There's never been a better time to start playing Warframe. It's a free-to-play MMO-ish1 third-person shooter that you can play solo with an amazing world and minimal shitty monetization. They just released a big update, The Duviri Paradox, which serves as an alternate tutorial and a better peek into the wild story than the old opening. Even if you bounced off of the game in the past, consider checking it out now.
Warframe is set in a far-future, posthuman solar system where you're a superpowered space ninja2 who does sick flips in order to fight space capitalists and fascists. There's a major plotline about helping a labor union to resist the bosses who are keeping them in eternal debt that means they even lease their own prostheses. There are plotlines about how trauma doesn't just go away; you have to learn to live with the scars, and sometimes that means forgiving people but sometimes it means drinking their soul.
It's a grinding and crafting game, doing third-person shooting with fun movement and ever-changing equipment in procedural levels3. You can get 99.999% of the non-cosmetic stuff in the game for free; premium currency can get you additional visual customization as well as let you skip some timers and some randomness. If you're so inclined (I'm not) you're encouraged to sell your duplicates from the free gacha system to other players to get the premium currency for real money. There are multiple free "battle pass" systems with very forgiving timelines that dripfeed you all sorts of stuff. The player community is astonishingly welcoming; you will basically never see slurs, rarely see toxic chat, and the biggest problem I have with the general vibe is that people are too hard on the developers.
It used to be that the best story beats were stuck behind a quest that was 50+ hours into the game. Now, though, The Duviri Paradox is a gorgeous, story-driven quest that you can (and should) do as the first thing in the game. It has a roguelite system reminiscent of Risk of Rain4. It eases you in to some of the complicated systems of the game. It explores emotional regulation in response to trauma. It has horses.
Warframe has been a tricky game to get started in, since there are a hundred different resource categories and side activities and progression paths and factions and mission types. To my game designer's eye, Duviri should help ease you into things much more smoothly; you'll have a good opportunity to be hooked by the world and story, and you can play around with stuff without having to read a wiki5. The expansion is still somewhat janky, but they'll be hotfixing stuff every day or three, so it should stabilize soon.
Try Warframe. It's free. Pick the Duviri Paradox path when it starts up. I will now take questions.
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For the vast majority of the game, you'll be in grouped instances of up to four players. There are social spaces that support hundreds, but they're mostly just shops and questgivers and such. The public matchmaking is very good, but you won't ever come across another player by surprise in the open worlds.
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or space cowgirl, or space centurion, or space hoverboarder, or space nightmare
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There are countless variations on the formula in the game, including space combat, mecha, open worlds, handcrafted quests, and the normal MMO array of mining, fishing, and animal conservation.
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Each run gives you a choice of several frames (classes) and weapons, plus "Decrees" that are things like "melee weapons attacks hit twice" or "when you dodgeroll, you drop a frost grenade". You get more Decrees as you play. You don't need to own the frames/weapons to have them as options and you can choose decent default builds, so it's a cool way to preview equipment you haven't gotten yet.
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You'll probably have to use a wiki eventually, though, and it's sadly currently hosted on Fandom (but there's real talk of migrating away). Use Indie Wiki Buddy and turn on its BreezeWiki support.