Meh.  I wasn’t expecting much and that’s pretty much what I got out of it.

WoW launched at this time in 2004.  I played, at least when the servers were stable.  I raided enough, stopped at AQ.  I truly question people’s sanity who think fondly of those days – at least from a game mechanics perspective.  Grinding past level 20, farming materials (tubers!), resist gear, prime rotations, farming tranq shot, running into whelps…looking back you get to realize how far the game has come in 14 years.

I have enough trouble emulating a WinXP or a DOS game today, I can’t fathom how much trouble that would be for an MMO that dates to back then.  I do understand the allure of progression servers, to take that entire trip once again.  I do not understand time locked servers.  But if there are people willing to pay, you can be sure someone is going to find a way to make it work.

Even the expansion seems to backtrack on expansion progress over the years.  Mechanically getting rid of the artifacts is a good step.  Level scaling across the board is good.  Lots of dungeons, open groups, all good things.  Ignoring the story, it looks like it can work. It’s the first expansion where I am I not curious, in the least bit.  Borderline apathy I guess.

I’m sure that some folks were quite pleased with what came out over the weekend.  The general theme though appears to be somewhat neutral, if a bit negative.  Maybe it’s due to the lack of a content drought?  Or maybe that there are just too many options on the table today, and people’s time is just not as available as it once was. Curious thoughts.

I am disappointed in the lack of Diablo news.  D4 could be something neat.  After having played a lot of Path of Exile (awesome), Grim Dawn (recent expansion), the loss of Runic (for Torchlight), and Marvel Heroes seeming to go dark… we could use a decent ARPG.

I’ve been relatively spoiled in this front, mostly due to RPGs.  Seems forever that there have been very large missions or boss fights in RPG games.  And I don’t just mean damage sponges… but real tactical bosses.  They really are more like puzzles than they are endurance bouts.  MMOs took this up a notch, though the detriment to that is that everything that isn’t a boss is considered “trash”.

As I play more of Warframe I am noticing that delineation of mission types, and events.  There are certainly “bosses” but not so much in the context we are used to.  They are damage sponges, with some light tactical elements.  The real challenge and rush comes from either defense or survival missions.

Defense missions have you protecting an object over multiple waves of enemies.  The object is usually assailable by many fronts.  Every 5 waves you get a bonus, and those bonuses follow a specific reward framework – A, A, B, C.  This means that after 20 waves, you’ve had access to all the loot tables.  It also means that there’s a “softcap” on how long people will run a mission.

Survival missions are more like horde missions in FPS games – non-stop enemy spawns.  You are continuously losing “mission health” that can be boosted by certain enemy drops, or clicking on spawning items that show up every 60s or so.  Rewards are provided at 5 minute intervals, again with the A, A, B, C reward structure.  Getting to 10 minutes can be a challenge, getting to 20 minutes requires serious firepower.

It’s not to say that other missions aren’t fun, they are.  But they are too focused on a specific activity, rather than just playing.  Spy missions have you go through a trap filled room based on a timer – fun the first time, not the 10th.  Interception has you defend 4 capture points, impossible solo, hard with a duo – and a bit too much like defense missions.  Again, the directed missions are fun, but not as the core.

This is ignoring Nightmare missions (harder, with special conditions like no shields or exploding bad guys), Sorties (like raids), or the recent Plains expansion.  I’ll get there one day.

The more I play, the more I realize that the Big Missions are not the ones with a focus, they are based on the structure and events that I make myself.  The “trash” of other games is the actual fun part.  It’s an interesting twist.

Link off first

I like Stranger Things.  I think the 80s are a great setting of tropes and set the standard for a lot of the media/art we see today.  The 90s were nihilistic, the 00s were new discovery, but the 80s… they seemed self-aware.

Fancy enough, there’s a mobile game out for Stranger Things.  Free.  No in-app purchases.  It’s a call back to 80s exploration games.  Midi-sound track and all.

It’s not a terribly long game, maybe a few hours. But it has a lot of collectibles, pretty much everything from the series, but isn’t really beholden to the series storyline.

In all honesty, I am overly surprised at the sheer quality of this game.  No news about it until the release showed up, no glitches that I’ve found, no crashes.  Just smooth 80s gaming.  Extremely easy to pick up and play too.  The overall challenge is simple enough for all but the library (act 5) and some of the collectible puzzle.  The upside-down world puzzles are more Sokoban than anything else.

I cleared the main story, now I’m onto the collectibles.  I find myself smiling a lot while it’s up.  It scratches just the right itch.

I don’t exactly have rose-colored glasses for old gaming memories.  Early MMOs had some positives certainly, but they also has some horrendous mechanics.  UO was my first kick and regardless of what people the shard split, it was needed.  EQ provided a “safer” space in true 3d, but it came with a massive grind and hard requirement to group.  WoW took all of that, got rid of everything people complained about (and hired EQ guild leaders) and presented an “optimized” gaming experience that pretty much everyone could get into.  Optimization unfortunately brought simplification of some systems.

I personally like the concept of multi-tiered crafting.  This makes all items relevant in the crafting process.  UO started with this, where that ingot at the start of the game is still relevant at the end.  EvE does this too.  There are multiple ways to find these “ingots”.  It isn’t just one location, and one method.  Find them with miners, find them on enemies, trade them, NPCs trades.  There are some rare materials, or rather less common, but they follow the same thought process.

Warframe follows this as well.  Of the dozens (and dozens) of missions, there’s a lot of cross-over of materials.  Some missions are better at some sources, and some areas require a bit more work.  The end result is that no matter what you’re doing, it’s rewarding and (somewhat) relevant.  It also means that as much as you have vertical progress (levels) you have horizontal progress (options) at the same time, rather than closing off content.

This is a flipside compared to the modern “ubisoft sandbox” model.  All the icons are things to do, but once you do, then there’s no real reason to go back.

The system isn’t perfect but it does work.  Keeping all the content relevant for longer periods of time is a smart investment of resources.  Also means that players have a lot more options to play through as the product keeps evolving. Choice is good.

Warframe’s greatest strength is also a weakness.  There’s a theory on the paralysis of choice.  Like when you need to buy toothpaste and there are 60 different kinds.  Why?  Sandbox/open world games really suffer from this (or excel).  Minecraft has zero goals, so the fun you have is the fun you make.

Warframe has so many things to do and see, and each one seems to impact another, that it’s a fine mess.  Expected in a 4 year old game, but after years of WoW (and clones) that completely isolate one activity from another, it’s jarring.  I’ll give a rather lax example.

There gate on Mars (to reach Phobos) requires 3 things.

1. Kill 150 enemies in 1 mission on Mars
2. Open 3 Lith Void relics
3. Scan 3 Cephalon fragments

The tasks seem fairly clear, SMART even (dammit).  All non-endless missions have about 100 enemies.  Endless missions have continuous waves of enemies attack you, increasing in level over time.  Mars has 1 of these missions (defense).  If you play in a group, then you won’t get 100% of the kills, so you have to solo it.  I was able to get it just by the 10th wave (you can leave every 5 waves).  Ok, not too bad.

Opening Lith Void relics requires you to a) have Lith Void relics and b) have Fissure missions. I have not found a practical way to “farm” for a), it just seems to happen randomly.  For b) there are one or two available most of the time.  I should have mentioned c), understanding that this system even exists and how it works.

Finally, the Cephalon fragments.  You need to a) know what the hell these things are and b) find them.  I could not find any reference in game to what these were.  I could not see them on any map.  I went wiki-hunting.  Sure enough, here they are.

Ok, now I know what they look like.  It also seems that for b) one randomly spawns in every regular map.  I have played 4 planets, dozens of missions, maxed out a few things.  Never saw a single one.  I’m not saying they are hidden, but they are not on the “main path” of a level.  I tried actively finding them, running some short/easy missions.  No luck.  Most people who have issues, recommend getting a Thief’s Wit mod, so that you can see them on the radar.  That’s another post.  Anyhow, I’m currently at this phase.

Objectives

Each mission has a goal (or goals).  There’s a yellow (do something), red (kill something) or green icon (exit the map) on the screen (radar and actually play screen) that shows where to go.  Without this, it would be impossible to navigate the maps, as there are many branching paths.  Heck, I get lost even with those icons.  But they do a great job of telling you “go here”.  Simple, effective.

The meta objectives though, ouch.  Where to find items to craft.  What an item actually does.  What is on what planet.  What the terms mean.  What the next goal is.  How to actually attack a boss!

This may sound like a complaint, but in reality it is just a comment.  5-6 years ago, when we didn’t have Wikia, this would mean hours pouring over game forums.  Nowdays, people have ideas and they post it out of the game.  The developer can focus on developing rather than training the user base, letting them discover as you go.  For the most part, that discovery works.  It isn’t being thrown in the deep end, you learn gradually.  The irksome part is when you reach a hard wall, where there are no hints.  Where you’re given puzzle pieces without the large image to reference.  What’s the next step after this one?

After years of hand holding in some many other games, it’s both frustrating and refreshing to have to actually learn again.

A bit more time, a bit more information!  I will go over some high level points first.

• Aside from a few trading hubs, and the clan hall (dojo) everything is instanced.  Think D3, or Neverwinter dungeons.
• Chat in combat is not really viable.  Voice is the way to go.  Expected in any FPS really.  General chat is a mess (as in every game).
• From what I can tell, nearly everything is free in this game, minus customization (icons, colors, skins).  There is a LOT of free customization, but the bigger ones have a cost.
• Acquiring new items is time gated.  Hours up to 3 days.  Can spend money to speed it up.
• There are two ways to progress.  Item levels, and character levels (mastery).
• There are many items.  Warframes (classes), ranged, melee, small fire weapons.  It’s actually hard to keep track of it all.  Each can level up to 30.
• Each item can be modified with Mods.  The level of the item determines how many and how strong the mods are.  Mods impact pretty much everything you can think of – speed, damage, crit, health, elemental attacks…it is very complex.  Adding and removing mods is free.
• Mastery has a cap of 29.  It is raised by getting more level 30 items (and some small mini-quests along the way).  It opens up more of the game, and capacity.  It also gates progress as some items have minimum mastery levels.
• Mods are life.  You can upgrade them.  You can mix them.  You can make a speedy crit master, or a super tank.  Some enemies are resistant to X, others are not.  You need to make conscious decisions before heading to missions.
• There is no progress under regular MMO terms.  Assuming you have access to all the level 30 Warframes, each Warframe has a specific use for a specific mission type.  Each weapon is the same.
• I have played FPS before.  This is not a ranged FPS.  The rooms are generally tight, enemies run up and there is a lot of opportunity for melee.  The parkour movement makes defense more about not getting hit/always be moving, rather than soaking damage.
• The actual controls are ok.  It takes a few hours to get used to the rather insane speed and to get your eyes used to what is around you.
• The art-style works for me.  Mileage will vary.
• There is actual lore, though mostly gated through quests.  You can scan everything and their mom to build an information log though (and there’s a faction for this too).
• Factions (syndicates) are present, with reputation gains.  Aligning with one may impact another.  Poor rep causes hit squads to come after you.  It’s like Vanilla WoW factions more than factions as we see them today.  There’s a choice to be made. Yay!
• There are bosses to farm.  Bosses are quite different.
• Each planet has 10-12 missions to complete.  Leaving a planet requires achievement based goals.  e.g. kill 150 enemies in 1 mission, kill a boss, scan 3 statues.  You can’t just skip to the last planet.  There are good and bad aspects to this.  It does prohibit catch up work, but item and Mastery levels are the true gates.
• The Archwing is not good.  It’s a 3d space sim shooter.  It is bad for 2 reasons.  First, it’s in 3rd person, which means you can’t see half the screen.  3rd person is designed for forward, one axis movement.  Second, the radar/map is not built for 3d combat, so it doesn’t show anything.  You end up getting attacked from all sides, with no notice, and no ability to see them.  Thankfully, this thing is not critical for game progression.
• There are a dozen mission types, then variants of those mission types.  Assassination, decryption, tower control, rescue, wave defense… all but tower control can be soloed.  Variants adds different enemy types, objective modifications and higher rewards.
• Default LFG for every mission, for up to 4 people.  You get a bonus to everything in a group.  It is a great way to experience the game.  Solo if required for some specific objectives.
• Tutorials are not good and do not do justice to what’s in the game.  You learn by playing and asking questions.
• The combat, art, and mechanics are polished.  Way more than I had ever expected.  This thing runs super smooth and responsive.

High level…. yeah right.

The important thing to remember is that there is always something to progress towards, always something to do.  It’s as if you mixed an FPS with an action RPG.  Think Hellgate for those that played it (I did).  The lack of focus or general direction can make it challenging for some people, but if you like settings your own path, this scratches a bit of that itch.

I hit Mastery 3.  I’ve yet to max any item or warframe.  I have a pet that shoots ice beams.  I shoot fire bullets.  I spin through the air like a dancer, and land with a giant axe.

I am having a lot of fun doing it.