My Evaluation of Defiance

Hello folks,

My background in mmo's is quite extensive. I have played most, if not all of the AAA releases since the original Everquest. All of them I have at the very least finished the major storylines, and most of them end game raided, if available. I could list them ,but we all know them if we game as a hobby.

I was asked to come here by some guildmates from Neverwinter, to give it a try and see if I liked it. The only third person shooter experience I had was in ME3 multi-player, which I easily did platinum in groups and soloed gold on all characters, and platinum on a couple. I listed this just so folks could know my background and they can make up their own minds as to whether my opinion on this game is worth reading.

I have played Defiance through the entire storyline, and the only thing I have left to do , is the final expansion arena, which I have not mastered yet.

There are a lot of words and phrases I could use to describe my experience in Defiance. They all apply at times.

Fun
Fast paced
Small learning curve
Easy
Slightly challenging
Stupidly over-challenging
Bug riddled

Now even though those all apply at certain times in my travels through the game, there is one unfortunate phrase that sums this whole game up for me.

Tedious with moments of pure frustration.

I am being completely honest when I write that after only 1400 EGO I am just not looking forward to continuing onto 5000. I look at all the things I have to do and realize that 90% of these things are easily accomplished repetitive tasks and the other 10% are excruciatingly frustrating tasks that need to also be repeated over and over until you reach a certain level of proficiency.

I have made friends that have left the game because they can't get past a certain element of the storyline, and become so frustrated that they just go back to whatever other game they were playing. I can't remember an mmo, anywhere that stopped a persons progress and disallowed them any help from clan or friends to help them overcome the challenge. What we have here is very simply a single player game with a few elements of multi-player thrown in. The only real point to clans is to finish the social ego portion, and maybe the bunkers , if you don't like pugs.

Racing - the only skill this tests is how well you can memorize the track.
Hot shots - These are excruciatingly frustrating, in that you can't use any of the abilities you worked so hard to accumulate and depend strictly on which perks you have chosen.
Rampages - point in the direction ego tells you and shoot.

In closing I would just like to say to the devs that there is something vastly wrong with any aspect of a game where the players swear to whatever god or super model they worship that they will never do X activity again once they complete it. You guys really need to look at what the difference between challenging and frustrating is and work a little bit toward getting rid of the latter, otherwise you will continue to bleed casuals.

Regards,

Xtorma.

Also Racing - Total BS, half the time there's a Hellbug Monarch or Volge standing in one of the freaken hoops, or the Hoops don't load or you start the race off of the vehicle.

I can't really comment as not been playing long enough. Although I have encountered bugs and what not its a really fun game. The text chat could use some tweaking and the one co-op map I played was a blast and just difficult enough.

Its people in game that make or break my experience and 3 out of 4 have been awesome so no complaints from me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vox Animus

Also Racing - Total BS, half the time there's a Hellbug Monarch or Volge standing in one of the freaken hoops, or the Hoops don't load or you start the race off of the vehicle.

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This is the main reason I refuse to race anymore. A few patches ago when you hit a monarch at times your vehicle would t explode, now with the lag/vehicle damage/volge EVERYWHERE it's not even worth wasting my time. It's like they just threw a dart at their map and just doodled a dirt path for a majority of them.

I won't get started on the Shotgun pursuit where the only way to complete it is with certain perks, or a weapon glitch.

@OP
Review is on point. Sums up everything better than I have seen anywhere else.

You make some very valid points, however there is nothing else like this on the PS3 this is why I play it every day. It's bitterly frustrating in ways that aren't healthy - especially the sniper hotshots where it's down to luck if you pass or not. But until something better comes along which I can invest my time and money in, I will stick with this through thick and thin, for better and for worse.

I reached level 3000 yesterday which totally overwhelmed me. I didn't think I'd last this long but since they reduced the cost of adding new slots to weapons and selling every type of mod in the various vendors, something changed.

I just hope they listen to player concerns and take everything we've said on board. With next generation consoles round the corner and tons of great games in the pipeline, they simply can't afford to be complainant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vox Animus

Also Racing - Total BS, half the time there's a Hellbug Monarch or Volge standing in one of the freaken hoops, or the Hoops don't load or you start the race off of the vehicle.

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Funny how I (and many others) pointed out that emergencies became a major problem for racing a month after launch (when they upped emergency spawn rates) and it still hasn't been addressed.

Hell, they made vehicles more flimsy and added the Volge since then.
New breakthroughs FOR SCIENCE! :rolleyes:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LOOKxATxTHISxI

This is the main reason I refuse to race anymore. A few patches ago when you hit a monarch at times your vehicle would t explode, now with the lag/vehicle damage/volge EVERYWHERE it's not even worth wasting my time. It's like they just threw a dart at their map and just doodled a dirt path for a majority of them.

I won't get started on the Shotgun pursuit where the only way to complete it is with certain perks, or a weapon glitch.

@OP
Review is on point. Sums up everything better than I have seen anywhere else.

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I totally agree with you on the shotgun pursuit.

All these faults with no sign of fixing any of them 'properly' is just so frustrating, I do a race and I have to do it over and over not because my time wasn't good it's because most of the time I can't finish the course without been blockaded, ambushed or bombarded with some hostile which just blows up your vehicle. Also


Volge:
Every time I try and go do a side mission there's a Volge emergency right there so I have to take time to kill them (with no incentive to do because of 0 reward) before I can get start the mission I want.
Also spawn points right next to Volge, "Safe Zones" ambushed by Volge. it's getting so annoying and they don't offer anything for killing them accept perhaps a white pieces of worthless weaponry. Ridiculous.

Defiance Store:
Everything costs the earth in the Defiance Store, and when it's updated with new stuff it's not announced and it's not updated frequently enough, and then they bring out blade mods one at a time so if you buy one and then they bring out a colour you'd have preferred you have to spend more to get that or go without.

Lag:
Vehicles just disappear when riding with a friend/group member glitching and you can't even open the menus whilst been passenger either, and lag stopping me from loading/moving when I change my loadout but the hostiles can still attack me?!

Selling:
Prices of sell back value greatly differ from the value it says in your inventory leaving you left with peanuts after selling a hoard of stuff.

Lockbox:
Terrible lockboxes you can buy twenty Tier 4 and get nothing but yellows buy two Tier 3 and get a orange because the rolls of getting a orange weapon are completely messed up. You can't even see the chances of what you can get when you go to buy one leaving you to guess.

Network Latency Issues:
Getting disconnected, kicked out of servers up to 30 or more times per day is a absolute joke.

Changes:
Now they're taking hard worked for stuff off of players like grenades when they shouldn't be working to take stuff away that's the opposite direction we want to go in, we want some forwarded action taken to properly combat all these god damn issues.

Not to mention that recently players sometimes simply vanish during sieges. I run around and I only see Volge slowly advancing, Viscera doing their hallmark rush attacks, but absolutely no players, not even on the radar, and then after a few seconds (can be up to 10 seconds) the players start pop back into view.

I still, on occasion, fall through the world and land on the other side of the map. It's quite funny, if it didn't happen during a mission or something.
I once tried to pull my pistol out, instead it pulled a BMG from my inventory that wasn't even in a loadout.
There was the time I was standing at one of the vendors when I just suddenly up and died, no enemy AI around, that was odd.
I spent 5 minutes once waiting for my vehicle to spawn after I called it.
During a siege last night, the entire world disappeared for around 30 seconds, cost me a tier one score. I wound up with around 21,500 points.
My loadouts will occasionally clear themselves.

That is just a few of the many many bugs Ic an encountered.

Minor Dark Matter ark falls that don't pay out so often that I don't bother.

Disappearing Dark Matter soldiers and Bulwarks.

Getting kicked during a major ark fall. Getting kicked back in the days when there was co-op (my entire Clan has abandoned the game, and getting ques to fill can be a joke). Getting kicked when standing still doing nothing.

Having a game freeze during an ark fall so that you can only run around, but not do anything, travel anywhere, or access your inventory (this endless little infuriation in particular is what made my boyfriend quit last month).

Major hellbug crystals that spawn in the sky, sometimes so high you can't complete the fall. Slamming into one invisible Volge emergency after another, after another, after another, after another, when all you want to do is roll down the road to get from point A to point B. Slamming into invisible fences, obstacles, buildings, and everything else.

Lag so common and severe that you never even try to risk changing loadouts during major action, lest you be attacked and crippled before anything even returns to your screen. So casually examining your equipment while riding shotgun with a friend sounds like fun? Lagged screens, forced ejections, and disappearing vehicles await.

Sniper rifles that glitch and never retain their ammo pool. At first I thought it was 'just' my legendary, for 30 rounds. But now it's all of my rifles for even more. At least they have spent development hours 'fixing it' by creating 'ammo spikes' in the next DLC...

I kind of like the floating ammo boxes, tho. Completely destroys what sliver of immersion you can get in this game, true. But I've grown fond of standing on them for a better view. Until I'm inevitably lagged out, anyway.