Warframe’s New War is just one part of the game’s future updates

This year’s TennoCon, the yearly convention for free-to-play ninja action game Warframe, was the biggest one yet. TennoCon 2021 was the most viewed TennoCon in franchise history, and more than 540,000 Warframe players logged on to see what was next for the Origin System.

Developer Digital Extremes showed off an upcoming chapter of the main story quest called The New War, as well as cross-save and progression across platforms. Polygon was able to ask Rebecca Ford, live operations and community lead, about the future of Warframe in an email conversation.

Polygon: Will the New War transform any existing in-game content that may be outdated or difficult for players to navigate, like the Plains of Eidolon bosses?

Rebecca Ford: The New War does not aim to address the difficulty of existing content. There are some content types that could use a logical refresh (Invasions?) but there’s nothing to confirm there right now. It will be changing one system for sure, but to be honest the spoilers [for the quest’s story] are severe and I can say no more.

Are there any plans for Steel Path Railjack missions, or is the team focused on New War at the moment?

Actually, maybe. Railjack enemies are balanced a bit differently so it would take a few more changes than just slappin’ the Steel Path on it, but a really important goal with The New War update is to give players an amazing and long awaited story, then plenty to do after. So Steel Path Railjack could be a part of the to-do, along with some other refreshes.

As Warframe continues to introduce weapons, companions, arcanes and warframes, are there any plans to update drop or loot tables? Example: the Tenet melee weapons, the new Ambassador grind, etc.

We do this from time to time. We added a second spot to get Arcanes with Orphix Venom, we’ve permanently unvaulted some Primes (Valkyr and Nyx), so there’s always changes lurking. Right now the Tenet Melee and Ambassador will stay where they are as Raijlack rewards.

Are there any ways New War is designed for veteran players, or is it a finite story chapter like previous ‘main quest’ updates?

There are ways! At this time many layers of ‘then what’ after players are done with the (longest) cinematic quest are being accounted for. The Steel Path Railjack would be a small but impactful way to add to The New War update beyond the massive quest itself.

Are there any plans to look at Yareli and her current state of balance, especially when it comes to her K-Drive?

We did a swift buff pass right before TennoCon and will review more in the coming weeks. We don’t expect anyone to be good at K-driving in our constrained tiles with 0 practice, but we can also make some tweaks to make the speed and navigation easier to handle. Her Merulina mount is effectively her second health bar and a way to move quickly and swiftly around so we’ll make sure to continue balancing and fixing things up.

Warframe will continue to receive updates throughout 2021 and 2022, all of which are free-to-play. This includes the next Warframe, Caliban, who is partially built out of parts from the antagonistic Sentinel AI.