ive been with warframe for a whole year now, and there is so much ive enjoyed and actively discussed loving; the art, character writing, worldbuilding, the frame designs, and so much more. but after playing for this long ive started to notice an issue i was too busy looking at all the shiny new things to notice.
at first i liked how low effort and low skill warframe was compared to other more tryhard games i play, i believe any kind of gamer can pick up warframe and understand its core gameplay. but ive gotten to a point where im bored of it. im bored of the fact that the choices i make in terms of weapons or playstyle dont matter – ive heard arguments praising this exact angle of the games design, and i can see their point. i would argue that "playstyles" dont really exist in warframe anyway when so many frames boil down to being one click nukes.
ive gotten to a point where i wish the game forced me to stop and think, made me put in some actual effort, build a tactic, or do some proper decision making instead of rewarding nonstop button smashing. being able to come home after a long day, put on warframe, a background song and just turn my brain off feels nice. but im lacking that exciting engagement factor these days. sometimes i zone out and realize i could just be holding W plus M1 and get the job done just the same, because thats how little the game asks of me.
i understand if that was warframes shtick, to be a low skill, low effort, chill game anybody can pick up. but for an everything game that big i do wish there was more variety in that sense cus im certain they got room for it. and not just 'these enemies are higher level so you need stronger builds and rare mods' type of "difficulty".
dont get me wrong i definitely dont want metas in warframe, or to be forced to play a single playstyle. what i wish for is more variety in terms of gameplay. if you look solely at the art of warframe there is so much variety, a little something for everyone. i cant say the same about the gameplay, whatever mode you play ends up having a similar experience of killing everything that moves and speedrunning the objective, because thats how the game is set up at its core. frame make big boom. big boom kill all enemies. new enemies spawn. repeat.
what got me thinking about this initially was one of my very first and one of my most beloved frames, cyte-09. his fantasy of being a sniper frame feels rough in a game like warframe. how the hell are you supposed to get into that fantasy when the game is so fast paced and the enemy you are scoping down is dead before you can pull the trigger, because your squad wiped them quicker than you could shoot. im sure someone will yell "but solo play" and sure you can play solo if you want to play cyte specifically but warframe is a social game, best enjoyed with other people and friends. i dont think you should need to cut that whole aspect of the game in order to make a frame work.
another example is descendia, which is a gamemode i no longer touch. it suffers from a 'we will make the mode different by making it more difficult and boost enemy levels, making them harder to kill'.
i wish DE experimented more with how the core gameplay is set up. if you are an explorer and prefer to get into the lore and art and collect info then you will love the game, so long as you have content to explore. but if you look at it from solely a gameplay perspective... it could offer more.
