Overview:
Defiance 2050 is the Sci-Fi, third-person MMORPG shooter from Trion Worlds that has players trying to save Earth. Players can choose between multiple races and classes and team up with each other to take down the alien threat that has plagued the planet.
Gameplay:
Defiance 2050, at its core, is a third-person ARPG shooter. You are able to kill enemies and complete missions to gain exp and level up, use skill points to become more deadly in your class of choice, and of course, loot enemies to try and find better gear. The game tries to follow this formula as closely as possible, and it takes its weapon system to a remarkable level.
When first starting off, you are only equipped with a couple guns, and one ability with no upgrades from your selected class. Depending on what class was chosen, there are a few different ways that a combat situation can be handled. When first starting out, I went for a guardian build which allowed me to set up a protective barrier that absorbed damage for me. This proved to be useful for fighting either at mid range or by close range. Abilities have cooldowns, and are quite lengthy at first, but once I was leveled up, I was introduced to the grand scheme of EGO, a general body augmentation that allows each character to have impressive combat abilities.
EGO also acts as a character level, which is independent from a class level. Each time you level up, whichever class you are currently using will also level up with you. You can use a class level up to gain a skill point and spend it to enhance current abilities or gain new ones. At the moment, there are five classes to choose from, and those range from a high damage dealing assassin to a demolitionist who specializes in explosive combat. When speccing into a class’ skill tree, there are multiple tiers that you invest your points in to, and each tier offers specific passive abilities or new active abilities. Progressing through a skill tree requires a certain amount of points to get to the next tier of abilities, and each ability tier caps off after a certain amount of point commitment, so this means that you will not be able to have every ability maxed out in a single tier. This might not be that noteworthy to those who like to min/max, but it is significant for those who like to take a little bit of everything. As a result, however, there are opportunities for multiple types of specialty builds that you can do for a single class.
Another interesting aspect is that you can actually change your class/weapon load out at any point during gameplay. This is great because it allows players to adapt to any situation. To balance this, though, if you use a skill in one class and switch to a different one, the skills correlated to your hotkeys will still be on cooldown.
Defiance 2050 is the Sci-Fi, third-person MMORPG shooter from Trion Worlds that has players trying to save Earth. Players can choose between multiple races and classes and team up with each other to take down the alien threat that has plagued the planet.
Gameplay:
Defiance 2050, at its core, is a third-person ARPG shooter. You are able to kill enemies and complete missions to gain exp and level up, use skill points to become more deadly in your class of choice, and of course, loot enemies to try and find better gear. The game tries to follow this formula as closely as possible, and it takes its weapon system to a remarkable level.
When first starting off, you are only equipped with a couple guns, and one ability with no upgrades from your selected class. Depending on what class was chosen, there are a few different ways that a combat situation can be handled. When first starting out, I went for a guardian build which allowed me to set up a protective barrier that absorbed damage for me. This proved to be useful for fighting either at mid range or by close range. Abilities have cooldowns, and are quite lengthy at first, but once I was leveled up, I was introduced to the grand scheme of EGO, a general body augmentation that allows each character to have impressive combat abilities.
EGO also acts as a character level, which is independent from a class level. Each time you level up, whichever class you are currently using will also level up with you. You can use a class level up to gain a skill point and spend it to enhance current abilities or gain new ones. At the moment, there are five classes to choose from, and those range from a high damage dealing assassin to a demolitionist who specializes in explosive combat. When speccing into a class’ skill tree, there are multiple tiers that you invest your points in to, and each tier offers specific passive abilities or new active abilities. Progressing through a skill tree requires a certain amount of points to get to the next tier of abilities, and each ability tier caps off after a certain amount of point commitment, so this means that you will not be able to have every ability maxed out in a single tier. This might not be that noteworthy to those who like to min/max, but it is significant for those who like to take a little bit of everything. As a result, however, there are opportunities for multiple types of specialty builds that you can do for a single class.
Another interesting aspect is that you can actually change your class/weapon load out at any point during gameplay. This is great because it allows players to adapt to any situation. To balance this, though, if you use a skill in one class and switch to a different one, the skills correlated to your hotkeys will still be on cooldown.
The gun customization is absolutely insane in Defiance 2050, and is easily my favorite part of the present RPG elements. There are tons of upgrades, stats, and passives to unlock and equip to a single weapon. At first, you are given pretty vanilla weapons that can’t really be upgraded, but as you progress just an hour into the game, you will find weapons that have the ability to be upgraded. These upgrades can come in the form of passive buffs or gun attachments. In order to upgrade your weapons, you will need to break down specific weapon types to gain their parts in order to upgrade your respective weapons. You can apply 10 parts to a weapon, and once you commit those parts, you cannot get them back. Each time you commit a part, you gain a point to upgrade one of your weapon’s three special passive abilities, so it kind of acts as leveling up your guns in a way. These points are spent on upgrading one, two, or three of a gun’s random passives, such as a rate of fire, recoil reduction, increased damage, decreasing bullet falloff, and so much more. Even better is that if you don’t like your gun’s abilities, you can pay a fee to re-roll those abilities. As you enhance your weapons further, you will unlock powerful passive that will automatically activate once their requirements have been met.
The best part about all of this is that for both your character’s skill tree and your weapon skill points, you can respec for free at any point in time for as many times as you want. This is a massive deal since it encourages experimenting with different builds without the needing to majorly inconvenience yourself, and it also ensures that if you misclick, you haven’t just committed yourself to something significant.
You also have the ability to equip grenades as well as one of many different pieces of tech that make your survivability stronger. These pieces of tech include giving you armor, shields, or just a massive spike in health. Each item’s usefulness is dependant on your class, but it was still neat that anyone could obtain these types of tech.
On the overview of your character, individual gear is added up and averaged out to give a single number that lets you and other players know how powerful your character is. This number is also displayed next to enemies rather than a level indicator. Upgrading your weapons also increases this number, so you really are seeing a number that reflects the overall strength of a character.
You can very quickly unlock the ability to summon a vehicle early on into the game, and this is such a blessing considering that massive map size. While this method of transportation is still more convenient than walking, the controls for the vehicle feel very sluggish. The vehicle controls are not all that responsive, and some vehicles can be an absolute nightmare to control.
Also, one of the biggest draws for player activities is also one of the biggest downfalls. In the game, there are Arkfalls, which are events that up to 50 people can participate in. Your goal is to complete a bunch of small objectives to fight a boss at the end. At the end of this boss fight, you end up getting a chest dropped that has loot in it, but you need a key to unlock it. The only way to get one of these keys is to purchase one with real money or get lucky and get a drop. In the end, while these events are awesome to participate in, there won’t be an incentive for a part of the community to participate in them unless they have a keys.
Game Design:
One of the coolest aspects of Defiance 2050 is that the world feels alive. While things can get somewhat repetitive, the dozens of small distractions that make you feel the effects of the alien invasion, and it makes it feel like the world around you is moving, even without you. There are small, quick, completely optional missions that happen randomly around the world, and you might have to defend an outpost, save captured soldiers, or collect some samples from alien life. Small little distractions like these really help make the world feel dynamic, and this was an amazing touch that helped the pacing of the game. Rather than have to travel over a kilometer to your next objective, there are some rewards for helping a vendor fend off attackers.
As mentioned before, there are world events called Arkfalls, and these are marked on everyone’s map and they are alerted to this event. These Arkfall event fights have seamless player interactivity, for you do not need to join a party or go through any sort of UI to participate in these world events. All you need to do is show up, and you are already participating based on that. Even though you need a key to unlock some good loot, you are still rewarded with some money and exp, but it is a shame that the good stuff is hidden behind additional grinding or a paywall.
In addition, main missions and side missions in the game have the same instant player interactivity. While on your quests, you will be joining other players who are doing the same exact mission, so these missions really make you feel like you are part of a much bigger picture. This is also a neat design choice because it circumvents the need and struggle of finding a group to tackle a mission with. To make matters even better, each mission has individual racking up points based on their performance. Once the mission is over, the scoreboard for the quest is displayed for everyone to see their performances. While everyone still earns their promised rewards for completing the quest, players who end up at the top will gain a little extra for their performance, so this encourages players to work together and try their best.
The menus at first are a bit clunky, for there is a lot packed into these menus. It does take time to learn how to digest and dissect all of the information, but things start off simply at first in Defiance 2050, so players have some time to get acquainted with the menus and learn what everything does Despite this, one of the coolest, quickest, and convenient features is present with these menus. If you are at any screen in the menu, instead of hitting back a bunch of times to get to a different main screen, you can hold down spacebar and instantly choose which menu you would like to view. This really speeds up the process of navigating the menus, and it is just in general very helpful.
One other awesome thing is the music. The ambiance of the overworld fits the tone and environment of the game very well, although it can get a bit repetitive after playing for extended periods of time. The music that plays during engagements is also alright, but the lack of consistent track variety makes the music a chore to listen to at times. Even though there are slight variations of the same music, which were a nice touch, they still felt too same-y for me to really enjoy them. Speaking of repetitive sounds, enemies that have voice lines tend to cycle through the same two or three voice lines when in combat, and that does end up being noticeable after only a few minutes of gameplay. To add to this, the voice acting is average, so there is no real flare to these voices aside from a few select performances.
Also, there were quite a few glitches that are noticeable. More than a few times, there would be looping sound effects during cutscenes, so this completely ruined these moments for me as it was hard to listen to what was going on when a loud sound effect kept repeating itself. Also, there were moments where the graphics would glitch out, and parts of people’s faces would disappear, but they would appear quickly. There were a couple times where I wasn’t able to properly load a cutscene, so I had to force quit the game and re-open it. While infrequent, it was a chore to regain all of my progress again because of a failed load screen.
The AI in the game could also use some improvements. There were times where mini bosses would attack downed AI companions, and they would completely ignore me, resulting in an easy fight that should normally be a challenge. Some of the gunner enemies also don’t have very good movement, and often just stand still or charge you, making their movement very easy to predict. When there are multiple enemies, things get much more hectic, and that is when the fun really begins.
While the graphics feel a bit dated by general game standards, the designs of the world are pretty cool. The aliens of the world have interesting designs, and the general alien feel of the game is right at home with me. Although the playable alien races are more humanoid than alien, you can create some alright looking alien players, but the main designs of enemy aliens is really where its at. Mutants have a pretty standard, bland design, so the aliens are really what caught my attention. The environments are also pretty plain, and nothing stood at to me most times. There are some areas that have cool designs, but again, these are alien infested areas most times. Overall, though, the designs fit into the world, and they do what they were meant to do, though more things blend in rather than pop out.
Online:
Because Defiance 2050 is an MMO, a constant internet connection is required, and because you end up playing with real people, the game offers a few different ways to play and interact with others. There is a matchmaking system put in place for players to either fight against each other or join each other for some co-op experience.
Players can join teams of 8 or 16 to fights against another team in either Team Deathmatch or Capture and Hold, a King of the Hill variant. While the amount of modes PvP modes are a bit lacking at the moment, there are far more PvE experiences to be had with others. As of now, there are plenty of joinable, co-op experiences, but those require further progress in the main story missions to be able to join.
There have been outspoken players that have brought up the issue of server lag, but I was able to play just fine with minimal lag. There was one instance where my game started to freak out due to a notable about of lag, but it cleared up after several seconds. However, this happened outside of combat, so I can imagine that things would have ended up much worse if I was in that situation.
Defiance 2050 is a free-to-play game, and as a result, many microtransactions are available in order for the game to generate revenue. There are three different paying options to buy bits, the game’s currency that is affiliated with real money. Once you have an appropriate amount of bits for an item, you can purchase whatever you need, but after playing for a while, there were no instances where I felt like something from the online store felt necessary, nor did it feel like something would have made life significantly easier.
The store itself has a few boosters, as do most free-to-play games, and these increase the rate at which you gain money, experience, and so on. In addition to this, you can increase your inventory space, key capacity, and you can also purchase mods for your weapons as well as items used to enhance your weapons. These mods and weapon enhancement items are obtainable in game, so purchasing them is not necessary, but it does require some grinding to get all the high-end materials you would need to enhance your weapons. However, you will be able to get mid to low level materials for enhancing materials fairly easily.
There are also tons of cosmetic items that add no bonuses to your character. None of the outfits in particular caught my eye as I am not one purchase cosmetics, but there is definitely something for everyone in the store. Finally, there are also options to purchase different vehicles. While you do get a vehicle early on, there are options to buy faster vehicles, so there is something there for those who wish to shell out a few bucks to get around slightly faster, but again, some handling of the vehicles may vary.
Story:
The story of Defiance 2050 follows the player, who is one of many Ark Hunters, specially trained and capable soldiers that posses EGO. In addition, EGO provides each player with the same AI companion that will talk to you throughout your journey.
The story starts out to be pretty predictable and cliche, for you are a standard soldier, but a chance encounter sends you on a crumbtrail to your next objective, but your main quest objective always seems to be just out of reach. This story formula has been done many times in the past, so the story ends up falling in line with the
As you start to progress through the story, however, there is some slight nuance with the characters and their perception of the world, your character, and more. Although things never really evolve past that, there was some deep thought put into the story and characters, but there was an obvious emphasis on the characters and their personalities.
One of the most standout characters, Cass, is also one of the best because of her distinct personality. A lot of the characters aren’t too dynamic, unfortunately, so the story ends up not really shining as it should be. Even though Cass is flawed herself in general, she still feels more three-dimensional than most of the cast. Given that, however, the story is still somewhat interesting given the setting. Seeing mankind and aliens alike banding together despite their differences makes for a tried-and-true story, although cliche. The world built around this conflict is easily the best part, and you unlock little bits of information as you progress throughout the game. Lore geeks will have a lot to read up on and listen to, and a lot of time and effort was spent to build up this massive world.
The story ends up sending you all over the place in the world, and its way of introducing you to new areas was cool. Side missions, however, are supposed to help supplement the lore of the world, but they feel more like standard questing. This is a bit of a miss, and the side missions could have really helped improve the overall story.
As you quest on, you will quickly realize that Defiance 2050 has a lot of cutscenes. It feels like every mission has at least one cutscene dedicated to it. This is how most of the story is told, so it felt really nice actually to not have to play and listen to the story unfold at the same time. I find that when I have to play and listen to story, I end up not understanding anything that’s being said because I am concentrating on combat. This is also just ambitious because MMOs generally don’t have this many cutscenes, and while I am sure it is not as cost effective as giving the player something to read, it really puts the story in focus for you, and you can easily digest it as a result. The extra supplemental reading also accomplishes this by requiring you not to be in combat to read, but having actual scenes to view makes the whole process feel more cinematic and meaningful.
Verdict:
Defiance 2050 can be a fun third-person MMORPG that has a lot for a player to do in it. While it is currently rough around the edges in a few key places, the weapon customization, world events, and its moments of seamless player interactivity makes this title have potential, but as of now, the experience will not be a right fit for everyone.
Score: 7.5/10