Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[DemonDays]

My big concern with this is that it doesn't sound like they spent the past year working on "2.0", but rather focused on the seasonal events which didn't seem to add much actual content to the game.

If they're just starting work on it now...ooph. Sure, 4-5 months is doable, but at the rate they've been working I think things are quite a ways off...and wonder if anyone will care by then.



Maybe they shouldn't have wasted 5+ years fucking about and stressing staff out, but that's the past.

At this point I don't have much confidence left in their ability to turn things around. I was expecting the announcement to come this year with some big info/asset drops showing off the changes they've been working on over the past 6+ months, but this is just a vague, generic blog post. They needed to come out swinging, hard, and IMO instead they came out with a limp wristed slap.

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This is actually a bit more reasonable - the under the hood work for Anthem is being done in-part so that they can use that foundation for DA4.

And it's not necessarily "Anthem with dragons", but it sounds like it'll have more online components than DA:I. It's more just that they're not throwing out all the work they've done in Frostbyte to make it work for a RPG and starting from scratch for a third time like they did with ME:A (work from DA:I abandoned) and Anthem (work from DA:I and ME:A abandoned).

Yeah... What the fuck?

It sounds like they're going to start work on Anthem 2.0 now. Like, now.

What the fuck have they been doing for 12 months?

[zealo]

Imagine having any faith in this when 1.0 crashed and burned worse than what we predicted. Catch me in pso2

So long as EA wants in on that loot game "games as a service" bullcrap, no one should expect anything good to come out of this.

You can burn a reputation taken decades to build down in a fraction of that time, and that's where the Bioware of today is at.

[Lahis]

Why haven't EA killed this off already? Are they that desperate for lootershooter lootbox money?

[Aliven]

Why haven't EA killed this off already? Are they that desperate for lootershooter lootbox money?

Why they should?

[Lahis]

Why they should?

Because Anthem's repuration is irredeemably ruined? Because remaking the whole game will never earn them enough money to make it worthehile investment?

For Anthem to earn back the money poured ibto its (re)development, it would need to be riddled with microtransactions. But the game and its publusher have such a bad rep that even very minir monetization will turn players away.

Keeping Anthem plugged into lufe support makes no financial sense.

[Ophenia]

Because Anthem's repuration is irredeemably ruined? Because remaking the whole game will never earn them enough money to make it worthehile investment?

For Anthem to earn back the money poured ibto its (re)development, it would need to be riddled with microtransactions. But the game and its publusher have such a bad rep that even very minir monetization will turn players away.

Keeping Anthem plugged into lufe support makes no financial sense.

Pretty sure a multi-billion company knows business better than any MMO-C poster, they wouldn't do it if that was any dangerous financially. It wouldn't be the first game to fall down and be reborn as a successful-enough game. I'm looking forward to it, stopped playing a while ago but the basics of the game (combat, flying, world) are awesome and I would hop back in a split second if they correct its main gripes (aka replayability, loot system).

[Coldkil]

https://blog.bioware.com/2020/02/10/...e-february-10/

I guess they're supposedly moving forward with "anthem 2.0"

Doesn't seem much so.Yes, they're going to rework things but this sounds very far from an overhaul of the game. Seems more like they're going to attach stuff to the game while leaving current things as they are.

Though it doesn't really say much, so everything can happen.

[Makabreska]

This Reddit post says it all:

USPrimeMinister
If you wanna know why FFXIV got some level of faith from the playerbase when they did their overhaul, its because Yoshida came out and said "We fucked up, this is not good enough and we will fix it." And provided constant updates throughout that process. Not, "We are very proud of what we have done so far and will work on fixing stuff based on your feedback". And brag about what they have delivered over the last year.

[Big Thanks]

This Reddit post says it all:

USPrimeMinister
If you wanna know why FFXIV got some level of faith from the playerbase when they did their overhaul, its because Yoshida came out and said "We fucked up, this is not good enough and we will fix it." And provided constant updates throughout that process. Not, "We are very proud of what we have done so far and will work on fixing stuff based on your feedback". And brag about what they have delivered over the last year.

Same for Blizzard. They even lie is some cases.

[Makabreska]

This PR corpo speech is yet another example of treating customers like idiots. Along with EA's "pride and accomplishment" , Bethesda's "these paid mods are NOT paid mods", and Blizzards "that ban has nothing to do with China".

[Biomega]

This PR corpo speech is yet another example of treating customers like idiots. Along with EA's "pride and accomplishment" , Bethesda's "these paid mods are NOT paid mods", and Blizzards "that ban has nothing to do with China".

Honestly, corporate waffle has reached levels of absurdity that seem almost Orwellian by now. Is it just related to the whole US-American never-say-die mentality, or capitalist PR propaganda caught in a loop? Who knows. And maybe us saying "do they really think we're stupid enough to believe this" is just sample bias in the first place, since we're the part of the customer base debating things - rather than what for all we know could be the vast majority of unwashed masses not wasting two thoughts on what might or might not be going on and eating up the PR drivel as-is and whole-cloth. I.e., they keep talking down to us like we're idiots because most of us are, and it works.

[Big Thanks]

This PR corpo speech is yet another example of treating customers like idiots. Along with EA's "pride and accomplishment" , Bethesda's "these paid mods are NOT paid mods", and Blizzards "that ban has nothing to do with China".

Or "the cutscenes of RF were intentionally bad to not ruin nostalgia"
That one...was the biggest for me.

[Aliven]

Because Anthem's repuration is irredeemably ruined? Because remaking the whole game will never earn them enough money to make it worthehile investment?

For Anthem to earn back the money poured ibto its (re)development, it would need to be riddled with microtransactions. But the game and its publusher have such a bad rep that even very minir monetization will turn players away.

Keeping Anthem plugged into lufe support makes no financial sense.

It isnt. Game is was fun just pointless from a looter shooter view. But core gameplay loop is sooooo much fun. Flying is great, using abilities, shooting also.

They also do that with Battlefront 2, another ruined game that was reedemed post launch.

[Edge-]

Why haven't EA killed this off already? Are they that desperate for lootershooter lootbox money?

Because, contrary to popular believe, EA isn't some evil overlord. If they were they'd have killed this long ago, but the fact that they're not abandoning it but sticking with it is praiseworthy. They invested quite a bit and want to see a return, so they're giving it a second go.

[Makabreska]

Because, contrary to popular believe, EA isn't some evil overlord. If they were they'd have killed this long ago, but the fact that they're not abandoning it but sticking with it is praiseworthy. They invested quite a bit and want to see a return, so they're giving it a second go.

Umm, I'm pretty sure that if they just pulled the plug, shitstorm, and public image damage would be just too big (not to mention potential lawsuits). Wouldn't really praise EA/Bioware for delivering what they promised, and what should be in the 60$ AAA game from the start. I mean, are we really praising companies now, for supporting and fixing the game 1y after the release, when "game as service" model was supposed to support it for (as they said) 10 years? And honestly it's hard to not see EA as an "evil overlord", when looking at what they do with games, franchises, game studios and gambling mechanics.

[Katchii]

Because Anthem's repuration is irredeemably ruined? Because remaking the whole game will never earn them enough money to make it worthehile investment?

For Anthem to earn back the money poured ibto its (re)development, it would need to be riddled with microtransactions. But the game and its publusher have such a bad rep that even very minir monetization will turn players away.

Keeping Anthem plugged into lufe support makes no financial sense.

Unless they're using it as a learning opportunity to improve tech that will translate into other games (as well as this one) that they will also release and make money off of.

From a business perspective, things don't have to have huge returns on investment on the specific application it's being developed for, for it to actually have a huge business impact overall.

And Anthem is still making money (just not as much as they'd like), so sticking with it while also improving their knowledge and tech is a win-win for them.

Flat out abandoning it would be stupid for them, when some people are still essentially willingly paying EA to be their beta testers and QA group.

[Edge-]

Umm, I'm pretty sure that if they just pulled the plug, shitstorm, and public image damage would be just too big (not to mention potential lawsuits).

Potential lawsuits would be summarily dismissed with prejudice in court. There is no legal standing for buying a bad game.

And considering everyone has been calling it "DAED GAME" since it launched and laying heaps of criticism on EA (rather than BW who are the more deserving target), I'd figure they couldn't eat much more shit than they already have. People will shit on them no matter what they do.

I mean, are we really praising companies now, for supporting and fixing the game 1y after the release, when "game as service" model was supposed to support it for (as they said) 10 years?

Every game has these ambitions nowadays. Not all games end up seeing that come to reality. And given that there were frequent rumors about EA abandoning the game, this is good news for folks that still want it to be good.

And honestly it's hard to not see EA as an "evil overlord", when looking at what they do with games, franchises, game studios and gambling mechanics.

There's plenty of super fair criticism against EA, I fully agree and have joined in a great many of them. But the EA hate is near the point of parody at this point.

[Makabreska]

Potential lawsuits would be summarily dismissed with prejudice in court. There is no legal standing for buying a bad game.

We are talking about pulling the plug, so ye, I think there would be a ground for a lawsuit there, if they simply kill it in 1y span after promising 10y of updates.

Every game has these ambitions nowadays. Not all games end up seeing that come to reality. And given that there were frequent rumors about EA abandoning the game, this is good news for folks that still want it to be good.

Again, are we still praising big gaming companies for actually delivering promised content to their severely undercooked 60$ games? After all the bugs, broken promises, not delivered road map features and false trailer advertising? Should we really be thankful that they didn't pull the plug? And every company has these ambitions? Maybe they should watch out what they actually advertise?

There's plenty of super fair criticism against EA, I fully agree and have joined in a great many of them. But the EA hate is near the point of parody at this point.

It's really hard not to behave like that, when you see how they treat their customers ("pride and accomplishment"), how they bullshit with straight face in the parliament about loot boxes ("surprise mechanics"), how they turned great franchises like C&C or Dungeon Keeper into a shitty mobile cash grab games, how they needed like 5y to finally deliver a good SW game while bullshitting about "single player games being dead" (it's harder to monetize these, than on-line "live service" bull crap).

[Edge-]

We are talking about pulling the plug, so ye, I think there would be a ground for a lawsuit there, if they simply kill it in 1y span after promising 10y of updates.

Again, this would be dismissed with prejudice and would probably be laughed at by the judge like that kid that sued claiming that Jagex infringed on his First Amendment right by muting him in chat.

That was their plan, 10+ years, and it's not and never has been legally binding. Gamers really need to take a few "law 101" courses before going around the internet threatening frivolous lawsuits.

Again, are we still praising big gaming companies for actually delivering content to their severely undercooked games?

Given that EA wasn't directly responsible for this, yeah. They're indirectly responsible because they gave BioWare too much freedom, which runs contrary to all the "evil EA" narratives. BW fucked up. Hard. Like, super hard. But now that they finally have a clue about what to do, EA is still backing them financially and letting them try to make their game into what it should have been from the get-go.

Yes, that EA isn't canning BW like so many EA haters proclaimed would happen if the game tanked is worthy of praise. Maybe not objectively, but at the very least to rub it in the faces of the irrational EA hater crowd.

After all the bugs, broken promises, not delivered road map features and false trailer advertising? Every company has these ambitious, maybe they should watch out what they actually advertise?

Talk to BW, then. They've run the show with this as the Kotaku piece clearly laid out.

It's really hard not to behave like that, when you see how they treat their customers ("pride and accomplishment"), how they bullshit with straight face in the parliament about loot boxes ("surprise mechanics"), how they needed like 5y to finally deliver a good SW game.

Pride and accomplishment: Yep, they ate a huge shit sammich for that. And clearly learned from it, reversing course on loot boxes hard. There's a silver lining to this monumentally stupid comment.

Lootbox gambling: Yep, that's shady. But it's also an argument that every major company is functionally making, just more behind the scenes. They're not unique in this, and while it's worthy of heavy criticism that additional context is needed.

5 years to make a good SW game: Making games is hard and takes time. Battlefront 1/2 had plenty of issues, but both shaped up to be pretty solid games, especially Battlefront 2 which is still seeing free content updates and support years after launching. And by all accounts it's pretty fantastic right now.

Other games take longer, and we know that the SW game that was previously being worked on by Visceral had all kinds of internal development issues that caused delays, so we'd have had at least one other game. But thankfully, the Respawn entry is reportedly awesome.

Development of good (or decent), AAA games takes time. If they were blasting out low budget, quick turnaround releases people would be attacking them for "milking the franchise with garbage games", so there's really no winning. What is the "appropriate" amount of time required to make a SW game? How often should they release them? I mean, what's the arbitrary bar being set here?

At the end of the day this is still good for Anthem, and while I'm worried that heavy work hasn't already begun I'm hopeful they can still turn this around. Not because I like EA or BW at all (I have no love for either), but because there are quite a few folks that are either still enjoying the game or that enjoy the bones of the game but stopped playing, and want to enjoy it again. If they can get it in a decent state, that's a net positive. Period.

[Lahis]

5 years to make a good SW game: Making games is hard and takes time. Battlefront 1/2 had plenty of issues, but both shaped up to be pretty solid games, especially Battlefront 2 which is still seeing free content updates and support years after launching. And by all accounts it's pretty fantastic right now.

Other games take longer, and we know that the SW game that was previously being worked on by Visceral had all kinds of internal development issues that caused delays, so we'd have had at least one other game. But thankfully, the Respawn entry is reportedly awesome.

Development of good (or decent), AAA games takes time. If they were blasting out low budget, quick turnaround releases people would be attacking them for "milking the franchise with garbage games", so there's really no winning. What is the "appropriate" amount of time required to make a SW game? How often should they release them? I mean, what's the arbitrary bar being set here?

Fallen Order didn't take 5 years to make. EA just served several pkates of shit with Star Wars stamp on it before they finally let a studio with the least EA Overlord oversight to do something decent with the license.