Okay, Warframe is something I completely stumbled upon. You know when you're up late at night and you casually browse the Xbox Live store, hoping to find something good to play? Something not too expensive, and a title where you can gain a few achievements? Well, after downloading Smite and realising it was utterly impossible to make progress without paying for the developer's next holiday, I saw Warframe.
It was free. Naturally, I scoured the furthest corners of the Web (basically Reddit) to find out if the game was really entirely free. And it was. There were hundreds of stories of players who hadn't paid a penny and were dominating the game. Even though it seemed to be completely irrational, the game could be enjoyed for free, even at the highest levels of play.
So I downloaded it. That was around two months ago. Now I hate it. Here's why.
It has players who are completely, utterly selfish
They're everywhere, the selfish players. You drop into a Survival or Defence mission in the hope of maxing the level of your Nerf Gun (or whatever hopelessly weak weapon you can find in the first few games you play) and then, within a few seconds, you see another landing ship right next to yours. They've piggybacked your mission. Or stolen it.
Then as soon as you touch down the other player zooms off like a missile, killing 30 of the 35 enemies you have to destroy before you've dusted yourself down. And then, to add insult to injury, they add you as a friend afterwards.
The Weapon Tease
This one is obvious, and it's probably the single biggest cause of frustration among new players. If you check out your arsenal and decide to upgrade a weapon or Warframe, you are shown all the cool stuff you can't afford. The glittering prizes are even pasted onto your Warframe so you can see how awesome they are, and then instantly feel like a child who didn't get what they wanted at Christmas.
Never mind ruining kid's lives by telling them there's no Santa. That's not even close to realising that you will have to spend another 73 playing hours before you can afford a Vaykor Hek.
The Blueprint System
By now you should be aware that I'm not a high level player. And if you're like me, you'll have felt that first flush of excitement and relief when you saw you could buy weapon and Warframe blueprints. Then that first flush turned into bitterness and despair when I came to the realisation that finding the items was of course tied into progression. Sometimes deep progression. If you weren't a God in the game, you were looking at The Mother Of All Grinds. Not cool.
The Forge
This may not be technically a good reason for leaving the game, but it's a reason.
When you finally get your grubby little robotic hands on all the items required for a new weapon or frame, you have to forge it. This is cool, but it kind of dampens your enthusiasm a little when it becomes clear that, yes, you have spent three months trying to find one more piece of 'salvage', and now you'll have to wait another 48 hours before the weapon is forged. It just feels utterly pointless. I sweated blood for this stuff, and I still have to wait?
Sometimes the game feels like some kind of patience simulator. You have to learn to wait.
Mastery
Again, there is this feeling of being kept waiting needlessly. You might slip up when taking the Mastery test (you could be momentarily distracted by a fly landing on your nose, for example) and then get obliterated by the 'tester'. It's soul-destroying, and while many of the lower level game tests are easy, you can still make a mistake and then die. You then have to wait 24 hours.
The lack of a real story
Okay, I'm still pretty new to the game, but I really can't find the motivation to continue along the so-called 'plot'. The campaign isn't really separate from what is still essentially a grind. The game ends up being a matter of tooling up, fighting, buying better gear, then tooling up and fighting some more. Even World of Warcraft has a more compelling story. Actually, the ridiculous COD games have more reasons to invest in the plot.
The Plains of Eidolon
No, I don't know how to pronounce 'Eidolon'. And I don't even know what to do. It's all very well making a massive open world, but if there's nothing to do, what's the point?
The Market
If this marketplace would offer more than a fleeting glimpse of what high level players can do, I'd be happy. Overpriced, hard to communicate with other players, and just unhelpful. Oh, sorry, I think you can buy a fishing rod or something on the market. So you can feel like you're playing Runescape.
The way those 'cleaver' guys move
I presume it's some sort of meat cleaver they're rushing towards you with, but the action just sucks. I hate it because it just looks ridiculous that these characters have the exact same animation. And this makes them feel utterly pointless. Because you could kill them with a peashooter. I guess it was scary and thrilling to watch a butcher on dress-down Friday rush at you, presumably to split your skull, the first time it happened at least. Now, after all the hours I've spent on the game, I often audibly groan.
The quite pointless 'ninja' stuff
The moves you make your Tenno carry out to avoid getting hit are great the first few plays. then you realise that the slide on the floor move just slows you down, the slow-motion shooting in the air is more hassle than it's worth, and that stupid barrel roll thing is only good for farming levels where you've just got to get to extraction. In fact, I haven't seen anyone use the abilities in any meaningful way.
And another thing, why can't Tenno characters punch or kick?