Defiance 2050 is the follow-up to 2013’s sci-fi MMO, Defiance. I had the opportunity to view the customization, combat, world map, and even a dungeon in alien infested San Francisco.
The first thing that was shown off was the class and weapon customization. Much like in World of Warcraft, individual gear is added up to give a single number that lets you and other players know how powerful your character is. As for the individual parts, there are tons of upgrades, stats, and passives to unlock and equip to a single weapon. At first, you are only able to make a couple additions to a weapon. As you progress further unto the game, you can unlock the ability to add more to your gun. These can come in the form of passive buffs, attachments, and you can even break down other weapons to use to upgrade your weapons.
As you unlock more for a weapon, you will unlock powerful passive that will automatically activate once their requirements have been met. Also there are a max of three traits for your guns, and you can even take a chance to re-roll for different or better stats. Also, there are a ton of numbers at play, so if you love to mess around with percents, buffs, debuffs, and damage down to the decimal, then you will love the way the stats are handled.
Next, we were given a nice view of all the classes to choose from. At the moment, there are five classes to choose from, and those range from a high damage dealing assassin to a tank that can activate a barrier to repel attacks. When speccing into a class, there are multiple types of builds you can do for a single class. There is a skill tree, but it is handled a little differently than other RPGs. While progressing in a skill tree requires certain amount of points to get to the next tier of abilities, each ability tier caps off after a certain amount of point commitment. 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.
Another interesting aspect is that you can actually change your class/weapon load out at any point during gameplay. This was done in order to ensure that players were able to adapt to every situation and to make sure that if something isn’t working in a dungeon, it can be fixed while still doing the instance. To balance this, if you use a skill in one class and then switch to another class, your skills will still be on cooldown.
Next, we got a view of the map, and there were a lot of little things going on. First of all, there were a lot of markers indicating a dungeon. Each dungeon has a skull rating, ranging from 1 to 5 from what was shown, and the more skulls, the harder the dungeon would be. Also, there was a big red circle at one spot on the map. It was revealed that those circles were world bosses that would be available to fight. Similar to Guild Wars 2, the world boss will be available for anyone to fight, and over 50 people will be able to participate in taking down these bosses. Be warned, however, for these bosses are no pushover, and every person counts while trying to take on these beasts.
Moving on, dungeons were designed to be completed either solo or with up to four players. While in the dungeon, there was a showcase of a variety of skills form an assassin class and a guardian class. The assassin has a lot of skill aimed at getting critical hits and dealing extra damage, and their final skill in their skill tree gives them access to either a weapon that can deal massive damage, or a close range sword. We were shown the sword, and it looked awesome to use. The guardian gameplay had the player using shield to avoid damage as well as using energy to conjure up armor to take reduced damage. At the end of the dungeon, there was a boss fight, but there was a cutscene before the fight detailing some of the story as to why the boss is being fought. Also during the cutscene, the mechanics of the boss were shown rather than told. This made fighting the boss feel intuitive and natural.
After the demo was finished, it was revealed that Defiance 2050 will have a valor system, and players who played the previous Defiance MMO will be able to transfer data to score some extra stuff in the latest game. You can transfer data from the original Defiance from any platform to any platform that Defiance 2050 will be on. This was done so that you can start off with something extra on the platform of your preference.
Finally, the game was confirmed to be free to play, and there will be premium classes. Currently, the only premium class is the demolitionist, but there will be more added in the future. Defiance 2050 will be entering a short open beta period from June 22 – 25, and then shortly afterwards, the game will launch for those who purchased a founder’s pack on July 6, and the game will full launch on July 10 for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.