I've played Warframe for well over five years. My review for this game has changed a lot over said years as well. I have a disgusting amount of time, and money, invested into this game. Grandmaster level founder, a few Prime Accesses, and a few plat Purchases here and there when I'd roll coupons.

Let me start out by saying this: that no matter what, I can never ever detract from or undermine DE's commitment to this game. They work tirelessly to update, patch, and improve this game and you really can see the passion and love. DE genuinely has heart and as much as I meme about "DE APPEARS TO HAVE NO INTEGRITY OR TALENT" it's all in jest. DE deserves almost all of the praise they get when it comes to these sorts of blanket, baseline things.

Ontop of that, anyone who does try to 'critique' Warframe and lists "it's p2w" as a point, is a genuinely moron. Completely disregard anything they have to say at that point because it is quite literally bollocks. At most I'd say "pay to progress a little faster," but genuinely, everything in the game (besides Tennogen items, cosmetics made by other users, not DE, in the Steam worskshop) can be earned by playing the game, including the game's premium currency. Period.

But after over five years, and despite plenty of positives and hard work from DE, this game has genuinely gone nowhere in those five years.

Hear me out before you downvote this or X out or whatever.

I don't think it's a foreign concept to anyone that Warframe is fucking repetitive. Like, insanely ridiculously repetitive. This is fine. Grinds are fine. People like to say or even complain about how there's just so much grind in Warframe (it really isn't much more than other grindy games though, let's be honest with ourselves here), and while yes there are a lot of things to get and collect and power up and unlock and what have you... the grind itself is absolutely meaningless.

No, really. You spend all this time making your gun do the most damage possible, your Warframe as powerful as possible, unlocking all of these systems and power ups and upgrades (that DE continues to add onto your character mind you), for what exactly? For five years we have been fighting the same exact enemies, in the same exact tilesets, in the same exact level ranges with absolutely no nuance, goal, or anything to reach for. What exactly is the point of becoming so powerful? We were overpowering wave 120 Defense back before Corrupted Mods were a thing, and that was an activity manufactured by players because there was, and still is, nothing to do when you become powerful. There is nothing in the game, and no Eidolons do not count, to apply all this power and all these upgrades to, because for over 5 years Warframe has had no endgame whatsoever.

There are no dungeons. There are no raids. There are no gear chases or powerful gear to go after. Everything is so homogenized. This became a huge problem when they got rid of void keys. The void used to be, at least in the very early days of Warframe, a genuine endgame space where runs would take a long time because of how much exploration you could do and crazy weird mods you could find, as well as the chase for Prime gear which was exotic to us at the time. Now there's nothing special about prime gear, as literally anyone and everyone can acquire it with little to no effort by either trading for it or just flat out buying it.

And before you try saying it, no, Trials (ie; Law of Retribution and Jordas Verdict) were not 'raids' and the fact that people even tried calling these 'raids' is actually offensive. No. Standing on a button for a few minutes with literally 0 encounters or real mechanics with a big guy you just burn down at the end of it is not a raid. These were elongated 8 man missions. No nuance. No encounters. No mechanics. No meaningful loot. Nothing. These were some of the worst and most unrewarding pieces of content I've ever played in any game.

And obviously the Void even if it stayed the way it was, would never realistically last as the endgame space for players, obviously endgame needs its layers. New stuff to see and do and encounter. But there's nothing. There is literally nothing and there has been nothing for half a decade now. No endgame activities or spaces. No endgame loot to chase. No meaningful grinds. Just more sideways progression every update one after another. I'm sure there are a lot of people excited about Fortuna, but it doesn't take away from the fact that its absolutely pointless content that people will burn through after sitting through all the timegates (ie; daily limits for Standing that will affect every fucking facet of it just like it did with Plains) and then forget about, just like Plains.

Everyone was so amazed and hyped by Plains of Eidolon, and now Fortuna, but really ask yourself what does this do for the game? How does this improve the game? What exactly is this adding that will be valuable towards the game's progression and content pool? More of the same crap for the sake of having more stuff? More Zaws to level up and then ditch and forget about? Oh yeah cus that was such an exciting and totally not overly tedious system; those modular weapons. Having to piece together each part, level it to 30, and then Gild it with standing that you may or may not be able to earn for the day and then level it again for it to actually not only count towards your Mastery but even be remotely usable too. Wowie, I sure loved doing that for every Zaw and Amp! I can't wait to do that again in Venus! All this CONTENT!

And herein lies a huge problem with not only Warframe itself but people who love to praise it. A lot of people like to contend that Warframe has all this "content," endless "content," and that DE keeps updating the game with tons and tons of "content." And while from a certain, completely devoid of any thought point of view this could be considered true, there's a heavy difference between 'content' and 'padding.' Warframe doesn't have a lot of content, it has a lot of padding. Adding new weapons, warframes, tilesets, what have you means absolutely nothing if there's still no point to any of it, if its still all just more of the same.

Something like Fortuna, quite literally does not add anything of value to the game. It's another huge, lifeless map with nothing going on, where you run typical Warframe missions, except instead of running down hallways really fast, you're running for 3 minutes from point A to B a few times. That's literally it. There is nothing impressive (gameplay wise, on a technical level its incredible), game changing, or fundamentally meaningful about these open world spaces DE is pushing. I commend them for the work they put in, I really do, I will not take that away from them, but these are NOT what Warframe needs. Especially when for two years in a row the game has had content droughts for the sake of these open world maps. And no, adding a Hoverboard does not make it interesting. It doesn't make it "OMG HYPE!" It's just more fucking padding. People were going absolutely nuts during the Fortuna reveal while I was sitting here wondering when the fuck are we going to get an endgame?

I'm probably making a massive mistake putting this in here, because Steam is filled with children and Warframe players are some of the most savage, unreasonable people on the planet, and I know its just the 'cool thing' now to bash on this game, but I've genuinely had more meaningful experiences in a year of Destiny 2 than I ever had in over 5 years of Warframe. And that's WITH Vanilla being bland and Curse of Osiris being shit (save for Eater of Worlds, which is a great fucking miniature raid and made how shitty CoO was kind of worth it, was still a terrible fucking expansion though). Really, Destiny 2 didn't become great until Warmind, but even despite that I managed to have a more meaningful grind and experience and MORE OF THEM in D2, than Warframe has provided in over 5 years or will continue to provide. Doesn't that say something?

DE's priorities are not in the right place. I don't want more 'content' for the sake of saying "wow look at all this 'content' gee," I want a meaningful grind and endgame experience to get lost in. I've waited over five years now, almost six thousand hours in and I'm like $600 deep and the game has genuinely not gone forward. All the reworks, [Insert system here] 2.0/3.0's, open world spaces, and new weapons and frames in the world aren't going to mean a thing if there's nothing to actually do with them or apply them to. You can try crying at me "IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE IT THEN WHY DID YOU PLAY FOR SO LONG/WHY DID YOU SPEND MONEY ON THE GAME" and the answer is simple you shrieking lunatic; I had hope. I saw potential. I kept holding out. I wanted DE to do something with the game. So I played, and invested, and brought people in, hoping that it would all wind up paying off or meaning something. I did this for over FIVE YEARS. If you really try negating my credibility for this review just because I said I had a better experience with a different video game, then I'm sorry but you are genuinely part of the problem and really have no idea what you're even talking about. I have more a right to complain or feel defeated by this game's lack of anything than probably anyone, with the amount of time and investment I put in and gave DE.

So after all of that, would I ever in good conscience recommend this game? The answer is no, because this isn't a game that I'd want to continue playing. Don't get me wrong, Warframe is in no way a BAD GAME. It is a very high quality product with very unique gameplay and by far the strongest game on the F2P market and well deservedly so. It's very very GOOD especially if the things I mentioned do not bother you. However they bother me, a lot, and I need my games to go somewhere, and Warframe has been in the same spot is has always been. Its had countless updates and systems added and reworked and what have you , but it still hasn't GONE anywhere and at this rate I doubt it will. I'm sure I'll come and check out whatever updates they add, especially the quests cus those are kind of enjoyable, but to recommend this as a game you should play? No. I can't. Sorry.