Warframe Concept

There's often been a discussion about the place for wheelchairs in fantasy games. Personally, we're all four it, but what about in science fiction? Christopher Pine (Star Trek) was wheelchair-bound. Hell, he was completely paralysed - not even having facial expressions. Could they have fixed it?  Quite probably, actually. But... not the point, now is it?

This got me to thinking about Warframe, with their space ninja. And of all the types out there, there's only one or two which could be considered 'different' - there's the one that's a composite of other Warframes. There's the one who's had her face blown through. But honestly, that's about it. Every single one of them is a super-agile killing machine.  But what about a concept for one that isn't - in the conventional sense?

See, I'm picturing a Warframe that doesn't have the ability to use her legs. She's in effect paralysed from the waist down.  And what happens is that the transference spark effectively carries her, holding her (often in a seated position, with her legs stretched out some), and guiding her around as she does her missions. The "ghost" is the one that has the mobility, bringing her along and giving her the means of travel.

What's the Warframe's power? Effectively Gravity Control.  She has a sword out? It hovers in front of her, lashing out and cutting anything in her path. She has kunai? They hover and twirl in front of her, then lash out, flinging themselves across the room at her enemies. I'd consider her passive to be a bonus to damage when using thrown / kinetic weapons (bows, crossbows, kunai, glaives, etc).

So what's her active powers?

1) Exalted Kunai.  Channelled Energy blades that hover and twirl around her that she can launch. Much like Ivara's Exalted Bow, or Excalibur's Exalted Blade, or Titania's Dex Pixia. Much as with these weapons, the exalted kunai are moddable.

2) Apportation. Pick a destination, and she gets 'flung' to that location. It's similar to a teleport, but you have to be able to cross the distance normally and you will physically move from one spot to the other.  The way I see it is that your WF hangs suspended as your apparition crosses the distance as per normal bullet jumping / wall running, etc, and when you activate the power again the WF is flung to your location. The way I'd deal with this is that your apparition doesn't have a 'cling limit' to walls and such, and can do literal wall-running to get from point to point - pretty good for some of the Corpus stages with the huge drops. You could also 'cancel' and go back to your WF body.

3) Poltergeist. Used with Exalted Kunai - you unleash a barrage of kunai against all enemies within an area, peppering them with multiple hits.

4) Haven't thought this far yet.

It'd be significantly different, but I like the idea.

TennoCon 2018

Samantha:  First time ever to a gaming convention!  It was a long-ass drive there, 11 hours, and a long-ass drive back, about 7 hours or 8 hours.  The drive got on everyone's nerves, and there was a bit of negativity involved, but the convention itself was fun.

Once I've had a chance to relax and decompress, I'll try to go into more detail.

Twitchy

Samantha

So, I'm on Twitch.  There's a long story about this though..

See, my brother had a Twitch account - we don't remember why, but he had it, so when Warframe started doing videos on Twitch, we decided to go hang out and watch it.  It's nice getting free things, you know?  So, recently, Warframe had a special thing, where if you watched some of their 'official' streamers, you could get extra stuff.

I decided to select a few, and watch them, and it was fun watching different people playing the game I enjoyed.  Ultimately, I wound up gravitating to one streamer more than the others - Fateful.  She made me a moderator on the first day - something I hadn't expected, and I've sat back and watched her play a variety of games - and get paid for it.

So, I decided to give this a shot.  I started streaming my games - with a few bumps along the way - and I've been slowly getting the hang of setting up the screen for people to see, adding the bells and whistles, and generally adapting to the idea of being a streamer.  I've picked my time slot - though it's stupidly late at night - and I'm trying to get into the flow of things - like talking to myself while I play.  It's hard with only one monitor though, because it's difficult to see what's going on in the stream while I'm running around, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Wish me luck!

There's Always Complications

Samantha

I've kinda stopped playing Guild Wars 2.  There was a lot of drama - not with me, but in general.  People I was hanging out with kind of went away, my guild was barely being represented, and things kind of fell apart.  The people I wanted to go run around with already did the material, so it was rehashing for them, or weren't really that interested anymore.

So it stopped being fun.  Kit's the person who's okay running around all by himself and seeing things, I'm the person who wants a group of friends to hang out with and chat with while I'm running around with them, the group of us seeing new things, and sharing the experience of exploring.  I mean, this is kinda what I did in Guild Wars 1 - I had a group, we met up once a week, and we pushed through the storylines, seeing what was going on.  When I got into GW2, it kinda fell apart, people went their own way, or stopped showing up at all.  I had to make a new group of friends for the game, and.. well, that didn't last long.

This whole thing with 'you can be in more than one guild' sucked.. because there were bigger guilds, more active guilds, guilds who had dozens and scores of members and who got all the 'good stuff', and.. left me with nothing.

Going into Warframe, we've got a bunch of new players coming in, or people who've not played in awhile and are just really getting into it again now.  Michelle's Clan had two members before I joined, and now I think we're close to 10 or so.  There's a few people on through the day, and we can team up and do stuff and chat on Discord while we're running around - and it's fun!

There's two people I was hoping would really get into it - enjoying something that I enjoy.. but.. yeah.  There's complications.  They're both pretty laconic when it comes to groups, fading into the background unless you specifically talk to them.. and one doesn't enjoy groups that much, while the other one's got.. reservations.. about the Clan because of certain dynamics.

They're both kinda important to me - I want them to have fun in something I'm enjoying.  I want to do things with them.  But it looks like that's not really going to happen.  So I'm conflicted.  I could spend less time doing something I'm enjoying to hang out with them - even if it means doing things less fun, or I can try to drag them into this.. knowing they're not having fun.. or I can spend less time with them, feeling bad about enjoying something without them.

And it all sucks.

A part of me is also worried that the 'new game' shine is going to fade for the people I'm hanging out with, leaving me abandoned again.  Typically, when this starts up, I'll be the first to bail - go find something else to do to distract me from feeling alone when things get complicated.  I don't want to do that to Michelle though, so I'll stick around.. but I'm worried I'm going to get hurt again, that I'll look around, and the people I was hanging out with have all gone to do something else.

:<

All I want is a game, and friends I care about who play the game with me, and us having fun.  Why is it so hard to find something so simple?

Warframe: A Review

Samantha
A bit over a month ago, I went to visit my friend Michelle in Montreal, and she introduced me to a game called Warframe.  For the two or three people on the planet who's never heard of it, Warframe is a third person space ninja shoot-and-stab 'em up that's free to play.

So, I had heard of the game before in passing, in that vague 'huh, it's a game I'm not interested in' sort of way, and didn't even give it a second thought, but Michelle was playing it a lot when I was over, so after a week of her nudging me, I thought I'd at least give it a half-hearted try to amuse her.. and found I kinda like the game.  A lot.  In the 'I will damn well spend money on this game' sort of way for the fashion stuff and everything.

The game has a bit of a learning curve, but during that curve, you start to feel kinda awesome very quickly.  The game's backstory makes you a legendary individual, rising from a deep sleep to try to bring balance to the universe.  You're kind of a super soldier with the ability to change 'frames', which are effectively character classes, in power armour form, that lets you slaughter hundreds of baddies and look totally awesome while doing so.

The game is mad-customizable, with different frames, which you can colour a whole slew of ways, metric ass-tonnes of weapons, with a primary, secondary, and melee weapon available, and your frames and your weapons are also customizable, with mods, which allow you to tailor your stuff to the style of play you want.  You can get animal companions (cats and dogs), and you can get mechanical floating sidekicks called sentinels, all of which have unique traits and can be, again, customizable to your style of play.

Everything levels.  You have 25 Ranks to work through, which is done by levelling your frames, weapons, companions, and sentinels.  Each can go to Level 30, and that's pretty easy to do.  But once you have it levelled, you can 'reset' it, altering one of the 'slots' for mods, and relevel it all over again.  You do this, because when you tweak one of the mod slots, you can start putting in stronger and stronger mods (since you have limited capacity for what you can add).  Each time you gain a Rank, you start your gear 'ahead' a bit - they're still starting at Level 0, but are treated like they're at your Level as far as modding is concerned.

You can play solo, with your friends, or in pick up groups, of up to four people total.  There's Clans to join, which have 'dojo' which can be customized to look awesome, and there's voice chat (though I tend to voice chat with my friends in Discord).  Most of the people are pretty cool even in pick-up-groups, and there's ample trade.

There's an optional PvP duelling arena, but I don't touch it - I much prefer going on missions with people and being awesome as a group - even though I'm normally a solo-style person.  The game makes it fun to work with others - it rewards teamwork, and if you are close to an ally, any XP they earn also benefits you, so there's the impetus to work together towards a common goal.

The backstory's interesting, and when you complete The Second Dream, everything you thought you knew about the game changes.  It adds a lot of interesting stuff, and The War Within which is the quest afterwards, turns everything on its head again.  A number of quests are to help you get additional warframes, but those two quests specifically are, I think, essential to the game, and are just amazing.

The standard style of play is sort of a 'dungeon delve' thing - you go on a mission, kill all the bad guys, accomplish the goal, and get out in about 10 to 40 minutes, depending on your skill and the type of mission, but recently they've added sandbox play with the Plains of the Eidolon.  That region's free to roam around in as you wish, and they're going to be adding a new sandbox region soon.

So yeah!  I didn't think I'd enjoy the game - I don't like third person or first person shooters, but the game play, the community, the company itself (who are awesome folks who listen to their players and interact with them regularly) and the story and background all contribute to this awesome game I can't say enough about.  I really recommend it!