Defiance, The Game - Week 4 - Lessons learned & Anti-Gravity!

Having played a while here are some notes on what I have taken as my approach to leveling weapons and inventory management.

Leveling weapons

• Do not care so much about a favorite, you'll move on from it in no time if you want to keep working that skill level. Once the weapon is at a max level either sell it or most likely break it down to resources.
• Attaching modifications seems rather pointless unless you really want to keep a weapon for some reason, maybe you like the look or it suits your play style and you are OK with it hanging around in your bag taking up space while you level others.
• Do not get obsessed with keeping all the different ones you come across, SMG's, sniper rifles and BMG's are all over the place and you will end up with lower level weapons that you probably will never level until you have nothing else to do.
• As you progress you will have the option for multiple configurations, use them. It's quicker to switch to another layout in the heat of battle when you run out of ammo than go find a weapon in the inventory that has shells.

Inventory management

• Always have some spaces available, nothing worse than having to try and find space when that really nice weapon reward hits you. Sure you can go claim it later, but you'll most likely forget and end up with a bunch in there that will be useless by the time you remember.
• Breakdown anything you do not plan to use, you need the scrip more than you need a full bag. If you cannot break it down then sell it when you get the chance.
• 'I'll use that mod one day so I'll keep it' ... been there, most likely never going to happen so unless you really plan to use them just get rid of them by selling and free up space.
• My rule of thumb is before I quit the game for the day I clean up my bags, I upgrade my shields or grenades with anything I think I want to use and then clean out the rest. You would be surprised how many you collect running around.

My weapon rotations

• If I'm doing contracts or random group attacks I start from a distance and pick off as many as I can with a sniper rifle till they get too close then switch to which ever weapon I'm trying to level in close combat. This is a great way to get a few sniper leveling shots in without having to worry about them coming at you quickly.
• If I'm doing an ark fall or instance run I'll usually have a pistol and either an assault rifle or shotgun for a little more fast crowd handling.
• When I come across an ammo refill location, I always always refill and rotate my weapons to be sure all are topped off in the magazine and then maxed in my inventory.

   What are your tips? Share with us all and lets that EGO rising.

   Finally as a side note, was anyone else getting floating vehicles, players and ark falls on Saturday 27th April? Weird.

Defiance, The Game - week 3

Defiance, The Game - Week 3

   A weird week in the game for sure, over the weekend us P.C. users had a long server downtime due to an unusual situation where many of us (I was one of them) suddenly saw our EGO boost into the 000's and many players reporting in the defiance forums other strange behavior. As expected the servers went down fast and we had to wait over 7 hours if I recall correctly for them to come back up again with 'normal' stats returned most likely due to a back up restore.

   Having now spent some quality time playing here are some thoughts from a P.C. player.

1. There really is no sense of community in the game, I'm lucky if I see the occasional thank you for rezing someone. The only time I come across other players in any kind of numbers is when we get some ark falls, even in the instance maps there is little to no conversation, and I think a lot of it is due to the weird way they implemented chat (textual).
2. Weapon leveling is interesting and keeps you mixing it up, but unless I am missing something I end up with a ton of them in my inventory and once I level one to the max I end up having to break it down to resources to make space, there needs to be some kind of stash mechanism where I can keep a set of gear that I've leveled and pull out for those special occasions.
3. I should not have to un-equip a weapon to modify it, this is extremely annoying to have to do every time, especially when you have a lot in your inventory.
4. Using transport with boost and flying up into the air with jumps never gets old, especially when you have that oh $%^& moment when you realize you just jumped from a ridge over water and are about to take a long swim back to shore.
5. I agree with conversations in the forums that Trion needs to find a way to prevent people from driving around in ark falls of bug out breaks, just flat out annoying for the rest of us.

   I am still immensely enjoying the game even though we have to deal with disconnects and server down time, I say we give Trion time to settle the systems down and quit whining about it as if peoples lives depend on it.

Defiance, The Game and The Show

So it is perhaps the first real attempt at a cross-over between a game and a TV show, syfy.com has put some big money and a lot of talk behind it. I am willing to put aside my problems with syfy and the way they churn out the junk that's all over the network these days and give this new attempt a fair hearing.

The Game
I've been playing the game since it came out and so far I'm impressed with it, the twists are nice and the gameplay good with a steady progression, that is putting aside the launch problems that I think it is fair to say any online game suffers from when you hype it and overload the networks.

A third person shooter with lots of weapons, modifications and open gameplay (although there are plenty of missions and a main story line to follow should you want too ... and you should). To the credit of Trion Worlds, Inc they have managed to release the game at the same time across all the major platforms and have worked diligently to fix bugs with fast patches and responsive support.

To not spoil the plot(s) I will not go into too much detail other than to say your character will interact with those in the TV show whilst allowing you to do your own thing and influence the game. In fact much has been said regarding how the TV show will influence the direction of the game and vice versa, I have even read that you just might see your character mentioned in the program further down the road so choose those names carefully!

The Show
The show follows the lives of those on Earth years after the arrival of many Alien races that come seeking refuge and a new home. Through a series of events the Earth is terraformed into an unrecognizable landscape where all races now exist (and fight!).

Defiance is the name of a city now standing on the ruins of St. Louis where I expect most of the show will take place in the first season at least, in many ways the initial pilot part 1 episode reminded me of a mix between Jericho and most Westerns with the rivalry between two controlling families.

There is understandably a lot of comparisons with BattleStar Galactica, not surprising since a lot of the people involved in that program are working on this one including camera work and sound track by Bear McCreary.

There will end up being 3 groups, those that watch the show, those that play the game and those that do both. I think you will really have to do both if you are so inclined to get the most out of it.

As hard as it is to judge a program by a pilot episode, I think this might be the one to watch for Sci-Fi fans and gamers this year at least and assuming syfy does not kill it, it could do well branching the divide between watching and interacting.

Let the new catchy phrases begin to encroach on society and go gather some Ark Tech.