How I’d Fix Defense Missions in Warframe

Defense missions are the worst. Well, OK, they’re not the worst, that reward goes to the likes of Defection missions. But Defense missions are all-round not particularly enjoyable. They’re also way more common than missions like Defection and Infested Salvage. Defense is so bad that people will intentionally leave Circuit missions to avoid doing them, especially on the Steel Path. These missions are terrible, so how do we fix them? Well, I’ve got some ideas. No more operatives The first and most basic idea is to not have an operative as a defense target. Their AI is absolutely stupid and… [Continue Reading]

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Mirror Defense Is Way Better Than Normal Defense

I’ve never really liked defense missions in Warframe. They are slow and tedious and always prone to breaking due to having to make sure everything is dead. The main reason I play defense missions is either me starting the day doing the defense mission Seimeni on Ceres, or because it’s in the current sortie or Archon hunt. There are two basic forms of defense and both of them are boring. The first is protecting a static object, generally some sort of metal pod with an unconscious person inside it. The second involves protecting an NPC, who will always try and… [Continue Reading]

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Railjack Corpus Ship Defense is just the Worst

There’s a lot to go through in the Railjack Retrofitted update, but something is bothering me. Sure, a lot of Corpus Railjack is half Railjack, half normal mission. I can kinda put up with that a little. However, there is one thing that is really irking me, and it’s defense missions. The problem is Railjack Defense. It’s just so bad. It’s normal Corpus defense but worse. Okay, first off, I need to explain why Corpus Ship Defense is bad. I’ve actually discussed Corpus Defense in the past, mostly with the death of Io. That one single defense mission on Jupiter… [Continue Reading]

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An Awkward and Possibly Rather Lame Look At A Single Grineer Shipyard Tile Set

The Grineer Shipyard Defense/Interception tile is a funny one. It’s a very small map and it’s the one that’s always used when you visit Seimeni for those sweet 20k credits for 5 rounds of defense. But it’s a small map that has changed a few times, not always for the better. The gimmick on the Shipyard Defense tile is that the Cryopod you need to protect is on a platform, and this platform has a chance to move from one place to another. It’s a bit like the Cryopod on Helene or Hydron except this moves on a rail. This… [Continue Reading]

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Rest in Peace, Io

Io was one of my favourite maps in Warframe. It was the Defense tile on Jupiter, set in the Gas City. The same tile was also occasionally used for Interception, but Io in particular is only a defense mission. For a long time, it was one of my favourite maps, but now, it’s a completely different beast. The old Io was… not a big map. Well, it was big and not big at the same time. Like the Ceres Shipyard defense room, you need to take a massive elevator up to the map itself, but the old Io tileset was… [Continue Reading]

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Torbjörn – Overwatch’s Engineer

God help me, I’ve been playing and enjoying Torbjörn. It’s not entirely my fault, the game loves raining Torbjörn loot box rewards on me. He’s the only character for who I’ve dropped an emote, highlight intro, victory pose and epic-level skin (the Steampunk gold one). It just felt a shame to waste them, so I’ve taken to testing him out on defense when the team consistency calls for it, and I’m actually very impressed with how Blizzard fixed most of the flaws with TF2 Engineer. For one, the resource management minigame is gone; Torbjörn has only one building to place… [Continue Reading]

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The joys of playing with new players

When you look at SPUF, you see a lot of spitting and huffing and puffing and complaining about how new guys are ruining the game. There’s sometimes venom dripping down the walls. Almost literally, if you listen to some of the much angrier members of SPUF. But the really weird thing is how all that hatred and anger disappears almost completely when a legitimately new person comes along. No matter how much we say we hate newbies and how they’re ruining the game, part of us loves them dearly. The reasons for this sudden change in attitude vary from person… [Continue Reading]

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The Pistol and the SMG: Unappreciated Pea-shooters?

In the majority of FPS games, your selection of weapons includes at least these three Faithfuls: the pistol, the machine gun and the shotgun. Your pistol is typically considered a back-up weapon, acquired early in the game and perhaps coupled with a melee option. Your machine gun is quite inaccurate but delivers lots of ouchies per second. Your shotgun is slow to fire and only effective at close range, but makes up for it by blowing your enemies’ heads open in one hit. TF2 is not the majority of FPS games. Just think about Soldier for a second. Valve could… [Continue Reading]

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Making Strange Filters Work For You

Strange Filters were integrated poorly. I know of nobody who disagrees with this. They should have been like strange parts, adding a prefix and a subcounter showing how many kills you’ve gotten on a single map. Lobotomizing the actual function of the strange weapon on 99% of maps is not the way to get people to buy them. This article by Brokkoli makes a good case for strange filters by pointing out that it makes your weapon truly unique. Indeed, you are unlikely to ever see a Strange Rigid Market Gardener for the rest of your TF2 career, assuming you made… [Continue Reading]

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Nucleus is a great map and I don’t care what you say about it.

I remember saying once that I disliked Nucleus. I can’t remember why, but it was something along the lines of it being a Sniper friendly map. But after having played on it a bit more, and having played on REAL Sniper friendly maps, I feel I should retract that statement. And maybe add a few more positive statements too. My original thoughts were about Snipers being way too powerful on Nucleus, especially on Arena Mode since you die and that’s it. I decided though to try and play Sniper myself. We all know I’m a useless Sniper, but to be… [Continue Reading]

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