Brickardo

I don't know, pal, I'd rather not work at all. I like listening to music and playing videogames.

...and it eventually returns.

Custom tip: –200%

you can buy prime frames and weapons, but can't buy the mods or arcanes directly from the game to outfit them.

How is this not the opposite of a pay to win mechanic? Either you play the game to find the mod or find someone to buy the mod from.

An even cooler thing is operator progress, whereby no amount of paying can take you through.

You're not missing out, because it's coming back.

Part of this scene was cut out in Spain back when it released. Even if it had not been accurate, the main takeaways were "dangerous" enough.

Good, you keep doing that!

Womp womp?

There's an interesting interview by NoClip which shows the early development phases of Warframe. They were stumbling their way around many new mechanics that come with a live service game.

They don't mention the daily revive system, but it's clear that in the game's progressive transformation from "tactical shooter" to "horde shooter", that system had to go. I don't remember if there were many complains about the system back then, though.

you miss your chance for many months (unless you pay of course).

Which is absolutely different from the actual predatory FOMO mechanics that are in place in many other MMOs. You seem to be overlooking the fact that, again, all those items are coming back eventually to the game.

If anything, you could have made a case for vaulting well before relics were introduced into the game and I'd have completely agreed. This is not the case for many years now.

You also mention "faction caps", which have absolutely nothing to do with FOMO, as their rewards don't rotate, again, except for relic packs.

FrEe battle pass [...]. Yes, now the game dictates even more what you have to do (and where), instead of letting you do what you want to do.

You are pointing out generalities that are defeated by a cursory play through. For starters, Nora Night does not stop your progress whatsoever nor does it add any impressive improvements to your play through. Furthermore, some of the tasks are done automatically (bullet jumping, killing enemies, completing missions). Finally, most of the rewards are alternative (cosmetic) helmets, and again other cosmetic goodies.

You could have made a point of the arcane Warframe helmets, which modified some stats of your Warframe and were taken back in favor of streamlining the Arcane system. I could have maybe agreed that that's a form of FOMO, if you really wanted to min-max your strategy.

Finally, the "cherry on top", as you'd put it, is the fact that you talk of yourself as having been "fairly high rank". Everyone and their mother knows that mastery rank provides little to no insights as to your skills, just the fact that you spent time leveling weapons.

For all these reasons, especially your failure to acknowledge the fact that there were FOMO mechanics that are no more for many years, allow me again to dismiss your alleged game experience. It clearly is not showing in the way you write any of your arguments.

Not only that, live service titles are absolutely tone deaf when it comes to respecting the effort of their players.

It doesn't stop Steve from being right with his statement, though, but his understanding of what a live service game's monetization model should be has shown to be two or three parallel universes ahead of what the "triple A" projects usually do.

Hell, paying real money can only skip you through the first dozens of hours of the tutorial. After that, paying effectively only allows you to get cosmetic options.

I agree with most of the stuff you've said expect the FOMO bit - there are three very specific items that are never coming back for obvious reasons, which are irrelevant to the overall story and hardly affect anyone's enjoyment of the game. Every other item has eventually come back.

Edit: on a second read, you mentioned the game is P2W. That's definitely a way to say you've not played the game, so now I'm angry I spent half a minute writing my comment.