Everything is a Syndicate these days

When Veilbreaker came out, I had a hell of a time playing the very first mission. It had a slow start, but built up in a pretty cool way, eventually ending with exploding ships and help from an unexpected place. The Veilbreaker quest was great, and I do wish that there was more of it. The characters in the Veilbreaker quest were excellent, and it set up quite a strange situation, where we sort of end up helping a quaint little base on Earth.

Of course, I’m talking about Kahl. Veilbreaker is all about the plucky Grineer saving and serving his brothers, rather than being loyal to Narmer, the Twin Queens or, well, Steel Meridian. In the whole Veilbreaker update, we do various missions as Kahl. Why? So we can build a new home for Kahl and his brothers, Grineer or otherwise. It all seems pretty neat. Until you realize you’re just leveling up another Syndicate. Kahl is running a camp, looking to build a home in the forests of Earth, and for us players, he is mostly just a syndicate for players to rank up.

Sure, it’s a nice syndicate. But it’s still a syndicate.

This isn’t even the first time this has happened. In a shock announcement earlier in the year, we got to finally visit the Zariman Ten Zero. The lost ship that started all this mess in the first place. In the Angels of the Zariman update, we’d finally be able to properly explore the hellhole that was the Zariman ruins, retrace our pasts, all that sort of thing. We even got some brand new game modes to play, and a home away from home that we can decorate ourselves.

You know what else we got in Angels of the Zariman? Another syndicate. Pretty much most of the update was locked away behind a syndicate. A syndicate just like the syndicates of Fortuna, Cetus and all that. Granted, there was some good stuff in these syndicates, but, again, it’s still a syndicate.

Intentional time wasting.

Thing is, I wouldn’t mind so much if syndicates were massively gated. As a MR31 player, I get a huge chunk of available standing per day. This allows me to climb up ranks somewhat quickly. But I am not a normal Warframe player, I have sunk thousands of hours into Warframe to reach my True Master rank. The vast majority of players don’t have as much daily standing available to them, and this can make ranking up very tedious. The lower the Mastery Rank, the longer it takes to level up a syndicate.

The reason behind all of this is pretty simple. DE don’t want players to blast through all their new content in one go. And making everything a syndicate means you can more easily time-gate players, even MR30+ players. As you can only earn so much standing in one day. And older players will readily accept the time gates and the daily standing limits because it’s what we’re all used to.

All that being said though, I’m tired of leveling up syndicates. I was bound to break at some point. And it turned out that Angels of the Zariman was the last straw. Problem is, I have no idea what I’d do to replace syndicates with something else. I do very much hope that the Durviri Paradox won’t have a Syndicate. But it probably will. And it’ll probably take a while to level up too.

Oh well.