Defiance, that TV show + MMO first person shooter hybrid, just launched its game portion (with the TV show to start on 4/15).
Anyone playing it? Thoughts so far?
For the unfamiliar:
The game: Essentially a MMO Borderlands clone with the addition of random world events and a rudimentary crafting system. It’s an open world where you drive around, shoot things, and get loot and exp. If you’ve played Borderlands, you’ve played this (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
The TV show: The first 14 minutes are available on Syfy.com. It’s got terrible, low-budget CGI but the story so far seems interesting, almost like a cheesier Firefly.
The open world is great. Vehicles are wonderful fun to drive around and run over things in.
I’m glad there’s a campaign of quests tying it all together, and the post-apocalyptic setting/story is somewhat interesting.
This is what I’ve always wished Planetside would be. The gunplay feels much better here and highly reminiscent of Borderlands.
The entire game, in fact, is pretty much a Borderlands clone – down to the AI voice, the weapon effects, the xp/loot system, the critical hits system, etc. I initially thought they were made by the same developers.
Arkfalls take way too long. Imagine dozens of players standing around for half an hour shooting at wave after wave of giant bugs. The bigger monsters take like 10 minutes apiece of constant shooting by the entire group to kill. It gets to be a grind.
I wonder how the TV tie-in will work. Are there just going to be token references or could the two mediums actually affect each other significantly?
A LOT of fun so far – can’t wait to get home to keep playing – but I worry about longevity since it’s a purely combat-focused MMO and there’s very little emphasis on the social aspect (no big towns, no significant crafting, not even collaborative quest sharing).
There are also several other MMO PvE FPSes currently playable:
Warframes, essentially a Mass Effect MMO clone. Instanced levels only, no open world.
Firefall, essentially a MMO Tribes clone. No quests, only open-world content which mainly consists of defending set areas against hordes of monsters. Has an advanced crafting system that players pretty much have to engage in because that’s how character progression seems to work. A lot of time is spent setting up harvesters at mineral-rich locations and defending them from incoming hordes of enemies.
Considering it’s the same price (and essentially the same game) as Borderlands but you get to play with much more people in an online persistent world, $60 ain’t that bad. It’s also on sale for 20% off at Greenmangaming.
The microtransactions are indeed unfortunate though. The good equipment in the game come from lockboxes; to open the lockboxes you have to grind for hours to collect keycodes or you can just buy them unlocked with real money. In other words: Pay to win.
Might as well get used to it, though. I don’t think MMOs are going back to subscription fees again.
It’s pretty intriguing, honestly, and for me, it seems to be releasing before Destiny as well. The console version, which was a bit of an older build of code, apparently, didn’t perform badly. It seems pretty Borderlands-y, which isn’t bad, although I don’t love the third person view. I think there might have needed to been a little more added to weapon proficiencies or something, or maybe just the Arkfalls, which were pretty repetitive and boring, for not much gain, despite what the Ego voice told you. The multiplayer seems a little tacked on, and it’s way too Battlefield-y for my tastes. I don’t think I’d touch the multiplayer if I get the game. The beta got me to appreciate it, and after the first day of the 360 beta being useless due to server issues, the developer responded very well to it, and the game was pretty damned smooth after that. The feedback systems seemed a little gimped, as did the overall UI, which is PC-slanted, but felt that way, in a hindering fashion.
I’m slightly on the fence, leaning towards getting it.