I'm a bit late since it was already on iOS prior, but the mobile ports should never have existed.
**Edit**: this post was never about accessibility, or that people shouldn't enjoy a mobile version. It's an opinion about mechanics and systems of this game being translated onto a platform where it doesn't fit. I can still think it was a bad idea without it translating to "fuck the mobile players", which is what most seem to be getting form this.
Original post below:
I don't know if it's a hot or a cold take at this point, but I gave the newly released Android version a brief tryout as an experienced player, and it left me with a genuinely mixed reaction, leaning heavily toward the belief that this is a game that should never have received a mobile port in the first place.
To be perfectly clear, the technical achievement here is undeniable. Making Warframe accessible on mobile hardware is impressive on a fundamental level and I commend DE for this. If developing Warframe on PC is like living on Earth, then making it run on a wide range of phones is like surviving on Venus. Against those odds, I was honestly surprised by how stable it felt and how visually intact the experience remained, even with the expected graphical compromises (it was sort a downgrade, naturally). From a purely technical standpoint, it is far more functional and far better looking than I expected.
But Warframe is, by its nature, fast paced and mechanically complex (the further you go), at least when seen through the lens of someone accustomed to PC play; if someone on console could weigh in, that would be greatly appreciated too, since I have no experience with that. I played through Awakening and the first two missions to see how the controls and gameplay would translate, and while I adapted relatively quickly, it never truly clicked in terms of... enjoyment, and felt like a hassle. The mobile-specific aids like auto run, auto melee, auto fire, and aim assist help reduce some of the immediate input friction, but they cannot overcome the underlying mechanical constraints. Within minutes, a significant portion of the screen is taken up by virtual buttons, creating a persistent sense of separation between the player and the fluid, instinctive control that defines the experience on PC.
Many maneuvers that are baked into my fingers on PC are just impossible to do. Dashing mid-air doesn't register so movement is slower, aiming up quickly for bullet jumping and so on is sluggish, and slam attacks you can basically forget about because you cannot aim down that quickly on mobile, at least not consistently. The list goes on. I understand that this is from the point of view of someone that's used to PC, but I can imagine new, mobile-only players running into some issues as well.
Does a new player in their first few hours need all this? No, they don't. But the moment they see someone zooming at mach-fuck-you past them in a crossplay lobby, slam-spamming groups out of existence and killing everything before they even get close, that's going to hurt people's enjoyment. We already have console players, usually older-gen, complaining about similar things from time to time. I cannot imagine being on mobile and experiencing the same thing, especially since mobile gamers are usually from a much more casual crowd.
Yes, I understand the motivation here: expanding the player base. The mobile version has been in development for some time, first showcased at TennoCon 2021. It is reasonable to assume that Tencent, with its dominant position in the mobile gaming market, played a significant role in this direction, particularly given their acquisition of DE (or Leyou specifically, which owned DE at the time) roughly a year earlier. The mobile market is enormous and highly profitable, yet the most lucrative games tend to be gacha-style titles designed either from the ground up for mobile, or with mobile being a concurrent process to the PC/console versions. They succeed because their systems and mechanics are purpose-built for those types of interfaces, not retrofitted from PC or console experiences.
~~There are already enough unresolved issues on and with consoles. With the mobile ports now a reality, this is but a pointed observation: the resources spent developing for Android and iOS could have been better applied to refining and stabilizing console experiences. Instead, it feels like another log has simply been added to the crossplay bonfire, compounding existing frustrations rather than addressing them.~~ I have been informed that within software development, specialized teams are usually making ports that can't really be put in place anywhere else, so this is a non-point, apologies.
If anyone has other matters that can weigh in here, I would be delighted to hear them. I am no expert in any of the matters I discussed, I merely am viewing this mobile port from the eyes of a PC player with a couple thousand hours, having experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer to one capacity or the other (save for Conclave, I guess).
tl;dr Warframe does not belong on a damn phone.