Defiance : The Game and The TV Series

Shrike said:
I absolutely suck at playing shooters and driving games. For that reason I find Defiance refreshingly challenging as an MMO ;-P
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Hehe, is that what it was? I saw you driving in circles on the quad bike and wondered what you're doing lol. That instant port to anyone on your friends list is pretty cool feature, actually due to the lack of private chat, it's essential. (EDIT: apparently there is private chat using /whisper, must just figure out whether it works on character name or account name)

Anyway, this game isn't that easy, especially if you do missions solo. You will immediately notice the difference when other players are doing the same mission, so much so that i sometimes wait for other players to do the missions with. It has alot of easy moments if you go one on one with mobs, but trust me , it gets pretty tough when the mobs start popping out from multiple directions. It's primarily about avoiding getting hit in quick succession and making sure you are using the right type of shield (i.e. how fast it recharge and how fast it starts recharging after it's broken).

The mobs at the beginning is just as deadly whether you're EGO 50 or EGO 400 . So being able to drop aggro when you're getting surrounded by mobs and your ammo runs out is probably the best ability to have, hence i prefer stealth and decoy. Stealth works the best for getting out of crap, Decoy is better if you want to drop aggro AND still shoot at mobs. Problem is decoy doesn't live very long when under heavy fire, whereas stealth doesn't have a health thing.

Luckily the death penalty is not bad and players are VERY eager to revive because there's this whole achievement thing. There's even players in the Arkfalls that complains that players "self rez" too fast. Due to this i go balls to the walls in the Arkfalls, shooting the boss right in the face and getting slammed through the air across the area all the time (kinda fun that actually).

Another tip, use your vehicle to clear out mobs. I do this all the time, i first drive into a base and drive over whatever mobs i can and then jump out and start shooting. Although the quad bike isn't great for this, but you can buy a buggy/dodge relatively quickly (check the specials at the terminals, i've seen some high end cars for cheap cheap there).

The addictive part is, killing mobs is not grindy like say WoW. You can instant kill mobs if you get a headshot in, and most of them die relatively quickly, but it also means they can down you in 3-4 shots too. So i actually enjoy stopping at every random roadside quest and shooting at things hehe.

I am also experimenting with all the guns, there's definitely a ton of variety with them. It seems like each gun has an "experience limit" , if you hit the limit you don't get xp towards your gun skill from that gun (you can see the bar on your gun) . I suppose it's Trion's way of "decay" , encouraging you to get new guns constantly. I initially thought i was leveling the gun, but then i hit that limit and nothing happened.
 
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Aparantly you can send private message by using /whisper [username] . I must just figure out whether this is character name or account name, most likely account name.
 
So far my experience of the game is almost exactly the same as Total Biscuit, its surprisingly fun. The game is pretty hard in some places, especially if you follow the story missions, you get spoiled with single headshots with a sniper rifle when a big blue mutant takes a whole bunch to the head to die.

Enjoying the sniper rifle, good fun, steep learning curve for a non shooter player ;-P

Finally got my "healer" gun, its pretty easy to use, making a career out of being a healer is not part of this game. At 250 ego I get to play Co-op (instanced group missions), looking forward to that.

So far so good. REALLY want a proper car, sick of the 4 wheeler, can't find any to buy anywhere.
 
Shrike said:
So far my experience of the game is almost exactly the same as Total Biscuit, its surprisingly fun. The game is pretty hard in some places, especially if you follow the story missions, you get spoiled with single headshots with a sniper rifle when a big blue mutant takes a whole bunch to the head to die.

Enjoying the sniper rifle, good fun, steep learning curve for a non shooter player ;-P

Finally got my "healer" gun, its pretty easy to use, making a career out of being a healer is not part of this game. At 250 ego I get to play Co-op (instanced group missions), looking forward to that.

So far so good. REALLY want a proper car, sick of the 4 wheeler, can't find any to buy anywhere.
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Yea, it got something to it. I actually just drive around doing arkfalls half the time, i probably should move on with the story at some point. I am sure the game will get old eventually, but for now it's fun.

At 400 ego, i got 4 or 5 "dungeons" available, so they seems to be a few of those at least. I kinda enjoy the co-op dungeons, it's easy to get into and not frustrating like classic MMO pugs can be. I see they swop players in and out as the leave, so also no worries about ending up in the final fight with 2 players etc.

As for car buying, i think the first place i saw standard cars was some way off way south on the map. I actually "Discovered" a vendor at some random place who were selling the orange dodge. The vendor only opened up shop after i cleared the area of enemies, so it's worth exploring some of these places. My favorite car (the suni buggy) i actually bought on special at the starter vendor for like 500 scrip, so keep an eye on the vendor specials.
 
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Ran the first "dungeon" as a healer a few times. Most of the groups were not english and in every instance all I could recognise was "BMG" over and over again. Now whether it was something like "cool, we getting healed, that BMG is awesome!" or "this fool should use a real gun instead of a BMG!" I have no idea. I was great keeping everyone's shields up all the time, very few deaths and very quick runs.
 
Hey hey tank! Not sure about the longevity of the game to be honest. From what I read lately, they are adding content as the TV show unfolds. I loved TR as well, this is sort of like TR but less of an MMO than TR. It sure is fun, but it is a little of a gamble as to how long you are going to play the game before getting tired of killing the same mobs.

Its a lot of cash, to be sure. So far I am happy with my purchase and it all depends on how much they patch this game in the future.

http://www.gamefanshop.com/partner-ChannelOlli/browse/gg2103-Defiance/#.UWYdhJM4nQp

A 25% off sale already.
 
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Tank said:
hey guys. the game worth the cash? massive tabula rasa fan here
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I'd say if you buy this, buy this like you would buy a single player game. In other words, don't see this as GuildWars or WoW, but rather say Borderlands or Fallout. There is a main story, which can be completed probably as quickly as you can complete the single player campaigns in say Battlefield/CoD . The rest is very much GTA / Need for Speed where you kinda do side missions or side events.

Standard gameplay is something in the lines of , jump in your car, drive to an objective (or just drive around looking for an objective), jump out, shoot everything , grab loot , complete some sort of objective, sometimes there's a boss , shoot that, jump in car . Often there's other players with you, the mobs will scale to be more difficult and so on. It's all "public" and "open world" , so no need to group.

There's the dungeon runs, pretty much a 30 minute 4-man concentrated version of what you've been doing outside. Usually ends with a boss fights and mini boss fights on the way.

There's PvP . I currently have like 3 "Arena" types (4vs4 , 8vs8) which i haven't tried. There's the "Shadow War" which is like a WoW Battleground , the objectives were to hold and keep specific spots and gain points for holding them. So it's identical to Arathi Basin in WoW. It's a fairly large area, so everyone is driving in their cars between these beacons etc. Wasn't a big fan, but probably because i got owned all the time.

And that's about it. There is obviously RPG elements, but i'd say it's VERY light. You gain experience on every weapon type based on usage (the more you use, the better you get at it) and you have a "perk" tree , but they've scaled the things to such an extend that someone who played 100 hours and someone who played 10 hours will most likely not be that much different. So even in the dungeon runs, i was at 400 EGO , another group member was at 1000 EGO (EGO is kinda like the closest to "levels") and the 1000 EGO guy died just as fast as any of us.

The closest you get to RPG i'd say is your choice of weapons. There's alot of weapon variety, and even within a specific weapon type there's a ton of variety. You can say get a pistol that shoots like an uzi and another pistol that shoots flares that erupts in a kind of AOE-fire patch on the ground (mobs catching fire then take damage over time). Both are pistols though. Likewise you get guns that stun you (electricity) and so on.


Personally i already got my $60 worth in terms of entertainment. I've completed $60 games in a much shorter time. It's useful that it's set up as an MMO as it implies new content will constantly roll in.
 
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Shrike said:
Ran the first "dungeon" as a healer a few times. Most of the groups were not english and in every instance all I could recognise was "BMG" over and over again. Now whether it was something like "cool, we getting healed, that BMG is awesome!" or "this fool should use a real gun instead of a BMG!" I have no idea. I was great keeping everyone's shields up all the time, very few deaths and very quick runs.
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haha. I think on your level the BMG is a pretty rare. It took me quite awhile before i got one. Also, it's probably the only gun / activity which can be noticed by the rest of the team. I mean if everyone is shooting at mobs, trust me, you don't notice what the other 3 players are doing and whether they are doing any damage. So you notice when the BMG comes out.

Up to now i wasn't really in any dungeon runs where i felt we needed healing. The final boss usually is a good place though. That said, since everyone can revive other players, if things go wrong you just do that, so not sure alot of players even care about dying.
 
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Shrike said:
It sure is fun, but it is a little of a gamble as to how long you are going to play the game before getting tired of killing the same mobs.
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Must just add, you will be killing mutants and those starship trooper like critters for a long time, but this does change. I am starting to like how they don't have alot of crazy variety of mobs , but every single mob are very specific and unique as to how you deal with them. Each of them also have "weak spots" or the equivalent of "critical areas" where you need to shoot to do critical damage. For example those critter warriors you need to shoot them on a small spot on their back or in their mouths (when they open them) .

I've now also now ran into these scrappers or "robots" which is quite different. Some of them simply don't take damage unless you hit them on their weak spots.

I'm still getting alot of satisfaction with instant kill headshots. Now i tend to run alot into these guys with the big shields, they're not so easy to headshot, but if you can make them catch fire they lower their shields, so alot of tactics involved sometimes.
 
Nice introduction and background info to Arkfalls.

http://ofcourseillplayit.blogspot.c...d:+OfCourseIllPlayIt+(Of+Course+I'll+Play+It)
What's an Arkfall
Well in the lore of the game, it's this: Currently, in orbit about our transformed earth, are the shattered remains and husks of fleets of ships that brought several alien races to our planet some thirty years ago. These alien races are referred to collectively as the Votanus Collective. They were, themselves, fleeing there own solar system, where their homeworlds were destroyed by some solar catastrophy, and so their ships were known as Arks. As the orbits of the remains of these ships decay, entire pieces of them plunge to the earth, and these are referred to as Arkfalls, and represent huge opportunities for scavengers and collectors such as you and I - Ark Hunters, to reap the rewards.

From a game mechanic's standpoint, they represent giant, collective, dynamice PvE experiences where you work with everyone in the zone to defeat the creatures and entities that spring up out of the ground, drawn by the cascading chunks of alien technology crashing into the earth. If you ever played Rift, ArkFalls are strongly reminiscent of those events, and as it's the same development studio that built both games, it's a good bet they are built upon most of the same underlying technology.


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He does talk about not using vehicles in Arkfalls to drive over mobs, i say it's circumstantial . Yes, driving over the skitterlings around the crystal is dumb, but i've found it useful a few times, especially when you're getting overwhelmed.
 
2.6gig patch. Eina! Going to be a little while before I can play again ;-P

Really enjoying the game, the only really HUGE hole I feel in it is the chat window. I so seriously miss a chat window, hopefully this patch will alleviate that somewhat but it does not look like I will have a persistent chat window. Will see when its done.
 
Shrike said:
2.6gig patch. Eina! Going to be a little while before I can play again ;-P

Really enjoying the game, the only really HUGE hole I feel in it is the chat window. I so seriously miss a chat window, hopefully this patch will alleviate that somewhat but it does not look like I will have a persistent chat window. Will see when its done.
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I'll respin it in May...
 
Blind Faith said:
I'll respin it in May...
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Not a bad idea actually, the first major patch broke the game more than it fixed. The list of new issues is now longer than the patch notes.

I will still play it, since no other MMOs are really around to play right now till neverwinter, but yeah, holding off is prudent.
 
Yea, i patched whole last night, so haven't seen what they broke now. From the patch notes it doesn't sound the chat was changed much, they "quick fixed" what they can more likely. So i am not expecting too much sadly, it's very unfortunate Trion did not manage to do this justice, i am also missing a proper chat channel. Hell you can't even talk to your friends properly.

At least i managed to get the TV Series, so i watched that instead. Not bad, it is kinda amusing how the pilot continues from where the game left of. If you've done the 4 "episode missions" with Nolan and Irissa, the last mission have them driving off and the gem (which you've been hunting with them) disappears. Let's just say, the TV Series start off exactly there and you get to find out what happened to the gem ;-). So it's kinda cool.

There was word these episode missions will change with the show and rumours that the 4 missions i'm talking about above might even be removed and replaced with whatever is happening in the show at this point. I will know with this last patch when i log in again whether this happened. I hope it's false and that Trion is rather doing a LOTRO "chapters" thing instead, so that people who only start the game very late can still play the episode missions in a meaningful way.


At least the tv show seemed to have had a good launch
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/04/16/syfy-touts-defiance-premiere-numbers/
Syfy says the premiere was its most-watched scripted show among adults aged 18 to 49 since the 2006 premiere of Eureka. Defiance also drew 2.7 million total viewers, which was good enough for first place over 2009's Warehouse 13.
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But there's alot of love and hate going on in the reviews. It is most certainly a niche show, so i don't expect this to be a Dexter or a Game of Thrones. I found it mildly entertaining, not extraordinary (it did not exactly hook me or anything) , there's alot of background info that i hope they fill in over the course of the show. I mean, they introduce like 6+ alien species in the first episode and clearly they have all kinds of alliances and cultural things going on, which they don't explain at all in the episode. The bits i did know was actually from the game. Example that cybernetic/android like woman you meet at that high up place with the curved ramp over the water , the show tells you nothing about these beings, yet there are 2 of them playing a major role in the episode).
 
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It is interesting that you equate the TV show as a niche show. The similarities between it and something like Firefly in presentation of background information is rather striking. By this I mean how the show does not go out of its way to explain the races/background story/names etc and rather lets you pick it up. The use of alien language words which have no explicit translation, alien races that you have no idea where they come from, the use of a currency which is only mentioned and not explained is all part of the deal and very much similar to how Firefly was presented.

TL;DR: Defiance sets itself up as if it has been around for a while with lore everywhere, like Firefly did.

The whole "frontier" feel is obviously a major similarity.

I hope it garners a large cult following like Firefly did but unlike Firefly, does not get canned after a few episodes. It has a lot of potential for a very rich lore.
 
Shrike said:
It is interesting that you equate the TV show as a niche show. The similarities between it and something like Firefly in presentation of background information is rather striking. By this I mean how the show does not go out of its way to explain the races/background story/names etc and rather lets you pick it up. The use of alien language words which have no explicit translation, alien races that you have no idea where they come from, the use of a currency which is only mentioned and not explained is all part of the deal and very much similar to how Firefly was presented.

TL;DR: Defiance sets itself up as if it has been around for a while with lore everywhere, like Firefly did.

The whole "frontier" feel is obviously a major similarity.

I hope it garners a large cult following like Firefly did but unlike Firefly, does not get canned after a few episodes. It has a lot of potential for a very rich lore.
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Well Firefly was niche (especially when it aired) . There's a reason why it has "cult" status as opposed to "mainstream" status. What i mean though is, scifi, especially of this type, has always been niche. Even the top ranked scifi shows never pulls in the amount of viewers a Grey's Anatomy or CSI pull in.

But yea, the show definitely resembles Firefly.
 
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I see Defiance has been renewed for a 2nd season, so we know it's going to be around for a bit more.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/syfys-defiance-renewed-for-second-season/
A massive financial investment and solid ratings have led to a second-season renewal for Syfy‘s Defiance, which has received a 13-episode order. Season 2 of the show, produced by Universal Cable Productions, will begin production in Toronto in August for a 2014 premiere, returning as anchor of Syfy’s Powerful Mondays block. Defiance was developed as a partnership between Syfy and Trion Worlds as a convergence of television and online gaming. Here’s the official release:
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