The 4th Defiance DLC ships out this month with the Gunslinger Trials, and it comes with a number of improvements to the co-op game. A few new things that you can expect to see once the DLC goes live are improved leaderboards, which will reward players based on their contribution and penalize getting incapacitated and repeatedly extracting from combat. The good news is that this should make players fight more strategically. The bad news is you’re in trouble if players don’t play strategically. Luckily, there are incentives to do so.

Trion will also be adding in bonuses for damaging the same target as allies and damaging targets debilitated by nano effects. Players will also be rewarded for reviving multiple allies. The bonus doesn’t stack for the same guy, so don’t get any bright ideas. Unfortunately, there was no mention of a bonus for players that choose to heal allies. Hopefully that’s a mild oversight or Trion has missed that important point to scoring that “countless” developers before them have made when implementing a similar scoring system that will end up screwing healers and pretty much damage the whole point of using it to encourage co-op gameplay.

Trion also revealed more about the co-op arenas that will be available in the DLC. These were previously provided in another DLC in solo form, but now you can take friends.

Defiance: Gunslinger Trials launches later this month.

Source: Defiance Scoring and Co-Op Arenas