As a dev I usually chuckle a little bit when I see stuff like this, bugs sneak through no matter how robust your QA process is, but then I glance at the subreddit and a ton of people are just like "Wow how incompetent can you be Bioware" and it's like, man, take a step back. They've acknowledged the issues and there'll be fixes for the fixes.
It sucks but dang, Bioware is making an honest effort to fix their game and apparently no amount of work is enough for them to get even a small amount of good faith.
It's been said before on that subreddit but a big problem is there is nothing else to talk about. Your not really talking up your build cause it's either too hard to collect all the pieces or doesn't really change up the game. There's not really enough puzzles or lore to break down.
The meat of the game to discuss is the loot, and while subreddits being toxic isn't really shocking, it's hard to just talk about loot drop rates and have it stay positive
The major thing for me is that many, if not all of the problems the game has had would've come to light with any play testing more serious than "see if the game starts without crashing" - Snark, but not far away.
That just absolutely shows this game was rushed, and was not ready to be released.
If the release game was the beta, it would've been understandable - Hard to test a game at this scale.
But it isn't.
+3
HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
As a dev I usually chuckle a little bit when I see stuff like this, bugs sneak through no matter how robust your QA process is, but then I glance at the subreddit and a ton of people are just like "Wow how incompetent can you be Bioware" and it's like, man, take a step back. They've acknowledged the issues and there'll be fixes for the fixes.
It sucks but dang, Bioware is making an honest effort to fix their game and apparently no amount of work is enough for them to get even a small amount of good faith.
Reddit posters labour under the pretense that every bug, issue, and design decision they don't care for is the resulted of a carefully orchestrated scheme by nefarious suits to give REAL GAMERS a much undeserved SLAP IN THE FACE.
If everything was magically fixed tomorrow, they'd split their time finding new things to complain about, and asking why it wasn't magically fixed yesterday.
As a dev I usually chuckle a little bit when I see stuff like this, bugs sneak through no matter how robust your QA process is, but then I glance at the subreddit and a ton of people are just like "Wow how incompetent can you be Bioware" and it's like, man, take a step back. They've acknowledged the issues and there'll be fixes for the fixes.
It sucks but dang, Bioware is making an honest effort to fix their game and apparently no amount of work is enough for them to get even a small amount of good faith.
Reddit posters labour under the pretense that every bug, issue, and design decision they don't care for is the resulted of a carefully orchestrated scheme by nefarious suits to give REAL GAMERS a much undeserved SLAP IN THE FACE.
If everything was magically fixed tomorrow, they'd split their time finding new things to complain about, and asking why it wasn't magically fixed yesterday.
"of course BiowEAre had magic powers this whole time and waited for the Origin subs to renew in April just to get a little more cash. Why didn't they use magic on release day? Too bad I haven't played this game since I watched it on Twitch in February, gg ez"
0
ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
The major thing for me is that many, if not all of the problems the game has had would've come to light with any play testing more serious than "see if the game starts without crashing" - Snark, but not far away.
That just absolutely shows this game was rushed, and was not ready to be released.
If the release game was the beta, it would've been understandable - Hard to test a game at this scale.
But it isn't.
Yeah I mean especially the quality of life aspects with regards to the higher tier drops just not happening. I'm sure testing was done at the "ok will this event absolutely crap the bed?" level, but as a "hey am I really having fun?" level it seems pretty rough. Like i'm getting flashbacks of early wow days where Molten Core and Blackwing Lair were deliberately tuned completely out of whack as they simply didn't expect people to get through the content and figured they had time to properly tune the instance for players. I can't imagine a QA tester for Bioware doing several hours of GM2 or 3 not completely kitted out in God rolled legendaries having any semblance of fun after a couple of hours. Heck I'm mostly full masterwork with two legendary components and GM2 is becoming a slog for me, even with consumables. I suppose it'll improve once I get more legendaries, but after a solid week of play of 3 legendary contracts and 1-3 stronghold runs every evening resulting in either side-grade/garbage MW parts or a legendary component for a non-colossus javelin admist a torrent of salvaging epics/rares, it really just wasn't fun to play anymore.
I dunno, maybe i'm just addicted to the loot treadmill and once it's dried up, it kills my interest, but the combat is amazing and I want to see what they have planned for the universe they created.
It's been said before on that subreddit but a big problem is there is nothing else to talk about. Your not really talking up your build cause it's either too hard to collect all the pieces or doesn't really change up the game. There's not really enough puzzles or lore to break down.
The meat of the game to discuss is the loot, and while subreddits being toxic isn't really shocking, it's hard to just talk about loot drop rates and have it stay positive
I mean, I agree with this! I'd personally play a lot more if there was any amount of progression at the endgame but there isn't really. The core of the game is a lot of fun to me but it's hard to log in knowing that I'm almost certainly not going to make any real progress. That's a legit complaint to make!
I think this is super unfortunate and is going to take time to fix, content doesn't magically appear. I sure hope we see what this mysterious Mastery system looks like that's supposedly coming next month.
But if your reaction to a huge patch that fixes 100 issues but maybe introduces 2 other bugs is "omg Bioware you're bad at making games!!!" then that's not really constructive.
Whether or not the reddit echo chamber is being needlessly harsh and vocal <James Hetfield>ANTHEM BAAAAAAD</James Hetfield>, the problem I think is this is, what, the 3rd or 4th pass they've made to try and fix loot drops and somehow it's still screwed up? I think people understand this game has a long way to go before being in a great state, but loot has been the main focus of discussion and patches since the game came out. Yet here we still are, still waiting.
EDIT: perhaps, though, this game is not meant to shower us in good loot like D3, PoE, TD2, etc. and we're the suckers for wanting it to be.
A lot of people are pretty clearly just looking for something to vent their spleen about and it winds up being videogames
Like, the idea of going to a sub/forum/whatever to post at length about how you don’t like a game is a insane to me; just move on to something you like better then
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
A lot of people are pretty clearly just looking for something to vent their spleen about and it winds up being videogames
Like, the idea of going to a sub/forum/whatever to post at length about how you don’t like a game is a insane to me; just move on to something you like better then
Yeah I've never gotten the "I hate this game, let me seek out media about it and incessantly say how much I hate it" but then again despite being a gamer my entire life I feel I don't understand most people in my hobby.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
look im all for crapping on whinging gamers, but with anthem i feel like this is what you get when you make a games as service game. If this was a single player or coop experience, nobody would be bitching about loot. But they essentially told us the way to play the game was the grind, and then when the grind is unrewarding, both superficially and substantively, this is what you get.
I dont even mean unrewarding in the RNG sense, I mean that even if you got all the legendaries you ever wanted all the time, its just stats, its hollow. A new skin and maybe a unique stat. The gameplay isnt markedly different the more you play, theres nothing new between gm1-gm3.
Now with most games you would just move on and accept you have gotten to "the end", but when you say "game as service", gamers get extra bitchy about the service
Essentially a more generous RNG could have cushioned the blow of an ultimately hollow end game, but I would argue you'd still eventually get a negative fall off and frustration as people realise theres no there there
Im much more forgiving of glitches and other things, simply because no matter how big your QA team is, its not millions of gamers playing it 24/7 big.
Whether or not the reddit echo chamber is being needlessly harsh and vocal <James Hetfield>ANTHEM BAAAAAAD</James Hetfield>, the problem I think is this is, what, the 3rd or 4th pass they've made to try and fix loot drops and somehow it's still screwed up? I think people understand this game has a long way to go before being in a great state, but loot has been the main focus of discussion and patches since the game came out. Yet here we still are, still waiting.
EDIT: perhaps, though, this game is not meant to shower us in good loot like D3, PoE, TD2, etc. and we're the suckers for wanting it to be.
I think they ARE making solid improvements, though these are being masked somewhat by the bugs that are introduced (and then resolved again) at the same time.
The expectation is that they fix loot in a very specific way: it should just straight up shower loot at all times. This is a fairly naive viewpoint, but that's not really anyone's fault. The picture they have is what makes them feel good in that moment.
Bioware is absolutely listening to that, but they have a more complete picture (internally, a much more detailed roadmap than we have publicly) and a lot more information on the health of the game. Sure, they could just flood you with loot but does that fit their overall vision? Do their expected metrics match up with what players are actually getting? If they overcorrect now, does it make it harder to implement other features they have planned? Ultimately, the goal is to strike a balance so players are happy too, but that doesn't always mean just opening the loot floodgates.
Nobody is happy with where loot is at at the moment, but it's going to take dozens of incremental changes to land on that balance, and perhaps a fairly major overhaul if it's needed (fairly likely) which is going to take time regardless, you don't want to end up in a situation where the overhaul needs an overhaul. Not because Bioware is unable to figure it out, but because some changes can have much farther reaching impacts than "makes the players feel good" and you increment on things so you can check on things in "real world" conditions. Yeah you can crunch some numbers and have some good guesses, but things almost always don't quite match up when you introduce players to the mix.
+2
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Just did Heart of Rage and got zero MWs or Legs from the whole thing. Tons and tons of Epics, though. At least the Elysian Chest eased the pain of it all.
At least they acknowledged it's a bug and gives me hope we'll see it made right shortly. Probably this week considering how fast they are pushing out fixes.
The problem with leaving loot drops at such a low level is every bit of fun you have in the game is immediately followed by disappointment, which sours the experience somewhat.
No one remembers how much fun they had watching their team go 2-0 up when they conceded 3 in the last 5 minutes of the game.
the last couple of times patches borked the loot drops rates (in the “over intended” direction), BioWare fixed that in what, a couple of hours? Wonder how long the GM loot drops get patched.
Also, calling out the people who want to be showered with loot as having a “fairly naive viewpoint” seems a bit silly when you have the game devs who saved Diablo 3 out there saying the exact same thing.
+1
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Silly thing: did freeplay for 3 world events and returned with 3 MWs. RNG!
Freeplay and Contracts still seem fine.
But a Stronghold/Legendary Mission not rewarding a single MW is not bad RNG it's a bug, considering you are supposed to be guaranteed a MW on completion.
the last couple of times patches borked the loot drops rates (in the “over intended” direction), BioWare fixed that in what, a couple of hours? Wonder how long the GM loot drops get patched.
Also, calling out the people who want to be showered with loot as having a “fairly naive viewpoint” seems a bit silly when you have the game devs who saved Diablo 3 out there saying the exact same thing.
the last couple of times patches borked the loot drops rates (in the “over intended” direction), BioWare fixed that in what, a couple of hours? Wonder how long the GM loot drops get patched.
Also, calling out the people who want to be showered with loot as having a “fairly naive viewpoint” seems a bit silly when you have the game devs who saved Diablo 3 out there saying the exact same thing.
This game is not Diablo 3.
You’re right, it’s not. But those devs ran a similar game and have the opinion that more high quality loot led to a better experience.
As you say, only BioWare has the full data dump to really make that determination for Anthem, so maybe making definititive statements about how naive people are isn’t a great idea.
the last couple of times patches borked the loot drops rates (in the “over intended” direction), BioWare fixed that in what, a couple of hours? Wonder how long the GM loot drops get patched.
Also, calling out the people who want to be showered with loot as having a “fairly naive viewpoint” seems a bit silly when you have the game devs who saved Diablo 3 out there saying the exact same thing.
This game is not Diablo 3.
You’re right, it’s not. But those devs ran a similar game and have the opinion that more high quality loot led to a better experience.
As you say, only BioWare has the full data dump to really make that determination for Anthem, so maybe making definititive statements about how naive people are isn’t a great idea.
Asserting that you know the best path forward without at least acknowledging that you don't have a complete picture is pretty naive. To be clear, though, I don't think saying "Hey, it felt good when I was just getting tons of loot!" is a bad statement. I hope Bioware hears that and keeps increasing drop rates across the board. The problem is that there are several posts that say "Just make it rain loot now! That'll fix everything! Why is it taking so long to do this??" That's what I'm referring to when I say naive statements.
I think Anthem fundamentally has a different loot system than Diablo 3 has or had. There are similarities and they would do well to listen to the people that helped Diablo 3 turn around, but saying that the solution that worked there applies 1:1 here is ignoring an awful lot. They did acknowledge that they read that post, so there's that at least.
Shock Treatment:
Was: Hitting enemies with Ordnance Launcher abilities temporarily lowers thruster-heat buildup by 30% for 5 seconds.
Now: Taking damage increases all damage by 8% for 10 seconds, stacking to 10.
Stalwart’s Badge:
Was: On shield break increases all ability damage by 40% for 5 seconds.
Now: When hit with a status effect, increase all gear damage by 40% for 10 seconds.
Synchronized Frame:
Changed to hitting an enemy from defeating an enemy.
Hngh. And they BUFFED Best Defense?
Also, jesus christ Inties.
Bloodlust: An inscribed component that increases melee weapon damage. Increases melee damage by 75% for 10 seconds when killing an enemy by using melee.
Raneri’s Charge:
Increased base damage by 25%, removed cooldown.
Conductive Lattice:
Was: Performing a small melee hit-streak (3) detonates an electric explosion.
Now: Melee hits detonate an electric explosion, can occur once every 2 seconds.
Way of the Bold:
Increased to 40% armor restored (from 20%).
That "removed cooldown" can't mean what I think it does, can it?
I just got a Raneri's Charge and Conductive Lattice today over lunch. I am ...fairly excited to go try them out later.
Don't ...don't look at me that way, Chonkyboi! I'll be back for more punch-the-world shenanigans in just a minute, but first I ...I need to uh... I need to go fast and stab things with lightning.
I just got a Raneri's Charge and Conductive Lattice today over lunch. I am ...fairly excited to go try them out later.
Don't ...don't look at me that way, Chonkyboi! I'll be back for more punch-the-world shenanigans in just a minute, but first I ...I need to uh... I need to go fast and stab things with lightning.
Oh hey and also this means that when you hit with Raneri's, there's an explosion at your target too. Woo!
At least this update is actually letting me ragequit
0
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
I will say that between all the games I was playing before I went on my holiday cruise, Anthem is the one I'm looking forward to finishing (the storyline I mean) the most.
(I have a lot to say about my single player experience so far but for now greetings from New Caledonia I guess)
I also got a decal and landing emote from Elysian caches
Fun thing- if anyone in your party opens a cache, you get the loot from it???
Yes, you can in fact have all 4 people bring a key and everyone gets all of it.
It's necessary for it to be possible (although very difficult without organised friends) to get everything. Max items given out is 4 per character per day. You have 41 days to get 162 items.
Chances of it now being impossible for those people who got crafting mats instead of stuff to get everything is very high.
edit: I'm not super opposed to them doing that provided they're priced appropriately compared to other cosmetic purchases, taking into account that it's random. Probably an unfathomably bad decision for them to make PR-wise though.
I also got a decal and landing emote from Elysian caches
Fun thing- if anyone in your party opens a cache, you get the loot from it???
Yes, you can in fact have all 4 people bring a key and everyone gets all of it.
It's necessary for it to be possible (although very difficult without organised friends) to get everything. Max items given out is 4 per character per day. You have 41 days to get 162 items.
Chances of it now being impossible for those people who got crafting mats instead of stuff to get everything is very high.
Where do you get 162 from "There are 67 unique vanity unlocks available, including vinyls, victory poses, emotes and arrivals. You will never get a duplicate vanity item!"
There's 67. If someone had a key, you get one. 67 keys, 67 items. Is there something not in the notes?
Edit: Also, what 41 days? Is that something also not in the notes?
Posts
It sucks but dang, Bioware is making an honest effort to fix their game and apparently no amount of work is enough for them to get even a small amount of good faith.
The meat of the game to discuss is the loot, and while subreddits being toxic isn't really shocking, it's hard to just talk about loot drop rates and have it stay positive
That just absolutely shows this game was rushed, and was not ready to be released.
If the release game was the beta, it would've been understandable - Hard to test a game at this scale.
But it isn't.
Reddit posters labour under the pretense that every bug, issue, and design decision they don't care for is the resulted of a carefully orchestrated scheme by nefarious suits to give REAL GAMERS a much undeserved SLAP IN THE FACE.
If everything was magically fixed tomorrow, they'd split their time finding new things to complain about, and asking why it wasn't magically fixed yesterday.
"of course BiowEAre had magic powers this whole time and waited for the Origin subs to renew in April just to get a little more cash. Why didn't they use magic on release day? Too bad I haven't played this game since I watched it on Twitch in February, gg ez"
Yeah I mean especially the quality of life aspects with regards to the higher tier drops just not happening. I'm sure testing was done at the "ok will this event absolutely crap the bed?" level, but as a "hey am I really having fun?" level it seems pretty rough. Like i'm getting flashbacks of early wow days where Molten Core and Blackwing Lair were deliberately tuned completely out of whack as they simply didn't expect people to get through the content and figured they had time to properly tune the instance for players. I can't imagine a QA tester for Bioware doing several hours of GM2 or 3 not completely kitted out in God rolled legendaries having any semblance of fun after a couple of hours. Heck I'm mostly full masterwork with two legendary components and GM2 is becoming a slog for me, even with consumables. I suppose it'll improve once I get more legendaries, but after a solid week of play of 3 legendary contracts and 1-3 stronghold runs every evening resulting in either side-grade/garbage MW parts or a legendary component for a non-colossus javelin admist a torrent of salvaging epics/rares, it really just wasn't fun to play anymore.
I dunno, maybe i'm just addicted to the loot treadmill and once it's dried up, it kills my interest, but the combat is amazing and I want to see what they have planned for the universe they created.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
I mean, I agree with this! I'd personally play a lot more if there was any amount of progression at the endgame but there isn't really. The core of the game is a lot of fun to me but it's hard to log in knowing that I'm almost certainly not going to make any real progress. That's a legit complaint to make!
I think this is super unfortunate and is going to take time to fix, content doesn't magically appear. I sure hope we see what this mysterious Mastery system looks like that's supposedly coming next month.
But if your reaction to a huge patch that fixes 100 issues but maybe introduces 2 other bugs is "omg Bioware you're bad at making games!!!" then that's not really constructive.
EDIT: perhaps, though, this game is not meant to shower us in good loot like D3, PoE, TD2, etc. and we're the suckers for wanting it to be.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Like, the idea of going to a sub/forum/whatever to post at length about how you don’t like a game is a insane to me; just move on to something you like better then
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Yeah I've never gotten the "I hate this game, let me seek out media about it and incessantly say how much I hate it" but then again despite being a gamer my entire life I feel I don't understand most people in my hobby.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I dont even mean unrewarding in the RNG sense, I mean that even if you got all the legendaries you ever wanted all the time, its just stats, its hollow. A new skin and maybe a unique stat. The gameplay isnt markedly different the more you play, theres nothing new between gm1-gm3.
Now with most games you would just move on and accept you have gotten to "the end", but when you say "game as service", gamers get extra bitchy about the service
Essentially a more generous RNG could have cushioned the blow of an ultimately hollow end game, but I would argue you'd still eventually get a negative fall off and frustration as people realise theres no there there
Im much more forgiving of glitches and other things, simply because no matter how big your QA team is, its not millions of gamers playing it 24/7 big.
I think they ARE making solid improvements, though these are being masked somewhat by the bugs that are introduced (and then resolved again) at the same time.
The expectation is that they fix loot in a very specific way: it should just straight up shower loot at all times. This is a fairly naive viewpoint, but that's not really anyone's fault. The picture they have is what makes them feel good in that moment.
Bioware is absolutely listening to that, but they have a more complete picture (internally, a much more detailed roadmap than we have publicly) and a lot more information on the health of the game. Sure, they could just flood you with loot but does that fit their overall vision? Do their expected metrics match up with what players are actually getting? If they overcorrect now, does it make it harder to implement other features they have planned? Ultimately, the goal is to strike a balance so players are happy too, but that doesn't always mean just opening the loot floodgates.
Nobody is happy with where loot is at at the moment, but it's going to take dozens of incremental changes to land on that balance, and perhaps a fairly major overhaul if it's needed (fairly likely) which is going to take time regardless, you don't want to end up in a situation where the overhaul needs an overhaul. Not because Bioware is unable to figure it out, but because some changes can have much farther reaching impacts than "makes the players feel good" and you increment on things so you can check on things in "real world" conditions. Yeah you can crunch some numbers and have some good guesses, but things almost always don't quite match up when you introduce players to the mix.
At least they acknowledged it's a bug and gives me hope we'll see it made right shortly. Probably this week considering how fast they are pushing out fixes.
Xbox Live / Steam
No one remembers how much fun they had watching their team go 2-0 up when they conceded 3 in the last 5 minutes of the game.
Also, calling out the people who want to be showered with loot as having a “fairly naive viewpoint” seems a bit silly when you have the game devs who saved Diablo 3 out there saying the exact same thing.
Freeplay and Contracts still seem fine.
But a Stronghold/Legendary Mission not rewarding a single MW is not bad RNG it's a bug, considering you are supposed to be guaranteed a MW on completion.
Xbox Live / Steam
This game is not Diablo 3.
You’re right, it’s not. But those devs ran a similar game and have the opinion that more high quality loot led to a better experience.
As you say, only BioWare has the full data dump to really make that determination for Anthem, so maybe making definititive statements about how naive people are isn’t a great idea.
Asserting that you know the best path forward without at least acknowledging that you don't have a complete picture is pretty naive. To be clear, though, I don't think saying "Hey, it felt good when I was just getting tons of loot!" is a bad statement. I hope Bioware hears that and keeps increasing drop rates across the board. The problem is that there are several posts that say "Just make it rain loot now! That'll fix everything! Why is it taking so long to do this??" That's what I'm referring to when I say naive statements.
I think Anthem fundamentally has a different loot system than Diablo 3 has or had. There are similarities and they would do well to listen to the people that helped Diablo 3 turn around, but saying that the solution that worked there applies 1:1 here is ignoring an awful lot. They did acknowledge that they read that post, so there's that at least.
Hngh. And they BUFFED Best Defense?
Also, jesus christ Inties.
That "removed cooldown" can't mean what I think it does, can it?
So as long as I keep killing things, I keep charging.
Okay!
Elemental Ops + Tip of the Spear + Seeker Missile is NUTS
Don't ...don't look at me that way, Chonkyboi! I'll be back for more punch-the-world shenanigans in just a minute, but first I ...I need to uh...
I need to go fast and stab things with lightning.
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
Oh hey and also this means that when you hit with Raneri's, there's an explosion at your target too. Woo!
Elemental Ops counts each shotgun pellet as a hit, so a single shotgun blast applies acid....
At least this update is actually letting me ragequit
(I have a lot to say about my single player experience so far but for now greetings from New Caledonia I guess)
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Fun thing- if anyone in your party opens a cache, you get the loot from it???
Yes, you can in fact have all 4 people bring a key and everyone gets all of it.
It's necessary for it to be possible (although very difficult without organised friends) to get everything. Max items given out is 4 per character per day. You have 41 days to get 162 items.
Chances of it now being impossible for those people who got crafting mats instead of stuff to get everything is very high.
edit: I'm not super opposed to them doing that provided they're priced appropriately compared to other cosmetic purchases, taking into account that it's random. Probably an unfathomably bad decision for them to make PR-wise though.
Where do you get 162 from "There are 67 unique vanity unlocks available, including vinyls, victory poses, emotes and arrivals. You will never get a duplicate vanity item!"
There's 67. If someone had a key, you get one. 67 keys, 67 items. Is there something not in the notes?
Edit: Also, what 41 days? Is that something also not in the notes?