Trion World’s Defiance continues to entice players with more DLC content, coming fast and furious since the studio reconfigured the live team last year. The fifth addition, Arktech Revolution, launched yesterday. We got the chance to talk with Trick Dempsey, Creative Lead on the game, about some of the boosts players will be getting as well as more upcoming content. Defiance has lots of plans and with season two of the show coming up, and Trick was happy to tell us where things are going.
One of the first changes we talked about was the shift in how Arkfalls and all in-game events now work. These events, which really drive the core minute to minute gameplay of everything in Defiance's open world, will now scale better to players as they join them. So if veteran players begin to join the enemies in the area will start to respond and the threat level will go up. This scaling will also work on the player side as well. New players can join an event that is heavily populated. Even if the level is much too high for them, they can join and receive a buff to better handle the combat. Trick explained that this is a way for experienced and new players to work together. Each event knows how hard it is on the back end and will scale accordingly. It works like a mentor system so that more people can play together.
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Another area the team worked heavily on balancing was the damage types with weapons. The system now has different types of damage which work better against certain situations. The example Trick gave was how electronic weapons will do better against shields. The Arktech shifts how damage effects the player. So when attacking a monster or player in heavy armor you have two choices. The Bio damage will corrode the armor and wear it down. You can also use Radiation damage to bypass the armor directly hit the opponent. The new Chimera faction will be helping shift all the damage types in the game. Trick also explained that with these new changes a player can actually build a tank style character. Even though you won’t deal a massive amount of damage, you will be able to spec your character with armor and shields to take a lot of punishment.
We talked about the Chimera faction and how it will offer players a lot of new tech choices as well as open the market on trade. With the Chimera and Paradise factions players will now have plenty of chances to do dailies for Caeruleum Cores which will reward legendary equipment. This also comes with a boost to EGO ratings. Trick said that with this DLC they are boosting the EGO cap. This will put players in the upper 5000s range now depending on how they select their gear. With the new resource being added they wanted to make sure players had a lot of opportunity to customize their loadouts. Not only can you upgrade weapons but you can use the resources to reset your weapon mastery. The team was very happy with these changes which offer much more freedom on how players want to go into battle.
Trick did tease about some of the upcoming plans for the game. The new season of the show on SyFy is coming out soon and the team on the game is working to set up some crossover missions. He said, this year they have a really good system in place to do this much with much more agility. Now that the show has launched and the game is solid it gives the team a better chance to explore the Defiance universe. They are working on building out the science of this sci-fi world a lot more in new updates.
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Trick mentioned that the team is working on a new landmass but would not give any spoilers. He said only one person has guessed correctly so far on the forums. We asked him what it is like to build out a whole new zone for the game. Trick said that the team must first form a narrative for players going into the zone. They do this for all of their updates. They also want to give players large points of interest in the areas to take part in. Whether it is an Arkfall or some other event there has to be epic content which gives the players plenty of opportunity to make choices. They also want to make the new zone visually interesting and very different from what players have seen so far. It has to have the feel of a real location in the Defiance universe. Sadly, Trick would not tell us where players will be going. He did say that the new zone will be centered on a new enemy set.
Defiance is now moving into the next phase with the show and game in sync for players. With updated changes to damage and a new faction with Chimera there will be a lot for players to do in the coming weeks as the show gears up for its second season on SyFy channel.
- Read our feature on the Gunslinger DLC Here.
- Check out our Defiance Game Listing Here.
Garrett Fuller / Garrett is the Industry Relations Manager for MMORPG.com. He cosplays as an orc, plays X-Wing on weekends, and loves Adventure Time. You can follow him on Twitter (when he uses it) @Gfulls.
