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

[Lantyssa]

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

Apparently a lot.

[Pennilenko]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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.

[murdoc]

Please note: The NDA will be lifted on March 22, after which you will be free to live stream, comment, post, tweet, share videos, and otherwise talk about your experiences from the beta event. We encourage you to post any comments you have to the Beta forums.

[Trippy]

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

[satael]

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

[Trippy]

Ah that makes more sense

[Nija]

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

[Pennilenko]

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

[Hoax]

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.

[Furiously]

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

[luckton]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Ghambit]

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.

[Falconeer]

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.

[Numtini]

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

[Surlyboi]

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

[Falconeer]

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

[Riggswolfe]

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.

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

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.

[Falconeer]

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.

[Ghambit]

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.

[satael]

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

[luckton]

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

[Pendan]

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

Queue Position: 2216

Estimated Time Remaining: 26 Days"

 

[Riggswolfe]

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  

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!

[Tearofsoul]

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

[Pennilenko]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[luckton]

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.   

[satael]

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.

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)

[Ghambit]

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.

[Draegan]

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.

[Tyrnan]

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.