f13.net

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/e3-defiance-tv-show-online-194736

Interesting game, I'm curious to see how it'll turn out.

C'mon now...I know Trion's shown themselves to be pretty competent so far with the whole MMO thing.  But I'm still waiting on my promised Stargate Universe MMO tie-in to the show...

I wonder if this is the same guys I was working with.

Oh I can't wait to see this. SPLOITZ AWAY!! The TV show better reference wall hacks and exploiting or else it'll burn to the ground. Meh, hell with it, it will burn to the ground anyway - the hardcore people will see to that.  :ye_gods:

Wat da fuck? Is this some Captain Power shit going on?  :why_so_serious:

Console MMO + TV show?  :awesome_for_real:

Massively just put out an E3 article on this...I'm now interested.  Hey Bloodworth, I found that MMO you were lookin' for.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/08/e3-2011-trion-worlds-talks-defiance/

:drill:

So should we start in again on the aiming abilities of KB&M versus gamepad here, or take it into another room?

KB&M has been proven to be superior.  Scientists and shit did tests.    :why_so_serious: 

Regardless of that, it doesn't matter, since Xbox, PS3 and PC won't be able to actually play together.

 :uhrr: So 3 tv shows then?  :why_so_serious:

No...one show with three scoreboards.  Top people maybe get mentioned in the actual show.

"We have a lot of good soldiers on our side. Men and woman like Coque Gobbla, xxxDoMiN8xxx and Drizzt Dwarfstabber are what keep Earth safe."

 :awesome_for_real:

Who in their right minds thinks this is anything but a laughingstock level failure? How are people getting paid to proposition ideas as ill conceived as this one?

The same people who put together an amazingly polished game with state-of-the-art combat and skill mechanics and drop it into the most generic fantasy world imaginable.

Personally I think that it is cool that they are trying to push the boundaries of media and gaming. I don't care that it might suck. What I do care about is that they are trying to evolve what may or may not be fun. I like watching them trying to grow gaming into other areas of entertainment. If it sucks i wont play it or watch it. If they do a good job i will play it and watch it. Easy as that. More power to them for being experimental.

"WE WANT INNOVATION!"

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?"

"WE WANT INNOVATION!"

I can't wait to see the frustration at Sci-Fi (I'll spell it like an adult, thanks) when players don't do what the Hollywood writers anticipated.

I don't mind integration between Hollywood and games, but so far Hollywood has repeatedly proven unable to comprehend that games are, how you say, "inter-active?"

At some point in the process you have to believe that Hartsman and crew are advising Syfy of the habits of gamers and the risks involved.

No, it really does come down to the money.  Reference: Killing the BSG, SG and other classic sci-fi franchises

Corp Suit: "I hear these MMO things make money hats.  We should try and get one to tie in with the show!"

Trion: "Um, yeah, we could do that, but, you have heard of John Gabriel's Greater Internet F***wad Theory, yes?"

Suit: "Bullocks!  There's millions of those warcrafty people playing!  That's more than we ever had watching Caprica.  Make my game!"

Yes, but I don't have to believe that Sci-Fi will listen.

The same SyFy that brought you Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus and the like?  :uhrr:

The same SyFy THAT CHANGED ITS NAME TO SYFY  :uhrr:

Touchè sir.

The same Sci-Fi that canceled MST3K in order to fill that time slot with un-MSTied versions of MST3K movies.

How exactly are gamers going to mess with the TV show?   Isn't it being filmed normally and they're simply changing it based on events in the game?   By events I assume they mean "Oh look someone killed the lich king".

Then that begs a question from me, why fucking bother in the first place?

I'm going to guess it's more intended to go in the other direction but who knows.   

So what happens when some catassers shock your the producer and down the Lich Kings in the first night?

"That's it! I can abide his evil no longer! I will slay this dark foe! This maligner of worlds, this - (someone whispers in his ear)- whats that you say? He has been put to the sword already? By the stalwart hero PwnURass112! Well then, who's up for drinks at the local?"

Okay okay, I have to stop. This whole thing is just to ripe for parody. I'm not especially creative or inventive, and even I can see many of the facepalming avenues this will end up going down. I look forward to seeing the hilariously cynical predictions you jaded mother-fuckers make that end up coming true.

I just don't understand why they're putting so much effort, and money(presumably), into something that all of five people will care about after the novelty wears off a few weeks after release.

The same thing that happens in WoW?  They'll get temp banned and Trion will fix some exploits then everyone will pretend it didn't happen.   Syfy is the one paying for this idea.   It's a lot more about trying to put a TV show into your MMO than the reverse.   They'll just cherry pick the best stuff from the game to throw into the show to make players feel more involved in it.

It's a show on SyFy.  All of five people will care in the first place...

Is it confirmed that SyFy are actually paying for development? Trion may have agreed to cover development costs and pay a royalty for the opportunity to develop a MMO along these lines, meaning that SyFy doesn't have to put their hand in their pocket at all.

Why would Trion do that? Free publicity for their title and the chance to get in on the ground floor with a new sci-fi property that could attract a cult following. If (big if) Defiance makes it past its first season, there is a good chance of there being a core audience who would watch and play.

Maybe they'll be able to show those Rift Weather Reports for free during commercials?  :grin:

If you watch the earlier videos it really comes across like it was SyFy's idea.   Specifically like it's a pet project of some big wig at SyFy.   Of course that doesn't mean they didn't sucker Trion into footing the bill.   I sort of doubt they pay royalties though.

Finally a trailer out for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQfooemkI0

Looks ok I guess. *shrugs*  It looks like a PvE focus if I had to guess?  At least that will set it apart from PS2 and Firefall.  *shrugs*

"THOUSANDS OF PLAYERS"

At least they're not succumbing to unrealistic expectations.

I like the look of that. I get a borderlands feel from it. But I wonder how its going to interact with the show.

Can't imagine there'll be much tied together. Maybe some scripted events in the game where the outcome becomes some throwaway line from the main cast in the following episode. But beyond that, story-based TV shows need to control too much of the viewing experience, and make too many realtime changes during shoots, to be affected by the random actions of gamers.

Made for a nice press release last year. But I wouldn't be surprised if only this game launches and the show itself never does.

Looks like fun. Basically a star-craft zerg rush from the marines perspective. If the enemy is aggressive enough that it rewards co-operative tactics it could be something quite novel.

Echoes of GW2 zone events and I assume ME3 multi-player. Hopefully they've realised that large player count on-line games can be something other than purely PvP, and I would be hella delighted. Group play with your friends without having to buy into the MMO grind would be awesome.

I think it will be more than that Darniaq... If its anything like the project plan from a few years ago. I think what happened is the people I was working with shopped it around so much.... This beat it to the punch.

I had this mental picture in my head of a big PvE based world in which different bases/outposts come under NPC controlled alien attacks ala Rift, but sort of as the main source of content.  So it would hypothetically be a ongoing war between the players and NPCs losing and gaining towns as they go, players could either push to some hive (one town at a time, reclaiming them on the way), or be pushed back to their capital city and crushed.

Now that I have my best case scenario out there, I'm fully prepared for it to be highly instanced missions ala Global Agenda   :why_so_serious:

Looked interesting with buggies flying and mowing down guys. Then they went bughunt and I was all like... why?

Tabula Rasa had the seeds of this idea. Aliens would launch invasions of keeps and capture them if Players didn't help the defense or take them back. Though of course like everything in TR it was half-baked and didn't go anywhere. Really fun though and it's inclusive, the more defenders the merrier.

I was there for the debut and I've talked to Rob Hill before.  This is pretty much a straight pve shooter using the rift engine and "rift" tech.

Interest officially killed.

I was in pretty early for TR and it was a lot of fun. Definitely had the relatively dynamic event system factor nailed, I preferred it over Rift's in many ways, since as you say, often it was centered on a defense emplacement you had to defend (or reclaim). Plus Borderlands-style loot drops.

Game definitely started taking a turn for the worse as release neared, though. I think one of the best reasons to play beta is to have fun before they 'balance' it out.

If they can do TR right, it could be pretty awesome. However, given their (admittedly limited) track record in world-building, I'm skeptical.

Who is making this game?  I mean the actual developers. 

Trion...not sure I understand the question.

I mean, what projects have the actual human beings working on this game worked on before.  I don't get the impression this is people from the Rift team.

Why wouldn't it be? I'd guess they've got whatever live team the put together working on Rift and the core of the dev team has been working on this for a while now.

Well for End of Nations, for example, they brought on Petroglyph.

Well Petroglyph is making the game and Trion is doing the backend stuff for it, if I remember correctly.  Defiance is all Trion at another studio location (San Diego?).

I know two people working on it, both were hired after Rift was released (or at least after it was in beta) specifically to work on it.

So the show just started production and is going to air Spring 2013.

A fair amount of people from the San Diego development community. So ex-SOE, Rockstar, 989, Highmoon, THQ/Bottlerocket/Concrete. Probably pulled some people down from the main Trion studio in SF I bet. The "core" of the studio when it was founded were almost all SOE veterans.

http://www.defiancejunkies.com/2012/05/22/video-documentry-on-the-making-of-defiance/

Sorry for the shill, but some new info out about the show more than the game.  Kind of a simple Making Of Documentary that's 6 minutes long.  Cool new shots of the CGI of the show.  Gameplay/game stuff is still from the video released last month.

Holy shit, one of the game features is the ability to "level up"!  Wow! 

I wish them the best.  They've really got a deck stacked against them, considering TV and games have just about the most unforgiving and fickle fans across any hobby.  As a new IP, both the show and the game are entirely dependent on the other for success, so if one is bad the whole project will suffer.  Not to mention that Syfy pretty much needs to be all-in for 3-5 seasons minimum for this to even try to catch on. 

Again, not trying to rain on parades, but the scope of the project is very, very large. 

Also, the game looks like TR.

While I agree with that in general, I always thought Eve Online's playerbase could be turned into a reality TV show. But I'm not talking about a reality show like the bread and butter low budget stuff we get now, but a show with the actual motif of the Eve universe. A lot of the dialogue and plot points are heavily inspired (if not a simple copy and paste) of past actions of corps/alliances and the capricious Olympian gods who watch over them.

The Making of Defiance Part II: Sets & Environments (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbJAGtIM4so&feature=youtu.be)

Defiance - Developer Diary: What is a Shooter MMO?  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3b0X4YPUAE&feature=youtu.be)

The video suggests that within the open world you can queue for instanced events. And they mention the open world as "do some resource gathering". Will be interesting to find out the details.

... from a distance. Though if it's the first shooter to let PC and Xbox users play together that should be amusing.
 

I like Trion, so I'll at least keep an eye on this, but I'm not really getting my hopes up for something special.

No pvp, no interest. 

I like Trion and support their efforts, but this game holds nothing for me. 

No PvP? When was that said?

While ago.  It's a PVE game.  I have no idea if that means no BGs or duels but it's not a PVP focused game.

The developer video says it has "session based player versus player conflict maps".

Rift shows that Trion has no interest in creating serious PvP content.  Even now... all these months after release, the balance in pvp is terrible in Rift. 

At least they're looking into pvp stat equalization in RIFT (and already have almost-equalizing bolstering), which puts them several tiers above other DIKUs like wow/swtor.

Dev Diary on PVP: http://www.defiancejunkies.com/2012/10/16/new-dev-diary-video-open-world-pvp/

The only thing i got out of that is that there is going to be pvp.  Which is good.

So what happens when SyFy cancels the show? 

Will the MMO last that long?

I saw the trailer for the TV show and it looked decent. It looks like an actual show and I don't see where the MMO tie-in helps much.

It doesn't.  The idea was dumb from the get go.  An MMO audience is simply too small.

The game being on the xbox and ps3 will probably help the game audience a lot.  Assuming the game is good.

I think Trion's learned a great deal of things with Rift, and Rift was already a great example of a refined 3rd gen MMO.  I give the MMO some decent odds of survival, even after the show gets canned to make room for either more wrestling or another reality show that looks like Hot Topic was either a big sponsor or thought of the show themselves.

Gameplay video looks pretty interesting. Borderlands and Gears of War-ish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aegBFzA2Qlg&hd=1

This would be a great place to continue the action-oriented combat discussion from TES Online thread.

This looks worth keeping an eye on if nothing else, I'm interested in a PvE oriented, MMOFPS, I like co-op games.

Video is private.

I am excited.  Saw a preview on Sci-Fi and looks interesting.

Then again, I excite very easily.

http://www.zam.com/video.html?video=815


This does not look bad.

Is that leaked video?

Nope, a hands on from ZAM. I just linked the HD version out of the article.

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=31413

Its all very Borderlands-ish, and better for it.

Must.  Fight.  Engagement.  Fanboism.

This video made my mouth water.

That's the same video I linked earlier. It's getting passed around - I'm not sure why they keep removing it from various sites.

Looks like fun. What firefall promised and couldn't deliver, GW2 style "join in" missions with shooter mechanics would be massive win.

This site looks pretty awesome.  I love how they are merging real life (tv show) with the game.

Also beta sign ups.

http://vonbachindustries.com/en/?CAS_REDIR=true

Defiance: VBI Recruitment  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBnhzzId-xo&feature=youtu.be)

Seems like registering meant instant and automatic alpha invite.

noticed the same

I signed up this morning, but no invite code yet it seems.

I figured it was do to the case I have  :nda: every  :nda: they have.

I don't think it's automatic - Did you guys buy Rift?

I signed up a few weeks ago and haven't got shit.

edit: Clicking the "Yes, use my trion worlds account" currently does nothing. Maybe it never registered correctly. Oh well.

I have a Rift account and yes I used that option without problems. BUT, friend I showed the VBI Recruitment page to applied at the same time as me and he doesn't have a Rift account, and got no problems either. So, turns out it's random I guess.

ZAM has some closed beta keys if someone is interested: http://www.zam.com/giveaways/defiance.html (http://www.zam.com/giveaways/defiance.html)

Are they for the proper closed beta? The email I got after applying the code was about the stress test that took place on Friday.

From what I can tell, Alpha is separate and running at all times while Beta is weekend events. Seems like they're doing this similar to how they handled Rift beta - only without the shitty twitter/facebook "contests" that they held.

https://twitter.com/DefianceGame

They post hundred use beta codes all the time. Add those to your trion account on http://www.trionworlds.com.

Ok so I will rephrase my prior post - they aren't limiting themselves to those shitty twitter/facebook codes  :why_so_serious:

Just in case anyone wants a key, I'm handing out about 500 of them: http://www.defiancejunkies.com/2013/01/14/defiance-beta-giveaway-come-and-get-em/

I applied a key from twitter to my existing Rift account. Now I have no information on how to download beta client for the weekend.

Try here: http://update03.triongames.com/ch3-installer/public/beta/DefianceSetup.exe

You will get an email when the invitations are sent out.  The key really just flags your account to receive the invite.

That video looks far better than this game has any right to be. I'm wary as shit about the tv show/mmo tie in stuff, but do want that gameplay.

At the rate the beta is patching, the weekend will be over before it finishes.

I still don't have the e-mail with invite. Patcher does not work until you do the NDA. Lots of people saying they have not gotten e-mail on different boards. DefianceGame just tweeted 40 minutes ago to e-mail community@defiance.com if applied code and did not receive invite. This was what I was worried about when first posted here that don't know how to download. It takes me 8 hours with my connection to download 2 gigs.

Edit: 20 minutes after sending e-mail that did not get invite they sent one so they are being responsive.

I keep getting two emails. One in German, one in English.

New trailer is out:
Show trailer #2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3XKZU459DI)

I dunno about you guys but I've been mildly squeeing over this show/game (especially after that last trailer).  They've got over $100m wrapped up between the two products (the majority in the game) and the simple fact is this is the biggest sci-fi show production on any network since BSG.  And no, I dont count the abortion that was Terra Nova.

The show itself has promise and is so far what I've been wanting in a sci-fi series for a loooong time.  

As for the game, the premise is sound to me.  They pretty much want a perfected version of TR integrated with a AAA tv show.  If they succeed at simply making TR-Next it'll be a great success.  And let's face it, Trion has their shit together moreso than Garriott and NCSoft did.  Rift engine done hardish sci-fi combined with a dynamic TV show?  Hell, why not?

And their control over ingame events works well with the premise of the show altering the gamespace and vice versa.  Let alone the potential for character development in both genres and the simple fact that gameplayers will now have a deeper reason to play (something TR was severely lacking).  Should be an interesting ride.

Have I reached Falconeer level fanboism yet?  Nah, I'm still DLing the beta.  Gotta try it first.

I played it a bit tonight.  :nda:


<Rattran Edit>There is an NDA

I'm pretty sure there is an NDA for this beta event.

Sorry about that. It was late and I am so used to Beta weekends being the new "open beta" that I just sort of typed without thinking. My bad. Thanks for the edit.

Shtako!  I jekkin' hate  :nda:  !!

And remember when judging Defiance (based on the beta weekend) that there's an alpha still going and that the release is still 3 months away...

Kind of a counter-intuitive statement that.

Judging from the betas/alphas I've been in over the last few years, these days "alpha" just means what "closed beta" used to, closed beta is what open betas were (open betas usually meant open to the public, not open as in, everyone can just march right in), and open betas are now basically just a free trial/marketing gimmick.

I'm so glad I haven't heard this said about pretty much every MMO with launch problems ever.

I hate NDAs. Nowadays when I see that a game's beta has an NDA, I automatically assume they are hiding a shitty product behind it. I don't have a problem with alpha NDAs though. But specifically with the current way betas are handled an NDA means poor confidence in their product.

Most of the time I'd agree, but Trion with Rifts had their beta NDA lifted really early, hopefully that continues with this game as well.

With three months til release and they are still behind an NDA, this will not be a pre-order or even a day one purchase, if it is even going to be purchased at all.

I'm actually a bit worried that they don't appear to have picked a business model yet, as evidenced by the fact that even if you were totally sold on the concept there does not actually appear to be any way to preorder this game for PC, nor any literature about it being F2P.

I understand the game is 3 months from release still, but this is something I'd expect to already be nailed down and publicly known by now.

I see preorders on EB's site, but none of them have any product details, but the graphic says beta access and exclusive items. Which means nobody's old EB what the hell they're selling yet, either.

It is going to be free to play isn't it? 

Edit, maybe not I can't find that info now but I could have sworn I heard that.

The most recent interview I could find said No. Sub choice or pay-per-content or F2P, they haven't actually decided yet. Which is worrisome.

I give this game a pass with having the NDA because there's a viable IP attached that they need to protect until the show releases.  Translation: any negative game press has the unfortunate effect of fucking up the show.  Knowing how game reviewers are, I wouldn't risk it either.

And really guys.  This show is not some SyFy joke.  Maybe it was mentioned in this thread earlier but I did some digging and found out who the creator was.  It's O'Bannon (old guys like me will remember his name scrolling in the credits on our old tube TVs  :awesome_for_real:).

This has me a bit more optimistic and to the point I'd likely give the game a definitive shot regardless.  Had it been someone like Abrams or Spielberg I would've never even downloaded the beta.   And had the dev. been EA or Ubisoft et. al., likewise.  Trion+O'Bannon should theoretically be a good marriage.  Neither like to screw around with their offerings.

The NDA is going to be up until launch for the usual reasons.

Toss the game in the same bin with the rest of the NDA-til-launch games as well.

To update my prior "why can't you actually order this game, that's odd":

PC preorders went up on their site, and on GMG and EB (no steam). So hey, they have that down! Also, they're listing no sub fee, so it looks like it's Buy to Play, with microtransactions of an unknown value.

If it's buy to play (like gw2) I will probably get it. Any kind of subscription and I'll probably skip it (gw2 has spoiled me and I won't pay a sub anymore unless it's for something really incredible)

Same here.  I don't mind a box cost, if it's reasonable.  For a sub though, I better be wined and dined.

Same here. The thing seems solid enough to deserve a one time purchase.

By listing no sub fee, I don't mean "it's not on the list", but rather that they're listing that there is no sub fee.

The Ultimate $150 edition however comes with a DLC season pass, so I'm presuming that they're going to do a bunch of DLC episodes and content. Hopefully not too aggressively priced considering it's already a $60 game, and the $100 version doesn't have the DLC season pass either.

edit: and I'm absolutely interested in the no sub fee + those videos. I'd still love more information, but so far it looks like the promise that Firefall and GA made and missed.

The game aside; that trailer had a vaguely Firefly vibe to it.  Like the early episodes in Persephone and the battle in Serenity Valley etc etc.  Maybe it was the music running in the credits.  Is that why they've got us fanbois in a lather??

"No more Sy-Fy shows for me, they all get canceled and leave you hanging."

Which easily trickles down to the game.

Once again we're at this point where a company wants our money and we can't even advise eachother on whether to spend it or not.  I mean, is it even violating an NDA if I say "buy" or "wait?"

The entire history of MMOs + SyFy show tie-in = wait.

Eh?  The only history was Stargate Worlds and it never got released.  And BSGO was a simple shitty webgame done after the show.  What other tie-ins have there been?  As I recall, Defiance will be the 1st one.
Speaking of BSG btw, the guy who did the effects for that series is doing Defiance as well.

What I've seen of the TV show has not seemed the slightest bit interesting. A bland regurgitation of long chewed-over ideas. It reminds me most of Earth 2, without the benefit of Earth 2's then-novel gimmick of "space ship crashes in the first episode, crew spends the rest of the series walking across a continent."

I have strong opinions about the beta. I'll try to remember to post them when the NDA is down.

I will agree that the whole IP seems a bit of a regurgitation, especially given its creator.  It really seems more of a late 90's era sci-fi series, only done with modern CGI and mildly original characters.  Thing is, I'm fine with that.  And in some ways, prefer it. We shall see.

I mean, at least they're trying guys.   :oh_i_see:     Granted, I shouldn't confuse 'trying' with simply not having any other choice.  Network TV has pretty much abandoned sci-fi altogether and I dont see it coming back anytime soon save for a Trek series.

I do have an initial gripe that the premise of the game really doesn't match the premise of the show.  Arkhunters have nothing to do with the SyFy series to start and to me that's a bit of a let-down.  Grokking it today I realized the perfect utilization of this IP would've been something akin to Shadowrunner meets last season of Fringe.  Instead they went the opposite route with the show and are internalizing a small-town just trying to survive outside the influence of large corps. like Von Bach.  Mistake to me, but maybe they'll tie everything in somehow like DS9 did in later seasons.

Odds are initially the game will have little to do with the show simply because one is in San Fran and the other in St. Louis.

Just wanted to add that some Russians have posted gameplay vids on youtube. Not going to link but when I checked it had 23k+ views.

Also going to say something later about the beta. :nda: 

The NDA is irritating the heck out of me. That is all.

Dont recall seeing this in here yet so, New Live-Action game trailer is up. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J30hfNT_uf4)
If you look close, you'll see an arkfall code to inject into your ego on the website.  Hint: watch the ego scene

So I guess we're not going to have a sub., which is nice.  And it looks like they're integrating the show with the game partly by easter-egging redeemable arkfall codes.  That's pretty slick.

Also new, Arkhunter Chronicles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J30hfNT_uf4)  (animated comic)

This is up for pre-order on Steam now.  I'll pass myself.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/224600/


They are doing one of those "Tiered" things where the more people who pre-order the more you get, check out the link for details if you are interested.

I kept seeing that pre-order and couldn't remember what the fuck it was or why I couldn't remember it. Now I remember why I forgot it.

I was going to buy it since it's buy-to-play but somehow when they started to advertise buying 5 dlcs for the price of 4 (as a season pass) even before they release I got the feeling that any free content updates would be very sparse (if they exist at all). Maybe GW2 has skewed my current view on this (and how they are not making all new stuff into dlcs).

And still, this is going to be the first "traditional MMORPG" (meaning big huge open world) that is firearm-based and works like a shooter. It should not be disregarded so easily.

At the same time, with the large amount of high quality free-to-play MMOs out there, I feel almost sorry for them hoping to sell boxes/keys at 49$. Looks like another project that will under-perform regardless of its quality.

I just don't know if I can stomach another quest grinder, regardless of the mechanics.

I know I can't. Not MMOPRG style anyway.

Still under NDA after open beta weekends is a not good a sign. You know they are not doing NDA to keep secrets from the competition. Under NDA with less than a month before release is a bad sign. Under NDA when selling the product to the uninformed is just dishonest.

Yeah this. Has the NDA test ever failed us badly?

I want to like these guys for having the balls to take on this kind of game but Rift was underwhelming as fuck so I'm not expecting them to do a good job.

Rift was above average in pretty much every respect IMO but the IP itself was just not interesting. I have a hard time getting invested with generic fantasy schlock I've known for years, much less stuff thrown together for what they figured was a technology test (that turned into a pretty successful MMO).

Given that this thing is going to run simultaneous to the show, it could be that the NDA is for story elements.  But then again, I am likely being too generous.

The trend is usually that late-lifting NDAs = bad/mediocre launch.  But then you throw Trion into the mix, and, well, that rule kinda faults a bit.

I think if anything this will fail due to Syfy's manipulations.

First once since Tabula Rasa was shut down.

It does have a TR vibe to it.

I thought about Tabula Rasa, but the combat, except for shotgun, never felt really right. It really wasn't a shooter. This is pretty much Tabula Rasa done right. Not necessarily a good thing enough anyway.

Is it tab target plus action bar or like a real fps?

real fps (or atleast alot closer to real than tab-targeting)

It was a well above average imitation of WoW. Everyone else trying to reskin WoW couldn't find their own dicks with help apparently but every part of Rift that was supposed to be something more was so lackluster that you couldn't say they had added anything to the equation of note except the soul/class system. My point is what they did well is not what this game is doing this game is trying to break all new ground practically which is exactly what they failed at last time.

Remember how cool rift battles and rifts opening up and attacking the world sounded?

Remember how cool they actually were?

To be clear, this IP is a helluva lot more appealing than Rift's and I liked/disliked Rift for all the same reasons everyone else did, therefore logic dictates I drop some monies on Defiance.   Failure will come because they will likely fail to truly link the show with the game.  I still see no indication of if/how that is supposed to happen in any way like was stated in the original prospectus from way back before Rift was even an idea; aside from the simple easter-egg ego codes.

That being said, if Defiance fails I believe Trion goes bye-bye.  This thing has always been their "white buffalo" so to speak.  Heads will roll.


It's an action bar RPG-based FPS.  Like TR, your dmg., reticule speed, etc. is determined by statted ability.  However unlike TR, you can't tab target except  :nda:.  I cant comment on hitboxes and the like 'cept to say there are obviously head-shots. (just like in the vids I linked).

To be clear, Tabula Rasa was a great game with simply not enough content.  Rushed to re-completion after Garriott scrapped NCSofts original shitty korean grinder ideas.  Trion is banking on, as Falconeer says, pretty much doing Tabula Rasa "done right."  More content, better theme, tighter physics, and more in-game reason to play.

Is it the game I want though?  Nope.   :oh_i_see:

It's a good TPS (Third-Person shooter). There are definitely a few hitboxes, aiming for mobs' heads does more than just shooting them everywhere.
Also, rifts and dynamic spawns are here too and they seem to be a somehow improved version of the Rift's one.

What I think it's really not giving the game a chance, especially considering how unknown it is, is the business model.

Fallen Earth?

W/o breaking NDA, there's no way to tell yet how "improved" the dynamic spawns will be.  It really boils down to how desperate the devs want the players to feel.  Personally, I always felt Trion fucked up in Rift when they dumbed-down the spawns initially.  Again, it's that "reason to fight" issue.  If they limit the spawns to not being a factor for anyone (especially with near zero travel time), then there's no point to having them.  Concurrently, if you can level w/o participating in the spawnfights then wtf is the point save to collect Arkfall?  So they'll have to get that part right too.  Note:  Questhubs are also less needed in a sci-fi game.  Much will be done via comms and so forth, so spawns will have to be location dynamic as was in Rift at times.

The game definitely has a more collecting/explorative feel just from studying the design.  They really want you to get into the act of finding tech., building shit with it, selling, or using it...  for whatever boutique reason you can find.  If they DLC in real reasons, e.g. gear-based endgame and/or plot-moves in the show (which wont happen during the first 5 epis obviously since they've already been made yes?), then good. Otherwise they'll fail to retain any players.

Right. You got me. Fallen Earth didn't feel "right" to me shooter-wise, but I guess it qualifies as a first. Unless we want to count some other minor attempts from around 2005.

I don't consider Fallen Earth a shooter simply because their mechanics were so... awkward.  I hated combat mode, and that's ultimately what ed me to stop playing and not pick it up once they went f2p.

You know what's between sad and pathetic? That with only twenty days to launch they had gathered up only 15% of the *first* reward tier for peroders (http://store.steampowered.com/app/224600/).
How could it be any different though?

Game is widely unknown.
Game is based on an unknown intellectual property.
Game is tied to an unknown, unreleased TV show.
Game is still in closed beta, so no one can try it.
Game is still under NDA, so no one can talk about it.
Game is fucking 50$/€ upfront.

This is not my job, but I'd really really like to have a word with whoever is in charge of marketing and business here. I mean, if I were Trion CEO and wanted to tank a game just for giggles, the above steps are exactly the ones I'd follow.

It sucks cause this game is no miracle, but it deserves better.

The Steam page doesn't make it clear, and I can't remember if I've asked... is there a monthly sub?

 :nda: on this is very very frustrating.

I am not sure where this game is now, but by recalling what I played two months ago. Hmmm, I highly recommend that anyone who is planning on pre-purchasing try to get into a beta phase before they may or may not be throwing their money into the toilet.

In fact, you might just wanna throwing your money into the toilet instead...

No subscription. You only pay the box. It's the Guild Wars model.

...but with dlcs ($9.99 each, $39.99 for a season pass of 5 dlcs) in addiition to cash shop.

Fuck these guys. Their whole approach seems based on the assumption that people were impressed with Rift and should be lining up to eat out of their hands. Instead I look at them has halfwit Blizzard, incapable of making truly daring game design choices but not talented enough to execute well. With a dash of big dreams and plans that amount to nothing in the end.

They fooled me once, I thought Rift was going to be a new game doing interesting shit. It was not that. I honestly wish Funcom had been making this game. At least they seem to earnestly try to make new exciting games.

I'm pretty much the opposite Hoax; I thought Rift was good enough that I'd gladly give Trion some more money. This is an FPS though, which isn't really my cup of tea; if it was TR done right I might give it a shot, but with the :nda: up still no one can really talk about it and the betas are always weekend events that I haven't had time for even when I did get in. Those who are skirting the NDA line here have been posting pretty negative comments, which means I probably won't buy it day 1 (and for most MMOs if I don't buy them day 1, I don't buy them at all because I like that new car smell).

For what it's worth it, my NDA-covered comment is positive.

Shit.  That means don't buy. :-P

Well, I said "don't buy" a few posts above. Regardless of the supposedly positive comment.

So the game hasn't interested me at all (Rift was ok but bland), but the concept of the show tie-in kinda. And at least one review (http://io9.com/our-spoiler-free-review-of-syfys-new-western-em-defi-453388225) thinks the first three episodes don't suck, even if they're steeped in tropes and suffer from Firefly-ness.

Perhaps Trion doesn't have the freedom to promote this independently of the studio or SyFy. I don't know how tied together the businesses are. But with the narrative tie in as described, chances are it's the studio that calls the shots (for a variety of reasons from ego through precedent through their creative vision driving the entire IP).

MMORPG.com is giving away beta keys in case anyone is interested.

http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/offer/424/Defiance-Beta-Key-Giveaway.html

Thanks for that.  Grabbed a code, will see what happens.

Oh good.  Thanks Ginaz.  This helps a bit.  I signed up for the 360 beta.  I wonder if that was a mistake.  Everything is just so much easier on a console.  And I hate my laptop.

Here's the schedule for the final beta, which will be NDA free:

Final Beta = Open Beta?  Sorry I'm not up with today's Gaming jive talk.

A 2 day window for PC, and again on a weekend. So much for that.

It's not an open beta.  You need a key, mang.

Aside from that, after trying to bone up on info for this game, I can understand the angst against it a little more.  There's just not that much info about the nitty-gritty stuff.  Character development looks kinda shallow, and aside from the dynamic events and stuff, is there still some kind of a PvE progression like a classic DIKU, or is it more instant-action go-where-ever-you want stuff?

It's definitely a DIKU. It's 100% EQ-WoW-DIKU (so quest hubs, dungeons, instances, wide open zones, loot, everything) but with free third-person-shooter aiming and basically no melee.

Tank/DPS/Healer setup or something different there too?  Doesn't seem to be any 'classes' per se, rather the TSW approach of "you can be anything, eventually"

Ha. You got me there. You are right. No classes.

Is the FPS mechanic solid, at least?  I suck at FPS really really badly, but this at least looks somewhat fun.

Sadly, anything else gets too deep into NDS territory. All I can say is that it's no as surgical as Counterstrike, but hitting different body parts does different things, so it seems solid enough to be while still playable by non-pro players.

This is not a DIKU. Here's what is public knowledge:

It's a close-up third person view, shooter, where you character selects abilities or augments off a grid.  There is a lot of gear in the game and different guns, including healing guns like Team Fortress. You do random "Rift" like encounters, there are vehicles that you can ride around in, and there is a story line associated with it.

There are also "dungeons" too.

Think third person borderlands with some random events thrown in.

Without trying to be cool, and assuming I actually am aging badly and forgetting stuff, what is a DIKU (http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/09/what-is-a-diku/) to you?

And what of the sentence:


is not right to you?

Eh???  There's plenty of melee.  Matter of fact you can build your character entirely around it ("ninja", "tanky-brawler", whatever.)   :headscratch:  Fucking  :nda:
As for luckton's question, being the Rift engine of course there's instant action and 'go where you want' stuff.  Borderlands was a nice analogy.

The game is not DIKU, because its engine is not turn-based per se.  To be DIKU you've got to have a common gameclock that's pretty long.  Games like TR and moreso Defiance have near instant response aside from tic damage and dont have shared timings between players. e.g. if your ping sucks, YOU suck.  So no, it's not DIKU.

It has many DIKU elements, but that doesn't make it so.  Matter of fact, if you wanted to you could play the game entirely TF2 style and never touch diku.

Fair enough. It's not a DIKU. To some (me), it feels like it is due to the prominence of some elements common to DIKUs, but it's not a DIKU.

Well, how it feels is all that really matters in the long run... so yah, maybe it is DIKU.   :grin:

Those last eight posts make me like this game so much less. Its just so incredibly asinine we aren't allowed to actually talk about this title yet.

I'm so confused.  I need a nap.

No one here uses DIKU to mean a stepped combat system.  It's about the endless questing, grinding, and use of the Holy Trinity.  It's designing a game like it's a DIKU MUD as opposed to something with more imagination.

nvm.  This merry-go-round goes round.

Damn  :nda:

I really want to weigh in on this "Diku or not" conversation but can't figure out how to do it without breaking the (silly at this point) NDA.

Simple.  DIKU refers to Diku MUD.  All diku muds were/are stepped-combat.  If your game is not stepped-combat, it's not diku.  Otherwise damn near 75% of games (even games like WW2O, certain BF mods, ARMA, etc.) would fall under Lant's definition. 

Subjective things like quests, "teh grind," and zomg classes arent enough to make me label something as a DIKU. 

I know what a DIKU MUD is.  I was a player and coder on one for a decade.

Calling a game a DIKU is a pejorative about its design philosophy, not a description of its mechanics.  I didn't coin it.  I'm just explaining how it's used here.

I have one for you all: is Tera a DIKU?

Apparently the NDA is finally getting lifted on the 22nd for the upcoming beta (not sure if it's been mentioned yet), so I'm expecting F13 to pick apart this corpse like the ravenous vultures you are.

Is the NDA also lifted for the 'Alpha' or just these Beta weekends?

I went ahead and pre-ordered today. Not that my tastes align very well with F13s but I thought I'd mention it. I have a sneaky suspicion this game is going to be very small simply because pre-orders don't seem to be very big at any major retailers. I suspect there's just not enough information out there and not enough people know about the game.

Hmm, wonder if SyFy told Trion that they'd look after promotion, but don't have the knowledge / skills / connections to deliver it for video games.

It's not anywhere near the top of the Gamestop list with basically 2 weeks to go, so someone's doing something wrong.  I've talked to a few consoleers and they dont even know wtf Defiance is.  Seeing as how it's one of only a few console MMOs, that's pretty disheartening.

SyFy has a few spots, but who the hell watches SyFy anymore?  So that's fail too.  The show releases 2 weeks after the game, so no real marketing there for the initial push either.

I wouldn't pre-order this even if it was free...

I like these games.. I just need to check if there are Australian servers (there very rarely are, for quite defendable reasons) and use that as my decision on whether I need to care.

I didn't even know there was a console version, but that could just be me - I don't pay close attention to consoles.

The meter on the Steam preorder page is still short of 30% to the first bonus unlock with two weeks to go. Something went wrong somewhere - whether in marketing or sales projections, I'm not qualified to judge. It's got to be depressing for the team to see, regardless.

The other issue is that you can look forward to seeing the series screened on free-to-air TV sometime in 2014. Perhaps. :grin:

But yeah, they've got two weeks to create a marketing push and sell a MMO to the masses; I don't think that's enough time. Plus the people who could be hyping the game - the beta testers - are still under NDA.

And that more than anything is the real killer on preorders. You cannot let an online game go out without sufficient word of mouth build up unless it's from an established IP. New IP? Hell no. TV ads won't do it because MMOG customers are either watching their TV online or time-shifted with their DVR's, in which case they likely aren't watching the ads much. Serious marketing fail. Hell, I knew there was a game called Defiance coming out  from Trion based on a SyFy show, yet when the pre-order popped up on Steam, I had to go to the store page to even know WTF it was.

Quoting myself only to state once again how much I can't wrap my head around the disaster they have been cooking up.
Seriously, if a competitor had paid an agent to go undercover as marketing lead in the other company and kill their upcoming MMO, s/he couldn't have done a better job. This is a flawless KO.

It is also remarkable given the legitimately good job they did marketing Rift.  That game had great marketing, a solid open beta, a good launch, etc.  It's like they brought in the B team for this one. (or C team, or D team).

Didn't Trion loose their AAA producer or something a few months ago?

Hartsman left, yes, but I don't know how much say he had in marketing decisions.

Apparently a lot.

I'm not saying that he is a magically amazing developer or anything, but I have a strong suspicion that he is one of those people that provides the voice of reason and common sense on projects. He did good things with rescuing eq2 from its horrible horrible launch.

I don't think he single-handedly made any game great, except for being given the power to pick the right people and steer them in the right direction.  They're still collaborative efforts.  But without him (and probably a few key people), things don't fall properly into place.

Jeez they couldn't have waited another week and a half till the game was released?

It's only the nda from the beta event so I have nothing to say about the game :oh_i_see:

Ah that makes more sense :awesome_for_real:

The beta event should be enough to show you how terrible this game is.

I would rather slip 60 bucks into Richard Garriott's wallet than pay 60 dollars for Defiance, and I hate Richard Garriott.

I've watched this being played, its awful. You can instantly summon a vehicle to appear from the air right next to you at any time. The players have no clipping with each other so other players will be sitting the middle of your car on their bike which just looks stupid. The enemies and AI do not really impress, the game is just too fast paced for AI to not feel as if your just beating up on mental midgets. What few spell effects I did see looked pretty yucky.

It looks like someone trying to make MMO Borderlands but doing a not so great job.

So, I hear if you got into this weekend's beta you can download the client now.

Factual statement is factual. Got my email this morning.

I can't say anything until tomorrow about the game specifically. I can say I preordered it and it may or may not have to do with my experiences playing it.

According to an email I just received, Nathan Richardsson (Oveur from CCP) is "VP Development, Executive Producer and proud member of the 150 person Defiance team."

I admit I didn't know that he was at Trion now.

NDA drops in 10 hrs, but I'll go ahead and say one should really try this last beta before dropping judgement.  The prior betas have been very minimal, restricted in schedule, and generally useless 'cept for early game stress testing which biased opinion quite obviously.  I havent pre-ordered yet but my final judgement will be based on how well they've flushed out the bugs I found prior as well as how complete the beginning zones are.  Those who are in full beta (anyone here?) have a better grasp then us lowly AMB people.

Personally, me and my brother have wanted to grab a Borderlands-ish game to play together but frankly I didn't like the Borderlands theme.  Defiance has the theme(s) I want though and the long-term support an MMO gives (along with a show), so for us it's nearly a no-brainer except to decide to play on console or not.

Tbh, in a head2head I found more fun in the barebones Defiance beta then Neverwinter's.  Albeit NWN is f2p.

Go to "options" and activate the damage floating numbers, off by default. They give a good Borderlands feel that I tend to like very much. Give it a try, sometimes a detail can change a lot.

Hmm. Grabbed a code last night, registered it, it shows on my trion account, and no beta download or other info.

I've been downloading the beta for the past 12 hours because the patcher keeps shitting the bed.

Going to NGI to read the Bioshock Infinite review I got an invasive and huge splash screen ad for Defiance. Mneh.

In all fairness IGN is all about those splash screens for their ads so it's not just Defiance.


This happened to one of my guild members and she contacted support and within an hour or two they sent her a different patcher that worked much better.

Oh yeah it was annoying but I didn't write that to poke at Defiance's advertising tactics. If anything I am poking at Defiance for doing what in my opinion is too little too late.

Given the attention span of the average gamer/show-watcher, should we really even have beef with their marketing schedule?  I've thought on it more and the way people react to advertising it seems a media blitz just before launch might be the smarter, as well as cheaper, choice. 

They're definitely not marketing for the min-maxer.

They've already reached 41% of reward 1 (of 3) pre-purchase bonus in steam!  :why_so_serious:

Patched up and ready to be either impressed or disappointed.  Gonna go get lunch first.

"The servers are busy, you have been placed in a queue.

Queue Position: 2216

Estimated Time Remaining: 26 Days"

 :grin:

Alright the NDA has been lifted so I figure I'll spill a few things. I'm going to do my best to make sure I only talk about beta stuff and not alpha stuff though I don't think there is a huge difference.

First, character creation:

You have 2 races: Humans and Irathiens. There is no difference between the two other than looks and lore stuff. Irathien is what the girl featured in the all the trailers is.

You have, I think, 5 'classes'. The only difference between them is your starting clothing and weapons.

You can tweak your face and hair, adding things like tatoos and scars, hairstyles and colors, eye colors, etc. There aren't a ton of customization options but there are enough you can reasonably make a character you'll like. It is just impossible/hard to make a truly unique character.

Other character stuff:

Your RPG skills/levels are represented in your EGO matrix. You have 4 base abilities to choose from Cloak, Blur, Decoy and Overpower. You can pretty easily guess what those do. You choose one during the tutorial after getting to try all 4. This opens up other advancements around that power. You could eventually work your way to the other powers and grab them as well. I have no idea if there is a skill point cap or if your character can eventually have every power in the game.

Clothing and armor is purely cosmetic.
Weapons work very much like you'd expect from any 3rd person/1st person style game. You can carry two at all times. I generally carry a sniper rifle and a pistol or shotgun personally. You also have grenades.

You get a shield that recharges over time. It sort of reminds me of Halo or a game like that. If your shield drops, get out of LOS and let it recharge.

Gameplay:

This is why I wanted to argue when the DIKU discussion came up but restrained myself at the time. You have no action bar. Left mouse button shoots. Right mouse button aims. G throws grenades. Other actions are mapped to other buttons which honestly I don't have memorized. I think E or F is interact/loot, etc. The gameplay is very, very action oriented.

You get a vehicle shortly after the tutorial. Like Hoax mentioned you can summon it at anytime. He apparently disliked that, I liked it because of the convenience factor. It shows up with a sort of shimmery effect and rolls to a stop in front of you which makes me believe it is intended that the vehicle was 'cloaked' or something and your summons just brings it your location and decloaks it. You'll need the vehicle because the gameworld is a pretty decent size. Whcih reminds me, it doesn't have zones or anything like that unless you go inside a 'dunegon' or something. If you hit shift your vehicle boosts to a higher speed for a short time which is quite fun to do if you see something that looks at all like a ramp in front of you.

You don't have classes as I mentioned. Everybody could theoretically get the same skill sets. Your DPS is determined mostly by your ego matrix choices and your weapons.

Crafting is limited to putting mods on weapons, stripping mods from weapons, or salvaging stuff from weapons. I'm not a huge crafter so I'm fine with that.

The gameplay is basically quest focused though they have something called Pursuits which are basically achievements. They cover the gamut from killing things, exploring, to winning races on your vehicle. Most of them give XPs towards leveling up your EGO. Some give new outfits, titles or vehicles however. You also have the random ark falls which are dynamic. I've done a few of them and they're ok. People just swarm them and kill everything as quickly as possible.

The game is very single player oriented. I have never formed a group in my time playing it. I have, however, worked with other players in some of the quests and Arkfalls we just didn't group. For example, a quest you can play in the beta has a part that essentially turns into a siege. Generally it'll be 4-5 players in the area fighting off waves of mutants. No one is grouped but they do generally work together.

Pvp:

I haven't tried it since I'm very casual about pvp. I imagine that due to the shooter mechanics it will feel much like typical fps style pvp.

Issues:

Hmmm...

The graphics aren't top end. I suspect this is due to it being on the consoles as well. The graphics on PC are better than they are on the consoles. I saw one person on the forum say they were like PS2 graphics. That was just silly. They are, however, 360 and PS3 graphics but with better textures and light and shadows on the PC.

Players don't clip with each other. Hoax mentioned this. It's not a big deal to me but it can be annoying. I once thought a quest was broken because I couldn't interact with a vehicle I was supposed to drive for it. It turned out another player had gotten into his vehicle and not driven away yet so I couldn't interact with mine but could still see it. When he drove away I was able to continue. I am frankly a little surprised at the no clip for players but perhaps they'll activate it later. I suspect this could lead to creative griefing if someone is determined to do it. For example, I've seen people park their vehicles on quest NPCs already.

Enemy variety: Unlike Hoax I don't have a problem with Enemy AI. It's about standard for an MMO. They shoot at you, throw grenades, sometimes try to flank but they're not as smart as the AI can be in a single player FPS. However, the variety sometimes is lacking in my opinion. You'll see hellbugs ALOT. Also, each zone/area, tends to have 1 or 2 types of enemies so that by the time you move on your sick of them. Mutants dominate the early parts of the game and I believe in the beta all you'll see is mutants and hell bugs. There are other enemy types but  :nda:

Graphics and other Settings: One thing I don't like is the game doesn't let me tweak my graphics settings very much. I like to go in and tweak things in advanced settings but you can't do much of this in Defiance. Again, I suspect this is due to consoles.

Menus: The menus can be a bit annoying to navigate. Again, this is likely due to consoles. *sighs*

Economy: I don't think there is much of one. If getting rich off of the AH is something you enjoy, Defiance won't be for you.

I'll answer questions if I can. I quite like the game despite my list of issues. I think playing a persistent, sci-fi shooter just scratched an itch I didn't even know I had!

1, 5 years-old story line, "Saving 'humanlity' at a unknown planet; But first, you gotta find one guy; along the way, you need to do XYZ"
2, shitty questing system, A to B > back to A > go to C > back to A > to D now! > back to A ...
3, killing the same type of mobs for hours...
4, oh yes yes, AI pathing is fucked up as well.

Successfully uninstalled

I actually think you are being too nice, no sarcasm.

1) It's not an unknown planet, it's Earth by San Francisco actually. The guy is found relatively early on though saying the story isn't exactly original is fair enough.
2) I'm really not sure what you mean about the questing system. There are some hubs and I guess that's what you mean.
3) Definitely a fair knock and not something they did themselves any favors with.
4) I didn't notice this at all really.

My biggest issue with the game is that it is just boring.  If you've done one mission, you've done every mission.  The combat is kind of fun for a while, but grows stale pretty quick.  It's not really bad, and I could see some people liking it, but ultimately it isn't good either, in my opinion.

This is becoming my conclusion as well.  Also, I don't get the point of being able to choose my race/background/etc when NONE OF IT MATTERS.   :uhrr:

I agree (and since I have not played beta, alpha still has nda and I won't be buying the game this is all I can really say on this game)

Well now, they've finally linked the show to the game at least somewhat.  (watch the intro. vid)

-I was going to screencap the skill-tree but I'm lazy.  It's setup like a grid (for consoleers obviously) and you can inject points into main skills (dmg, decoy, speed, cloak).  There's a lot of subskills you can grab that'll make you a specialist in certain areas (healing, melee, speed, turrets, tankyness, etc.) if you've got the requisite power rating.  Some are pretty specific.  It's definitely different from the vanilla stuff.  You can then inject certain skills into your activeatable EGO if you've got slots available (also expandable).
-Looks like they've settled on box sale + microtrans.  You buy/earn bits and those bits can be spent on fluff.  Most of it is cosmetic.  There will be DLCs later.
-EGO codes found through exploration, watching the show, etc. typically give more noticeable ingame rewards (dmg. boost, inv., etc.)
-Now that I can also talk more about diku-ness.  This aint diku.  It has some diku elements, but the game doesnt feel as such.  Even the questing is largely done via remote, so a lot of the running isnt necessary unless you've just gotta do every side-mission you find.  And since you've got vehicles and teleportation it's not that bad.
-Love the seamless 'verse.  "Dungeons" are instanced though.
-As said prior, still not sure how dynamic the spawns will be (hopefully will find out by end of beta).  In the prior events they seemed pretty static.  You'd have an arkfall and it'd typically stay right there and not encapsulate the zone.  Not sure if that's supposed to be how it works, but given the amount of people in the zone it wouldn't have gotten far anyways.  As usual, this will be Trion's main problem come launch; tweaking the spawn difficulty.
-There are lots of smaller "events" that will happen on your way to quest locations... you can take part or not (like saving an overrun squad, etc.)  The few I played were pretty interesting and tense and typically involve waves of increasingly harder enemies with a boss at the end.  If you're up-to-date with your leveling you should be able to bypass these events w/o wiping, but if you're squishy you may have to stay and fight.
-There are a fuckton of vehicles you can earn or buy.  There will be races you can enter for prizes and so forth supposedly.  Dev ran.

Overall I like the feel of the game but I'm a sci-fi geek and eat this shit up.  Do I wish it was 'harder' sci-fi??  Yup.  But it's definitely no 'Wildstar.'  There is no pulp in here.  It's obvious they had to vanilla a lot of the game to accomodate a viewing audience and consoleers, but I dont think it's so bad that entertainment can't be derived.  As long as the devs focus on challenging the PC player with content this should be ok.  Otherwise the game will fall flat in a month.

Like I said, regardless I'll likely be playing as long as I can find friends to join me. (though it plays fine solo, will definitely get stale if this is your playstyle).  It's a different itch to scratch.  Not a huge game, but big enough.  Definitely not worth a sub., which is why there is none.  And yes, there is more fun (and challenge; you WILL die) here than there was in the Neverwinter beta (which just felt like mindless button-masher action rpg #250).

edit:
As Malak said, combat can indeed grow stale as tends to happen with these 3ps combat games.  If you dont mix-it-up (arkfalls, pvp, instancing, grouping, etc.) you wont like the game.  The dynamic stuff will hit you over the head from time to time, but that wont be enough unless they really plan on ramping things up after the 1st zone.  A lot of the issue is difficulty, just as it was with Rift.  This is why I dont think I'll play w/o a concerted group/guild/partner.

The game really screams for diablo/borderlands type where weapons rain down like candy and you can hunt for rares.  From what I've seen, this game doesn't have that.

Have they added a /friend command or some other way to add people to your friends list besides standing right next to them and using the quick menu?  I Gave up last weekend after about half an hour of trying to find my friend so we could play together and getting constantly cock-blocked by the game which kept putting us in different channels/instances no matter how many times we did the logout/login dance.

Hellgate: London is better than this piece of shit.

This actually brings up a gripe of mine that I keep forgetting about. A lot of the smaller but nicer features in the game are totally undocumented. Fast travel, for example, is there and you can see the icon on the map if you think to mouse over it however, nothing in the game tells you it exists. I actually didn't know about it for quite awhile until I saw somebody talking about it in chat.

I also forgot to mention all the little random events you encounter as you play. Those are a nice diversion. I tend to avoid any of them having to do with Hell bugs because, really, screw Hell bugs but I'll do the others like "A vendor was ambushed by mutants, save him!"



Character customization. I am one of those weirdos that LIKEs the fact that my race/'class' only matter in a cosmetic way. It means my choices are based on "that looks cool" instead of "Ok, I want to be DPS so I need to choose the Veteran." This is another example of "not documented" however. Nothing on the character creation screen tells you that this choice is purely for cosmetics and starting weapons. The first time I played I chose based on my perception of "ok so this is an engineer, this is probably a DPS, this is likely a ranged stealther..." Turns out that none of that was true.

The run animation... It makes my eyes bleed.

My huge beef, which no one's mentioned yet, was with the UI.

In the first place, everything completely replaces your view of the world. If you want to check your inventory, you can't see. I feel this is unacceptable in a game where there is no pause and you can be attacked virtually anywhere.

The first time I tried to quit, I literally could not figure out how - I ended up using CTRL-ALT-DEL and task manager to manually shut down the exe. In most games you press ESC and "quit" is right on the resulting menu. In Defiance, ESC brings you to some full-screen menu I can't remember. In order to find the quit command, I had to hold down the space bar (not toggle - hold down) and select "settings" from a radial menu. Then you choose quit from a side scrolling list of options along the TOP of the screen. Then you confirm using an unobtrusive button that appears on the BOTTOM of the screen.

The UI for Rift was clear and concise - I don't recall needing anything explained. I assume this was the same team, so... they must have been really screwed by the cross-platform thing.

I turned in more than one quest to mailboxes. Mailboxes in the middle of a lawless, mutant-overrun wasteland. Wait, what?

And one last thing. Have you heard that hip new made-up obscenity, "schtako?" Well, you will in Defiance, because it's guaranteed to appear at least twice in every quest bestowed by the local bumpy-headed Star Trek alien. They're trying to make her sound edgy and tough, but it just comes off as juvenile and repetitive. "Frack" worked in BSG because they weren't using it every other sentence.

Ha! I couldn't figure out how to quit the game either. I had to alt-f4 out.

The Menu/UI system is complete and utter shit.  I mean very very very very bad.

The menu system was designed for the lowest common denominator, that being console players.  All they have to do to quit is hit a button on their controller.

I think I'm going to take a pass on this game.  And if it's any reflection on how the TV series is going to go, I think I'm completely done with Syfy, short of a Farscape/Stargate revival.

The quit button is much much more accessible now. You go to any menu and hit the space bar. Quit Game is now a button in the upper right. Much more accessible than having to hunt for it like you used to.

Schtako doesn't bother me. It's just another sci-fi made-up cuss word like Frak or Frelling or any of the others.

Technically, this IS the Farscape revival.  As in its creator is involved in Defiance, which means through non-competes you wont be getting a new Farscape for a long time.   :oh_i_see:

Ok, I don't feel so bad now for trying to figure out how to exit the game for 10 mins. :awesome_for_real:  And yes, the UI is complete and utter shit.  Not a good start.

UGH...fine, I'll give the series a shot.  But no to the game for now.

Actually DIKU has been perverted to mean anything the poster doesn't like on this board.

Good review but you left out the fact that vehicle controls are straight out of Mass Effect 1. Talk about retarded. Trion already have fine mouse steering code in Rift, why didn't they use it?
After 4 hours of playing today I've come to the conclusion that it is an interesting game in search of a usable UI. I don't know if the loot was pumped up for Beta but it seems almost ARPG like in it's loot drops. I got several guns that proc'd fire damage and one acid damage assault rifle in the 3 or 4 hours I played. There are boss events like Borderlands and they seem to always drop a blue weapon.

Well I played the Mass Effect games on the 360 and this on PC so I didn't think of it but in hindsight I can kind of see it. The vehicles control ok once you get used to them. I've never driven anything besides the 4 wheeler though so I don't know if they change.

From someone who only really plays MMOs, the controls are terrible and confusing. Too many buttons too close together.

Overall, it seems ok, but I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing or why. Is this just a mission oriented PVE shooter? A pseudo-MMO? Is what I'm doing just a training mission for a PVP game?

I suppose on some level I'm a victim of marketing because I almost certainly will give the series a try.

I laughed then I felt bad for Trion. I'm not sure if that's 100% true but it does seem to be on HG:L's level which is something we should have moved passed by now.

I believe that we don't even get to play with console kids? They have their own servers? So basically its a game that is a ton worse as a result of bringing players I don't get to play with. Pretty sure that is all the reason I need. That said though I fucking LOVE post-apoc, dystopian, mad max, type settings I played the shit out of Neocron (little slow, awesome setting), Face of Mankind (great game loved it), AO (loved lots of things about it) I wanted to play Fallen Earth but it had a sub back then and others I'm forgetting but this shit just looks bland. So  bland. There's no sense of urgency or danger. You run around your shields get low you hide you run some more maybe you die but its just a game you respawn and do it some more wheeeeeeee!

There have been standard fps games that have done a better job with depth and breadth than what I've seen of this. Dystopia and Neotokyo come to mind.

I'd say it's a mix of the first two Numtini. A mission oriented PVE shooter and a pseudo-MMO. There is PVP but it's of the 'go to a new map and fight' style and I believe you can totally avoid it. This may be one of the few MMOs that doesn't see a round of nerfs because pvpers whine and cry. Most of the EGO perks are just flat % changes to either one of your 4 skills or damage/loot/health/etc. The controls work perfectly for me. They remind me a lot of typical 3rd person controls but perhaps that is a difference in what games we play.

I will say I just remembered another knock against the game. If there is a cover mechanic I've never found it but it feels like it should have one.


I rolled my eyes. Out of all the hyperbole I've seen in this topic, what Tearofsoul said was the most silly and outrageous.


I have to agree about the console stuff. Why even bother making it for consoles, they're not really MMO territory and both the 360 and PS3 are within the last year of their life cycle. As for your other comment about no sense of danger. That knock could be made about any current FPS or MMO really. I don't think it's fair to give them shit about having a mechanic that is very common in a lot of games these days. This sounds like you just want something that isn't really a part of modern gaming. Fair enough but that doesn't make the game bad. It makes it not for you.

You go for consoles so that you don't have to compete with all the MMOs that exist on PCs as well. DCUO's main revenue source is the PS3 version.

Well, to be clear Defiance takes scrip away when you die but it's unclear how much.  It's essentially a repair bill if you dont get rezzed... which as we know can get fairly devastating at higher levels.  At lower levels it means exactly jack and shit as Hoax explains.

I played with a few friends last night and we actually had a pretty good time.  As frenetic as the game can get, it's relaxing in its simplicity... definitely meant to be played on the couch.  Things did mechanically become stale after a while, but thematically the missions were enjoyable and widely varied.  We even had one that put us battling alongside the show's main characters (I guess they're arkhunters); which I hadnt seen before in the other betas.  We're all pretty advanced FPSers and fell into the usual routine pretty easily and of course the game was no match for that. 

As stated, the monsters become rote - though I've heard they change by region.  Part of the 'roteness' is due to making players anticipate each one's AI, but it doesnt take long for that to get stale.

I wish the mission-sharing system was a bit better, but since you can only really run one mission at a time (again, for consoleers) it's understandable.  Sharing is a pain if it's even possible since most missions are chained, but get everyone on the same objective and it autocompletes by proximity.  There ARE a million little sub-events that will happen on your travels though (outside of whatever mission you're tracking), that you may or may not take part in.  So in a way, they've just done away with having to hold a huge mission log and just have you voluntarily do them as you go.

Another gripe, you can't choose your own shard per se.  You can only log off and log back on into a different one.  Friends can "phase" to you however, or vice versa.  I got caught in an unbalanced shard (too many players) within a group and had to drop group, log off, log back in, reform group, and rephase the groupmember... all just to change shards.

I like the "go to friend" feature.  It's essentially a free portal ability that drops you at the nearest extraction point.  Very nice.

Crafting, modding, slotting, etc have the potential to be very nice systems but only if it's actually useful.  For instance, I've got a nade that sprays sticky goo everywhere slowing down everything... great for cleavers. (there's a gun that does similar I believe).  But again, do I actually NEED to theorycraft that deeply??  Not yet.  Granted, this is the starter zone.

In re. Arkfalls, they were noticeably lame on our shard due to lack of population.  Herein lies the problem Trion always seems to have with this dynamic; they never seem to get the difficulty right.  So the Arkfalls start out already kinda lighthearted (due to small pop server), but regardless they're immediately swarmed by the few players on the shard and are taken out within 30 seconds anyways.  This also nerfs the rewards so you'll get out there, start shooting, and get nothing due to the lameness of the arkfall.  They need to make it a bit more difficult then that come release and I'm hoping they'll be less localized and spread more like Rift's did.

More to say, but there's probably enough here to warrant the usual $60 console price.  As a PC game it rides a fine line though and it'll be up to the Clans to make the thing worthwhile, as usual.  Certain groups will most certainly live inside the Shadow War, but there's no strat meta to the pvp at all 'cept the gear grind.  The coop maps are limited to 4 players as well, so no 'raiding' unless you consider large arkfalls.   As a single-player game it's definitely not worth $60 as it's not designed for the single-player experience as something like The Secret World is.

Ya this is the coolest part of the game and the one that made me wonder what game the person who dismissed this as a wow-like quest hub system was playing.

Yah, last night we rolled up on some mutants and skitterlings trying to feast on mutated wildabeasts.  Wasnt even a mission until we got close (never appeared on the map either).  Drops were pretty good though and not an easy fight.  The best ones are the random troop carriers that you have to defend that eventually turn into rare merchants.  That's the only time I'd recommend buying gear, otherwise save your monies.

Overall I must say the zone/game does feel organic and Live, especially being seamless.  They did a nice job not just having random mutants running around to grind on.  Most every target is linked to some kind of objective.  It really needs a main base for people to hang though.  I havent been past the beta zones so not sure if they add this later; I expect Tortage since they're keeping pretty mum on the late-game.   :oh_i_see:

If you mean a Mass Effect-like "you automatically get velcroed to any 90-degree flat surface you nudge against," I haven't seen one either. Cover does work though; crouch behind an open car door, it will block most incoming fire, but you can fiire through and get shot through the window.

I don't like the velcro-cover mechanics, so I'm fine with that. I prefer the sort of old school shooter cover they have going.

If only your character had the sense to pick his gun up and shoot over a wall rather than firing it into the wall it would be a bit better, imo. My character refuses to do anything with her assault rifle other than shoot from the hip, even aimed shots never leave the from the hip position, despite the rifle clearly having a scope.

Even from crouch? Bizarre.

I use deadbolt sniper rifle as my main weapon, so I'm used to having bullets come from head/shoulder level.

I rolled my eyes too, I am not sure if you are new to MMO, or you have been playing RuneScape for the past 10 years.

But if you really like this game, make sure you "pre-pay" their DLC as well. Good deal bro, good deal.

The game's fun. It has flaws and I don't know what legs it will have but if I spend $60 and get over 20 hours of play out of it that puts it ahead of most modern games for me. Ironically. it's longevity probably depends on the DLC that you're snarking about and how well they tie it into the show. But to say it's a piece of shit worse than Hellgate: London is pure and simple hyperbole. It's got issues, some of them quite serious (their chat is shitty for example) but it's better than Hellgate was.

As for the "How long have you played MMOs" stuff I have no interest in trying to prove my MMO street cred or whatever you're shooting for but if you must know my first MMO was UO back in...hmmm...'98 or '99 I think. I'm not sure how that matters as I don't think Defiance is truly an MMO as we think of them. It's more of a persistent shooter with some MMO systems tacked on.

Different genres. Hellgate London doesn't play like a shooter at all, and it doesn't have an open world.

Terrible comparison. Global Agenda would be a slightly better (but still bad) one.

I think the comparison was basically "what's a shitty online game? Oh, Hellgate:London. Yeah, Defiance is shittier than that."

Just wanted to mention now that I'm getting into serious "six guys running at you at the same time, with cleavers, miniguns, and grenades," I've died at least a half dozen times purely due to the default keymap placing the "quickmenu" command between the run and dodge keys.

EDIT: Aaaaand looks like beta is over for me. I'm stuck on a mission I can't complete that includes the aforementioned sort of swarm+bosses... which you have to avoid while completing a jumping puzzle. Maybe someone else has reflexes good enough to deal with this... I don't. And I can't take another quest while I have it, and I can't find any way to abandon the quest.

Yeah. Fun!

Go to your map.  You can abandon quests there, I believe.  Its stupid, I know, but it goes back to the UI being made more for consoles.  Consolitis at its finest.

Consolitis is indeed strong with this one.

That said, it IS kinda fun in a mindless, run-and-gun sort of way. I liked TR a lot and the mechanics here are similar enough, with the added bonus of not being locked into any one archetype. I'll lay out the 60 bones for it probably. Still need to see how it ties into the show though.

Never did figure out how to abandon quests, but I managed to follow some other people to the problem area and finally clear it.

I ended up playing Defiance beta for 11-12 hours this weekend, versus five hours of Neverwinter beta. It's an odd bird. Neither MMG nor Fallout 3, it's fun enough in a shooter-lite, explorer-lite way. The story I couldn't care less about - more cheapjack Sci-Fi Channel schlock, and I don't give two shakes of a rat's hindquarters about their "transmedia" gimmickry. I think if I bought the box I'd end up playing for sixty hours. A good value ratio.

I'm pretty sure the guy who played Von Bock was a salarian somewhere in Mass Effect.

EDIT: To be more clear, yes I intend to buy Defiance. I won't be taking it too seriously, but it definitely fills a gap in my gaming needs.

EDIT 2: Or at least I *would* buy Defiance, if Trion's page didn't give me "We are unable to complete your purchase. Please try again later." over and over...

Steam that bitch.

And if one more hellbug gave me 1970s pants...

Buying it through Trion's site guarantees you get the preorder bonuses that have yet to unlock on Steam. Also, I expect a greater percentage of the profits go directly to Trion.

Still not working this morning, though. ¬_¬

Beta is over.


The main chars. of the show are arkfall hunters as well evidently.  You meet them in the intro. and in a side mission on Mt. Tam (wherein they teach you about arkfalls).  They'll be moving to St. Louis though, which somewhat explains why the game starts 2 weeks before the show.  Word is, the game will react to the show for most of the 1st season - the main element of which will be big arkfalls seen in the show.  The show wont react to the game until near the end of the season or next season since most of it has already been filmed (they plan to inject well known PC's into the show; through contests).  From the get-go both media will share common adversaries (mutants, hellbugs, etc.)

Ive not got my hopes up for how they're going to take advantage of all of this.  'Twer me I'd drop clues in the show for taking down impossible bosses, explorative easter eggs, and codes that give special access to certain maps/regions.  They've been completely mum about all of this though aside from what I said above.

I was referring to Trion's purchase page, not the game itself.

Regardless of where you buy it you get an outfit, a title, a Dodge vehicle and a special weapon. Those other bonuses on Steam are above and beyond that actually.

Preordered the deluxe edition. I like that wanna-be Imperial Guard outfit.

You are correct. Thanks - it got turned around in my head.

Steam Reward 1 has been unlocked and it's halfway to reward 2.  Seems to be gaining some momentum now.
Fuckit I'm jumping on this bandwagon.   :uhrr:

I gave in and pre-ordered  :oh_i_see:
While I think the game is not that great it's launching at the perfect time considering that the wvw-patch in GW2 was a big disappointment for me so I'm done with that game atleast for now and Defiance happens to be science fictiony enough to interest me (mostly due to the lack of a better choice of a game to play)

as a reminder for anyone actually choosing to play: arkfall codes (http://orcz.com/Defiance:_Arkfall_Codes)

I gave in as well.



"REDEEM ARKFALL CODES AS PART OF YOUR ARK HUNTER TRAINING"

Apparently Ark Hunters do a lot of cutting and pasting.

Just 120 times. After that they are trained.  :why_so_serious:

I was thinking about something the other day. The timeline in this game (and the show) seems really important. I was thinking on waiting before picking it up, I am playing various things now and I would certainly get a more fleshed out experience in a few months, more content and less bugs.

But it bugs me that given the unique nature of this product I would be missing on stuff should I not play it at the right time, meaning when the series is being aired. Catching up later on such a story-driven product makes me feel like things would be inevitably less cool. Or maybe I am just too anal about spoilers and timelines. What do you think?

Since they are already selling dlcs and a season pass (5 dlcs for the price of 4) I doubt they'll add that much free content and (imho) there aren't that many big bugs needing immediate attention (and since it's multi-platform any fixes might take a while if they aren't platform-specific). As far as the storyline goes I have no idea whether waiting a few months or playing at launch would be a better experience. I just know that alot of MMOs have their newbie-zones full of players at launch and then those areas become empty by the third month if the game isn't a big hit (or if there isn't a good reason to level alts immediately after getting your first character to max level)

I'm too lazy to search at the moment.  Are console people going to be able to play with PC people, or are they getting segregated yet again?

AFAIK, its mixed.

It used to be mixed, but it isn't any longer.  I think.

The Trion Page says:

http://n4g.com/news/1140704/microsoft-and-sony-rivalry-blocking-defiance-cross-platform-multiplayer

I don't want console players in my pc games, thanks.

I had similar thoughts last night when thinking about waiting myself.  I mean already we're getting spoilered arkfall codes and the show hasnt even started (kind of weird they're all found when I figured they'd easteregg em into the show; I anticipate them adding more rewards then).  Also, the show's main chars will have already moved out of Mt. Tam and into Defiance by release week 2.   Soooo, does that mean they'll disappear from the Mt. Tam side mission?  I do believe they should but who knows.

Part of the sudden influx of orders has to be due to this same exact thinking process; which one has to give kudos to Trion for taking advantage of regardless of how good the product ends up being.  For the consoleer it's a perfect medium, but I cant be arsed to deal with those folk.

Doesnt the game take place in a totally different area than the show? Kind of hard to have it stay relevant for long unless they put radios on every table like in Fallout or something. Your concern about waiting echos mine though, just not the reason. I just figure it will be like every other mmo this past decade and have a peak population lasting at best a month then everyone gets bored and wanders away to the new shiny.

About player numbers, how do servers work? I never got to choose a server in alpha and beta, so could it be that they have the ONE-BIG server thing going on (maybe two, EU and NA), with infinite instances that can be reduced when population shrink to keep it consistent and prevent server mergers?

So I didn't give this a second glance until yesterday. It looks pretty cool, but I'm having a tough time getting a shot of condensed information.

What's the bullet list version of why this game is rad?

I am not buying the game, so it's not that I like it _that_ much, but here's why I mostly appreciate it.

+ Combat is fun.
+ I like the world and setting. Cutscenes are nice, and if you count the TV show, you kind of have the best cutscenes ever.
+ Lore is (again, partly thanks to the show. But partly thanks to being on Earth) huge and detailed.
+ Driving around, and car/bike races are cool.
+ Challenges (brief solo instances where you have a score set by other players to beat) are fun.
+ There's a certain feel of dynamic world thanks to some random spawns and encounters. Not sure how long that will last, but it breaks the monotony of the quest grind.

That's all I could gather from my time in alpha and beta.

A brief bullet point of what I don't like:

- UI is a disgrace. Can't believe there's still people so inept at making UIs. What are you saying? Consoles? Not my problem, UI is a disgrace.
- Some weapons behave weirdly, or feel extremely underpowered in an uncool way.
- Character customization is definitely lacking at creation (non existent), and while I don't know how it will evolve look-wise, I can already say I don't like the way perks/talents/abilities work. Call it bland, it just doesn't look interesting.

Can't think of much else so far. I'd get it if it weren't for lots of other cool games I am playing, but this one doesn't feel engaging enough to make me want to drop anything else at the moment.

It's technically one big server with shards, only you have no choice in shard unless you have a friend in one (you can logoff and come back hoping to be in a different one but unless the other one was pretty full it'll just plop you right back where you were - as it should).  So if the population shrinks, so do the shards.  They learned their lesson with Rift; you cant have this dynamic-spawn game with a constantly shifting player population and expect it to work.

My bullet-point:
+Game just has a Fun feel.  That's all I need to say really.  It lacks the depth and challenge (so far) I typically require, but that's made up for by the IP that comes with it and (somewhat) the achievement system.

edit:
Steam reward #2 was unlocked overnight and we're halfway to #3.  So yah, there's definitely more value to that $60 purchase now.  Maybe I'll take a peak at Storm Legion for a month or so.

I played Rift, but not through Steam. Can I use this copy of Storm Legion, or would I have to buy a second copy of the base game through Steam (which, um, won't happen)?

Any Steam codes you get just get applied (manually if need be) to your Trion account.  To be sure, when u get Storm Legion, copy the CD Key from the right menu, then paste it into your Trion account.

I was 50/50 on going with Storm Legion or Defiance and when the Steam rewards started to go up, it became a no brainer.

-I'll echo the sentiment that the gameplay is fun. I enjoy the hell out of it. Will that last? Who the fuck knows. But if I get a good month out of it, it's worth the 100 bucks.

-I'll also echo the sentiment about how lacking character customization is. Four archetypes and the choice is limited to either human or Irathien? Really? I thought the Votans were seven races?

I'm sorry, I just can't agree that the empty game play is fun enough to be worth sixty bucks.

Define "empty".

One of the DLCs will add another alien race. I find that kind of odd since the choice of race is purely cosmetic so why not have it in at launch?

Still, the character customization is 'ok'.

You have hair style, hair color, eyes, a few facial tweaks, a few archetypes to start with, scars, and tatoos. Oddly you cannot change your body at all. Everyone is built exactly the same. I'd probably give character customization  a C. It's not the worst I've seen but it's not Cryptic/COH levels of customization either. If I could request two things from them it'd be far more hair colors and the ability to at least choose 3 or so body 'types' like TOR did.

They make up for it somewhat with armor/clothing choices, which is where the meat of the customization will be I'm sure... along with DLC and microtrans of course.  It has a very TSW feel in that regard.  In the end chars  in most games dont look very customized no matter how much choice you have at inception (especially if your game sports a lot of armor, helmets, etc.); Trion knows this, so why waste the resources.

Btw, there are now 6 Arkhunter chronicles up (I havent been keeping up with them).  Most have ego codes of course.  They're not half bad.

I'm at 120/120 ego codes but I do still need to watch those ark hunter videos. Well, I don't need to, I just wonder if they're fun to watch.

Well, I guess it doesn't matter what I think about this game, since my wife pre-ordered copies for us and is totally pumped to play this with me. I don't actively try to piss off the wife so it looks like I will have time to learn to love it.

 :awesome_for_real:
After all that, you still end up playing.  And I'd give my left testicle to get my woman to do anything of the sort yours did.  I'd say, even if the game ended up sucking for you, you'd still win.

I'm totally thankful for my wife. Its just that it was a long alpha which still is under nda i think so  :nda:

This is the first MMO that she has been interested in since we had our son, so Im going to do what ever it takes for her to enjoy herself. She played MMOs with me for years before she got pregnant then all of a sudden she had no interest until now.

Fuck. This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRdEIEzW5uo) might actually make me cave in.

Looks like all the Steam rewards have been unlocked.  Surprising considering it was sitting at only 30% of reward 1 this time last week.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/224600/

They definitely decided to go with a last minute marketing blitz, Defiance adds are fricken everywhere.

 :grin:

Feels a bit OP being a Steam subber though.  Seriously, 3 vehicles at launch?  Do all these rewards stack??  Or do we indeed get +10 inv slots and 10 days of xp boost?  Also, I totally missed they give you a season pass discount at reward 3 (doesnt say how much though).  That's a nice touch there.


Yah, it's fast.   But it wont drive well in rough terrain.  For that you need the 4x4.  People bitched about the terrain collision system but it's really there to have a reason for different vehicles.  Also, I cant wait to use my truck during arkfalls.  The 4-wheeler assplodes if u breath on it.

The discount is $10 off. Instead of $39.99 it's now $29.99. It makes me wish I'd preordered from Steam instead of Gamestop or that these bonuses were for all preorders. I only did Gamestop because I wanted some of the perks you get from the nicer editions. Yes, I spent more than $60 on this game. Sue me.

Looks like Trion lifted their initial ban on Steam subs pre-DLing the game.  So no need to wait until launch for the game to unlock, just DL from Trion after you inject your keys.  Cheers.

My inner Cynical Git suggests some numbers were finessed behind the scenes.

I thought the same thing.

I think a lot of people might have canceled their pre-orders from other sites to get in on the Steam rewards.  Plus, maybe the beta weekend convinced more people to buy in.  I trust Steam enough to not think they manipulated the numbers.

How does the PvP work? Is it all little mini games in specific instances, or can I sneak up on people while they are busy trying to take down a boss in a PvE mission and shoot them in the back?

Edit: This may have been answered earlier I guess


Anything else I should know though (just supposing I like shooting people in the back...)

Ya, You should probably look for a different game.

Sixty bucks and 30 more for a season pass? this is a good deal?

I think you're supposed to look at it like a MMO + few months sub.

Soo I should buy?  

Reviews are all over the place on this game.
  

Is the NDA over yet? :oh_i_see:

Only for beta, if you were in the "alpha" you are still under NDA.

NDA from the beta is over, but if you played in the alpha you can't talk about the alpha experience.


I'm not going to buy.  I don't think the game is really bad, but in my experience it is just boring after a while.  I enjoyed it for a bit during beta, but basically feel like in that (relatively short) time, I've already gotten my fun out of/fill of the game.  If you really like the setting and like the idea of running/driving around a fair sized game world shooting stuff in a quest-centric MMO, it might be for you.

Im in on this. But I'm on spring break all of next week, and found out that our long distance car either is out of commission for the moment.

Beta player, reminded me of GW2 except with more traditional questing. Not an in depth serious MMO, but something you can pop into from time to time and have some fun in. Good game for me at this time.

I've managed to completely miss that this game even exists. What is its hook? Does it have sweet exploration or excellent gunplay?

Passable gunplay. The hook in theory is the TV show, but personally I really don't care about that. It's basically Tabula Rasa 2: Tabula Harder. What remains to be seen is how the DLC pack stuff expands the world or fails to.

Since my only experience is the NDA stuff I can't say much. I haven't played in quite some time, but just recently tried again.  I bought through Steam yesterday. There are some some bits in this that make it worth the experience.

I picked it up because I enjoyed the gunplay as a casual thing. I just don't think this is really intended for hardcore shooter fans, or hardcore exploration fans. It's just a bit of fun, and I'm curious how the DLC plans on keeping people coming back.

Have you seen the show pilot?  Tis good?  (or am I getting you mixed up with Darniaq)

I wanna make sure, this thing doesn't have a monthly fee right?

So I am not supposed to say anything because I am still under the alpha NDA but I think that is pure garbage one day before release. Is the game fun? Yes. But it is also the most buggy unbalanced game I have beta tested since Horizon. It does not have the show stopping bugs of Anarchy Online but is has so many small things that are so irritating. It is also so shallow and repetitive. But it is easy to overlook in the short term because it is fun for a while.

My Senior Editor got a chance to watch the whole pilot/first episode when she visited the studios last week. She said it was awesome. Though she is under NDA with it.

The first 14 minutes of the pilot is available. It looks ok. Some ok action and world building. The main character seems a bit stiff but the teenage alien girl has enough personality to make up for it.

The game is fun but shallow. It is far more about action than the typical MMO and is really more of a shooter than an MMO in my experience. As far as Pen's unbalanced comments I'm not sure what that is all about. There are no classes and only 4 main skills with the rest being % increases to damage, health, damage resistance, or tweaks to those 4 skills like shorter recharge times.

The weapons may be slightly unbalanced I suppose but that doesn't bother me. A rocket launcher > sniper rifle > pistol seems pretty natural to me. My only weapon complaint was that shotguns felt underpowered to me.

When there are some unbalanced weapons in a game, thats fine with me because anyone can use any weapon. It's also fun.

My main issue though is the ego system is really shallow. Four abilities with just perks that augment stuff is kind of meh. Maybe it adds up over time.

I don't see a lot of staying power in this game. It looks like yet another 3rd person shooter only in a grindy open world with the now obligatory tacked on MMO story where every player plays the same exact role in the story as "the one".

A good idea, but it feels like they squandered a lot of potential here.

At first, I was honestly expecting it to be a clone of Rift, just reskinned and bugs/issues worked out, along with some features more fully fleshed out and taking out the bits that didn't work.

By all means, keep the "shooter" aspect of it for those classes that do that, but then work in the other bits, or something.  I dunno.

I half agree, I'm holding on to that they have something half way decent with the show tie-in that they haven't shown us us.

We'll see.

Balance as in how hard to make PvE opponents. They have been making big changes in the final weeks. Balance as in what the final boss is like compared to the rest of the game. Balance as in what type of shield to use for all PvE content such that the rest is vendor trash. Balance as in how much ammo drops which also is swinging back and forth and they can't get correct. Balance as in where to place skills in the big matrix, how many points to give you to use the matrix, and what level you need to be to unlock certain skills. Balance as in how to do keycode drops and box unlocks. They redid the mechanics a couple weeks ago because the old system was terrible. Hopefully the new system does not need much tweeking. And yes, balance as in some weapons are way over powered and some are way under powered. One of the over powered types is promised to be reworked or removed soon after release.

By the way certain skills are must have for the final boss while certain skills are completely useless in it but helpful at other times. Hopefully you know that if you are not the type to read spoilers you better also be not the type that is easily frustrated.

You also often want to use completely different skills, shield, and weapons in PvP than PvE. This will further the unbalance between the dedicated PvP player and the casual PvP player.

I broke down and bought it.  This will probably be the only "MMO" besides TESO I buy this year anyway.

Correct.  Buy to play like GW2 and (now at least) The Secret World.  No sub fees.

Servers would appear to be up FWIW.

Yeah, but once again, the patcher is shitting the bed on me.

Indeed, they've launched over 12hrs early (probably wise to spread load).  Nifty.  I'm ingame as "Ghambit"

How do you log in?  I don't have anything on my Steam account yet that even gives me the option to DL the game.

NM, I figured it out.  Patching now.

Ish. The character creation/tutorial isn't actually connected to the world map. The world server appears to still be quite down.

I just played for a few hours. Those claimed rewards are pretty damn good as a starter. There is a 4x4 vehicle that you get as well that's a bit more stable than the starter one.

Yes.  I did the tutorial mission and now I can't get past it.

how do you claim your rewards? I want my challenger, dammit!


*edit*

escape, click circle thing in bottom left corner, choose defiance store (bottom of radial) and then claim items (small box lower leftish).

Make sure you enter all 3 of your steam codes.

30 minutes to go in Europe.

Can't get the game to run at all.  Enter password, hit update, hit play, white window pops up and looks like it's getting ready to launch then just closes.

I was still trying to use the beta client, which it turns out doesn't work. ¬_¬

I'm in now, character Reyzel Faris. No idea how you friend - it never came up in beta.

Unless they've changed the default keymap, I advise rebinding ALT and Z so they don't lock up your UI for a menu. I died many MANY more times in beta because they stuck those in the middle of the movement keys than because they combat was too difficult.

Incoming sadness.

Someone update when it goes f2p or $20 for the box, please.  That's my pricepoint. 

It launched f2p

You have to buy the box.

Are the servers down? i logged out for a second and now its telling me the service is not available.

True but you do for a lot of these games. f2p to me means no subscription fee.

They are.

Am I missing something or are hair styles completely random?

N/M found it.

Just a reminder: go to Settings and turn Damage Numbers on. It makes it so Bordelandsly more fun. Especially with shotguns.

It also gives a better idea on how much damage you are doing.

/sigh

Still can't get the game to even launch.. And can't get a refund cuz Steam.

Did they seriously not give an option to /tell someone?   :facepalm:   So in order to have a convo you have to group.  Also, chat still goes offline when u disable voip.  And with voip enabled, there's no threshold adjustment, so you get to hear everything on someone's mic if they're not wearing phones.

Indeed, a console game through and through.  There's not even a mission log in the game, so you cant tell what you've done so far.   :oh_i_see:


Servers are down for "maintenance."

Everything that is wrong that people are noticing are things that the alpha forums have been screaming at them to change/fix/add for a really long time.


Edit: I sympathize with any buyers remorse, I wasn't going to buy this game, then my wife got all hyped out at the commercials and bought two copies for us to play together. She has already quit in frustration and it's not even past the first official day. $120 bucks completely wasted.

I know they are down now.  My experience with the game so far is.  Open game, put in password, press login, update, hit play, all white window pops up, wait 3-4 seconds, and window closes.   This is as far as I've gotten since the game launched.

Do you have a 100mhz monitor?

Negative I've got a 60hz.

Well new patch fixed me being able to log in at least. 

Didn't your wife decided to buy after trying the beta? Or did she spend 120$ based on advertising alone?  :oh_i_see:
Unless the game is simply not your cup of tea, there isn't much to quit in frustration about just after a few hours.

No tells is definitely a :facepalm: but my voice has been disabled from day one and my chat works just fine.

I'm enjoying the game and it fits perfectly with my current lifestyle, but at the same time, it feels like a beta. Apparently there's still no loot from Arks, which kind of conflicts with the entire concept of Ark Hunting.

In the end, I'll get my $30 worth out of it and it'll probably lead me to resub to Rift, but I can understand people who aren't that excited about the game.

She hadn't touched it at all before release, and apparently never paid attention to me bitching about it being buggy, short and high on console design. Also we played all day Monday (during server up times) and most of Tuesday. The reason why she doesn't want to play anymore is because every last drop of content is the same and she can't talk to people individually. Her words were that the commercial sold her a shooter MMO and she got a barely single player game. Her words, not mine. Also, running out of story and episode quests in less than a day might have pissed her off a bit too.

Wow. Did you all ignore everything except story/episode quests or am I just slow? I just now got out of Mount Tam though admittedly I did everything possible there to get pursuits.

I think this game is lucky it has no sub as that is what will give it some time to grow. If it launched with a $15 sub it'd be dead in a month. I enjoy it for what it is and since I don't have a sub to pay I'm willing to be patient and give them time to fix/improve things. Some of their mistakes blow my mind since this isn't their first MMO. The chat system is the number one worst problem with the game.

I'd be curious to see how console players feel about the game versus PC players. I suspect having a headset and mic on XBOX may actually work well for this game.

I think you might be slow. We did a good deal of the side quests, however, she kept playing while i was in class and 4 hours on both day i jammed story line missions to catch her.

There is no good way to spin the lack of content. Name one single mmo that you can finish the main storyline in less than 12 hours.

The map looks pretty big to me. Does the content stop somewhere early in the map? I didn't get started until yesterday at, oh, 1 or so. I picked up my copy at 10am then it took almost 3 hours to patch on their obnoxiously slow patch server. Seriously, they need to give that thing some bandwidth or something.

Well...hopefully the game will last for a bit and not die in a month or so like some of these do. I'm finding it fun right now but if I run out of things to do I might drift away. What 'level' did you get to when you finished the content?

If that is the case, it is unexcusable. No way around it. Ridiculous and bordering fraud (I know it's not a fraud).

My guess is if you disable it while in group-chat or some such the chat goes down.  Others have had the same issue.  Maybe it comes back, who knows.  Hell, I just figured out how to even chat in group yesterday. (apparently, you have to press "x" which moves a little chatpip to area/group/etc)

I've finished all missions that are not repeatable, I've also done a bunch of arkfalls. I'm sitting at 421 ego.


Also, I can't tell if Falconeer is being a douche or if he is being sincere. I haven't said anything about the game that isn't true or out of line with expectations for an MMO.

Absolutely sincere. Even if it took three days? Barely a single player. What the fuck.

Here's another question: how many "zones" are there after Mount Tam?

There are three "zones" essentially, but the second is about twice the size of the others.

It's a very empty-ish world, and around 10-12 hours of content seems about right. The thing is that it's not particularly high quality well crafted content. 10-12 hours for a shooter is considered pretty normal (Infinite is what, 8ish?) due to all the polish that goes into every event and object placed. I enjoy Defiance for some stupid fun, but it's world does not seem anywhere near as detailed as other major titles. It actually seems like something they rushed out. Lots of detail in the guns and gun models. Lots of explosions and a decent open event system. Very little detail and polish in every other aspect.

I tried the first dungeon last night. Wasn't that horrible.

The first are is annoying to get around and it's not very inspired but it does look like a devastated area. I wonder if the show part will shed some light on things. If there is anything else to go with the game.

But yeah, the game is just a bit of shallow fun. I enjoy it for a few hours here and there. I also like how there aren't any real levels, you just shoot shit.

They really needed to market it as something else. I don't see how you can call it an MMO if you can't send messages to individual players. No global chat channel.

If I put aside my alpha and beta glasses, and looked at this from the perspective of somebody that knew nothing about the game, I wouldn't nearly be as upset if they said, "Hey guys, here is this game that progresses with this new TV show, here is the intro to play before the show starts in a couple of weeks, and we are updating the content as the show progresses."

Instead the marketing hyped it as a full on MMO, with the hook being a tied in TV show and shooter third person combat. My wife isn't a full on gamer like me, but she has played enough MMOs to have certain expectations from a game calling itself such. She honestly thought there would be at least a month's worth of content at the bare minimum.

MMO without all the other people would actually interest me as a feature.  So far i am having fun, but i can see how this is going to get old fairly quick.

Pretty much what I'm up to. What's really amusing me is how close this world feels to Firefall.

Terrible accident! Mutanty thingies and aliens! Bugs from terraforming or something! Passable shooter!

Also got a laugh out of some random hostage I rescued dropping a fully voiced f-bomb, while the annoying plot missions insist on using their dumb replacement slang for it.

Interesting. I thought I read somewhere that max Ego level right now is 2000 (or maybe 5000). I guess they're hoping people will pvp and stuff once they finish the story. (assuming Pvp gives you exps of course)

Miss Replacement Slang also flips the bird at one point.

I'm assuming that they plan on expanding the land mass a bit, and this is just season 1. Though I question how they plan on getting this to stay running for years.

Side note: this uses my least favorite form of scaling. The more players in an area, the more health the mobs get. Which turns into emptying weapons into what are essentially 2-3 shot trash targets in order to barely hurt them.

The Marshal throws out a few f-bombs too. Replacement slang only seems to come from aliens.

Everyone says fuck all the time in all my games now.  I've become desensitized to fuck.

Some men would pay for that.

/wave

It's your avatar that makes this funny.  :awesome_for_real:

I like it.  It's okay so far but I'm not entirely sure it's worth the money, either.  Isn't there new DLC coming in a few days?  Maybe that's where everything is!

And who is your avatar, Nevermore?  Is that you? 

It feels like a AA cover shooter without the cover, only MMO. Kinda feel like I wasted a bit of money but it's not too terrible outside of the interface.

Dear God I hope so.

Game is pretty mean at points, but I think that's because I'm not buying any gear and living off of quest rewards and drops.

Nope.

I'm gonna hold out hope that come the end of the content the game will roll right along with the show.  If I can pop in/out once a week and do something new I'll be happy.

Once a week? Won't happen. If you look at your pursuits, they call this season 1 and I am guessing that means exactly what it sounds like. That this part of the game ties in with season 1 of the show. That said, the DLC pack said 5 DLC this year, so I'd guess roughly every 2 months or so we'll get some new stuff.

Also, on their blog they listed some stuff they're working on and one of them was chat.

I am going as far as saying that so far the ridiculously small amount of content is my only complaint. It's a casual game, and I was definitely enjoying the exploration and story driven shooting without feeling the need to invest hours in it like other MMOs, or caring too much about what is definitely half-assed. But to find out that it's not going to be long (at all) before I will be done with it and they will be asking me more money to get what... a few more quests? really pisses on my parade.

Seriously, you can't launch with this little content then charge thirty extra bucks for more.  I still hold out hope that I'll get sixty bucks of fun out of this but it is insulting to ask for more money.

It's a very cool avatar.  She's awesome looking.

I'm at 23 1/2 hours played and am in Marin now which I think is roughly half way through the story content. Doing coop plus pvp plus going for pursuits plus arkfalls really adds to the length of time you can spend in the game. That's why I asked whatshisname if he did all the content or just the story missions.

Doing all the achievements which I think they call pursuits will give you a lot of ego points. That will be a long grind.

Another "activity" you can do is grind faction points to be able to buy stuff. That is a very slow and long grind. I could go through the entire story start to finish much faster than getting enough faction to buy one purple level item. Most of the faction points appear to be locked behind dailies.

Yeesh, I haven't even seen a faction yet. I've been able to get back to where I ended beta - along the coast of Madera. I expect I'll slow down even more now that I'm seeing new things again. (Side note, the "hold off waves of uber enemies while the dickbag executive escapes" story mission is just as ludicrously balanced as it was in beta. I hadn't died anywhere else, but in order to complete that one I had to grind through the spawn camping mobs by rezzing, getting off as many shots as I could before dying, then rezzing again. Good thing money seems useless!)

Nathan Richardsson put out a blog today on technical issues, particularly on XBox, and what they're doing about them.

http://community.defiance.com/en/2013/04/04/day-2-in-the-life-of-defiance-little-bit-of-humble-little-bit-of-cautious/

He also exhorts people to try the PvP, which is... I mean, if you're the sort who likes shooter PvP, go play a shooter. Or Planetside 2, if you want scale. A big part of the reason I'm playing Defiance is because I like shooters but don't have the reflexes or competitive nature for that stuff.

Can you guys list your screenames? Maybe I'll pop open a clan or something.  Of course, listing screenames matters fuckall because if you're not online you can't be found.   :oh_i_see:

The economy is one of the things I have not seen talked about in this thread and I forgot to mention except for the general shallow game comment. Unless you are the type that wants every vehicle in every color possible I am not sure what the point of scrip is after you accumulate about 10k. You will spend a bit on weapons and mods but less than you earn.

I'm Signe.  Or Zombie Signe.  There's going to be a new race this week sometime, right?  Then I might be something else.  I haven't decided yet.  Oh, and I suck.

Here's the first dungeon and my first time running it. I was trying to be a helpful healer before I decided to say fuck it and just do a lot of damage.

Looks like it took ~25 minutes?

http://www.twitch.tv/nijasan/b/386677251?t=76m50s

That BMG does plenty of dmg if you have more than 1 target.

Defiance can't seem to decide what color my quad-runner thingy is. So far tonight, it's been blue, green, red, and silver.

What's the trick? I've tried that but it only ticks everything for 40-60 damage. My shitty LMG seems like the best thing for sustained damage so far. Explosives are okay and so is the hatching thing, but those are a lot more tricky to use.

I'm still trying to find a short-burst (3 shots I think) LMG which was my favorite weapon in  :nda: (no luck so far)

Trick?  No trick.  There's not much in the game that'll essentially DOT for that much when taken altogether.  3 targets each taking 50 dmg is 150dmg per tick... each tick is like what?  .25s?

If it's the one I think it is, they're VOT LMGs. I don't find them particularly useful compared to burst firing normal LMGs, since the VOT stuff seems to take heavy damage penalties in exchange for rate of fire. The VOT SMG for example is the best way in the game to run out of ammo in 30 seconds.

I'm having an odd problem.  My camera makes me seasick when I'm moving around fast.  If I slow down my mouse sensitivity, it's too slow.  I CAN'T FIND THE RIGHT PLACE!  I hate being seasick.

Go into options and disable motion blur.

Wow, uh, this game got Not Fun overnight.

All my side missions are suddenly spawning multiple waves of two guys with rocket launchers that destroy your shield and take you to half-health in one blow, two guys that run like meth addicts, and two slow moving guys with shields that I can only take down with grenades that I can only use once every two minutes or so. Completing a single step is a tedious process of running around in circles for 15 minutes, interrupted by the odd death and a 1km drive from a spawn point.

Side missions. And I'm solo. No one else in the area.

EDIT: Oh, and now a pair of those guys with the automatic grenade launchers that you have to beat on until they open their faceplate before you can actually hurt them. Jesus Christ.

If they're just Side Missions, maybe skip them? I don't play or know anything about the game, but if you've got something you can't solo that isn't essential to the story, there doesn't seem much point in beating your head against the wall.

I stopped and did a major Arkfall, which was considerably easier even when I was the only one there. Somehow I ended up being number two in kills and damage and getting a huge pile of loot. So... yay?

Weird, weird spikes in difficulty in this game.

Rocket dudes: headshots throw off their aim (true for all humans), or just side strafe a little bit and they miss horribly. The shield dudes will stagger to any explosive, or run up and eat the shotgun hit and melee them (immediately unload weapon after meleeing, it will move their shield for a few seconds)

The real issue I found with the raiders are the rank and file dudes. Those SMGs fucking hurt, and they come in bulk. But yeah, they're the first real bad guy group. The rocket dudes are indeed a pain the ass when solo since their weak spot is on the back and barely sticks out enough to hit from the front.

99ers are the next enemy you'll run into, and they're just as mean. Personally I find my playstyle reacts better to low buffer shields with fast recharge times. Everything will drop even the largest shield buffer in a few seconds, so it works out better if you're constantly using cover and letting your shield back up between taking out hostiles.

Yeah, the tricks for all of them can be seen with a little observation (and I do give Trion credit for making each obvious enough). The problem is when you're trying to deal with multiple examples all three at once, with no back up, winning is a long, tedious mess of circle strafing, waiting for that fortunate conjunction of positioning and enemy reloading that allows you to take one out without getting immediately turned into a greasy smear.

Roll dodge can be your friend. It also depends on your weapon and perk choices. I use an AR and a pistol and I tear through groups like you mention, only occasionally having to get behind something to let my shields regen. The rocket guys are pathetically easy to dodge. The shield guys are annoying but the best strategy is what kildorn mentioned. Run up, melee, unload while they're stunned.

Another thing that works on the shield guys is shooting from an elevated position that allows you to hit their heads even if they have the shield in front. I usually use a semi-auto sniper rifle for headshots or a purple assault rifle that has 15% grenade recharge on kill (and 30-second recharge pyro grenades) to take out the shield guys pretty fast.

Im pretty sure its been mentioned in this thread, but the reason the difficulty scales wildly is because mob hp scales up according  to the number of players in the vicinity. I've noticed that there is a very generous range on the scaling in the mobs favor.

I have some Tier 2 Lock Boxes preorder reward to open. Is there any point in waiting to open them (like what's inside changes based on your level) or they are completely random so they can drop a crappy or super weapon regardless of your progress?

I totally overlooked that.  Thanks! 

Having a char that can control the field moreso then just lay waste is helpful.  Use decoy and nades that stun or slow.  Electrified rounds, knockback rounds (with the ability that gives more dmg to stunned nme), BMGs, cluster rockets, etc.  There's a surprising amount of tactical choice and synergy in the game if people look hard enough.  The problem with all that though is they dont give you a bank to store all this shit in.  And in order to grab those synergies you have to creep around the ego grid.

There is a bit of pigeon-holing in the game's design, that much is obvious.  I mean, you can literally take one weapon and master it.  One weapon?   :headscratch:

And I have yet to mod a damned thing.  It never works for me.

I'd like some friends on my friendlist. My in game name is Boggle.

Here are some tips for the shield dudes.

Notice which side the shield dudes have their shotgun on. Approach from the other side. Run up and melee (F) them and then unload on them. You can get a few guaranteed headshots.

If you're having trouble with maintaining your shield and health - like I was at this part of the game, switch to a LMG / BMG setup. The right click of the BMG will start recharging your shield and your health. This means that you can use one of the very high shield items that has a really slow regeneration rate and time to begin regeneration. You just have to remember that you need to hit Q and right click and hold to begin the shield regen.

I've spent some more time with the BMG and it's okay vs large groups of enemies. The LMG is amazing though.

For the rocket dudes, you just have to realize they are there. The rocket is slow moving and very easy to dodge. They stand perfectly still and are headshot bait.

Once you get to the 99ers, they have about 15% the amount of health a raider has, but they have a shield.

For grenades, I'd suggest you use the flashbang kind that stuns enemies for 5 seconds. It's amazing. If you need an additional crutch, complete the episode quests and get the assault rifle that recharges 15% of your grenade on a kill. This is extremely overpowered to the point that I made myself NOT use it.

I'd say to NOT skip side missions. You get tons and tons of exp for doing them. I gained about 150 points or whatever in a single day just doing side missions.

So, uh, should I get this? I played the first weekend beta or whatever and it seemed totally competent, just kind of bland and uninteresting, like a 'serious' Borderlands.

I just found out the perks I've been buying were doing nothing, since I didn't clue in to the fact that I had to equip them. I :facepalm: at myself

I'm apparently at "Level 6" in runners now, but I'm not sure what that means. I got a transient message about "Boost +0." Anyone know where I can find out more about that? I wasn't able to find it in that delightful UI.

Instruction and documentation is woefully inadequate in this game.

If you go to.. statistics? I think? The one with your faction rep on the top bit. Scroll down and you can see your cumulative bonuses for every category. I think the transport bonuses are bugged, but the rest are pretty obvious (-recoil and such for SMGs).

Basically, you can level up weapon categories via use that provides a permanent minor stat boost to them. You can also level up an individual weapon (xp bar under the weapon when you look at it) that unlocks a hidden bonus. I don't know if that bonus is random or specific to weapon type. I had an SMG that gained +6% damage when above the target for example.

The element types I find completely unexplained as to what they do.

If you don't mind the spam, you can also turn on damage numbers which may help you a lot in figuring out what you are doing right or wrong. Hit locations are big in this game, and hitting someone in the arm versus the chest can alter your damage quite a bit even beyond their normal critical hit locations.

A little backstory (http://defianceworld.tumblr.com) if anyone's interested...

some fun bits of information on weapons:
-attaching different mods to a weapon actually changes how it looks (which is pretty neat)
-if you max out a specific weapon then using it will no longer contribute to actual weapon skill progress (which is pretty meh)

Fuck, that explains why my LMG skill stopped progressing.

What kind of move is that?! I have a good weapon now that doesn't grant me any exp?

I DID notice that the exp bar on the weapon is full. I think this might encourage you to use other weapons and not just stick to one thing.

Can you explain this? I'm a total noob at this game, but why do you need to keep progressing if its maxed?

The skill that you see in the stats tab (like assault rifles) will not progress if you use a weapon (like VOT blaster rifle) that you have maxed exp on (you can see it on the weapon below the mod slots I think on the right side of the screen when you select it in the inventory view)

Dev diary posted yesterday:

"
Dear diary, it's the fourth day, it's been amazing but why do we still have lag?

    I’ve asked myself this question 3,289 times today. Don’t get me wrong. Most territories and platforms are mostly doing great by now. I know very well some of you still have outstanding issues, bugs or customer support tickets waiting. I didn’t say everything was perfect. Then we’d be playing all day ourselves.

    But little time for that. There are problems to be solved, this is what we signed up for, gaming is what we love doing and we’re incredibly sorry that you have to go through these issues now with us. That’s why we don’t have problems sitting here now on a Friday night hammering through this still. We want to live up to your expectations and in some cases, we obviously aren’t. And I’m sorry for that.

    But the world is conquered by eating an elephant in small bites accompanied by martinis. And here are todays bites, some of which are stuck in our throat:

        US XBOX – Our battle with this server cluster continues. I’d put swearwords here but I think you can hear me in your head right now. You will have noticed some great server moments in the last 24 hours, some not so great. We continue to re-configure, deploy fixes, roll some back, try something different, measure, analyze. There’s just so many of you shooting so much. If you could just be nice and all get along. Hellbugs have feelings too you know. This is by far our top issue. We’ve thrown a ton of more hardware at it (we had reinforcements ready), changed client-server protocol to remove load balancing setups to have less moving parts and a host server code changes.

        Game Server Crashes – These are the service not available and service timeouts you see. Today’s server code update alone had 9 different game server crash fixes. Some happened rarely, others were quite frequent. It all adds up. You should see less of service not available and the timeouts now although just tonight we’ve spotted a few other ones.

        Connectivity and patching – This one is still on the list. There are so many new players joining us and we even have a few of you which are still patching. We’ve deployed patches, reconfigured contend distribution networks and continue to do so based your reports of where you are in the world having problems.

        Chat & VOIP – Back on the list again, we have some fixes for this, both that we can do server side but also client side. Unfortunately client patches of this nature can’t be deployed till the 15th as mentioned yesterday.


    I’m not listing here individual gameplay items, such as general balance, mission changes, enabling or disabling missions or side-missions (such as due to exploits). That doesn’t mean they aren’t important, it’s because this is always important and constantly going on with a dedicated team. I did list Arkfalls, simply because that affected so many of us. Now to the happy part. We all enjoy happy endings. Like in the Fifth Element. Always makes me cry.

        What’s our DLC plan? – I’ve seen a lot of you mention this and this is material for an entire blog post because there is so much I want to talk about. However, let’s be short. There are at least 5 DLCs this year. They all have a free and paid component. We do not want to segregate our playerbase so we always want everybody be able to participate and play with friends. The free part is features and content, the paid part is essentially, say, access to a new playable species with a bundle of stuff with it. The upcoming TV tie-ins aren’t DLCs that cost either. It’s all yours.

        More updates enroute – Today fixes some disappearing item cases, more Arkfall loot love, mission and side-mission updates in addition to all the optimizations and bugfixes we deployed to improve the server crashes. Our patch around the 15th is in testing and on its way into certification. We anticipate to update our servers with code updates daily. XBOX of course more frequently till we fix it. Which we will.

        Another big patch? - It’s Friday night and it's tricky to rock a rhyme that's right on time. We have a patch around the 15th but we’ve already started work on the massive patch that’s coming roughly 2 weeks later. There are so many things we can’t fix, add or improve right away and have to be part of a larger client patch. That’s why we have two planned. After that you should see a nice shiny DLC.


    The summary is, we have the cavalry out, we’re not giving up till we make this an awesome experience for you and as I mentioned yesterday, figuring out a way to make it up to you. When I find a way to make it all work, I’ll let you know here first. Promise. Besides of course just fixing the damn thing.

    I hope I’m not still in your head swearing. That wouldn’t be very nice of me. Especially on a Friday. If it was Thursday, it would probably be fine.

    Again, our apologies. After 5 years of creating this, it saddens us and frustrates us that you aren’t getting the great experience we strived to create. The upside is that it makes us quite determined to get you there.

    A A,

    Oveur "

http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?22520-Dear-diary-it-s-the-fourth-day-it-s-been-amazing-but-why-do-we-still-have-lag&p=225280&viewfull=1#post225280

Don't ppl have to connect through the Xbox Live service with this? That must complicate things a lot.

So I've just now come to grips with the fact that weapons progress horizontally as well.  That is, you can get an EGO 40 legendary shotty (like I did) and technically be still using it at EGO 200 with great results.  EGO ratings on weapons seem fairly arbitrary when dealing with dmg, as it scales with you regardless.  So all those badass low EGO weapons I've sold?  Should've kept em.   :oh_i_see:

Now, you tell me....I'd been assuming Ego level on my weapons was also a rough guide to how good they were compared to my current ego rating...

"Bat Country" clan is active.
Find "Ghambit" or "Surlyboi" ingame for invite.

There's a restaurant chain in New England called "99 (http://www.99restaurants.com/about.aspx)." I suppose it's equivalent to a Bob Evans or Denny's.

Whenever I hear a cybernetic miner yell, "Fear the 99!" I start thinking about cholesterol.

EDIT: I keep forgetting to ask... does anyone know how to take a screenshot? There's no keymap option for it.

If you bought it on Steam, I'm pretty sure f12 will automatically take a screenshot (for whatever game you are playing through stream).  If not, I'm not sure.

I noticed this morning the number one Defiance player is a guy on the 360 who's racked up 108 hours. That must include beta weekends (because if not, he's been playing 18 hours a day), but it still seems like an awful lot of time. Pace yourself, dude.

Maybe he left the game idle?

I do that a lot.  Wander off and leave the game on.  I forget which, maybe EQ2 or something else old, I accidentally left myself running in a corner for days.  A lot of games log you off after no activity for a while, but not always. 

It's a lot, but it doesn't seem like it is impossible for the very highest ranked player in a brand new MMO to have played that much the opening week.

It's like those guys that hit the level cap the day after an expansion launches. Catasses gonna catass.

IGN on the Defiance crossover:


http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/defiances-game-tv-crossover-is-disappointing

For once a decent IGN article, despite that they're stating the obvious.  A ball was definitely dropped somewhere along the line during development, taking Trion vast distances away from the original concept.  So for the most part the 1st season will relegate the game to nothing more than an IP-whore; since the two really won't coincide. 

Once again, producers not putting their two best feet forward for fear their golden parachutes will develop holes.  Spineless fucks.  God I hate SyFy.  And Trion, as much as I like them they're really turning into the "smartypants Cryptic."  They play within the numbers and try best not to make mistakes, nor take too many chances, etc.  Kinda lame.

Still having fun ingame though.   :grin:   Nice lil' pop in/out shooter.

Said this elsewhere, repeating here: apparently "Syfy" should have gotten Icarus to do Defiance-the-MMG instead of Trion, since Fallen Earth's designers did post-apocalypse with shooter mechanics and horse travel JUST FINE. (In fact, FE is the only MMG I've played that made actual horses, and not horse-shaped pants you put on for a run buff.)

Which is not to say I don't enjoy the vehicles. It's certainly the fastest I've ever tooled around in an online game.

EDIT: In reference to the following quote:

This seems like a ridiculous statement, but I just want to make sure.

This game has been out a week or so. I've yet to see a single line of player chat.

I got the invites last night and joined the clan, but clan chat doesn't work either does it?

What the fuck is going on at Trion? It's an okay single player game, I guess. That's how I'm approaching it now.

I've seen maybe one or two lines of player chat, and a couple cases where someone used the canned statements. There's a few reasons why I don't use it:

It's small and shoved off in a corner.
I haven't seen any popup "word balloons" over chatting PCs in the main view.
Messages only last a few seconds before scrolling/fading out.

Take the last three together, it means when someone chats, I don't notice until minutes later.

Also, using the chat system means you're doing nothing else. You can't move, shoot, or look around. Coordinating tactics in an arkfall? No way. you'll die. I think they expected everyone to be using voice comms. Considering how difficult it is to use the friend, team, and guild functions, and that they don't seem to have integrated voice chat, that's a hope in hell. You bring your existing friends and voice chat to the game, or you're in a cone of silence.

The game definitely has some sort of built in voice chat but I didn't see any options for it...I did one of the "dungeons" and some guy on the other end was definitely speaking into his Mic, talking to his other friends who were also on skype/TS/whatever.

The voice is always on if you have a mic. Everyone is turning it off because that is the worst voice option ever, and you just hear everyone's background noise and speakers. From a quick run around the menus, I could never find a push to talk option.

I don't have a mic, so I hear nothing at all. An... equally odd choice.

Even if you shut it off, it takes some time before the system knows to do-so and you can still hear people talking; and with only one person having their's active, that means everyone's is active.

Not sure if it's been fixed but I know last week if you turned off the voice chat it would mute your text chat as well, so that could be why some aren't see any chat at all.

Hasn't been fixed.

I still dig it though. It's definitely got a Tabula Rasa feel, which I like. Plus, running around a destroyed SF is almost as cool as running around a destroyed NYC. I'm just sad that it took them so long to let us go back to NYC in TR.

Now, if they'll let me drive down to Cupertino and Palo Alto...

The clan I'm in is using something called Evolve which is an odd-on chat client. It works ok. Still can't use it for coordinating very well but it is better than the built-in chat which is probably the worst part of the game and the worst chat I've seen in an MMO.

Also, on the 15th they're putting in a mega-patch which supposedly has 8 pages of patch notes. Hopefully "Chat no longer blows" is among those notes.

That mega patch is also adding more content that may tie into the show as well as adding more storyline for you to play with if you've already beaten the Mai storyline.

Having deja vu. Did we discuss this earlier here? Or maybe I'm thinking something else?

Anywho, this isn't surprising. The TV world is entirely different from game development. I mean right down to exactly what shit gets decided and built and when, especially on live action stuff. The closest analogy I can think of is imagine an agile shop where all the developers are implementing realtime orders during daily scrum all the time.

That's not really the major dissonance though. Trion people seem pretty sharp so they probably realized this going in or right away. I think the bigger problem is that the business models are just so different. They had to treat these as separate but related just to meet any time of realistic launch schedule which are driven by such different goals, different oversight organizations, shit, even different legislation and reporting requirements.

That they have 25% overlap is fucking amazing.

Yah, we discussed it here earlier after I'd drudged through a lot of devblogs, old interviews and so forth; the writing was on the wall then.  Hence IGN stating the obvious, though they verified it through a higher profile interview.  But yes, I'd be happy with a 25% overlap actually... but realize, this likely translates into (as said before) simple Arkfalls for season 1 and not much more.

In other news, my fully upgraded Epic Assault rifle disappeared.  I have no fuckin clue how but I'm seriously pissed about it.  3/4 of the way to mastery too.  Sent in a ticket, they better gimme my shit back.  I earned that rifle in a gnasty arkfall I won.  No really, I'm mad.

Also, I'm at the point where I have to decide which weapons to really focus on, because there's just not enough inv. space even with all those pre-order bonuses and EGO codes.  Christ there area a lot of weapon types... even before considering types for those weapon types (like, there is actually quite a few different types of BMG even before considering dmg element - some link, some dont, some heal, some dont, etc.)

Aargh, was doing the scrapworks co-op and on the final boss with both of the forges down when someone in the group was blasted thru a fence back to the area prior to the end fight.
That reseted the boss and left the one player outside the fence and the rest of us inside and unable to even restart the boss  :uhrr:

It is? Where did you hear that? I haven't found much information on the megapatch except rumors from other players.

I guess they have to push out some content to coincide with the release of the first episode. They are rolling in a bunch of technical fixes with it. I guess since the content is already cooked, they might be working off that repo or something along those lines. Don't want to merge anything before then.

In chat related news, last night I saw exactly one line of clan chat and I was able to send exactly one line of clan chat. This is 2 more lines of chat than I've seen the past week in game!

I'd sure like to see a preview of their fixes somewhere...

For reasons I don't want to discuss I wanted to get my account primary display name changed. So I contacted customer service, and was friendly and willing to accept them telling me no for any number of reasons. However what shocked me severely was when the customer support rep told me that he would have been more than happy to make that change for me except that no tools existed to manipulate that type of account data.

After some more questions I found out that the only accounts they can change account display names for are console display names that have personal information in them, and in order to do it they make a new account with a new name and then apply the old accounts last backup logs to the new account and once that is done they delete the old account.

It's really hard for me to reconcile that this and Rift come from the same company. I know Rift isn't for everyone and I agree it's setting for whatever reason just isn't all that compelling, but I always got a vibe of competence from the company.

I'm not getting that here. I really enjoy the game, but it all comes off as more than a little half baked.

I've never played Rift. How was it at launch? I'd think that this game has three things complicating it for the company:

1) Utterly different style from Fantasy MMO Wow-Knockoff #27
2) It had to tie in to the TV show which put it on a deadline that couldn't be moved.
3) They decided to put it on consoles as well as PC. That last one strikes me as pretty ambitious and they must've had to divert a significant amount of resources to that, particularly on the PS3.

Rift had as close to a flawless launch as we're likely to see. Everything worked. There were long-term issues, but the biggest complaints I recall were too-thick spawns in the opening areas and a poorly designed end to their initial live event. (IIRC, it ran once, in a single location, so the majority of players missed it, and those who were there mostly lagged. In other words, everything the Asheron's Call live team learned through their own bitter experience in 1999.)

Rift didn't have cross platform support ( or even compatibility ) and need to go though Microsoft and Sony toolsets.

That's it. Rift worked so well because it only needed to work on Windows.

This is a ridiculous mashup of systems and all the weirdness that comes with that. The fact that it has to tie into a TV show just throws in an additional wrench that the developers just weren't properly prepared for.

I like it, but the vision exceeded the grasp by a lot.

I think you guys are overthinking this. Changing a player's screen name doesn't require Playstation or XBox programming it requires a tool that works with the server database. If rift's toolset had been designed for portability it would already be there.

Oh. And the Nim fight can kiss my ass. Die already, you fucking Locutus wanna-be.

Finally figured out how the hell crafting really works.  
a) if you have something loaded, even in an unused loadout, you cant sell/mod it
b) synergies work just like armor sets in WoW do.  The more you have, the more that may stack depending on synergy.  For instance, most epic faction pieces have 4 mod slots and 4 possible synergies to go with them.  Get all four and stack all of the stats.
c) some synergies are EGO based (so you have to have the perk) but most are based on themselves.  Some are even class-based, so yah... CLASSES do matter for endgame-ish play.  For instance, I just gave up my epic VOT pulser to my outlaw clanmate; which is decidedly melee oriented.  He gave me a machinist autoshot.
d) trigger effect % mods are for DOTs on weapons
e) all mods have tangible effects graphically and functionally.  so if u put a scope on an LMG, you will have a sniping LMG when u right-click (with too much recoil to be of use)   :why_so_serious:

Seems like the faction grind is an integral part of all of this; and they are ran as dailies.  I have yet to run any so not sure how many tickets you get per run, but an epic piece is usually 200 tix to buy + scrip.

And I'm done with Defiance. A half-hour long enforced-solo "trick" boss battle where, if you die, you have to start again from scratch? I don't put up with that sort of bullshit design in JRPGs, and I won't put up with it in MMORPGs either. And since you don't get any more side missions until you complete the main missions, that means all there is left is to wander around and shoot random object.

EDIT: Coincidentally, Raptr says I uninstalled at hour 60 of my play. So I did, indeed, get my $60 worth. And I'm sure they won't miss the money I won't be paying for DLC, store costumes, or whatever.

The "final" boss isn't that bad at all. Also, if you make it to his 3rd phase you restart there should you die. It can be a bit rough if you have bad luck or don't move to hide from some of his hard hitting stuff on time but in general it's doable.

I don't think C is correct. The synergies share names with some EGO perks and classes but they are purely mod based and have nothing to do with your class and/or any ego perks.

This was Jackleg Jack. I didn't get to the "final" boss. I did say that I suck at shooters. :)

Storm, it was about at this point that I switched to having a BMG in every single one of my loadouts. Look in your inventory or a supplier for a BMG that has equaly or roughly equal healing and damage stats. You'll use the right click to regen shields and health. Then find one of those ~1500 value shields with a bonus to something. I've got one with +25% health regen.

You just have to realize when you hear the right sound you should duck behind cover and regen some of your shield.

Are you in the guild? Can we group to help you through that part? I've literally never grouped so I don't know how the mechanics work.

Ahhh...Jackleg Jack. I cheesed that part out. To his left, your right if you're facing him is a little cubby hole behind a tank or some crates or something. If you go over there he can't hit you with his grenades. I basically went over there, popped out to kill some guys,then ducked back to keep him from dropping grenades on my head. When one of those smelter guys came out I'd shoot his tank, run out, hit Jackleg as many times as I could, then rinse and repeat.

That mission, along with some others, really requires you to be good at dodge rolling. I have it mapped to a button on my mouse and there are some fights where I am literally going 'dodge roll, shoot, dodge roll, shoot, dodge roll, shoot." Especially against things like black lungs and raider tankers.

Ya I realized in the beta that dodge didn't have a cooldown mechanic for a reason. Though it was hard for me to deprogram my wait to dodge reflex from GW2 or Secret World.

I've found some stuff at Toolworks that has "EGO precision" synergy.  Forgot what it says exactly, but I assume it stacks with the perk.

Nope. It just shares a name. Check the forums. People have tested this kind of thing and found that only two things activate the synergy bonuses: mods,and oddly, having two weapons with the same synergy in the same loadout.

On another note, they had a brief server restart today and now the pursuits are changed. The old ones are called Season One and six new pursuits have been added under a category called Episodes, and there are pursuits for episodes 1 and 2. Likely we'll have a week for Episode 1 pursuits and a week for Episode 2 pursuits.

It appears you can start completing them now and they use stuff already in game, so maybe they'll just leave them in game and keep adding every week or so.

So, what was the "Huge April 15th patch" about?

It hasn't hit yet. They have the patch notes up on their forums. It's basically a massive bug fix patch.

Game is pretty fun but I don't see it having much sticking power unless they make with the content. I got a really nice assault rifle from an Episode Quest and a nice sniper rifle from a timed vendor, so I'm actually killing shit now. What sucks is that the assault rifle is fucking awesome in most every way and has all 4 mod slots, but I have literally no mods for assault rifles. I bought a Tier 3 lockbox since I had the keystones to do so and got...2 crappy lmgs, an SMG mod, and an orange quality SMG. Meh.

You can buy shit mods for pretty much nothing from some random vendors (the one at iron demon ranch for example), they're sorted in an absolutely stupid manner.

Yah, as kildorn says...  trash mods are 500 scrip for every weapon.  Just have to find the merchant.  There's one in particular that has them ALL.

Geez, there's gazillions of codes.  They're fucking everywhere.  I wonder if you can get them from the TV show too?  I didn't watch it yet, but I did record it.  I was merrily typing in my 87th code when I guess the servers went down again a few minutes ago and they don't accept them when the game's not up.  There are some ok rewards, such as mods and inventory space though.  Some of them are just shitey shite shite shite.  I'm holding out for a pony.

The arkfall codes? There used to be a forum topic with all 120. I started the game with them in and it helped a bit.

Yes, I'm using one of those lists.  There seems to be more than 120 now, though.  Lots more.  That's why I was sort of wondering if you can get them from the show, too.

I don't know bout anything else, but it's so worth cutting and pasting them to get the extra inventory slots.

There were always more, it's just that 120 is all you need for the bonuses. I think it was for people doing it the non-wiki way, in case you missed commerical #42 or forum posts.

I read that people were getting more shit if they added more than 120 codes.  Not sure I believe it because once you get to 120, it accepts the code and even says it adds a point, but the points stay at 120.  Maybe they'll do more later.  Not that it matters, the game is broken right now.  Possibly forever.  Who knows?  I may never get to seem my lootz. 

Every day is a day for something.  Today is Pessimism Day.

Link to the codes? I literally knew nothing about this code thing; I'm guessing it's like the SHIFT code thing with Borderlands 2?

http://orcz.com/Defiance:_Arkfall_Codes

Danke.

And every day is St. Bloodworth Day!

I don't know why you said that but I'll agree because I don't want to be the only one who doesn't understand.  Hi!

Bloodworth has a tendency to repost things.  Occasionally things he posted himself.

So they took my birthday and named it in his honor.  :cry2:

Aww... I'm sorry.  I'll try to be more careful with my posting.  The game is back up and I was only joking about it being broken forever.  I actually really like this game now.  I had good fun at some weird bug hive event killing a thingy and his thingy friends with a bunch of oddly dressed people.  Totally not expected.  And I got lootz!  If I ever see you in a game I'll give you some good lootz to make up for buggering up your birthday!

Signe found an arkfall  :awesome_for_real:

What? No, you didn't... I was reacting to "every day is a day."

This will teach me to try to make jokes immediately after donating blood. Everything is funny, but only to me. Ergh.

I hereby dub today St. Bloodworth day!

You didn't bugger up my birthday.  I'll still take the lootz though!

Hopefully there's a better chat filter than what Free Realms has in whatever game that is.  That was... comical.

Did everyone get the emails with the extra lootz?  Yesterday some thug ran me down with his ATV and I said "ouch" and it actually popped up in the chat line.  First time that's happened for me!  I think they're fixing stuff and that update was HUGE.  If they keep actually fixing the things people are bitching about, this game might end up so much better than I initially thought from reading this thread. 

And kudos for giving away your precious blood, Stormwaltz.   :heart: 

Happy St. Bloodworth Day, everyone!

I thought the fact that the mods change the weapons appearance was nice until I fully modded my orange pistol and it ended looking like this  :why_so_serious:

Hehe ya that is pretty much what I did also having a shotgun with flame effect makes setting the munchkins on fire super easy. Shoot once the guys are knocked down and on fire they get up and blow the shield.

I was not even trying to cheese the grenades hiding by those barrels just was getting minions into the crossfire between the chick who is always on the one side of the room and me. Pretty fun fight pack a shotgun and it is a LOT easier.

People still enjoying?  I feel the need to shoot stuff virtually! :drill: :drillf: :drill: :drillf:

ut oh
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/17/trion-hit-by-massive-layoffs

I wonder if this means what we got is all we get because it's really not enough.

Isn't it standard practice to shit can a lot of people after a game is released?  They don't need as many people to maintain a game as they do to develop it.  I hope thats the case here.

I got a bad feeling regarding the 30 dollar DLC pass thingy I purchased.

They've shown plans for the first DLC. Who knows what this means. It's already free to play so I suspect it boils down to their cash shop. Is it making enough to keep the game afloat? To pay for continued DLC?

Textbook Friday news dump heh.

IGN sources suggest that well over half the company has been let go, with some suggesting numbers as high as 80%

Depends on how true the source is. It's not unusual to kick out any excess workforce after the release but not 80% if you plan to do any further development or even maintenance on 2 MMOs (unless they had to hire lots of extra people to launch Defiance in time for the airing of the tv show)

Trion is denying that 80% number is correct and is actually much lower.  Who knows, really?

Normally I'd say their PR is spinning (some of which is very true) but IGN is a shitty website ever since their own layoffs. They post stories with crazy headlines and/or poorly researched articles and usually both. This 'source' is probably somebody pissed at being laid off. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if they lost a big chunk of people. Defiance is fun but their content is trickling out and their cash shop is over priced with not much worth buying in it.

That's become the spin about these kind of layoffs, but launched games are still a lot of work. And now you've just let go a bunch of people who understand how it operates.

Defiance was a flop of a MMO and Trion also has End of Nations Onlnie and ArcheAge (as publisher) in the pipeline. They still need a sizable group of people to help launch those games.

Free weekend and 30% discount on steam. Which pretty much supports the notion that Defiance hasn't been selling all that well.

Broken install link on Steam. Blah

I'm downloading it now... so it might have overloaded or been disabled due to load.

(edit)

I haven't played for ages... I think I did a rift free trial years ago. So try to recover my password and to do so I need to remember two secret questions (which I don't even remember setting), but the obvious answers don't seem to work. And to reset that I need to call them during US hours... fail.

The game was also supposed to be a cash shop one and since there's not really a whole lot to the game, I suspect people drop out long before they buy any widgets.

This is another game that I have been upset at myself for buying. I should know better by now.

I feel pretty much the same way though I was entertained for a while it hasn't come even close to others like GW2 in the amount of content etc.

This is a very average game. Why console players think default blur and bloom is "cool" is beyond me, I guess maybe it hides the relatively average textures. Shooting stuff is fun but a laggy (Australian latency to US servers not helping) and repetitive console shooter, with apparently not that much content, is a big ask as a full price game.

Did one arkfall and it seemed to play out as I expected. A horde of random ranged DPS with the people having aggro basically just running and rolling. Though I did see some player defeat one by hopping over a piece of railing the mob would take a long path around. There's little variety in tactics, no group tactics and the perks are intensely dull. Though I guess that's partly because of the constraints of a console controller.

I am not really hating on the game. There are fun bits. The project though, as it stands right now, is disappointing to me. I feel even worse because I feel like I was fleeced for a DLC package that is nearly impossible to get information on.

Have they done anything for the DLC?

Thats the thing. I dont know because there is a severe lack of information/documentation. At least that i can find.

The last I saw they kept saying next episode, then next episode would show and no real additions other than multicolored hellbugs. Plus, they'd reassure everyone that anything useful in the new patch wouldn't be DLC. I think the only DLC they mentioned was a new race, but that means grinding out the quests a second time.

I really like the gameplay, but I've reached a been there done that level. One arkfall? I've probably done a hundred. And now that people are used to things it's basically everyone with a 400 damage LMG and the extra damage power gunning it down in almost no time at all. Rift was a game that really gave you a million things to do. Defiance gives you two: quest or arkfall.

Free weekend on steam.

And the quests are almost all about going to the mark on the map, shooting the same models, triggering the item, shooting the mods that pop out of spawn points. They're do a much poorer job of fitting the environment or concealing the repetition than GW2 does.

It's really a shame the game couldn't keep pace with the show.  The show is starting to really come into its own.

I had a look at the synopsis for the show and they don't seem to be that tightly connected. It's definitely the American fantasy of the world returning to a updated version of the wild west, with rugged armed individualists protecting the settlers from bandits. Trying to keep some sort of narrative sequence with a TV should would be fairly difficult though.

Personally, I think the 60$ entry fee hurt them. I could see money hats if it was a F2P that was mainly targeted at the show viewers.

It really should have been f2p. The gameplay is not that engaging, there's lots of space for selling episodic content packs and cosmetic items (which they are doing as well as the box price anyway) and it relies on having a lot of people so missions are busy. But I imagine like APB they looked at how much it cost them and decided they needed that initial cash as well as cash-shop intake.

Yeah, absolutely.  I tried it in the free beta weekend or whatever before release, I thought it was kind of fun, but I did not think it was worth spending $60 to play.  Even on sale for $42 it's too rich for my blood, especially considering some of the comments you guys have made about finishing all the content pretty quickly.

For those on the fence, it has about 20 casual play sessions worth of content.

Is there a date yet for the first (of atleast 5?) dlc?

I'm pretty sure they are going to fuck everybody that purchased dlc packs. This game is so bad it hurts.

This game is to me what Diablo 3 is to Ironwood.

Yikes.

This game, considering I jumped in during the steam sale and never even looked at it till then, has a lot going for it.  I have never seen a game keep you involved in the action this well, and the transition from solo to co-op play is really seamless.  I completely get that other than instant fun, there isn't much more, but if ever there was a game that would really benefit from a good patch, its this one.  Just having a real chat system would boost this game big time for pc users.

This also reproves to me that you are so much better off waiting a month for a free weekend than jumping in on the first day.  With so many mmos being tossed at us these days, I've gotten used to playing them for a month then jumping to the next free weekend somewhere else.

I'll probably play it when it goes f2p. It's not very good, it's not very long, it's not worth paying much for.

It's better than firefall but that's a really low bar.

Same.  Trion would be well served to make a F2P transition to hype up the next TV season.  If released properly at the correct time, they could really gather viewers to the show and players to the game out of it.  Advertising win!

Nathan Richardsson out as Executive producer, Chris Lena in. Trion declines to comment, no mention of Richardsson in Lena's introduction.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/23/rumor-former-defiance-executive-producer-no-longer-with-trion/
http://community.defiance.com/en/2013/07/23/dev-blog-castithan-charge-pack-and-the-future-of-defiance/

That was a weird confluence of events with the blog post and Massively article.  What did we decline to comment on?

So they are actually more or less promising to release the first dlc next month and the rest of the (5) dlcs in the game's first year. That means 5 dlcs in 8 months (the game launched on April 2) and with the dlcs priced at $10 each (or 19.99 for season pass) when the game itself is b2p and priced currently 9.99 I somehow doubt there's much demand for them...

Given that they have already sold subscriptions, they may not feel they have an option to do anything other than produce them as a paid product.

I have no idea how they have let things go this far. I remember people chomping at the bit for the DLC when the second episode of the series came out and wondering why it had been delayed so long. I don't think that blog comes even close to the kind of damage control they need to do.

The DLC was originally sold for $29.99. Also the game is shit. I know that at its core there is some decent gameplay stuff stuck in there, but everything else is shit. The pvp is shit. The "class" selection is shit. The itemization is shit. The bullshit to keep you busy is uncreative and shit. Trion should be apologizing to everyone that purchased the game. They should refund DLC purchases. Every single person that worked on Defiance should be locked out of working on another game for the rest of their lives because they are shit.

Richardsson's departure; "Massively confirmed Richardsson's departure with Trion earlier this afternoon, but the company declined to comment further."

I believe they're suggesting that it was not an amicable parting. When high-profile devs leave with neither side saying a word about it ("thanks for your work, good luck" and "great team, I'll miss you"), people wonder.

I'm at such a loss to explain what is going on with this title because as I have said before, it isn't bad.  Of all the crappy games out there this one has so much potential and the fact that its connected to a popular show on Sci-fi, if only in name, makes it even more ridiculous.  They should've just made it a console shooter and let it go.  I would think, if I was a member of the team that spent a lot of time and work on this title, I'd be pretty pissed with the direction the company took on it. 

Because it is bland, promised a lot and will never deliver on that promise. The "potential" it had is one of the reasons to dislike it.

Though I think part of the fun is seeing how they manage to extricate themselves from a failing game, falling revenues and the promise of continuing content they sold in advance.

In charge now. (http://youtu.be/QyowCj_aH0g)

Curious.. wonder if he was overseeing the End of Nations fiasco on Trion's end. If so, he could have been the one who told Trion to pull the plug on Petro and bring it in-house..

Wasn't RIFT literally a tech test for the making of this thing? Is there some irony in that?

I thought Defiance was okay but there wasn't really any variation or much to do really. I dunno how to put it, but Defiance feels really repetitive and boring in comparison to other 3rd-person cover-based shooters but the other cover based shooters don't really have that much more to do. You just shoot the mans in both but somehow Uncharted/Gears/etc managed to keep the 40th gigantic shoot out different/interesting feeling enough for me to not be completely bored.

It's that Defiance doesn't even pretend that you're doing something different. It's a giant useless but varied terrain containing a very very tiny number of Rift things you actually wind up doing.

The shooting and whatnot is all very well done and it plays wonderfully. There's just not that much to actually do in it.

The core gameplay is fun as hell but everything else is lackluster. The story, for what it is, is ok but extremely short.

One of the biggest problems with this game, IMO, is the horrid chat interface. It's hard to have an MMO when I can barely communicate with other players. Add to that the repetitiveness, and the stupid decision to tie it to an IP but set it half a continent away. If they'd set this game in Defiance that'd have sold it so much better. Hell, Defiance and the surrounding areas probably have tons of stuff to do that the show characters aren't handling.

I believe that the decision to make it multi-platform is what killed it. They cut so many corners to put it on 360 and PS3 and it really show, especially in the PC version.

A lot of players like to remark on how much it's like Borderlands in ways being shooters blah blah blah.

To me it didn't really feel like that. The difference being Borderlands was funnier, dropped more loot, better weapons, and didn't feel like a grind as you played it because of the story. Strangely a game like Defiance with it's own television show and five years of planning has such a boring story that only actually crosses over a quarter or so of the time so it's hard to get into it except for the face shooting.

This is why I chuckle at people saying the $60 price was worth it because ''Compared to other shooters...''  :grin:

Incidentally, it's now selling for $7 American since it's April launch if anyone hasn't seen the game yet and still wants to try it.  Or you can wait until next month when it will be dropping to 5 Zimbabwean dollars and get it then.

Or you can just play the free trial (http://www.defiance.com/en/my-ego/profile/pc-free-trial/) now and save your Zimbabwean currency  :why_so_serious:

Or you can just not play it and avoid the shit sandwich.

Why would anyone do that?

Their patcher sucked so bad that it would take the full 72 hours for them to even get you in the game. You should see how many people have been complaining about that. Even Angry Joe couldn't take it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-iKMWrwl74

Seriously, it was pretty bad. People still having problems from their last trial.

I did work on End of Nations for quite a while but, obviously, can't comment on the move taking it internal.  I moved over to Defiance in the last 6 months before launch.

Also, that Angry Joe video was put up just about 4 days after launch.  We have made a few improvements since then although there are always more to make.

Does Schild still make names red?

I think only if they survive.

Why would you want a red name?  Seems counter-productive to anything a dev would hope to get out of posting here.

Took me about 60 hours to download because the patcher would fail regularly and then on restart would lose progress (has to do with downloading 4 files at once and not being able to restart any files from where it left off if you error or purposely quit out). The 72 hour limit was not that big of deal though because only took a couple hours of play to get to the max 200 whatever they call it points where character can not advance anymore in the trial. You also limited to the first two area just like the open beta weekend. Those two limits mean it is really silly to have just a 3 day time limit. A longer time would not mean you could actually do all that much more.

I thought only baseball players got red names?

Oooh, I'll have to start actively watching this thread now eh?   :popcorn:
Release the hounds!!!!!!!

Wait until they put out their first promised DLC, then it might be. Until then, it's chuckles and grinnies reading about the state it's in.

I was referring to the non-red named lurker dev. in the thread and his impending beatdown.  The game itself?  Not that interested.

Where the hell is that DLC? The entire first season of the TV show has came and went. There wasn't any overlap in the game at all. Didn't someone somewhere say there was like ~15-20% overlap? Ha!

Not to mention that it seems like the only thing you get out of it is being able to grind through with a new character race.

Yar, this guy did:

Defiance's Game-TV Crossover is Disappointing (http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/defiances-game-tv-crossover-is-disappointing)

:awesome_for_real:

This whole thread can been summed up by "we really should've made a Fallen Earth TV show instead."   

I don't think this link needs much explanation:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/trion-worlds-closing-defiances-san-diego-development-studio (http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/trion-worlds-closing-defiances-san-diego-development-studio)

I am not terribly surprised and suspect this will only further delay the DLC. I think Defiance is going to be the thing that kills Trion if they're not very careful.

..or they'll push out whatever they have ready to fulfil the season pass obligations (5 dlcs if I remember correctly) and put the game on bare minimal support staff wise until they can close it without too many objections.

First they'll make the base game f2p, upgrades and the promised DLC available from the shop for new players. That's generally the initial attempt at resuscitation.

So...


I rented this from Gamefly. It installed itself on my 360, then took about 30 mins to nab the game client. It then took another 45 minutes to patch.

I am still in the tutorial, I think. I am underwhelmed.

The last MMO to grab me was TSW, and I think my inherent no MMO on the console bias makes me like this even less.

On the upside, I can only quick chat.

You can rent it?

360.  Its available on 360, PS3 and PC.  Separate servers for each platform.

Now introducing, CASTITHANS, a completely new playable alien species that looks oddly human but with exciting space tribal tattoos!  Just once I want to see a new race be an amorphous blob of jelly.

Free to play without a box cost coming in June to coincide with the second season of the tv series. Up to now, I gather they've half assed the expansion packs and they still haven't met their commitment for people who "subscribe" at launch.

Their scheme to link the reputation of the game to the show has worked though. The way the game has been treated has significantly soured me on the show. Probably not what they wanted.

How's the show being received anyway? I stopped watching arounf episode 3, I was pretty much bored. But sometimes these things pick up later. I guess people don't hate it if it got a second season on top of not being canceled.

It started getting pretty good when things got all mystical/magical, but the direction of the show itself was obviously sophomoric... which showed especially in the last epi. 

I didn't like the direction they took it with him settling into the town there.  If it has been "The Adventures of Guy and Daughter In Post-Alien-Apocalypse America" I think it would have been more interesting.  But I just couldn't bring myself to care about the politics of Defiance.

I was still onboard when it came to politics but once it went all mystic supernatural near the end I was ready to give up on it (but I did watch it to the finish and I still have a silly hope they'll ditch all that when the second season starts since I'm a sucker for a non-zombie post-apocalyptic world serieses)

I have a hard time deciding which show is shittier and ruined my favourote setting the most between Defiance and Revolution. I still want to keep watching both, but they really make it hard at times.

We'll see where they go. I can roll with the mystical if this is the peak or it comes up with science-fantasy explanations, but if they keep going down the rabbit hole, I'm not going to be really happy. To me, it's a popcorn show. It's nothing great, particularly in today's world where there's just a flood of very high quality tv. However, I found the series entertaining enough to watch which is more tahn I can say about Revolution, Under the Dome, SHIELD, the 100, Fallen Skies, and more that I've forgotten.

I watched the first episode of Under the Dome.  It really pissed me off.  How could I ever watch a series made by people who think the inside of a cow is raspberry sorbet?  I had to look up The 100, I've never even heard of it. 

I like Defiance.  I really like Tony Curran who is even cuter painted white.  I do agree with people about the main male lead being sort of wooden and not very animated.  I'm sure he can do better.  Or... they should get Richard Roxburgh.  They look almost just alike and he's awesome in Rake.  People won't even be able to tell the difference visually.  On the other hand, I really like Rake and don't want him to leave.  I'm feeling conflicted.

Speaking about New Zealand, I love the All Blacks.  Every single last one of them.  Going to an All Blacks game is on my bucket list. 

I enjoyed Defiance for what it is, mindless entertainment. Popcorn show is pretty accurate. Tony Curran though... rattled me for the first 3 episodes. I could not get the thought of him as a Tinman VanGogh outta my head the whole time.  :why_so_serious:

The 100 is a really odd show. Lord of the Flies meets the CW network. It comes across like a show targeted at teens, and then they just start randomly offing what appear to be main characters.

Yah, by 'direction' I meant the director.  It's just not a well implemented show.  As for theme, you already know I (and most everyone) agree with you there.  Had they kept with the game's premise (father-daughter merc treasure-hunters), the show would've been awesome - but I think budget had a say in that, as being in a different location every day would've been pricey.

Really, it's just another lost sci-fi opportunity imo, so far.  If it lasts to a 3rd season, then mayhaps it'll gain a foothold similar to how BSG or DS9 did.

I tried to watch The 100, if for nothing else than the company's other products have migrated to Kindle Worlds and I thought it sounded interesting. I just couldn't survive. 100 poor teenage brats marooned on a post-apocalyptic earth with nothing but hair product between them and death...

Best apocalyptic story ever:  A Boy and his Dog.  I haven't seen the film for ages, either, so that's tonight's entertainment.  That and Hannibal, because I love the death art.

Though he can be a vindictive, mean-spirited cuss, Harlan Ellison is an exceptional writer; one of very few I read when I need inspiration.

I don't care to imagine a world without him in it.

Ellison is brilliant. He's the one sci-fi author that can consistently surprise me, and I know I haven't read all of his stories. Needless to say I went apeshit back in the day when he had his Babylon 5 cameo. I didn't think that show could get more awesome. Except for Penn and Teller.

I've had a few tonight. I'm not even sure where this conversation was going.

I'll probably regret this tomorrow.

Free to Play is here! Take a look (http://Defiance.com/f2p) (and turn on damage numbers from the options for that Borderlands feeling).

These guys can go fuck themselves. I still feel like they stole my money regarding the season content passes.

I share the feeling  :oh_i_see:

Just for shits and giggles i tried to recover my account. Sometime between the last time I logged in and now they implemented authenticator recovery security questions. I recorded the old authenticator serial number when I switched phones recently thinking I could just pop the serial number in and run with it (like every other software authenticator I've ever used)...nope. You have to log in through the authenticator software on the phone and answer security questions that I never put answers into. You can not just put the old serial number in and then have a working authenticator.

So I go to the support site, can't file a ticket without my authenticator, can't go to support forums without authenticator, can't use live chat without authenticator... wait for it...Trion has no phone support at all. They do not take customer phone calls of any kind.

Hi Pennilenko,

Please see: https://support.trionworlds.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1719 (https://support.trionworlds.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1719)

I believe this page has the information needed for you to regain access to your Trion account.  If you're still having trouble, send me a private message with details and I'll try to get you in touch with CS directly.   

Defiance was a lot of fun to play but the chat system killed the game for me. I never was able to feel like I was in an MMO because the char was so utterly horrid that interacting with other players was more or less impossible. Combine that with a severe lack of quality of life features (Revolving around socialization) and I quickly lost interest.

It's been on steam sale so it was basically already f2p. Played it through, sort of enjoyed it, but once the story ran out there's no reason to keep playing. You've visited every POI on the (small) map, the gameplay had gotten repetitive long before you finished and there's no progress on your character other than amazing achievement grinds.

MMO's that believe they can do sequential story telling through hand-crafted new content are delusional in general, and this one never came close. Indeed I still have little idea what the back-story was, but all a shooter story needs to do is give you goal, a map and enough opponents to shoot your way through and it works so the bar was pretty low.

When it went f2p I got to the end of season 1, now doing the odd season 2 mission, but its a bit samey. Great fun whilst it lasted though.