Anthem

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

NEW FEATURES

• Legendary Missions: Allows you to replay critical path missions again with a much higher difficulty level. One mission will be available per day that has no limit on the number of times it can be completed. These missions offer a new challenge and require team coordination to achieve victory!
• Elysian Caches: Earn Elysian Keys by completing daily challenges. These keys can be used on Elysian Caches, which appear at the end of each Stronghold after the boss is defeated to unlock vanity and crafting materials. Opening an Elysian Cache creates loot for each member of the Expedition. There are 67 unique vanity unlocks available, including vinyls, victory poses, emotes and arrivals. You will never get a duplicate vanity item! This is our first version of the ruleset for Elysian Caches in the game and we'll look forward to your feedback and the data we gather from your play.

Loot Changes:

• Chests now have a chance to drop additional items and crafting materials in Strongholds, Freeplay and Missions.
• Apex creatures now have a chance to drop additional loot, similar to the change made to chests. (Apex creatures include: Ursix, Titans, Furies and Escari/Luminaries)
• On GM1 difficulty and higher, Stronghold bosses will now drop more loot with a chance at additional masterwork and legendary items.

 

At least the few people that are still playing will go right to the end of the Strongholds now, instead of bailing after the first few chests.

[Craymen Edge]

A long but interesting read from Jason Schrier at Kotaku:

How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong

[regemond]

Bioware responded before they'd even read it...

 

http://blog.bioware.com/2019/04/02/anthem-game-development/http://blog.bioware.com/2019/04/02/anthem-game-development/

 

I'll just give one little quote to give an idea of how they're treating it:

 

Quote

We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.

 

Basically "we're well aware of this and we're more pissed that you're bringing it to the public's attention. Hush up and let us put our staff under all the pressure we want."

 

Also, interesting commentary on the whole thing from Polygon:

 

https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/2/18292304/bioware-press-response-anthem

[AndyKurosaki]

Definitely an interesting article,it certainly explains why it launched in an absolute state. 

[Maf]

 

This is what a dev thinks about their own game they charged full price for 

 

Call me when it goes F2P

 

And then I’ll put you to voice mail 

[one-armed dwarf]

At least it's better than RE2

[Maf]

Well I think we can all agree RE2 has a long way to go before it becomes a viable product 

[Whiskey_chaser]

The issue is they're now trying to make it the game everyone wants it to be, because people got butt-hurt that it wasn't a new single player game.

It wasn't perfect, few games like this are at launch. But I enjoyed the time I spent with it and will return to it.

[Maf]

I mean I have not played it but I really don’t think that was the reason people were butt hurt by it. Correct me if I’m wrong but I never saw this sold as anything but a multiplayer game

 

I think it was technical issues

I think it was design and content issues

I think people expect more from Bioware (Even if it is a different type of game to what they’re known for, they still have/had a rep)

I think it’s the price paired with release strategy

I think it was them patching out a massive chunk of the game

 

I think most reasonable people expected this game to be kind of rocky for a few weeks. An always online game from a studio that has never made one and yada, yada. Only fools thought this would roll off the conveyor belt in mint condition

 

But just from a lot of reactions this is far from ‘a rocky few weeks’. This is a lead dev coming out and saying “It’s a long way from where we want it to be” 

 

A long way!

 

Then why is it out if it’s so far away from what you want it to be?

 

When they say what “We all want it to be” what they really mean by that is popular. They really want it to be popular. If the game was doing well you wouldn’t see stuff like this. 

 

I think the statement is too try ease fans for the delay in content but to me it reads terribly. When a lead dc comes out and says it’s nowhere near what we envisioned then it’s like muthafucka why is it out lol

 

[one-armed dwarf]

My read after the Schrier article is that they got so mired in technical debt from poor leadership and bad APIs (frostbite) that they never got the time to really spend on features and content development, so Anthem ended up as  fairly anaemic in its 1.0 form.

 

Technical debt can kill software. You're spending so much time doing busywork and bug fixes and implementing basic ass shit when you could be doing cool stuff that people will love. And a lack of vision from above will leave developers rudderless and wasting their time on rubbish that never gets included in the final release and just creates more rubbish for people to pile through when they try and stack new features on top a fairly unstable codebase. Which is more time and budget out the window and less content for players to enjoy

 

That's what sounds like what happened with this anyway.

 

Stuff like this happened with Destiny as well, but it sounds like the Anthem development experience was a whole fresh new layer of hell

 

So my point isn't to dump on Anthem or the players who are enjoying it cause I've got no stake one way or the other but just to say it is not an easy situation for these developers to be putting out all these fires left, right and centre and try and develop content for a game which has had deep rooted problems with its development cycle

[Maf]

That is fair, bad tech + bad leadership leads to a bad product. Or to be fair, I suppose, a product that wasn’t ready. As basically admitted by the dev in today’s article. 

 

But the end result is still the same for the user. The blame does not lie with the user, nor for anyone enjoying what is there. But it just sounds like fresh admission that what is there isn’t even what the people making it want. Which is like, super bad to put in a press release

[one-armed dwarf]

I think it's the only way you handle it, quite frankly. A bad software release isn't something you can PR sleaze your way through.

 

Unfortunately unlike No Man's Sky which was largely solo it's hard to see a way for Bioware to hunker down and release a great 2.0 which delivers everything and keeps their playerbase on board

 

But stranger things have happened, like FFXIV Realm Reborn.

[Maf]

To be even fairer, I don’t think Anthem is in as bad a condition as other online only releases in the past year like Sea of Thieves or Fallout 76. I believe there’s a chance for this game. But it sounds like a long ways away with articles like this 

 

EDIT: I still want to be in an Iron Man crew, that sounds fun!

[Sly Reflex]

3 minutes ago, Maf said:

To be even fairer, I don’t think Anthem is in as bad a condition as other online only releases in the past year like Sea of Thieves or Fallout 76.

 

It falls between stools with these two. Sea of Thieves had barely any content. Only now is it starting to take shape. It worked though, I've played a fair old chunk of it and not had any glitches, crashes or bugs. In fact for the sparsity of the games content the actual technical ability of it is really accomplished. Think of all the people on the server seeing the same sea and how boats pitch and roll in complete synchronicity for all players is an amazing feat. I couldn't recommend it just yet unless you were into watching where water physics are going, but it can and will be good at some tenure during its life.

 

I've not played 76, but I've watched a friend play it a lot on Twitch, and oh boy is that game fucked. Lots of disconnecting, the game likes to crash. It's ugly as fuck, it's a bad game with a Fallout skin. There feels like there's little point to it, despite the levelling up and making a base I feel so disconnected from when he started to play the game versus now. Again you could level that argument at SoT as well, after all all that's happening are some dials are going up and you're getting gold to pimp out your ship and pirate, but if you were to say to me "OK, Sly, we're going to play a game for a few hours, we've got 4 of us, what shall we play?" Then out of the two I'd always pick Sea of Thieves. At points that game is a glorified chat room, but it's a very pretty and well put together chat room.

 

That brings us onto Anthem. Anthem when you play it in small hits is amazing. You can be competently acrobatic within 10 minutes of learning the game. Shooting is easy to pick up and works well between the powers your suits have. It suffers from aspects that Sea of Thieves suffered from, as well as suffering aspects that 76 suffers from.

 

For a start, there's not enough of it. There's not enough variation. The other looter shooters when they came out were hobbled by the same thing, Destiny boiled down to doing the Nightfall and Raid and Division boiled down to trying to gank or avoid being ganked in the DZ. Anthem is particularly weak here with the options it offers players for the endgame. Three Stongholds. That's not great. The parity between Strongholds is ridiculous as well. Difficulty and running time vs rewards needs to be looked at, there's a reason why people were running the spider Stronghold so much when the game came out, and that's because it allowed people to gear up quickly. Speaking of which.

 

Gear. And the Javelins specifically themselves. When you play Anthem the game busts its load way too early. For instance if you pick Storm, the lightning strike you get at the beginning of the game is no different visually from one you get at end game. For a game about loot and levelling up, there's little sense of progress, all the equipment and guns might have bigger numbers on them, but the impact they strike with is exactly the same as when you first run into the opening areas and discover what your Javelin is capable of.

 

Honestly, it shouldn't be like that. Maybe the Storms lightning strike at lower levels should be a spark that does fuck all damage and over the course of the game grows into a ferocious fork lightning that jumps from enemy to enemy. Maybe the Ranger's missile pod should be limp as fuck and turn into a battery of missiles that scorch everything they manage to land a hit on? Maybe the guns should have game changing unique properties that offer new ways of playing other than just doing what you've been doing for the past 20 or so hours. There's a lot to take in from it all.

 

The thing that stands out most to me is that Anthem is fun to pootle about in in the same way Sea of Thieves is. The core concept is a fun and engaging one, they just need to make it so that those loops are fun and engaging to do over and over again by offering visual and tangible  excitement with the activities and gear going forwards.

 

For what it's worth, I think Anthem will eventually be a game that turns itself around. EA has spent so much money that they're invested in it now in a similar way Ubi got invested with The Division, which was also fucking shockingly broken and people seemingly forgot about and decided to sweep under the rug. Sea of Thieves looks like it's going to be great now that it's finally getting some more meaty content to be going at, and I even think that eventually 76 will end up in a place that's way better than it set off in. You look at something like The Elder Scrolls Online which was a complete fuck up when it came out, but after a lot of hard work it's one of the top MMO's now.

 

Things can be turned around. Warframe is probably the biggest success story there. It just takes work and a lot of listening to feedback and making sense of the criticism throughout all the outrage to come out the other side better for it.

 

Metal Gear Survive will never ever be good though, fucking unneeded piece of shit that it is. 

[Maf]

I don’t really know how to respond to that. It probably doesn’t require one. I would say you are right about a lot of stuff in terms of games turning out as successes, and things like Elder Scrolls and Division I completely forgot about how they started. Also me and Blakey played SoT when it came out and the only things there were to say about that game at the time were “Man, it looks sharp” and “No, there are no pigs over here”. So yeah completely lacking in content like no game I have come across before and was highly disappointing. 

 

For me though I’m not really in it for the long term. Like for me when a game comes out I want to know if it is good and if I should play it. That would go for any game, even more important when it is a live game because the enjoyment depends so much on playing with others.  And because of limited time and so many other games coming out I’m very much a ‘yes and no’ not a ‘wait and see’ type of video game fan. 

 

I know it makes a lot of sense to be in these games for the long haul, but 1) Does a game really deserve that kind of constant dedication if it is so lacking out of the box? And 2) How long do you have to give it? 10 weeks a long time. 

 

My biggest experiences with live games have been Destiny 1, 2 and SoT. I don’t know how you would compare Anthem to Destiny in the same type of time frame, but for me I got in to Destiny because I got in with a fun crowd and managed to do lots of dumb shit and clown around even in the very repetitive content there was. And despite falling off and on that lead all the way into the sequel. 

 

It doesn’t sound like that is the case with Anthem where seems like a lot of people have bounced already. Which for me is the real killer for these types of games, whether they have better content incoming or not. 

 

I don’t know if you would agree with that or if you think they are different cases, it sounds like you get something different out of these games than I do. But for me it is about is it good, and who wants to play it with me? Anthem sounds like no and no one from the outside looking in. 

[Sly Reflex]

I'm probably going to have to think about that, since it's a more complicated answer than you might expect.

[ThreeFour]

I love these debates but I'll not get involved as just can't be doing with long posts n deep discussion these days. 

 

For my part I've got the game, but barely touched it. Not for lack of interest but I could tell the game was in a state and I'd get more enjoyment playing with my mates so I'm waiting for them to get it.

 

Having played Warframe, Division, Destiny back when they were 'fresh', I wanted to give this game its own perspective. I've enough of an idea. Listening or reading developer interviews and such you can tell it didn't have time to cook and they didn't even know what it was going to be till too late on.

 

It's not an easy genre to 'nail'. Too grindy n people complain it's no fun. Give access to to too much too quickly and people complain there's nothing to do. Make it too grounded people don't like the dullness of it. PvP or don't even bother, losing a portion of a player base from the off. 

 

With these games @Maf you got to find the one you like. You'll get burnout trying to play them all properly. Hell, if like me your a working man with not as much time as he'd like it's downright impossible to play them all. That's why I've cut the rope on Division. Never really excited me so I'm giving Anthem the chance (at some point) but if Borderlands is good and has regular content then Anthem may be done (if it isn't by EA). 

 

Damn it! that's my lunch break gone ? 

[Sly Reflex]

4 hours ago, Maf said:

For me though I’m not really in it for the long term. Like for me when a game comes out I want to know if it is good and if I should play it. That would go for any game, even more important when it is a live game because the enjoyment depends so much on playing with others.  And because of limited time and so many other games coming out I’m very much a ‘yes and no’ not a ‘wait and see’ type of video game fan. 

 

Honestly, I think if you really wanted to you could play all these games as a service games between the usual releases. The more time I spend with them the more time I realise that there's just not enough to warrant any of us really investing all that time in in such a manner where we "Mainline" one game.

 

Destiny 1 is a great example of this. When the Rise of Iron stuff came out I jumped back in and played through everything I missed, with the exception of the later raids, because they were too much an ask for my group. There got to a point where I was playing with @Sambob and we were really going for it trying to reach the cap. We put some serious hours in. And for what? I honestly think we made the best decision to knock it on the head at that point. As amazing as that package is when it's fully formed, there's not much to be garnered when you're asked to pull the same shit out of the games arse every day in the hope that you might get the thing that you need.

 

All these Games as a Service stuff, you're best eating all you can and then moving on. There's enough of them now where you can bounce from game to game, play through whatever they've added and then as soon as you've seen everything they've added, bail at the first sign of boredom. Treat them like a finger buffet, eat what you want and then move to the next table when you're tired of eating that particular flavour.

 

4 hours ago, Maf said:

I know it makes a lot of sense to be in these games for the long haul, but 1) Does a game really deserve that kind of constant dedication if it is so lacking out of the box? And 2) How long do you have to give it? 10 weeks a long time. 

 

Like I said above, you don't need to be super dedicated. Boot the game up, see what the added content is and then once you're done you pull the plug and move on. Sometimes you're going to pull the plug quicker than others and sometimes you're going to pull the plug indefinitely like I did with Grand Theft Auto Online.

 

Look at it this way. Destiny. Division. Elder Scrolls Online. Anthem. Whatever. If you can get 10 or 20 hours out of them before calling it a day before the additional content or improvements happen, then you've got your monies worth. You saw the credits roll on the main story and that's what most people will be doing. A lot of the diehards that expect to get 100's of hours out of a base game are asking for the impossible. Not to say that some games don't come with 100's of hours straight out the gate, because there's an exception to every rule, but with these GaaS things it's impossible for them to add content faster than eople can complete it. I always find it really amusing when people will buy the latest game, mainline it for 70 hours in one week and then complain that there's nothing to do anymore. For a lot of people 70 hours is 4 or 5 weeks of gaming, maybe more. 

 

Just because you've bought it doesn't mean you have to be on it every waking hour. People, especially in our circle, tend to want to get t the end of shit ASAP. We always want to be chasing the next big thing and chasing the next big thing and getting all excited tends to lead to disappointment.

 

I don't know if it's a cultural thing or what, but we're consuming at a rate like never before. Not just games, everything. Whether you're second screening or listening to a podcast while playing games, we're all munching through content at a pace people before us never did. I think the fault likes partially with us as much as it does the people making the content. We could do with slowing down.

 

5 hours ago, Maf said:

My biggest experiences with live games have been Destiny 1, 2 and SoT. I don’t know how you would compare Anthem to Destiny in the same type of time frame, but for me I got in to Destiny because I got in with a fun crowd and managed to do lots of dumb shit and clown around even in the very repetitive content there was. And despite falling off and on that lead all the way into the sequel. 

 

That's because the people you're playing the games with are the best part about it. Being part of something and contributing is part of the hook. We've all got the friend that had the Gally or the Ice Breaker (for me it was the Vision for Nightfalls with Solar burn) that help us tackle those challenges and hope that eventually those jobs manage to get shared and past along to each other. This is just being part of a community and feeling wanted or needed.

 

5 hours ago, Maf said:

It doesn’t sound like that is the case with Anthem where seems like a lot of people have bounced already. Which for me is the real killer for these types of games, whether they have better content incoming or not. 

 

I'm not done with it. I shall go back to it where there's enough stuff for me to take a proper run at it and get invested for a week or so. Plus a lot of the crew that I plan on doing that with are balls deep in The Division 2. It boils down to having the community thing. Build a community with your friends and you'll always have someone that will tag along. It's a case of entrenching yourself in a community by either being nice, useful, funny, or any combination of the above.

 

I know you did the whole Join my pirate/cowboy gang" or whatever back in the g™ days, but I think it takes more than that. If something is going to be a flash in the pan it needs to be a flash in the pan for everyone. Anthem had that forced upon it with the arrival of The Division 2 compounded by the issues players found prevalent in that game. There's however times where nobody is going to be willing to play a game. Maybe it's not fun, maybe it's grindy, it could just be a bad experience previously put players off it. Sometimes it's not going to work. Do I think Anthem will fall casualty to that? I think it partially already has, but I also think that for every person it pissed off there'll be a person willing to give it a chance. Who knows really?

 

5 hours ago, Maf said:

I don’t know if you would agree with that or if you think they are different cases, it sounds like you get something different out of these games than I do. But for me it is about is it good, and who wants to play it with me? Anthem sounds like no and no one from the outside looking in. 

 

It sounds like the exact same as me, except for the is it good I'd replace that with do I find it enjoyable, because there's a very definite definition between a good game and one that you enjoy. For example I know Street Fighter is a good game series, but I don't like it. Similarly I knew Army of Two was pants, but it was super enjoyable because of how idiotic it was.

 

3 hours ago, ThreeFour said:

It's not an easy genre to 'nail'. Too grindy n people complain it's no fun. Give access to to too much too quickly and people complain there's nothing to do. Make it too grounded people don't like the dullness of it. PvP or don't even bother, losing a portion of a player base from the off. 

 

Taking my last paragraph into accord, you could make the best game every that's perfectly balanced and has everything just right, but some people just aren't going to like it because it feels off. Something as simply as making it third person can put people off playing. Liking something isn't binary. Games aren't a one size fits all.

[ThreeFour]

17 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

Honestly, I think if you really wanted to you could play all these games as a service games between the usual releases. The more time I spend with them the more time I realise that there's just not enough to warrant any of us really investing all that time in in such a manner where we "Mainline" one game.

Nah dude your projecting your own play enjoyment and time available like we're all the same. At the moment I get a few hours a week and I'm juggling what I really want to play. It's different for everyone. Some nip in and out of games nibbling on them for months. Some sternly play one game at a time till it's done then move on. Some like just PvP some like just single player. 

 

I made the choice I get so much enjoyment out of the whole thing Destiny offers its my main looter service game. I play something in down periods like I'm doing with Sekiro now. But I'm still working on pinnacle weapons in Destiny also. I could in no way manage another looter. Not in any meaningful way like I think you should.

 

24 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

All these Games as a Service stuff, you're best eating all you can and then moving on. There's enough of them now where you can bounce from game to game, play through whatever they've added and then as soon as you've seen everything they've added, bail at the first sign of boredom. Treat them like a finger buffet, eat what you want and then move to the next table when you're tired of eating that particular flavour.

Definitely. You can't stick to one game and play the bones out of it. But these games require a bit more investment. Again It's different for everyone. When I'm done with Destiny's PvE stuff I have PvP to enjoy and focus on. It prolongs the enjoyment and I get more out of it than someone who doesn't. When I've got the best gear from a raid I tend to be done. Some like to go for lore Triumphs or Sherpa others through it. You get out of a game what you want, there's no hard and fast rule.

 

But I do think you just dabble in these things. I've not played with you but your description about "too much to ask for the raid and trying for the cap" is arse about face to me. Made me do a ? The Cap is just something to guide you on your progression. I've never chased the Cap. I don't really care about it other than being smart and getting ready for the entry level for something. The Raid is the pinnacle of Destiny, mostly, and you should be going for it. If your group isn't up for it go LFG it. I've met some truly cracking people from all over the world. No game has made me go out and meet them like this has. 

 

A looter is about the gear. You want every piece as you never know when it might come in useful for a situation. I've never run a raid with the same loadout. Or Nightfall. Hell I change it up in-between phases. To make it more efficient to get the next thing. And so on. That's what you do in looters. Replay the same things on harder difficulties to reach a 'peek'. That's the loot chase. 

 

These GaaS thing aren't all lumped in. Division was about specific builds and had more RPG aspects. Destiny had a strong shooter following and that was more it's focus. They have a strong lineage there, especially in PvP. Different strokes even though they are looters. But they're trying for that MMO vibe where you continuously log in to keep up with the meta and chase the latest gear. Some failures and some success. I think Division has found its Niche. Destiny is like a rolling Storm churning out different scenery ?

 

But these games to most that play them and know what they are, want that chase. They aren't one and done Action games or story driven pieces. If you're in for that and catch the right one it's great. I fell in and out of them for years till Destiny came along. 

 

Anyway f*ck off stop dragging me into this ??

[Maf]

Time is a factor for me but I also really, really struggle playing the same game for just weeks at a time. Going well off topic, I suppose, but as much as the Raid stuff in Destiny was really fun and is the highlight of those games, getting there is hard. Even when chatting and having fun I find playing the same stuff over and over exceptionally challenging. 

 

Bringing it back around a bit, that’s why I was excited for Anthem but never ended up playing it. On the face of it the direct appeal is Iron Man like stuff, but then when the reviews and reports from users started to come out about it I was thinking my struggle with these type of rinse and repeat games already, add the fact there doesn’t appear to be a chase, added to the fact that people seem to fall off really quickly. Made this a super hard sell. And every time a new game comes out that’s just one more nail in the coffin lid for me and Anthem, which is a shame because the promise was really appealing 

 

EDIT: I didn’t mean to bump him go back and read @ThreeFour‘s post ?