Defiance - The Game - Too little to keep me interested any longer

After doing the story, the side missions and grinding reps to trusted and realizing how long it will take to work them higher and the pay off for doing it....

... I'm done with the game, it's become boring and repetitive.

Sure I've been working the arkfalls over and over, and the pursuits till I've got over 5000 kills and got the suits. But that is all there is to do, and it gets old very fast. At first I thought I'd stick with it until the first DLC (downloadable content) drops but I just see it being more of the same.

Sadly there is practically no 'MMO' interaction to be had in the game and I fail to see how they can work it in there at this point.

I feel a little cheated as I expected it to last longer than it has before joining the pile in the games graveyard. It remains to be seen what happens with the TV show, but that is starting to suffer from lack of progressive story lines as well. Maybe I'll come back in the future but for now I think the game will fade fast.

DEFIANCE Patch 1.021 goes live today, here's the notes.

• Reduces game server crashes
• Fixed a client crash caused by keybinding in character select Settings.
• Fixed a Plague event Emergency where not all of the assets were spawning correctly.
• Fix for Perks not remaining in their proper slot after loading.
• Data recorder associated with the Svushinnira event Vagabond mission now able to be grabbed by all members in a group.
• Salvage Crew Emergency now has a completion message.
• There was an invisible shotgun wielding mutant roaming around the world - he is now visible.
• One of the Mutant Rifleman was not always attacking players properly. He is smarter now.
• The Alamo in San Francisco had some periodic issues with Dark Matter guys popping in and out which is now fixed.
• Reduced the difficulty of the Matron in Island of Lost Soldiers for groups.
• Contracts page will no longer get locked after completing all daily and weekly Contracts.
• Fixed a case where you could get instant shield regeneration.
• Addressed a synchronization issue that caused people to see a couple of extra seconds added to their race time.
• Mastery effects that were increasing the duration of EGO powers were causing an issue that would let you have essentially unlimited duration on their powers. These Mastery effects have been changed to reduce the cooldown on Powers when performing a full reload with the weapon to correct this issue.
• Fixed a situation where a few weapons would not get XP when used. This included the VOT Mass Cannon, VBI Guided Launcher, and the Hydra Launcher.

Defiance - The Game - Faction Rep building is worse than WoW Fishing :)

So I'm at the same point as quite a lot of others players I'm guessing, you've done the main story, you've done the side missions and now you're wondering what now ....?

Well it's onto rep grinding then, something that should be very familiar with any MMO player out there. Except in Defiance it's a very different beast, here's the break down basics.

What is it?

• There are five factions at this time.
• One faction WILL require you to do some PVP (player versus player)
• Each faction gives you two faction quests
• One has to be completed in 24 hours and usually involves collecting a certain amount of items (which is really just killing a whole bunch of something).
• The second lasts longer and is a little harder to complete.
• Sadly the reward is very low and it is pretty much going to take a hell of a long time to get your faction levels up beyond friendly.
• Rewards are usually purchasable items from the vendors much like anything else you've been buying up to this point in the game, but they [should] be better quality and have some nicer stats.

So is it worth it?

Well I guess the only real answer at this time is ... what else you going to do instead until those DLC's (downloadable content) start dropping? :)

There is an excellent site you can use as reference should you get stuck on where a particular contract is and other details for it, just visit

http://www.defiancedata.com/

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.