Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[dope_danny]

I just hope Bioware won't fuck up Dragon Age 4, it's their last bastion before absolute failure at this point.

What have they done this console generation to make you believe theres even a remote chance it wont be a buggy always online live service scam to sell minibuys on a cash shop?

[Thelyron]

I really hope this game gets a redemption story. The core gameplay is so much fun, they just need to do more with it.

[Aliven]

What have they done this console generation to make you believe theres even a remote chance it wont be a buggy always online live service scam to sell minibuys on a cash shop?

Because shittons of great games dont have that, with most recent one being Borderlands 3 with no mtx whatsoever.

[Aliven]

... wait, wut? As far as I can remember Borderlands 3 sells skins and shit.

Where? I have not see ingame shop or premium currency...

[Aliven]

I can't really tell you where exactly, as I have yet to play it myself, but as I said, I recall a huge drama about it:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bo.../1100-6466610/

Well i cant buy anything in game, there is no item shop. Everything is earnable in game.

[Aliven]

Everything earn-able in-game =/= no micro-transactions.

Also, no, I don't think you can earn some of them just by playing the game.

But still, as for "where", apparently in the stores together with DLC's and shit, microsoft store:

Hm, ok, point taken i have all in one edition and have those.

Kinda bad then, but alas those are pretty pointless, especially the toy box weapons...

[endersblade]

The super cheap price makes me think they are going to make people buy the "Anthem 2". It is just weird to have no real discount for digital to such a massive one. But for 8.99/10.49 it isn't a big loss.

That was exactly what I was thinking. Just picked it up for $5 and another $3 for the Legion of Dawn DLC for PC. I don't even have plans to play it until then.

[Ophenia]

I really hope this game gets a redemption story. The core gameplay is so much fun, they just need to do more with it.

Agreed... Tried again this weekend, the only groups I could find were for Tyrant Mine Stronghold, no one for anything else (contracts, legendary missions or the current event), had fun but I can't see myself only farming that for hours on end...

Also, it seems they didn't fix some bugs that I still encounter one year later. What bothers me the most is the sound breaking completely when you use Storm's ultimate.

[Ophenia]

Well well, gave it another try quite heavily this weekend, as there is a big downtime in Warframe (once again :P ), and I gotta I'm pleasantly surprised they've added a lot of sources for legendaries (dunno since when), now you can actually grind without feeling you're wasting time.
Gameplay is still top notch. The only thing that really is a problem is the low pop. Current seasonal activity is Tyrant's mine and that's basically the only content you can find group for, it's really difficult to find anything else than that. Was a pain to complete my 5 legendary contracts for weekly challenge, as I didn't want to go solo.
For some reason, now the matchmaking is exclusively for groups, if the tool doesn't find anyone, it doesn't even throw you in a mission, it just... searches for people endlessly. You can only decide to force a mission by checking Solo instead of Public apparently ? Which prevents anyone from ever joining so meh.

Still had plenty of fun, too bad it was limited to 99% Tyrant's mine and 1% contracts. I'll see what the Seasonal activity rotates to tomorrow (or is it today ?), I suspect if it's anything else than Tyrant's mine, nobody will play it at all.

[Edge-]

https://blog.bioware.com/2020/05/15/may-anthem-update/

Hi All,

My name is Christian, and I am the Studio Director for the BioWare Austin office that is leading the production of what we are exploring NEXT for Anthem. NICE TO MEET YOU!

Prior to this role I was the Franchise Development Director for the Anthem Live Service helping guide the development of our post-launch updates which focused on stabilizing and improving performance of the service, our first Cataclysm, Season of Skulls, Icetide and into the most recent update with 1.7. And in addition, I have been silently stalking you over the past year on Reddit, EA Forums, Twitter, etc. taking in all the feedback you have been graciously providing and adding it to the giant cookbook of things we are experimenting with in Anthem.

As you can see from my photo and like most of you, I am all set up from home, ready to be juggling multiple things – children, pets, family. Some days are better than others, but I can tell you that regardless of where I am working or where the team is working – we’re committed to this project. With that, I wanted to start with a quick update on what is going on with Anthem since we last discussed it in February.

Incubation- AKA prototyping

The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses. Incubation is a term we use internally – it essentially means we are going back and experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem. We are a small team – about 30-ish, earning our way forward as we set out to hit our first major milestone goals. Spoiler – this is going to be a longer process. And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.

We really want this experience to be different for the team and our players, but we know we have some tough challenges to tackle. We want to include you as we go and be open and honest with where we are at and what the expectations are with where we are going. The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on – but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK. We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem. But, with that comes seeing how the sausage is made – which is not always pretty by the way.

Start the conversation

We also want to start putting together some regular comms out to everyone to show/talk about these changes and our progress. This blog is one example, but we also want to include you in more of the day to day and hopefully get you some real interactions with the team. These updates could come in the form of an ad-hoc live stream, or some cool concept art posted on social media, or the occasional feed of me curled up in a ball crying in the corner…

We will get back to everyone on what our update cadence will look like soon, as we start looping you into our progress.

We hope this finds you well

We have a great studio here in Austin working on Anthem and other cool projects (shout out to the SWTOR team). I am proud of the folks I spend time with – and in this physical distancing new world, the folks I spend time on Zoom with. I am not here to over hype anything, but we do believe the changes we are making are the right ones and we hope you think so as well…but you might not and that is cool too. It is the constructive criticism and feedback we need – in either direction.

I hope everyone is staying safe and focusing on the things that matter most to you. As game developers we are all very lucky for the job we get to do but there is some real stuff going on out there and some real heroes looking out for our safety and well-being. Take care of yourselves and each other. Stay tuned as we kick this off and we hope to see/hear from you as we go on this journey (stronger) together.

Christian

Good news: Yep, the rework is underway! They're not abandoning the game, but going back to the drawing board a bit.

They're promising more transparency, but given their track record on this I'm not holding my breath.


Bad news: None of it's coming soon.

Their team "experimenting" with how to improve the game is smallish, 30 folks, and they're already making it clear this will NOT be a quick process. It sounds like it just started which makes me wonder what the hell's been going on since they mostly went dark.

I legit want to know what they've been up to, because I'd figured by this point (over a year after launch, without much in the way of new content for the live-game) they'd be starting to show off their progress...not just kicking it off.

No clue who this new guy is, can't find anything about him before this blog post and it doesn't seem like he was on the SWTOR team. Hopefully he'll have more luck steering the ship than the last guys did.

[RobertoCarlos]

HI CHRISTIAN NICE TO MEET YOU.

Sounds like an introduction to a kids TV show. Which would probably be more interesting than whatever plans they have for trying to save a franchise people have already forgotten and moved on from.

[zealo]

Transparency in bioware speak recently so far has meant "only communicate with the community when outlook on the game is positive in the community". Communication done fell off hard when players started to become more critical of their work, even by community managers.

I'm not holding my breath for them getting that part right when it comes from a company that took moves such as shutting their community forum down entirely.

[Faldric]

Nice PR speak for: We got reduced to a skeleton crew and have no idea how to extract a little more money out of this turd Bioware Edmonton created. So please tell us.

[dope_danny]

"start the conversation"? in 2020?

At this point i am amazed its still getting any time at all rather than being ghosted like Andromeda.

[Razamith]

Because I know its at the forefront of all of our minds:

https://blog.bioware.com/2020/10/28/...meplay-builds/

[Edge-]

Because I know its at the forefront of all of our minds:

https://blog.bioware.com/2020/10/28/...meplay-builds/

class fantasy.

Did they hire someone from Blizzard?

Reals though, I didn't see anything that looked bad in there at all. It actually looks like they're finally paying attention to feedback, which jives given that this is BW Austin leading this now and now HQ. I'm pretty down with pretty much everything in there even if it's just very general info for now. I honestly had completely forgotten that this was still being worked on, but them going super quiet while it seems like they did some pretty significant redesign work is smart.

I'm kinda looking forward to them rolling out more info now that I remember this exists. I'll probably build my new rig before they're anywhere near done with the redesign, but damn if I'm not lookin forward to seein how fuckin pretty the game can look all juiced up at 2K, especially if they add any extra goodies like ray tracing. It's a freakin pretty-ass game.

[Lahis]

They still working on this?

No amount of polish can resurrect this game.

[Coldkil]

What i've read there looks good. Point is, gameplay is shallow as hell and world is completely empty and void. It's pretty, that i admit.

If they go for a f2p relaunch like Destiny, i may dabble in this for a while.

[orsraunia]

A pretty simplistic view is this: They failed to make ME Andromeda interesting enough and then they decided to undertake a more ambitious project... and they failed again. Strange.

[Lahis]

A pretty simplistic view is this: They failed to make ME Andromeda interesting enough and then they decided to undertake a more ambitious project... and they failed again. Strange.

Just wait for Dragon Age 4 to fall flat on its arse.