I’ve been a bit late to the Destiny train, but to tide me over until I finally got my hands on it, I spent a lot of time in the free-to-play game Warframe that had recently released on the Xbox One.
Warframe, like Destiny, focuses on Co-op, but they are pretty different past that. You still shoot in both, and loot is a big focus, but the main design methodologies, in terms of mechanics and aesthetics, are what set them apart. It’s been out for a while on PC, which is why there’s a whole load of content for you to explore. It’s fun, frantic, and can be extremely tense.
Warframe is about the Tenno, which are aliens that are essentially Space Ninjas. The Warframe that the game is named after is the suit that these Tenno wear, essentially changing the class that you play, determining abilities, health and shields. You get three weapons, a Primary, such as Assault Rifles, A Bow and Shotguns, a Secondary, with a variety of pistols, and a Melee weapon, such as a Sword (or two of them) or Pole. There’s a good variety of weapon types, but the focus seems to be more on Melee and Stealth, though you don’t have to be sneaky the whole time.
In Warframe, you also have a ship. In a recent update before it’s release on Xbox One, they added the ability to actually walk around your ship when you aren’t in a mission. This houses the store to buy customization, weapons, equipment and anything you need, either for the in-game currency or Platinum, which is bought with real money. It also has a station for crafting, mod management (which is a key mechanic to customization and improving your warframes), the map to send yourself on missions, a codex of all information in the game, an inventory management station, an incubator for a dog follow called Kubrows and more. It’s great to be able to see all of these stations open up in the new Quest System, which introduces the game in a nice, story focused way, and allows you to learn each new station one at a time.
Now, of course Warframe has been out for a while and has been tweaking things for that time, so it’s understandable why they have managed to take in feedback and all these awesome features. This is why I feel that Destiny might be able to take the time to look at this game, and apply some of that to their own game to improve the experience for players. It’s important to note that a lot of the ways Warframe does things is focused on their free-to-play model, so things like loot drops and anything akin to that won’t be discussed here.
When you’re playing Destiny, you start in orbit, looking at your space ship. You use this to go to the Tower to do your daily business or go straight into a mission, patrol, strike or raid. In Warframe, it’s similar, but you’re actually inside your ship. You have access to everything you need and you get to see the ship from a different point of view. Destiny could easily do this, as currently, there’s not much point to changing what ship you actually use, besides what it looks like from the outside. There’s also a little fun addition to Warframe that can help kill time when you’re loading, which is that you can actually move around your ship as it flies through space. Though it’s a small addition, it could make the loading screens in Destiny a bit more entertaining, rather than just staring at the atmosphere or a planet, or zooming through space.
In terms of clan and social abilities in both games, Destiny allows you to create a fireteam of up to 6, most of which is too much for most missions, as 3 is the max unless you’re raiding. Warframe is a little different, and has a total of 4 in it’s co-operative missions. This isn’t something that Destiny needs to change, aside from introducing more content that allows you to play with more of your friends. What’s interesting is that Warframe has a chat log, even on the Xbox One version of the game. These have different channels that you can chat in. One for your squad, if you’re playing with anyone, including randoms, one General Chat, just to see what everyone is talking about, one for Clan recruitment and one for Trading Items. Clans are interesting, as you have your own clan Dojo, which is necessary for you to trade. It’s also a great place to meet up with your friends and organize some groups to go finish missions, or farm for some specific items you may need. Destiny could really learn from this to improve their social aspects. Clans aren’t really prominent in the game, aside from tags you can see on a players emblem when you’re loading up a mission or a match in the Crucible. There’s also a limit to how many you can have in the in-game clan, but not on the clan on the website. This isn’t necessarily a problem for most people, but some YouTube stars have noted that this is awkward when they’d rather not have to have multiple clans so that everyone can play together.
The ability to trade is also huge. Sometimes, at the moment before the big change to engrams, it’s possible that some of the Legendaries you receive may not be for the class you play. It could very well be for one that your friend does. Since there’s a good number of people who would never have an interest in making and levelling another character, their only choice would be to dismantle the legendary. It would be much easier, more efficient and generally nicer to be able to just send it via mail, or trade directly with a friend. Maybe even having a section of the tower specifically for trades between you and any other player that’s currently occupying your section of the Tower. It’s just a nice convenience that is necessary for a game that takes mechanics from the giant MMORPG genre. You can see the chat panels at the bottom of the screenshot below.
So, that’s just what I’ve gathered from my time playing Destiny and Warframe together. Though the comparisons have been made in either game that they’re similar, they’re both fun, but could definitely learn a thing or two from each other to make each game a better experience. This is just my opinion, but what do you guys think? Would you like to see improvements like these in Destiny? What’s the one thing you want to see happen? Let us know!
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