My bigist problem with the PC version of Defiance is the UI.
I would have to rate the ease of use of the UI as 3. It is a clunky mess were you have to click on many screens just to get to some action that you want to do.
Ease of understanding the PC UI I would have to rate as Zero. Other than the short into instructions there is nothing to explain the controls. The first time I played as normal for a PC game I used ESC to try and leave the game. This pulled up a menu screen that you had to go through four more screens just to quit the game. (Did not know of Ctrl-Q at the time to exit the game.)
The poor PC UI and other game bugs have lead to me not playing Defiance very much anymore.
Would have been much better when Trion learned that they would have to keep a game build for each gaming system if they had used the Rift UI instead of the UI they did.
Many good points Bill. Its an honest review, and fairly damning, given how well Trion did with Rift. Yet again, we see the evils inherent in rushing a game to market, when its obviously not ready. The tie in with the TV series is no doubt part of that.
The fact that the PC side is an after thought, tells one quite abit about Trions focus. I'm wondering how well the game will fare, when the next gen consoles come out. It could turn out to have been a rather poor decision.
This review seems fair. Personally, I regret my purchase. I played it for a couple days, and I doubt I'll log in anytime soon. I found it to be incredibly bland and boring. I really expected better from Trion. Still, as was said, the B2P model at least lets me slip in and out on occasion to see if anything's changed for the better.
The word VISTAS is mentioned as being good,but yo ucan clearly see in the picture that the background is all fogged out,the graphics fall off very quickly and does not lean towards a nice vista.It's not relegated to the the pic,the vistas are weak throughout.
Collective plaza there is very little color,just gray/green/brown.Most of the world is just barren land with trees and a few dotted objects.
I found the Gamespot review to be a little more in depth also having a video alongside the review helps a lot.
Its rough its UI is atrocious but manageable once you learn the keyboard shortcuts,it feels like your alone outside of co-ops etc but its also the most fun I've had in a video game since the 1st few months of SWG or Planetside 1. It's an absolute blast and I'm really missing logging on every night for an hour or so as my laptop is back with Toshiba yet AGAIN.
Nailed it and its really what a lot of us saw in Beta and elsewhere, reported, feedbacked, bugged and never changed. I'm hoping that Trion learns from this and that their San Diego studio refuses to do any more tight deadline games.
By the way BILL...this is the best detialed review i have ever read on mmorpg.com. You are becoming my favorite when it comes to opinions about MMOS.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
I agree with the review for the most part. The only thing I really disagree with is the lack of importance put on fun. It's something most MMO's fail to consider and for me it's why I've left most recent MMO in a month or less.
The first question that should be asked is of course "Is it fun and or entertaining?".
For developers they have to consider if a game, mechanic, and even the content they are adding is going to be fun and or entertaining for their intended player base. If the answer is no then there really is no point in continuing with the current design. You've start off with an uphill battle where you have to continually try and back track and make things fun. You have to continually add content that acts as a carrot on a stick that promises fun will soon come. As in the intial design and development it is easy to lose sight of fun when trying to fix a game and make it fun later.
Polish, additional content, etc. are all much easier to add after a game is out than adding in fun is.
If the core of the game is fun, them I have always felt my purchase was a good one and I'm more than happy to wait for things to get smoothed out and more stuff to be added to the game. If a game fails to deliver that fun then I feel my money was wasted and no, I won't be sticking around waiting for things to be fixed. SWTOR offered a great number of features and mechanics, it also had a massive story and depth. The problem was it was only slightly entertaining for a short while. It lacked fun. Same with numerous other MMOs to launch in recent years. They can offer me the world for the box price, a nominal monthly fee, or for what ever I'm willing to spend on the cash shop but... if they don't offer me fun then there simply is nothing for me there.
Even games like APB and CO that I find fun I can't bring myself to play much because they hender the fun in the name of profits and I haven't loaded eaither up in several months.
Fun for me is the most important thing in gaming, if it isn't fun then whats the point? Defiance delivered where it counted in my book. Its one of a few on my very short list of good MMOs . More polish and content are easy to add down the road.
the show is horrible but I am digging the game. I mean i know it has a lot of issues but I am honestly havign fun with it. Maybe the thrill of havign a machine gun that lights things on fire just hasn't lost its novelty yet. That said I am pretty casual about my game time with this (power lvl 479) so for a guy like me that didn't make a mad dash to end game (or lack of from what I hear) its still occupying me quite well when I finally have the chance to sit down and play. No sub makes it even more enjoyable.
Overall a fair review, but I am surprised that at no stage in the reviewing process was putting damage and other modifiers client side, mentioned. While "hacking" seems to have slowed a bit, Trion made an extremely big mistake there, and you can still commonly see people setting their damage to 999,999 and running about one shotting things in arkfalls.
Psst:
"Then there’s the notion that the damage might be handled on the client side of things... yeah, it’s a thing. But without a fix, the PVP will wind up useless and frustrating forever, as opposed to the incredible fun it can be when it’s rolling on all cylinders."
Sorry, missed that
The game is good fun if you don't look too deep, but it definitely feels like Trion used interns or fresh devs to cut costs. Lots of rookie mistakes. Hopefully the A team was simply reassigned to Archeage.
Overall a fair review, but I am surprised that at no stage in the reviewing process was putting damage and other modifiers client side, mentioned. While "hacking" seems to have slowed a bit, Trion made an extremely big mistake there, and you can still commonly see people setting their damage to 999,999 and running about one shotting things in arkfalls.
Psst:
"Then there’s the notion that the damage might be handled on the client side of things... yeah, it’s a thing. But without a fix, the PVP will wind up useless and frustrating forever, as opposed to the incredible fun it can be when it’s rolling on all cylinders."
Sorry, missed that
The game is good fun if you don't look too deep, but it definitely feels like Trion used interns or fresh devs to cut costs. Lots of rookie mistakes. Hopefully the A team was simply reassigned to Archeage.
Been playing this for about a week now. While it may not be a full fledged MMO in many respects, it is still a fun game. Not perfect. Not terrible....just fun. Been playing with friends and having a lot of fun with them.
My only real complaint is the fact that there are few (to none) explanations of some things such as modding weapons or what "contracts" are all about. It can be figured out but takes a lot of time away from just playing and doing.
My overall score would be more like around 7 or 7.5.
Can't wait to read a review for Scarlet Blade after the site trashed it right before running ads for it. If it gets higher than Defiance, my head might explode into a spray of brain matter and chocolate.
I think a lot of people don't like it because it is more of shooter than an MMO. I'm a big shooter fan and have really enjoyed Defiance. A lot of people I know like it for the MMO reason, playing with lots of people and working together to take down bosses. There is a sense of community I feel in the game that a lot of shooter fans just don't get in their game, but Defiance delivers this. This might also open up those gamers to the MMO world and want to try other games like GW2 or WoW.
I would be lieing if I said I didnt want the game to get a higher rating but I do agree with it.
I look forward to log on every day and everyday I do have a blast playing but yes.. the game needs more polish and maturing and yes the social aspect needs to be improved. I dont fully agree with there being no reason to be social, but the current chat system makes it tricky, adding push to talk and persistant chat windows would make a huge difference.
In short, the game mostly needs to do some maturing.
Decent review, covered the basics, so folks could make an informed decision. Don't care about the number ratings, those are always screwy.
Bad UI (though it used to be terrible) is a rough one. Some of the technical flaws are enough to make me happy I haven't jumped on it from alpha/beta. Not really worth the retail price in my opinion. They just can't ask for $60 on the console boxes and have it less on the PC. If you are interested, getting it on sale would be my suggestion.
Right now it does sound like the game is better than the TV show. Bad writing strikes again! For a channel supposedly focused on Sci-Fi, they really don't understand the genre at all. And wrestling!
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I bought the game and had some fun, untill i got to the cut scenes......
I thought i was an idiot after watching those cut scene.
Whom grand design was it ?
Obviously only stupid kids plays MMO or.... watch SYFY. (aren't they bound to one another?)
Anyway it did good for neither of them.
Don't buy games kids, they are just for stupids kids.
The irony!! lol
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Great review. Some fun bits, but too many things poorly designed, poorly implemented, or rushed in to meet launch date. It feels fun at first, but declines pretty quickly. From one day to the next, nothing pulls me in.
On the PC, there are moments when you will wonder if someone intentionally tried to make the interface as annoying and frustrating as they possibly could - if there's a long-term place for this game, it should be the case study for how not to design cross-platform games.
Two major points the OP missed is the fact that the Social score should not have gotten more than a 2 at best and that he left out the major gamebreaking bugs the game STILL has that will randomly cause you to lose boosts you spend RL money on as well as random vehicle rank rollbacks to 1 with zero support from customer service on any of the above issues.
This game should have gotten a total score of 3.5 at best.
Comments
My bigist problem with the PC version of Defiance is the UI.
I would have to rate the ease of use of the UI as 3. It is a clunky mess were you have to click on many screens just to get to some action that you want to do.
Ease of understanding the PC UI I would have to rate as Zero. Other than the short into instructions there is nothing to explain the controls. The first time I played as normal for a PC game I used ESC to try and leave the game. This pulled up a menu screen that you had to go through four more screens just to quit the game. (Did not know of Ctrl-Q at the time to exit the game.)
The poor PC UI and other game bugs have lead to me not playing Defiance very much anymore.
Would have been much better when Trion learned that they would have to keep a game build for each gaming system if they had used the Rift UI instead of the UI they did.
Many good points Bill. Its an honest review, and fairly damning, given how well Trion did with Rift. Yet again, we see the evils inherent in rushing a game to market, when its obviously not ready. The tie in with the TV series is no doubt part of that.
The fact that the PC side is an after thought, tells one quite abit about Trions focus. I'm wondering how well the game will fare, when the next gen consoles come out. It could turn out to have been a rather poor decision.
The word VISTAS is mentioned as being good,but yo ucan clearly see in the picture that the background is all fogged out,the graphics fall off very quickly and does not lean towards a nice vista.It's not relegated to the the pic,the vistas are weak throughout.
Collective plaza there is very little color,just gray/green/brown.Most of the world is just barren land with trees and a few dotted objects.
I found the Gamespot review to be a little more in depth also having a video alongside the review helps a lot.
http://www.gamespot.com/defiance/videos/defiance-video-review-xbox-360-and-ps3-6407249/
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Personally regret my purchase because of the horrific PC UI.
I can see where where console users would enjoy the game , it's decent.
For a PC game , especially from Trion who I expect better of (Maybe its a sign of why Hartsman left) , it seems like a shoddy port.
Agree with most of the review.
Its rough its UI is atrocious but manageable once you learn the keyboard shortcuts,it feels like your alone outside of co-ops etc but its also the most fun I've had in a video game since the 1st few months of SWG or Planetside 1. It's an absolute blast and I'm really missing logging on every night for an hour or so as my laptop is back with Toshiba yet AGAIN.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
I agree with the review for the most part. The only thing I really disagree with is the lack of importance put on fun. It's something most MMO's fail to consider and for me it's why I've left most recent MMO in a month or less.
The first question that should be asked is of course "Is it fun and or entertaining?".
For developers they have to consider if a game, mechanic, and even the content they are adding is going to be fun and or entertaining for their intended player base. If the answer is no then there really is no point in continuing with the current design. You've start off with an uphill battle where you have to continually try and back track and make things fun. You have to continually add content that acts as a carrot on a stick that promises fun will soon come. As in the intial design and development it is easy to lose sight of fun when trying to fix a game and make it fun later.
Polish, additional content, etc. are all much easier to add after a game is out than adding in fun is.
If the core of the game is fun, them I have always felt my purchase was a good one and I'm more than happy to wait for things to get smoothed out and more stuff to be added to the game. If a game fails to deliver that fun then I feel my money was wasted and no, I won't be sticking around waiting for things to be fixed. SWTOR offered a great number of features and mechanics, it also had a massive story and depth. The problem was it was only slightly entertaining for a short while. It lacked fun. Same with numerous other MMOs to launch in recent years. They can offer me the world for the box price, a nominal monthly fee, or for what ever I'm willing to spend on the cash shop but... if they don't offer me fun then there simply is nothing for me there.
Even games like APB and CO that I find fun I can't bring myself to play much because they hender the fun in the name of profits and I haven't loaded eaither up in several months.
Fun for me is the most important thing in gaming, if it isn't fun then whats the point? Defiance delivered where it counted in my book. Its one of a few on my very short list of good MMOs . More polish and content are easy to add down the road.
Sorry, missed that
The game is good fun if you don't look too deep, but it definitely feels like Trion used interns or fresh devs to cut costs. Lots of rookie mistakes. Hopefully the A team was simply reassigned to Archeage.
hmmmm...you may have a point there
Been playing this for about a week now. While it may not be a full fledged MMO in many respects, it is still a fun game. Not perfect. Not terrible....just fun. Been playing with friends and having a lot of fun with them.
My only real complaint is the fact that there are few (to none) explanations of some things such as modding weapons or what "contracts" are all about. It can be figured out but takes a lot of time away from just playing and doing.
My overall score would be more like around 7 or 7.5.
Let's party like it is 1863!
" No real reason to socialize"
The one true staple in all MMO's today.
"Defiance is a game that fights with its players to be loved..."
Oh dear... this is SO FREAKIN TRUE!!!
The scoring restored alot of faith into mmorpg.com's reviews. Good one!
I bought the game and had some fun, untill i got to the cut scenes......
I thought i was an idiot after watching those cut scene.
Whom grand design was it ?
Obviously only stupid kids plays MMO or.... watch SYFY. (aren't they bound to one another?)
Anyway it did good for neither of them.
Don't buy games kids, they are just for stupids kids.
Diablow 3, it sucks ...
I would be lieing if I said I didnt want the game to get a higher rating but I do agree with it.
I look forward to log on every day and everyday I do have a blast playing but yes.. the game needs more polish and maturing and yes the social aspect needs to be improved. I dont fully agree with there being no reason to be social, but the current chat system makes it tricky, adding push to talk and persistant chat windows would make a huge difference.
In short, the game mostly needs to do some maturing.
Decent review, covered the basics, so folks could make an informed decision. Don't care about the number ratings, those are always screwy.
Bad UI (though it used to be terrible) is a rough one. Some of the technical flaws are enough to make me happy I haven't jumped on it from alpha/beta. Not really worth the retail price in my opinion. They just can't ask for $60 on the console boxes and have it less on the PC. If you are interested, getting it on sale would be my suggestion.
Right now it does sound like the game is better than the TV show. Bad writing strikes again! For a channel supposedly focused on Sci-Fi, they really don't understand the genre at all. And wrestling!
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
The irony!! lol
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
On the PC, there are moments when you will wonder if someone intentionally tried to make the interface as annoying and frustrating as they possibly could - if there's a long-term place for this game, it should be the case study for how not to design cross-platform games.
Two major points the OP missed is the fact that the Social score should not have gotten more than a 2 at best and that he left out the major gamebreaking bugs the game STILL has that will randomly cause you to lose boosts you spend RL money on as well as random vehicle rank rollbacks to 1 with zero support from customer service on any of the above issues.
This game should have gotten a total score of 3.5 at best.