Dear Trion,
I've always had great respect and admiration for you. Ever since I first tried RIFT, I knew you were a company that strives for excellence and one that cares deeply about its customers. Nathan Richardsson's posts in the community section of the main website are an example of the former while my experience with Trion support has always been positive and a firm proof of the latter.
I love Defiance. I've been playing it since launch week and I am having a blast. Aside from PlanetSide 2, I've never seen such a successful combination of shooter and ARPG mechanics. While not without its faults, Defiance can subsist on the strength of its gameplay alone. The horizontal progression system, the ability to summon a vehicle minutes from making a character, the dynamic events... There is a lot to like in Defiance. I log in almost every day to simply ride around in my roller, looking for trouble. In short, Defiance is a game I wanted ever since I first experienced the total wreck that was Hellgate: London.
I am writing this to express my dismay over the rationale behind the recent changes to the game. One of the changes that I am referring to is the fact that roadside events no longer reward with keys. I am aware that pedestrian events such as 'Skitterlings!' should not grant 4 keys. This said, fixing the issue so that no event rewards with keys is extreme. Besides character and weapon XP, there is really no reason to stop for events anymore. Why not offer one key for a roadside event, 3 for a minor arkfall and 5 for a major arkfall? Alternatively, why increase the number of events in the world when they offer so little to the player?
As far as the contribution credit 'fix' introduced in patch 1.012, I find it even more problematic. Yes, driving around Marin and suddenly getting credits for a couple of 99er kills for your daily contract was silly. Nonetheless, given how mind-numbingly boring some of the contracts are, the 'bug' was a welcome addition. If anything, it should be a documented feature! As a consequence of the fix in 1.012, I ended up having to revisit Diablo Oil thrice in order to gather my 15 digestive sacs from Blastpods. The first time, I was part of 5-6 ark hunters doing exactly the same thing. I only managed to get credit for two Blastpod kills, despite the fact that we completed the mission. This does not encourage cooperation, this is not fun and, I feel, this goes against everything the game stands for. If you are not willing to revert the changes, at least let people get credit for kills and missions within earshot. It makes no sense that events scale dynamically to accommodate a larger number of players and yet often only reward one person upon completion. It's unfair to everyone involved: the one player has to deal with the increased difficulty of the encounter while the rest get nothing out of assisting him.
I am not throwing a tantrum or threatening to leave the game. I am not going to draw a comparison to any other games I've played in the past either. This said, I find the 'fun police' approach to patching to be counter-intuitive at best. Defiance doesn't have a lot of content at the moment so making the existing content less rewarding is a questionable decision. There are quite enough issues that need to be addressed without the team grasping at straws. For instance, some weapons have incorrect values listed in the description, cluster grenades and explosives result in people getting Arkfall rewards for dealing 0 damage and the counters for several challenges keep resetting... There are even larger problems with the game, such as the PC UI that I am not even going to discuss here. My point is that there are enough real issues with Defiance that can and should be addressed before patching fun out of the game.
Thank you for your time.
- A concerned player
