Introduction to Warframe (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, July 09, 2019, 07:10 (1745 days ago) @ narcogen

If you don't know the exact path to unlocking the story missions, it takes, on average, 40 hours to get to the structured story missions.
That is a problem for people who want to play for the story, and one that came about as a result of those story missions being added two years after the game came out. If you DO know the exact sequence of events that you have to do to get to those story missions, it takes about seven or eight hours to get into the meat of the game. I've seen MR5s that have completed all of the current story quests, but they followed a guide, and were carried through by a Clanmate.

I have to admit, I have a hard time reconciling the idea that it takes 30-40 hours to REACH the story missions (even if that is logical based on when they were created as part of the game's development cycle) and the idea that Warframe's lore is "integrated into the game" which I think is intended as a contrast to Destiny.

This sounds like Destiny inverted. When Destiny gets new content, there's story, then grind, then endgame.

This sounds like grind, story, endgame. Which sounds awful, at least to me.

The difference is that story isn’t just something you get out of the way on your way to the lone endgame option of the expansion.
Most of the game’s story missions are intended to be introductions to one of the game’s systems and game types, several of which are endgame options along the way. So before you even get to the main story missions, you’ve unlocked about five or six endgame playlists, you’ve defeated several bosses, and you ideally have a favorite/customized Warframe or two. There is a lot of grind involved if you want there to be (and if you want access to a sizeable percentage of the weaponry), but for the most part, if you’re in a clan, the Clan Dojo’s offerings can ease a lot of the pain.

Then you start the “cinematic quests”, which are the core story missions. Each of of them introduces a game changer, in a bit of a literal sense. They not only push the world’s story forward, but they introduce new mechanics into the game that you will use for other endgame offerings, or even the ones you were doing before. It’s a game that builds upon its systems with every quest, but which lets you pause at several points to focus on endgame offerings that you’ve unlocked. And if you want to simply skip to the endgame stuff that you don’t have available to you? Someone in your friend list can simply taxi you over to that content, and help you through it (save for some major story spoiling bits). You won’t just be popping “Immune” numbers from enemies either, because the leveling doesn’t work that way. You can theoretically have a complete endgame build for a character before you ever complete a single quest.

I had a frustrating time contrasting this with Forsaken. I wanted to do Menagerie, but couldn’t until I completely finished Forsaken. The two are completely unrelated, but I can’t engage with a single Year 2 system until I get the Forsaken story out of the way. The great part is that bungie’s gotten better about Light Level, so once I did finish Forsaken, I shot up to 690, which temporarily opened up access to Menagerie, and I was able to have fun doing a run without the stupid level of Grind that Bungie has historically forced on you before you could have fun with the new content.