Popular Post DisturbedSwan Posted February 16, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted February 16, 2019 Started this last night, have probably put around 6-7 hours into it so far. I'm not going to go into too much detail as folks have already put up detailed impressions of their time with the demos. But, yeah, seeing as my expectations for this were pretty much 0 and I'd not played any of the pre-release demos, alphas etc. I have been pleasantly surprised. The graphics are what I noticed first really, it looks absolutely phenomenal. The voice acting and motion capture for all the characters just feels so incredibly lavish as well, all the performances are amazing and the motion capture just looks and sounds like one of the most realistic I've ever experienced. The hub world is reminiscent of Destiny's Tower but it feels much more Biowarey than I expected it too, it feels like much more of a real, living, breathing place than the lobby-esque workmanlike aesthetic of the Tower. Throughout the first few missions more and more areas of the Fort are introduced to you and you discover new people and places to see like a lovely plaza and bar. What has surprised me the most about the base is probably the NPC conversations though, you have multiple people to speak to after pretty much every mission you finish and talking to these different people to get to know them is a real joy, it doesn't feel like some throwaway exposition dump like in Destiny and other GaaS shooters, you do feel these folks have personalities. The 'action' part of the game I just felt like I was playing an Iron Man game really, there's not really any other way I can describe it. It felt fucking amazing to jump of of the cliff face outside the fort and just engage the thrusters for the first time. Combat itself feels way better than I expected too, although it has been very easy so far with me dying once and my shield being depleted on only 1 other occasion, all the other missions I've played have been a breeze. I have had quite a few bugs. Textures popping in some places - one time I was flying around and a whole environment was pretty much white and then spawned in around me making me crash -the helmet of your character not appearing on the cutscene that plays just before you go on a mission, a weird one where the subtitle box from previous dialogue stays on the screen and won't go away. I've also had quite a struggle getting it to run smoothly on my PC - which is surprising - I had to lookup a guide to get the settings right earlier and have actually managed to get a mostly stable 60fps with few dropped frames - before I was getting as low as 30fps in firefights. I actually haven't had the game kick me out at all though which is surprising, the servers and matchmaking side of things has seemed uber stable so far apart from the long loading times to get into a mission. So yeah. I like it and I want to play more. Apparently after 10 missions there's some kind of Wall that you have to grind to get up, but I'm not there yet so just enjoying the journey so far. It definitely feels way more Bioware than I was expecting and way more distinct thanks to the flight aspect. Lots of pics: Spoiler 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 18, 2019 Author Share Posted February 18, 2019 The more I play of this the more issues I run into. The texture pop-in has got worse, a lot of the time when I exit out of one of the doors of the Base and go into the Market area things are still loading in, I got stuck behind scenery one time and had to quit out. I've also had invisible enemies attacking me out of nowhere when in freeplay which isn't much fun either. I've also had issues with the menu map taking ages to load - sometimes as long as 30 seconds - and the Forge too. QoL issues are also bugging me like not being transported to your teammates when you enter a game, having to attempt to fly to them before a - short - timer runs out and then the game having to load you in for 30 seconds so you can finally join them. The mission variety is just not there either. I'm still having fun with it and it's still a blast just flying around in these suits but I just wish it was a little more polished, maybe a Day 1 patch this Friday will sort out some of these issues but I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 19, 2019 Author Share Posted February 19, 2019 I'm close to giving up on this now, it's just a bit of a mess. I just went into a mission, waited 2 minutes for it to load then once I got into the mission it failed to warp me to the area twice, when it eventually did I had to sit through another lengthy loading screen followed by an unskippable cutscene. Then I had to wait another 2 minutes for it to load, only to load into a load of scenery and had to quit out. I've had an infinite load glitch a couple of times and missed the entire conclusion to that mission. I know Andromeda gets a lot of stick, but this is far worse than that technically in my view. It feels like the seams are stapled together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 22, 2019 Author Share Posted February 22, 2019 I've played quite a bit more of it tonight and it seems like the 'Day 1' patch has eliminated almost all my technical issues thankfully. The loading screens are more frequent than I'd like still but the times themselves are pretty much halved from what I remember them being before. I've had absolutely none of the awful texture pop-in issues I was having before either. I've reached the grindy part of the game now. 4 Trials to open 4 different tombs where you have to tick off a variety of things in order to proceed. Luckily most of these can be done in regular missions so I've already unwittingly done quite a few of them just playing through the missions and such but there's one for doing World Events that needs to be done in Freeplay. I think I only need 1 more multi-kill, 2 more Ult-kills, 3 more World Events completed, 5 more chests opened and to revive 2 more people and I'll be all set. So it hasn't really been too bad for me so far. I'm very pleased that the technical issues that bugged my experience won't affect all of yours' first hours in the game, I do think it can be great. I still have issues with mission variety and enemy variety but teaming up even with randoms and just flying about doing missions is a lot of fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whiskey_chaser Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 I played for about four hours last night, no technical issues. The loading times between the Fort and the game world are a bit on the lengthy side, but transitioning between the main area and caves is about ten seconds. Managed to get over 5000 coins just by playing the main story and a bit of freeplay. Freeplay seems more fleshed out than the demo build, with world events cropping up a lot more frequently. Graphically it seems to have had a bit of a bump as well. The opening mission is gorgeous. I'm actually enjoying the Fort bits, the characters have personality and there's been some good dialogue. Think I heard Mel from Flight of the Conchords last night which was a nice surprise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whiskey_chaser Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 41 minutes ago, Nag said: Don't you come in here being all positive and shit! ? I just think this game's getting an unnecessarily bad rap because it's not the next Mass Effect and/or it's published by EA. That Switch Up guy that Nabby posted a few pages back literally calls his review 'Bioware made the wrong game, and made it badly.' He then spends ten minutes comparing it to Mass Effect and Old Republic. My time with it is limited to the first four hours and around fifteen more across both demos so i've still barely scratched the surface. Who know's, I may end up hating it, but to me they seem to have laid a pretty solid foundation, and they're only going to improve on it. And i've said it before, the dev team have been fantastic in dealing with their community. Bethesda and Bungie could learn a thing or two from them. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 It's OK so far. The fort makes my eyes uncomfortable though, I don't know if it's a FOV thing or what but I find myself cringing a lot walking around that joint. I had a similar thing for Destiny, I had to sit further away from the screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeFour Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 Fuck me! You bought a new release? ? I'll give it a whirl tomorrow I think if I get a mo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 22, 2019 Author Share Posted February 22, 2019 25 minutes ago, ThreeFour said: Fuck me! You bought a new release? ? I'll give it a whirl tomorrow I think if I get a mo. He only buys day 1 for loot shooters ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 22, 2019 Author Share Posted February 22, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted February 23, 2019 Share Posted February 23, 2019 So I spent ages walking around the fort talking to everyone. I met a Northerner. Found out he was a miner. Fuck off Bioware, you racists. 0/10. The reason I spent ages looking around is because it said I'd opened a new stall, except it's the same stall as the one Proboscis or whatever he's called has, the one that sells microtransactions. Which would be fine I guess, but they're right next to each other. Fort Tarsis has it's own version of Greggs, except instead of selling lovely pastries they sell fucking skins. The exact same skins. What the fuck. Why? Why does the woman that sounds like Kristen Shaal even have a reason to exist? Even with the pensioner speed walking it's not that far to go to see the original guy. In other news, the game so far isn't as bad as people would lead you to believe. It might get better, it might get worse, but so far it's OK. I already managed to get into one of the places everyone has talked about where you have to grind, so I don't know if it glitched or if I did the stuff needed. Whatever, it's done now. The loading screens though, they're bad. They could do with putting all the lore things on the loading screens, there seems to be hundreds of things to pick up and read about but ain't nobody got time to read all that shit unless it's all they have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 23, 2019 Author Share Posted February 23, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 23, 2019 Author Share Posted February 23, 2019 I’ve had a sound issue a few times where part way through a mission the sound will completely cut out and I’ll have to restart the game after finishing the mission. Apart from that technical issue I’ve still not had hardly any issues post patch. Unfortunately, the game itself has really worn me down really. The loop is just not grabbing me anymore, the missions are all super samey and talking to people back at the base afterwards has lost its appeal. I just feel like I’m going through the motions. I do still want to reach the level cap (which is 10 levels off) but it’s going to be a bit of a slog now I think. It is still fun sometimes but the lack of variety in the missions is really grating on me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Yeah, the variation is lacking. They really need to look at the stuff they have and take a good look at other games in the ilk and Anthem-ify those missions. The texture is very bland and if it wasn't for the movement and general combat being nice to control I'd be a lot harsher on the game. They should have missions where you chase mobs around the map, stuff where you cull wildlife, bits where you have to get high up and plant beacons to measure the Anthem. I find the 3 activities they have of killing the things, picking up the things or picking up the things and taking them back to the things a bit tiresome. The daftest thing is they want you to play with friends. You get more coins by playing with friends with the weekly affiliation thing. But not everyone wants to hear the stories of everyone, so you have this time where not only do you have to sit through people menu surfing, naming no names but his username sounds like PoorofShooty, but then you have to sit through them walking around the fort as well. It's completely at odds. It's fucking bad enough waiting on people to work their crafting table in Warframe, or run around the BoO in Division, or even fucking about in the tower in Destiny. Same with any game like this, Borderlands and Diablo as well, keep the story stuff uniform so everyone has to sit the cutscene and then do their own personal stuff. Adding more to the personal stuff really breaks the flow of the game. Those conversation are nicely done, some of them are even bordering on excellent, but they're not for games like this. Also the bit where people are saying you need to grind for hours to get the 4 doors open. Absolute bollocks. I've replayed a few missions to catch people up with where I am and I've done maybe 2 hours of freeroam tops while I've been waiting for people to get online and I'm 2 revives away from opening the 1 door I can't open. People are overblowing that "issue" completely. If you play the game and do the side stuff you're going to do the majority of the requirements on your way to them, if not all of them. I'd probably have the revives by now if I was playing with terrible people. I think I've had to revive Small twice and Duck once. I actually think I've been revived just as much. It's a real mixed bag is Anthem. There's a seed there that could germinate into something fantastic.For that to happen it really needs a lot of support and love. There needs to be more, What I've seen feels like the absolute bare minimum. One big thing is at least the story makes sense so far. I've not got a fucking clue what the Traveller is in Destiny even after all this time and Division is just prepper wank material nonsense (although the little self contained side stories can be pretty good). It's nowhere near as good as Warframes story though. If you'd have told me some indie outfit in Canada was managing to tell a better story than Bioware 10 years ago I would have laughed in your face. Now? All bets are off. What has the world come to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyKurosaki Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 The Tomb grind that many reviewers hated was fixed by the Day One patch. It was still an utterly ridiculous idea to force people to grind tedious tasks to progress the story. Would they have altered it,if a ton of people hadn’t told them “this is total bollocks”? That’s debatable. People complain the story isn’t up to the standards of BioWare’s previous work,that the meaningful conversation choices just aren’t there. By this stage,it’s pretty obvious that the talent responsible for their quality in this area has long since moved on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigkopman Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 @Sly Reflex "PoorofShooty" lmao!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 I think I had a glitch when I levelled the Sentinels up. It says the vault is upgraded. It's locked at 500/500 xp and I my bank hasn't increased ion size. I don't know if they altered the area though, the bit with the guy near the stations where Owen hangs out changed when I levelled that faction up. I think it's still levelling up the faction but something has gone wrong somewhere. I tell you what else fucks me off as well. being told to open the menus so I can track stuff. Fuck off with that nonsense, I don't need to track it, I've already completed half of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted February 24, 2019 Author Share Posted February 24, 2019 Looks like Anthem flopped - in the U.K. at least (according to analyst ZXHuge on ResetEra) Quote Anthem sold around 10% what Destiny sold in its first week. (UK Packaged sales comp) Andromeda sold more than double yes. Andromeda itself was already nearly half of what ME3 sold in its first week. Again. These are packaged sales comparisons and digital missing does skew the figures. Digital sales (which EA themselves say is approaching 50% of overall sales for them) are not counted. Nor is EA Access players. There were incentives to buy the digital ver. so I'd expect a really high digital share for the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 53 minutes ago, Nag said: I'm sure everyone will be very happy when Bioware get shuttered...? what do you want them to do Nag, hand over £70+ for a game they don't want or think is very good? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 The thing I keep hearing is EA mandating Frostbite in games they're not suited to. That it's fine for FPS but when you want to do other stuff you have to bolt a whole fresh codebase on top of it. Like either Andromeda or Inquisition the developers had to implement basic things like inventories from scratch in a way they hadn't previously, or something like this. The type of thing prevents feature development and quickly iterating on your design. That that could be a reason the quality of their games are falling so dramatically. Just getting lost in the weeds with basic shit. Here I found this, that Amy Henning game had trouble getting started on frostbite before it was canned https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vg247.com/2019/02/22/amy-hennig-visceral-ragtag-frostbite-engine-shortcomings/amp/ You can see why so many studios use Unreal (assuming it's more versatile). Even Square are using it now instead of their crystal engine shit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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