My experiences from trying to play with a friend

[Ordinary]

I recruited a friend to Defience and today we played together for the first time... this is my experience.

First we were going to do a main-quest together but apparently the mission was a solo-mission. Having completed the main story-line by myself I had not noticed that you were unable to play through "the actual game" with your friends.

Fine, let's go for a major-arkfall instead. I got there first, my mate teleported to my location. We were in the middle of the boss fight, I and maybe 20-30 other players, but all my friend saw was an empty field with no enemies and no players. Sometimes a vehicle would flicker and then dissappear. Ok strange! After rebooting the game he would atleast see my character if we were in the same group.

Ok... so we decided to go for a co-op match. We picked a mission and... we had to wait for 2 more random players to join. After driving around and doing random side-quests for 15-20 minutes the match started. Yay. After about 30-40 minutes of messing around we were finally able to play a match.

From this I can conclude that Defiance is a pseudo MMO riddled with game breaking bugs. It's more of a solo-game with online elements. The Social part of the game is a joke, which does not help the lack of content. After ~35 hours I feel that there is little or nothing of meaning left to do in the game, I can't even play it with my friends.

Someone have similar experiences?

[Blondin]

Join a clan, you'll find more "friends" to play and have fun with you

[Bugs]

I got the game day one and have played every mission with my friend except for the ones that are solo. It was much better starting fresh for us both. If you beat the game and then want to play with someone just coming in, it's best to just let him lead and you shoot whatever comes up. Yeah, the story line has solo stuff but it's not to bad.

The arkfall thing I've had happen at times but was still able to fight it. My friend and I still group up just about every day and run contracts or do different things while yacking in group chat or with the guild. Arkfalls don't give us much issues, co-op isn't that long of a wait, I've found it really easy to play with him and clan mates.

It's the same as any other mmo, really even better as seeing if you're level 50 and your friend is level 30 in others it would kill the exp for the lower one or lock instances and what not.

[Iceberg]

OP, you about summed this game up pretty nicely.

[NIKOLA]

you lost me at "reqruited"

[kaytysgottagun]

Join a clan, you'll find more "friends" to play and have fun with you

Good Idea. Only problem is, all my guild Buddies have gotten bored with the game (Being about a thousand EGO above my level) and have drifted off to other things, leaving me to plod along solo. It used to be we'd have a dozen or more from the guild on at the more popular times. Now ? 3 or 4, none of whom I know. If this is the case game-wide then....

[Frostdrift]

The lack of effectiveness of grouping is quite surprising given the experience the broader Trion team has with Rift.

E.g.
- You end up in different phases when zoning back to the world after a PVP match
- You can't teleport to friend while queued for a PVP match
- You don't get to see a 'raid panel' when at an Arkfall like you do at a Rift in Rift. The lack of such a raid panel means you don't get any familiarity with any names as they are just hanging around you like random NPCs
- The solo instances in the storyline should not be as frequent, even though everyone wants to feel like the hero. Compare it to the way say SWTOR works when having the same sort of cutscenes

[AxionXD]

Did you make sure you were on the same phase?

[Kleptobrainiac]

Just tell your friend to give the game time. All mmo's are shallow & bug ridden for the first 7 years of their existence. Tell him to just spend more money & hope for the best like the rest of the people who continue to support this game.

Lol!

[Wtflag]

In all honestly, I have to state that everything the OP wrote is the same thing I experienced at game launch when I try to play with my brother.

But for the main missions, it gets a bit better after the newbie areas and there are only really 2-3 forced solo boss fights at the end.

For the Arkfalls issue, that has to do with your friend's connection and PC.

For coops, joining a guild should help getting the necessary people.