The Truth Is...

[ItISLupus]

I Lied About Everything?(language warning)

[ItISLupus]

On the subject of new content.

IF, and this is a major if, we get content down the line that is outside of the "season pass"/ "paid dlc" It won't be for months. IE, probably, as put in game, Season 2.

Unfortunately, Defiance is still in that "premie" stage. Not bashing on Trion, just saying that content wise, we won't be getting the "massive" expansions for a good while. That's something that people seem to ignore.

[Shtako]

I really enjoyed Defiance and got a number of my friends involved, we had a great time in game but then things started to die down at an alarming pace. These are things that need to be addressed if this game is ever going to survive. To the haters; there are some great things this game has going and only hope the devs put the puzzle together soon. To the fan boys; there are so many things driving people away from this game its time to accept and pressure the devs into expanding the game so that we all can get our moneys worth.

The Good:
The game mechanic is really good, shooting, moving, ADS etc. all feel refined enough that makes defiance a good shooter. Bar some mechanics like missing reflect sight, scopes feel a bit flat etc. I cannot argue that as a TPS Defiance gets a 7/10.

The Bad:
There is no progression; hold on before you all quote that this game is a "linear" shooter and designed around "skill". The problem is that there is no real benefit to leveling anything in this game and no real incentive. My argument is based around the fact that all content can be beaten with the starter weapons with no real effort. So only for the bragging rights and for the "pretty" factor is there reason to level ego, weapon xp etc. I do not want my character to get prettier and have new vehicle / ammo skins, I want my character to get better at what he does so that it enables me to do the more difficult content. This is the formula that drives most MMO games (Also please do not quote that this is NOT an MMO), If it really is not an MMO then it has serious competition in the shooter category as a single player game.

The Ugly:
- No communication as to the future plans for the game: If what we have seen, i.e. new pursuits at an adhoc basis that require you to collect data recorders (yawn), purchase only story updates, lighting lantern events etc. is what we can expect in the future then, bleh..
- No real clan support: Clans like to communicate easily, have a place to hang out and progress as a team into the "end game". Defiance has none of these well implemented, which is why you see clans dying all the time.
- No variation: most games that are in the MMO category with little variation and intense grind give you something really good for your efforts. In Defiance I am expected to grind for an orange weapon, to do what with exactly? My white assault rifle kills anything in this game via hip fire. So if you want me to grind 90k ark salvage to put a new attachment on my gun, that attachment better turn my gun into a nuke because the content around the corner that has bullet soak of 3 nukes requires it, if not there is no point in grinding for the orange weapon besides bragging rights.

The excluded:
You will notice I did not mention the bugs for good reason, 99.9% of games have bugs these days and it is not that causing people to stop playing. Its the fact that, as one of my friends said, "There is no substance to Defiance". The odd bug here and there I can live with, the lack of substance is a different issue altogether.

Conclusion:
I will hang onto my copy in the hope that the game gets good updates in future, although I did the same with MOHW and look how that turned out. Since these are the developers of RIFT I expect the same level of content updates and support in future.

The ONLY thing that will cause the game to turn around is two things.

1. Carrot on a stick: The game needs something for us to chase after and receive small increments of things we desire. Usually this means raids but could be done in 5 man. The uniforms made me work the 5 mans now I have no reason what so ever to do them. We need goals. Otherwise this is like any other 1st person shooter forced into a 3rd person shooter with more people.

2. Real rewards: We need to feel like we are progressing somewhere. PvP needs rewards. PvE needs rewards. No incentive means empty servers and empty servers means no one buying anything at the Store. Hell dropping discounts for certain items in the store would go a long ways I think. But what we likely want is named gear that drops here from the TV series. I mean who wouldn't have worked hard for Nolan's ark hunter gear if that outfit is not only a named object from the series but also gave say a + something to shields or health or crit? Just saying we need incentive or no one will be on to even buy anything at the store.