Thanks for the high quality trailer, key art (wallpaper) and images.

Really excited for the Plains of Eidolon expansion update, it will introduce a huge open world area to the game - the first of many, if people like it. This free and huge expansion will bring:

A new story quest, new Warframe, new weapons, new armors, new enemies, new bosses, some reworked core systems, new and improved Archwing (flying) controls, new modular weapons system (crafting), fishing, mining, new resources, a new Deluxe skin, new lighting and shadow systems, improved performance, and so much more.

All of that for free - attainable through playing and trading. Warframe is one of the best examples of Free-to-Play done right. Now to scream that it will launch in the same week as Middle-earth: Shadow of War and The Evil Within 2. Too much great games, so little time.

Played a tonne of this back when PS4 came out, and i never really found it that grindy. I did find you had to spend at least a little though just to expand inventory slots. Otherwise its a great example of how to do free to play right! Might jump in for this update.

Warframe rarely felt grindy to me if I just did normal things like constructing warframes, weapons and other useful items. It's true that just by playing the game normally, you start collecting resources to build stuff and with time, you end up getting everything. If I'm not mistaken, the average time to get everything non-cosmetic in the game is around 500-700 hours - with a few exceptions like arcanes and PvP stuff, but mostly due to the sheer insane amount of content.

Warframe becomes extremely grindy if you start shooting for specific stuff and want it as soon as possible, which makes you start repeating the same things over and over until you acquire that thing, instead of playing normally and when you have enough parts and resources, you just build it. I have done that in the past a lot and that's when it becomes grindy as hell.

Still, Digital Extremes has changed a lot of things over the years in order to lessen the grinding - to a very high degree - and add variety and choice in how you pursue certain goals. Their best source of income are what's called "Prime" items, which are sold in Prime Access bundles - which costs a lot imho. In the past, trying to acquire a specific set was extremely grinding and boring most of the time, taking days and sometimes even weeks.

But around 2 years ago, they changed that system to be so fast and easy that what used to take days and sometimes even weeks, now it's done in a few hours. The end result is that Prime Access bundles' sales have heavily declined, as have the trading prices of these items - they used to sell for 800-1000 platinum in the first few days, but now they're being sold by 300-400 platinum in the first few hours.

I barely play the game anymore other than just doing daily events - 3 missions - and crafting Forma to make weapons stronger. Yet, I find myself in the ironically comic position in which I have an absurd amount of resources of all types and don't have anything left to do other than just do daily events and craft stuff, mostly of this just by playing the game normally for the past year.

I don't want to go into more detail because this would become an even longer message than it already is, but in the past 4 years the game has changed a lot and many of the things people had to play for hours and days to acquire are now just a few hours away and can be acquired through a variety of different means. They also invested heavily in the "new player experience and progression", so things are very, very easy to acquire now. Warframe has become a great example of Free-to-Play.

Yeah I don't think Warframe is that grindy, the ability to level and get good gear comes relatively easy. What's supposed to drop in certain instances generally does. Which sounds simple but other games aren't so kind.
The culture that surrounds the game and the fact they actually have conventions for it is pretty amazing. It's a testement.