On Not Feeling Like A Warframe Veteran
On a Waframe Discord channel, I recently joked that I’m MR29 and still sometimes feel like a “Smolt”. A Smolt is the name generally given to a low MR newbie who picked Volt as their starter, a “small Volt”. I can’t really claim to be a Smolt at all, since I’m Mastery Rank 29, with pretty much everything leveled up and unlocked. Sometimes though? Sometimes I find myself struggling.
Normally it’s the little things.
Most of the time, I’m fine. I’ll mow through enemies like any other normal space ninja. But occasionally, I’ll find myself running into a brick wall, as if I was some fresh newbie. The other day, I nearly messed up a spy vault by accidentally running into a Nullifier. And I completely forgot how Infested Salvage worked the last time I played that. However I did discover that there’s some horrifying underlying chatter in Infested Salvage that rarely gets heard.
But these little mistakes can easily get worse and worse. That messed up spy vault basically threw me off the whole mission, and I nearly died because everything suddenly knew where I was.
Steel Path makes it worse.
The Steel Path is definitely wearing me down. I’ve struggled my way through Grineer nodes. But I’ve also had to do a LOT of missions, Grineer or otherwise, solo. For reasons unknown, I just don’t seem to get match-made into public groups. That’s fine if you’re signing up for an exterminate, but I really, really didn’t want to do the Raptor fight solo. I ended up doing it solo anyway, but it would have been easier in a team.
The same goes for other missions, like Interception. Interception is a LOT easier with two people, but I’m always on my own.
I am beginning to doubt everything.
Clearly, the weak link here is me. I’m sitting here with builds that have worked fine for all previous content, and these builds suddenly do nothing. Everything hits harder and takes longer to die.
Actually, I say that, they DO do things. My builds just don’t mass-murder Steel Path level 130+ Grineer the same way my builds murder everyone else. So the question is, am I actually sucking? Do I need to make some tweaks to my builds? Or is it like this for other players as well? I genuinely can’t tell.
I can help other people without issue though.
That’s the thing. If someone asks me for help, I’ll go and help them and it’ll all be fine. In fact, I seem to be at my best when I’m helping someone. Maybe it’s because I tend to grab better gear and concentrate more on helping the other person than on playing myself. Because it’s mostly when I’m on my own that I struggle. Like some kind of sensory overload. Having someone else, even if it’s someone I’m helping, just makes everything better.
At the end of the day, I am just bad at video games.
I mean, slow reaction times and a general incompetence when it comes to aim will do that to you. Combine it with a panicky attitude and a tendency to over-compensate, and it makes everything difficult. After all, when you need to make every bullet count, missing all the time just screws you over.
Oh well. I’ll work it all out. And if I can’t do something, I guess I’ll just keep trying until I can. In the mean time, at least I can invite a friend to play Warframe with. Or at the very least play with random players.
Ooooor I can just shut up and power through, which is what I ended up doing with the Steel Path.
That lingering imposter syndrome is tough to break. Since we all start off as noobs and witness every stupid mistake we make, it’s rare that we ever realize we’ve grown into a veteran without someone mentioning it. I remember when someone on reddit mentioned they were interested in my opinion on something “as an old-time player” of Payday 2; I’d never thought of myself as such because I’d started in 2013.
But just think of the millions of players who have started Warframe later than you, and how many years you’ve put into the game. By strict definition, anyone who’s ever turned the game on is a veteran, so you more-than-qualify for the title!