So I’ve talked a lot about ideas in this column over the past few weeks, but now I think it’s time to start diving into an experiment that Warframe went all-in on starting in 2017. And it was a big deal when it happened. The first open world area, the Plains of Eidolon, was introduced then and got a lot of people excited just from the concept. It was a clear sign that Warframe was expanding as a game, exploring new means of content delivery, trying out something exciting and novel. And the Orb Vallis and Cambion Drift came next, both refining the gameplay.
And then it stopped.
You might point out that technically we did get another free-roam area in Duviri, and I promise, I will get to that, but for all intents and purposes it doesn’t count. The last real free roam area added was on Deimos, and that was a good four-to-five years ago now. By contrast, we’ve gotten very different content for subsequent factions.
So what went wrong? Why didn’t open world areas work?
First and foremost, I think it’s important to talk about the difference between open world areas and the average Warframe mission because a lot of the language we use to discuss these concepts is frankly just wrong. It’d be easy to call the latter “instanced,” for example, but both of these modes of content are equally instanced. If my friend is in a group with three other people on the Plains of Eidolon, I cannot join that group. And Warframe is hardly alone in this; lots of games use instanced field areas in varying capacities.
More importantly, normal missions are not exactly straight shots all the time. Within a single Corpus map I can very easily wind up starting on capture with a void fissure to open a relic, get the objective shifted to exterminate, kill a treasurer, enter a Granum Void, get a Sister of Parvos, and free a Solaris worker. These maps are not devoid of side objectives!
So what we’re going to use here is a different term – directed experiences – because that is the real difference for the game’s open worlds. These are not directed experiences but sprawling boxes full of encounters you can possibly have, but they have a distinct problem: They’re just not as fun.
And in part it’s because of the shooting.
As a game, Warframe is about shooting things. The strongest two features it has are very satisfying movement through maps and very solid shooting gameplay, combined with systems that allow you to really do a lot of things to customize your shooty sticks. That’s not a bad thing, and it is honestly why you play the game in the first place. You were attracted by shooting things.
Open world zones feature a whole lot of not shooting things with guns.
The funny thing is that the not-shooting-things parts of the open world are still, basically, shooting things. Mining, fishing, and conservation are all activities that require you to do something that is ostensibly not shooting enemies until they die because you’re using a tranq rifle or a mining laser or a fishing spear. And that’s not a shock because “aim at thing and then shoot that thing” is literally the mechanic the game is built around.
But not only do you wind up having to not use the carefully curated shooty sticks you’ve acquired in order to take part in these activities, you actually have a distressing lack of control over what you are gathering in an unpleasant fashion. You need to spend a bunch of time spearing fish and cutting them up to get materials you need in order to craft a variety of important items, but you can’t control what fish spawn much of the time, you have to stand around waiting for the right window, and so forth. Compare this to gathering materials most of the time, which is a matter of “finding the best mission for these drops and running it a bunch by shooting things.”
Compounding the problem, though, is that you are getting shot at.
Now, as a shooter, Warframe has a pretty clear balance in favor of the players. This is proper and intentional. You kill mooks far faster than they can kill you most of the time, and if you’re good at moving quickly and shooting mooks, you have a pretty big bias in favor of your durability. By contrast, individual mooks are kind of irrelevant. You don’t need to worry about them, and killing them is not pointless, but it is arguably low on point.
So you have to go out and do things you otherwise might not in order to get resources, but in the process you are getting potentially attacked by random enemies. This means that instead of just gathering, you have to periodically stop in order to get into firefights with the open-world spawns that you don’t even want to fight because they don’t help you at all. And because of how the open worlds work, fighting is more likely to draw more things to fight whether you like it or not, and when several of the things you’re trying to do are also time-limited…
Now, none of this would be a huge problem if the open world zones offered something really cool and unique for Warframe as a game. But they don’t. The bounties just string together a handful of objectives that aren’t really all that different from the experience of just running normal missions. The landscapes are pretty static and don’t really have many points of interest to explore. It is seemingly the worst of all worlds, pun very much intended.
Duviri, very clearly, was an effort to do something wildly different with the fundamental concepts of the open world structure by leaning in on a roguelike structure. But you’ll also note that it doesn’t include basically any of the side activities in their normal forms – no mining, no conservation, and no fishing beyond whatever the Maw was supposed to feel like. It’s also not really meant as a place you explore but instead is a sort of different take on ordinary tile maps.
And it’s still… not really a home run. It’s fun as an occasional dip into an alternative way to play the game, you don’t have a problem finding groups, but it doesn’t attract the sort of constant play you get from other content like even Hollvania.
Warframe is a game that has done a lot with its maps, and I think it could find more ways to do new things; it’s clear from content like the Cavia and 1999 that the developers are eager to explore new kinds of missions and new approaches to play. And those branches of content even got us new enemy groups instead of more Grineer, Corpus, and Infested. I respect the ideas at play in the open world zones.
But we have to acknowledge when good ideas don’t stick the landing, and this is just such an example. The structure of the game ultimately renders these as interesting but not entirely successful experiments compared to others. They exist in a bit of a limbo, a good set of ideas that just don’t quite stick the landing and are ultimately less fun than the sum of their parts.
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
