State of game address from Trick

[Notturno]

I have to say, I feel for the Trion team at times. I feel like they receive a lot of mixed messages from the community - people want to see more communication, then when it comes the "talk is cheap" lines come out. While I do understand this is a large community with many voices that hold their own opinions... there's a significant discord in what people seem to want.

My point is that regardless of your opinion on past transgressions, try to offer a quality response to what they are saying. I've read so many posts in this thread that make no attempt to address the subject matter discussed in the blog post, and some are just completely unrelated chest bumping between some members with some serious ego problems. Pun absolutely intended, if only to highlight the absurdity of this thread.

Anyhow, as for the message itself, this is mostly just echoing some key points from my blog post reply.

Trick F'in Dempsey

Trick Dempsey is a good face for the Defiance team at Redwood - he's personable and has retained his credibility throughout the game's lifespan. I think his presence on the Friday streams have been helpful, particularly with his willingness to provide relevant, concrete insight into game aspects. My hope is that he can become a developer fixture on these forums, similar to how Daglar functions on the RIFT forums. A consistent and visible presence from a developer would go a long way towards repairing people's perspectives on the development of Defiance.

Peashooters

Weapon balance, and equipment balance in general, is one of my chief interests in Defiance. This is mostly due to its significant impact on PvP, but that's another subject entirely. Balance is just something that needs to occur, I just hope the right details are applied in regards to addressing the overall direction of certain weapons. In particular, I feel like aim assisted weapons should not be emphasized, while skill dependent weapons are rewarded appropriately. Overall though, I would like to see a wider variety in weapon selection - that means more benefits and drawbacks, more modification options, and a wider array of combat situations.

Generally speaking, this is my opinion on what I would like to see from weapons moving forward:

• Infectors need to be revamped, period. The aim assisted needles are overwhelming, the infections take up too much screen real estate, and the amount of damage sources is just ridiculous. I personally believe the weapon should not have any homing on it unless you are using a scope, but that's just me.
• The emphasis on mobility in the competitive environment is negatively impacting weapons that require precision aim - Assault Rifles, Light Machine Guns, and Pistols are all poorly suited to that environment. While I am hesitant to assign blame to the accuracy penalties, I think that may be one of the key components holding them back. I believe the lack of bloom and accuracy penalties with Sub-Machine Guns may be playing a significant role in this regard.
• I find Rocket Launchers to be generally underwhelming, and often inferior weapons when compared to Grenade Launchers. I'm unsure how to further incentivize those weapons (other than the Sludge RL, which is great), but perhaps more rocket variants similar to the Sludge and Bonfire would help differentiate them.
• Let's be honest here, does anyone use Shotguns to hit multiple targets at once? The spread on those weapons is often unnecessarily large, further diminishing their impact in the competitive environment. I can also say I'm not particularly fond of the forced reload animation, I hope that's reverted back to allowing firing to break the reload animation.
• I adore the Charge Blades, but I feel like they are missing something. They lack any ability to gap close right now, which significantly weakens their competitive viability. Would there be any way to wrap the Volge Viscera's charge on to the right click function for blades? I think that would really help those weapons out.

Shields?

I'm really unsure how the Defiance team perceives shields right now, but I think you guys have a sheltered view of them. Why specifically mention the Ironclad as needing a buff? If anything, that is the most well balanced shield in the game. Ironclads are the de facto choice for PvP players - it provides a good balance between capacity and recharge. If anything, those are the shields that should be considered the baseline for every other shield. What really needs to be looked at are a few specifically unpopular shield variants. Specifically, take a peek at the Hurricane, Rebel, and Tachyon variants. I feel like Respark, Ironclad, and Rhino shields are just fine.

What I think could be useful would be offering more differentiation between the shields, specifically through more noteworthy bonuses and modifications. Right now shields just feel like sort of a necessary evil, rather than a fun part of your character you can customize.

That Inventory Thing

I really have nothing to say on the inventory. It's just something I've always worked around, and I do not really care about it. I'd rather see emphasis placed on more important aspects of the game.

Babbling

Another aspect I really do not have an opinion on. I think the chat system needs to be streamlined and improved, but I do not use the in-game voice options. I use my own third party solution (TeamSpeak 3), and I think this goes for most PC players. I guess this is more of a console issue?

Objectives, UI, Whatever

Three in a row! Another thing I just deal with.

Beeeeyooooonnnddd

I'm really unsure how to absorb all of this, I'm not really certain I like the direction the game is moving in.

For starters, why did you change the way Arkfalls work? I thought they were fine as content, they just need a more intuitive and better scaling rewards system. The biggest issue is that you are better off "tagging" it with a few bullets and just taking the keys, while letting the other suckers finish the whole event. If you literally just transferred to Siege rewards system to Arkfalls, it would be perfect. The interiors do not seem to bring anything new and exciting to the table, just another unnecessary layer. I saw nothing compelling or interesting with those interiors, it just seems like more of the same.

I'm very concerned about stims and spikes - in fact, I think these have the potential to be the biggest faux pas yet. The combat of Defiance is its strongest trait, hands down. I do not think it needs additional layers or content added to it, it just further complicates an already acceptable and sensible system.

Just based on casual observation and my own experience with the game, here's what I can foresee:

• That stim that automatically replenishes your health and shields? That is very poorly thought out. This almost exactly replicates the issue we had with syphon procs triggering constantly in PvP. This is going to give top tier players another huge edge in fights. It will be the de facto choice for PvP if it remains the way it is.
• The ammunition spike is going to do nothing more than invalidate weapon ammunition pools. One of the biggest drawbacks to the strongest PvP weapons right now (hint: Tachmags) is that it dumps ammo faster than anything else in the game. By giving us a spike that refills out ammo pool... you have just effectively negated the weapon's only weakness.
• Want to see what a damage stim does to a cloaked courier? I don't. If you thought players were upset with the Cloak power now, just you wait until we get our hands on that. That will almost certainly lead to one shot kills on most players.

I think there is some serious work that needs to be done on that idea if its going to make it live. Healing stims should not be an instantaneous effect, but perhaps an emergency "oh s**t" button to trigger a quicker regeneration effect. Ammunition spikes just have no reason to exist, it only serves as an invalidation of ammo boxes, which are a strategic point players can control in a fight. If anything, they should be something you have to interact with to gain their bonus. Damage stims really only seem like a secondary Overcharge, which to me seems redundant.

Just My Opinion, Man

I really, really hope Trion can work towards accepting player feedback a bit more, particularly when it comes to alpha feedback and gameplay from your higher tiers of competitive play. I think some design decisions are being made without considering the effects they have in the hands of a truly skilled player. I love the ideas behind some of the upcoming changes, but I worry about their execution and how they will impact the game in reality. The poor response time of the team in regards to major issues (shield glitching cheaters, PvP queues) has me concerned that we may be left with a poor competitive environment for quite a while since hotfixes seem to be all but gone from the development cycle.

I just want to see communication - similar to what we see now, but more specifics being conveyed. I feel like there is a bit of a disconnect between the way Trion plays the game, and how players play the game. Bridging that gap should be a priority.

[CRIXDA]

Great Post, Notturno.
I agree with a lot of what You said, honestly.

[FDG SKULLS]

Ok i get yes cool ark fall BUT WHAT ABOUT SOME OTHER OR MORE STORY LINE MISSIONS AND NOT JUST A FEW LIKE A CRAP TON. i mean i believe if its gonna be a another So called DLC then it should involve something other than ark falls yes cool so we can call them our selfs now. What about after a week or so of people doing this its gonna be like ok ive done this now BORED AGAIN come on man. This is a major reason why most people have left this game because of the lack of DLC Content if they want there company to grow more then make it so were getting out moneys worth from the season pass not just one lousy thing even DLC i mean yeah i look forward to the new ark falls but thats not gonna keep me playing for another 2 months and it wont to a lot of other people also except for the people that KISSBUTT .

[Milkandcookies]

I'm very concerned about stims and spikes - in fact, I think these have the potential to be the biggest faux pas yet. The combat of Defiance is its strongest trait, hands down. I do not think it needs additional layers or content added to it, it just further complicates an already acceptable and sensible system.

Just based on casual observation and my own experience with the game, here's what I can foresee:

• That stim that automatically replenishes your health and shields? That is very poorly thought out. This almost exactly replicates the issue we had with syphon procs triggering constantly in PvP. This is going to give top tier players another huge edge in fights. It will be the de facto choice for PvP if it remains the way it is.
• The ammunition spike is going to do nothing more than invalidate weapon ammunition pools. One of the biggest drawbacks to the strongest PvP weapons right now (hint: Tachmags) is that it dumps ammo faster than anything else in the game. By giving us a spike that refills out ammo pool... you have just effectively negated the weapon's only weakness.
• Want to see what a damage stim does to a cloaked courier? I don't. If you thought players were upset with the Cloak power now, just you wait until we get our hands on that. That will almost certainly lead to one shot kills on most players.

I think there is some serious work that needs to be done on that idea if its going to make it live. Healing stims should not be an instantaneous effect, but perhaps an emergency "oh s**t" button to trigger a quicker regeneration effect. Ammunition spikes just have no reason to exist, it only serves as an invalidation of ammo boxes, which are a strategic point players can control in a fight. If anything, they should be something you have to interact with to gain their bonus. Damage stims really only seem like a secondary Overcharge, which to me seems redundant.

Hmmm I'd get worried once people *cough* like Outmo...b..ble *cough* start using sawed off shotguns, but it would be fair to put that in if bolt action snipers get to have a one-hit kill anywhere in the the enemy's body while using stim.

A lot of people (99.5%) down at console servers can't even aim with a bolt action sniper. They have to use charged snipers for that.

I know that this will make all the new players at a huge disadvantage, but pvp in this game is already unbalanced severely and by adding these new features into play, you just made things a lot harder for countless numbers of people that play pvp.

[Firefly]

You make some good points here I feel obliged to put in my .02cr on...

Overall though, I would like to see a wider variety in weapon selection - that means more benefits and drawbacks, more modification options, and a wider array of combat situations.

Agreed. When looking for the right tool for the job, it helps to have a large toolbox to choose from. For example, burst-fire weapons just doesn't put enough damage downrange quickly enough to exploit a monarch's soft underbelly; and bolt-action sniper weapons are not quite ideal when dealing with Volge...

Infectors need to be revamped, period. The aim assisted needles are overwhelming, the infections take up too much screen real estate, and the amount of damage sources is just ridiculous. I personally believe the weapon should not have any homing on it unless you are using a scope, but that's just me.

It might be worthwhile to see how the Type 33 GML (AKA 'needler') is handled over in the Halo games. An alternative rework could take a page from Battletech's NARC system (or the TAG in the first Battlezone): to exploit the needles' homing ability, you have to give them a beacon. I imagine having the weapon fire beacon rounds when zoomed in, with them having a 'life' of several seconds once they hit a valid target, during which all the needles you fire while zoomed out will home on it provided you're aiming in about the right direction (maybe you can be as much as 30 degrees off-target?).

The emphasis on mobility in the competitive environment is negatively impacting weapons that require precision aim - Assault Rifles, Light Machine Guns, and Pistols are all poorly suited to that environment. While I am hesitant to assign blame to the accuracy penalties, I think that may be one of the key components holding them back. I believe the lack of bloom and accuracy penalties with Sub-Machine Guns may be playing a significant role in this regard.

The concern you raise sounds like it's not exclusive to Defiance at all, yet I don't recall similar concerns being raised in other shooters where all three weapon classes are represented. The fact that SMGs use assault rifle rounds isn't helping... that's an odd design choice, given that 99% of their actual counterparts use pistol rounds.

Sort of related: in the absence, to my knowledge, of a charge AR, I had an idea of how such a thing might work: it'd be something like the VBI TACC, normally firing three-round bursts; the charge effect would be an energy bolt (think Megaman/Rockman) with three levels, each increasing the damage yield (and at max yield, adding a small splash radius).

]I find Rocket Launchers to be generally underwhelming, and often inferior weapons when compared to Grenade Launchers. I'm unsure how to further incentivize those weapons (other than the Sludge RL, which is great), but perhaps more rocket variants similar to the Sludge and Bonfire would help differentiate them.

I'll have to play around with these two weapon types some more... but yes, more specialty rounds would be welcome. This also applies to the GLs as well (I'm surprised there isn't a Sludge variant, for instance).

Let's be honest here, does anyone use Shotguns to hit multiple targets at once? The spread on those weapons is often unnecessarily large, further diminishing their impact in the competitive environment. I can also say I'm not particularly fond of the forced reload animation, I hope that's reverted back to allowing firing to break the reload animation.

To be fair, I think videogames as a whole have trouble modeling shotgun (specifically, buckshot) behavior... as well as flamethrowers. At least here we have a variety of chokes (spread patterns) and slugs to choose from here.

I adore the Charge Blades, but I feel like they are missing something. They lack any ability to gap close right now, which significantly weakens their competitive viability. Would there be any way to wrap the Volge Viscera's charge on to the right click function for blades? I think that would really help those weapons out.

The most obvious thing they're missing is their own progression mechanic; with that charge ability unlocking at a certain proficiency level. As for a gap closer, discounting Blur or Cloak, I've found flashbangs and the shock-delivering form of that new shotgun which has almost-certain effect trigger at max charge handy...

For starters, why did you change the way Arkfalls work?

If you're referring to the 'instanced' arkfalls, I understand that they're something being added to, instead of replacing entirely, the existing varieties.

The interiors do not seem to bring anything new and exciting to the table, just another unnecessary layer. I saw nothing compelling or interesting with those interiors, it just seems like more of the same.

And the fact that we've just seen one type of interior so far doesn't help. Those arks are big enough that the creative team should have no problem coming up with different kinds/layouts... surely there's concept work at least on what those things look like on the inside, and it'd be a shame to let that go to waste.

I'm very concerned about stims and spikes - in fact, I think these have the potential to be the biggest faux pas yet. The combat of Defiance is its strongest trait, hands down. I do not think it needs additional layers or content added to it, it just further complicates an already acceptable and sensible system.

Not sure about the stims (it depends on the ratio of duration to cooldown, though)... but I see spikes as Defiance's answer to totems in many other games, which leads me to ask if they can be taken out by enemy fire. If so, I imagine folks would be a bit more careful about placing them.

[Iceberg]

I am not going to repeat what others have said, but I for one am tired of just "dealing" with the games flaws/issues and downfalls. They finally gave us a test server, but only used it for a stop gap. Changing Scrip prices on charge blades without any notification was pretty low. Priorities have always been messed up on Trion's end when it came to what needs focused on and what can wait.

If you were going to touch up the chat system you guys should have left it in a better state than it was currently, not in the complete failure it is now. Along with the DLC 1 problems were all the free stuff from the patch was in way better shape than the paid items of the DLC speaks volumes.

I am willing to give you guys one more patch before I consider just up and leaving. After you guys are all settled in at the new location and have the team working on the next big update, ill see if the rubber meets the road or not.

[CRIXDA]

Iceberg, You are right.
Matter-of-factly, everyone has legitamite concerns and points and I don't blame anyone here for getting pissed about any of the problems/issues that we deal with in-game on a daily basis.
Let me point out that I am not a "Kiss-butt" for Trion at all, rather someone who just wants Defiance to be the game that I wanted It to be. I try to remain optimistic about the entire thing but it isn't easy when You try an arena five times and the lag is so bad that You eject and. Go to Netflicks instead in frustration.

"So much improvement, so little time."
Trick has said that the team is going to make this right before the next DLC, and I want to see it happen. Badly.
Like Iceberg said, IT HAS TO HAPPEN.
This might not be over the course of one patch, maybe in two but as long as something gets fixed and we see some postitive headway, how can that be anything but a good thing?
If the next DLC is going to drop in the next two months (speculating here, my own rambling) then that would mean that Trick has everyone working their tails off to repair the game BEFORE we even get that. So the improvements in the State of the Game address will hit us before we even sniff the new stuff.

"We need a butt-ton of new content and not just new features."
Dammmn right we do. I concur one hundred percent. Even though I am still working through the DLC 1 content (what little there was), we need to get an exponential helping in the next offering AT LEAST.
Now, I paid attention during the Twitch livestream that showed the same PAX stuff but just more in-depth.
Greg stated that we would have to meet story/mission requirements to get Arkfall spikes. I also recall Elizabeth saying that we would be getting more fcuking lovely data recorders. Yay.
To address the point about the Arkfall interior that was shown, Greg said it was random but he was still on the same server/build so Nim's bedroom was the one that was there. He said that there were more than just that.
I personally am excited to see the inside of the Major Arkfall that Greg called down because I want to see the Volge boss or whatever that I have been hearing rumors about because It is supposed to make Visceras look like first graders.

"Into the future"
Yeah, I hope that we are allowed to have one and everyone will hang around to see it.
The game can be great, if the fixes are done right and DLCs come correct.
Riddle me this:
Why do people say that we won't get more story content until season two of the television shows comes out if the show and the game are independent of each other except for episodic stuff? What?
Sci-Fi can't film what hasn't been written. They are filming season two now.
So we can't get more story?
Assinine.

I want Defiance to prosper and thrive.

[Mr Reloaded]

Is it just me or does Trick Dempsey look like Edward Norton!

[thejx4]

and for some reason, dahanese thinks the community has no interest in these types of posts. Before you say I'm making **** up, she said it herself. She basically told us what we didn't want.

State of whatever posts are placebos at the very least, but it's still more reassuring than a simple "we're working on it". It's the thought that counts

[Bonehead]

Is it just me or does Trick Dempsey look like Edward Norton!

nope not just you.