Follow the Lotus, Tenno (Warframe)

[Ford Prefect]

I fuckin' love misappropriated imagery :v

So the closed beta of Digital Extreme's F2P cooperative third person slice em up shooter Warframe has begun. While I haven't received my key, I got an email telling me that I received the much coveted (???) VERY IMPORTANT PERSON status so I'll get one sooner rather than later. How about anyone else?

While I'll freely admit that I'm not a huge fan of the F2P model generally, but I like the set-up. The premise is that each player is a Tenno, a warrior who went into stasis after a war centuries ago, only to be woken up to discover that the solar system has gone to shit. The Grineer Empire, a bunch of degenerating and ugly clones, wants to exterminate the Tenno because they jelly (no, really, their motivation is 'fear and envy'). The Corpus, a trading guild that operates robots built from ancient Orokin technology they don't really understand, want to acquire the Tenno for profit purposes. The reason for this is that each Tenno is able to bond with a Warframe, which represents the height of Orokin battlefield technology. The fiction is largely nonsense and a revitalisation of the the very original Dark Sector concept, which was spectacularly different to what was eventually released (though if you played it you might recall that 'Tenno' was the last name of the main character).

What this translates to is a cooperative game where players fight waves of either ugly Grineer clones or sleek Corpus drones. Horde mode, ME3 multi, Halo Firefight style. There are a bunch of different Warframes with different stats and abilities and styles. The balanced Excalibur has a dashing slash attack, can blind people with the power of Greyskull and jump really high and far. The heavy Rhino can stomp the ground and slow down time while lifting dudes into the air, turn on a form of heavy armour. The Loki can switch positions with enemies, turn invisible and make decoys. It seems like each frame has four different special abilities, and while the website only has four up, one of the dev diaries mentions a fifth so who knows how many there will be in total. They're fairly swish looking and you can paint them up, which is standard but still neat.

Like obviously I have no idea how it actually plays at this point but I thought it would be a good time to bring it up. Check out the website, and maybe sign up for the beta if you're interested.

[Stark]

Is this actually moving? Why didn't I get my email? I RESERVE MY NAME and everything!

It's an interesting design especially since Hav, Los and i were discussing (not here obviously) whether Bioware could have released ME3 multi as a F2P download game in XBLA and made money. People pay to premium shit anyway, and even I'd play it, but I'm not paying $80 for the shitty RPG that comes with it.

Post moar when you know moar!

[Ford Prefect]

I'd like to get some first hand impressions but I'm not in the first wave of beta keys. The videos haven't shown a great deal of enemy variation, particularly for the Grineer, which is a bit worrying.

[Vendetta]

It's an interesting design especially since Hav, Los and i were discussing (not here obviously) whether Bioware could have released ME3 multi as a F2P download game in XBLA and made money. People pay to premium shit anyway, and even I'd play it, but I'm not paying $80 for the shitty RPG that comes with it.

I remember saying that this is what they should have done. Partly because then it could have had a proper progression system with a storefront not packs of magic cards.

I'd even take a World of Tanks tech tree to grind through* to unlock moar gunz (which would also make XP relevant when you hit 20, rather than having silly prestiging)



Anyway, this is an interesting idea. If they do the reward balancing right they can sidestep any pay to win elements of F2P unlock systems, because if you've got a whale** on your team he's paid for all of you to win. But I bet I'd need a new PC to even think about being able to play it.


* F2P games need a treadmill, really. You need to match the rate of players getting new Stuff with the rate at which you release new Stuff, so that the majority of the playerbase always has something to work towards. That's what keeps the playerbase engaged and keeps them making your microtransaction purchases.

** "whale" is a term used by F2P developers for the few players who spend an immense amount of money, for many F2P games they make up a serious chunk of the developer's income.