ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
Also I know the thread is a bit quiet and all, but I finally decided to pull the trigger on the Anthem artbook, mainly out of a sense of morbid curiosity I guess? Holy hell, first off it's an amazingly crafted book, nice heavy glossy paper and box that the collector's version comes in. But goddamn I don't think I've ever had an art/concept book depress me as much as this has. So many of the art pieces have tidbits from the artists/devs talking about how "We were originally planning this..." "We were developing this to do that...." "We were far along in this but..."
So many damn cool concepts that just never saw the light of day, they had whole factions, whole cities planned out etc. I'm going to try and take as many pics of the more interesting pieces as I can and post it to an imgur gallery or something sometime this week.
I didn't buy the game so I didn't get to experience the lack of stuff, but when they first showed the game, I really thought it had been constantly worked on for at least 4 years, I was really looking forward to a huge world of content. I really wish this hadn't happened the way it did.
EA had their quarterly earnings call today and it's...generally good news for Anthem. They acknowledge that it underperformed but they are still committed to fixing it and expanding on it with the help of community feedback. The full transcript isn't up yet but from the prepared remarks:
We are similarly committed to the live service for Anthem, and delivering for our community in this new IP over the long-term. The launch of Anthem in Q4 did not meet our expectations. However, we believe in the team at BioWare, and we also believe in what they set out to achieve with this game – building a new IP and melding genres to reach a new audience. Players have spent more than 150 million hours in Anthem since launch, and we’ve heard from them that the beauty and expanse of the world is stunning, and that traversing the environment in the Javelin suits makes for amazing gameplay. However, we’ve also heard feedback from our community about issues that began to manifest as the game reached scale, and that they want more depth and variety in the mission modes of the game. The team is now very focused on continued improvements to the game, and will then bring more content updates and in-game events that will enhance and expand the Anthem experience.
While I was pretty sure that this was going to be the case, I wouldn't have been totally surprised if they wrote it off considering. I'm glad they are still going to give it the attention it deserves and we'll have a chance to see how it pans out!
Yeah even if I'm spending my time with the other bioware live service game (sw tor) I really enjoyed anthem and look forward to improvements and hope EA gives it time to breath like Sw Tor got.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
Every time I leave Fort Tarsis by the front door I'm always fucking flabbergasted by how vertical the opening area is, like a hundred to two hundred metres worth of dense cliff faces and waterfalls. Few games in the genre use vertical space the way Anthem does and every time I hear some shit about how "generic and bland" the environment is I keep wondering what the surface-level fuck they're on about
The only improvement I'd suggest from the environment is even more density and drawing more inspiration from South Asian architecture, it really pops out when its around and few games draw from that aesthetic
Re: Earnings call, I'm glad they said what they needed to say about committing to its development but really just like the BioWare tweets I don't know why people were expecting to hear anything different, like "oh nah Anthem sucked we're pulling the plug on our service 5 years in development, 2 months post-launch"
The most important thing about the earnings call was that they discussed how Anthem showed they need to change how they launch games. They referenced how game companies do soft launches and more iterative testing in Asia. So, hey, maybe they are learning.
Today’s Anthem update has removed special Elysian chests from the game just over a month after they were added. This comes on the heels of several delayed updates, leaving the game’s remaining players bewildered and frustrated.
They were always going to go away. Right off the bat it makes it seem like they did something unusual instead of a thing that was always supposed to happen, then go on to point out how they it's supposed to happen. There was a timer ticking down in the game. I also like the use of weasel wording by repeatedly referring to the population of the game as its "remaining players." They really have an uphill battle to fight with this game's perception.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
There was a freaking timer on the chest challenge entry. It was always slated for a set period of time that was clearly shown every time you looked at that challenge list. Complaining about them going away smacks of hating something for the sake of hating it.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
I think it's the fact that there's just so little content in the end-game already, the idea that they would remove one of the few pieces that existed (even if the play was always for it to be a temporary thing) seems counter-intuitive.
I don't know. I've shelved Anthem myself, probably haven't played for a month or more, so I probably can't speak much to the existing state of the game. Just based on what I've seen though, it sure as hell isn't looking good. I'm hopeful that it can still turn things around, but I'm not optimistic about it anymore like I once was.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
The best part about this is that I never actually got around to spending the one Elysian Key I got, mostly because I wasn't really paying attention and earned my first one last night
Idk I just pop in for a couple hours and help out with some players' story missions. I don't voraciously consume these types of games these days (I dropped Warframe pretty hard for that reason, in all honesty) so I'm normally happy to just hit the matchmaking button for a bit and ride the current.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
If only if it was just Kotaku, Forbes posted basically the same article. Pretty much everyone decided early on they would shit on Anthem. Some of it is deserved, absolutely, but oh boy have there been plenty of articles that really reach because it gets clicks.
Yeah I saw that article and refused to give it a click because of how they phrased it. It was specifically in game listed as a limited time event that would expire. They weren't "removed" the event ended. Good jesus.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
As someone not actively playing, I wasn't aware it was a limited time event, so I imagine lots of other people just thought it was something added to the game permanently, especially considering how little content the game has.
I sympathize with that point of view, but I think entirely too much of public opinion on this game is similarly not actively playing but for some reason talking all the time about it.
Kind of hints at something askew, eh?
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I’m kind of surprised no one in this thread has mentioned that the latest patch completely broke loot drops from the Ash Titans in HoR (as well as other “apex creatures” apparently).
Like what kind of test are doing (or not doing?) over there?
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ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
I’m kind of surprised no one in this thread has mentioned that the latest patch completely broke loot drops from the Ash Titans in HoR (as well as other “apex creatures” apparently).
Like what kind of test are doing (or not doing?) over there?
Yeah I just popped into the reddit and saw the post about it. Pretty much all "Apex" mobs in Legendary Contracts and Strongholds are not dropping loot at all. Freeplay appears to be unaffected but the rest appear to be wiped out right now.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
If only if it was just Kotaku, Forbes posted basically the same article. Pretty much everyone decided early on they would shit on Anthem. Some of it is deserved, absolutely, but oh boy have there been plenty of articles that really reach because it gets clicks.
A lot of the piling on is just to get some bucks but anthem dev team seriously has earned some of it. Like the patch that took out the elysium chests. We knew that was happening and fully expected. But apparently in removing those it removed all the OTHER chests from strongholds. COME ON guys jesus just test this stuff before you push it out. They SERIOUSLY need a PTR environment sooner rather than later.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
If only if it was just Kotaku, Forbes posted basically the same article. Pretty much everyone decided early on they would shit on Anthem. Some of it is deserved, absolutely, but oh boy have there been plenty of articles that really reach because it gets clicks.
A lot of the piling on is just to get some bucks but anthem dev team seriously has earned some of it. Like the patch that took out the elysium chests. We knew that was happening and fully expected. But apparently in removing those it removed all the OTHER chests from strongholds. COME ON guys jesus just test this stuff before you push it out. They SERIOUSLY need a PTR environment sooner rather than later.
...where are you seeing that? This is the first I've heard about all chests vanishing.
The one "big" bug everyone is complaining about is that specific mobs in strongholds don't drop loot at the moment. Which is a significant issue but isn't "all stronghold chests are missing"
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
Unfortunately, once a narrative has been established by the vocal minority it is very difficult to overcome. Has the game had issues? Absolutely. Are they working to improve it? Also absolutely. There's a lot to improve on, but the core of the game is simply fun to play. Sadly, it has been established that the game is a steaming pile of bat guano and it's going to take a long time to overcome that perception. Hopefully EA is in this for the long haul, otherwise the game may end up a sad footnote in history.
Unfortunately, once a narrative has been established by the vocal minority it is very difficult to overcome. Has the game had issues? Absolutely. Are they working to improve it? Also absolutely. There's a lot to improve on, but the core of the game is simply fun to play. Sadly, it has been established that the game is a steaming pile of bat guano and it's going to take a long time to overcome that perception. Hopefully EA is in this for the long haul, otherwise the game may end up a sad footnote in history.
The interesting thing about enthusiast-blogger content-aggregation is how it feeds off itself. That article reads like he took a stroll through reddit (given the links to comments, he probably did) and parroted their negative commentary. Which, in turn will get signal boosted by the enthusiasts, usually not in the form of "this is dumb" like I just did, but in the "see how upset people are" context to support their view.
The shareholders call that was mentioned a few posts suggests that they are aware of that (they would have the numbers to know how many people are playing the game/buying, etc) and are continuing to support it.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I’m kind of surprised no one in this thread has mentioned that the latest patch completely broke loot drops from the Ash Titans in HoR (as well as other “apex creatures” apparently).
Like what kind of test are doing (or not doing?) over there?
Because the one thing the reddit threads don't point out is that they've been communicative about this bug and are quickly working to address it. As of this morning they were performing some additional testing on the fix and it sounds like they're getting it out as quickly as possible.
The bug exists and that sucks, but there's other activities in the game. What good is going on and on about a known issue when a fix is imminent?
It amazes me the sort of flak Anthem gets. I play FFXIV a lot. After every patch there's almost assuredly going to be a hotfix patch or two over the course of a week or two. This happens almost without fail. Do people post long pieces on the FFXIV subreddit about how SE's QA processes are clearly trash because they didn't catch this one thing? No. And yes, this is partially a function of the game having more content and a generally happier playerbase, however, it's also generally understood that bugs happens in game updates. It sucks but it's a part of the process. You literally can't test everything in a game between patches. Automated testing only goes so far and is less useful when it comes to something like an online game where potentially hundreds of thousands of players are going to be hammering it.
Anthem gets examined under a microscope because people want to complain about it.
I’m kind of surprised no one in this thread has mentioned that the latest patch completely broke loot drops from the Ash Titans in HoR (as well as other “apex creatures” apparently).
Like what kind of test are doing (or not doing?) over there?
Because the one thing the reddit threads don't point out is that they've been communicative about this bug and are quickly working to address it. As of this morning they were performing some additional testing on the fix and it sounds like they're getting it out as quickly as possible.
The bug exists and that sucks, but there's other activities in the game. What good is going on and on about a known issue when a fix is imminent?
It amazes me the sort of flak Anthem gets. I play FFXIV a lot. After every patch there's almost assuredly going to be a hotfix patch or two over the course of a week or two. This happens almost without fail. Do people post long pieces on the FFXIV subreddit about how SE's QA processes are clearly trash because they didn't catch this one thing? No. And yes, this is partially a function of the game having more content and a generally happier playerbase, however, it's also generally understood that bugs happens in game updates. It sucks but it's a part of the process. You literally can't test everything in a game between patches. Automated testing only goes so far and is less useful when it comes to something like an online game where potentially hundreds of thousands of players are going to be hammering it.
Anthem gets examined under a microscope because people want to complain about it.
Yeah as someone who played both anthem and division 2 at release. They both have issues, but Anthem's got like ballooned up to THE WORST THING EVER and Div 2's were like "sure this is broken and the devs aren't working on it, but div 1 had problems too..."
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
One big, and deserved reason Anthem got shit on so hard was it repeated the worst mistakes of every similar game that came out over the last 5 years. This despite saying in marketing hype that it wouldn't repeat those mistakes.
People were just fed the F up, and Anthem caught a lot of extra hate leftover from Division and Destiny.
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One big, and deserved reason Anthem got shit on so hard was it repeated the worst mistakes of every similar game that came out over the last 5 years. This despite saying in marketing hype that it wouldn't repeat those mistakes.
People were just fed the F up, and Anthem caught a lot of extra hate leftover from Division and Destiny.
One big, and deserved reason Anthem got shit on so hard was it repeated the worst mistakes of every similar game that came out over the last 5 years. This despite saying in marketing hype that it wouldn't repeat those mistakes.
People were just fed the F up, and Anthem caught a lot of extra hate leftover from Division and Destiny.
Perhaps it came out at the wrong time.
It did. If it had come out before division 1 or destiny 1 it would have received way more praise. But it didn't, and the devs, mostly due to bad management, did not have time to learn any lessons from those games.
I understand that they are working to fix things, but we need to be realistic: The game was haphazardly built in less than 2 years, a lot of this stuff can't be fixed with what I assume is now a skeleton team in a sensible time frame.
This game unfortunately needs a full team to work on it at least another year. I'd like two.
I understand that they are working to fix things, but we need to be realistic: The game was haphazardly built in less than 2 years, a lot of this stuff can't be fixed with what I assume is now a skeleton team in a sensible time frame.
This game unfortunately needs a full team to work on it at least another year. I'd like two.
Yeah honestly that's my biggest fear as well. When you crash develop like that to cram things together in such a short amount of time, you're going to make shortcuts/bandaids/bolt-ons to get your MVP out the door. Untangling that, especially with the supposed burnout of the various devs involved in this project, and with not the full team on top of that, does not look a feasible process without some serious time commitment, time that I'm not sure the community will give them, especially with Borderlands 3 coming later this year.
I mean look at this latest small patch they just released. They made what sounds like a fairly innocuous tweak to mobs' loot tables and it bricked every apex mob's loot table in strongholds/legendary missions/contracts etc. The fact that got pushed live with either QA not catching it (or given Frostbite's nightmarish bug fix process apparently, not being able to fix it in the proper timeframe) speaks to me a lack of resources at some level of the current dev team.
Yeah I wouldn't say players are bewildered.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
If only if it was just Kotaku, Forbes posted basically the same article. Pretty much everyone decided early on they would shit on Anthem. Some of it is deserved, absolutely, but oh boy have there been plenty of articles that really reach because it gets clicks.
A lot of the piling on is just to get some bucks but anthem dev team seriously has earned some of it. Like the patch that took out the elysium chests. We knew that was happening and fully expected. But apparently in removing those it removed all the OTHER chests from strongholds. COME ON guys jesus just test this stuff before you push it out. They SERIOUSLY need a PTR environment sooner rather than later.
...where are you seeing that? This is the first I've heard about all chests vanishing.
The one "big" bug everyone is complaining about is that specific mobs in strongholds don't drop loot at the moment. Which is a significant issue but isn't "all stronghold chests are missing"
It looks like it was somebody miswriting what the issue was. Its not the chests its the mob itself not dropping. I just saw that and was like WTF. Its still pretty wtf though.
Played for a couple of hours yesterday with some friends.
Man yeah the world-event bugs are weird, but amusing.
YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT!
EVERYONE GETS AN EVENT!
But, I got 2 legendaries! One I don't care for but the 2nd was a weapon, which is good times since I've been on MW weapons for ages.
World events are odd. Sometimes you just get on a bonkers run and its just one after the other rapid fire and it feels pretty damn solid. Then you do it another day and its like 30 minutes to find one and it takes an hour to do your three for the daily. I kinda suspect it is a case of if everybody in the free play instance stays closeish to each other they trip off more frequently.
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
I understand that they are working to fix things, but we need to be realistic: The game was haphazardly built in less than 2 years, a lot of this stuff can't be fixed with what I assume is now a skeleton team in a sensible time frame.
This game unfortunately needs a full team to work on it at least another year. I'd like two.
Yeah honestly that's my biggest fear as well. When you crash develop like that to cram things together in such a short amount of time, you're going to make shortcuts/bandaids/bolt-ons to get your MVP out the door. Untangling that, especially with the supposed burnout of the various devs involved in this project, and with not the full team on top of that, does not look a feasible process without some serious time commitment, time that I'm not sure the community will give them, especially with Borderlands 3 coming later this year.
I mean look at this latest small patch they just released. They made what sounds like a fairly innocuous tweak to mobs' loot tables and it bricked every apex mob's loot table in strongholds/legendary missions/contracts etc. The fact that got pushed live with either QA not catching it (or given Frostbite's nightmarish bug fix process apparently, not being able to fix it in the proper timeframe) speaks to me a lack of resources at some level of the current dev team.
As a developer, I feel really bad for these guys sometimes. And this is also why I would never work in the video game industry. There's "crunch time" and then there's "video game industry crunch time."
Played for a couple of hours yesterday with some friends.
Man yeah the world-event bugs are weird, but amusing.
YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT!
EVERYONE GETS AN EVENT!
But, I got 2 legendaries! One I don't care for but the 2nd was a weapon, which is good times since I've been on MW weapons for ages.
World events are odd. Sometimes you just get on a bonkers run and its just one after the other rapid fire and it feels pretty damn solid. Then you do it another day and its like 30 minutes to find one and it takes an hour to do your three for the daily. I kinda suspect it is a case of if everybody in the free play instance stays closeish to each other they trip off more frequently.
Yes it has definitely felt like they trigger a lot more frequently when you are near other people.
Not sure if properly grouped as a squad or not, but going solo both in group and in proximity the world events before would take AGES to trigger.
One big, and deserved reason Anthem got shit on so hard was it repeated the worst mistakes of every similar game that came out over the last 5 years. This despite saying in marketing hype that it wouldn't repeat those mistakes.
People were just fed the F up, and Anthem caught a lot of extra hate leftover from Division and Destiny.
Perhaps it came out at the wrong time.
It did. If it had come out before division 1 or destiny 1 it would have received way more praise. But it didn't, and the devs, mostly due to bad management, did not have time to learn any lessons from those games.
From what the deep dive post-mortem article said, it wasn't about time. Allegedly, the upper management explicitly didn't want to hear about the Division or Destiny. How accurate or exaggerated that might be, I don't know, but if there's even a kernel of truth, that seems like a pretty massive problem. Citing the same article, that might have also been tied to the uncertainty of what game they were making (survival, action, etc). The lack of clear direction certainly compounds things, but be unwilling to look at their competitors with a critical eye, see what they do well, and what they don't, would be valuable information.
Even if they're not making "Bioware's Divisestiny", at least look at the landscape and see where you can stand out (which in some ways they did, the verticality and flight are some of the most fun I've enjoyed in a game), but also there's no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. As I've cited a few times, they could have easily adopted the Diablo 3 enchanting system to inscriptions, as a way to expend resources and allow players *some* control over what they get, without allowing 'instant god rolls'.
Anyway, circling back to the chests and the patch. Not only did the chest event have a timer, the game had loading screen tips indicating that the keys would disappear when the event ended. Anyone who was playing for long enough really should have clued in to the limited nature of the event. Anyone on Reddit in particular has no excuse; people were openly doing the math on how one needed to open more than 4 keys a day right from the start (40 days, 40 keys, 162 items).
I get some disappointment in hoping that this round would be replaced with something else, and I do hope they return to the concept, but I think it's unreasonable to declare this a blindsiding for not having 'season 2' of them going live immediately. Don't get me wrong, I liked the keys/chests, I found it an interesting element added to the game, and a good reason to log in every day at least enough to get my key. In the end, I think I only missed 2; one because the service was unavailable for the majority of Sunday, and because I was super busy on the Monday it ended. Since my buddy and I both had all of our items, I just didn't worry about it.
Though honestly, we did the dailies for coins yesterday and for a change I just decided... yeah, I'm good, and did some other stuff. I will eagerly put 4+ hours into a game every day for weeks (hi Warframe, hi Fortnite), and as much as I want there to be more content and fun things to do in Anthem, I'm also okay with knocking off an hour or less of dailies here and there too.
It's a shame when a patch fixes some things and breaks others, but that's also the nature of this stuff. It doesn't excuse it, I wish that weren't the case, but anyone expressing outrage over something this common is just looking for things to be angry about. Maybe I was just lucky, not getting any time to play on Tuesday either, but I don't recall any missing stronghold chests when I played last night, so I guess that got resolved?
I continue to enjoy the game, hell I even feel a little bad only getting to Tier 9 this week for the Alliance (I think that's the first time I've fallen short of 10 since launch), but same as I hope Bioware's looking at this, I see it as a marathon, not a sprint. It won't be fixed in a week, or a month, or really fully show its potential in less than a quarter, I'm guessing. Hell, people have repeatedly said that both the Division and Destiny had shitty launches of one form or another, and took up to a year each to really come into their own. I hope we aren't waiting until spring 2020 for things to settle into place, but clickbait and hate/misinformation/willful outrage aren't going to get them there, or make the trip any smoother.
Frankly I'm kind of hoping something else goes sideways for the internet outrage machine to latch onto. I wouldn't wish this bullshit on anyone, but it feels like there needs to be some other grand target to get some people to finally walk away and do something more productive with their time (or at least, direct their anger towards another thing and leave this crew alone).
Yeah, I'm sure some outrage on Reddit or Twitter prompts the occasional shift, but they have access to how many people are logging in, for how long, how much money they're spending in the microtransaction shop (probably less than they planned, after giving us dozens of vinyls, a chunk of materials, and a handful of emotes/arrivals to play with in the event for those who were lucky enough to get them).
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So many damn cool concepts that just never saw the light of day, they had whole factions, whole cities planned out etc. I'm going to try and take as many pics of the more interesting pieces as I can and post it to an imgur gallery or something sometime this week.
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While I was pretty sure that this was going to be the case, I wouldn't have been totally surprised if they wrote it off considering. I'm glad they are still going to give it the attention it deserves and we'll have a chance to see how it pans out!
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The only improvement I'd suggest from the environment is even more density and drawing more inspiration from South Asian architecture, it really pops out when its around and few games draw from that aesthetic
Re: Earnings call, I'm glad they said what they needed to say about committing to its development but really just like the BioWare tweets I don't know why people were expecting to hear anything different, like "oh nah Anthem sucked we're pulling the plug on our service 5 years in development, 2 months post-launch"
pleasepaypreacher.net
It'd be cool to have areas teeming with dangerous wild life.
Like, patches or ground where the shit can get real if you just want to walk around there.
Swarms of tiny little raptor like creatures, etc.
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Anthems Latest Update Removes Special loot chests
They were always going to go away. Right off the bat it makes it seem like they did something unusual instead of a thing that was always supposed to happen, then go on to point out how they it's supposed to happen. There was a timer ticking down in the game. I also like the use of weasel wording by repeatedly referring to the population of the game as its "remaining players." They really have an uphill battle to fight with this game's perception.
That's one hell of a stretch.
Frustrated, sure, but not bewildered due to the chests going away when everyone knew they would be.
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wra
I don't know. I've shelved Anthem myself, probably haven't played for a month or more, so I probably can't speak much to the existing state of the game. Just based on what I've seen though, it sure as hell isn't looking good. I'm hopeful that it can still turn things around, but I'm not optimistic about it anymore like I once was.
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Kotaku trying to give a spin for more clicks? Why I never...
Idk I just pop in for a couple hours and help out with some players' story missions. I don't voraciously consume these types of games these days (I dropped Warframe pretty hard for that reason, in all honesty) so I'm normally happy to just hit the matchmaking button for a bit and ride the current.
If only if it was just Kotaku, Forbes posted basically the same article. Pretty much everyone decided early on they would shit on Anthem. Some of it is deserved, absolutely, but oh boy have there been plenty of articles that really reach because it gets clicks.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Kind of hints at something askew, eh?
XBOne | LyrKing
4 special-edition Elysian keys
Out of production, very special run with limited quantity
Never been used, guaranteed to work on ANY Elysian chest
Khajiit has wares keys, if you have coin
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Like what kind of test are doing (or not doing?) over there?
Yeah I just popped into the reddit and saw the post about it. Pretty much all "Apex" mobs in Legendary Contracts and Strongholds are not dropping loot at all. Freeplay appears to be unaffected but the rest appear to be wiped out right now.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
A lot of the piling on is just to get some bucks but anthem dev team seriously has earned some of it. Like the patch that took out the elysium chests. We knew that was happening and fully expected. But apparently in removing those it removed all the OTHER chests from strongholds. COME ON guys jesus just test this stuff before you push it out. They SERIOUSLY need a PTR environment sooner rather than later.
...where are you seeing that? This is the first I've heard about all chests vanishing.
The one "big" bug everyone is complaining about is that specific mobs in strongholds don't drop loot at the moment. Which is a significant issue but isn't "all stronghold chests are missing"
The interesting thing about enthusiast-blogger content-aggregation is how it feeds off itself. That article reads like he took a stroll through reddit (given the links to comments, he probably did) and parroted their negative commentary. Which, in turn will get signal boosted by the enthusiasts, usually not in the form of "this is dumb" like I just did, but in the "see how upset people are" context to support their view.
The shareholders call that was mentioned a few posts suggests that they are aware of that (they would have the numbers to know how many people are playing the game/buying, etc) and are continuing to support it.
Because the one thing the reddit threads don't point out is that they've been communicative about this bug and are quickly working to address it. As of this morning they were performing some additional testing on the fix and it sounds like they're getting it out as quickly as possible.
The bug exists and that sucks, but there's other activities in the game. What good is going on and on about a known issue when a fix is imminent?
It amazes me the sort of flak Anthem gets. I play FFXIV a lot. After every patch there's almost assuredly going to be a hotfix patch or two over the course of a week or two. This happens almost without fail. Do people post long pieces on the FFXIV subreddit about how SE's QA processes are clearly trash because they didn't catch this one thing? No. And yes, this is partially a function of the game having more content and a generally happier playerbase, however, it's also generally understood that bugs happens in game updates. It sucks but it's a part of the process. You literally can't test everything in a game between patches. Automated testing only goes so far and is less useful when it comes to something like an online game where potentially hundreds of thousands of players are going to be hammering it.
Anthem gets examined under a microscope because people want to complain about it.
Yeah as someone who played both anthem and division 2 at release. They both have issues, but Anthem's got like ballooned up to THE WORST THING EVER and Div 2's were like "sure this is broken and the devs aren't working on it, but div 1 had problems too..."
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People were just fed the F up, and Anthem caught a lot of extra hate leftover from Division and Destiny.
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Perhaps it came out at the wrong time.
It did. If it had come out before division 1 or destiny 1 it would have received way more praise. But it didn't, and the devs, mostly due to bad management, did not have time to learn any lessons from those games.
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This game unfortunately needs a full team to work on it at least another year. I'd like two.
Man yeah the world-event bugs are weird, but amusing.
YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT, AND YOU GET AN EVENT!
EVERYONE GETS AN EVENT!
But, I got 2 legendaries! One I don't care for but the 2nd was a weapon, which is good times since I've been on MW weapons for ages.
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wra
Yeah honestly that's my biggest fear as well. When you crash develop like that to cram things together in such a short amount of time, you're going to make shortcuts/bandaids/bolt-ons to get your MVP out the door. Untangling that, especially with the supposed burnout of the various devs involved in this project, and with not the full team on top of that, does not look a feasible process without some serious time commitment, time that I'm not sure the community will give them, especially with Borderlands 3 coming later this year.
I mean look at this latest small patch they just released. They made what sounds like a fairly innocuous tweak to mobs' loot tables and it bricked every apex mob's loot table in strongholds/legendary missions/contracts etc. The fact that got pushed live with either QA not catching it (or given Frostbite's nightmarish bug fix process apparently, not being able to fix it in the proper timeframe) speaks to me a lack of resources at some level of the current dev team.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
It looks like it was somebody miswriting what the issue was. Its not the chests its the mob itself not dropping. I just saw that and was like WTF. Its still pretty wtf though.
World events are odd. Sometimes you just get on a bonkers run and its just one after the other rapid fire and it feels pretty damn solid. Then you do it another day and its like 30 minutes to find one and it takes an hour to do your three for the daily. I kinda suspect it is a case of if everybody in the free play instance stays closeish to each other they trip off more frequently.
As a developer, I feel really bad for these guys sometimes. And this is also why I would never work in the video game industry. There's "crunch time" and then there's "video game industry crunch time."
Yes it has definitely felt like they trigger a lot more frequently when you are near other people.
Not sure if properly grouped as a squad or not, but going solo both in group and in proximity the world events before would take AGES to trigger.
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wra
From what the deep dive post-mortem article said, it wasn't about time. Allegedly, the upper management explicitly didn't want to hear about the Division or Destiny. How accurate or exaggerated that might be, I don't know, but if there's even a kernel of truth, that seems like a pretty massive problem. Citing the same article, that might have also been tied to the uncertainty of what game they were making (survival, action, etc). The lack of clear direction certainly compounds things, but be unwilling to look at their competitors with a critical eye, see what they do well, and what they don't, would be valuable information.
Even if they're not making "Bioware's Divisestiny", at least look at the landscape and see where you can stand out (which in some ways they did, the verticality and flight are some of the most fun I've enjoyed in a game), but also there's no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. As I've cited a few times, they could have easily adopted the Diablo 3 enchanting system to inscriptions, as a way to expend resources and allow players *some* control over what they get, without allowing 'instant god rolls'.
Anyway, circling back to the chests and the patch. Not only did the chest event have a timer, the game had loading screen tips indicating that the keys would disappear when the event ended. Anyone who was playing for long enough really should have clued in to the limited nature of the event. Anyone on Reddit in particular has no excuse; people were openly doing the math on how one needed to open more than 4 keys a day right from the start (40 days, 40 keys, 162 items).
I get some disappointment in hoping that this round would be replaced with something else, and I do hope they return to the concept, but I think it's unreasonable to declare this a blindsiding for not having 'season 2' of them going live immediately. Don't get me wrong, I liked the keys/chests, I found it an interesting element added to the game, and a good reason to log in every day at least enough to get my key. In the end, I think I only missed 2; one because the service was unavailable for the majority of Sunday, and because I was super busy on the Monday it ended. Since my buddy and I both had all of our items, I just didn't worry about it.
Though honestly, we did the dailies for coins yesterday and for a change I just decided... yeah, I'm good, and did some other stuff. I will eagerly put 4+ hours into a game every day for weeks (hi Warframe, hi Fortnite), and as much as I want there to be more content and fun things to do in Anthem, I'm also okay with knocking off an hour or less of dailies here and there too.
It's a shame when a patch fixes some things and breaks others, but that's also the nature of this stuff. It doesn't excuse it, I wish that weren't the case, but anyone expressing outrage over something this common is just looking for things to be angry about. Maybe I was just lucky, not getting any time to play on Tuesday either, but I don't recall any missing stronghold chests when I played last night, so I guess that got resolved?
I continue to enjoy the game, hell I even feel a little bad only getting to Tier 9 this week for the Alliance (I think that's the first time I've fallen short of 10 since launch), but same as I hope Bioware's looking at this, I see it as a marathon, not a sprint. It won't be fixed in a week, or a month, or really fully show its potential in less than a quarter, I'm guessing. Hell, people have repeatedly said that both the Division and Destiny had shitty launches of one form or another, and took up to a year each to really come into their own. I hope we aren't waiting until spring 2020 for things to settle into place, but clickbait and hate/misinformation/willful outrage aren't going to get them there, or make the trip any smoother.
Frankly I'm kind of hoping something else goes sideways for the internet outrage machine to latch onto. I wouldn't wish this bullshit on anyone, but it feels like there needs to be some other grand target to get some people to finally walk away and do something more productive with their time (or at least, direct their anger towards another thing and leave this crew alone).
Yeah, I'm sure some outrage on Reddit or Twitter prompts the occasional shift, but they have access to how many people are logging in, for how long, how much money they're spending in the microtransaction shop (probably less than they planned, after giving us dozens of vinyls, a chunk of materials, and a handful of emotes/arrivals to play with in the event for those who were lucky enough to get them).