Putting the cart before the horse Trion!

[shuckydarns]

...

...

Great minds right?

Glad to see the community helping others on these forums!

[Terra]

No monthly sub for this game

Monthly subs can take many forms depending on how frequent, expensive, and 'required' the dlc is going to be. For instance I would definitely bristle if I have to buy access to bigger and better weapons through content when new content costs about $5 and comes out three times a month. Or having to shell out $10 to have access to the new raid. In fact i'm not sure just how much i'm looking forward to the DLC considering how much of a money grub it has become as of late. You could be more selective in your updates, but to have full access with your friends you will almost be forced to buy it all. If it is limeted mostly to cosmetic stuff i'd be a LOT happier, but I have a nagging feeling...


That rant aside I did watch the first video. Apparently this is an actual alpha/beta setup which is refreshing, and might be something the mods could let players know more. This is not really a 'marketing' beta, like say the game Firefall or maybe even SWTOR, GW2, or Secret World were. So that kinda eased my fears.

As for progression, I could be wrong but I strikes me as a cross of Fallout 3 and Boarderlands. You have points when you progress to put into perks. You also gain skill in weapons and vehicles as you use them. What that gets you is I think the same as the skill points in Fallout. You can pick up a shotgun and use it in Fallout to effect, but you would be much deadlier had you invested the skillpoints. In Defiance's case that would translate to time used. If I got this right.

So if I understand it, the difference in top tier weapons and starter weapons will be base damage. But that is mitigated slightly by skill use. So if you focus more on shotguns that shotgun will in theory be useful longer since your skill boosts the power of the damage longer then if you just decided to switch to using shotguns today. But all this is separate of the perks to a degree which upgrade the base nature of your character, the health and special skills outside of weapon choice. This also might be reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls in that given enough time you could become proficient at everything, but it would take a REALLY long time.

[bobalobabingbong]

he didnt say there was >.>

Touché....

[bobalobabingbong]

Monthly subs can take many forms depending on how frequent, expensive, and 'required' the dlc is going to be. For instance I would definitely bristle if I have to buy access to bigger and better weapons through content when new content costs about $5 and comes out three times a month. Or having to shell out $10 to have access to the new raid. In fact i'm not sure just how much i'm looking forward to the DLC considering how much of a money grub it has become as of late. You could be more selective in your updates, but to have full access with your friends you will almost be forced to buy it all. If it is limeted mostly to cosmetic stuff i'd be a LOT happier, but I have a nagging feeling...

Very true. I hope that your rant does not come to be true.

[Aaricane]

I always say that i'm not gonna purchase DLC for any given game.
Then it gets released & what do i do? I RUN OUT AND BUY IT!!

So i think and DLC is considered a buy for me, unless of course i totally hate the game.
Which i am hoping does not happen....

[Kordesh]

I'm in full agreement with the OP here. I'm interested in the game, but I wouldn't dream of pre-ordering anything until I see the beta and get some more details on the game. There's a lot of justification from fans going on in the forums, and it's mostly dismissive rather than providing any information, mainly because there is little of it right now.

For one, for a game that has a media tie in, you would think the backstory would be more important. Right now, there's virtually nothing known about the story for the game. Some things are obviously meant to be learned in the game and via the show, but the very basics don't seem to be detailed anywhere. All you know is "something something aliens, something something rare materials, something something bounty hunters and hellbugs." (I might add, what little is known, dose not inspire good feelings about the writing...)

Secondly, whats the deal with the monitization scheme and how are updates going to be handled? You buy the box, and there are microtransactions, but there's also DLC? Are content updates planned at all or is it all coming via paid DLC? In which case, what are the micro-transactions supporting? It seems a bit much and I have a feeling it has to do with the console/multiplatform issue in that pushing updates to anything on Xbox Live is not only a chore, but expensive. For lack of more detailed information, I expect PC players and others will essentially be subsidizing the cost of updating the other platforms by having to deal with micro-transactions on top of paid DLC. I know for a fact that Microsoft actively "discourages" the concept of content updates via their platform that don't have a fee attached, and I'm sure Trion isn't complaining about being able to throw some extra charges in to accommodate. There won't be cross platform play (clarified elsewhere in the forum but not where it should be (on the website) but there's no mention on if the PC is going to be held back to the console update schedule or not. There's no reason for it to be, but that doesn't mean it won't due to some policy to keep all platforms on the same page.

Third, and perhaps more importantly, there's few to any details on how the game actually plays. There's lots of showings of co-op, and lots of flashy trailers with no substance, but little on what the game actually IS. My general impression at the moment is that the open world consists mostly of a "hub" and you end up jumping into instances once you accept missions dotted around the landscape, with the randomized arkfalls consisting of most of the open world content. Does it ACTUALLY work like that? Who knows, because there's no information on it. For a game this close to release, that's a little disturbing. Drawing out the NDA this long and making people resort to hunting and pecking through old unedited livestreams somewhere to get a sliver of information is not how you go about it. Side note: The arkfall system sounds as though they took the Rift system from Rift and ported it straight over. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on how it's being handled, it's not a great thing either. The scaling back of the dynamic elements in Rift and making it more of a raid/instanced focused game was what drove me away from it to begin with, and I always felt it was a bit weak calling rifts "dynamic" when they would spawn in at pre-set locations like clockwork, same with the invasions.

I'd really like to be more interested in the game than I am, but at least as it stands right now, it's REALLY hard to be. I'll admit I'm more interested in another game that's more in the scope of how I'd like to see this kind of game done but not quite as far along (that I'll refrain from mentioning) but I would certainly like to get into this if for no other reason than the novelty. But the bottom line is, until there's SOME information on what people are buying into, I'm at least not buying into anything.

[D351]

Getting to play beta before pre-ordering is good fortune but uncommon fortune.

[Aaricane]

I'm in full agreement with the OP here. I'm interested in the game, but I wouldn't dream of pre-ordering anything until I see the beta and get some more details on the game. There's a lot of justification from fans going on in the forums, and it's mostly dismissive rather than providing any information, mainly because there is little of it right now.

For one, for a game that has a media tie in, you would think the backstory would be more important. Right now, there's virtually nothing known about the story for the game. Some things are obviously meant to be learned in the game and via the show, but the very basics don't seem to be detailed anywhere. All you know is "something something aliens, something something rare materials, something something bounty hunters and hellbugs." (I might add, what little is known, dose not inspire good feelings about the writing...)

Secondly, whats the deal with the monitization scheme and how are updates going to be handled? You buy the box, and there are microtransactions, but there's also DLC? Are content updates planned at all or is it all coming via paid DLC? In which case, what are the micro-transactions supporting? It seems a bit much and I have a feeling it has to do with the console/multiplatform issue in that pushing updates to anything on Xbox Live is not only a chore, but expensive. For lack of more detailed information, I expect PC players and others will essentially be subsidizing the cost of updating the other platforms by having to deal with micro-transactions on top of paid DLC. I know for a fact that Microsoft actively "discourages" the concept of content updates via their platform that don't have a fee attached, and I'm sure Trion isn't complaining about being able to throw some extra charges in to accommodate. There won't be cross platform play (clarified elsewhere in the forum but not where it should be (on the website) but there's no mention on if the PC is going to be held back to the console update schedule or not. There's no reason for it to be, but that doesn't mean it won't due to some policy to keep all platforms on the same page.

Third, and perhaps more importantly, there's few to any details on how the game actually plays. There's lots of showings of co-op, and lots of flashy trailers with no substance, but little on what the game actually IS. My general impression at the moment is that the open world consists mostly of a "hub" and you end up jumping into instances once you accept missions dotted around the landscape, with the randomized arkfalls consisting of most of the open world content. Does it ACTUALLY work like that? Who knows, because there's no information on it. For a game this close to release, that's a little disturbing. Drawing out the NDA this long and making people resort to hunting and pecking through old unedited livestreams somewhere to get a sliver of information is not how you go about it. Side note: The arkfall system sounds as though they took the Rift system from Rift and ported it straight over. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on how it's being handled, it's not a great thing either. The scaling back of the dynamic elements in Rift and making it more of a raid/instanced focused game was what drove me away from it to begin with, and I always felt it was a bit weak calling rifts "dynamic" when they would spawn in at pre-set locations like clockwork, same with the invasions.

I'd really like to be more interested in the game than I am, but at least as it stands right now, it's REALLY hard to be. I'll admit I'm more interested in another game that's more in the scope of how I'd like to see this kind of game done but not quite as far along (that I'll refrain from mentioning) but I would certainly like to get into this if for no other reason than the novelty. But the bottom line is, until there's SOME information on what people are buying into, I'm at least not buying into anything.

As much as i have defended the game, i too kinda thought similar. Until i watched the live stream events.
All of my doubts have been quelled. So i would encourage you to check them out.

[Caios]

If you go to the Defiance website you can find out more information about both the game and the TV show including some of the backstory.

If you want to know more about the background and history of the world you can check out the Defiance Tumblr site: http://defianceworld.tumblr.com

Honestly I highly recommend you check out the sticked thread at the top of this forum labeled "One stop shop for Information"; you can check out all sorts of resources to get even more background info about the game and the show in there.

If you want to check out how the game actually plays, your best bet is to get invited into the public beta events. Then you'll be able to actually play the game and decide for yourself if this is something you want. Of course the easiest way to do this is to preorder the game which guarantees you a beta invite.

Since you want to kick the tires of the game before preordering you will need to get an invite elsewhere. Fortunately you can still get a beta invite code fairly easily. Numerous gaming websites having been giving out invite keys all over the place. Also you can watch Trion's live stream on Twitch.tv every Friday where they almost always give out Beta codes.

Also keep in mind that once you're invited to one of the Beta events you will be automatically invited to ALL future beta events until the release of the game. So you'll get plenty more opportunities to check out the game.

[Aaricane]

Those saved live stream vidoes from Twitch TV are amazing! I'd say my info on the game has more then tripled!