Defiance Reporter Episode 018 – The Con

It’s that time of year again! The San Diego Comic-Con 2013 has come and gone, and with it a wake of Defiance news for Season 2, a few Defiant Cosplayers, and a sneak peek at the up and coming DLC! Tune in to hear Chris and Ben discuss everything they’ve learned from SDCC 2013 after the break!

Listen now:

There’s lots to discuss this episode:

• Syfy and Trion’s Defiance presence at Comic Con. Great pictures from fans all over twitter flooded my twitter. Mary Jane’s Cafe was converted into a Need/Want, A few cosplayers dressing up as Castithans and Irathients, and one fan even made himself a giant red hellbug hat! (http://www.syfy.com/comiccon/ )
  • Hellbug Hat http://t.co/YD09b0zKOt, http://t.co/UGslLB51dQ
  • @Airlily’s photos of Mary Jane’s Cafe  pic.twitter.com/3AGNcZbQUa, http://t.co/DtQO9GrT4A,
  • Other pictures http://t.co/QWWHGoN6fW, http://t.co/EnuXwQ11bT, http://t.co/V9zgynSaU0, http://t.co/T15yW3L7jw
• The Defiance Panel at Comic-con discussing what’s coming up in Season 2 (and the unfortunate unavailability of the panel in its entirety online).
• More info on the Castithan Charge DLC,
• A Staff change at Trion Worlds? New EP and new promises,
• …and even an Emmy Nomination.

OFF THE SET

Emmy Nomination for OUTSTANDING SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS 2013

http://www.emmys.com/nominations/2013/Outstanding%20Special%20Visual%20Effects

Pilot Episode

What They’re Going Up Against:

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome

Falling Skies – Worlds Apart

Game Of Thrones – Valar Dohaeris

Hemlock Grove – Children Of The Night

Last Resort – Captain

‘Defiance’ Season 2 Intel: Everything Has Changed

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/defiance-season-2_n_3636476.html

(with further info from CinemaBlend’s Defiance Comic-Con Panel Live Blog by Mack Rawden http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Defiance-Comic-Con-Panel-Live-Blog-57617.html and from Rueben of TV Equals http://www.tvequals.com/2013/07/22/defiance-season-2-panel-comic-con-2013/

Maureen Ryan over on the Huffington Post had the pleasure of moderating the panel, which included executive producer Kevin Murphy and stars Grant Bowler (Joshua Nolan), Julie Benz (Amanda Rosewater), Stephanie Leonidas (Irisa), Tony Curran (Datak Tarr), Jaime Murray (Stahma Tarr), Jesse Rath (Alak Tarr) and Trion Worlds senior game producer Rob Hill.

“The goal at the end the end of Season 1 was to take the chess board and flip it up and knock all the pieces all over the place. Every single character has a reset.” Kevin Murphy

Here’s a list of things to expect from Season 2, and a few of the panel’s many amusing moments:

• Rawden Kevin Murphy says the goal of the season finale was to “reset every single character”. He wanted to mix up the chess pieces and let fans see how characters would do in with different responsibilities. Amanda is a new line of work. Stahma is now the head of the Tarr family, and Irisa’s fate will be “front and center of the Season 2 premiere”, which will bring up “many, many more questions.”
• Ryan It sounds as though Datak will be away from his family for the first part of the season. “What happened to him” — which was unclear after he murdered the Earth Republic official — will be explored in first part of the season, Murphy said. Curran sounded mournful about being away from home: “I won’t be bathing with my gal at all,” he said.
• Ryan As for Stahma, she’ll be experimenting with the increased power and status that her new role in the business gives her. “Stahma has taken over the family with Alak as the figurehead,” Murphy said. During her time in Defiance, Stahma has been around “other women who are far more liberated,” Murray said. “Castithan men put their women in cages. She was trying to control from within the cage, but maybe this season she’ll get a taste of what it’s like in the outside world.”
• Ryan Did Stahma actually love Kenya, and did she kill her? “I think [Stahma] enjoyed the experience, and just because you kill somebody does not mean that you didn’t love them.” Murray said to big laughs. “I can truly say no one will ever love Kenya as much as I did ever again.”
• Ryan As for Kenya’s fate, that was left very much up in the air. No news there, I’m afraid!
• Rueben The entire cast also shared that they have all received such great feedback from fans especially on Twitter with Jaime stating that there are some great ‘Defiance’ fan groups out there, including “The Women of Defiance” who she claimed are “so funny”. Jesse also shared that the online feedback he got on his character Alak throughout the first season was quite unique: “they liked him in the pilot and then (when the) hell bug episode aired (they thought) he was wussy but then they came around by the end of the season”
• Rawden Lots of talk about the awkward bath scenes featuring Stahma and Alac Tarr. They tried to make them as awkward as possible, take after take pushing the incestuous undertones a little further. As anyone who has seen the show knows, that awkwardness definitely came through.
• Ryan Amanda is in a dark place; her sister is missing and she lost the mayoral race. She’s also “in a new line of work — you can make of that what you will, but it’s a very interesting line of work,” Murphy said.
• Bear McCreary, the show’s composer, showed up to ask a question at the audience microphone: “Why do you make me write music for bugs?” The general consensus: Because he’s good at it.
• Ryan Fans are also wondering what happened to Irisa and her story “will be front and center of the season premiere,” Murphy noted. “We will learn something about it that will raise many, many more questions.”
• Ryan Before Season 2 arrives, fans can play the Defiance game to get clues about what a couple of the characters are doing (two characters from the show will be in the game between seasons — Nolan, and one other character that Hill didn’t name). The game will serve as something of a narrative bridge between seasons, and elements from the game will be a bigger part of the storytelling in Season 2, Murphy and Hill said.
• Rawden Season 2 will feature at least Los Angeles and perhaps a few other towns. Nolan will be on the road, and we’ll get a much better sense of the world outside Defiance’s borders.
• Ryan Sukar was scheduled to die in the razor rain episode, but actor Noah Danby “was so magnetic and wonderful and fit the top hat so well,” Murphy said, that they couldn’t resist bringing him back to the show after that, and he’ll be back in Season 2 as well. (Murphy didn’t say, but perhaps Sukar will be back in a flashback? We’ll be seeing a lot more of those in the new season.)
• Ryan New Earth Republic characters include Niles Pottinger, the new provisional mayor, and Viceroy Mercado, “a grand old man of E-Rep,” Murphy said. “They have some nasty, nasty plans for Defiance,” and they are very interested in what’s down in the mines (which no longer belong to Rafe McCawley).
• Ryan I asked that we get more Doc Yewll scenes in Season 2, and Murphy answered, “Request granted.” That said, the cast described the four-hour makeup process Trenna Keating goes through to become Doc Yewll and it sounds grueling.
• Rawden Judging by fan reaction, she’s VERY popular.
• Rawden Tony Curran’s mother called him after the first episode asking why the producers made Datak wear a fake nose. He had to tell her, sheepishly, that he didn’t wear a fake nose–just the one she gave him.
• Ryan When Season 2 begins, Nolan is no longer lawkeeper and is out looking for Irisa. What was it like being resurrected? Old hat, really, Bowler joked — he played Jesus in a movie earlier in his career, so what occurred in the Defiance Season 1 finale was technically his second resurrection.
• Rueben A few last teases that Kevin revealed were that we will see a time before the aliens came to Earth, there will be more confrontations between Stahma and Amanda and the audience will also learn a lot more about the cultures and history of the alien races and more back stories on all of the characters as well.

Some video snippets from Comic-con can be found on Defiance.com’s site: http://www.defiance.com/en/series/news/defiance-at-comic-con-watch-all-the-videos

‘Defiance’ Cast Talks Evolving Characters and Cool New Changes by Melissa Molina

http://screencrave.com/2013-07-19/comiccon-2013-defiance-season-2/

• Grant Bowler reveals plot details from the lost pilot script:
  • The original pilot script, which was a beautiful script by the way. My guy has been there for seven years, had a human daughter and was settled down with Amanda. There’s a whole bunch of different stuff. Irisa didn’t really exist. Tommy didn’t really exist. It was a very different story, kind of like Gary Cooper in High Noon
  • Fresh quality, no racism, the right to pursue your ambitions, all very American qualities. When we come into Defiance there’s a town counsel, there’s an ex-mayor, there’s a mayor in running, there is all these power structures. We’re learning who all these people are. We know what drives them, their ambitions are, what their fears are and who they would like the world to see them as, then we blow it up and we make them all start again. That’s the difference between season one and season two.
• Tony Curran discusses the misunderstood Datak and how he’ll fare next season:
  • I’m looking forward to Datak wisening up a little bit and not attacking and asking questions later. Instead of him being so spontaneous with his rage, I think he has to try and keep a lid on it a little bit more, his wrathful nature because it obviously hasn’t done him too well so far.
  • You can have this hard, tough exterior, but inside… I’m not going to say that he wants a cuddle, but I think he wants a little compassion as well. It’s probably something he didn’t get when he was young, and I think it’s something they may touch on in the future.
• Jaime Murray on the excitement of Season 2 and how Stahma Tarr will evolve:
  • I’m really excited about the world that we created in the first season and how intricate it was. It’s such an ensemble piece that I would read the script, we would do the read-through in the room, but the Tarr household is a whole little universe of it’s own.
  • What I really like about the second season is now that we’ve established all of that, now everybody has accepted that and knows who all the players are, the different species and the different relationships. Now we get to really play. I read the first three episodes of the new season and I was like, oh wow.
  • Now I feel like some really gritty, edgy, frightening stuff can unfold.
• Jesse Rath and Stephanie Leonidas are excited to reveal some cool changes to the world of Defiance:
  • Jesse Rath: It gets much darker, from what we have seen. We’ve been given the first couple of scripts and it seems like the world opens up hugely. We find ourselves in LA, so it’s not just the town of Defiance anymore. There’s quite a lot to come.
  • Stephanie Leonidas: It’s really cool to see some landmarks of the cities, like how they’ve been affected by the terraforming. There’s some recognizable stuff that you’ll see… It should be very cool.
• Not many characters at the start of the new season are in a good place, Amanda being one of them. Benz explains where she is mentally when the show returns:
  • She’s starting in a pretty bad place. She’s got a lot to deal with. She’s got to re-define herself in the town of Defiance to figure out how she fits in. She needs to figure out what happened with her sister.

NEWS FROM THE BAY AREA

[What we did in game]

Ben

• I’ve mostly stayed off the PC version of Defiance as I’ve completed the Replay Content  Pursuits and wanted to get it all done on the XBOX.
• I am now EGO 315 on the 360 and have everything done for the Replay Content EXCEPT the co-op instance that require me to be EGO 500.. Commandeer Cronkite. Now I have until next Wednesday to get it all done or I miss out on the title.
• I had the humbling experience of playing Shadow-wars with a controller in my hand instead of a KB/M combo and watched as listener Lust of Clan 7 totally CLEAN HOUSE.
• I got behind the Monolith on the Golden Gate Bridge with only an EGO of 300! Pics or it didn’t happen? OK. http://t.co/yOu7qqaNtO Here’s another one! http://t.co/PLgc6r79G7

Chris

• Worked on all the Replay Content on PC. I’ve completed all of the episodic missions, and enjoyed playing them out of order.
• Moved the story along as well.
• Starting to be annoyed by the lag between completing a story mission/episodic mission and when the icons show up on the map for the next/other one.

CASTITHAN CHARGE PACK DLC AT COMIC-CON, covered exclusively by Twitch TV

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/432924064

The first DLC for Defiance has been talked about on numerous occasions and previewed behind closed doors, but this is the first preview of the content we’ve seen, shown only at SDCC 2013.

• Charge Blades
  • Sequenced or Combo Attacks
  • Slower, charged pound attack
• EGO powers around Blur are abilities that affect melee attacks and have been around since release. Now with the charged blades, they are a viable build option and extremely powerful.
• Dueling.
  • Players start off cloaked so they can position themselves
  • Duels are best 2 out of 3
  • Players are limited to a large rounded are of play.
• 4 player vehicle looks Sa-WEET! Unless you get stuck in the back seat. Then it sucks.
• New Siege Content
  • Volge are still as strong as they are in current Emergencies. Charged weapons seem to do much better damage to them.
  • Sieges can be activated, but play much like the Plague Sieges
• Dark Matter Arkfalls
  • There are glowing power up charge rods that can be used to acquire a temporary Blur ability and speed boost but enemies can also buff up.
  • Monolith boss doesn’t seem as big as the one at the Golden Gate (opinion) but it does take large leaps and does fly.
  • Why can we fight a Monolith in a group and win but when we get to the gate it ALWAYS wins? Stupid Deus Ex Machina…
• Not much mention about turrets other than seeing one during the siege. You upgrade turrets by paying resources.
• Castithan Player models were shown off. Pale and not so beautiful..
• Charged weapons were FINALLY and briefly shown off. Showing what it looks like for a weapon to charge up and overheat.
• Charged Sniper rifles, when charged up, will fire in a burst of 4 or 5 shots. It does result in kickback though.

For a better look at actual game play with a charged weapon or blade, head on over to YouTube and see MMOHDTV’s “First Look” video http://youtu.be/B0tlMpb-S-E

As we already know, the DLC is a two part deal; the content you pay for, and the content released as an update for everyone to play. In case you forgot, here is a breakdown of what you paid for and what everyone gets for free (courtesy of Defiance Data http://www.defiancedata.com/page.php?id=1):

Paid Content

• Access to play the Castithan Species
• Access to a new Story Mission Line with new Battle Arena Game Mode
• Access to the new Castithan Battle Arenas
• Castithan Charge Blade & Ceremonial Mask as a reward from Story Mission Line
• A unique version of the Raptor, a new 4 player truck of doom
• A unique Castithan version of an outfit
• A Charge Weapons Starter Pack
• Access to New Pursuits
• New Xbox and PS3 Trophies and Achievements
• One time option for a single character to have their appearance change, name change, and species changed

Free Content

• Access to the new Charge Weapons Class and Castithan Blades
• Access to Sieges, a new Open World Game Mode
• Access to the new Monolith Major Arkfall
• Access to a new PvP Map – Military Academy
• Join a friend into the Battle Arenas Game Mode
• Duel your friends and neighbors in the Duels Game Mode
• Enemies, lockboxes, and events can drop Charge Weapons
• Select a new voice for you character
• Multitude of game improvements from UI to content

Store Items

The following features are tabled to be released for the store only.

• New Mods that tint the color of your Castithan Blade
• Lockboxes have a chance to get Charge Weapons
• More versions of the Raptor, the new 4 player truck of doomed compensation
• Character Customization changes: Appearance change, name change, or everything change

THE FUTURE OF DEFIANCE (or WTH Happened to Nathan Richardsson?!)

http://community.defiance.com/en/2013/07/23/dev-blog-castithan-charge-pack-and-the-future-of-defiance/

“Hello.  My name is Chris Lena and I am the new Executive Producer for Defiance.  I have been working at Trion for over three years and started on Defiance last November (almost exactly 6 months before launch).  My background is a long history of working on massively multiplayer games both live and in development which has driven home the fact that those that play your game are not just customers but partners.” Chris Lena

According to Chris Lena’s LinkedIn account, looks like he’s currently working on Defiance and End of Nations. Past work include:

• THQ/ICE Draconica Online
• Cryptic Studios Champions Online
• SOE Everquest
• and online support for Blizzard during the Diablo II launch.

“But enough about me, let’s get down to business..”

• The first DLC will drop in August. No specifics and this is already a push back from the rumored July release. I only use “rumored’ because it was never “officially” announced.
• Although there are a lot of details to talk about with the first DLC I don’t want to spend all of my time doing that.  That can come when we announce the date.
• I know that many of you play without any issues but too many of you are encountering problems that you should not have to experience.  We need to make sure that when someone logs into Defiance that the only frustration they have is getting hammered by the Volge. Seems to me we’ve been spending most of our development time on this problem..

Patching

• For console players: In this upcoming DLC we have fixed all known occurrences of this “Critical Error” bug.  Also, we have taken this opportunity to introduce a new loading bar that will more clearly communicate where you are in total patching progress.

Social Features

• There are issues with groups of players entering into a Co-Op Map and not all of them ending up together or entering a Co-Op Map that was already under way. We have this fixed and it is making its way out to Live soon.
• There are fixes and improvements to voice chat and quite a few changes to the chat window in general.
• We also realize that there are quite a few problems with the way Clans are working and we are digging into those as well.

Region Locked

• Not an issue for PC users, but console gamers will not be able to select a region server to join friends in other countries. Keep in mind characters are server-bound and you will have to start a new character on the other server to play.

Other Stuff

• There are a lot of fixes that are going to be making their way onto the live servers but I will leave that to you and the patch notes of the future.  Everything else is just talk. Seems to me that all this was.. just talk. Its the same information we had before. Same promises, different lips.

No further news on the departure of Nathan Richardsson but we wish him the best of luck on his future endeavors and we welcome new EP Chris Lena into the fold. We may be hard on you Chris, but we do it out of love and devotion to this game.

DEFIANCE Patch 1.025 Notes

http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?112352-Patch-1.025-Patch-Notes

Patch was deployed on 07/23/13 with the following fixes:

• Challenges: Hotshots & Rampages: You should no longer get stuck after repeatedly suiciding (for example, during the Crystal Defense Hotshot)
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur during an Arkfall
• Fixed a bug where you would lose ammo swapping weapons in the current loadout when the ammo pool was full.
• Fixed a bug where players would join an instance and not be properly put into a group (yet they could still interact with group teleporters)
• Fixed a bug where group UI did not appear for some of the group members when entering an instance
• Fixed a bug where adding a Strain Reducer Mod to the Innoculator would reduce the amount of shots fired to one
• An EGO call was set to repeatable by mistake, resulting in constant EGO spam after completing any TV Tie In Recap Mission. This is no longer the case.
• Players are no longer spammed with their most recent EGO power level up and things they unlocked when logging into the game or changing servers into PvP, etc
• Fixed an exploit where players could go to a friend during the beginning of a Rampage, causing Advanced Weapons to drop at their friend’s feet.
• Fortunately, you will no longer be spammed with “You are now bound to the Bathhouse” when near certain extraction points.
• Sometimes Monarchs and other nastiness would spawn during the Marin Time Trial: Mine Alley making the race difficult to complete. The Monarchs have let up, and will spawn elsewhere.
• Emergencies: Landmine Rescue: Updated landmine arming range to be a bit farther away. This will let you approach them to disarm them without them just blowing up in your face (which was rather unfair).
• Tweaked Arkfall frequency to more evenly distribute enemy groups (i.e. previously there was a high frequency of Hell Bug Arkfalls and you would rarely see Scrapper Arkfalls)

Bad news followed on the heels of the patch as most players have been experiencing connectivity issues. A Hotfix has been applied to EU servers and the NA servers are expecting a patch very early morning 07/26/13. For the latest on the issue, follow @DefianceGAME on twitter or follow the link in the shownotes to the forums where Sledgehammer is keeping players up to date. http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?113244-Ongoing-Connectivity-Latency-Disconnect-Issues

DEFIANCE NOW AVAILABLE STARTING AT $9.99

http://community.defiance.com/en/2013/07/25/defiance-now-available-starting-at-9-99/

There has never been a better time to start playing Defiance because now you can secure your copy for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for $19.99 and on PC for $9.99.

Digital Editions

• PC Standard $9.99
• PC Deluxe $29.99
• Playstation Store $19.99

Physical Editions

• Standard $19.99
• Collectors Edition $39.99
• Ultimate Edition $59.99

One thing to note is that not all retailers are reflecting the new prices yet. Walmart still has a PC Standard edition for $35, while Amazon has one for $13; Steam also has the Upgrade from Standard to Deluxe set at $29.99 instead of $19.99; and Gamestop is selling the Ultimate Editions at the correct price, and the standard editions for consoles,  but nothing else so watch where you buy from.

Community Responses

@defiancepodcast @DefianceGame they can make it free for all I care as long as they do something for the day 1`ers #defiance

— CB (@TrollyTrinity) July 26, 2013

@defiancepodcast @DefianceGame A price drop like that…they’re trying to build up the player base and rely on their online sales. (Cont.)

— LuSt (@l7l_LuSt_l7l) July 26, 2013

@defiancepodcast @DefianceGame kind of ticked I paid so much & it just keeps dropping and dropping while dlc content same price

— Saturn (@partyonsaturn) July 26, 2013

@defiancepodcast @DefianceGame on the plus side though, I’ve been able to convince more of my friends to join up because it’s so cheap now

— Saturn (@partyonsaturn) July 26, 2013

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:

DEFIANCE Data

http://www.defiancedata.com/

We’ve featured Defiance Data once before here on Defiance Reporter but since then the site has come a LONG way, reporting on the World of Defiance, constantly adding information like lore, maps, data recorder locations, etc to the database, livestreams, and soon the ability to display 3D models from the game on the site. This site practically already has everything related to the Defiance game and it continues to find more data to add. Great work, Etaew

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

KTAM Radio is holding a few contests “We are looking for Clan ads, we have the Dick’s Taters Contest, write a script, produce a commercial and provide an image of a Dick’s Tater, another fine product from the Dick Family Farms known for their Big Bag of Dick’s Apples, and Dicken’s Cider and the new Dick’s Popping Cherries. Rules are up on our forum (http://www.ktamradio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=78) and on the Defiance forums (http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?110095-K-TAM-Radio-Contest-Win-a-T-Shirt-and-have-your-Ad-play-on-K-TAM&highlight=KTAM). We have some more ideas, but like everyone else waiting for the DLC before we make any final choices, don’t want to scoot off in the wrong direction.”

Join our 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