Defiance and Longevity, Major issues flying under the Radar.
Warning, lengthy post here.
Long time MMO player here. Everquest circa 2000, Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Lineage II, Tabula Rasa(DOA), Rift, Age of Conan, Aion, City of Heroes/Villans, Heroes Online, Everquest II, WoW, Rift, Pirates of the Burning Seas, Warhammer Online, and various others I've tried for an hour(didnt make it past character creation), a day, or a week or 3.
Ladies and gents, bugs are the norm for MMO debuts. I see so much himming and hawing over all these silly bugs..... flooding the forums. I was around for WoW's release, and let me tell you kiddies it's not the spit and polished game most of you discovered several years post release. I had a character stuck in a zone that I could not access for 3 days when WoW was released. Every time I logged onto to that one character(my main) in that one zone the game crashed. GET OVER THE BUGS kiddo's, they will get ironed out. I'm amazed most players that visit the forums are wearing blinders when it comes to the real issues.
I'm enjoying Defiance at the moment, and see great potential. I have some concerns for the longevity/replayability of the game, and concerns over a few other MAJOR issues that seem to be... for whatever reason... running under the radar.
-Servers:
Just one server for Xbox 360? Major Arkfalls are horrendous. Often the only thing I see is the current boss(Monarch, Matriarch, Symbient ect) and nothing else. No Warriors, No Archers, No skitterlings, No other players. Literally all i see are the crystals and the boss. I understand the system is compensating so the game at least runs without crashing the server, so I can at least see the boss. That said, other times I see all the player clones(generic guy in white puffy coat x 164), but I dont even see the current boss. While I realize players dont want to end up on a dead server, this game really needs at least a West Coast and East Coast Server, as well as an EU and Pacific Realm server. And please give us the option to choose(so us yanks can play with our Euro/Pac Realm friends). This is a HUGE issue and it boggles the mind how it's not at the top of the forums every day.
-Loot and Ark Salvage not keeping up with the cost of modding as you get higher levels:
It currently costs me 60,000 Arkfall to add the 4th mod slot on any given weapon at Ego Rating 2066. It costs me 40,000+ Arkfall to retrieve Mods. The problem is I'm receiving the same amount of Arkfall I was receiving at level 250, back when it only costs a couple thousand to add slots. In other MMO's, loot scales "with the cost of living" as you level. In Defiance, the cost to mod the higher up you get in Ego increases exponentially, while the amount of Arkfall you receive remains the same. The current costs to mod at my level is outrageous, and I've pretty much stopped modding because of this.
******s in vehicles at Arkfalls: how was this not covered in beta??? How was this not anticipated by anyone on the Dev staff? I'm not aware of any pursuit to "drive through Arkfalls like a ****** kill stealing and denying everyone doing the fighting loot" pursuit. Crystals and other such devices at every Arkfall should destroy any vehicle entering the Arkfall and render the driver incapacitated. Problem solved.
-Attack of the Clones!!!:
Part of any MMO is players attachment to their characters, how they look, how others see them, how other players characters look. Currently in game most of the time I play it's "attack of the clones" because of bandwidth issue and the huge number of players that get jammed into one area(ie Arkfalls. There's also the issue of random rendering issues out in the middle of nowhere. I can be at a vendor in the far reaches of North East San Fran with only 3 other players in my immediate vicinity, and they're all clones. Why?? I can understand it at Arkfalls with 300 other players, but why is there a local rendering/bandwidth issue way out in BFE San Fran? Arkfalls during prime time are a nightmare. Possible solution? See my above paragraph on Servers. If this isn't addressed sooner than later, what's the point of tweaking your outfit and look if nobody's going to ever see it?
You literally can not FAIL a mission: no mission timers, no timers in certain area's of co-ops, no raid "wipes" per say. Literally you cannot fail in this game. Probably the product of little league soccer, baseball, football where they dont even keep score any more... Well a lot of us that play games like to keep score, and it's refreshing to get your XXX stomped in the dirt. I'm sure there's quite a few gamers out there that would like to see more challanging battles in Defiance. While I'm aware there are a few pursuits that require boss X being killed in a certain amount of time, missions themselves cannot be failed. This needs to change.
-Carrot on the stick.. gear, leveling, loot:
Treading ever so lightly here... I'm currently at level 2066. I have a lot of time being a disabled veteran, so I've been in game quite a bit since release. However, I havent been rushing through content as you're probably assuming. I've only done the main story line up to the overpass in San Fran, and I've only completed side missions in Mount Tam and the area up around Iron demon ranch. I've kept busy testing out the various weapon types, exploring the modding system quite a bit, as well as exploring pretty much every inch of the current Defiance map. It seems the content, that started off pretty easy once I figured out the mechanics, has become just too easy at my current level.
I'm closing in on weapon skill level 20 on a couple of my weapon classes, and my Quad Runners and Rollers are both at 20. Keep in mind I've leveled up everything but pistols, sawed off shotguns and rockets to at least level 10. My concern here, or should i say my main WORRY here is, once I reach level 20, is that really it for that weapon class? As in forever? I'm wondering... shouldnt players be reaching the maximum VEHICLE level, Weapon levels, at END GAME(ie Ego Rating 5000). Wouldnt it be better to keep players striving and interested in leveling up their weapons skills and vehicle skills all the way to level 5000. It would seem by level Ego Rating 2500, the maximum weapon skill level you could achieve should be 10, by at Ego Rating 5000 you can finally hit level 20 on skills. Perhaps there will be further levels added for weapons, vehicles with DLC? IF so, that worries me as well, because my level 17 LMG just shreds through Iron Lungs now like a knife through butter. And Imagine the imbalances in PVP if more weapon skill levels are added.. ie max weapon skill levels of 50 at Ego rating 5000.
Loot is another issue. The first couple days after release me and the group I run with were already sporting purple weapons, purple shields, purple grenades. Shouldnt those items be really really really hard to come by? While I understand weapons max out and most of us just salvage these items, what about the nades and shields? If we're using purple, and sometimes Orange weapons week 1, 2 or 3, six months from now, what's the "next" elite weapon color we might expect as the game progresses to "End Game" content?
Vehicles... Personally I think the Challanger should be a bit harder to aquire, as in "end game" type ride. The Baja rides should take some effort as well. Sure a lot of players received their rides through pre orders, that said, shouldnt the "fastest" mode of travel in game be something that takes a bit of effort to aquire. As is in game now they're practically given away.
Content... not much to say there, side quests, time trials, and the main story line are fine, I still have plenty to do, but at this point there's no area of the maps you cant go to at any level, unlike most other MMOs where you set one foot inside a "high level" zone, you get mercilessly crushed in milliseconds by the high level baddies. This type of content seems to be totally missing from Defiance, other than the Monolith at the bridge...SPOILER ALERT.... which you end up just bypassing via a silly *** cut scene.
While I dont want a tedious "gear grind", I do want something to keep me playing, I want that carrot on the stick out in front of me keeping me and my friends in game. Right now most of us are pinning out hopes on new content via DLC.
Odds and Ends:
-Clans: right now there's no real incentives to even belong to a clan. The tags dont register most of the time on our characters, clan UI is poor, we have players in our clan that get randomly dropped from clan. There's no clan vault, clan base, clan banners, clan colors, clan crests or insignias for vehicles, ect. Please expand on clans much sooner than later.
-Vehicle types: gamers love unique rides. Unique mounts, horses, dragons, boars, buffalo, 4x4's, monster trucks, dirtbikes, harley fatboys, ect. While I dont want vehicles thrown at us from day one(ie carrot on the stick), Why not have Reputation Vehicles like you had Reputation Mounts in Rift?? WHERE'S MY NOMAD ROLLER FOR XBOX 360!!??!! I'd love to be working towards a Nomad, or one of those Armored cars the Raiders drive around.
-Reputation Vendors: Rift had some amazing rep gear and some insanely hard end game daily quests, as well as a challanging "long haul" of a grind to get the best rep gear available. If i recall correctly you didnt just attain "Trusted" ie the highest reputation status 2 weeks into Rift(like many of my clan mates have). Rifts reputation items included Reputation armor(ie outfits for Defiance?!?), weapons, trinkets/pocket items(why no trinket/pocket items slots in Defiance), jewelry, shields, as well as reputation MOUNTS. Where's the disconnect between Rift reputation gear and Defiance rep gear? If you're going to import the "Rifts" from Rift, as in Arkfalls, and dailies, why not bring the incredible and wide variety of Reputation items as well, to include pocket items and mounts? Lets not forget some of the extremely difficult (elite) daily/weekly quests.
-Exploiters, Hackers: I play MMO's for PVP, that said, I'm loving the PVE in Defiance. I refuse to set foot inside any arena, or mass realm vs realm(Shadow Wars) until the hacking and exploiting is stomped out. In this day and age there's really no excuse for number of hackers running rampid in Defiance PVP. Trion needs to start swinging the Two-Handed Mithril Banhammer, as well posting a weekly list of the names of toons they are banning. Ban their IPs, motherboards, unique PS3 and 360 console ID #'s. Do this now or lose most of your PVP player base.
-Separate PVP from PVE. I love PVP. PVP still should NOT reign supreme and ruin PVE. Other games have made it work. The homework is already done for you, throgh other MMOs trial and error. Use the methods(final, polished products) other games have implemented and please make it work. You dont have to reinvent the wheel with this one.
-Storage: while I understand part of leveling up is unlocking storage space, and while it is in a way a carrot on a stick, at least let us organize our existing storage space more efficiently. Give us a "new loot" section, give us a "salvage all" option, so every item we "check" in the new loot box automatically gets salvaged. I dont care if it takes 3 minutes and ties up my Salvage UI during that time, let me auto salvage 20 items I have chosen while I go kill sh..t in the mean time until the salvage que is completed. Give us a totally separate window for MODS! I dont want items I cant salvage popping up in the salvage list. Organize the mods more efficiently, all Detenator mods in 1 window, all Shotgun mods in another, ect!!
-Exploration: game world seems small for an MMO. I realize there are some areas of the map that are currently "unmapped". Hoping DLC fills in the blanks. Hoping for a "Major Expansion" way down the road once those "unmapped" areas get filled in. How about random "hidden chests" popping up around the world, at random. Hidden Quests that pop up randomly. Ultra Rare spawns with chance at epic loot that cant be farmed. Not places you can farm, but in truly random locations where players rarely go. The enemies in these areas should be deadly, even for the most seasoned players.
-Difficulty: Trion needs to take it up a notch or 3 in certain areas of the map. I was believing that I had to actually get high enough rank to be able to fight the monolith, and was expecting it to take several attempts, days, if not weeks to suceed and cross into San Fran. I expected that once I reached the other side of the bridge that me and my friends would be decimated by the enemies in that area. Needless to say, we were sorely disappointed.
-Alts: currently, other than a different look, there's no real reason to roll an alternate character. Alts are the mainstay of many MMOs, that keep players rexperiencing content over and over, but with a different twist, ie, a different skills set. Even if they implement racial abilities(one per race), this really isnt enough reason to revisit earlier content. I'd really like to have a reason to make an alt down the road a bit, but currently there's not really any incentive. Hope this changes in the future.
More to follow...
