Ok, played a few hours more. It's definitely fun, i was just doing the side missions from the one side of the map, which leads to the main missions. How long it will remain to be fun is the real question.
This guy gives a great summary about this game, i'm quoting just some snippets from his article:
http://my.mmosite.com/2939742/blog/i..._wont_buy.html
I am actually inclined to pre-purchase , simply because there's nothing else of any MMO/Online interest coming out April/May (well not that i'm aware of). I had the exact same experience where i logged off and realised i played like 8 hours, so while i might feel the game is "mediocre" it did kept me going for more...Anyone's who ever been a fan of the third person shooter genre has reason to rejoice. Defiance does a good job taking the fast-action feel of the third-person shooter and mixing them with some RPG elements and cooperative gameplay to make a unique game experience.
Unfortunately, the shooter elements don't feel as “clean” as I'd like. Anyone who has ever played a polished third-person shooter such as Gears of War or Mass Effect will immediately be able to tell the difference.
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When I logged off Defiance after my first time playing and noticed that somehow 8 hours had passed by, I realized something: the storytelling had suckered me in.
Already I'm dreading going through the same missions I already played through if I purchase the game and have to create a fresh character. It might not be too big an issue for most people, though, every character is capable of using any weapon so unless you really want to try out a different build of EGO perks the need to create secondary characters will be small.
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Those of you who played Rift are familiar with Trion's attempts to make a world more 'alive' than the standard theme-park approach to mmo's. With Defiance they took this approach to an extreme. Missions are done in the open world; when you arrive at an objective oftentimes you will find others on the some mission having already started and you can jump in, going through the objectives together until the mission is complete.
Oh, speaking of Rift, rifts are here too, though now they're called “Arkfalls.” Fancy new name, same basic mechanic: they appear randomly somewhere on the map in either minor or major form, and you and whoever the hell else is around can work together to beat it.
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Defiance is just chock full of stuff to do when you don't feel like going to the next mission. Aside from all the side missions, mini-missions, and Arkfalls, there are plenty of challenge missions for you to try to compete for score against your fellow Ark Hunters for bragging rights. There is also a wide range of “goals” which will be familiar to anyone whose ever played a game with achievements.
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The game has a solid foundation, but it still feels very rough around the edges. There are still a lot of bugs for a game that's supposed to launch so soon, the combat feels a little clunky, and the weapons feel horribly unbalanced. I think the game could do well to be in production a little longer, but of course that's not a possibility since the game's launch needs to coincide with the debut of the SyFy series.
Still, the game is pretty fun. If you're a fan of the third person shooter genre and like MMOs then this should be right up your alley. It's a niche that currently is not filled by any major games on the MMO market. And personally, I'd like to see the game succeed
I think you MUST however play this game when everyone is leveling together , otherwise you'll be doing alot of the content on your own , and even though they scale the Arkfalls , i still struggled. It certainly helps doing these missions where you must activate like 5 beacons and there's 3 other players doing it, you don't need to activate all 5 yourself to get the complete, just someone in the area have to do it while you are also in the area. Don't even have to group up, so it's quite a cool way to coop.
Will give it a miss, never been a PVP fan.
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My 9 year old asked me "What should I be when I grow up daddy?"
I answered, "Happy".
Uhm no, this is not a PvP Game. There is PvP, but it's a side show, similar to GW2's WvWvW or Rift's PvP . There's certainly zero PvP in the "open world" , it's all PvE . The 50 vs 50 PvP is totally instanced , exactly like what Trion did with Rift's PvP. They take the actual zone and instance it into a PvP Zone (and you queue up for it etc). Kinda like The Secret World's PvP too.
I must say, after awhile, i could feel the resemblance to Rift in the game. Take out the classes and skill system (and the complexity of it) and replace with 3rd person shooter and a post apocalypse world and you get Defiance. The story of Defiance is definitely told better than Rift's story though, it has that movie like effect, like what you find in a single player game which is kinda nice.
It's kinda like an action version of Fallen Earth. Where Fallen Earth was all crafting and kinda on the slow end, Defiance is all quick action, right down to the "Fast Travel" spots (something i remember was a huge argument on the Fallen Earth forums back in the day). The combat in Defiance is a ton better than combat was in Fallen Earth though.
I must also add, while there's no classes and the EGO system is pretty one dimensional, you do improve in all your weapons and vehicles based on usage. So if you use a sniper rifle, the more you use it , the better you get at it.
I seriously doubt i will PvP in this game (Planetside 2 is much much better for this), the forums already clearly indicates it's pretty unbalanced and not very interesting. The weapon of the day was grenade launchers which is simply spammed all over the place .
I have to agree with diabolus, I rather enjoyed my limited time that I played = about 2 hours in total. But it was fun, I was having some lag issues tho and struggled with some of the more basic kills. Some weapons where definitely over powered and the graphics was not running smoothly for me, minor things like the character running felt and looked a bit weird to me.
I suspect I might get the game tho.
I ended up pre-purchasing on Steam (note: you get more rewards on Steam than from Trion directly) , it will be my April game i suppose, since there's nothing else on my agenda for the next 2 months in terms of online multiplaying. I don't expect this game to be a long term thing, if i get a good 100 hours out of it, it will be money well spent.
Alot of people say the closest thing to explain Defiance is to compare it to a Borderlands MMO (maybe not as good as Borderlands, but the gameplay is similar , add other players and dynamic events).
There's also that other 3rd person shooter, Firefall, which even looks like Borderlands too, and from the videos looks better than Defiance, but that game has been in Beta for like years now, and still no release date.
It's Buy-Box-2-Play, same model as GW2 (no sub). Costs $60 for standard edition and then you're sorted. I would however have liked to pay less, maybe $40 would have been a more logical price point. I imagine the price will drop after 2-3 months anyway. There is a cash shop too and they have DLCs (no quite sure what this would be, but you can already buy into this) , which seems like additional content they will release in parallel with the TV Series. I'm guessing it's story arcs , maybe some "dungeons" or "zones" .
The beta client was about 7gb, not sure what the final size would be and i sure hope it is pre-loading on Steam... i mean what else am i going to do the entire easter weekend
As for "playable at release" . The starter zone was pretty much without anything particular glaring as far as i could tell. They can definitely tweak the weapons a little, but the quests all seems to work almost too well (considering how dynamic they are and how you can complete all of them without grouping and get credit while others complete parts of the objective). Let's just say, no quest bugged out on me or required me to "abandon and retake" . Some of the mobs pathing and AI is terrible, but that tended to work to my advantage and i exploited that fully (predictable AI, same as any other MMO).
The start zone was pretty large , and after my 10 hour stint this weekend i was not even half way. The actual world map was much larger, kinda like a continent, similar to those continents in Rift. I didn't encounter any game stopping bugs, they seemed to have disabled the modding system (you can upgrade your weapons with all kinds of mods) , so not sure if that was not finished yet or not.
They also have the equivalent of "dungeons" on the map, including a few solo instances that form part of the story line (i.e. going underground into bunkers and such).
So it's hard to tell how much content there really are. It might very well end up being the starter zone and then all a buggy untested mess afterwards, but i got a feeling their "base" model will be re-applied across the entire continent, similar to the starter zone, which should be easy enough. I just hope the landscape change a little....at least there are day-night cycles.
I'm sure they could probably have polished alot more, especially with the UI (which reminds me of DCUO's UI, yes, that bad). However this game is releasing on all 3 platforms, so i guess they have to cut corners somewhere.
Sounds interesting indeed. Is there group content? Are there healing/tank roles etc in groups? This game has totally flown under MMO radar so I am in the dark here and can't find an easy to pickup info site on it. Is the beta going to be used for release or do you have to download a new client. How big is the client? ;-P
Questions questions!
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My 9 year old asked me "What should I be when I grow up daddy?"
I answered, "Happy".