Warframe – A Free-To-Play Shooter – Too Good to Be True?
If you’re looking for Borderlands-style shooters, you’ll most likely come across Warframe. A shooter that sends you into space to kill countless hordes of enemies and collect heaps of stuff that makes you stronger and richer. More and more players are drawn to the space world, which is also available for free. There’s just one catch. Patrick from the GamesCoin editorial team talks about his own experience with Warframe.
When Warframe was released in 2013, it didn’t exactly elicit cheers. But a lot has happened around the space shooter since its release. The community is growing steadily and there are tens of thousands of players on the various planets.
Space shooter
You play with the so-called warframes, or frames, of which you can choose one of three at the beginning. But in the game you’ll find kits and associated parts that you can use to build stronger frames. You travel from planet to planet, on each of which you can complete a wide variety of missions. You’ll shoot, cut and jump through the space world in third person, leveling up both your frames and the weapons you carry. Similar to other looter shooters, you’ll collect everything that comes in front of your shotgun: money, blueprints to build new frames and weapons, and materials with which to create the items. You can either team up with friends for missions, get assigned to a crew, or play all by yourself.
The game didn’t grab me right away. In my own spaceship, where I move between missions, I can upgrade weapons at various stations, build mods, and select different game modes. That’s the catch of the game: The game overwhelms beginners and casual players by its complexity. You should allow yourself plenty of time to get into the game, and it’s best to watch a few YouTube guides.
You can pay, but you don’t have to
When I found out that Warframe was free, I immediately raised my eyebrows. We’re all familiar with those supposedly free games, but at some point you have to dig into your pocket to unlock certain levels, items, or characters. Pay-to-win can be annoying and cost more in the long run than games you buy once. In Warfame, you can spend real money in the game to save some time. But you don’t experience any other disadvantages – you just grind a little longer. And let’s face it, when a game is basically all about grinding, then that’s not even really a disadvantage, it’s part of the game.
Why is Warframe so popular?
Shooting, looting, grinding, these are all things that give me personally and many others a lot of pleasure and are addictive. But what’s special about Warframe is not necessarily the gameplay, but the relationship between the players and the development team. In my opinion, what makes Warframe so playable is the community that has formed around the game. This community forms a culture, enabled also by the developers, Digital Extremes. They interact with players to get feedback on almost every aspect of the game. There is even a stream every two weeks where the heads of each department sit down and show what they are working on. Players and developers are part of a tight-knit ecosystem. This is something we would also like to see from games that are tied to a blockchain.