Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[Karrotlord]

Kind of like how they sold the game initially off some lies kind of Dick move?

It's been awhile. Can you remind me what those lies were?

[Baconeggcheese]

It's been awhile. Can you remind me what those lies were?

Only thing I can think of is EA saying they were going to support the game after the rocky launch and then very much not doing so. People typically equate their ignorance not doing their homework pre-launch despite all the information on the state of the game being out there with saying the devs "lied".

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the release date anniversary is in a few days. i bet they announce something around then.

supposedly the meeting with EA already happened. my guess is they are putting together the announcement verbiage.

my guess is the game is finished. the anthem reddit is filled with posts from other communities "X game community supports you" is pure cringe.

I think if they dropped the game they won't say anything, because why would they?

If they did decide to continue supporting the game, again there is absolutely no reason to say anything until they have something to show to make it worth drawing attention to the game.

Finding out about the talks was already a leak, we'd have to get another leak to hear anything. I don't see why they would make an announcement now, but I wouldn't mind if they did.

[Karrotlord]

Only thing I can think of is EA saying they were going to support the game after the rocky launch and then very much not doing so. People typically equate their ignorance not doing their homework pre-launch despite all the information on the state of the game being out there with saying the devs "lied".

Do you know when and why they pulled the majority of funding? I admittedly suck at Google-fu. I know at the beginning there was a distinct lack of endgame content. There was also the change in loot systems but I didn't play much after finishing the campaign so I don't know what that was. Those were the 2 big things I remember not going well, but the rest was solid if a bit inconsistent.

[Baconeggcheese]

Do you know when and why they pulled the majority of funding? I admittedly suck at Google-fu. I know at the beginning there was a distinct lack of endgame content. There was also the change in loot systems but I didn't play much after finishing the campaign so I don't know what that was. Those were the 2 big things I remember not going well, but the rest was solid if a bit inconsistent.

I don't recall exact dates at this point, but the majority of the devs were moved off the game within a few months of the launch to work on what we assume is dragon age. My understanding was there was a skeleton crew left to do the enormous amount of bug fixing that still needed to be done and then finish up / put out what little content we did end up getting.

As far as what didn't go well, the game launched unfinished and bug riddled. It was near unplayable for some people while it ran mostly fine for others. It was pretty much the same story as what we saw with cyberpunk on that front.

Thing is it also didn't have any end game besides just doing the same things we were already doing to get higher ilvl loot. The itemization and reward structure were very poorly done, there was a lot of missing QoL features as well.

So what happened is people pissed through the games campaign as fast as possible like many people usually do to try and rush end game, only for there to be nothing there really worth them doing. You couple that with all the bugs and the campaign itself being a bit of a mess and yeah... lot of upset people.

[Karrotlord]

I don't recall exact dates at this point, but the majority of the devs were moved off the game within a few months of the launch to work on what we assume is dragon age. My understanding was there was a skeleton crew left to do the enormous amount of bug fixing that still needed to be done and then finish up / put out what little content we did end up getting.

As far as what didn't go well, the game launched unfinished and bug riddled. It was near unplayable for some people while it ran mostly fine for others. It was pretty much the same story as what we saw with cyberpunk on that front.

Thing is it also didn't have any end game besides just doing the same things we were already doing to get higher ilvl loot. The itemization and reward structure were very poorly done, there was a lot of missing QoL features as well.

So what happened is people pissed through the games campaign as fast as possible like many people usually do to try and rush end game, only for there to be nothing there really worth them doing. You couple that with all the bugs and the campaign itself being a bit of a mess and yeah... lot of upset people.

I just tried to find a list of bugs. The only one I personally had was the orbs of light or whatever they were in the dungeon disappearing if the person that was holding them left the game. Granted that was a pretty huge bug because it would ruin runs, but most of what I saw weren't actually bugs. Just people not understanding how things worked. I also had the slow load times but can't say if that was a bug or just bad optimization.

[Makabreska]

I just tried to find a list of bugs. The only one I personally had was the orbs of light or whatever they were in the dungeon disappearing if the person that was holding them left the game. Granted that was a pretty huge bug because it would ruin runs, but most of what I saw weren't actually bugs. Just people not understanding how things worked. I also had the slow load times but can't say if that was a bug or just bad optimization.

From the top of my head, legendary items doing less dmg than common.

Main issue was that devs had no idea what the game was supposed to be about up until like 1y before the release. Development was highly mismanaged, to the point of EA having to interfere and slap them into action. Game had like two dungeons or w/e it was called you had to run back to back as end-game content. Loot was very stingy, to the point of players begging devs to bring back a bug that caused a loot shower, because they started to actually have fun. Then devs came out with a road map (very popular back then for "live service" games) with new content and dates, then they removed the dates, and then they just didn't deliver the content. One big shitshow. If you are interested, read Jason Schreier article about behind-the-scene development chaos.

[schwank05]

I still think that the gameplay was the best of any game I have played in years. They could easily fix a lot of tings by tweaking loot and releasing 5-8 more Dungeons and a raid.

[Karrotlord]

From the top of my head, legendary items doing less dmg that common.

Main issue was that devs had no idea what the game was supposed to be about up until like 1y before the release. Development was highly mismanaged, to the point of EA having to interfere and slap them into action. Game had like two dungeons or w/e it was called you had to run back to back as end-game content. Loot was very stingy, to the point of players begging devs to bring back a bug that caused a loot shower, because they started to actually have fun. Then devs came out with a road map (very popular back then for "live service" games) with new content and dates, then they removed the dates, and then they just didn't deliver the content. One big shitshow. If you are interested, read Jason Schreier about behind-the-scene development chaos.

I'm aware of the development problems up to launch. I'm more trying to figure out why the support was pulled and if it could've held onto that roadmap and made a deserving game if it had managed to keep it. I wasn't aware there was a bug issue with the loot. I thought the change was to prevent people from gearing too fast and leaving the game. I'll have to look into that. And I never got a legendary so I never noticed what they did. If true, that seems pretty bad as well.

[Edge-]

I don't recall exact dates at this point, but the majority of the devs were moved off the game within a few months of the launch to work on what we assume is dragon age. My understanding was there was a skeleton crew left to do the enormous amount of bug fixing that still needed to be done and then finish up / put out what little content we did end up getting.

Sorta kinda not really.

Edmonton was the lead studio, and they moved those folks off once the game was shipped. Austin was a support studio for the title during development (and sadly ignored by Edmonton), and was always planned to take over live-service for the game with a smaller team (you generally need smaller teams for live-service compared to full development).

Content was delayed, and then indefinitely delayed, so the team could prioritize unfucking the game and making it playable, and eventually they announced that they were canning additional updates to focus on a potential reboot. But it wasn't a "skeleton crew" initially, though it did dwindle a bit as they moved to figuring out the reboot (don't need a huge team for pre-production).

Thing is it also didn't have any end game besides just doing the same things we were already doing to get higher ilvl loot. The itemization and reward structure were very poorly done, there was a lot of missing QoL features as well.

Yep, apparently there was only about a year of actual full-scale development, which is why the game was so content anemic.

So what happened is people pissed through the games campaign as fast as possible like many people usually do to try and rush end game, only for there to be nothing there really worth them doing. You couple that with all the bugs and the campaign itself being a bit of a mess and yeah... lot of upset people.

This is probably one of the things BW Austin tried to tell BW Edmonton after they learned the hard way that thinking players will take 3-5 months to hit the level cap and start endgame in an online game isn't remotely reasonable and that people will be hitting the level cap and endgame grinds in the first week, or even first day or two.

That and the BW narrative was apparently...not great and choices felt underwhelming and kinda pointless IIRC.

[Makabreska]

I'm aware of the development problems up to launch. I'm more trying to figure out why the support was pulled and if it could've held onto that roadmap and made a deserving game if it had managed to keep it. I wasn't aware there was a bug issue with the loot. I thought the change was to prevent people from gearing too fast and leaving the game. I'll have to look into that. And I never got a legendary so I never noticed what they did. If true, that seems pretty bad as well.

My guess would be this: they thought people will be hooked from the launch but they got bored too quickly. So EA decided that it's more profitable to move onto next game, instead of pumping money into Anthem. Articles describing development mess were getting out, Andromeda was still fresh in people memory so they deemed game to be burned. Same stuff we saw recently with Marvel's Avengers.

[Edge-]

My guess would be this: they thought people will be hooked from the launch but they got bored too quickly. So EA decided that it's more profitable to move onto next game, instead of pumping money into Anthem.

Except they still are, they're putting money into the reboot. Or were. Or maybe still are, we don't know what happened last week but the fact remains that EA has continued to fund the team as they've begun early work on the reboot (some of which they've shown off).

As to the roadmap and why it was abandoned, I imagine with the state of the game and the amount of work necessary to fix loot and a lot of other really poorly designed/awful underlying systems that a reboot would be a better/more practical approach than trying to slowly rehab it while it's live. Not to mention the games playerbase had tanked and it wasn't generating money, making a reboot where they could try to capture a larger playerbase more appealing.

I don't even think EA is managing the whole thing though, at least outside of whatever meeting last week about the future of the reboot. It seems that BW Austin has been more or less running things how they want since launch.

[Karrotlord]

This is probably one of the things BW Austin tried to tell BW Edmonton after they learned the hard way that thinking players will take 3-5 months to hit the level cap and start endgame in an online game isn't remotely reasonable and that people will be hitting the level cap and endgame grinds in the first week, or even first day or two.

That and the BW narrative was apparently...not great and choices felt underwhelming and kinda pointless IIRC.

This I vaguely remember. You as a dev HAVE to assume try-hards, for lack of a better term, and going to burn through your game. So you're going need ample stuff to keep them coming back. The issues in development were most likely the reason they didn't have more launch content. It's a shame really.

As for the story, sure it wasn't some grand epic like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, but I still enjoyed it, even if it was a bit disjointed.

[Baconeggcheese]

I just tried to find a list of bugs. The only one I personally had was the orbs of light or whatever they were in the dungeon disappearing if the person that was holding them left the game. Granted that was a pretty huge bug because it would ruin runs, but most of what I saw weren't actually bugs. Just people not understanding how things worked. I also had the slow load times but can't say if that was a bug or just bad optimization.

The game was pretty playable for myself as well on PC, but that doesn't mean anything for other peoples experience. There was an insane amount of bugs.

That and the BW narrative was apparently...not great and choices felt underwhelming and kinda pointless IIRC.

iirc the story was plagued with the same issues as the game itself and went through reboots and departures etc which is why it had huge plot holes and all that.

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Except they still are, they're putting money into the reboot..

My understanding from that leak is they've had 30 people working on Anthem and the leak claimed they'd need at least 90 to put any amount of content out.

Hence its been on a skeleton crew.

[vian]

Given everything we heard about DA4 and its development, I am 100% confident it will be just as bad as Anthem.

Ofc it will suck. The route they've taken DA doesn't fit the game at all.

[Edge-]

My understanding from that leak is they've had 30 people working on Anthem and the leak claimed they'd need at least 90 to put any amount of content out.

Hence its been on a skeleton crew.

30 currently, in pre-production. The meeting seems to be functionally trying to sell EA on the reboot to secure funding to staff up for full-scale production. So it's not really a "skeleton crew", the BW Austin team working on it post-launch was much bigger from what I know but as the live updates slowed they didn't need as many people working on the early days of the reboot.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Ofc it will suck. The route they've taken DA doesn't fit the game at all.

...Dragon Age Inquisition did well no matter how much people whine but this isn't for Dragon Age.

30 currently, in pre-production. The meeting seems to be functionally trying to sell EA on the reboot to secure funding to staff up for full-scale production. So it's not really a "skeleton crew", the BW Austin team working on it post-launch was much bigger from what I know but as the live updates slowed they didn't need as many people working on the early days of the reboot.

Convincing EA......probably the harder task then the 2.0 reboot itself.

[Edge-]

Convincing EA......probably the harder task then the 2.0 reboot itself.

Who knows. EA seems to keep a very loose "leash" on their studios, it's the reason that development for Anthem was such a mess to begin with : /

[Baconeggcheese]

Who knows. EA seems to keep a very loose "leash" on their studios, it's the reason that development for Anthem was such a mess to begin with : /

I think the issue is convincing them that they can turn the franchise around and make it profitable when it already didn't meet expectations and blew up in their face like it did.

Not only do they have to make a game that knocks it out of the park but they have to do it while beating back the stigma around the name and not burning people who already paid for the game and were told that future updates would not cost anything.

[Edge-]

I think the issue is convincing them that they can turn the franchise around and make it profitable when it already didn't meet expectations and blew up in their face like it did.

Not only do they have to make a game that knocks it out of the park but they have to do it while beating back the stigma around the name and not burning people who already paid for the game and were told that future updates would not cost anything.

It's a big new IP, companies don't like investing in a new IP and then dropping that investment quickly. The stigma can be dealt with, plenty of games have successfully rebooted from failed/underwhelming launches like Division, Destiny, FO76, FFXIV etc.

I fully expect it to be a "free" reboot for folks that own the game and ongoing cosmetic monetization. Hell, they could even move to F2P and throw some bonuses to previous owners. There are plenty of options.

[Lex Icon]

as one of those that played it more than most. i gotta say i'm impressed with how much they got done in the short amount of time they spent building the game.
get some proper management over there and they might actually spit out some cool games even if Anthem gets axed.