On Passing The Help Along
A lot of my early hours in Warframe were spent in a daze. I was dragged from one node to the next, not understanding what I was doing. Despite having a high MR player helping me, I struggled greatly. In fact, I actually rage-quit a few times, especially after being dragged into a Sortie at a fresh MR4. Still using the MK1 Braton. I didn’t actually hit my Warframe stride until quite a bit later on.
But along the way, I received a little help from complete strangers. All sorts of help.
And not just help with missions!
Funnily enough, one of my earliest gifts was from a guy called Siralextraffo, who used to do Warframe giveaways on Reddit. He gifted me a Valkyr and a Tonkor, after I’d posted about having issues and generally being a newbie. The Valkyr did a lot of heavy lifting for me while I worked on getting all my other builds in shape. And simply having a weapon with a potato in it meant I could do soooo much more damage.
Most of the other assistance I got was in-game advice and people explaining things I didn’t understand. Occasionally, they’d give me a mod I needed as well. These people didn’t have to help me, but they did. Especially when, like most people, I was just some low level rando in Region Chat.
However, a lot of this assistance was given with a single recommendation: to pass the help along later on.
Now, as a veteran myself, I do just that.
I’ll browse Region Chat and spot people asking for help. Sure, there’s a Questions and Answers chat, but Region Chat is still a good place to ask. And plenty of people don’t always get the answers they’re looking for. In particular, people asking for help with missions tend to get ignored completely. They get buried under all the people looking for Eidolon hunts and radiant relic shares.
I’m not alone in doing this though. There’s always a small group, at least on the more populated regions, that happily answer questions. They don’t have to, but it’s fun to do so.
The game’s player base rewards helping.
While Warframe may be genuinely awful at giving information, it at least makes it easy for users to ask for information. The chat is right there, all the time. If you join a clan or an alliance, you can actually ask for help at literally any time.
Heck, common advice for new players is to simply ASK for basic mods. There’s almost always someone in Region Chat who has a spare Serration mod for you. It’s often easier to get to MR2 and trade for a Serration than farm for one.
Maybe I help a little too much.
It’s easy to get carried away with the help though. Most people I stumble across in need of help always get more than they asked for. Especially when it comes to Ignis Wrath blueprints. If you ask for one blueprint, I’m giving you two or three minimum. I’m also the sort to give you ranked up mods rather than just empty ones, or throw in a random goodie when trading.
Still, players like me aren’t that rare. And players that are willing to help are pretty common. At the very least, if you ask a question, you’ll get an answer and you won’t be faced with ridicule. Sure, there are the odd bad apples, but most people will at least try to help. The only expectation is that, if you get help from another player, you try and help someone else later on. And, amazingly, this seems to be universal across Warframe.
I guess that’s what makes the Warframe community stand out.