries, how DE seems willing to do weird things.

I look at all of that and think “I wanna have fun while experiencing this”, and all it takes is equipping different mods than the standard stat boosts and I’m good to go for most things.

I’ve seen people likening it to nailing their feet to the floor and walking, but it seriously isn’t (and these are people who are bored with power).

edit: And before you say that the game is designed to slot all the power, I counter with it’s just as physically easy to slot non-power mods

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53 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I think I see where you’re coming from and can understand.

That said, there’s a lot of unique things about Warframe that I really enjoy; the movement, the design, the small things like finding an Ayatan Sculpture in some dead end corridor, Railjack, mechs, open worlds, gunplay, powers, lore, mysteries, how DE seems willing to do weird things.

I look at all of that and think “I wanna have fun while experiencing this”, and all it takes is equipping different mods than the standard stat boosts and I’m good to go for most things.

I’ve seen people likening it to nailing their feet to the floor and walking, but it seriously isn’t (and these are people who are bored with power).

edit: And before you say that the game is designed to slot all the power, I counter with it’s just as easy to slot non-power mods

I do agree that warframe could use some legitimate difficulty.

One of my favorite things is taking missions slow as ivara or ash and killing from the shadows without alerting enemies. But even though the game gives you these tools it really disincentivized this gameplay considering even stealth missions can be brute forced without consequence.

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39 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

I do agree that warframe could use some legitimate difficulty.

One of my favorite things is taking missions slow as ivara or ash and killing from the shadows without alerting enemies. But even though the game gives you these tools it really disincentivized this gameplay considering even stealth missions can be brute forced without consequence.

Mm, yeah. There’s no denying that, if someone wanted to, they could just blaze through. By then it becomes a question of “What are you looking for?”. I’m looking for a variety of things (like a tough fight and to be a sneaky ninja who needs to make the right decisions when things go wrong so that I don’t fail the mission), and others are looking for (and finding) their own thing.

To overpower my opponents with shear numbers would mean I’m not getting what I’m looking for, and Warframe lets me easily choose what to bring to a mission, then locks my choice in so that I have to deal with it. (a bit like painting with a limited pallet; we have access to all the colours the human eye wants, yet sometimes character designs are drawn from maybe 3 different colours and all the mix and shades and tints that they produce). And then gives me the means to (example) stealth-kill and wall-climb

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2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Yeah, the term “Horde Shooter” is a varied one. I wasn’t sure how to clarify what I meant since my main thinking is Dynasty Warriors style, but it’s not a consistent term for everyone

edit: I tune Warframe to my needs as well, and while it mostly delivers, I can respect that it doesn’t always do so (I play something else as well when I get bored 👍)

Indeed, Dynasty Warriors is a deliberately exaggerated form of horde gameplay, where 99% of the enemies on screen don't even register as a threat. In Hyrule Warriors 1 for example, I've noticed that it takes about 10 seconds of standing still before a basic cannon fodder will even attack you

The next level down would be Warframe and Dead Rising. Every enemy on screen is a threat, but the player character still VASTLY outmatches then on every level. The average Grineer can do nothing but slowly damage you and take cover

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Another one of these...

If a game's core game mechanic (moding and building weapon) take the fun out of the game or even break the game itself. It's flaws from Design perspective.

No one care about how you want to play the game.

If you enjoy less efficient way to play the game good for you. But that doesnt change what the game is.

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2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:
2 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

You're having a good time, right?  What does it matter how the games signature play is categorized or what other players are saying or doing?

Curiosity. I’ve heard the term used a lot and am wondering at its origins

 Are you sure that's the main purpose of this thread?  Apologies if I'm misreading it, but that seems like a mere segue into talking about the way you play Warframe and contrasting it with the way others play.  

That's a fine topic, potentially.  But if that's the main topic I think it's better to be upfront about it.

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On 2021-06-15 at 1:46 PM, Tiltskillet said:

 Are you sure that's the main purpose of this thread?  Apologies if I'm misreading it, but that seems like a mere segue into talking about the way you play Warframe and contrasting it with the way others play.  

That's a fine topic, potentially.  But if that's the main topic I think it's better to be upfront about it.

I swear it was. The seque happened because I was getting pulled up for my other posts in other topics and felt compelled to defend myself.

🤔 In hindsight I should've stated something along the lines of "Let's keep it on-topic here". By this point I've gotten my answer, so until this topic dies or whatever, I'm just kind of chatting. I'll be thinking twice before engaging in this topic with others about "Way to play" now that you mention it

edit: as an aside, I did learn to approach from a different perspective 👍. And I do like seeing how others play

late edit: oh, and I just realised you were referring to the original topic post wherein I said "I approach Warframe from this angle" and not how the topic evolved. When I wrote the post, I figured I should clarify where my approach was coming from; "In my experience, Warframe doesn't portray a horde shooter as I would think it would be defined" sort of thing, establishing the necessity for having to ask, and then I laid out where I thought people were coming from, followed by "Is this a correct interpretation"

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It's more like a meat grinder then a horde shooter but the same idea even if you are with subpar gear tbh.
Example - when you start the game you just chew trough enemies with 0 level frame and unmodded gear , yes they are lv1-5 but you are also effectively lv0-1.
There rest of the game you just get the gear to do the same thing to higher level enemies that you do to the starting lv1's.
So in essence you just want to gore the npc's all the time. ^^

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1 minute ago, vegetosayajin said:

Example - when you start the game you just chew trough enemies with 0 level frame and unmodded gear , yes they are lv1-5 but you are also effectively lv0-1.

Yeah. You gotta get to about level 20 before enemies take some punishment to die, and even then they can sort of do some damage, but nothing life-threatening until they start grouping up (mostly their shots go wide)

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24 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

yes it's a horde shooter.

no, you're not forced to use the meta, but you won't be as effective without it. play however you want, and don't try to infringe on how others want to play.

that's it. 

This annoys me 🤨. An incorrect assumption is being made (I feel. Could be wrong, though)

Why do you think I'm trying to infringe upon how others want to play?

How many times have I said "Others find their fun however" or "Being overpowered can be fun" or whatever? When I feel like I need to I make it a point to say that being overpowered is a-okay with me, because I know some of the things I say can be mis-construed as anti-power when I'm talking to players who engage in power-play but who are bored doing it and players who are convinced the game is the grind and not in the fun it can provide (as opposed to players who have fun being overpowered).

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This nintendo peasant calling us "demigods", we ARE GODS, GODSSS, GOLDEN GODSS and we UNLEASH oUr FURY like the CRUSHING OF A THOUSAND WAVESSS

wdEHuKB.gif

 

Go play mario party bro, and let the gods rage and massacre.

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5 hours ago, ebrl said:

What you or anyone else thinks a game is or is supposed to be has absolutely no impact on what it actually is.

Out of curiosity, how do you identify what a game actually is? The dev’s statements seem a good starting point, but I’m not sure if you have an alternative take (this is a pretty brief sentence)

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The short answer is, yes, it's a horde-shooter/blender. But that doesn't mean you have to play it like that. Some mission types are easier if you don't kill them enemy.

Just keep in mind that many other players will chose to play it as a horde-shooter, so don't be surprised if you're completely left in the dust. And be very, very careful if you bring crowd-contolling frames/abilities. If you slowdown a mission, others can be very upset by this e.g. high-range Limbo, or Slowva to a defense, is typically a big no-no.

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47 minutes ago, (PSN)iuvenilis said:

The short answer is, yes, it's a horde-shooter/blender. But that doesn't mean you have to play it like that.

Just keep in mind that many other players will chose to play it as a horde-shooter, so don't be surprised if you're completely left in the dust. And be very, very careful if you bring crowd-contolling frames/abilities. If you slowdown a mission, others can be very upset by this e.g. high-range Limbo, or Slowva to a defense, is typically a big no-no.

Yeah. I tend to play solo (or with my partner) if I'm looking for a fight, because to expect others to play at my level is a big ask and there's less space to use weird loadouts since they may tread on the toes of randoms (particularly Limbo).

If I play with others, it tends to be because I'm looking to blaze through an area and grind fast, which means I tend to bring things that would make it go faster still. I don't usually play with others, but when I do, I'm not about to slow them down for my sake.

edit: 🤔 Isn't this standard consideration practice?

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17 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Out of curiosity, how do you identify what a game actually is? The dev’s statements seem a good starting point, but I’m not sure if you have an alternative take (this is a pretty brief sentence)

A game is just a set of rules with a certain goal. Developers can and will call their game whatever they think is the most marketable category (for their target audience) that it broadly fits in, and since video games tend to have exceptionally complex rules, it's easy to fit them into multiple definitions, and almost as easy to make these definitions completely meaningless, at least in how detached they are from the actual words that make them up (see: how everything with a fail state and no saves is now a "roguelike" regardless of anything else, and even that is not set in stone).

So, if you really wanted a definite answer to OP's question, you'd have to first clearly define a "horde shooter", which given how malleable game genres are does not necessarily mean these are shooters that have hordes in it (and if they are, you'd also have to define a "horde", anyway, and good luck doing that without retroactively messing up the entire history of shooter subgenres), at which point the entire enterprise is just a waste of everyone's time for the sake of applying another cute sticker with a couple words written on it to the game instead of just playing it, and that's just considering Warframe's core gameplay loop while completely ignoring that at this point it is about a dozen different games precariously stacked on top of each other. Some broad categorization is still needed for practical purposes (you can comfortably call Warframe a third person shooter so that it doesn't get lumped with Tetris or Guitar Hero or Papers Please or Katamari Damacy), but I think those largely nondescriptive (and often misleading) subcategories are best left to marketing teams, lazy journalists and questionable algorithms.

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26 minutes ago, ebrl said:

A game is just a set of rules with a certain goal. Developers can and will call their game whatever they think is the most marketable category (for their target audience) that it broadly fits in, and since video games tend to have exceptionally complex rules, it's easy to fit them into multiple definitions, and almost as easy to make these definitions completely meaningless, at least in how detached they are from the actual words that make them up (see: how everything with a fail state and no saves is now a "roguelike" regardless of anything else, and even that is not set in stone).

So, if you really wanted a definite answer to OP's question, you'd have to first clearly define a "horde shooter", which given how malleable game genres are does not necessarily mean these are shooters that have hordes in it (and if they are, you'd also have to define a "horde", anyway, and good luck doing that without retroactively messing up the entire history of shooter subgenres), at which point the entire enterprise is just a waste of everyone's time for the sake of applying another cute sticker with a couple words written on it to the game instead of just playing it, and that's just considering Warframe's core gameplay loop while completely ignoring that at this point it is about a dozen different games precariously stacked on top of each other. Some broad categorization is still needed for practical purposes (you can comfortably call Warframe a third person shooter so that it doesn't get lumped with Tetris or Guitar Hero or Papers Please or Katamari Damacy), but I think those largely nondescriptive (and often misleading) subcategories are best left to marketing teams, lazy journalists and questionable algorithms.

Cool cool. Thanks for the insight into your thinking 👍

Yeah, it’s been pointed out that the term “Horde Shooter” isn’t set in stone, and when I was writing the question I was thinking “Horde” as in Dynasty Warriors-style groups of enemies. Some people were describing Warframe as a horde-shooter in other topics so I was hoping to get some insight into why people were thinking that the term fit (I’ve gotten some good answers so far 👍)

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An interesting discussion.

I tend to see Warframe as a sandbox. It's clear that this is a game stuffed with all kinds of various things which are barely compatible but provide a wide array of player experience.

You want to fly through a level with enemies exploding in your wake? Can do. You want slow stealth play? Can do. You want to shoot? full auto? shotguns? sniper rifles? Can do. You want to personally punch enemies in the face? Can do. You want to solve laser puzzles? Can do. Want to fly and shoot things in space? Can do. Want to pilot a ship and shoot things in space? Can do.

That's a big strength of Warframe because high-efficiency play degenerates into farming pretty quickly and farming is no fun.

Everyone insisting that lots of power to clear levels fast is the only "right" way to play Warframe misses the path/destination distinction. If you're playing the game merely to get to the next carrot higher-stat thingy, well, your choice, but you're stuck in hamster wheel. On the other hand, if you're playing the game for the pleasure you get in going through things, even though it's "inefficient" from the farming perspective, I think you'll end up with more enjoyment.

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