Perhaps the most iconic mechanic in all of Warframe is the illustrious Bullet Jump, which doesn't come as much of a surprise given the game's evident emphasis on mobility. For those unacquainted with just how fast Warframe is, I recommend checking out our piece on how Warframe's movement outpaces every other game ever made.
What was more surprising to me, however, was my recent discovery that the Bullet Jumping I've grown to love during my time with Digital Extremes' space ninja game wasn't there at launch - at least not intentionally. Instead, players exploited several movement animations by chaining them together to propel themselves across the map at blistering speed. This was called coptering, and you can check out how it looked back in the day in the video embedded below (apologies in advance for the music).
Coincidentally, I recently got the chance to chat with Digital Extremes about Warframe, and published an exclusive interview about Warframe on PS5 earlier today. While I had COO Sheldon Carter on the line, I thought I'd ask about how the exploitable glitch known as coptering ended up being transformed into the revered Bullet Jump, which has since become the primary element in establishing Warframe as a game centered on mobility.
"If you go back and look at some of the early Warframe videos, it was all about how to copter through a level," Carter tells TheGamer. "You look at those things and you’re like, if all the players are doing it and it’s an exploitative behaviour in terms of speed travelling, but it’s something that they all love, how is it something that we can incorporate into the game in a way that made it a cool feature, but also gave them the mobility.
"It’s funny, those players helped us to understand that mobility was such a huge aspect of Warframe. It was a bug that got exploited, and we changed that into the key defining features of Warframe, which is cool."
Modern Warframe is now renowned specifically for its Bullet Jump. It's part of every conversation between a veteran player and a friend they're trying to entice into giving Warframe a shot. I've had this exact discussion with my own friends at home. "The mobility is amazing," I'd say. "You need to check out the Bullet Jump."
But as Carter said, the first iteration of the Bullet Jump was the copter, which was never intended to be in the game in the first place. So, how did Digital Extremes approach the situation? Why did it decide to rework the bug into the game as a core feature, as opposed to just patching it out like most developers probably would have?
"It’s about a relationship with the community and the players," Carter says. "The relationship we’ve built with them, we think of it like we’re co-developing the game with the players, so the things that they see and find, we take really seriously.
"Bullet jumping is a great example because it isn’t coptering exactly, but it’s an expression of that feeling for them. We try our best to give players what they want but in a surprising and different way, so it still feels fresh. It’s not like, 'Hey they just made coptering a thing' - they changed coptering into Bullet Jumping which is even cooler because now I can go up and I can reach places I couldn’t before."
This change to Warframe had a drastic knock-on effect on other aspects of the game, too. It wasn't as if you could just jump to a higher tree branch, or reach the second floor of a building without needing a stairs. Once you change how much mobility a player has at their fingertips, you change the fundamental way in which they interact with the game world - and so the game world itself becomes more interactable.
"Our level design team start[ed] coming up with ways that they could use that in the levels," Carter explains. "It’s this really dynamic collaborative process with the players. I think when we’re at our best - when Warframe’s at its best - it’s because we have that relationship with our players."
There you have it - Warframe's Bullet Jump was essentially co-developed by Digital Extremes and the players who invented coptering. Sure, Digital Extremes was the one to implement the new mechanic, but it was the players who created its first iteration by exploiting what was available to them. It's a remarkable story, really - seven and a half years after launch, Warframe is all about Bullet Jumping. However, we could be witnessing an immensely different version of the game if Digital Extremes decided to just patch out a bug and move on.
As Carter says, "It was a bug that got exploited, and we changed that into the key defining features of Warframe."