Warframe – Page 5

Kitten Assist

January 25, 2016 by Belghast

Helping Hand

This is becoming a pretty regular occurrence in my office, where Kenzie decides to “lay” behind one of my two monitors and then spend time poking her head out under the bottom and bopping things with her paw. This morning she has been desperately trying to drag my phone that is attached to a usb cable towards her… which is making me rethink the placement of that charger cable. For the most part this weekend we hibernated to avoid the cold, and while we had nothing to deal with like the blizzard folks on the east coast… I am not equipped to handle 20* temperatures that well. The biggest news of the weekend is that we got our new dishwasher set up on Saturday. Its stupid but right now it feels like we are purposefully dirtying dishes just so we can “play with it”. I know it sounds like we truly are deprived of fun when you put it into those terms. The truth is… we’ve gone without a dishwasher for a very long time. The order of business was to rinse things out, and set them in the sink… until we had enough there to warrant washing dishes. Now we simply dump the dirties in the dishwasher as we dirty them…. which is making me have to rewire a bunch of my internal processes.

We also used this as an excuse to buy new silverware… and by silverware I really mean stainless-steel-ware because it is not like we are the “good silver” type. I am getting used to not eating on a mishmash of seven different patterns that we have had since college, but it is taking some doing. A few years back we standardized on one set of dishes and gave away the equally mishmash set of plates and cups and bowls that we got in college, and I guess it was time for us to do the same with utensils. So we are now eating with the best forks target can buy! Well not exactly… there were apparently ritzier sets available. The whole experience is just strange… its like I have to reroute how I exist in the kitchen now and it is taking some getting used to. One of the themes that you can catch running through the blog is that “bel doesn’t handle change well” so… it will take a few weeks before I really can tell you if I like it or not.

Crusader Weekend

I spoke a little bit about this one but on Friday night I got carried hard in Diablo III. On the night season 5 opened, several of us ran around together as a group… but one of that group has eclipsed the rest of us by a huge margin. On Friday night my friend Carth was nearing 500 paragon levels, and I am almost certain that by the time I am writing this today he is probably around 600 given his meteoric rise. Me however… I was sitting at only around 10 paragon when I joined the madness that was our leveling binge. Over the course of roughly three hours I got drug up in level to a point where I was actually somewhat functional. During that time I pieced together what was a pretty damned good set of gear, and Saturday morning I managed to wrap up the last few requirements for the season 5 chapter 4 rewards. At this point you can check out the particulars on my Diablo 3 profile, but there are still a handful of things that I am working on upgrading. Damai linked me this build and I am following it to some extent, but there are some places where I plan on diverging… namely on the choice of weapons.

There is no world where I would ever use the pig sticker with its constant squealing. The entire point of using it, is to have a fast attack speed… and technically my current sword already has a faster attack speed than the pig sticker. Most of the weekend past Friday night was about me figuring out just what I could do on my own. I can solo Torment VIII pretty easy, but it is slow enough going that for bounties I have decided to just stick to Torment VII as they go so much faster. While recording the double AggroChat this weekend, I managed to do one full circuit of Torment VII bounties and while I added a few paragon levels I didn’t really get much loot to write home about. At some point I plan on trying to solo more greater rifts to increase my blood shard count, but right now I have done through level 30 without much issue. I really hate doing timed events… they just bring out all of the horrible anxieties in me, so in truth greaters are not exactly my favorite thing to do in the world.

Rhino Prime

The other big happening of the weekend is the fact that I managed to finish up both my Rhino Prime and my ArchWing. The only problem is that I have a silly amount of things that now need leveling. I still have not capped the Lex sidearm, or my Drakgoon, Boltor, Latro… or even my Dual Skana. The frustrating thing about all of that is that I really don’t know how best to level them. This is one of those games where I really like running around with other people and playing it… but have not really enjoyed soloing much at all. So whenever I had a “solo” moment this weekend, I fired up WoW and did Garrison stuff or popped into Diablo 3. I need to sort out a solid and reliable way for leveling, and I thought just maybe it would have been a low level survival mission. While I got lots of loot from it… I didn’t exactly get lots of levels and only managed to put four levels on the Rhino frame.

I am in this strange state of limbo where I think I might want to like Warframe more than I actually like it. I absolutely enjoy playing with my friends, but unfortunately without also playing it solo… I am falling massively behind. The friends who are really super serious about playing this game… are playing it all of the time as their primary game right now. Which means I will always be behind in my ability to actually help them out in missions. It gets frustrating sometimes when you realize you are being carried hard… and there isn’t much you can do about it. I was slow abandoning the bow, and as a result I am struggling to play catch up with my other weapons. The bow is this awesome solo weapon…. but pretty useless for group activity. The problem there is that I feel like the non-bow weapons are less useful for soloing… so when I am stuck going through missions by myself to level them it feels like a sub optimal experience. So as a result… I really didn’t play much warframe this weekend because I am still sorting out my feelings about the game.

Literal Pay to Win

January 23, 2016 by Belghast

Actual Pay to Win

One of the bogeymen of the MMO industry for years has been the concept of “Pay To Win” or the fear that those with the most money can end up with the best stuff. The cycle of what makes an MMO has been right or wrong built on this illusion of a meritocracy. The general idea being, that if you work hard and get really good… you can have the best items in the game for your efforts. The problem with this is that it in itself has always been a lie. Last night I spent several hours hanging out with friends playing Diablo 3, and during that time I simply was along for the ride… getting carried so unbelievably hard that during greater rifts I was gaining a paragon level damned near every-time my friend Carth killed something. Nothing about this situation is me actually having any real merit, but instead was a situation of I knew someone who was willing to drag me along for fame and glory while at the same time increasing their own magic find chances. The same has always been the case with raiding in general, that it is more about who you have an “in” with and that can get you into this or that raid… rather than pure skill. However these games are built under the pretenses that these obstacles need to be there in order to maintain the social order, and keep the gamers from rioting.

In the past when there has been even an hint of “Pay To Win” there have been riots in the streets. The problem being that, there are many games right now with ways to shortcut your way to victory. Granted in many cases they don’t take you all the way there, and you still have to do a lot of things to truly catch up. It has become perfectly acceptable for games like World of Warcraft or Everquest II to sell character boosts, that allow you to jump instantly to an end game equivalent level and be decked out in equivalent gear, saving you the time of actually leveling. So the question is… why is this acceptable but it is not acceptable to sell armor and weapons? I’ve been mulling over these questions while playing Warframe over the last few weeks. The truth is… that game is absolutely a pay to win scenario. If you were to spend multiple thousands of dollars on that game, you could in theory have the absolute best in slot gear for every single frame. The funny thing is that while I know this is the case… it doesn’t actually hinder my enjoyment. I don’t feel like I am somehow being robbed of my experience, but instead I know in the back of my head there is always an out… if I ever get down a path that ends up being too grindy.

Money for Time

“Pay to Win” in the case of Warframe is a bit of a misnomer, because in the purest sense that would mean you are getting something with your money that no one else can get without stepping up to the plate and spending an equal amount. There are lots of games with lootbox grab bags…. and these always seem super insidious to me… I am looking at you Rift and your mounts. Warframe however just feels honest about it. You can farm a planetary boss over and over until you get all three parts of a Warframe to drop… and then purchase the equivalent blueprint off the market for in game credits, or you can just bypass the entire process and pay 200-400 platinum to have it in your grubby hands right then and there. You are paying to speed up time… because there is the act of actually grinding the components… and then gathering up the materials through running missions on planets. Finally there is the actual time of crafting the thing. Each of the three sub components take about 24 hours to craft, and then the final Warframe craft takes between 2 and 3 days depending on if it is a normal or a prime frame. So if you absolutely have to have something right then and there…. you can pay a premium to get it delivered into your hands.

What I find more interesting though is just how thriving the secondary market is when it comes to purchasing items. There are so many things that you can trade in this game, and for almost every single one of them there is a secondary market. Players are limited to a specific number of trades per day, but you can often times find what you are looking for in the secondary market for prices cheaper than the official shop. So while you can’t actually buy the Prime Rhino Warframe from the shop right now, you can find a player that has collected the four component pieces and essentially pay them platinum for the act of farming it for you. So the cycle is interested, in that those who have the time to run missions over and over to farm up complete pattern sets…. can easily turn that time into money. The folks who don’t have the time, but can afford to spend some money… can turn that money into the resources that help them play the game more efficiently. It is far from a utopia, but it is nowhere near the apocalypse that most MMO players would predict.

Two Way Street

I think the key to this feeling overall “fair” is the fact that it is absolutely a two way street. There are lots of times in MMOs where the “house” steps in the middle and offers a not entirely fair deal to both sides of the equation. For example in the case of the World of Warcraft token… it is not literally a case of one human selling a commodity to another human. Instead there is an algorithm in the middle, that buys tokens from players for a floating amount of in game gold… and then sells that token back to players who want to use it in lieu of subscription time. The problem is… this formula takes human nature out of the equation, the thing that makes the whole experience interesting. In games like Rift and EQ2, that have direct exchange of subscription token to currency between two players…. the patient player can wait out the best possible deal. There were many cases where I sat on a token for weeks until I found someone who absolutely had to have that token right then to continue their substitution, and wound up getting a premium for it. Similarly I am sure there are players who took advantage of market surplus to stock up on tokens when they were cheap and ended up spending far less in game currency as a result. The reason why that felt better, was that there were options… that you were not essentially dealing with a vending machine that took its on theoretical cut.

What I think I like the most about this situation in Warframe is that it feels like I have a lot of options. I can go much more slowly and solo the planets trying to collect the items I need, or I can pester my friends to run it with me multiple times . I could go to the aftermarket and hit the trade channel and look for the items I need to finish out a blueprint set. Or if i am really desperate I can simply open my pocket book, but in all cases I have several different paths to the end goal, and as a result I don’t feel nearly as trapped as I often do in other games. For example right now I would love to have a Moose in World of Warcraft, but the raid I have connections with… that can easily get me one… happens to run at the same time as we record AggroChat. Do I want a moose because it is some status symbol, that somehow places me above other players? God no… I just like collecting mounts, and I like the idea that it looks like a normal group mount but can also fly. If I could plunk down money and pick that mount up on the store… you can bet I would rather than trying to do the copious amount of social engineering it will actually take to get me that damned mount. Warframe…. I can take either path. I can work with friends towards a goal… or I can simply grease the wheels and get everything I feel like I want faster. In truth… I feel like we as players are far more scared of “Pay to Win” than is really warranted.

That Feeling of Missing Out

January 22, 2016 by Grace

When you play with a group of friends sometimes the stars align and you all get excited about one game that everyone enjoys. Most of the time, though, everyone is checking out multiple different games, and occasionally tries to gather everyone to try something they thought was fun.

I’m in this situation now where most of my friends are playing Warframe together. They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves, and what little of the game I’ve poked at looked ok to me. Meanwhile I’m still excited about Diablo 3 season 5. This puts me in a tricky position. Do I drop D3 for a while and play with them? Or do I keep playing the game I’m excited about, but miss out on fun times with my friends? I’ve seen this pattern happen often enough to know that it probably won’t be too long before some or all of them get distracted by other games and drift off to do their own thing for a while, so it makes sense to try to hop on the bandwagon and play together when everyone is in the same place. From what I’ve played last weekend I enjoyed Warframe fine, but it didn’t exactly grab me and pull me in. The allure is more about playing with friends than playing that particular game.

It doesn’t help that my introverted nature makes group play a weird thing for me. I crave it, I really do want to hang out with friends and spend time together. However, it also tires me out much more quickly than playing alone, and I often get that urge to “hide” in solo games for a while if I overdo it. In a weird way MMOs are actually good for me because there’s often solo tasks like farming supplies that need to be done, and group activities like raiding are usually scheduled just a couple times a week. Games, even ones like D3, that are “better” or more rewarding if you are always grouped are the ones that tend to burn me out more quickly unless I am good about enforcing some “me time”.

Anyway I’m still torn between playing with my friends and playing the game I want to play. The biggest time this happened to me was with WildStar, when I watched people go back to WoW or other MMOs and I stayed behind with the game I loved. I don’t regret that at all, but it is still sad to see your friends having fun times without you and hard to seek out new social circles. Maybe this weekend I’ll give Warframe another shot and try out its group play. But I still want to make D3 my focus until I meet more of my goals for the season.

Squirrelghast

January 21, 2016 by Belghast

Flak Cannon Time

When it comes to playing Warframe I have quite literally spent almost 99% of my time playing the game…. in a full or partial group. This greatly colors my feelings about the game, and in truth it has allowed me to play in a super inefficient manner. Last night we had several group missions and then when Tam went to class and Ashgar went to bed… it just kinda broke up and never reformed in spite of us having several people there. Instead of grouping I opted to start working on some of the missions I had not actually unlocked, and I have to say… I am pretty bad at this game. At the very least my chosen play style is not exactly a solo friendly play style. When I am playing my Excalibur with a Bow…. it works great, because I can sneak around and get a bunch of stealth kills. However last night I was trying to level my Atlas with a Braton… and the ability to stealth kill anything was non-existent. In truth I feel like most of the problem is the fact that I have yet to really sort out how I want to mod anything. At some point I need to spend an entire evening leveling mods, and deciding which ones work best with which weapons.

On the positive side of things, I did manage to finish up all of the sub components of the Rhino Prime and now simply have to wait the 72 hours crafting time to get it. I also managed to finish up the Drakgoon Flak Cannon last night, so I spent some time playing with that as well. I keep calling it a Flak Cannon because it very much reminds me of the Flak Cannon from Quake 3. At close range it can be fired like a shotgun, but if you charge up the attack it can be fired from a much longer range and still be effective. I am digging it quite a bit… and managed to have quite a bit of good luck with it running some missions. I still think that the Strun is probably a better choice for a charge in and sword damage playstyle like I tend to favor, which is something that Ashgar suggested. For the time being I am having a blast with this weapon…. and yes that pun was intended. The other thing I did last night was start building a Boltor rifle, to see if I like that as was suggested to me by Scarybooster. I mean in theory I could have gone shopping for a Boltor prime, but I happened to have all of the crafting mats available to make one without really dipping low in anything. I guess tonight I will give it a shot and see what I think about it.

Blade and Soul

Right now the new hotness at least among the blogosphere seems to be Blade and Soul, which just launched this week. In fact at this moment it seems like unless you are paying for the game, it is highly unlikely that you are going to actually get to play it. My twitter timeline has been full of folks posting pictures of the insane queue times just trying to log in. The other big problem that I have seen is that it seems like no one is actually playing on the same server. I did a few quick queries and it seemed like everyone I know is playing on completely different servers. I had no real interest in this game prior to launch, and honestly…. there isn’t much about it after launch that interests me. That said…. since it is a freemium game I have this overwhelming desire to at least give it a shot. I have to admit I have some pretty severe biases against Korean MMO art styles. There is just something about the art aesthetic that annoys me… the cloyingly pretty men, and the insane “Jessica Rabbit” style women… its just not my thing.

The positive is that there is a Lalafell like race in Blade and Soul so I decided to try and focus instead on the maximum cuteness potential of that. The problem there is… it just isn’t as good as a Lalafell. I created what I am dubbing Squirrelghast on the Old Man Cho server…. simply because I liked the name. At some point if I end up liking the game I will try and sort out another server to roll on that actually has people I know. The only negative is that I have yet to get any further than character creation because I end up getting dumped into a massive queue… and decided that I would simply rather play Warframe or Diablo 3. It is my hope that over the weekend I will be able to get in and give the game a proper try. The only thing I really know about it from clips is that it seems to be an MMO about the whole flying wire “crouching tiger hidden dragon” style of combat. These movies never really appealed to me either, because they just felt so over the top silly to see someone calmly flying across the screen. I’ve heard however that the localization job that Carbine did on this title was really damned good, and much like Final Fantasy XIV they slipped in a ton of cultural references. If for no reason other than that… I kinda want to play it. I really love the folks at Carbine and they seem to do a great job with the games under their care, so it is my hope that I will be charmed enough by the localization effort to overlook all the things I don’t care for.