So I kind of got this game simply because I had way too much in store credit at Best Buy. I played the "beta" for about 2 hours and didn't think much of it. Now I kind of regret, but whatever. I just wanted to kind of get the temperature of the bomber community and see who got it and how you're enjoying it. So far I think its laughably boring and the PVP in incredibly unbalanced and not fun. That's just my opinion, of course.

I also think it is hilarious that on day 1 they have a near $10 set of cosmetic armor in the shop. Seriously, $10 for one item that is only cosmetic. Oh well.

The game's tie with Syfy is as bad as you expect, but if you power through the tutorial mission and the first area of the game; I found myself not being able to stop playing. It really is like a MMO Borderlands.

Really sad there isn't more buzz about the game. I'm guessing it's because everyone's either busy with Bioshock, the Syfy tie-in isn't what they're looking for, or media just haven't given it enough attention.

Online borderlands you say, i could get behind thay. Anyone else care to weigh in on the quality/borderlandsyness of the game?

I'm still in the first area of the game, but I am having some fun with it. The shooting feels a lot like Mass Effect which is not really a bad thing in my book.

Jeff evidently. The shooting feels much better than Mass Effect; I would've paid like 20 bucks + 5 bucks a month for a subscription; but since it's 60 the price is guaranteed to drop in short order.

I think they didn't promote it that well. Jeff mentioned on twitter not finding copies when he went to look for it. So maybe they didn't send many out, and maybe stores didn't think it was worth stocking

I think it has something to do with the marketing. A lot of the ads and things just look like generic future dudes shooting other generic future and/or alien dudes. I haven't seen every piece of marketing for the game so maybe there's some good stuff out there, but most of it doesn't look like it's doing this game any justice which is quite a shame.

Defiance has some strengths and some weaknesses from both the third person shooter genre, and the MMO genre. The enemy AI is built for an MMO - they're a little dumb, and in some cases they won't agro on you even when you're standing right near them. This detracts a little from the shooting, but if you're alone or only in the company of a handful of other players the sheer number of enemies can make up for the poor AI in terms of challenge.

There's no proper cover system which is a shame because there's a lot of cover to hide behind; it'd be nice to be able to snap to it.

Flaws aside, the game is still a lot of fun. The shooting feels good, and the experience of wrecking a giant Hellbug in the company of hundreds of other players is super enjoyable. There's a steady stream of loot to collect, but if you find yourself using the same weapon for a long time it'll level up. You can also add attachments to your weapons for more customization opportunities.

There's a lot to like here. There are a few flaws, but most of them are super easy to look past.

As for the Syfy connection, the main characters from the show do show up in the game, and there will be some ties from the game in the show, but from what I gather from all of the various press releases and other info I've seen on it, each will stand on its own. Personally, I'm skeptical about the show but I expect I'll be playing the game for a good long time.

What systems are people playing it on?

Is the 360 and ps3 versions about the same or is one fucked, and does the PC version look significantly better then the others?

@carryboy: I'm playing on PC - Doesn't seem to look SIGNIFICANTLY better, but the faster framerate is always nice. If you have friends playing on a console you won't be missing out on anything significant by playing there instead of the PC, though personally, I'd say the PC would be my preferred platform based on the slight graphical improvements and mouse and keyboard controls.

I'm interested in picking this up for consoles as playing an mmo on 360 seems pretty novel.

Picked it up today and having a good time with it. For as bad as the game is, it pretty much proves that there aren't enough Borderlands clones out there. This game would crash and burn if there was any actual competition.

I am, when the servers are up anyway.

Been playing this a bit, the arkfall events are great. 50+ people firing at giant space bugs. Kind of reminds me of Earth Defense Force but with a bigger budget! XD

Its pretty fun and the game looks fine compared to the PC on consoles. I decided to get it for the Xbox since i think the community will last longer since its kind-of one of a kind on consoles.

I just got it and am working my way through the tutorial. The initial character customization is a little weak, but hopefully that pans out further into the game. The story set-up seems cool and I am looking forward to the actual show. I appreciate that the SyFy network is attempting to do some cool tie-in stuff with this game . If you're on PSN then add me: ajlangino

There are inherent flaws, but the core gameplay is still fun. It has potential! through in game PC: Sunnyathome , or steam: Skyflare1

I was a little interested in this before it came out but there really wasn't enough info out to help me decide on buying it. On launch day I watched a couple player streams and it didn't look too bad. Next day, I checked stores in my area and nobody had any copies. I asked some of the employees at the stores and as far as they knew, they weren't sent any copies. Now, the more that time goes by, the more that I'm OK with waiting until a price drop hits. I just hope there's still players around when that time comes.

The question I have, is about what will happen to the console versions of "Defiance" once the xbox720 & PS4 start to take over the current-gen consoles. Given its an MMO, it really needs to looking for a decent sized-community for a pretty good length of time, certainly WAY longer than when xbox720s & PS4s are being bought by plenty of people.

So, I'm wondering if they have any game-plan in place to allow people who have bought the game already to be able to migrate the game forward to the next-gen. Possibly if people are registered for the game they could just log-in to download a next-gen version (possibly with a little more money to allow for the higher-quality it 'should' have).

Got the 360 version last night. Having fun. They had to bounce the servers at one point, so it was down for about 45 minutes, but I still got in a couple of hours.

I'm just happy for a mmo on the xbox 360.

Best Buy didn't have any copies, and GameStop was out as well ("did you preorder?). But they looked in the back for that day's shipment and they found a few copies.

I'm sort of intrigued by the setting, and wanted to play through the opening stuff with the main characters before the show premiered.

My guess, by the time new consoles arrive this game won't matter anymore. While it's technically an MMO I'd say it will very much get the same treatment most multiplayer gets these days, a few months of heavy activity and then people move on to newer games. I highly doubt it'll get any sort of real continous support.

@ares42 I think a lot of that will depend on how the tie in with the show goes. The way the pursuits (achievements) are categorized is by season, so it's entirely plausible that if the show takes off they'll release new content packs each season. I'm not saying they'll port it to new consoles, but I'm optimistic that the game will at least get supported on PC for a while.

@stormhead: The 360/PS3 client has to be linked to the Trion-account. Meaning your account isn't tied to a specific platform more than what license you've purchased.

That way, what you download to PC and the consoles are just clients for the specific platform, which can be swapped out "easily" once the new consoles are released, as they kind of only need to make a new executable for that platform.

I've now sunk about a day+ worth of playtime with this game, and I now know why there's a season pass available.
The story-missions basically play out as a singleplayer game with an actual ending to it.
Given it's an mmo, that felt really odd.
You're then flung back out to the overworld and left to pass some time with the rest of the side-missions / arkfalls / co-op dungeouns or pvp.

The co-op dungeons are the most fun so far.

Expect around 6-8h hours worth of story based missions out of this title. There's plenty of side-missions to do in the game so there's plenty of things to do, but they're in no way mandatory to grind through in order to manage the story missions.

Them ite progression is the biggest letdown so far, there's not enough noticable upgrades in the weapons you get from quests nor co-op dungeons.
I basically managed to get through all of the story missions, only switching my main gun 2 times ( the one you get from the last episode mission is good enough for the story missions end-game).

It's messy but the shooting 'feels' really good, dunno how long I will spend with it once I complete the story but that was enough to justify my purchase.

6 to 8 hours? What the actual fuck? How good are you at video games? I just got through what I believe is the end boss of the story and my Steam account says 31 hours played (I had some sickdays last week). Sure, I did some of the side quests, an arkfall here or there and I helped a friend for an hour or so and I drove everywhere (because the driving was fun) but seriously? You got through all that in 6 to 8 hours? The final boss alone took me an hour to beat.

I'm tempted to get the PC version because it looks sort of fun, but I also feel the price will drop super quick, if not go free to play completely in a few months.

Had a great weekend on the 360. They are having server issues still, they had to bounce it at least once. But overall a great time.

Finished the first area (Mount Tam) except for a few challenges.

Finished the Episode missions, those are pretty good.

Love scooting around in my atv and exploring.

Did the one co-op mission available to me, that was pretty great.

Did a few arkfalls, they are great fun, but I can see them getting repetitive.

The overall map is pretty small, but there is plenty to do on it, for now.

I'm intrigued but the setting, looking forward to the show at this point. Hope it doesn't suck.

I could be exagerating/underestimating it, my /played is way off since I've done A LOT of the side-missions.
The final boss took you an hour? What class are you/weapons were you using?

A LOT of people have been complaining about the difficulty of the last boss encounter on the official forums. Most of these people are console folk, so it could just be a controller thing.

Maybe it was more like 40 minutes, but yes. I had to restart the first phase once and the second once, but that was about the time I spent. I was using an SMG mainly, but after a few tries came to the conclusion that the infector I had been carrying around without ever really using it was pretty good since it would home in on the target. After that it was mainly a question of dodging his attacks while taking potshots at him. It definitely took me somewhere around 40 mins to whittle him down, including retries. He was a bastard. When he got back up AGAIN after the second phase I nearly just went to bed.

I'm playing on the PC, but yes, using a controller.

I've put in a few days into this on PS3, and really like it so far. Gotten more hooked into it than Borderlands managed to, and I'm not even all that fond of third person shooters, I think the content seems well worth the $60, but considering it's not subscription based, I'd wager that most of the post-release content will be paid DLC, not much in the way of new free zones, quest lines or stuff like that which many subscription based MMO's tend to get (though they'll probably do more free episodic missions that are linked with the show once that starts airing).

I guess I kinda agree with those complaining that there isn't much weapon progression over the course of the game, but that could also be a kinda good thing, as most enemies even in the earlier areas still pose some challenge to higher tier players, while players that are just starting out still can provide some firepower in the arkfalls, which I think made the arkfalls much more fun than MMO raids tend to be.

It's ok. My gripes with it that it doesn't feel as loot lusty as it could. For example there are no random chests in the world to loot. You just maybe get a gun or shield from an enemy. The ark fall stuff is also kind of dumb and cool all at the same time. Over 100 players all shooting a giant rock for about 5 to 10 mins. Also the 360 version looks like real trash.

@fisk0:

They have said that each of the 5 DLC planned has a free component as well as paid. I'd guess at least any co-op and competitive multiplayer maps will be free, so as not to split the player base.

Im loving the game so far. I am at EGO level 294. Just the sheer fact that I know there are hundreds of other players in the world is cool. It's fun to get to the brink of death only to have a complete group of strangers coming to your rescue. I am enjoying the game alot.

Big patch dropped yesterday, everything seems to be running smooth now. I got into a shadow war (Big PvP) almost instantly, before it was taking a few minutes to queue up.

They added a few things to tie in to the first episode of the show that aired Monday. Nothing major, but it's a nice touch.

I've played daily for 12 days now, still enjoying the heck out of it.

The weirdest part of this game is how little your character progresses. Each "level up" just grants a perk point which can upgrade your character's damage or defense by about 2%, and that's assuming you have a perk slot available. There's no additional health/armor/damage stats when you level up.

A level 200 shield item (equivalent to 20 in normal MMO's) will have less than 1% more shield capacity than a level 0 shield.

The gun skill level ups also improve your damage by only a few percent, though they often alternatively improve reload, fire rate, or something else.

The end result is that level 1 enemies never become trivial no matter your level, and the high end enemies can easily be taken on by low levels.

I haven't gotten to the endgame though, so I don't know if max level players suddenly get insane items.

Probably put about 6 hours in at this point, and I love it. The Arkfall events are pretty great, I just show up, shoot shit with everybody else, the whole event is pretty great without really trying to be.

I read/heard someone say the game is more fun than it is good, and I think that about sums it up for me. Glad I got it to be sure.

What a random game to compare the shooting to.

@hunkulese: Third person Sci-Fi shooter-RPG vs Third Person Sci-Fi shooter-RPG, seems an apt comparison to me.

So far my biggest gripe with the game is the use of the word "Shtako"