It’s been a long while since I stopped playing Warframe, Digital Extreme’s still-living live service free-to-play looter-shooter. I felt like I have moved on, had enough of the grind-craft, and none of the big content updates appealed to me. Until they announced and now released Warframe 1999.
And during this “off-season” if you will, where new games and game news have slowed a bit, I decided to try a bunch of other games but nothing sticked, but it was Warframe, of all things, that got me in that gaming groove again.
As a lapsed played jumping back in 2025 since the Railjack update, it’s good to be playing Warframe again. The game has a lot going for it. It’s still weird. There are many, many more things to grind and craft for. And the rewards for doing so are satisfying. And binging through the main quests just to get to The Hex, the new main quest that comes with Warframe 1999, has rekindled my love for this weird game that used to be about space ninjas.
It’s Just As Fun With A Controller
I’ve been playing Warframe only on PC, and even then, always on a keyboard and mouse. And that’s because of Warframe has some movement mechanics that just makes more sense, at least to me before, on KB+M than it is on a gamepad. Regular traversal involves performing “bullet-jumps”, a momentum-based crouch-into-jump that propels you further and faster. You could just run, but if you’re playing with other folks, everyone just bullet jumps, and you better keep up. Veterans are fine with waiting, but that’s just bad manners if you keep people waiting, right?
I was hessitant to try the game on consoles for the longest time because of this. But now that the game has cross save, and I don’t have a daily driver PC at the moment, I gave the game on PS5 a shot, and was surprised at how quick I got used to playing on controllers.
Aiming is a problem, that’s a skill issue on my part. But bullet jumping becomes second nature again quickly. Warframe has to bind crouch to L1 (left bumper), an odd button for crouch, but pressing L1+X over and over to bullet jump, plus hovering with L2, all makes perfect sense. I can’t say that I kept up to speed with the vets, even on keyboard and mouse I still lag behind them. But the game is perfectly playable on a controller. And on consoles too. On the PS5, the game runs buttery smooth reaching what my eyes perceive as imagery running at 60 FPS. And the slowdowns I see are the same ones even the PC versions have, like the transitions between the hub world and open world on Earth, Venus and Deimos.
Quests As New Mechanics Tutorial
Playing some of the quests back-to-back made me realise how these are all designed. It’s all a tutorial. The first quest I did on my current playthrough was The Deadlock Protocol, the quest to unlock the Protea warframe. It has lore reveals and new mechanics that you have to do. But the moment when the quest starts asking you to do the same thing again, that’s where it clicks: this is all a tutorial for something. And it was. Once the quest is done, you can access those hidden rooms again to farm (grind) for parts to craft Protea proper.
And then I played The Duviri Paradox, that super-weird content that seems to be another open world, and it is, sort of. The story has even more lore ramifications, all of them smartly told with good cinematics. Not a fan of the shot-reverse-shot-shot camera angles for those one-on-one dialogues though. But this one is really odd as there’s a lot more tutorialising than I thought. Of course, there needs to be a tutorial for the new Drifter gameplay, a new character you control with moveset entirely different to a warframe. But then it feels like it wants to tutorialise how to control a warframe at some point of this time-loop adventure.
Turns out, The Duviri Paradox was designed with the intent of this being an alternate start for newcomers, which explains how weird it is with the onboarding. The developers then change course and made it unlock a little later instead as its own, independent side quest. It’s now a main quest again due to its story ties with Warframe 1999’s content.
Between these two quests, I got a good grasp of the gameplay loop these parts of the game operates on. Warframe is a big game with many disparate content and features, and it’s nice that there is an onboarding before letting players loose.
After the Deadlock Protocol, I clearly learned that this is a badly designed grind-craft loop where I will need to find a dedicated group of folks who all wants to farm for Protea. Thankfully I don’t need to, as apparently I already have Protea from a Twitch drop from so long ago I forgot that I even tuned in a Twitch livestream for it. After The Duviri Paradox, I understand clearly what this weird update was about, it’s Warframe’s roguelike mode. And it rules. It’s one of the smartest grind-craft loop they designed.
The Waverider quest is not as good of a tutorial though. The challenges are great at showing what a K-Drive hoverboard can do, it has combat usages apparently, and there are descriptions to how to clear them. But the mechanics of how to use a K-Drive isn’t as obvious that you can figure out by pressing buttons. Some outside reference is still required on that one.
What’s Grind-Craft?
Speaking of grind-craft, let me explain this term I made up just for this piece. It’s to describe the core gameplay loop of specific looter-shooters like Warframe and other Warframe-likes including The First Descendant.
In the case of Warframe, the big aspirational gear don’t randomly drop (mods, essential cards that modify your gear stats, do randomly drop). Instead, you get tons and tons of resource materials throughout the course of your play. To earn these aspirational gear, mainly weapons and warframes (and a few others) in this case, you’ll need to have blueprints for them and their associated resources to craft them.
Some blueprints only drop at specific locations and missions, and they don’t drop that often which means if you’re aiming for a specific blueprint, you will have to grind for them. If it’s the hot new item from a recent update, you’ll bound to find like-minded players in public matchmaking which should make the ordeal easier.
Blueprints don’t just build the entire gear, rare gear like new warframes require blueprints to craft its three specific parts, and then another to combine these three parts plus one other resource.
In short, what makes Warframe and Warframe-likes fun is this time-consuming process of grinding for parts and later crafting them.
It’s a grind, yes, but when you get that blueprint drop eventually it means you earn it. And if you just joined in a group and get that rare drop, you’re absolutely lucky.
It’s not far off from gacha but instead of feeling you wasted money, you wasted time, and for players who are all about sinking time in their games, that’s a fair trade.
You can skip the grind entirely by buying the things you wanted using premium currency. But putting in the time to grind and then to craft (which works on a timer, you can’t get the things you craft immediately unless you pay to skip the wait) is a sense of achievement.
What Makes A Good Grind-Craft Loop
With that in mind, Warframe becomes a fun time to put the hours in when the grind-craft loop is effortless. For another example, the grind-craft loop for the rather recent warframe Koumei. After completing the pre-requisite quests, you just talk to one person, go to the new shrine, and you get instant access to the mission to grind for Koumei-related blueprints. The blueprints can drop randomly from the mission itself, or you can buy them using currency earned exclusively from that specific mission.
What makes this good is its ease of access. You can either initiate the quest from the Shrine in the Cetus hub world, or from the map on board the ship. The mission itself is simple to understand, and can be completed quickly with a busted warframe setup. And then you can rinse and repeat. A good few hours of grinding and you can get Koumei free. It’s designed to be easy to grind-craft, even the crafting time for Koumei is shorter than other warframes.
The complete opposite is Protea. Access to the secret space to earn her blueprints requires playing on a specific mission of a specific tileset. Then you have to find a special enemy that only spawns after completing The Deadlock Protocol to earn a special currency. And then you have to find a special location within the procedurally-generated map to insert said coins. Then you have a limited to be in the secret space and do a specific attack tied to a specific melee weapon. And also, try to convince other random players to deviate from the objective to do all this. An impossible task.
And since Protea is already rather old, I don’t think you can easily find random players partaking in this arduous grind. It’s too complex for its own good. That being said, doing the Deadlock Protocol quest itself was fun. The unique glaive you get and its specific attack it has is super fun when you get the hang of it.
And this grind-craft problem affects another popular content: the bounties in the open world. Of my attempts in playing in public matchmaking groups, it’s just hard to find players who are all out grinding for bounties. There are plenty of new players that don’t know what to do, and with the vastness of these maps they tend to meander and get lost on the way to the objective, assuming they know they needed to get there. And the way the bounties are scaled really doesn’t help. Some dedicated folks are out there doing high level bounties, something where new players will get shredded immediately if they attempt to help out.
Which is why appreciate The Duviri Paradox’ approach to its grind-craft. It has an open world, but it’s tightly scripted as you always start with a “bounty” and with no free roaming. And from my experience, every player should be strong enough to complete most of the objectives on their own, so there’s no issues of improper scaling. As a result, grind-crafting is more accessible, and everyone of any skill level can start getting the resources they need without much headache as compared to the open world experiences.
On a side note, Warframe has been getting better at giving info on how to grind within the game. In the Market, you can find info on where part blueprints drop for a warframe if you hover on “buy blueprint”, so it can set you off to your grind-craft loop. You can ask in the in-game chat and a bot will tell you where to go. Having pages of wiki on-hand is still more helpful, but now I am opening less pages than I did when I started playing years ago.
Warframe Is Bingeable
This is a funny thing to say, but I do feel Warframe is bingeable. In that if you leave the game for a few years and come back, you’ll be feasting with so many things to do.
I think why I dropped the game way back when is that when I was finally all caught up on the story, the desire to grind-craft loses its lustre. There’s no new things to discover. Waiting for that new shiny content drop feels like forever. It’s just, well, a grind.
But now coming back after a few years and seeing they have added oh-so-many cool warframes (Gyre looks sick) and weird warframes (Jade looks modest with her more rotund silhouette—SHE’S WHAT?!?!), it sparks that lost desire to grind-craft once more. In the span of a weekend I spent 30 hours into Warframe, adding more than 10% of my overall playtime so far.
Actively playing the game every day doesn’t fit my lifestyle (and my work style, we have to cover a variety of games at Gamer Matters). And other than Prime Vaulting, there’s not much FOMO inducement being done. Anyone can safely quit and return to catch up on what they’ve been missing out.
While I have some issues with the game as stated, some of these can be easily rectified by having a friend group playing together or interacting with the community. There are plenty of players willing to help out, either from the in-game chat or through clan dojos.
Though there are still elements of the game that may stop you from making progression, like the limited slots for warframes and weapons, which you have to either pay premium currency to unlock more or grind through the game’s free battle pass system Nightwave. But if you’re running into that issue, it’s likely at a time where you feel like you can spend a few Ringgit on premium currency.
Oh, and Warframe has regional pricing in Malaysia. You’re not paying four times the price in USD for purchases. And it’s cheaper if you buy stuff directly from the game’s site. This game is cool like that.
Is Warframe Worth Playing In 2025?
Yes. If you’re looking to find a new game to binge on, or if your favourite live service game seems to be facing a content draught, Warframe is still well alive, keeping it rolling with the occasional big, headline-catching updates. You’re not missing out in any content other than some Prime gear that’s currently vaulted. There’s plenty of content to binge-play through, for newcomers and lapsed players alike.
Wake up, Tenno. Game’s good fun right now as of early 2025.