Joke title aside, I was messing around on Limbo recently, because I find him fun and I was leveling various trash weapons. I joined an ODD so I had a shot at getting two things done at once (namely, leveling and getting High Noon) and there was a Mesa. Most people have no idea how Limbo works, because he's rarely played, so around wave 5 I cast Banish on Mesa (who was currently standing next to the pod spamming Peacemaker and generally one-shotting any infested nearby) to see if she would freak out because she stopped dealing damage.
Instead, she dealt the same amount of damage, except was now invincible and regenerated energy (effectively reducing the cost of Peacemaker to 1.75 energy per second). After the game was over, I looked it up and it's been noted on the wiki.
Which made me sad, because I've never seen it done before. The playerbase of Warframe seems to be so closed off to Limbo. I certainly understand why, he's got a quest that's a pain in the arse solo that few people want to play for a Warframe that isn't quite as much of a monster as Nova or Mesa or whatever the OP frame of the month is. In my opinion... wait gimme a second...
In my OPINION, Warframe would be a better game if it wasn't free to play. How does this relate back to what I was talking about? Basically, the biggest attraction for Warframe I have is simply 'being awesome'. For example, chaining a front flip into a two-footed kick to the face that launches -insert least favourite enemy here- into the sky. There are two reasons I care about stats in Warframe: doing hilarious amounts of damage and because if I don't I die very fast and do very little damage. To me, Warframe is too chaotic to be min-maxed into oblivion. Thing is, Warframe is a game of farming, which encourages brutal efficiency in achieving your goals. Thus why you cannot go into a defense mission without seeing a Mesa. If it wasn't FTP it would have those dynamics.
That being said, Warframe would be a very different game if you payed for it in the first place, and I have to question if it would have really been better. DE chose free to play for a reason, indeed, I got into Warframe in a time when I didn't have much money to throw around, and it being FTP factored heavily into my decision to play it.
Either way, I could appreciate Limbo/Mesa because Limbo is an awesome but rarely seen frame. In my OPINION, Sure, I guess it was still min-max farming in the end, but as someone who doesn't own Mesa or Nova or Mag or whatever other frames that people abuse in defense, I was happy that I figured this out on my own, and happy I could contribute in a small but significant way. I saved the mission as Limbo about five times.
What is the purpose of me spout all this?
Fuck knows, but I think the tl;dr amounts to:
Play Limbo more
Try things that are weak but awesome (how do you think people discovered Soma crit?)
Let down your hair in defense and do something stupid, but fun. Trust me, you feel much better in the end if you barely scrape by wave 15 with four pink rhinos rolling melee only than if you easily made it to the same wave with Nova, g-Mag and two Mesas.
Mesai?
Mesas.
Edit: I know why Warframe will never be pay to play. I know the logistics. I know it would be completely different. You really, really, don't need to tell me.