Syfy + Trion = Defiance MMO Action Shooter (PC 360 PS3)

[satael]

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

[Ghambit]

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

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.

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?

[kildorn]

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

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.

[Signe]

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.

[Pennilenko]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Rendakor]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[kildorn]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[satael]

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.

[Pennilenko]

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.

[Falconeer]

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?

[Signe]

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.

I totally overlooked that.  Thanks! 

[Ghambit]

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.

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?   

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

[Nija]

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.

[Nonentity]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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 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.

[Pennilenko]

Instruction and documentation is woefully inadequate in this game.

[kildorn]

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 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.

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.

[Surlyboi]

A little backstory if anyone's interested...

[satael]

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)

[Nija]

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.

[Threash]

-if you max out a specific weapon then using it will no longer contribute to actual weapon skill progress (which is pretty meh)

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

[satael]

-if you max out a specific weapon then using it will no longer contribute to actual weapon skill progress (which is pretty meh)

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)

[Ginaz]

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

[Phred]

Dev diary posted yesterday:

        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.

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

[Ghambit]

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.   

[Riggswolfe]

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.   

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...

[Ghambit]

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

[Stormwaltz]

There's a restaurant chain in New England called "99." 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.

[Malakili]

There's a restaurant chain in New England called "99." 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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Draegan]

Maybe he left the game idle?