So my First Impression

[MegaDerpLord]

So i've got some criticisms of this game that really personally irk me but first i think i'll preface this post first by saying:

I actually like this game. I rarely if ever get a chance to play a very co-op oriented F2P games that wasn't an MMORPG. So diving into this game was actually nice and refreshing, especially considering it's entry fee: nil. For the life of me I cannot do any sort of competitive F2P games regardless of what the quality is, which is why I have walked away from games like Tribes:Ascend, Planetside 2 and Blacklight: Retribution. So the moment that I heard that this was co-op by nature I felt I had to dive right in. From what I see on a first impression basis I really like. Shooting is decent enough, the graphics quality was really nice and the general look and aesthetics of various warframes though alien(no doy) in nature looked pretty good and fairly unique. Feels like I have found a potential F2P game that I can actually play on a frequent basis.

I do however, already see things that does get in the way of my enjoyment. Currently, I have a Volt warframe leveled at rank 5. I've just finished all of the Mercury missions and am now breaking my way into Venus. One of the things that I'm sure we have all certainly noticed is that the environments.... well... they are pretty much the same environments and that does leave for a legitimate amount of concerned. I don't think any of us wants to be shooting down the same looking corridor again and again and again. I swear the ship layouts are all the same as well. That is also a damn shame as well. The levels are supposedly random but to be honest i'm barely noticing it at all. It all pretty much looks like the same ship to me. The obvious solution? Bring in more variety which I hear is something the devs are working on so that's a plus. Personally, I want to see some outlandish crazy environments. I.e. a biodome space station that houses a small rainforest, a giant garage containing the deactivated, giant warmachines of the Grineer with massive cranes and all, Halls of cryonegic tubes in rows containing the frozen bodies of humans in sleep. Now i'm not sure if such environments do already actually exists in later games but if they do, i'd like to see them pulled into earlier content instead since a first impression matters so much.

The visual aesthetics of the environment aren't the only issue when it comes to variety. I feel as though the actual objectives that you have to achieve can feel pretty much the same and a lot of the time each objective doesn't feel all that different than others. I think that what is needed for this game to last for a while is to have some very unique objectives along with some fairly unique assets tied to those objectives. I.e. destroy as many clone cryopods as possible before reinforcements arrive in X amount of time, capture X amount of VIP's which also contains the secondary objectives of disabling escape pods before they escape in them and push back the infestation in a rare abandoned tenno ship, which invoves nodes that will spawn new enemies and a boss fight at the reactor. I do believe that it will take unique objectives such as that to make the game more memorable and to at least hide the illusion of grind.

While I did say that the shooting was "decent enough" and I do find it playable enough, I feel like they don't have enough of a kick. So far though I'm only playing with the starter assault rifle and pistol. What i've noticed so far was the rifles don't have quite the kick to them to make them feel satisfactory nor the right kind of sound to them but in both cases they are still passable. Obviously I'd like to feel more kick out of them and would like some improved sound assets but I can still definitely play it should it be the same.

Abilities is something that can be a bit of a concern as well. While I do like dropping the abilities that I do have, I wish however that I was able to utilize them more frequently either through a faster regen of power or simply by nerfing what each power does while adding a quick cool down timer. More active use of abilities, the lot of which I find to be really cool i think will help distinguish the game even further from other games and make it stand out more while also making the game feel as though there were more ways in which you can kill your enemies.

Another thing in regards to gun which is more just something I want to see then any criticism to be honest is for mods to have some effect on the visual appearance on the gun. The same goes for armor where I would like to see different chest pieces, pauldrons and visors applied to your warframes (which I have yet to see in the amount of time that i'm playing.

So in short, I find the game to have a good solid foundation and has alot of potential to be a great game.

Edited January 8, 2013 by OlimOdan

[MegaDerpLord]

Some quick suggestions that I would like add as well having just played another session:

-Clicking on missions should instead bring up a start game button, along with a run down of all your different objectives and intel on the type of enemies that you will run into.

-A planet/mission view button in the menu UI would be ideal for convenience sake.

-Global chat options and of course chat rooms would be a nice addition.

-Perhaps scale rewards based on how long a person has spent in someone elses game? I had this session where I joined a game that was already 2 minutes from being complete and I ended up getting the same amount of credits as the person who played the entire session, which I feel is quite unfair.

-UIs for weapons, and armors should be reworked so that clicking on the image of either the weapon or the warframe would bring up a single interface containing, the modifications of your warframe or weapons on the top part of the screen, the weapon and warframes that you own in the middle that can all be swapped out and at the bottom the market of weapons and warframes that you own at the bottom.