Last year I was trying to find something to play daily, since I ditched Destiny a few years ago. Then I decided to try Warframe, I got 90h on it, even tho I know it's very little I think I can have an opinion already.
I got overwhelmed by how hard the game tries to make me spend money, I might be exaggerating but I think literally everything has a way to be boosted or achieved by paying. This kind of completely kills that friendly competitive aspect of the game like you achieve something and you just can't tell if it was legit or someone paid for it.
For example I remember there was this double resources boost and other kind of boosts that double many things you do in the game, and I kind of felt bad thinking "fuck man... look how much I farmed here, if I had paid for it, it'd be double", which often was letting me down.
Then suddenly they show that daily offer, I got a 75% OFF offer on game currency and FOMO syndrome just hit, I bought it. I asked on Reddit sub if it's worth it and everybody was just saying they pray to get offers like that, then I thought: well, it seems good I'll do it.
And I did it, now I see how manipulated I got by this game. I didn't spend too much, a 75% OFF was like an old game price, I thought it was fair to pay a game price for playing the game, at least once.
But then I realized if I kept doing it I'd lost myself and always want more. Then I just decided to ditch this game as well before it was too late. The game looks good overall but man... What an aggressive monetization, it's definitely not just cosmetics, you pay to speed up things and way more stuff than cosmetic.
I know that late game you'll eventually farm cosmetics and earn many stuff that at first is bought only by real money, but that's a massive almost inhuman grind to achieve we're talking like 1000-5000h. And then at the end you think again "fuck... I should've payed for a few stuff, I'd have double of everything now".
I mean I don't get it, this game isn't all of this, it feels everything you do in the game there's a part on the screen screaming "LOOK AT HERE IF YOU PAY YOU CAN GET IT EASIER AND WITH EXTRA STUFF WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?".
I fell for it once and now I see how I was manipulated, Warframe somehow helped me on my decision to not spend a cent on extra content anymore. Btw I didn't spend any of my game currency I bought with real money, I just made a mistake and cut it right away.
Of all the ideas of all time, the idea that Warframe has an aggressive monetization plan is certainly one of them.
Yes, you CAN save time by buying a resource drop booster, but those can also be earned in game. you CAN just buy whatever Warframe you want right now, but you can absolutely earn them all in game. You CAN buy Platinum, but you can also trade for it in game and never spend a dime. But none of this is aggressively presented to you, none of it gets pushed on you. The mere existence of boosters is a far cry from aggressively pushing them, the only one nagging you that you "could have had more" is you.
And the accusations of FOMO are pretty misplaced. It's not completely absent, but on the rare occasion that your login bonus is a coupon for platinum you're only ever one click away from just ignoring it. So many games will put something on sale once and tell you up front that if you don't BUY it now, you'll never get it, if you miss out, you REALLY miss out. Warframe never does that, even the things that are limited time are on a rotation, they'll be back, and they can always be earned in game without spending a dime. Warframe makes a point of making everything earnable in game, always. You can pay for a shortcut, you can pay to skip some part you don't like, but at no point do you ever have to, and it definitely doesn't PUSH microtransactions on you like so many other games. You won't get pop ups telling you to buy some limited time bundle or encouraging you to double your payout with this booster or that. Those things exist, and they're tucked away in the market where you don't have to interact with them. If you're really wound up over resource drop boosters or the like, you'll get them as the occasional log in bonus from time to time, but in most cases they're just not going to be necessary. The things that tend to block you aren't things a drop booster is likely to seriously impact. Frankly, if you ever spend platinum on a booster, you're a fool.
You spent money, once. By your own admission it wasn't even a lot. That's fine, just have some shred of self control and the game won't push more on you. Have a modicum of patience and sooner or later the game will give you what you were looking for anyway.