Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
First thoughts after 1 day in beta
DanitaKusor
Member UncommonPosts: 556
Ok I've put in a fairly solid day's play in the beta today time for some thoughts about this game.
Firstly, this game is a basically shooter version of Rift. Defiance has Arkfalls instead of Rifts but it's the same boring thing over and over. I did perhaps 25-30 rifts today in the game and they only come in 3 sorts.
1) Shoot crystals while killing bugs.
2) Shoot bugs near a crystal.
3) Run away from giant bugs in a ring of crystals.
That got boring very quickly. If this is going to be the main focus of the game it's not going to do well.
Quests
Main story quests are voice acted and are ok fun wise. Side quests seem to only have one sort and that is click on quest, get some standardist voiceover about how the soldier needs you to do this but he can't for some weak reason. Then run/drive to an area and click on 3-4 items scattered around the area while shooting stuff. That's it for side quests as far as I could see.
There are also some mini game quests which seem to be a time trial driving mission and a survive until you die mission. I only did each type once because they didn't interest me that much but it's good to see this sort of thing in a game.
PvP
I didn't try PvP (is there PvP? I've read there is but the UI is so bad I'm still having trouble trying to find how to exit).
Character Creation
Poor. This game has significantly less customisation than SWTOR and similar games.
Very limited customisation. No body customisation. No clothing colour customisation, althougth the game does have different outfit you can find/buy somewhere I believe because other players were more glammed up than me. There are 2 races (human, red humans), around 8 hair styles and a similar number of colours. You can also change your face a bit by changing the nose/mouth/jaw. However seeing you rarely see your own character's face in game this is a waste of time. You can also change some tatoos (again to face for my character).
I missed the option to change hairstyle etc the first time I created a character because they aren't obvious. A lot of people were apparently missing this from what I've read elsewhere.
Gameplay
Very smooth gameplay on my computer. No crashing issues as all so seems to be a stable game.
I had one server disconnection and I found one bugged quest that I had to repeat twice before I got completion credit. Also one quest that when you click on the object it teleports you high up in the air and drops you, but there is no falling damage so this isn't a major issue.
The vehicles are ok but seem a little difficult offroad (but fast on road and you seem to get better at driving over time).
As a shooter it seems to run fairly smoothly but I did find latency as issue against some enemies when it came to dodging them.
The enemies were fairly easy to kill with the exception of the Militant Grenadier who killed me every time I encountered him with his endless stream of grenades that you have to either constantly dodge or die to and it's impossible to reload while dodging so that makes this guy is basically unkillable solo, while every other enemies in the game I can solo kill with ease (well except the major rift enemies and some of those can be taken down solo as well).
The perks you get don't see that interesting. They all seem to be of the +5%/+10%/+15% less damage if you are doing something or the +3%/+6%/+9% damage if you doing something else. From what I can tell you get 4 possible active abilities but only get the choice of one at the same (and the UI only allows you to use one anyway). I chose decoy which sends a low-life decoy running through the enemies to distract them for a second or two before it dies, but probably would have preferred the cloak. I'm not sure if you can unlock others later.
UI
This has been commented on by others and I agree it is very poor for a PC game. Although I've spent the past 10 mins remmaping my keys to something more familiar and it's working a bit better now (exit menu was F6... why not ESC like every other game?).
Some of it is stupid like not being able to double-click to equip perks and having to go through endless selectors to mod an item (first you have to find the salvage box, then you have to select an item, then you have to select mod item, then you have to choose a mod, then you have to click on mod item and then the game asks you if you want to proceed yes/no and then you finally have a modded item.
There are no damage indicators so you have no idea if you are hitting or damaging some things. You can see the health on weak enemies going down but on the crystals during rifts are you damaging them? How can you tell without any damage numbers.
The is no general chat. I believe the people with white names running around could be other players but you can't tell because there is no one talking. This is a big no no for MMOs for me. You must have some way to chat to other players otherwise why the hell are you playing with other players. We are social creatures we want to communicate not run around and mime to each other.
The achievements (pursuit) menu is poor as well. I have 1/67 achievements in on category but when I expand that category I have no idea which one I have unless I go through all of them. Until I remapped the key bindings this was another menu I didn't even know existed either.
The loadout only allows you to equip 2 weapons at one times, rather than 1 weapon of each type. But you can change weapons in combat fairly easily.
Ammo is no a major issue for general gameplay but when doing the Rifts, especially the major one you run out of ammo very quickly. It isn't helped when several weapon types all use the same ammo and you chew through 10% of your ammo in a couple of seconds with a good gun and there doesn't seem to be any way to exand the amount you carry like you could in borderlands 2.
Anyway, thats it for now, time for dinner. I'll play some more tomorrow and see if I can find anything worthwhile.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Comments
ive played since the start of first alpha and yet havent write anything about the game , you in other hand play one day beta and bash the *** out of the game . this is today world so called " gamers " think they kno watch the catch on games in general while they just want to shine as rewievers for nothing.
arkfalling gets as boring as in rift doing rifts its literally same concept no big news there or was it? seems to me so.
still its same grind like every other god forsaken mmo outhere, and thats the catch to keep players playing those games.
It's a fun game if you're looking for a shooter with some progression and persistent world. If you're looking for a deep MMORPG you can explore and get lost in for 100 hours a week look elsewhere.
trion knows its not going to be most people's primary MMO. But for $60 it's a heck of a fun shooter. I'm mot a huge shooter fan but I love MMOs and there's enough MMO in this title to make it the perfect casual shooter for me,
Have No Fear Cohas is here!!!
This game is essentially Mercenaries 2 : World in Flames.
Which is not a bad thing, it truly feels like a GTA-ish, Far Cry type deal where you basically just run missions and do whatever you want when you want for whomever.
I seen the two main characters from the TV show and learned a little about them through questing with them, so that was a neat introduction to the show and one quest introduced me to ARKfalls which are BASICALLY Rifts from Trions other game Rift.. Random chance of happening with a lot of scripted events and phat lewtz at the end..
Weapons made me feel kinda weak, took a million bullets per monster even right after the tutorial.. Guess its more MMORPG than actual Shooter so their has to be a reasonable power curve.. Guess Warframe has me spoiled in that regard..
Not a bad game though.. Still on the fence about buying it. It seems like it may be one of those quick swim games where all the players jump in the pool and then out leaving it an empty big space to play alone...
Character creation is pretty bad. I don't know why they are limiting to two races when the show clearly has more. Probably DLC down the road. lol
And choices for a character is really limited.
As for the UI, be glad you didn't play the alpha. Woo wee was it bad! lol, it's come a LONG way, and once you figure it out, it's not so bad.
Adding more races per DLC is probably their way to give the game a sense of replayability. Like "oh, i saw this race on tv and i cant stand my human anyway...going to start over"
I'm enjoying it. I think for the most part minor things will make it a game I find playable for 3 months or so (about the same amount of time I spent in GW2). I would like to see a cover system and some more races/character customization, though. Trion did well with Rift POST launch, which many would consider too little too late. Likely the same scenario with this title, but all in all it's pretty fun, as it is a big change of pace from the typical fantasy hotkey bashing MMO's we continue to see surfacing and quickly sinking.
Basically, play it if you want a change of pace from all of the CRAP that other developers are rushing out, but don't have extreme hopes of longevity. I'm cynical about MMO's at this point, and I consider 2-3 months of playing an MMO a win these days. It's sad that it has come to this, but developers are just unable to keep my (and countless other players) attention for more than a couple of months with the stale gameplay we've seen over and over and over again.
My concern is that they're trying to use cut scenes and "story" to hold a mediocre game together. Is it worth 60 bucks? And what if either the game or the TV show should bomb and not the other? That's going to be lame. At least I can watch the show for free...
I also don't like the whole "console port" BS. If they don't release a patch to alter the UI for PC players, it'd just end up alongside the other Steam console ports I don't play out of annoyance.
Couple of corrections to your post OP (Anything i don't touch upon is me silently agreeing)
However seeing you rarely see your own character's face in game this is a waste of time.
Except for nearly every cutscene
There are no damage indicators
There are, you have to enable them in the settings. Not sure why they felt like having them off by standard is a good idea.
The is no general chat.
There is, bottom right corner of your screen is a chatbox.
Thanks for the tip about how to turn on damage numbers that helped a lot.
Now, after a 2nd day of play here are some follow up thoughts.
PvP
I finally got to try PvP this afternoon. There appears to be 2 PvP games, one is 8v8 deathmatch called the observatory and the other a 16v16 match. The 16v16 one never happened, so I only got to try the 8v8 one which was ok if you like shooter pvp.
Some problems I encountered was that the quick join button automatically put you into the 16v16 match which no one was doing, so you had to select the 8v8 one to get into a game.
You can't tell which team you are on until you die or kill someone when it shows your colour. The teams have names, but again this means nothing because you can't tell which one you are on until you start dying or killing. It makes telling if you are winning or losing hard as well.
The voice chat just gave an annoying electronic squeal throughout the whole game and did not work for me at all. I had to turn it off to save my ears. Obviously it was working for some people because it was being used (hence the noise) but not for me.
It is difficult to locate enemies because they don't have a health bar until you fire on them, while your group member do have health bars. When the enemy health bar does appear it is white... the same colour as a friendly one. This makes picking out enemies targets very difficult, you basically look for the people without the green tiangle over their heads or just shoot everyone.
There are medals at the end of the match but the game doesn't identify what they are for so they are pretty much meaningless.
Loots
It seems that the best quality loot mainly comes from lockboxes. It is possible to get lockbox keys from doing most events/pvp/etc in the world, but I think this gives an advantage for those willing to spend RL money.
As an example, from 2 days of play I got 1 blue drop from the world. I was able to buy 2 blue items from vendors (the specials of the hour items). From each of the lockboxes I opened today I got 3 blue items and one gave me an epic item as well.
The difference between items seems mainly to be the effects and mods and item has. The epic item I got had two mods and each mod had 2 effects but it's damage was the same as a green item I got soon after I started the character.
PvE
As a hint to anyone who plays. Forget all your guns, your vehicle is your best weapon against PvE enemies. The elite grenadier guys that had been killing me I was able to take out every time by using my car to ram them. In fact I spent most of the morning running around clearing events just with my car with almost no change of dying and no worries about ammo.
The Enlightened take things Lightly