Relays and Region Chat

Despite the loneliness of the Orbiter, the silent life of a Warframe, you are always in contact with other Tenno. Whether it’s via the casual concourses of the Relays or the communication system of Region Chat, there’s always someone to talk to. In a moderated fashion.

The thing is though, people seem to think that chat, late night Region Chat in particular, is some weird, creepy place where people talk about lewd things. That’s not necessarily true though. It all depends on what’s being discussed at the time. Conversations can go in weird directions and sometimes you end up talking about how the Zarr, a Grineer cannon, looks like it has udders. Because it does. Conversations drift all over the place because that’s what conversations do.

Normally though, conversations are harmless. Anyone who starts spouting bad things tends to get banned from chat relatively quickly, and people posting trade requests or are looking for groups tend to get moved to the right chat pretty fast as well. Sometimes the auto-moderators can be a bit over the top when it comes to kicking people (especially for simple words like ‘gay’) but you’re generally fine to talk about most things.

Relays are exactly the same, just emptier, depending on the time of day. Larunda is always the busiest relay simply because it gets a regular flow of newbies visiting a new place they’ve just unlocked. But on weekends (or during summer holidays), Larunda can be full of people just chilling out and chatting. What makes the Relays particularly nice though is actually seeing other Tenno in their brightly coloured Warframes. It’s a good place to pick up and discuss fashion, and you get to see rarities like Excalibur Prime owners on a more regular basis. Even better than that, you can also use gestures in Relays, something I wish Digital Extremes would enable inside your ship.

Really, not even Trade Chat is that awful. It’s mostly just about a few hundred people saying the same messages every few minutes. Trade Chat has a timer on it, meaning you can only say something once every few minutes (to stop spam, clearly) but there’s nothing vicious going on in there. You might see people setting stupid prices on their items for sale (for example, trying to sell Ignis Wraith blueprints when many Tenno give them away for free), but that’s about it. Heck, most people you trade with via private messaging are nice enough – generally they’re just in a hurry to move on to their next trade.

Of course, when you do come across a dick, you remember it more clearly than the hundreds of chats and trades that happened and were perfectly fine. Things that are different from the norm always stick clearly in our minds, whether they’re good or bad. You won’t remember all the boring trades, but you will remember that one trade where some guy wasted your time. You’ll also remember the trade where someone gave you like 20 extra platinum for no reason. Swings and roundabouts, really.

The best thing about Region Chat though is that 99% of the time, someone is around to answer your questions. It’s the perfect place for a newbie to get some help with whatever it is they are doing. I feel like one’s participation in Region Chat is part of growing up as a player. You start off being shy and asking questions (some of which may be answered by chat bots), you get answers and shyly say thank you, and as you progress, you ask less and answer more. Before you know it, you have an encyclopedia in your brain. And hopefully you’ve made some friends too.

Just whatever you do, don’t say “Press F to pay respects” because that will get you kicked from chat.

Oh, and if anyone wants an Ignis Wraith blueprint, hit me up. You gotta be MR6 or higher though.