Defiance – Page 5 – MMO Fallout

MMOrning Shots: Anti-gravity

Today’s MMOrning Shots comes to us from Defiance. I didn’t fully understand why the Volge were constantly attacking E-Rep camps until I came across the above area and realized that they are trying to steal our anti-gravity technology. The hovering truck is one thing, but I’m not sure what the point of the levitating garbage can or sandbags is.

MMOrning Shots shows off interesting games and locales, and can be seen here at MMO Fallout every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To submit your own MMOrning Shot, send an email to contact@mmofallout.com.

Defiance Third DLC Coming February

Trion Worlds has announced the next set of DLC for Defiance will be coming this February. No details have been released other than the following snippet and the name of the DLC: The 7th Legion.

When the world fell apart, one group kept their courage. Guided by the teachings of the Code of Bushido, the soldiers of the 7th Legion marched across Canada gathering survivors as they went. From one outpost to another they marched until finally they found a city which did not fall: Manhattan. There, they made their stand against the darkness, and Commander Yoshida Hiro called an end to their long journey. Now they have come to Paradise. What dread news could this herald?

(Source: Defiance)

Defiance Reveals Endless Free Trial

Trion Worlds has announced that Defiance will be moving over to an endless free trial, allowing players to get in on the action for as long as they like without buying the full game. Instead of the previous 72 hour time limit, players will now be capped at 500 EGO points until they upgrade to the full version. With Defiance going for cheaper than a meal at Burger King most days, upgrading to the full version won’t set players back that much. To the best of my knowledge, this beta extends only to PC players.

(Source: Trion Press Release)

Impressions: Defiance Arkbreaker

I managed to get some time in playing through the Arkbreaker DLC for Defiance, and I came out less disappointed than the Castithan pack DLC. I had a hard time completing the first DLC arenas because the timers were randomly breaking at launch, and I believe still are to this day. The Arkbreaker DLC introduces a laundry list of new content, including stims, spikes, a new mission line, arkfall events, weapons, and more.

There are new consumables added into the game in the form of spikes and stims. The spikes are like totems from other MMOs, you stick them in the ground and they give area of effect buffs to you and your allies. Stims are injected and offer similar buffs. They are consumable and you can only have a maximum of five of each particular type at any given time. What I really like about these items is that Trion has made it so you can only have one of each type in your inventory. If you find any more of the same type, it replenishes your stack, and if you find a higher quality version of the same thing it will replace the lower quality version. So if I get a higher tier ammunition spike, it will replace the one I have on me now. This sounds limiting, and you are limited to ten of each spike, but it makes the inventory less cluttered.

The ability to favorite items and protect them from accidental salvage is a great addition, as is the inclusion of daily contract missions on the main map. The new Arkfalls are enclosed shooting galleries, there isn’t much to them outside of shooting a bunch of Volge and then fighting the Warmaster. The Warmaster itself is difficult, a giant tank with a lot of health. My group filled up the area and still couldn’t bring him down below 25% health before time ran out and he disappeared. Still managed to get a few decent weapons.

I am not impressed by Trion’s decision to make grenades consumable. Had they done this from the start, it probably wouldn’t be an issue, but they run out fast and are a pain to refill. Changing it this far into the game just feels like a step backward. Much like the first pack of DLC, I also can’t help but feel like there isn’t much to justify the price. Most of the content is available regardless of if you actually buy the DLC, and I can’t help but feel that the $40 I spent toward the season pass is going to waste. The world is as tiny as it ever was, even smaller since Trion split the map and threw in a loading screen. The company seems more dedicated to filling an already cramped world with more stuff, rather than taking the logical approach and expanding it as people have been requesting since launch.

As an update, Arkbreaker offers some nice content, but with most of it being given for free, it’s hard to justify spending the ten dollars.

MMOrning Shots: Pale In The Moonlight

Fun fact: Today’s MMOrning Shot could not be uploaded in its original .png format because it somehow ended up being nearly sixty megabytes. Figure that one out.

MMOrning Shots: This Is A Crowd

If you ever want proof that a good chunk of people still play Defiance, just check out one of the game’s many Arkfall events. Arkfalls are a great place to go through your stockpile of weapons and figure out which are worth keeping or need to be thrown away. Check out Defiance at http://www.defiance.com/

MMO Rant: In Defiance Of Quality Assurance

I once read an editorial about the hardcore gaming scene that discussed how players could stand just about any form of loss as long as it was fair and the reason could be pointed to in an understandable way. Being perpetually stuck at a specific point in a game because the boss is too hard or a level is too difficult is frustrating, it can even cause you to quit, but at the end of the day you know that it was your own abilities that stopped your progress. On the other side of this idea, you have games that cannot be completed due to hard stops out of bugs or incomplete content. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl is a game that can come to a hard stop when you reach the final area (the Chernobyl power plant) only to realize that you not only will not survive the radiation without the highest level suit, but the game does not allow you to go back at this point and get it. If you don’t have a save file from before entering Chernobyl, you are SOL.

But even that isn’t as infuriating as not being able to progress due to a bug, and when it comes to MMOs, I can think of no other game in recent memory than Defiance that I have wound up quitting temporarily due to bugs preventing progress. I still have not completed the levels in Defiance’s Castithan DLC pack, released back in August, because it is impossible. If you haven’t played through the content, the missions involve a series of arenas where you rack up points over several waves of enemies. There are five waves per level, and at any time the game can suffer a fatal bug where the round begins but the timer disappears and so does your score, forcing you to quit or be killed and try again.

And then you try again only to have the system break again, so you can try again to have the system break again, in an almost never ending loop. Only by sheer luck did I manage to get through the first four arenas after multiple forced reboots over the course of the past two and a half months, and finally after having to restart the last arena three times, I managed to get through all of the rounds without anything breaking. I did ultimately complete the Castithan content pack, but had I not already purchased the season pass, I likely wouldn’t purchase any further DLC. The fact that such bugs are going unfixed after two months time is unacceptable, especially in a game that is working double time just to retain its players, as Defiance is.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

Weapon Bonuses Make Sense In Defiance

Defiance is a game all about shooting guns, which means that making those guns actually fun to shoot is pretty integral. In Defiance, the random nature of weapons dropping with attributes didn’t always work out to the benefit of the user, such as a sniper rifle with melee bonuses, or single shot guns with increased rates of fire. To remedy this, Trion has released patch 1.105.

The new patch alters drops so that weapons will stack bonuses with each tier of rarity, making rare weapons always more powerful than their lower counterparts. It also ensures that weapons don’t have bonuses that are of no use to their play style.

Our previous system had some quirks that led to weapons receiving bonuses that didn’t always make the most sense: single-shot rocket launchers could have bonuses to their rate of fire and sniper rifles could provide chances to light enemies on fire (cool) with melee attacks (uncool). Weapons also sometimes had effects that weren’t satisfying (like a self-revive bonus. We’ve never heard someone exclaim “man, this bonus is great! I can’t wait to die now!”).

The patch applies this effect retroactively, making your current inventory all the more useful. Check out all of the changes at the link below.

(Source: Defiance)

Defiance’s First DLC Coming August 20th

Trion is finally ready to release the first content pack for Defiance. Officially launching on August 20th, Catithan Charge Pack is Defiance’s first paid content update, available for individual purchase or via the season pass. Players who buy the pack will have access to the Castithan race, either by creating a new character or changing their existing character. The content pack will also unlock a horde-mode single player mini-game which in turn will unlock a story mission line, the Castithan charge blade weapon, and more. Players on the 360 and PS3 will also have access to additional trophies and achievements.

Regardless of purchasing the pack, however, all players will have access to new charge weapons, a siege mode where creatures invade major mission locations, a new arkfall event, dueling, a capture and hold PvP map, and updates to improve the game’s in-game map, chat window, and more. If you haven’t picked up Defiance yet, you can find it at the all time low price of $9.99 on Steam.

(Source: Trion press release)

Defiance's First DLC Coming August 20th

(Source: Trion press release)

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