Warframe vs Destiny 2: Which Looter Shooter is Best for You?

Everyone has a friend or two that plays Destiny 2 or Warframe and probably plays it religiously. Seeing your friends has so much fun in either game may make you wonder if you should join them, but then the question is should you play Destiny 2 or Warframe. They both are classified as looter shooters and both require an equal time commitment so playing both at the same time is almost impossible. Let’s go over both Destiny 2 and Warframe so you can decide which looter shooter is right for you to play.

Should You Play Destiny 2 or Warframe?

Both of these games are Sci-Fi shooters that have a central focus on getting loot to make yourself more powerful. While they do share a lot of similarities on the surface, which causes people to compare them so often, a play session of either game will give you vastly different experiences. Warframe will have you jumping, wall-running, and gliding around as you fight for your life. While Destiny 2 has you channeling elemental abilities to mow down armies worth of enemies.

Let’s break down how both games handle a few main points.

Loot

For a game that proclaims itself to be a looter shooter, the loot that you get should be a pretty big deal. In this case, Destiny 2 provides a much better instant gratification for its loot while Warframes loot is a little bit tamer. In Destiny 2, your loot will mostly be weapons and armor, something you can instantly equip and use. While the loot in Warframe will be mods or resources. It isn’t hard to figure out which of these a player would be happier to see.

While you can use the resources in Warframe to get yourself new weapons and Warframes to use, this takes time, which is why Destiny 2’s instant gratification for loot comes out on top.

Content

In this regard, both sides win in some way. While Warframe has way more content to experience, Destiny 2 has much better endgame content. Warframe has a bunch of different mission types as well as huge open worlds that you can explore and do whatever you want in but it also has the Arcwing and Railjack system. Allowing you to not only be a space ninja but also a spaceship captain and use a space jetpack. Destiny 2 also suffers in this depart as they shelved a lot of the older content for the game, thus cutting out a lot of story for new players and providing less of an introduction to the game for them

While all of those different forms of content are cool they wear off quite quickly and their difficulty is limited to making enemies hit harder and take more damage to kill. Meanwhile, Destiny 2’s endgame content is stellar. From raids with new and interesting mechanics to dungeons that also have dungeon-specific mechanics. Once you hit the endgame in Destiny 2, you feel like you are playing a whole new game.

Destiny 2 also offers more regular content updates with the season’s system. Every week in a season you can expect new content and lore to happen that pushes the story of Destiny 2 even further. While Warframe does provide new content to the game it normally comes as large updates that are months apart.

Pricing

This can be a make or break for someone when it comes to a game and it does still have to go to Warframe for being entirely free. While you can still spend money to instantly get almost anything in the game, you can also experience all that Warframe has to offer and never spend a dime. Although Destiny 2 has gone free-to-play, you do still have to pay for all the expansions and the seasonal content. Without all of that, then there is not much to do in Destiny 2.

Although the continent that you do pay for in Destiny 2 is of higher quality than what you get in Warframe, it does make a steep buy-in price just to find out if you will enjoy the game or not. Playing Destiny 2 free to play really doesn’t do the game justice. You are locked out of almost all of the story content and much of the endgame content. Making a free-to-play account is a great way to try out a bit of the game, but having access to all of the content Destiny 2 has to offer will give you a much different picture of the game.

The real drawing point for both of these games is whichever one has your friends playing it. While Warframe does offer a much better experience for solo players, grinding content by yourself can get quite mind-numbing without friends around to make it interesting. Destiny 2 feels almost unplayable without friends and having a full Strike Team makes the game much easier than playing solo.

Of course, don’t be afraid to try out both games and see which one feels more your style, be it the fast passed Warframe or the intense gunplay of Destiny 2 both games are worth a try and can be tried for free. No matter which game you choose to play, we have guides for both Destiny 2 and Warframe if you need help with either.

Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Google Stadia and Warframe is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.