A lot of people outside of the US have constant complaints about official Warframe streams (those with drops enabled) being outside of times that they can attend those streams (either because they are at work or because it’s the middle of the night where they live when the stream starts). You have to remember that those official streams are a part of Digital Extremes’ job, so you can’t really expect them to stream outside of business hours where they are located. I’ve been making it a point to attend even the streams that are in the middle of the night where I live in the US, so it’s doable, although I’ll admit perhaps not ideal...
I’m going to fill in users on a few tricks I’ve been using on my PC:
- The first is that you don’t actually need to be actively watching those streams, just in the channel with the stream playing & unmuted (at least in the site’s player, you can still mute the browser tab without it affecting your drop progress). A lot of streamers still appreciate people lurking in their channels, so they usually won’t object to you being the channel before the stream even starts or being inactive in chat. You can also set the quality of the stream to the lowest quality to save on bandwidth (or to make it easier in the second trick I'm going to detail below if you have a low upload rate that the running stream might impair).
- The second trick I’m going to give is regarding remote access. You can use your mobile device to remote access your PC to start progression towards a drop. This will require that you use software that allows for unattended access to your PC (because you will not be able to accept an incoming remote access request if you are not at your PC). A few things I do have to point out here, however.
- When allowing unattended remote access to your computer, this opens it up to potentially being compromised. First thing is make sure you have a strong password to be able to access that device.
- The password also has to be a static password, not a randomized password, as you will not be able to double-check the password remotely.
- Utilize the device whitelist if the software has the option for it. This will limit only your devices to be able to access it, but will need to be set up prior to attempting to access it for the first time (the device ID should show on your device, which you would enter into the whitelist before attempted access for the first time).
- Only run the software when you expect you are going to need it. In the case of TeamViewer (note that I’ve stopped using this software & closed my account because they incorrectly flagged my devices as being used for non-personal use), this means disabling the background service (note that the TeamViewer background service will re-enable itself after an update to the software, so it will need to be disabled again after each update) & only running the software when you think it will be needed (also don’t leave it running indefinitely, otherwise you may run into the same problems I did).
- Make sure your user account on your PC has a password on it & lock your PC (Windows Key+L hotkey) when you are not at it. This will add an additional step before they will be able to access your PC if somebody does access your computer while it’s not being used.
- Disable file transfers in the remote access software. This can be enabled if you need it once you get past the login screen on your PC, but remember to turn it off again before disconnecting the session (software like TeamViewer will auto-lock your PC if you had to unlock it after a session is started).
Of course there are mobile apps you can use while you are out, however if you have limited bandwidth (or are in an area where service is spotty at best, if not a mobile service dead zone) these may not be an ideal alternative (especially if you have to do it at work). From my personal experience, the official apps really are not a reliable option (I would suspect this is where a lot of the complaints are coming from on the Warframe forums regarding drop progression not correctly tracking) & some of the apps really aren’t even usable anymore (the Shield TV app breaks stream playback after MOST ads are played; I’ve started using the remote access method to watch streams playing on my PC to get around this).
