Waiting for Cross-Save

A while ago, Warframe got Cross-Play. This meant that people from consoles could play with people on PC. This applied to not just XBox and Playstation, but to the Nintendo Switch as well. However, we currently can’t trade with people across platforms. And, most importantly, we are still locked to playing on our respective platforms as well. The big thing we are waiting for is Cross-Save.

Cross-Save is a big thing. It will, hopefully, allow us to play on any platform, and freely switch between them. Personally, I want to be able to play on my Nintendo Switch when I don’t have access to my laptop. Playing Warframe on the move sounds like a lot of fun to me. Okay, sure, I have a laptop but you can’t always lie in bed and play Warframe at the same time. Need space to move your mouse.

However, there are a lot of challenges when it comes to Cross-Save. Most of those questions are based on the value of items. But the obvious first problem is making sure that everything is synced up. You don’t want to spend time leveling up a weapon on a console, then swap to PC and realize that your weapon has reset. Logging in to two places at once can cause all sorts of problems, and I expect that we’ll only be able to log into one instance at a time, to get around this issue.

The value of items is another large problem. While most of the in-game market is all the same value, there are some things that can only be bought in certain ways. For example, there are bundles on Steam that you can only get there, and I’m pretty sure there are bundles that can only be bought on various consoles. There’s also the console-related skins that are given out occasionally.

I’m mainly talking about Tennogen though. You see, on PC, you have to spend real money on Tennogen items. However, on consoles, you can buy Tennogen items using Platinum. If or when we get Cross-Save, I can see many players switching to console just to buy the technically cheaper Tennogen skins. Sure, the platinum price for Tennogen is about the same as if you’d bought it with real money, but you can trade for Platinum, meaning you can essentially buy those Tennogen skins for next to nothing. Already, you can’t trade with players on other platforms, and I’m expecting a lot of things to be bound to whatever platform you originally used to play Warframe. So Tennogen for Platinum on PCs most likely won’t ever be a thing.

There’s already evidence that the above will happen. When Warframe came out for the Switch, you could transfer to a Switch account. But doing so wouldn’t transfer everything. Things like the Ignis Wraith blueprint were left behind. In fact, the Switch went without the Ignis Wraith for a while, only seeing it in Baro Ki’teer’s stock every other week, at a REALLY expensive price. It wasn’t until the blueprints could be found in Railjack missions that Switch players had a proper way to get the blueprint. At the same time though, Ignis Wraith blueprints became untradeable. Rest in peace my 100 blueprints that I used to give away to random players.

So yeah, I expect, when Cross-Save comes out, there will definitely be some sort of limitation, mostly concerning the market. But if it means I can play with my LR2 account rather than having to make a new account, then I’m all for it. Because, believe me, I don’t want to start from scratch again. I’ve done that before and while I enjoyed it that time, it’s not always as fun the third time around. And I’m specifically not going to start new from the Nintendo Switch. Not again.

At the end of the day, I really do hope that Cross-Save comes out. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works.