To those who play Warframe

While I agree on Perq's points...

I have to say the game itself is fun to play, regardless of all that. I know the game lacks an "end game" as much as PoE lacks a real "end game" (they're essentially the same thing when one gets down to the nitty gritty) PoE is becoming much less fun, and Warframe is becoming much more fun as I play it. For that reason alone, I'm going to keep playing Warframe instead (I mean, that's the point of games, to have fun). I think it's the combination of the parkour elements and satisfying melee combat (I only shoot things when I care to complete the bonus objectives, or shooting out the sensor bars above some grineer doors.) And it has my most favorite weapon type ever, and it feels so fun to use (the twin-bladed staff). PoE has nothing that comes close to feeling as fun to play melee.

I know they have massive pay to win going on in Warframe, moreso than PoE (yeah, inventory/stash issues in both games, but Warframe lets you actually buy weapons and frames... things you can farm on your own, given time, and I have time. Warframe also gives you an infinite inventory for materials used to craft stuff - the only real slots you have to worry about are finished warframes and weapons)

Warframe has a bonus: you can sell stuff in-game for platinum, and then spend that on its market... unlike PoE, where you cannot get more stash tabs or cosmetics without paying your own real money. I can truly play Warframe ENTIRELY free to play. PoE misses this mark by a mile.

Warframe has plenty of potential, and I can see more positive aspects in it than PoE, at the current time. I'm more of a solo player anyway, and probably won't touch sorties or Eidolons.


EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm somewhat of an artist, nothing professionally sold yet, but in Warframe, I might try my hand at making some Tennogen... and monetizing my talent. (my day job is mindless, and my work on games is more of a hobby these days, since I'm not on a development team currently.)

To not sound like the game is terrible or something - it isn't. Not by a long shot. The mod system, the amount of weapons, the production value and locations, planets, mission - thats all awesome. The whole theme and ideas are great.

And I really had a lot of fun researching how stuff works, how to upgrade and what to upgrade. The problem is that if you really want to play it a lot, you'll reach a wall of pay or get out really quickly. Sadly, there is little else to do to outgrind it. And it pretty much ruins all of the previous stuff, with a single blow. This makes me really, really sad. :(
I'd much rather have items require far more experience to reach high ranks and whatnot. I mean, seriously, this system could have been made far better, and all of the awesome parts of the game could shine.
Shitty f2p mechanics from mobile should never be implemented, ever.

I’m going to speculate that, perhaps due to the scarcity of Forma / Catalysts / Reactors, Warframe isn’t as good at supporting sustained objective driven gameplay as Path is (grind to and past end game 1-3 times per season, still have more builds for next season); however, due to the distribution and relevance of rewards at all stages, it is better at supporting a more casual, all over the place approach (switch between 3-6 builds at a time, always have something productive to do relative to any given builds power, because focused objectives are still incomplete and early missions can still provide rewards).

I’d say Warframe is a much more casual game at the end of the day, which is what makes the pay to win tolerable; this wouldn’t be the case in PoE, but then again they’re very different games.

So far as which I would prefer to play, I’d prefer both, but I’m not playing PoE until we get xbox forum integration. I’m not playing through a league with that god damn trade board as my only interaction with other players.

Since I play solo, and I can grind for the stuff that you can buy with real money (either directly getting the items from the gameplay, or selling stuff to other players and spending their real money currency) I don't see Warframe as a negative pay2win experience. (I also haven't touched, nor will I ever touch Conclave, unless they lock some MUST HAVE thing behind it, and then, and only then will I do the minimum required PVP)

If some things were locked behind "only spend your own money" (like Tennogen on PC - PS4 gets to spend traded platinum on them :)... THEN, and only then, would I start to get upset about this stuff. PoE has this blockade with in-game advantages sold for real money that you can't acquire any other way (not items, no, but advantages none-the-less).

I'm no white knight for warframe (already posted in feedback/suggestions about some new player concerns to make things more clear - and one was already implemented!), but they're doing a really good job with their monetization method.

(I really wish they had an in-game Auction House, same problem as PoE... but since it's allowing real currency trading for cash-shop items, I'm actually going bite the bullet and engage with it, whereas I won't touch PoE's 3rd party website junk for in-game currency.)

Some nice person decided to give me 100plat!

Meeting up with them tomorrow to get it. That's 5 more warframe slots (but probably will get 2 weapon slots and 4 warframe slots or some other combination)

"

Zaludoz wrote:

[...] but they're doing a really good job with their monetization method.

(I really wish they had an in-game Auction House, same problem as PoE... but since it's allowing real currency trading for cash-shop items, I'm actually going bite the bullet and engage with it, whereas I won't touch PoE's 3rd party website junk for in-game currency.)

RM auction house is actually terrible as all hell. If you have something like this in the game, you are (as a developer) enticed to make good items as stupidly rare as possible, so that people buy them with plat - be it from your directly, or from other players who spend (way too much) time playing your game and grinding those to get premium currency from paying players.
It essentially becomes your job. Not sure this is something you want to do, really.

You say the Real Money currency trading system is some horrible thing, and I'd have agreed with you at some point... but...

They already have an in-game RM market (only they sell the items directly, not player-player trade) and I see no evidence of making this stuff an unbearable grind. Sure, the temptation is there to make things so hard that people would rather just buy it... but what I've encountered thus far, has not been said grind.

They already have a 3rd party AH just like PoE, warframe.market (it even allows you to place Buy-orders) ... and things seem to be going along very well. No doomsday! No crazy grind, as I said above.

(The Focus grind is a chore, but unrelated to plat purchase designs, unless you think they want to use that to sell affinity boosters - but you still rely on the random time-limited convergence thingies anyway, so it's not something I'd buy to speed up - and the focus system is up for review in the coming months.)

The only reason I'm willing to deal with this 3rd party AH, and not PoE's, is that it's going to save me actual real money to buy Warframe slots and Weapon/sentinel slots... (I might actually spend money on this game, because even with its flaws, it feels a lot more finished than PoE - but I don't HAVE TO, like I would with PoE - a MAJOR DIFFERENCE - Warframe is truly Free to Play as long as you obtain platinum by selling stuff you play the game for. That can never happen in Path of Exile, because you need to spend your own real cash to buy anything from the MTX shop, including stash tabs. Warframe wins the "entirely F2P" title here - PoE is disqualified.)

If Path of Exile had a way to earn cash-shop stuff (tabs only, in my case) through in-game trade, I would likely do that, even with this horrible AH-but-not system they have going here - the tabs would still have to have been bought with real money at one point, so they're not just a loss for the company, as if they were freebies.

These developers don't seem as money hungry in their F2P game, compared to PoE and their ever-growing list of custom made stash tabs to help with all the forced clutter they add with almost every new expansion/league - and trade functionality, while Warframe even lets their community profit off their game with Tennogen cosmetics, and now their Fan Forge fan-designed clothing and stuff.

I'm continually impressed with Warframe, and continually disappointed by PoE - not that I WANT to make this a comparison thread. Just sharing my experience, and this is a PoE board, and using it as the point of common ground to relate.

I don’t feel as though things are as absolute as you define them, though. Maybe I just haven’t hit that point yet, but it seems like DE has done a good job of integrating tradeable premium currency; there is a fair amount of grind, yes, however considering the amount of good stuff you can acquire easily, none of the grind-locked stuff seems like it is grind-locked because of a paywall. On the contrary, because stuff is so relatively easy to acquire, they had to come up with vaulting to keep the player economy revolving. Besides precisely that, everything else feels like steady, rewarding progression to me.

Disclaimer: To each their own. I’m not even going to criticize vaulted relics/blueprints, because everything else is done so much better than, say, some $60 games with premium currency.

This week with Baro:
Prisma Veritux, Prisma Grakata, Fanged Fullisade. Meh. Grakata maybe, Crit multi, reload, and magazine capacity are nice, but I already use Twin Grakata and this doesn’t (can’t) replace that.

Vermillion Storm, Astral Twilight !! Tempo Royal !!!! Yay. Stances for Glaive and Heavy Blade! Now this is exciting. I don’t have claws yet, but I’m definitely going to try to get all three.

Twin Grakata Towson Skin, Ki’teer Raza Syadana, Liset Prisma Skin. I like all three of these. Probably can not afford them... might consider extra grind for the syadana, but not in place of any of the stance mods. If I happen to fall short, Liset Skin is 1/4 the cost.