Defiance Reporter Episode 022 – Blue Drinks on Us

The Irathient Flu has struck down our hosts this week, so they reach out for some outside help in the form of @WomenOfDefiance’s Michelle and @HellbugsInLove’s Jules! Listen as we discuss Dragon Con and Cosplay! Then Chris and Ben talk DLC2 Alpha gameplay!

Listen now:

Welcome back, Women of Defiance’s Michelle! This week we are also ecstatic to have Hellbugs in Love’s Jules!

• Tell us a little bit about yourself..

  • Creation of @HellbugsInLove twitter identity – co-founded with crazycat9449 on tumblr, eventually grew into primarily a twitter account by the end of May

    • started with live tweeting for WH13 before renewal announced

  • Community reaction

    • @PartyonSaturn’s Felix at Space Mountain

    • Cha’s Jordan doing gymnastics

    • @JaimeMurrayFans’s Helly the vegetarian

    • Brought up one of the bigger questions: lack of show merchandise

  • What do you love most about the show?

    • hellbugs!

    • female cast

OFF THE SET

Dragon Con

• Defiance Community

  • What impressed you most about the fans?

    • They are all just as nice as they are on Twitter – it’s nice not to be catfished by a fandom ;)

    • Within fifteen minutes, we were in Stahma’s hotel room – that’s hospitality

• Defiance Cosplay and quality of

  • Just how many Irisas\Stahmas did you meet? (Not enough!)

    • three or four Stahmas, five or so Irisas, one Sukar, two Kenyas, one Nicky, one E-Rep, two Nolans… (one hellbug) (@Midorikai, @Ellandvynni, @karlyko)

  • Was the quality of the costumes what you had expected?

    • Way more than I ever expected – this was basically Project Cosplay all the way. I haven’t seen Heroes of Cosplay, but I’m pretty sure we were surrounded by many of them at DragonCon – what was also impressive was how they formed a community around making their costumes – not only with each other, but with Defiance people as well

    • Valerie, who organized the Facebook group, had a few Stahma outfits (including bath beads!) and she did a wonderful job of connecting fans throughout the weekend at different events

• Defiance Panel

  • What were some of the questions you would’ve preferred to have answered at the panel?

    • It was all fan Q&A-driven, which can be good or very bad -

    • Wanted more specifics about season two, for sure – they are very tight-lipped – all we got was that things were “dark” – but we did hear that Tony wasn’t there because he was “having a baby”, according to Grant

    • A good question was asked about political philosophy of Defiance, and Grant made a great analogy to liberalism.. and how the E-Reps are very bureaucratic, etc.

    • Mums the word on Kenya

  • What was one thing said at the panel that absolutely made your day?

    • The three panels were all very different. The first one was just Jaime and Grant (with Grant on three hours sleep and a ton of caffeine) – a lot of talk about bath beads, not so much on substance.

    • The second panel was probably the fullest – all three were there, and were asked about their own immigrant experiences, which was enlightening

    • Most endearing of all – Stephanie Leonidas wandering the Defiance markets on set as if they were real markets

    • The best panel had to be the third one – just Grant and Steph for most of it, but because it was the third day, all of us had pretty much met one another – they were more relaxed, joking with the crowd (what would happen if the Apocalypse happened at DragonCon? Nothing)

      • still not exactly sure what happened to Jaime during this panel – was she literally trying to find it?

    • Stephanie deleted her Twitter app by accident

    • There was also a fan panel that was quite interesting, because there are those fans who simply just watch the show or play the game – they don’t do the Twitter, they’re probably not listening right now… and it’s interesting to hear their perspective on the show without all of our white noise in the background

      • at that fan panel @karlyko discovered an image of Julie Benz and Grant from season two – and I think Amanda is definitely rocking some E-Rep clothes (everyone keeps saying she has a new, unexpected role in the town, but don’t we all kind of expect her to run the NeedWant? So isn’t that what she WON’T be doing?)

  • Meeting Grant Bowler and Jaime Murray after

    • Grant is quite charming – he spoke to a gamer on the phone – wanted to know where his “mines” were

    • They were at the Walk of Fame generally all day – they didn’t duck out, they really were there to interact with the fans

  • Was there something you wanted to ask them but just knew they wouldn’t/couldn’t answer? Did it break your heart?

    • Will Amanda chup something other than an electronic device?

    • Will we ever see Graham Greene in bath beads

    • What is that blue drink?

• After experiencing the panel, do you feel like you’ve got a better handle on what will be happening next season in Defiance? Or on the characters they portray?

  • More so on the direction of the show itself. It was mentioned in the first panel (hopefully these will find their way online eventually) that the second season is really where things begin for these characters. The first season was really about setting things up for us.

  • Stahma will be coming into her own a little more

  • Seems successful – Grant was pleased the cast has a bigger greenscreen to work with (size matters)

  • Grant did say we’d see an actor who played an Indogene return next season to play a different character (the Indogene Ben, Amanda’s assistant)

  • Was was NOT mentioned, until earlier this week or last, was the addition of two new cast members (Varus Soleptor and Berlin)

Play the Game, Join the Show contest finalists http://www.defiance.com/en/series/news/vote-now-for-which-game-character-should-be-in-season-2

Voting ends (or has ended) September 12th. Leading the polls we have:

1. Ke-Tala – A brilliant Irathient scientist, Ke-Tala has turned her back on the spiritual traditions of her people in order to re-terraform Earth: http://syfy.ly/1d5qnO8 783 Votes

2. Daeminos – A savage and unpredictable Irathient warrior, Daeminos follows his own code of conduct: http://syfy.ly/16TwFdJ 700 Votes

3. Mr. Pain – A deadly and fearless Irathient, Mr. Pain is an assassin with a twisted sense of humor. Don’t cross his path: http://syfy.ly/14H3Y0a 443 Votes

4. Alethea – A mighty warrior of the Votanis System who wishes for a place where all are equal: http://syfy.ly/13TLhXh 289 Votes

5. Kbob – Operative #53A1, designation ‘Kbob,’ is an elite soldier for Echelon – the premiere private military company of the new frontier: http://syfy.ly/1d7LHS0 276 Votes

NEWS FROM THE BAY AREA

[What we did in game]

Ben

• Playing Defiance 360 from my couch thanks to being laid up and sick all week. Think it might be the Irathient Flu…

• Not much playing thanks to a drug induced haze and drowsiness. Always end up asleep and waking up when my controller vibrates thanks to enemy fire.

Chris

• Got frustrated with Arenas. Too many bugs.

The Thorn Liro vendor items and Mod Hoard Lockboxes

Thorn Liro Vendor (Hotfix 1.102) http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?132667-About-the-Thorn-Liro-vendor-changes-(an-how-we-re-fixing-that!)&p=1254559&viewfull=1#post1254559

• Based on feedback Trion are refunding the difference in Scrip and Reputation between the item prices for items purchased on the Thorn Liro vendor.

• The prices have been reduced from a huge amount of Scrip (in some cases 500k) to a small fraction of the amount.

Mod Hoard Lockboxes (Hotfix 1.103) http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?132337-Alert-Removing-Mod-Hoards&p=1251643&viewfull=1#post1251643

• We are aware that the “Mod Hoard” available at lock box vendors is underwhelming to say the least. We will be removing this item with the next patch. Our apologies will take the form of Tier 4 lock boxes given to those who purchased these rather unpleasant items. The “Mod Hoard” was not intended for public consumption.

• Our compensation efforts have been completed. If you think you’re still missing some Tier 4 Lockboxes, send a message to support@trionworlds.com and they can take a deeper look into your account.

DLC2 Preview during PAX

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/453840098 (Starts at 2:15:00)

Greg Laabs and Elizabeth Tobey showed off some Defiance DLC 2 alpha gameplay at the Twitch.tv booth during PAX Prime and we learned about some interesting new features..

• Instanced Arkfalls

  • Arkfalls can now be called down and the possible impact sites are displayed on the map.

  • To call them down you have to deploy an Ark Spike. 1 Ark Spike is needed for a Minor Arkfall and 4 are needed for a Major.

  • At the Minor Arkfall impact site, enemies will spawn outside the wreckage.

  • Once the outside is cleared you will then enter the ship. These are instanced arkfalls for up to 16 players and anyone can join.

  • Inside of the ships are randomised.

  • Major Arkfalls will have bosses in the interior as well.

• Buff Spikes and Stims

  • Spikes can be placed in an area to apply buffs to all nearby friendlies.

  • So far we’ve seen Damage Boost and Ammo Regen.

  • Not much detail out on Stims yet.

• Grenades

  • Grenades are now “limited use items” and now work more like ammo so that grenade count is the limiting factor on using them instead of the recharge time.

  • Recharge time will be lower.

  • You will be picking up grenades like ammo.

  • More details further down.

• UI Changes

  • The weapon bar on the bottom left of the screen has changed, it now shows the nano effect of the weapon, amount of grenades, and the status of your EGO Power, Spikes and Stims. The call vehicle has moved to just above it.

  • There are now inverted arrows displaying enemies and friendlies, Red for Enemies, Blue for Clan can be seen in the stream.

  • The Quick Menu has been given an overhaul, taking up more of your screen, but no improvements have been made to the many nested menus.

  • Reward Screens are now smaller and hold more information in scrollable form.

Friday Live Stream http://www.twitch.tv/trionworlds/b/457360595

Friday Dev Livestream for September 6, 2013 featuring a Q&A with Trick Dempsey

• Why are there so many Volge emergencies at the moment? Right now because of the sieges, I think it ends this Monday, the Volge emergencies are going to calm down considerably. We wanted to make sure that people encountered the enemies and the changes to the enemies and get that pursuit. Particularly with people returning to school and getting new computers and being able to join the game.

• Does the Volge accuracy at a distance need adjusting? We could do something about that, they shouldn’t have the range that they do. Essentially they need to get the same treatment that we made to Dark Matter Enforcers. They also had sniper like accuracy with their sidearms and it was silly and made them more difficult than they should be.

• Why isn’t there a Volge boss? During the big event we showed off at Pax, we visited a larger major arkfall that we didn’t go inside. If he had, he would have encountered the Volge boss. Essentially a raid boss, something that is designed to fight between 16 and 24 players simultaneously inside a confined space and it does horrible things to people. We’ve drastically improved the group targeting and he now takes advantage of all of those things.

• How will consumable grenades work? DLC 2 contains a lot of toolboxes for arkhunters to use, specifically spikes, stims and grenades which are getting a revamp. One of the problems they had with grenades is that they were high risk with relatively low reward, easy to miss and imprecisions in the third person perspective. We wanted to reduce the cooldown to them and add a more strategic element to their use, and also add more economic pressure in the choice between salvage and scrip. With grenades we’ve reduced their cooldown, currently on alpha the cooldown is 3 seconds, so now you can throw 10 grenades in the time it took for the previous cooldown ends. In addition we have created it so they are limited use, when something goes down to 0 inside your inventory it does remain there, so you can go to a vendor to refill it or you can take advantage of another feature we’ve put in called Smart loot. Smart loot is a consumable item that you already own a copy of, enemies that die have a higher chance to drop that rarity or lower of that item type. So if you had orange frag grenades and you run out of your orange ones you will see orange ones drop, but more frequently green and blue. You can switch between those easily and you can go back to the vendor and get a full stack refill of the grenades.

• What will happen to the current grenades? Current grenades will convert to the new system, but they will remain in your inventory. You will get a full stack of them and you will be able to refill those by going to vendors or picking up the loot.

• How will the Grenadiers mod synergy change? We are looking at the mod synergies that rely heavily on the old system, either we will do a full refresh with it, so you can immediately throw another grenade or other weapons. We haven’t decided entirely with that. Right now we have a system called ‘antiquing’, which creates items which you can sell back without the merchant greed being involved in that. For example strange combinations you could sell back for a huge value, and be able to buy a better item with it. Rather than make the item dissapear from your inventory or replace the bonus with another benefit.

• What do you plan to help with the endgame? We have a plan, I am going to Redwood city next week to discuss that plan. Hopefully sometime next week I will broadcast an honest state of the game address to tell you guys what we are doing. There are a lot of disappointing things in the game, and we want to make those better. If that means we have to change our update schedule we will, you guys have stuck with us and have been a pretty incredible as a fan base and we want to make sure we deliver on the promises of the game.

• Why were Volge emergency drops nerfed? I need to look in on that, as I’ve seen reports of people getting orange drops from Volge elites which surprises me as they should never have been dropping orange drops as we had intended to have them put into sieges. That would have been silly as you would have been getting dozens of oranges a day, so I need to find out which changelist that was and how that happened. To my knowledge they shouldn’t have been nerfed and I want to find out what their status now.

• What happens to those Volge LMGs that were meant to be dropped in sieges? If you reach tier 10 to the scoring you are getting a Volge reward lockbox, which can contain some of the extremely high rarity weapons.

• Will there be a two handed charge blade? No yet. I really love the dynamic that melee weapons created, so I would really like to have an effect of aiming with a charge blade and create more variety. Every new animation we add to the player that would have to be loaded, and that would make more bland looking people at arkfalls so we are balancing priorities.

• Will the PC UI be fixed? I have a strike team right now looking at the UI, someone on that team sighed with exasperation finding out that they had to double click some things as its like the 90s. We are doing a major overhaul of the UI making it more functional and friendly and fixing the major chat elements. It’s hard to go into that, but we need to fix the chat since its silly.

• Can you incentivise people to revive others in sieges? Yes I can, and that is one of the updates that is coming, but I can’t say when it will be. It’s compared to arkfalls, I prefer the way that sieges handle scoring and contribution as its not as invisible and game-able.

• How will spikes, stims and grenades work for console players? Grenades will remain the same, spikes stims and your power will function as a shoulder button and a modifier. For PC users it will be 1,2,3 buttons.

• Switch grenades easily? We’re not making a change to the loadout system just yet, because anything in your inventory can be “smart loot dropping” you will be able to run up to any dropped grenade and hold the pickup button and immediately swap to the grenade. (Like Borderlands)

• Is there any way to improve framerate during arkfalls on the 360? We are going through a MAJOR series of optimizations at the moment. It’s mostly the consoles trying to render everyone, we are doing some things to improve the framework on that but I don’t know the timeframe for those. That is the rendering, engineering and network field.

• Are there plans to make the game 100% co-op, no more single player missions? Yes, totally. Probably one of the most fun thing we’ve done testing is fighting Nim as four player battle. Because of the network re-architecting we had to do for instanced arkfalls, we should in the near future make it so you no longer need to be split up during any of the missions, because it’s silly.

• Clans seem pointless, are there any plans to change it? I want the second DLC to be out already. I worked on the clan progression system, it makes it much more significant. Clans become a very good way to maximise the output of events. Clan participation can increase all of your rewards from various activities, via a progression path.

• Will there be an EGO Rating increase? Technically there has been a slight increase from the episode content. The moment we release new perks, which will happen some day, that will increase the ego rating.

• Weapons and mod synergies not in the game? I’ve got some people looking through the database finding out why we have those discrepancies. The loot system is really complicated. I’m trying to find the root of why it is that they don’t match up, whether its rogue equipment that is being dropped or that a loot table out there is horrible. I’m not personally looking at that but I have some people who are.

• What will happen after the 5 DLCs are released? I can’t say, that’s too forward thinking. There are lots of things we want to improve before DLC 2 is even out. We are doing a lot of improvements to the game beyond the DLCs, because the DLCs are things that we charge people for, and until we have a value that we are comfortable with, it seems strange to charge people for lots of things. I’m really looking forward to creating the improvements to the game that we are going to do right now, and that is where I am focusing. That and working with the team up in NBC Universal and Syfy that the crossovers for the second season are amazing.

• Will future patch notes list everything that has been changed? Our patch notes have been silly in the past, we are fixing that. We are making the process between Rift and Defiance identical, our next big patch will reflect that change.

• When will coldfire plasma assault rifle become a priority? The Volge weapons in general got a major revamp while we were working on the second DLC to make them more interesting and consistent and that is when they will be released to the public. The shape was pretty but it didn’t have a mechanical effect to make it special.

• New Dodge Challenger colours? I don’t think so, those are the real dodge colours. The colours are the real colours from the production line, that is the limiting factor.

• When are we getting dirt bikes and be able to make backflips? Do I pull back the curtain for that? no… There are a variety of dev commands that we can turn on right now that can let them do backflips and supermans etc they are super broken. The backflips should come out at some point, that is well within the physics engine of Havoc and the other stuff we rent. The other strange abilities not so much, but backflips would require an update to the client so that would require a real patch and so might be some time.

• Job crafting? Crafting and things like crafting, none of us are happy with the way that the salvage matrix works. Job systems aren’t so good for shooters. There are a lot of things on the wishlist once we fix a lot of the core gameplay and fun of the game. We are going to be improving the player customization and crafting experience but I can’t comment on when or how much yet.

• What are you doing with PvP, force them to fight in a constant PvP environment instead of wait for instance pops? If you flagged yourself for PvP you would find yourself largely alone, because there are so few PvP players. That is something we want to address, but there is a social problem with it as well. I love shadow wars a great deal but some of our instances are well crafted. We have very complicated feelings about PvP but we’re looking at it.

• Why does decoy not do damaging explosion as stated on the website? One of the functions that used to exist on it was that you could essentially get a flashbang to drop when you swapped places. It caused wierd issues and it is a function we intend to add again, but we are doing an awful lot of balance right now. So we want to leave the powers stable at the moment so that things can be balanced first.

• When will arenas be co-op? I can’t say when, all of the solo stuff we want to be able to be done in a group. Rampages, Hotshots and Races will remain solo.

• How long until we see between season content? I can’t really say, it’s one of those when questions.

• Is there going to be a way to swap your character from NA to EU server on XBOX? I don’t know the legalities of region swapping. I know a lot of people have been talking about swapping, since you can now change which region you are on. But I don’t know where that conversation is going.

• Is there going to be a skill level for Charge Blades? We had them for a bit, I was surprised when they got pulled. We could certainly add it, but a lot of the other weapons have a great deal more variability in the stats they have to alter, we only have 2 possibly 3 variables we can alter on the charge blades. Until we have greater itemization upon them it doesn’t really do justice to players who want to have a good melee combat to have a lame skill progression. Once we have a better skill progression on that we can swap it and turn it back on.

• Can we deactivate the feature to stop being turned around when shot? Get knockback resistance, being hit with a knockback based attack you will turn towards the guy who hit you. They are stuns essentially, also I think Blur will help with that a lot.

• Is anyone looking at group and instance persistence for Arkfall Interiors in DLC 2? The reason you cannot return to the same instance that you went to is that we immediately try to fill any vacancy inside of your group the moment that you disconnect. So normally someone else has taken your slot. In Arkfall Interiors there is no concept of needing to be in a group or having a slot inside of a public instance so as long as that instance still exists, because they can end, your inside of a very unstable structure. When you re-join you will re-join inside of that instance.

• More settings for PC graphics? We have people working on that. Even if you have an awful lot of memory you can’t make it display more players right now. I think the code of it is finished, you can let the game know that you have more RAM and display more players and outfits.

• Retention We do care, which is why we are making the shift that I am helping to spearhead. The increase in overall quality the better chase, the more reasons to log on. I think that would mean that we would get a greater retention of people who already are here but it would mean that our acquisitions would stay. It is difficult to discuss that in any specific way without talking a lot of shop that I shouldn’t talk about.

Community Spotlight

Each episode we try to find gamers who go above and beyond to create a more immersive experience for the Defiance Community. This week we want to shine our spotlight on

3rd World Tactics PS3 Defiance Clan

http://www.3rdworldtactics.com/

A medium clan of 30+ members responsible for organizing some of the best and awesome community events on PS3. Watch the schedule for Shadow War events, Clan vs Clan nights, and Death Marches. Check out their videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmMmsmJNn8zrqN9ZnO43I3Q/videos

Remember, if you want us to feature your clan or community site on Defiance Reporter, tweet us, leave a voicemail, or send us an email at defiance@mmoreporter.com.

LAST MINUTE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• PICK UP A BOXED COPY OF DEFIANCE, GET SWEET LOOT IN RIFT! For a limited time: get a Ghost Hellbug mount, Votan Fragger weapon transmog, and $5 in RIFT Store Credits when you buy a physical copy of Defiance! This offer applies to Standard and Collector’s Edition boxed copies of Defiance on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3, and is valid while supplies last – so hunt down yours and wield the loot of the future, today.

• SAVE 50% ON DEFIANCE AT GAMESTOP! From September 11th until the 18th, console versions of Defiance are 50% at GameStop. Prices are good both online and in stores!

• Join our PC clan IGNI FERROQUE! <defiancereporter.guildlaunch.com> No registration required, just look for one of these officers in-game, Corso Vanlocke, Jack Thundersteele, or Almazar to get an invite!

CONTACT US!

Email: defiance@mmoreporter.com

Twitter: twitter.com/defiancepodcast or @defiancepodcast

Website: defiancereporter.com

Voicemail: 616-666-6778 (and our new widget on the ride hand side of the page)

Facebook: facebook.com/defiancereporter

Youtube: youtube.com/user/mmoreporternetwork

Ben: twitter.com/nebsinsane

Chris: twitter.com/almazar