Defiance - Not so hot
I bought the full retail $60 early bird version of Defiance. Got the red Dodge (hate dodge), got the Quads (love those), got some weapons (garbage), and some other stuff like titles, etc. Tell ya I was hyped and ready to go after I did the Closed Alpha 3 Test. I could see the potential for this game IF they catered to both the shooter AND RP communities BUT alas it left the RP players out in the cold.
So far it's a shooter and not a good one by any means. The free to play ones like APB, Blacklight and Planetside 2 to mention a few actually blow this out of the water as a shooter.
Let's address the shooter aspect first then I'll talk about what the game needs to survive otherwise I see a bleak short life for this game. (The TV show is different, it's RP, acting and makes sense, everything the game doesn't).
The shooter end of any shooter is usually the gun customization or modding aspect of it and in Defiance it is a disaster. Makes no firkin sense and is hostile to user interface. I mean it, there is no sense to the modding of weapons in this game, no way for a player to organize their efforts in weapon modding and the interaction system is terrible and embarrassing. I'm serious when I say that the Dev who thought of this aspect and developed it should be standing in the soup kitchen line. It needs an over haul from start to finish. Does Defiance appear to take it seriously? No, so far they are so slow bringing about fixes and patches it makes listening to Obama tell lies seem like a blessing.
The UI is great looking but needs a major fix. It needs modding over-haul, categorizing ability for players, Load-out fixes are needed its more buggy than a cave full of hellbugs. Chat system is so frikin gross it is like your playing a stand alone talk-to-no one game anyhow. Terrible, no meat an potatoes there and the in game voice chat? At first it echoed like talking in a can , that works better but still along way from good. Also, it's full time on voice chat unless you turn it off in options meaning, you start talking dirty to the wife/husband, swear at the dog/cat, fart, burb, sing, talk to yourself it doesn't matter EVERYONE in the GAME WILL HEAR YOU. ADD a push to talk feature and can the always live already OK?.
The art work is pretty good in the game. Scenery is cool, lighting needs some work as do shadow effects, Character customization sucks ass in that it is not available AFTER initial character creation. Want to lighten your skin? (I'm accidentally stuck with an African instead of the light tan I wanted on one character and CAN'T Change it now). You can tell the environment artists get paid too much and have too much freedom in the office at Trion, Stones, rocks, trees, stumps, assets mission items and structures are "floating" above the virtual world all over the place and not because they meant it that way either. Just lazy and poor application of game assets to the environment.
Weather systems? No, Clouds - yes, Night and day transition? yes but terrible. Add some rain storms, lightening, Tornado's etc this is a terraformed planet not EDEN.
Life forms? Other than raiders, mutants and hellbugs and Pows? nope, disgusting. Where is their imagination? Terraformed planet? How bout giant pray mantis, huge alien wasps, meat eating ants? How bout normal life like birds and bunnies mixed in with NEW terraformed life like a shark with mountain lion? or something else weird and new and something even the aliens haven't seen.
Where are the aliens? other than us human or irathient and the few characters who show up from the show in the game where are they? There are supposed to be 8 alien races why are they not found all over the place, doing alien things. AI controlled NPC's for shop, taverns populace do not exist so its a barren and lonely world at times. In fact if your not doing arkfalls, the main mission (the last part so far is impossible for most to finish) or the side missions there is NOTHING else to DO!. They left RP out. I can't believe they have a show where they are paying actors big bucks to RP and they don't have the ability at all in their game? WTF is with that?
I know this review so far is not glamorous for Trion and for that I had wished I could have said something nice about the game so far but I can't. I am hoping they take heart and fix the major pitfalls in this creation before it bottoms out. If it goes tits up it will likely be too late to bring it back out of the ashes so Trion fix it make it RP to, get all the little quirks and bugs fixed and add some major changes to weapons and chatting and NPC interaction and allow the RP community a place to blossom and the game would become a winner.
So far it's a shooter and not a good one by any means. The free to play ones like APB, Blacklight and Planetside 2 to mention a few actually blow this out of the water as a shooter.
Let's address the shooter aspect first then I'll talk about what the game needs to survive otherwise I see a bleak short life for this game. (The TV show is different, it's RP, acting and makes sense, everything the game doesn't).
The shooter end of any shooter is usually the gun customization or modding aspect of it and in Defiance it is a disaster. Makes no firkin sense and is hostile to user interface. I mean it, there is no sense to the modding of weapons in this game, no way for a player to organize their efforts in weapon modding and the interaction system is terrible and embarrassing. I'm serious when I say that the Dev who thought of this aspect and developed it should be standing in the soup kitchen line. It needs an over haul from start to finish. Does Defiance appear to take it seriously? No, so far they are so slow bringing about fixes and patches it makes listening to Obama tell lies seem like a blessing.
The UI is great looking but needs a major fix. It needs modding over-haul, categorizing ability for players, Load-out fixes are needed its more buggy than a cave full of hellbugs. Chat system is so frikin gross it is like your playing a stand alone talk-to-no one game anyhow. Terrible, no meat an potatoes there and the in game voice chat? At first it echoed like talking in a can , that works better but still along way from good. Also, it's full time on voice chat unless you turn it off in options meaning, you start talking dirty to the wife/husband, swear at the dog/cat, fart, burb, sing, talk to yourself it doesn't matter EVERYONE in the GAME WILL HEAR YOU. ADD a push to talk feature and can the always live already OK?.
The art work is pretty good in the game. Scenery is cool, lighting needs some work as do shadow effects, Character customization sucks ass in that it is not available AFTER initial character creation. Want to lighten your skin? (I'm accidentally stuck with an African instead of the light tan I wanted on one character and CAN'T Change it now). You can tell the environment artists get paid too much and have too much freedom in the office at Trion, Stones, rocks, trees, stumps, assets mission items and structures are "floating" above the virtual world all over the place and not because they meant it that way either. Just lazy and poor application of game assets to the environment.
Weather systems? No, Clouds - yes, Night and day transition? yes but terrible. Add some rain storms, lightening, Tornado's etc this is a terraformed planet not EDEN.
Life forms? Other than raiders, mutants and hellbugs and Pows? nope, disgusting. Where is their imagination? Terraformed planet? How bout giant pray mantis, huge alien wasps, meat eating ants? How bout normal life like birds and bunnies mixed in with NEW terraformed life like a shark with mountain lion? or something else weird and new and something even the aliens haven't seen.
Where are the aliens? other than us human or irathient and the few characters who show up from the show in the game where are they? There are supposed to be 8 alien races why are they not found all over the place, doing alien things. AI controlled NPC's for shop, taverns populace do not exist so its a barren and lonely world at times. In fact if your not doing arkfalls, the main mission (the last part so far is impossible for most to finish) or the side missions there is NOTHING else to DO!. They left RP out. I can't believe they have a show where they are paying actors big bucks to RP and they don't have the ability at all in their game? WTF is with that?
I know this review so far is not glamorous for Trion and for that I had wished I could have said something nice about the game so far but I can't. I am hoping they take heart and fix the major pitfalls in this creation before it bottoms out. If it goes tits up it will likely be too late to bring it back out of the ashes so Trion fix it make it RP to, get all the little quirks and bugs fixed and add some major changes to weapons and chatting and NPC interaction and allow the RP community a place to blossom and the game would become a winner.
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