Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[jstnw89]

Well that article just confirmed all suspicions for why the game turned out to be a steaming pile of shite.

Kinda surprising that there are still people that will gladly be served shit and thank you for the opportunity to eat it

[Eleccybubb]

Well that article just confirmed all suspicions for why the game turned out to be a steaming pile of shite.

Yep.

Glad I didn't throw £60 on it.

[jstnw89]

Yep.

Glad I didn't throw £60 on it.

They got my $15 for the premier sub, otherwise I'd feel really butt hurt lol

[Lahis]

They were in complete Denial about Copying Destiny and Division and ended up with a poor man's Destiny.

But in general it went through a very messy development cycle, game was rushed out the door in about a year and a half.

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Oooof.

This and the mess that was Andromeda's development makes one wonder how the hell Bioware even is a thing anymore.

If Anthem wasn't a LIVE SERVICE that needs constant upkeep, EA would be chopping off Bioware already.

[Ealyssa]

There are a lot of stuff to discuss about.

Please proceed.

[Greyvax]

It's now april and they have a lot of updates listed in the april section of their "90 day roadmap".

So far, haven't heard anything about any of these.

[Eleccybubb]

It's now april and they have a lot of updates listed in the april section of their "90 day roadmap".

So far, haven't heard anything about any of these.

Honestly. Have a feeling they are just gonna end up being underwhelming as hell.

And weren't a form of cataclysms on the Beta which was basically just a big event akin to WoW invasions?

[kenn9530]

anthem is a decent game just needs more content, just like division 1 at launch was a decent game and that needed more content, it should develop into a better game in time just with any other game thats released

[quras]

EA's interference basically boils down to them pushing Frostbyte, taking programmers for FIFA (but giving extra staff from other studios) and not letting them extend into another year for development. Oh, and telling them the game was crap without flying.

EA gave them 7 years from how it reads and bioware wasted a little over 5 of it dicking around due to poor bioware management.

Thats not on ea. I wouldn't extend a deadline again either after 7 years.

while ea pushed frostbyte it wasn't all on ea for that either a mentioned above.

Plus, how many times have we have to listen to developers tell us just throwing more people at a project doesn't help. Taking some away for fifa doesn't change how bioware alone screwed around for so long them pissed and moaned when some of the team was put somewhere else and they were so far behind. Thats still on bioware for management and their lack of vision it seems for the game.

As easy as it is to blame ea. This really isn't one of those cases. Hell, it sounds like their in-fighting and poor management did more damage than what ea was capable of for anthem. ea was damn near hands off for the most of its development.

[Baconeggcheese]

One thing that could greatly help is replace the "[R] Forge" on the End of mission screen (now that the Forge is accessible without loading screen from everywhere) by a simple "[R] launch another mission". Would avoid the Launch Bay / Fort Tarsis loading if what you want is just chain another contract/stronghold/freeplay.

Yeah, that has been one really common request. I have to imagine they're already working on that. Hopefully it happens sooner than later.

After that they should also improve the respawns on Strongholds... Not reviving in the current objective area is dumb, forcing you to go through another (short, but annoying) loading screen 5 seconds after reviving.

IIRC the current solutions are kind of bandaids / placeholders until they had time to work a more permanent fix in. At least that's what they said, time will tell as with a ton of things...

Just jumped in for this. The issue is not the Anthem game itself (which is in a very poor state and it's completely unacceptable) but this kind of general behavious players as customers allowed to companies to follow.

They can easily dish out a shit game developed in 1 and 1/2 year (which costs a lot less) and focus on marketing and people will just flock and buy millions of copies anyway even knowing it's smelling like bullshit.

I'm not against studios getting back on their feet and making a good product out of a shit one, i'm against the habit of doing shit stuff because the money comes anyway wothout the need to actually support them.

It's basically like they know that developing a good game takes time, so they sell it unfinished and make money out of it. I'm totally against this crap, that's way i'm now just waiting years to play a game so at least i can experience a full product instead of an half-assed one.

I assume that working as a developer in this environment must be hellish. But hey, things changed when big money started to flow.

I don't really agree with the premise here, and I think that kotaku article disagrees as well. They clearly didn't plan on developing the game in 1 1/2 years, they worked on it for an incredibly long time. They just got forced into crunch time and having something to release after 4+ years with nothing to show for it. I imagine from the publisher end its more just getting their ROI, and from the developer end needing to have *something* at that point after colossal fuck ups from leadership.

[szechuan]

They can fix the game, eventually. As I said it won't be fast or easy, but we've seen deeply flawed games turn around with enough time (Division, Destiny 1/2, FO 76 etc.) and the Austin team seems pretty capable.

But here's some of the problems/concerns though, Bioware still keeps on messing up the game with each subsequent patch.

Bioware now has Division 2 and a much more complete Destiny 2 to compete with now, as time goes on with Anthem, it will have a harder time getting people back and or keeping them.

Anthem's Cataclysm's IMO may not be enough for people to come back for people wanting more then a Special Free Roam activity and if people were Unimpressed with End Game Strongholds I doubt the "new" stronghold will hold peoples attention long enough and I'm not sure how well Anthem will be able to pull of Guilds and Leaderboards.

The fact that They still haven't properly updated LootPools properly yet and these patches had some OBVIOUS FLAWS makes me wonder why people think they will be able to pull off Guilds/Leaderboards properly when they clearly don't do any Q&A with the patches that break part of the game.

When Division 2 is currently opening up a new World Tier (new to similar gear with higher numbers) with new Apparels adding more content and fixing a lot already in a quicker amount of time then Anthem (Probably due to the Frostbite Engine).

Which is another problem Anthem developers seem like they STILL will have a hard time with which is the Frostbite Engine. We don't know how many people are still working on Anthem as Bioware will most likely shift there focus to other Bioware games making Updates and other new content updates potentially slower.

We also don't know if Leadership has learned any lessons and are still in Denial about Copying Destiny/Division among other things.

[Yunru]

EA gave them 7 years from how it reads and bioware wasted a little over 5 of it dicking around due to poor bioware management.

Thats not on ea. I wouldn't extend a deadline again either after 7 years.

while ea pushed frostbyte it wasn't all on ea for that either a mentioned above.

Plus, how many times have we have to listen to developers tell us just throwing more people at a project doesn't help. Taking some away for fifa doesn't change how bioware alone screwed around for so long them pissed and moaned when some of the team was put somewhere else and they were so far behind. Thats still on bioware for management and their lack of vision it seems for the game.

As easy as it is to blame ea. This really isn't one of those cases. Hell, it sounds like their in-fighting and poor management did more damage than what ea was capable of for anthem. ea was damn near hands off for the most of its development.

Well looking at how many people left bioware...its almost a year when this happened:
https://massivelyop.com/2018/03/12/a...tor-hall-hood/
And almost 2 years before this:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...dromeda-launch

If there are no talented people you cant make a good product. But i always expected something like this is up.

[Baconeggcheese]

If there are no talented people you cant make a good product. But i always expected something like this is up.

The company seems to lack leadership more than it lacks talent. That'll be the crux of it.

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/st...206852609?s=19

Yeah.. this is.. ugh.

Not that I was ever expecting them to be all *YEAH GO AHEAD AND AIR OUR DIRTY LAUNDRY TO PRESS!* but this being the reaction from leadership is... ugh.

Also sad to hear that this is far from a bioware specific problem, though I think we all knew that.

[americandavey]

If there are no talented people you cant make a good product. But i always expected something like this is up.

You can have talented people working on a game, if there is no leadership, no vision, no one wanting to make decisions. Talented people are just flapping in the wind or IMO just being wasted.

With TOR, ME:A and now Anthem, EA needs to clean house in that Studio. The elitism of calling the other studios "not pure" Bioware, more or less telling those employees who are trying to help that studio complete their shitshow of a game to "fuck off" The funny thing to me is the people that were in leadership in the early years who couldn't make decisions or a have a vision for the game, leave BW/EA to create their own studio to create new games.

[Vineri]

Part of the problem is with the usage of "BioWare".

Many years ago, BioWare was a singular company, pushing quality games. EA bought them a decade ago. Gamers still expect the same quality they used to always get, but it's not a reality. The original creative minds behind the original BioWare are long gone. EA employee's remain, under the umbrella studio BioWare.

People need to get it absorbed that EA employees operate BioWare these days.

So "BioWare" can speak about about "BioWare Quality" all they want (as they did in recent interviews), but they aren't the same folks who built the company with KoTR, early ME's, etc. Different people. Different company. Different outcome. Different fan reaction.

I think EA management is mostly to blame, not the employees. EA seems to be the Walmart of the video games industry these days.

[szechuan]

Amen, considering everything, it's pretty surprising that Anthem is as "good" as it is right now.

.... but this is a issue that has been there at least, possible before, Mass Effect Andromeda, if they don't get their shit together soon, that talent will start moving to other companies, I'm starting to get really worried about the next Dragon Age, if that ever comes out at this point.

Bioware should probably just focus on making Dragon Age, I don't think Anthem will survive the year or even past a year.

[Baconeggcheese]

Amen, considering everything, it's pretty surprising that Anthem is as "good" as it is right now.

.... but this is a issue that has been there at least, possible before, Mass Effect Andromeda, if they don't get their shit together soon, that talent will start moving to other companies, I'm starting to get really worried about the next Dragon Age, if that ever comes out at this point.

If you read that tweet I linked, it seems to be a running trend within the industry. Which imo has shown over the years. I've been saying for a while now that I'm able to put up with Anthem because I'm numb to this kind of BS, feels like it happens more often than it doesn't. Which seems to be the consensus from the people working in the industry.

[ryanmahaffe]

Very interesting to see everything coming out of Anthems "troubled" development. However this isn't a new case, nearly every major AAA title has this problem of feeling unfinished at launch these days. Anthem may have been a more extreme case but nonetheless it is still nothing new. This is why I have moved to AA and Indie titles. The AAA industry is falling apart not just due to terrible corporations ruining everything, but from incompetent dev management.

[yasiru]

This totally makes up for the death threats and vitriol the devs, content creators, and subreddit moderators have received! /s

Sorry, but someone telling me that I should feel awful and that they're going to murder my family because of a game isn't erased by r/ATG not being complete idiots for an afternoon.

Totally agree. This basically just shows me what I've believed all along, that most gaming redditors just jump on whatever the current bandwagon is... Then you've got the trash youtubers like Joe too, just making a 40 min video reiterating everything about Jason's article to help line his own pockets.....it's pretty sickening. But, hey, the masses must have their “leaders.”

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They reduced the amount of crap you needed to do. It was not "huge" at any point, but it could be several hours of unrelated nonsense just to progress the story, which is why it felt wrong for many, in addition to reward being so lame. People would not remember it that badly if the reward would be some sort of mission and/or event in said tomb, but instead we got a casket and some text string? Really now.

From what I recall they didn't reduce anything that was needed to finish the tomb quests. What they did do though is set the game up so you started earning the things needed to complete them at pilot lvl 3 instead.

[szechuan]

Then you've got the trash youtubers like Joe too, just making a 40 min video reiterating everything about Jason's article to help line his own pockets.....it's pretty sickening.

Seems like you always have issues with people "Reiterating" and adding there own commentary on what other people have said.

Are you suggesting that Earning money from making your own Commentary/Video from reading other Journals or Playing Games and learning more about the Industry from what others have said is Morally Abhorrent?

I guess all Video Game streamers should also be "Sickening" to you for profiting off of Nintendo's and other Well Known game Developers Hard work according to you.

You also commented on this quote

This totally makes up for the death threats and vitriol the devs, content creators, and subreddit moderators have received! /s

Which has nothing to do with Angry Joe.