Keep watching, please. I've seen two decent-sized guilds collapse, both of which I had no connection with outside of the game before launch, and a 90% drop in friends list activity within the game itself, higher among those listed at >1500 ego. I am still active, still play the game as a guilty pleasure, and incidentally have a very large list of friends. Or did, until they stopped logging in. There are systematic issues in both the game's design and continued service, on a higher order of magnitude than most recent launches, that are causing activity to drop.
While it's easy to discount any launch issue as "just another MMO" it's also intellectually lazy to do so. It's not acceptable for "those other MMOs" to have issues at retail either, much less have issues at the same order of magnitude (progression loss) as we're experiencing now a month after launch. Furthermore, this is Defiance. Other games simply are other games; they aren't relevant when the complaint is about a specific product and not the genre.
This is not the typical issue of players leveling to cap in a week and complaining about "no endgame." There is no middle-game (unless the game's transformation into a Korean grinder counts, which it doesn't), and any hint of Trion's completion of the game is held behind a wall of "oh, we don't want to give spoilers" or similar no-timeline excuses. If spoilers were an issue, they could simply say something along the lines of "By March, we intend (subject to change) new map area 25% the size of Marin with a new tier of enemies and new weapons. Additionally, new trading functionality will become available, along with a new co-op instance. Plus more! Please look forward to it!"
Instead, we are told "no spoilers" and they clam up. At the current incomplete state of the game, this is not enough information and "possibly maybe" wishy-washy statements like "it's totally coming... someday" are NG. We are left to guess, and some people simply assume Trion is in over their heads as a result. While just as lazy as "it's just an MMO" its appearance is also to be expected given the lack of concrete information over the last month. Freight Yard and resetting pursuits give these accusations at least a little ammunition.
I'm very sorry you've decided you've taken such shortcuts to convince yourself you've seen all of this before, but dig a little deeper and you'll understand where some of us are coming from.
Originally Posted by Schwa
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