Male warframes vs Female Warframes

[Tossenberg]

This is not a post about gender politics in video games or whatever. To be fair I actually couldn't care less about that, but don't see it as bad in any way that there is an equal gender split.

What I don't understand, however, is why female warframes get so much more attention and are generally just way better than male warframes. 

I find it a bit odd, and certainly sad that in a game about diverse playstyles and exploring new options, there is a group that is getting left behind for no reason. I love playing Volt, started out as a nidus main, and am currently really enjoying playing garuda, mesa and nyx too, so its not that I only play male warframes and complain that they s*ck because I'm afraid of female warframes. But why is it characters like Oberon, Loki, Nekros, Nezha, Lavos, Nidus, and many more, get left to just be kinda eh in today's meta, while Saryn, Garuda, Protea, Mag, Voruna, Khora get to absolutely dominate? I don't think I have seen any 'relevant' top 10 list of frames from anyone on youtube, where about 80% isn't female. 

It confuses me, and makes me sad so many frames with great designs and ideas, are just not worth playing because their performance isn't near the same level as others. 

Maybe I'm insane, would love to hear others on this topic. 

(Yes I do know some female frames are underperforming, but generally, its the male frames, and also fewer male frames that are generally just relevant at all)

[RLanzinger]

To @Tossenberg,

Original (Fe)males frames Design (From #1 to ~20 around Nova) :

• Males frame have better basic characteristic but less in abilities (Like Rhino, Frost)
• Females frames have lesser basic characteristic but stronger  abilities (Like Ember, Saryn)

So appart form some exceptions, Females frames are design to have better abilities that help to make KILLS (Mag, Saryn, Protea)

Edited March 26 by RLanzinger
forgot some word :p

[Tossenberg]

1 minute ago, RLanzinger said:

To @Tossenberg,

Original (Fe)males frames (From #1 to ~20 around Nova) :

• Males frame have better basic characteristic but less in abilities (Like Rhino)
• Females frames have lesserbasic characteristic but stronger  abilities (Like Ember)

So appart form some exceptions, Females frames are design to have better abilities that help to make KILLS (Mag, Saryn, Protea)

I get what you are saying but that's just stupid, and they should change that. In a game basically about getting kills above anything else, it's setting male frames up for just becoming redundant, boring and bad. 

[Circle_of_Psi]

Oh boy, what can of worms you just opened up!

 

Each frame regardless of its "uniqueness" is strong in its own right and how "strong" a Warframe is up to the Player, for example: I find Nezha much more powerful than Ember because I enjoy his kit and his Warding Halo better then Immolation.

Guass is very strong if built right with his Thermal Sunder (even tho I replaced that power :3) and I enjoy him for what he is and while I do love Titania, she not fills that power itch I have with Guass

Dante is about to be my new main, and he looks quite strong on paper.

 

All in all, good luck to you OP

 

^{_{You'll need it..}}

Edited March 26 by Circle_of_Psi

[Tiltskillet]

Usage isn't the same as power obviously, but its a lot easier to quantify.  In terms of usage, combining base and primes, four of the top five frames are male.  And out of the top 21, 10 are male, 10 and female, and one is Xaku. 

I do find the basic premise, that DE neglects frames on the basis of their gender quite dubious, although I don't think it's disprovable.   Like, to me the fact that Grendel, Hydroid, and Inaros have gotten the last three extensive reworks is evidence that DE isn't neglecting male frames.  Somebody else will look at that and think, "Why were these three male frames in such bad shape in the first place?!" :P

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

I really do think that there should be a bit of a double-checking function on threads like these. Tiltskillet did it in a general way, but there does need to be a little more of a question to OP in here:

How do you quantify warframe power, OP?

Because, for as long as I've been here, Warframe doesn't have anything other than 'completing objectives' to compare the frames with.

This is why Revenant and Wukong are at the top of the usage ranks currently, because they allow players to easily complete objectives. They don't die, they have decent other abilities, and they make for great weapons platforms for basically easy-mode on anything.

Why is Khora powerful? Because of scaling area damage and crowd control, plus a loot boosting ability. Why is Mesa powerful? Practically the opposite, offering high survivability and high single-target damage (even if the single target can be switched quickly).

Why is Wisp powerful? It's not because of her Sol Gate, I'll tell you that... Highly effective functions that provide better survivability, radial CC and self-boost your other functions. But wait, that makes her a support version of Gauss, when taken in that context, with survivability, radial CC and self boosts.

Then again, there are plenty of female frames that are at the bottom of the usage stats because they only do one thing, and many frames do something similar in a better way.

Nyx and Banshee, for all that I love them both to play, are so focused that they find it difficult to keep up in the current game, poor Valkyr desperately needs some TLC on her 4th ability.

I mean, here's a question I puzzle over; for the last 2 years, Zephyr has been consistently ranked at a high A tier for what she now does, but according to the stats her usage shifted by only 1% overall from 2022 to 2023, why is that?

All of these female frames are powerful when modded and played right. But they're all different. They're all so very, very different that they can all be popular together and not really interfere.

And the male frames are no exception. They're all very different, even when they share some functions, like Rhino and Nezha. Frost is, currently, in a really good place, with his augments, the changes to Cold, the changes to how Armour Strip works, all of the updates in the game have just made his kit apply harder. He's not the best, far from it, and there are multiple changes that could be made to buff him, any one of which would be great on its own. But he's low use because people see him as only a defense-based frame.

Meanwhile you have monster damage output from frames like Baruuk and Ash, and people are still using them less than a frame like Gauss who (as I said before) is a more selfish version of Wisp with a way better 4th.

Styanax and Kullervo are incredibly powerful in the current game, and yet... once people try out the builds that make them powerful, they go back to whatever other thing they felt comfortable with before.

Enough rambling.

I need to get to the point.

Both genders of frames, including the plural frame, have a complete spread of the incredibly powerful to the not-so-hot. Xaku has that within their own kit, with Gaze being the bread-and-butter of stripping defenses, Accuse being okay for what it does with the CC, and Deny being the red-headed step child.

There are some with higher usage, despite their lower power, and there are some with extremely high power that you see over and over.

Why?

Because you're trying to complete an objective. You're trying to grind for loot, get a reward to drop, something. And some frames help players do that better than others.

Things are not nearly as disparate as OP is making them out to be, and if you go through any functional ranking system that doesn't make a 'top 10' list (since those are highly subjective) you'll find a surprisingly even portion of frames in each tier.

[zThulsaDoomz]

It's not a gender issue.  It's a meta issue.  

When DE dropped the Eximus rework it brought Overguard, which drove the final nail in the coffin of CC based frames, of which a lot are male coincidentally. 

It didn't help that the game had also drastically shifted towards a kps meta (kuva/AoE weapons), as it is simply easier to just kill something than lock it in place.

Another factor was shield gate.  We drifted away from hiding behind Frost bubbles, to running tanks like Rhino, Nezha and Nidus, straight into SG with glass cannon frame X because survival is the highest it has ever been.

Honestly I don't personally see it as that big an issue, because to me they're just pixels.  But to humor this thread, if you want to see a more balanced gender representation,  DE has to either shift the Meta again, or do what a lot of players have requested over the years: rework armor and health scaling.

P.S. The most played frame over the past few years has been a male tank.  Just saying.

 

[TARINunit9]

2 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

why female warframes get so much more attention and are generally just way better than male warframes.

They aren't.

Top tier picks are pretty gender-diverse with Volt and Revenant holding their own with Dagath and Mesa. Likewise, the bottom tier is no sausage fest, with Yareli and Nyx struggling just as much as Loki and Inaros (at least, pre-rework Inaros)

The one exception is Saryn, of course. She's in a tier of her own 

[TheBlingKing]

14 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

The one exception is Saryn, of course.

Her sheer toxicity transcends gender norms.

 

[UnstarPrime]

2 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

I don't think I have seen any 'relevant' top 10 list of frames from anyone on youtube, where about 80% isn't female. 

Top 10 lists from any given YouTuber are going to be subjective and thus confounded by personal bias; so let's remove this bias by looking at a larger population.

To get a better idea of what frames are worth using, I'm going to draw from the official 2023 usage statistics; specifically, I'm interested in what frames the max MR players are using, for the following reasons:

• Incorporating data from players at all MR's puts normal Excalibur towards the top of the list, indicating that the total sum of the data is likely being affected not simply by power, but by access, and we want to avoid that.
• 99.9% of max MR players will have played all the frames and will be sufficiently experienced with the game.

So if we look at those numbers, here are the top frames from 2023:

1. 5.28% - Volt Prime
2. 4.75% - Wukong Prime
3. 4.47% - Revenant Prime
4. 4.30% - Khora Prime
5. 4.22% - Saryn Prime
6. 4.08% - Wisp Prime
7. 3.99% - Mesa Prime
8. 3.92% - Titania Prime
9. 3.03% - Xaku
10. 2.71% - Hildryn Prime

3 male, 6 female, 1 agender.  So slightly more than half female.  It's probably worth noting that if Xaku weren't there messing with the gender binary, then Nekros Prime would be in this top 10, splitting the binary into 4 and 6.  Not perfectly equal, but as close as you can get to that without being perfectly equal.  And if this were the top 12, there would be 5 male frames and 6 female frames; where we choose to arbitrarily stop the tally has serious ramifications on our perception of this balance.

Beyond that, those 3 male frames are occupying the top 3 spots.  How come there are no female frames breaking into the top 3?  Talk about a glass ceiling!  To be clear, I'm goofing a bit, but I don't feel like that's a solid foundation upon which to suggest that female frames have it better than male frames.

Anyway, in summary I don't really see an issue here once we look at the closest thing we have to objective data.

(Someone could of course repeat this analysis for every frame (not just the top 10), which would provide more thorough results, but he a helluva lot messier and more time-consuming.  If you're inspired, feel free!)

[Raikh]

I don't really see that at all. At best its colored by a meta perception not even necessarily power or efficiency.

We have Volt, Gauss, Kullervo, Revenant and Frost. Nezha who you listed as underwhelming is getting a crazy augment with the Update tomorrow. Rhino and Sevagoth are also somewhat underappreciated because a good part of their power is transferable due to their powerful Subsumes. But they are by no means weak. Wukong was also by far the most populal Frame till his nerfs and Revenant is really high up rn. So just from a popularity perspective Male Frames aren't on the backfoot either.

And for instance I wouldn't even put Voruna high on the list of the most powerful female Frames. She is technically quite strong but awkward and sluggish to play. And I also wouldn't put Protea on the highest of pedestals either. They are strong Frames but they do not come to mind for me when I think about the most broken stuff we have in the game.

Most consistently incredibly powerful female Frames are probably Saryn and Octavia, but even if we assume that they are the most powerful Frames in the game, for arguments sake, overall I do not think that the Top 2 spots being taken by female Frames is in any shape or form indicative of a bias.

[Tossenberg]

1 hour ago, UnstarPrime said:

Top 10 lists from any given YouTuber are going to be subjective and thus confounded by personal bias; so let's remove this bias by looking at a larger population.

To get a better idea of what frames are worth using, I'm going to draw from the official 2023 usage statistics; specifically, I'm interested in what frames the max MR players are using, for the following reasons:

• Incorporating data from players at all MR's puts normal Excalibur towards the top of the list, indicating that the total sum of the data is likely being affected not simply by power, but by access, and we want to avoid that.
• 99.9% of max MR players will have played all the frames and will be sufficiently experienced with the game.

So if we look at those numbers, here are the top frames from 2023:

1. 5.28% - Volt Prime
2. 4.75% - Wukong Prime
3. 4.47% - Revenant Prime
4. 4.30% - Khora Prime
5. 4.22% - Saryn Prime
6. 4.08% - Wisp Prime
7. 3.99% - Mesa Prime
8. 3.92% - Titania Prime
9. 3.03% - Xaku
10. 2.71% - Hildryn Prime

3 male, 6 female, 1 agender.  So slightly more than half female.  It's probably worth noting that if Xaku weren't there messing with the gender binary, then Nekros Prime would be in this top 10, splitting the binary into 4 and 6.  Not perfectly equal, but as close as you can get to that without being perfectly equal.  And if this were the top 12, there would be 5 male frames and 6 female frames; where we choose to arbitrarily stop the tally has serious ramifications on our perception of this balance.

Beyond that, those 3 male frames are occupying the top 3 spots.  How come there are no female frames breaking into the top 3?  Talk about a glass ceiling!  To be clear, I'm goofing a bit, but I don't feel like that's a solid foundation upon which to suggest that female frames have it better than male frames.

Anyway, in summary I don't really see an issue here once we look at the closest thing we have to objective data.

(Someone could of course repeat this analysis for every frame (not just the top 10), which would provide more thorough results, but he a helluva lot messier and more time-consuming.  If you're inspired, feel free!)

This doesn't reflect pure strength nor what is actually good. This is a mix of accessibility, fun and popularity.

If you were to put these frames against level cap, I can only with my own experience say, the female frames generally perform WAY better, which is also coming from someone who has played near every frame. 

[Tossenberg]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

They aren't.

Top tier picks are pretty gender-diverse with Volt and Revenant holding their own with Dagath and Mesa. Likewise, the bottom tier is no sausage fest, with Yareli and Nyx struggling just as much as Loki and Inaros (at least, pre-rework Inaros)

The one exception is Saryn, of course. She's in a tier of her own 

I agree that Yareli yes is in the bottom tier, but I'd take Nyx over loki and inaros any day. She is basically immortal, armor strip, CC and with helminth you can put damage buffs on her too which pretty much rounds her out completely. I would like to discuss further if you have any female frames in mind that you'd consider 'weak', because I can off the top of my head not think of any 1 female frame that couldn't function viably at level 1000 or 2000 (except yareli, maybe with her new augment it will be different but currently i'd agree she is overall weak.)

 

[Tossenberg]

1 hour ago, zThulsaDoomz said:

It's not a gender issue.  It's a meta issue.  

When DE dropped the Eximus rework it brought Overguard, which drove the final nail in the coffin of CC based frames, of which a lot are male coincidentally. 

It didn't help that the game had also drastically shifted towards a kps meta (kuva/AoE weapons), as it is simply easier to just kill something than lock it in place.

Another factor was shield gate.  We drifted away from hiding behind Frost bubbles, to running tanks like Rhino, Nezha and Nidus, straight into SG with glass cannon frame X because survival is the highest it has ever been.

Honestly I don't personally see it as that big an issue, because to me they're just pixels.  But to humor this thread, if you want to see a more balanced gender representation,  DE has to either shift the Meta again, or do what a lot of players have requested over the years: rework armor and health scaling.

P.S. The most played frame over the past few years has been a male tank.  Just saying.

 

This is absolutely a valid argument and an amazing point.

I think you are completely on the nose with why my little conspiracy exists. I agree that maybe if they armor and health scaling it would make male frames perceive more viable instead of just pure kills. 

I get your argument with most played, though it isn't a reflection of actually strength (not to say revenant prime isn't powerful), it is somewhat an argument to be made nonetheless.

And as stated this wasn't to talk about gender politics or representation or anything, I just found it weird how there was this pattern.

But thank you for your comment, it was actually a perspective I didn't think about, and was near exactly the kind of thing I was looking for :)

[Ghastly-Ghoul]

Female leadership so we're going to get bust(y)ed female frames of course while the male frames get nip tassels.

[UnstarPrime]

24 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

This doesn't reflect pure strength nor what is actually good. This is a mix of accessibility, fun and popularity.

If you were to put these frames against level cap, I can only with my own experience say, the female frames generally perform WAY better, which is also coming from someone who has played near every frame. 

If you wanted to have a conversation that revolved around level cap, you really should have lead with that; level cap is such a different experience when compared to general Warframe that it's nearly a different game.  And since so few players engage with level cap, in general conversation it's not what most players are thinking about when rating strength, etc.

I don't personally do level cap content, so all I know about it is that DE has gone on record stating that they balance the game for star chart missions, not endurance runs.  So whatever happens at level cap is simply happenstance rather than intentionally designed.

[Tossenberg]

I feel like the correct analogy here would be something like, I argue Ferrari's cars are generally faster than Volkswagen, and I say on a test track they will always drive faster because they have more power, and you say "well they can both drive fast enough to go on a highway".

Yes I get what you are saying, but if you can handle level cap, its only easier to handle everyday content. And yes we weren't meant to play level cap, but as said before, if you can handle level cap, you can also handle steel path, and if you can handle steel path, you can also handle normal star chart. If you just needed to be able to complete steel path and nothing more, they wouldn't even need to buff anything, because pretty much any frame with any build can do steel path, because you can always just use weapons anyway. I (sorta) use level cap as a measurement, because as said, their performance there, reflects their performance everywhere else. 

On 2024-03-26 at 5:28 PM, Ghastly-Ghoul said:

Female leadership so we're going to get bust(y)ed female frames of course while the male frames get nip tassels.

They can only ever dream to have the power of the prime bust

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Tossenberg said:

but I'd take Nyx over loki and inaros any day. She is basically immortal, armor strip, CC and with helminth you can put damage buffs on her too which pretty much rounds her out completely

I've tried to make modern Nyx work, I very much remember the days where she was S tier alongside Mesa... but the presence of Overguard is just too much. It killed her viability. Too many enemies just not being affected by her powers, which means she's getting shot and dying. Armor stripping is always useful but A) it doesn't strip overguard, and B) her version feels like the worst armor strip in the game: it wears off for some reason, and some enemies will always keep some of their armor no matter how many bolts I hit them with (yes I have enough power strength)

And if you're running Assimilate... I mean at that point you're just playing Inaros again

[(PSN)robotwars7]

7 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

would love to hear others on this topic. 

I couldn't help but notice you glossed over these facts:

- Gauss Prime had one of the most viewed Prime trailers eevr, and was a very well received prime. Gauss is male.

- Styanax and Kullervo are newer male frames that are well liked by many.

- the last two frames to be reworked are both male (Hydroid and Inaros).

- our last new frame was Qorvex, who is male. our next frame is Dante, who is male. 

DE give plenty of attention to both genders, and both have their DPS/support/tank style picks. frankly the abilities of the frame are more important that their visuals (especially since they will usually get a skin sooner or later than can fix any aesthetic discrepancies.)

[Tossenberg]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

I've tried to make modern Nyx work, I very much remember the days where she was S tier alongside Mesa... but the presence of Overguard is just too much. It killed her viability. Too many enemies just not being affected by her powers, which means she's getting shot and dying. Armor stripping is always useful but A) it doesn't strip overguard, and B) her version feels like the worst armor strip in the game: it wears off for some reason, and some enemies will always keep some of their armor no matter how many bolts I hit them with (yes I have enough power strength)

And if you're running Assimilate... I mean at that point you're just playing Inaros again

I mean that's a fair argument, I kinda like running absorb and being an immortal terminator, but I can understand why its boring. I don't know why it shouldn't fully armor strip, that's weird, but typically I run her with Nourish as her first, damage buff, activate absorb, put on chaos and just shoot and kill. And if any enemy is too strong, armor strip, and das it. I get eximus' are a problem for some, but most weapons I have used kinda tear through their overguard, then it should be pretty normal from there on. But yea I would put her in the "needs rework / touch up" pile, alongside loki, valkyr, limbo, oberon and caliban.

[Tossenberg]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

I couldn't help but notice you glossed over these facts:

- Gauss Prime had one of the most viewed Prime trailers eevr, and was a very well received prime. Gauss is male.

- Styanax and Kullervo are newer male frames that are well liked by many.

- the last two frames to be reworked are both male (Hydroid and Inaros).

- our last new frame was Qorvex, who is male. our next frame is Dante, who is male. 

DE give plenty of attention to both genders, and both have their DPS/support/tank style picks. frankly the abilities of the frame are more important that their visuals (especially since they will usually get a skin sooner or later than can fix any aesthetic discrepancies.)

Like I said, this post isn't about gender politics or representation, but just that I have noticed that in general female frames are stronger. And yes there are great male frames, and they are popular, I'm not arguing that, I'm just saying in terms of meta and viable frames, there are more female frames than male frames.

If yall really want a list, I will sort what frames I in my opinion think are equivalent to A tier or above, split between genders.

Female above A tier: Saryn, Garuda, Voruna, Mesa, Citrine, Wisp, Khora, Mag, Octavia, Zephyr

Male above A tier: Gauss, Kullervo, Volt, Revenant, Rhino

Rest of the male frames I'd argue would be lower, while apart from Yareli, it would be hard to argue (at least in my opinion) that any female frame is below a C tier. Where I'd place Loki, Limbo and Chroma in a D tier ish. 

And it was never an argument about visuals or how they look. 

[Hexerin]

"I'm not talking about gender politics."

"So anyways, here's some gender politics."

Ya'll never cease to amuse with your nonsense.

[_Anise_]

10 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

why female warframes get so much more attention and are generally just way better than male warframes

this post reminded me, I had a post about how all warframes with access to overguard were male, it also wasn't about gender politics, I just wanted an overguard gurl ! and then I took hiatus, when I got back to warframe I had several quote message alerts from that thread that I never got to see! seems like the mods had since deleted the topic, can only assume it got heated in my absence.

so yeah my contribution to the topic is there is no way outside of unlocking the horse and taking it to openworld for a female frame to generate their own overguard!

no via companions, not via mods not via anything ! thats one thing male frames have advantage on so far.

 

[RPColten]

5 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

You are an actual goon head, but I respect the opinion lol

Just making sure to not add anything of value to the thread beyond objectifying the robot ladies.

It is important. Wishy-washy balance mumbo-jumbo between some conversation about kits or something, and eye-candy.

Don't know, didn't read your opening post really.

[Aruquae]

19 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

"Why were these three male frames in such bad shape in the first place?!" :P

In which you would response with Yareli, Banshee, and Valkyr

Two have seen better days, while one has yet to see better days

Edit: Dang I forgot Nyx too

Edited March 27 by Aruquae