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 Kanluwen wrote:

Did you people not also pay attention to the fact that there's Stronghold drops of cosmetic crates that aren't in the game yet? That the various events are going to have cosmetic rewards as well as actual item drops?

I mean, what an absolute shock that game devs are showcasing builds that they're working on that have stuff not in the live game yet!

They were showcasing cosmetic items that were DONE prior to the game going gold aka finished and ready for launch, not "builds they're working on". It's an absolute shock that you can get the verb tense so wrong so consistently in favor of the devs/game and not pay attention enough to correct it yourself. Live service items should be completed after the game is finished, not artificially cut out of the base game as previously shown in order to pad said service at the expense of the core game.

It's funny with regards to the racer crowd because devs are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they have all the content available right off the bat at launch? There will be complaints once it's beaten. No matter what.

If they time-gate or stagger content?
There will be complaints there is not enough content.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Did you people not also pay attention to the fact that there's Stronghold drops of cosmetic crates that aren't in the game yet? That the various events are going to have cosmetic rewards as well as actual item drops?

I mean, what an absolute shock that game devs are showcasing builds that they're working on that have stuff not in the live game yet!

They were showcasing cosmetic items that were DONE prior to the game going gold aka finished and ready for launch, not "builds they're working on". It's an absolute shock that you can get the verb tense so wrong so consistently in favor of the devs/game and not pay attention enough to correct it yourself. Live service items should be completed after the game is finished, not artificially cut out of the base game as previously shown in order to pad said service at the expense of the core game.

Cosmetic items being done prior to the game going gold doesn't mean jack when you do not seem to understand that devs are consistently working on builds past what we're seeing.
That demo we had? That was a build from October. It had to go through certification processes, debugging, etc via Microsoft and Sony (which still seemed to miss some big ones) to get published when it did.

And again:
There are cosmetic crates that are not in the game yet as part of the Stronghold loot tables.

 warboss wrote:
It's worse than that. A "live service" game is an excuse to cut even more out of the game that was developed PRIOR to the release to add in at a later date as part of the "service" instead of releasing the full product at one time to get the minimum viable product at launch for the minimum cost.

I think that's how AAA devs and pubs have approached it, and it's part of why they keep failing.

Making a successful live service game means having a fundamental gameplay concept that is solid enough and strong enough to stand on it's own, even with content limitations. That's how PUBG got started, and Fortnite, Warframe, Overwatch, DOTA clones, and Path of Exile. I'd argue that when it comes to this model they're the most successful games at the moment but no one in AAA development has bothered to take a real hard look at how these games designed themselves and instead continue making games the way they were made when I was in highschool and they wonder why that model isn't bringing them similar results.

I think Anthem actually has a really solid concept. Sci-Fi Iron Man survivors in a post apocalyptic world? That's solid as feth, but even watching Lets plays I can see that the game runs out of anything to do with that concept after a few hours, and then you're stuck waiting for content releases which isn't really encouraging for a player. The execution of the solid concept appears lacking. They'll probably fix it like they fixed The Division, but it took the Division like, a year, to get its gak together and by then a lot of people moved on to other games.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's funny with regards to the racer crowd because devs are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they have all the content available right off the bat at launch? There will be complaints once it's beaten. No matter what.

If they time-gate or stagger content?
There will be complaints there is not enough content.

Devs are damned if they publish a complete game at launch with the free options they've already shown off included? Are you posting from an alternate bizarro universe? The "live service" is and should be separate from the game and not carved out of it prior to launch. They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

How many people actually bought Fortnite though? Before the addition of the Battle Royale mode which seems to be all anyone does now?
Warframe took quite some time to find its feet and if they hadn't had infusions of cash by being a Freemium game? It probably wouldn't be around for us to still be talking about it.
Overwatch is just...bleh. It had Activision and Blizzard both propping it up so who knows if that would have worked.

 warboss wrote:
They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

It's never been stated but I think it's fairly obvious Anthem was scrapped somewhat in 2014 and again in 2018 (both times Casey Hudson came and went from the project). Anthem doesn't look cheap by any means, but I can't fathom what they spent six years doing because the game doesn't look like something that should have taken six years to develop. There's a black hole somewhere in there that some development clearly went down and didn't come back.

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's funny with regards to the racer crowd because devs are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they have all the content available right off the bat at launch? There will be complaints once it's beaten. No matter what.

If they time-gate or stagger content?
There will be complaints there is not enough content.

Devs are damned if they publish a complete game at launch with the free options they've already shown off included? Are you posting from an alternate bizarro universe? The "live service" is and should be separate from the game and not carved out of it prior to launch. They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

Woe be the gamers who cannot buy multiple cosmetic items for their Javelins!

The "Premium" store has a timer on it. They put up an armor set for the Storm and Interceptor both, making it so all 4 Javelins have had complete armor sets available to them as a discounted bundle that can be bought via in-game currency or Premium currency.
Along with a decal, emote, and two materials for customizing.

The items aren't exactly something you can achieve in a single sitting playing reasonable amounts of time. Hence why the timer is a weeklong thing.

Seriously, does nobody have any patience anymore?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 warboss wrote:
They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

It's never been stated but I think it's fairly obvious Anthem was scrapped somewhat in 2014 and again in 2018 (both times Casey Hudson came and went from the project). Anthem doesn't look cheap by any means, but I can't fathom what they spent six years doing because the game doesn't look like something that should have taken six years to develop. There's a black hole somewhere in there that some development clearly went down and didn't come back.

Yes, it's called going from one generation of consoles to the next and changing game engines.

 Kanluwen wrote:
How many people actually bought Fortnite though? Before the addition of the Battle Royale mode which seems to be all anyone does now?
Warframe took quite some time to find its feet and if they hadn't had infusions of cash by being a Freemium game? It probably wouldn't be around for us to still be talking about it.
Overwatch is just...bleh. It had Activision and Blizzard both propping it up so who knows if that would have worked.

I think it's a pretty good question to ask, which game do you think EA is more impressed with right now? Apex Legends, or Anthem?

I suspect the former is going to dictate the course of future EA projects more than the later, cause Legends is a lot more solid on the surface.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Yes, it's called going from one generation of consoles to the next and changing game engines.

That wouldn't explain why content wise the game looks like something with a 1 year turn around time more than a 6 year project.

 Kanluwen wrote:
How many people actually bought Fortnite though? Before the addition of the Battle Royale mode which seems to be all anyone does now?
Warframe took quite some time to find its feet and if they hadn't had infusions of cash by being a Freemium game? It probably wouldn't be around for us to still be talking about it.
Overwatch is just...bleh. It had Activision and Blizzard both propping it up so who knows if that would have worked.

Anthem hasn't completely changed game genres in the past few weeks and nor will it change to free to play so using Fortnite as an example is particularly a bad choice. Warframe is a better comparison but it has always been free to play and that generally means that gamers allow the devs more latitude in what/how they offer updates since it literally costs them nothing. That latitude isn't and shouldn't be afforded to a full priced game IMO. In a game like Warframe that has no cost of entry, the service is the product/game so the base expectations at launch are alot lower for most players. For a mandatory $60 entry fee, the expectation that something at least be comparable to games from 10 years earlier in terms of options isn't unreasonable.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
How many people actually bought Fortnite though? Before the addition of the Battle Royale mode which seems to be all anyone does now?
Warframe took quite some time to find its feet and if they hadn't had infusions of cash by being a Freemium game? It probably wouldn't be around for us to still be talking about it.
Overwatch is just...bleh. It had Activision and Blizzard both propping it up so who knows if that would have worked.

I think it's a pretty good question to ask, which game do you think EA is more impressed with right now? Apex Legends, or Anthem?

I suspect the former is going to dictate the course of future EA projects more than the later, cause Legends is a lot more solid on the surface.

People said the same thing about Battlefield Heroes a few years ago, and yet...

Will Apex Legends have an impact? Sure! But it's really "just another..." of that style of Hero oriented game. It stripped out the stuff that made Titanfall and Titanfall 2 fun to basically just play off the brand.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Yes, it's called going from one generation of consoles to the next and changing game engines.

That wouldn't explain why content wise the game looks like something with a 1 year turn around time more than a 6 year project.

Reworking a game from scratch to suit a new generation of consoles isn't an easy thing.
Reworking a game from scratch to suit a new engine isn't an easy thing.

 LordofHats wrote:

 warboss wrote:
They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

It's never been stated but I think it's fairly obvious Anthem was scrapped somewhat in 2014 and again in 2018 (both times Casey Hudson came and went from the project). Anthem doesn't look cheap by any means, but I can't fathom what they spent six years doing because the game doesn't look like something that should have taken six years to develop. There's a black hole somewhere in there that some development clearly went down and didn't come back.

I agree but it isn't an excuse IMO for the final product that is being sold as if that wasn't the case. If the game is a service then I don't think it's unreasonable for complaints if that base expectation of service isn't met. YMMV (and obviously with Kanluwen it does). If you go to a restaurant and order a meal, you don't care if someone called in sick last week and they were short staffed so forgot to order the key ingredients in the name of the meal you already ordered that came without them. I expect we'll see a behind the scenes expose in 6-12 months on a social justice gaming website like Kotaku like what we got with Andromeda.

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
How many people actually bought Fortnite though? Before the addition of the Battle Royale mode which seems to be all anyone does now?
Warframe took quite some time to find its feet and if they hadn't had infusions of cash by being a Freemium game? It probably wouldn't be around for us to still be talking about it.
Overwatch is just...bleh. It had Activision and Blizzard both propping it up so who knows if that would have worked.

Anthem hasn't completely changed game genres in the past few weeks and nor will it change to free to play so using Fortnite as an example is particularly a bad choice. Warframe is a better comparison but it has always been free to play and that generally means that gamers allow the devs more latitude in what/how they offer updates since it literally costs them nothing. That latitude isn't and shouldn't be afforded to a full priced game IMO. In a game like Warframe that has no cost of entry, the service is the product/game so the base expectations at launch are alot lower for most players. For a mandatory $60 entry fee, the expectation that something at least be comparable to games from 10 years earlier in terms of options isn't unreasonable.

Warframe "has no cost of entry" but let's not pretend there aren't microtransactions out the wazoo.

Want to add a Reactor or Catalyst to a Warframe, Sentinel, Kavat, Kubrow, or Weapon? Platinum, please! Or use one of the relatively rare ones that get given to you via an Alert or wait for an event.
Want to add an additional weapon, Sentinel, pet, or Warframe slot? Platinum, please!
Color palettes? Plat!


People love to pretend that "Well you can sell things via the in-game marketplace!" makes Platinum not a real thing. But they also love to pretend that the market isn't ridiculous.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Warframe "has no cost of entry" but let's not pretend there aren't microtransactions out the wazoo.

No one is pretending that. I'm certainly not. Let's also not pretend that in most of the good and popular games that those microtransactions are actually optional in practice and are not comparable to a $60 mandatory entry fee prior to playing your first session.

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Warframe "has no cost of entry" but let's not pretend there aren't microtransactions out the wazoo.

No one is pretending that. I'm certainly not. Let's also not pretend that in most of the good and popular games that those microtransactions are actually optional in practice and are not comparable to a $60 mandatory entry fee prior to playing your first session.

Find me a single microtransaction in Anthem that is mandatory.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Warframe "has no cost of entry" but let's not pretend there aren't microtransactions out the wazoo.

No one is pretending that. I'm certainly not. Let's also not pretend that in most of the good and popular games that those microtransactions are actually optional in practice and are not comparable to a $60 mandatory entry fee prior to playing your first session.

Find me a single microtransaction in Anthem that is mandatory.

Dude, now I know you're purposely miscontruing the discussion so as not to confront the actual point being made. I'm clearly referring to the base cost of the retail game and have never even hinted that any Anthem microtransaction is mandatory. You're not even tilting at real windmills in your quest to defend the fair maiden Anthem's honor.

 LordofHats wrote:
Making a successful live service game means having a fundamental gameplay concept that is solid enough and strong enough to stand on it's own, even with content limitations. That's how PUBG got started, and Fortnite, Warframe

I gotta stop you there.

Warframe launched as an almost no-content non-game on release. Its gameplay was fairly mediocre as well. It's had to go through multiple iterations in order to get where it is now. Stop looking at these rather old games and comparing where they are now as if where they are now is the same as where they were at their launch.

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Warframe "has no cost of entry" but let's not pretend there aren't microtransactions out the wazoo.

No one is pretending that. I'm certainly not. Let's also not pretend that in most of the good and popular games that those microtransactions are actually optional in practice and are not comparable to a $60 mandatory entry fee prior to playing your first session.

Find me a single microtransaction in Anthem that is mandatory.

Dude, now I know you're purposely miscontruing the discussion so as not to confront the actual point being made. I'm clearly referring to the base cost of the retail game and have never even hinted that any Anthem microtransaction is mandatory. You're not even tilting at real windmills in your quest to defend the fair maiden Anthem's honor.

Then make a frigging point. You cut out my statement to then throw out some gobbledygook about how those "microtransactions are actually optional in practice and are not comparable to a $60 mandatory entry fee prior to playing your first session".

Because quite frankly, if you track spending patterns for Warframe players? You will see plat purchases that equate to around $60 if not more over the course of their early game experiences--assuming the person actually sticks around rather than just quits.

Got to play a bit finally at a pals place.

Content issues aside, I found the combat to be fun, and the visual artwork astounding. Enemies felt a bit odd in not taking too much advantahe of a 3d battlespace, but I could overlook that, especially if the point was to emphasize the power of the player characters. Flying around the world was pretty great.

Unfortunately the mishmash of coop multiplayer and story elements did not mesh well at all, ultimately feeling like two different unfinished games being frankensteined together into something that sounds cool on paper, but in practice makes for an awfully frustrating experience of waiting on other people, missing lots of story elements, and lots of looooooooong loading screens. These aspects fundamentally drag on each other. Actually sitting down with a group of pals and trying to experience the full panoply of the game just didn't feel possible, one had to give up on one aspect to enjoy another.

Games like L4D or Vermintide do the coop combat thing well without a deep interactive story, just as ME3 didn't try to tell its story directly through the multiplayer elements.

The lack of indication on exactly what item bonuses do, and the inane process that equipping new gear entails, was also not helpful.

I think a lot of problems can and likely will be fixed over time, but the fundamental SP/MP melding is going to be a hell of a stumbling block. Some people won't mind the waiting or skipping and whatnot, and I think that crowd will have lots of fun over time, but at least for myself I found it to be intenstly frustrating.

So far I've run into 3 bugs total:

1. Accepting the pre-order bonus crashed the client. But the content was in my inventory when I reopened it.

2. One Contract, the last collectable for the quest was bugged and nobody could pick it up. Dropped the mission, started the mission again, and it worked.

3. I force-closed in a stronghold once, and when I reopened, pressed "X" to load, and it took that to mean I wanted back into the stronghold - but it respawned me *alive*.

I know the game is unfinished, and that many others are seeing a lot more defects, but it's been quite reliable for me.

As for unfinished - that stronghold run I forceclosed. This has only happened once, but there was a party member who just ran around and if anyone died, they'd go to their corpse and /wave.

Annoying, but strongholds aren't too hard. We made good progress. Then, a little over halfway through, all 3 of us actually *playing* went down.

Now what?

If 4/4 go down, it'll wipe you, and you all respawn. But with 1 alive? Doesn't happen.

So drop group? Can't. No menus, no nothing while dead. So you can't even ditch if things go really sideways.

Wait? He was at it for over 10 minutes. Just running to each corpse in order. Being a tool.

Hence why I force-closed out of a stronghold. Didn't intend to return to it.

I'm only lvl 14 (playing missions solo, only grouping on contracts/freeplay), but it's been a ton of fun.

My complaints, though:
1. Loading screens
I had the same problem in Destiny, but in Destiny, you can go into the menus/review gear/track quests.

The menus aren't any longer than other games, since launch. But they're more noticeable. First, they're too often (Forge and one-room-dungeons have loading screens?) Second, it's just a fullscreen with an image and one line of text.

I'd *love* it if they added the "Codex" to the Loading Screens. There's so much to read and see in that menu. Put it over the loading screens, and most players won't notice loads at twice the length!

2. Assumed multiplayer.
I want to do the core story missions solo. I don't want to jump through the same hoops every time. And some of the stuff seems clearly tuned to be a headache for solo play. A quest with 4 Ursix? Without combos (and my Ranger solo can't Prime the Ursix - neither the Fire grenade nor Shock Mace did enough to Prime), each Ursix took a *long* time to take down.

3. Gated Contracts
I'm a decent way through the main story quest. I don't want to progress it before I talk to everyone. And sometimes, I just want action. Freeplay exists, and is a lot of fun, but sometimes instead of roaming and doing whatever, I want a canned multiplayer experience - drop in, do some contract, drop out.

I think I've had 3 Contracts *total* so far. Sounds like the rest don't unlock until you finish all the related story content.

Why? Why not let me choose those so I can "play my way"? I want to digest the story missions at my own pace.

4. Game by numbers
The guns each feel like they came from a spreadsheet. 1 "normal" all-rounder (Scout, Guardian, etc). One either super-fast or super-slow. And one mini-gimick (such as "2-round bursts"). Most (if not all) categories have these 3. No more, no less.

Each Javalin has the exact same number of skills for each slot. So maybe there was this crazy cool idea for a skill, but that slot already has the mandatory number? Well, too bad. Or maybe there was a dumb idea for a skill, but nothing better came along? Oh well. Skills should be included because they're interesting, not just because it brings a Javalin to the right number.

Why doesn't the Interceptor have a "Turn invisible for 3 seconds" skill? Why does the Ranger have exactly one skill of each element (minus Lightning - which is only available on melee)? Why are there no skills that can fit in either slot? Why are all the utility skills so bland?

They really need to open up and just put ideas out there. They don't need to keep all the options limited to some "magic number". Build what makes sense. Provide options as they come up.

I can't wait to hop back on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Vak,
For the SP/MP melding, I think it'd work a *lot* better if they didn't gate so much of the MP behind the story quests. If you could go run contracts or side missions early on, and leave the story quests for when you were playing solo, I think it'd be a much better game. Your thoughts?

Bharring wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Vak,
For the SP/MP melding, I think it'd work a *lot* better if they didn't gate so much of the MP behind the story quests. If you could go run contracts or side missions early on, and leave the story quests for when you were playing solo, I think it'd be a much better game. Your thoughts?

I think that would help the player experience a lot, but at that point it would be a fundamental admission of the defeat of the original game concept and leave one to wonder why they dont just split the MP/SP elements entirely back to their traditional areas. It'd definitely make the game more fun however, at least for me.

The aforementioned lack of communication tools also didn't help the feeling of disconnect.

I'll give my 2 cents since preordering and playing it now for a few days.

Over all, I find myself wanting to keep playing it. Im not super far so I cant speak to end game stuff or loot issues ive heard.

Pros:
Visuals and sound. Both top notch.
Lots of story and characters
Fairly fast action, very eye catching

Cons:
Loading. they said it was fixed, but wow. So many loading screens, and boy does it suck.
Guns. Really, seems like you just want the one that shoots the fastest. Your spamming abilities with short cooldowns and flying so I don't see much reason to use a sniper or any gun that doesent spray
Enemies. Not very smart. Very run of the mill.
Story and characters. While its good, it also isn't. I don't want to do missions where I cant skip a cut scene that goes on 10 min when ive done it before. Also if your with friends you need to yell on the mic for them to shut up so you can listen
Unable to go solo freeplay. Why? I get strongholds, that's the point of them but why do I need randos running around in my freeplay.

Im sure I could list more cons, and while it seems like theres a lot of issues, I am enjoying the game.

 Vaktathi wrote:

The aforementioned lack of communication tools also didn't help the feeling of disconnect.

Out of curiosity, which platform are you considering playing it on? Console have included mics usually but it seems like in recent years they're being used less and less in modern games by players compared with even in the original xbox days when they were a novelty. As for the tools, I've heard alot of buzz about the pinging tools/functions that don't require voice chat on the F2P Apex Legends game by Respawn (also owned by EA) but haven't played it myself to know for sure. Perhaps if those are good they could consider adding something similar.

str00dles1 wrote:
Guns. Really, seems like you just want the one that shoots the fastest. Your spamming abilities with short cooldowns and flying so I don't see much reason to use a sniper or any gun that doesent spray

I've come to the opposite conclusion. Guns like the fastest firing variants on assault rifles, lmgs, and machine pistols are the least useful guns to me. A sniper rifle I can use to kill an enemy or two while the powers are on cooldown, and usually slower firing weapons have better range, which helps keep me out of danger. A hand cannon style heavy pistol is great for cqb as I don't have to deal with recoil for the most part, with them. Marksman rifles are my favorite kind of weapon in this (ironically, in Destiny 2 they were my least favorite!).

Only exception is the colossus' Assault Cannon class of weapon variants, which... well... just look at the name of that. They're just a great heavy weapon to carry around.

So I guess again it depends on your playstyle.

Kanluwen wrote:
People said the same thing about Battlefield Heroes a few years ago, and yet...

There was no point in time where Battlefield Heroes wasn't looked at like a bad joke.

There's also a very big difference between a game that reached 7 million users at it's peak, and one that topped out at 25 million users just last week. Apex Legends sudden success literally saved EA's stock price from a dive caused by it's lack of success in the traditional AAA games market and lagging sports franchise sales. If EA were smart they'd pay attention but... I won't be shocked if EA feths it up. I never doubt EA's ability to screw itself, especially not with the past three years as a wonderful display in how not to run a company.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Reworking a game from scratch to suit a new generation of consoles isn't an easy thing.
Reworking a game from scratch to suit a new engine isn't an easy thing.

I find that argument unconvincing. Xboxes basically run on windows with a different GUI at this point.

Melissia wrote:Warframe launched as an almost no-content non-game on release.

I'm not strictly talking about content (I think that as a general rule this medium has a particular struggle at the moment with content scarcity across the entire industry). Too much money goes into visuals and graphics. Not enough into actual gameplay. Case and point, Tomb Raider spent more than a million dollars animating Lara's hair. Who the feth thought that was a valuable use of their admittedly overblown budget?

For this though I'm talking about how the game is intended to work mechanically. From the start Warframe had a clear model in mind. Cyborg-Techno ninjas go into a mission stage, clear out enemies, get rewards, grind their gear up into better gear, go into new mission stage. Even in the early days when the AI was bat gak gak stupid, the combat a clunky rendition of it's current state, and items numbered at ten, the game had that model and stuck to it for years before moving out of it. As clunky and barely a game as the start was a clear vision was present of what the game would be and how it would keep players playing.

AAA devs have largely failed at that. They throw together the same kind of game they always have, and their only ideas about how to keep people playing seem to hinge on microtransactions and sparse content updates. Anthem and Destiny are the first games I've seen come out that seem to actually be moving in the right direction on turning a AAA game into a successful service game. My criticism is directed at the industry, not Anthem specifically (though again, I never doubt EA's ability to feth it up).

If you're just talking about the industry, that's fine, but not all criticisms of the industry at large is applicable to specific games, as you yourself admitted with your example of Warframe.

I think Anthem's fortunes have become unfortunately tangled in the ongoing disaster of the industry. A couple of years ago the excitement would have been unquestioned, but in the meantime the reputations of EA and Bioware, the genre of game they're aping and even rival studios who we once used to use as a way of comparing Bioware's quality have been pretty thoroughly tarnished, with Anthem sort of showing up late after someone already threw up and ruined the party (and unfortunately, not bringing anything SO great as to start it up again).

 LunarSol wrote:
It's just in the same place MMOs were a decade ago. Everyone tries to make a game that people play and pay for forever, but ultimately, the community will largely consolidate around one of them (WoW) and the rest will drift towards various models to try and pick up the scraps.

Just for fun...

Reportedly some WoW subscription numbers were leaked late last year (since Blizzard apparently no longer releases the numbers) that put the number at 1.7 million. Unfortunately, since Blizzard isn't officially releasing the numbers, we can't examine them to see how many of them are "active" as opposed to "barely playing", etc... But it's something to work with.

Final Fantasy XIV apparently had just over 750,000 active characters this month, according to the FFXIV Census website. That doesn't include players in China, which is a bit off by its own due to the unfortunate restrictions that country imposes. While the census only counts "characters" as opposed to "accounts", keep in mind that FFXIV allows you to level up multiple classes/jobs on the same character, so there are a lot fewer alts than in most other MMORPG games. So the number of active accounts is probably right around the same number. Additionally, FFXIV is in the end of life cycle for the Stormblood expansion. Shadowbringers will be releasing this summer, which will probably bump the number of active characters up for a while.

While I'm aware of other MMORPG games, I'm not aware of any others that fit the same general genre, and could compete with FFXIV, let along compete with WoW (assuming the leaked numbers are accurate).

Anyway, getting back on topic...


The "race through the content" problem is an issue for every on-line game. Developers have to cater to the "normals", but also have the hard-core "put in a ridiculous amount of time" players. And the latter tend to loudly complain when they run out of new content. Though developers can still have fun with them at times using content explicitly aimed at them (see FFXIV's Ultimate Binding Coil of Bahamut for an example).

Anthem's solution appears to be a grind. After you finish the big mission in the story, you're confronted with a long grind requiring lots of world events, stronghold runs, contracts, and "quickplay" missions (which is where you join a randomly selected player's mission to help them complete it). IIRC, you're looking at 100 missions (of assorted types), and 100 world events to clear the grind. Is it the best solution? Of course not. Grinds can get to be annoying, and will burn you out if you're not careful. But it is one way of playing for time while they prepare whatever it is that they're planning next. And the story has at least a few dangling plot hooks ready to go.

At the very least, it gives players something to work on besides just leveling up their equipment. And I would imagine that the average "normal" player could get through it in a month or two.

Eumerin wrote:

Anthem's solution appears to be a grind. After you finish the big mission in the story, you're confronted with a long grind requiring lots of world events, stronghold runs, contracts, and "quickplay" missions (which is where you join a randomly selected player's mission to help them complete it). IIRC, you're looking at 100 missions (of assorted types), and 100 world events to clear the grind. Is it the best solution? Of course not. Grinds can get to be annoying, and will burn you out if you're not careful. But it is one way of playing for time while they prepare whatever it is that they're planning next. And the story has at least a few dangling plot hooks ready to go.

Destiny 2 ultimately wen the same route with the Foresaken expansion, though I'd argue the results show case why catering to the 12 hour a day player is an awful idea, and their complaints about having nothing to do should just be met with "we're sorry." The game has become so grindy that it doesn't even seem worth playing. There were 4-5 hour a day players who even after three months still hadn't reached the item level cap there was so much time gating and grinding involved. I stopped last month after my frustration with a lack of meaningful rewards for my time reached its peak and I went back to playing Grim Dawn for my looter fix (helps that Forgotten Gods is coming).

Grind can be fun with properly incentivized. I love grinding. Warframe practically made it an art to make your grind as efficient as possible. A mindless, tedious grind, with pathetic rewards at the end however has very negative consequences.

str00dles1 wrote:

Unable to go solo freeplay. Why? I get strongholds, that's the point of them but why do I need randos running around in my freeplay.

I actually wish there were *more* people in a Freeplay instance. If I stumble across a tough world event, it's nice having support arrive to help out if something goes wrong. For instance, I suspect that if I run into one of the four named titans that are listed in the achievement, then I'm going to need help (I have trouble with the titan blast rings; and whenever I manage to successfully avoid them, I invariably get blind-sided by the seeking fireball that they seem to like to launch immediately after the last ring) But so far as I can tell, a freeplay instance appears to consist of exactly four players in the entire world area (which is pretty good-sized), usually all off in different parts of it doing completely different things. I was up in Shadowmarch(?) last night - the northwest part of the map - and cleared out two world events on my own (including a titan) - without any other players getting anywhere even remotely close to me while I was doing so.


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I'd *love* it if they added the "Codex" to the Loading Screens. There's so much to read and see in that menu. Put it over the loading screens, and most players won't notice loads at twice the length!

This is what they do in Monster Hunter World. MHW has long loading screens. But whenever you're stuck in one, there are seven little messages with either helpful hints, or in-game lore, that the game automatically advances through over the course of the loading screen. It helps distract a bit.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 warboss wrote:
They had 6 years to come up with more than 2 unlockable/buyable armor options for each class in the base game. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to expect given that games with 1/2 the development time and less resources do much more.

It's never been stated but I think it's fairly obvious Anthem was scrapped somewhat in 2014 and again in 2018 (both times Casey Hudson came and went from the project). Anthem doesn't look cheap by any means, but I can't fathom what they spent six years doing because the game doesn't look like something that should have taken six years to develop. There's a black hole somewhere in there that some development clearly went down and didn't come back.

Yes, it's called going from one generation of consoles to the next and changing game engines.

What? Anthem? No, that is just a completely incorrect assertion.

Anthem is very clearly built from Andromeda with an iteration of the same Frostbite engine with a handful of new subsystems (flight being the biggest). It looks the same, handles much the same, and has a very similar UI and functionality in powers.
There isn't a major generational change here. This is Bioware building further on the back of Frostbite, which they've been using for years now. Both DA:I and Andromeda are very present in this game's graphics and design.

Story wise and sale model wise, this is a different game. But from a programming/mechanical perspective, Anthem is straight up Andromeda 2: Soaring Boogaloo.