Community Q&A: March 27

Welcome, ark hunters! You’ve asked, we’re answering. We’re back with another action packed Defiance Developer Q&A! Make sure to keep an eye out for the next question collection thread on our official forums next week!

Source:

• Chris Robet: Can we add new sword abilities?
  
  We are currently looking in to adding nano mods to swords. It’s a little complicated with the existing color mods, but we hope to come up with something soon. As for specific effects and abilities we will have to look into nano mods first before we can experiment further.
• Anemic crowd: What synergy is the next event going to be?
  
  The Armistice Festival will have weapons that will give synergies from their respective Arkfall Events.
  
  
  • Hulker Hell Arkfall Event & Blackened Hellfire Supply Crate will have the Synergy “The Purge”
  • New Frontier Harvest Arkfall Event & Cornucopia Supply Crate will have the Synergy “Plate Slicer”
  • Solstice Strike Arkfall Event & Radiant Solstice Supply Crate will have the Synergy “Saturnalia”
  • Colony Courtship Arkfall Event & Heartbreaker Supply Crate will have the Synergy “Heartbreaker”
    
    
• Bentu: Can you add an indicator to a downed player that tells others around them if they have a self revival available?
  
  That sounds pretty interesting we will look into how easy or difficult this will be to implement.
  
  
• Graywolfe: Can we start getting T4 mods of each syn as the random specials at the vendors?
  
  For the time being we will leave the system as it is now. We may revisit the vendor specials in the future, for the time being we are looking into the reputation vendors first.
  
  
• Fedbox: Will there ever be new cars?
  
  We need to tweak some of the existing vehicles first, after that we may start looking in to new vehicles.
• Tex_Arcana: Are major Scrapper/Dark Matter/Hellbug Arkfalls going to get better value for participation? At present they are not worth attending except for pursuit completions.
  
  For the immediate time frame they will remain as is. I have been thinking about adding some new pursuits related to these events.
  
  
• TNO: With the way the Threat Level system is working it feels like we are getting penalized for playing in groups. This becomes particularly apparent when doing contracts at Conflict Sites. Is this something that is troubling you and does your team intend to look into it?
  
  With the Alcatraz update there was a general scaling change that should ease some of the level spikes we were all experiencing with threat level scaling. You can test out some of these changes on PTS if you are on PC.
  
  
• Claydough: Can we please get the option to increase the amount of load outs with the alcatraz update?
  
  We currently do not have any immediate plans to increase the amount of load outs a character has. We may revisit this in the future as we add more types of gameplay that may require a new loadout.
  
  
• Ruvo: If you make it to where reviving a fallen ally removes yourself rev, then there is zero incentive to stop and help a fallen ally. Would it not be easier and more beneficial to limit the amount of revives available to each player to one or two per expedition, then require resources to revive beyond that point to make it challenging yet encourage team play for those of us who enjoy helping our fellow players? One of my ego perks is a 45% recharge to myself revive for reviving an ally. Does this negate that as well?
  
  Many players were asking for more challenging group content something that wasn’t a walk in the park, a challenge that also included a real death penalty. We listened to the players and are releasing this content in the form of expeditions. The difficulty of Expeditions should be tuned as to which you will want to revive your fellow group member to survive the encounters. If you want to succeed in Expeditions, you’ll need their gun by your side. During the development process we considered existing builds available to the players via EGO perks. We also made a new rare synergy, “heartbreaker” which grants a 2% recharge to your self revive on an enemy kill. This synergy was available to players who participated in the Valentine’s Event and there will be chance to get this rare Synergy as part of the upcoming Armistice Festival event coming up next week. As for the EGO perk “Turn the Tide”, it still works in Expeditions. With the "Turn the Tide” EGO perk equipped during an expedition, when you revive your fellow group member you will have your revive charge start at 45% instead of 0%.