So for those who have seen the PAX footage...

[ten4]

Lots of reused assets like the nim encounter room. It is obvious they have no one left to make new things so they rehash old instead.

Spikes do look intriguing but with the whole culling and rendering problems that plague this game: adding more onscreen clutter will make it 10x worse.

Like last arkfall I did where I saw zero mobs and zero players, just piles of SC, ammo, and ark salvage.

Adding spikes and grenade drops in the mix is a bad idea unless they aggressively address culling/rendering problems which we all know they won't.

[Sanguinesun]

Considering they did Alpha with dlc1 and the reported bugs are all in the release, dint hold your breath

As for pvp breaking, there is no evidence buffs or stims will be useable in pvp yet. Need to wait for more info before thats a worry. I liked the ideas really but I agree nothing groundbreaking. Still its early days

I warned folks a long while back that test is/was nothing more than an issues kiting tool not an issues fixing one :P

As for the DLC 2 and as some have pointed out: there's a lot of reused assets just reorganized in a different fashion. It reminds me of City of Heroes and the reusing of the same maps across tons of "door missions" in that regard. Such allows a team of just a few devs throw out content without having to have a lot of new rendering efforts made.

The grenades issue seems like a way to turn them into a consumable resource similar to Borderlands 2. PVE it wont necessarily be that impactual, but for PVP I can see there being alot of adjustsments that will have to be made in order to have it not be a problem.

The arkfall spike summoning to me sounds like partly a misdirect if the plan is to scale back the number and frequency of random spawning arfalls. Also it seems like this, along with the boosters, will be a hard to get asset outside of the bit store and potentially can be very badly imbalanced pay to win situation.

Instant heal boosts in pvp is essentially putting back into pvp the syphon's role just wrapped in a different way so that it can get people to buy boosts.

So I see a potential pattern to this DLC: diminish features that were already in place in order to shift incentives to spend money in the bits store to attempt to turn around Defiance's lack of revenue making so that Rift isnt carrying it.

[Frostdrift]

Are new arkfalls actually content?

I like the new ones better. They are, imo, what arkfalls should look like.

But they are still the same zombie stupified content. There is no complexity to them. No stand here, pull that lever, do this jig...

The game is fatally flawed for content progression. You have no desire to do anything, so more bland content does nothing. They need to go back to the drawing board for content progression (notably after making everyone get all perks unlocked at trivial ego levels).

[Billy Guile]

... said Arsenic Touch as he lorded on his pedestal.

no kidding, right? respectfully AT, the way things have been in the game lately, might as well call it CORE Defiance :-/

[PseudoCool]

16 man arkfalls... given that my clan has well over that many players active at one time, it's going to be annoying getting us all into one instance. They better not replace the old arkfalls and they better give them better skins, inside and out. And I hope there's a kick option so we can remove non clan members and invite people that we actually know.

The minor arkfall started out okay, until they got inside and it was just a slap to the face.
The major arkfall... they doubled the minor arkfall... I mean come on? they better come up with a better design to look like the hull of one of the arks because that was just terrible.

Nim's throne room was kind of insulting, really hope that was just a place holder. It may impress people that haven't even beat the game yet, but those of us who actually beat the story line are not impressed with that reveal.

I didn't see any game changing reveals, but I did see some potentially game breaking reveals.

Also, they better throw this up on the alpha client as they finish certain parts of it and let us actually test it. And then actually take our feedback to heart and actually fix the bugs we report before letting it go live.

I'm going to throw these points up here, because AT was probably getting frustrated and missed a minor details:

16 man groups at Instanced Arkfalls where for how many people can go INTO the arkfall in a single instance. Each arkfall can spawn multiple instances between 4 and 16 players, and you can go into an arkfall with your team. This is exactly what Overload said while playing it. The outside area is just like the current arkfalls, the grouped instance is when you go inside. Shouldn't be much of a problem for anyone Besides.. Core can't always compete against just Core for high scores.. where's the fun in that?

Nims throne room - hmm.. well.. I kind of agree that it was sort of a let down to see a re-used and slightly modified piece of the game already, however I had to go back to my memory about it. Nim's room WAS supposed to be inside of an old ark, so it would make sense if the interior design was the same for many ark's to save time and materials while constructing them. Not to mention the whole issues of crew familiarity. It's like putting a different bridge on every destroyer in the Navy.. it's just going to never work and cause a crap ton of confusion and parts issues, among other things. So for this, utilizing Nims throne room minus the shifting crazy floor and the giant energy pulse in the center, I can see. Story wise, it would make sense.

Test Server - On this one my friend, I agree with you 110%! They'd better get these items up on the test server ASAP so we can test them, and really, they need to listen to us. We test to see how it can be broken, glitched, or abused.. so they'd better listen to us. The previous team didn't listen to us at all from Alpha or Beta, and look what we're dealing with now in world. Frankly, I think the stims and spikes are just going to cause way too many issues in PvP, and for that they should be turned off for it. Same with the grenades having a shorter cooldown time.. bad idea.. it's going to cause some wayward charlie to go all 'nade-spamming on everyone instead of actually fighting.. at least til he runs out. I'd say for grenades (which are a viable and legitimate part of PvP), that a smaller pool of them and a longer CD would work without causing too much grief for anyone.

And now to everyone else:

Being able to call down a signature feature in the game (Arkfalls).. being able to interact with it in ways we've never been able to (and always wanted to).. and in that interaction, the players being able to call down their own bosses (in a game that's often missing bosses in open world).. I'd say that's pretty game changing for Defiance. Not game changing for the industry, but definitely for the game itself. And also, as Dahanese was quick to point out at the beginning of the segment on Twitch.. "This is not all we're doing for our second DLC, but it's what we've worked on enough to be comfortable to show you".. so hopefully this means they'll actually pull something and put in some more of the stuff that we as a community has asked for, repeatedly, on the forums and their suggestion thread.

[PseudoCool]

I warned folks a long while back that test is/was nothing more than an issues kiting tool not an issues fixing one :P

As for the DLC 2 and as some have pointed out: there's a lot of reused assets just reorganized in a different fashion. It reminds me of City of Heroes and the reusing of the same maps across tons of "door missions" in that regard. Such allows a team of just a few devs throw out content without having to have a lot of new rendering efforts made.

The grenades issue seems like a way to turn them into a consumable resource similar to Borderlands 2. PVE it wont necessarily be that impactual, but for PVP I can see there being alot of adjustsments that will have to be made in order to have it not be a problem.

The arkfall spike summoning to me sounds like partly a misdirect if the plan is to scale back the number and frequency of random spawning arfalls. Also it seems like this, along with the boosters, will be a hard to get asset outside of the bit store and potentially can be very badly imbalanced pay to win situation.

Instant heal boosts in pvp is essentially putting back into pvp the syphon's role just wrapped in a different way so that it can get people to buy boosts.

So I see a potential pattern to this DLC: diminish features that were already in place in order to shift incentives to spend money in the bits store to attempt to turn around Defiance's lack of revenue making so that Rift isnt carrying it.

THe only problem I have with your synopsis is this: Overload said that getting the arkspikes would "not be easy for players, and it would be almost impossible for a player to have all 4 needed for a major arkfall on their own". Now that being said, being able to BUY anything in the bit store isn't hard at all. Not even close. Annoying yes.. but hard, no. So I don't see us needing things from the Bit Store to get these arkfalls. Infact, if they go that way, I think our already decreasing population of gamers in Defiance will drastically and immediately get much smaller. Sure, we as gamers don't mind blowing some cash in the bit shop for things we want.. but to make things happen in game, that should have been there in the first place.. I don't see that as a way to keep us around for long, and I'm sure the community and dev teams are well aware of it.

But that does bring the questions.. where exactly do we get the stims, resource spikes, and ark spikes? What is the cost involved? What is the challenge to get the materials? This is all stuff we need to see, and test the hell out of, on Alpha long before it goes live.

[Sliverbaer]

Nims throne room - hmm.. well.. I kind of agree that it was sort of a let down to see a re-used and slightly modified piece of the game already, however I had to go back to my memory about it. Nim's room WAS supposed to be inside of an old ark, so it would make sense if the interior design was the same for many ark's to save time and materials while constructing them. Not to mention the whole issues of crew familiarity. It's like putting a different bridge on every destroyer in the Navy.. it's just going to never work and cause a crap ton of confusion and parts issues, among other things. So for this, utilizing Nims throne room minus the shifting crazy floor and the giant energy pulse in the center, I can see. Story wise, it would make sense.

This. Not Nim's architectural and interior design influence, just the inside of an Ark. Would it be nice to see a slightly different layout? Yes. I don't think there was anything released on the different class ships or arks that the Votans brought. Shuttle models would be cool to see.

16 arkhunter instanced phases sounds interesting.

Buff spikes look cool. Buff effect could be cooler.

Stims seem unnecessary. Shields & Health Regen?

Not sure on the grenades. I can see the changes affecting PvP. We'll have to see more and get more info on the grenade changes to see why they decided to go this route.

Good to know that the Volge remain annoying when they relentlessly shoot at you even when you're down, haha.

[Dist0rt3d Hum0r]

Also, they better throw this up on the alpha client as they finish certain parts of it and let us actually test it. And then actually take our feedback to heart and actually fix the bugs we report before letting it go live.

^This

I didn't get to see PAX since I was working, but I've come to trust your judgment over the months. Full availability on the alpha servers for testing is a must if they hope for this to turn out well. After the long wait for the first DLC this is their chance to redeem themselves.

[WARDUKE]

IMO, those Larger Arkfalls need to be taller, not longer.

[Sanguinesun]

THe only problem I have with your synopsis is this: Overload said that getting the arkspikes would "not be easy for players, and it would be almost impossible for a player to have all 4 needed for a major arkfall on their own". Now that being said, being able to BUY anything in the bit store isn't hard at all. Not even close. Annoying yes.. but hard, no. So I don't see us needing things from the Bit Store to get these arkfalls. Infact, if they go that way, I think our already decreasing population of gamers in Defiance will drastically and immediately get much smaller. Sure, we as gamers don't mind blowing some cash in the bit shop for things we want.. but to make things happen in game, that should have been there in the first place.. I don't see that as a way to keep us around for long, and I'm sure the community and dev teams are well aware of it.

But that does bring the questions.. where exactly do we get the stims, resource spikes, and ark spikes? What is the cost involved? What is the challenge to get the materials? This is all stuff we need to see, and test the hell out of, on Alpha long before it goes live.

More significantly though, if none of those consumables including the spikes are to be in the bits store, then how will trion, already having revenue stream issues with Defiance, reverse that? Perhaps they have no intention to and that all they wish to do is simply fulfill their contractual obligations to deliver 4 more dlcs, let Rift pay the bills and scuttle the project once such is done and over with.