Warframe is one of the popular and loved massive multiplayer online games that continuously stands the test of time. Released by Digital Extremes for the Windows PC in 2013, it came out as a free-to-play multiplayer online shooter game. Yet during its open beta in the same year, it didn’t have much content, and players had mixed feelings about it. What we got then was a tutorial intro, and then access to some planets with respective missions to choose from. We had no clue about the plot, and, aside from it being visually pleasing, it felt it had no direction.
The Story Behind the Ancient Warframe
The great thing about Warframe is that despite its initial mixed reviews, their developers never gave up on the game. Truth be told, it is a game with huge potential, as story-driven, cooperative shooter games are quite rare then. Most multiplayer online shooter games at the time were all competitively driven, often featuring Player-versus-Player gameplays, like Counter-Strike Go.
Players take on the role of an ancient warrior race called Tenno, thought to have been lost for a century. You begin by waking up inside a sleeping pod, swarmed by a race of diseased, militant human cyborgs called Grineer. Using what the Tenno calls a Warframe, you are given superhuman abilities on top of your gun-running and wall-running skills. This puts you a cut above everyone, and other races quickly considered you either as a threat or an advantage. Once you’ve escaped, you’ll serve as a mercenary taking on different missions, for various factions, in a variety of planets.
What makes this game unique against other online shooter games is that it’s focused more on cooperative play, than PVP. It also offers a leveling system that will have you do repetitive missions to grind your Warframe, weapons, and pets. As a space mercenary, you get to collect unique weapons from a vast selection and use different Warframes as well. By now, you would’ve guessed that the frame is not an actual player avatar, but a weapon in suit form.
The Tenno Way of Grinding Levels
As mentioned, the game allows you to explore planets through mission objectives that can be fulfilled in their respective areas. Fulfilling missions can give you access to weapons, or Warframe blueprints to be used for crafting in your landing ship. This is the Tenno Way of life during its early years, and like many MMORPGs, it can get quite grindy. The developers decided to invoke a unique leveling system that a lot of other games are now taking into account. Once you’ve maxed a weapon and frame, you can enhance it, which will reset its levels but increases its potential.
Your player level is measured via rank, and once you’ve reached a certain point, you’ll take a test to progress further. Increasing the position gives you bonuses like increasing the number of weapons and frames you can keep, among other things. Weapon and Warframe leveling can get pretty repetitive, as making them powerful means resetting them multiple times on various occasions. If there isn’t enough content, the game gets boring quickly, as you’ll be doing the same missions over and over.
Luckily for everyone, Digital Extremes kept on coming up with new ideas to keep players engaged. It has received multiple expansion updates throughout the years, offering different mission modes each time. Now Warframe offers open-world explorations in different planets and massive spaceship battles. You can grind your levels as much as you want in more ways than one, and explore the vast universe. The story keeps on expanding with each new update as well, making this game a world all on its own.
Ultimately, Warframe is a free-to-play online multiplayer game, which means a lot of grinding is involved in making it big. But the constant update, with new, exciting features brought by the developers and its community, makes this game top-notch. So answering the question if Warframe is too grindy for 2020? Yes it is, but you’ll have fun doing it, and definitely worth playing.
