My Detailed Feedback From Warframe

[MalusCalibur]

I have been playing Warframe for a while now, and as enjoyable as I find the game, I have compiled my personal issues/gripes (as worthwhile as they may or may not be).

1) Controls

For games of this type my preference is to use a controller rather than a keyboard, but I find that this game does not have the best setup for doing so. While most actions are fine, I find that sprinting consistently is difficult, and often painful, to execute, and rarely can be maintained at will without applying a great deal of force to the left stick. Precedent in similar games is for the stick to only need to be 'clicked in' once to toggle the character into a 'sprint mode' that is then cancelled by releasing any tilt on the stick or performing another action. I understand that this currently would not work given that the roll is executed this way, but I would therefore suggest that the roll is transferred to a different button. The problem is such that I did not even realise there was a sprint at all until I was told by a friend, as I did not expect two different actions to be applied to the same stick with only a small variation in use.

On a more nonspecific subject, I find that a lot of the acrobatic moves are what I would describe as 'awesome but impractical', given the relative complexity of undertaking them which cannot easily be done when in any kind of combat situation, reducing their impact on gameplay.

2) Intuition

Perhaps this is mainly due to the game still being in beta, but I have found a lot of gameplay elements surprisingly unintuitive, and were only discovered by pure accident or experimentation. For example, the laser barriers first encountered on Venus - me and a friend spent a good 5-10 solid frustrated minutes trying to ascertain why they would seemingly switch on and off at random. I would not expect hand-holding here (indeed that would be quite difficult given the random nature of level layouts), but perhaps making the cameras a little more obviously linked to said barriers, or some kind of vocal prompt that hints at a connection, would not be intrusive but help avoid similar situations.

3) Cash Shop

I will not lie, I am generally very wary of free-to-play games for the danger of a 'Pay To Win' factor emerging. That said, I do not believe that Waframe has (as of yet) gotten to this point given that most things seem to be obtainable via effort as well as upfront payment - this is fine, I have no objection at all to having to grind for something, so long as a non-paying option is available for everything important. However, there are still items that are cash-only, and I do not personally believe this is neccesary for warframe and weapon slots; it merely reduces the scope that non-paying players have and, in my eyes, would see them depart the game more quickly.

I make no secret of the fact that I am adverse to the idea of paying for in-game functions (as opposed to just buying a game upfront and having everything it has to offer), and the idea that non-paying players should have less overall options than paying players, so there is certainly some bias here. I can, though, accept that some things have to make the developer money and would not begrudge them. What I cannot accept so readily is ransoming something so basic as colours for such an astonishing price. Even worse, the free players are not even granted one full pallete, instead limited to a paltry selection that does not include fairly basic shades (such as black or purple to name but two personal favourites). Asking £4 for each palette category is far too high for how small and minor an effect colours are (I have obtained entire games for that amount), and in me it fostered a degree of early resentment and soured my opinion towards the game as a whole.

4) Early Engrossment

I wil preface this by saying I find Warframe to be an enjoyable game that I am happy to repeatedly play - however, this only came about after putting a high level of time into it. I find that a lot of the game's best features really do not start to come into play until several hours later, and I believe this might serve to detract a lot of potential players. Early on the missions are very short and samey, with clear lack of variety in layouts and no explanation or even hint of the greater depth awaiting in the mods and upgrade systems, nor any that the majority of new weapons can be obtained without being forced to pay.

As mentioned before, the lack of intuition can (and did) frustrate, and small factors such as poor design in the tutorial and controls, and in the cash shop, almost deterred me from perservering altogether - one of the very first things I did was to investigate the aesthetic customisation of warframes and weapons, and therefore was immediately exposed to what I saw at the time as an avaricious ploy for a cash investment, before I'd even really started playing.

I'm now finding Warframe highly enjoyable and expect a great deal more of my time will go into it, but these problems persist and I believe addressing them would improve the game.

Certainly I consider it (once the bugs are ironed out) one I would have been happy to pay upfront for, and find it unfortunate that it adopts the 'free-to-play' model instead.

Thank you for reading.

Edited April 1, 2013 by MalusCalibur

[Oni-shi]

This in my opinion is a good post for any person wondering what the game is about. I like it.