i think i agree with most of the GB opinions mildly, but im having too much fun with the controls/ movement on pc, in the way I love DOOM, to write this game off. all of these open world games promise you it all from the start and then deliver the dlc eventually. i think the base gameplay will be amazing once there are some AI bosses with flight suits, and tighter story missions

The proselytizing for this game that has been pervading the internet has been really strange. You're making this assertion with absolutely nothing to support your claim apart from hopes and dreams.At this point, EA has shown with Battlefront 2 and Battlefield V that they have no idea of how to manage a successful live service. Based on the paltry offerings shared in their road-map, Bioware will follow in the footsteps of DICE in providing too little too late. I'll be happily surprised if they manage to pull it off, though, because I do agree that the core gameplay of Anthem can be very entertaining.

If they don’t fix the non-stop loads, it’ll never be a decent game. Let me explore, give me an at least somewhat seamless world. Do that, and I’ll check out a free weekend.

I’m assuming those are engine limitations that are unlikely to be resolved. I still find them 100% deal-breakers, though.

EDIT: And with EA being the publisher and owner of Bioware, I think it’s more likely that this game is forgotten in 12 months and Bioware folks have moved on after being shuttered. I don’t want this for Bioware, but fuck if they haven’t sucked these past few years.

I don't really have faith that Bioware will pull it off, but I'd be very interested in checking out Anthem this time next year. I definitely wouldn't buy it at full price right now, but I see the potential. Best case scenario for them, it basically ends up being Destiny 1/ The Division all over again, and they end up with a great product after a year.

I’d like to add some brevity and clarity to my earlier comments:

THE BIOWARE WE LOVE IS FUCKING DEAD

That is all.

It's an okay game. It's not a great game. Bioware needed a great game. Okay isn't enough.

2032 will be such an awesome year.

@jacksmedulla: well there is this..... https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02/23/anthems-90-day-post-launch-plans-revealed

im not entirely acting like Nostradamus, just betting for the best on this game

@psychomantis47: Notice how I mention “Bioware’s paltry roadmap” in my original comment.

that roadmap is more than we were given for the division and destiny and destiny 2 if i recall, not saying its all gonna be gold but its something to make my assertion, or expression of opinion rather, other than hopes and dreams.

@psychomantis47: And that’s why I mentioned Battlefield V, another EA game with an ostensibly promising roadmap that has turned out to be incredibly disappointing. The Division and Destiny both had a guaranteed influx of cash to support their expansions. Anthem is relying on micro transactions, and if it doesn’t get the player base EA and BioWare had hoped for, it won’t bring in the money to justify the large fixes it needs, just like Battlefront 2 and Battlefield V before it.

@jacksmedulla: but both of those were meant to compete with COD and really just have 1 year life cycles dueto cods yearly release.... too much moneywent into anthem to let it die after 1 yr

With the release of Anthem I feel like I dozed off at some point and completely missed where suddenly everyone likes The Division.

When this game goes F2P in 2-3 years, sure I can see it being alright.

Oof, haha. So it goes I guess.

I hope BioWare finds a way to turn around the narrative with Anthem, but let's be honest with ourselves. EA doesn't hesitate to kill a game or shut down a studio if it's not producing numbers that are going to raise the stock price.

After Andromeda and then this, Andrew Wilson definitely has a "we wish you well on your future endeavors" email drafted and ready to go.

@theht: Yeah, the future is bleak for Bioware. I wish it weren’t so, but it is what it is.

They had a great run, followed by a good run, capped off by a pair of trainwrecks.

@psychomantis47: Maybe. Like I said, I'll be happily surprised if that's the case, but based on EA's past offerings, I certainly wouldn't put money on it turning out well.

I played the demo and I quite liked parts of it, while others fell flat. I enjoyed the movement a lot and because of that, I think I'm more interested in Anthem than something like Destiny, where the shooting is really good, but the movement doesn't much do it for me.

That being said, I don't know that I see EA even bothering to support this thing to the level needed to ever really evolve the game much past launch.

I think people forgot how bad/rocky Division, Destiny, and Warframe started. It took around 6 months for Division to get good and interesting. Destiny 1 got rid of Peter Dinklage (the person who talks the most in the game), it was bad at giving out loot until Bungie updated it, and people were surprised at how few missions the game had. Bungie expected us to play the same missions dozens of times, which was not okay with me. I like Warframe now, but it used to feel like a weird mod. If I recall correctly, neither Division nor Destiny released with their incursion/raids at launch either. It would be great if they all did, but it seems like a crappy standard in the loot shooter sub-genre now.

I think Anthem is at a better starting point than those games and can easily build/grow from here. All they really need is add more challenging and diverse missions. I don't like the idea of the grandmaster difficulties just adding more health to enemies. They need to rethink that BS immediately. Going harder should make enemies a little tougher, but it should also be more about their AI and spawning harder enemies more often. They actually nailed this in Mass Effect 3's MP, so they just need to look at that.

@deathstriker The problem is that Anthem is not competing with Destiny 1 and The Division as they launched. It's competing with Destiny 2 + Forsaken (which you can get on sale for well less than $60) and The Division 2. Also Destiny 1 did launch with a raid (it just opened like a week after launch so people could level up, per MMO tradition). Comparing Anthem to D1 would make sense if they were launching close to each other. It's 4 and a half years since D1 came out, a game that launched on the 360/PS3 as well as current consoles.

If Bioware adds a lot of content to Anthem and improves the UI/load times I will check it out. Until then I'll believe it when I see it.

I just don't wanna be seeing any talk about Division 2 being a little rough but don't worry it'll get there in time when that game is out in a coupe weeks.

Some people seem to be weirdly passionate about this by-the-numbers, corporate room-conceived, technical mess of a game that delivers less than its competition. How about the game be better now, on release? You know, since EA is asking full price for it and shoving microtransactions into it already? No matter how many times AAA devs/publishers release disappointing unfinished games, I will not grow complacent and accept that as a given.

this ^

Noone is forgetting anything. What we remember is this:

Ubisoft has a history of keeping up support for their games (Division, R6 Siege, For Honored) even after incredibly rocky starts.

Bungie is Bungie. Activision couldn't close them down, and they had proven to do well before, so they buckled down and tried fix their game.

What do we remember EA doing? Well, most notably discontinuing all plans for DLC or any kind of support after a tepid launch and closing studios left and right.

Don't come here with that 'you people have short memories', when the thing is, we remember.

I hope Anthem gets the support it needs. After the trial, I still have a hankering to get in there on an almost daily basis (waiting for a few reasons), but let's not pretend like the future is rainbows and unicorns, when that future depends on one of two things:

Anthem having sold really well

OR

EA having changed their ways.

Adding content won't save this game, it's not at all a flawed concept it just needed a better design in every category, whether that's technical, narrative or otherwise.
If there's a review on the box it probably reads "The flying's good, 4/10".

I don't think the talent and EA investment (money) is there to turn this thing around, when your known for great story telling and you have to most bland story ever, i am guessing that most of those folks who have written great story's over the years for Bioware have moved on. This game isn't bad it's just MEDIOCRE, a game that drools simplicity and yells designed by comity rather then individuals.

Even as a defender of this game I acknowledge as I'm approaching about 12-15 hours, it's unlikely to be the game that gets improved and improved until it's the best of Division/Destiny/Warframe. It just has too many built in flaws and limitations.

Considering my only experience with the game was the alpha, and I hated the flight controls in that, Bioware and EA will have to pull quite a stunt to make me interested in that franchise. From what I have seen in recent years, I don't think they have it in them.

@deathstriker: @tds418:

Launch Destiny was a good core game with a laughable story and some loot/repetition problems that made it hard to stick with or recommend. The Taken King added a ton of content, and made a disappointing game great, but the core of the game was still the core of the game.

Anthem can add better loot and enemies. It can add skill trees. They can change how the weapons work. They can add new maps (God, I think they’d absolutely need to).

I’m in no way convinced that they can or will make load frequency better. That they can make the open world feel meaningful. That they have the chops to make the story matter. That they can make exciting combat encounters.

Destiny always had it’s moments, which made it so infuriating at launch. In Anthem, it’s fun to fly for seconds at a time. Loads and the crashing illusion of freedom quickly kill that moment, though. I’m doubtful they can fix that without a sequel.

Do the enemies get better? It basically looks like mass effect but with worse enemies and power combinations, at least from the little bit of gameplay i have seen so far. I feel like this should have been andromeda and built on the lore and powers of those games, but maybe I haven't seen the cool stuff yet?

@oursin_360: MY UNDERSTANDING is that it doesn’t ever really change. I played the demo weekend and there was one encounter that was fun as a result of an overwhelming number of enemies.

The stronghold, regular encounters...none felt particularly fun.

There is one enemy who seems kinda like the storm javelin...he’s kinda interesting. Bugs and cannon fodder trops aren’t really engaging though.

Destiny also had largely uninteresting enemies. Bungie didn’t bring the feeing you got from battling Elites in Halo. There were some somewhat memorable bosses that anchored memorable sequences though, largely due to overwhelming enemy respawns (and probably a lot of balance testing).

Disagree with those saying Destiny 1 was worse at launch and that we are forgetting how bad it was. I liked Destiny at launch, it wasn’t great or anything, but I had more fun with it than this, simply because the shooting felt great in it. This is not the case here, the shooting is floaty and has no impact. The basic gameplay of the game isn’t even sound, it’s weird to act like this is going to be fixed for sure. The story is just as bad as Destiny but is way more obtrusive and it’s even worse loading time wise. The final nail on the coffin is that the loot has been super boring for me five hours in. Again, Destiny wasn’t great there either, but it was ok to good.

The flying is great, minus how restrictive it is, I’ll give that.

I don't see how they do that, there seem to be too many core problems for Anthem to ever have a hope of overcoming the competition. I could see it making a big leap forward if there is an Anthem 2, but an Anthem 2 seems very unlikely.

@fear_the_booboo: Wasn't there even a proper Destiny patch that was essentially we're sorry our loot is boring as shit here have more drops. A game wherein for quite some time the proper way to gear your character was to shoot blindly into a cave.

I think the core gameplay (the shooting, traversal) would have to change dramatically in order for me to like it more and it seems to me like that’s the part of the game they won’t change much. I personally love the Rainbow 6 Vegasesque cover shooting in The Division and find it to be a lot more fun than the combat in Anthem.

@efesell: There was, my point is the bad loot in Destiny was still more interesting than what's there in the first five hours of Anthem (this might change). Also the loot cave was never a thing that was actually worthwile, the game was just bad at explaining itself, which is certainly a big flaw Destiny had.

My biggest takeaway though is simply that I thought Destiny minute to minute gameplay was fun while the wrapping around was off, I don't think Anthem minute to minute gameplay is fun at all.

@efesell: I don’t recall the loot cave being a thing for too long (a couple of weeks?), but it was definately a big blaring sign of what was wrong with Destiny (and many players, frankly).

I used the loot cave while bullshitting with friends one night. I’m not proud to admit it, but it seemed about as fun or

productive as anything else in Destiny, and at least it was different.

Destiny was a fun shooter where you had fuck all to do. At the time, you could run around and collect spinmetal or shoot into a cave. Either option is a shitty use of time, but the fix there was to tie rewards to rewarding gameplay, rather than running around holding X or shooting into a hole.

I just don't actually know of any loot game where I can honestly say there has been exciting finds within the first few hours. It is by design to make the big fancy bespoke equipment what you are working for at the very end. Until then you just find ever more valuable pairs of pants. Sometimes they're blue and sometimes not but the number is always slightly bigger.

Unless you become modern Diablo 3 where you now get legendaries every 20 minutes or so and it's not exciting anymore for entirely different reasons.

@efesell: My major issue with Anthems loot is that it's boiled down to boring numbers with no chance at lucky drops.

What I mean is first and foremost, for me at least, the way you can make normal loot exciting is design difference. Yeah that next step up sword is basically just a bit of a higher number but if it looks cooler, has a neat design and color scheme it can make it fun anyway. In Anthem all the gun types look damn near the exact same. You AR is going to look almost exactly the same to the upgraded one you just got, and that makes it a huge bummer. Also the lack of armor bits for the Mech is also a bummer.

The other decision that makes the loot boring is the quality of the loot is tied to level. Early levels its commons, then as you level it becomes uncommons and epics, then mostly epics. It may seem dumb but the chance at a high quality drop no matter what can add a bit of excitement to all drop chances. Maybe not perfectly balanced for early to mid levels but since this game is purely PvE why not have it in?

There are lots of ways to make loot fun and exciting outside of endgame through some tricks and systems to keep drops interesting, even if its mostly just in your head.

when i think about low level Diablo 2 loot, they still made it exciting to find new stuff by including different elemental bonuses, passive boosts, sockets & adjusting droprates. Sure, this 50 damage weapon might not be all that useful 5 hours later, but when you stumble upon it you can feel good about it and see that it's making a difference right there. Maybe you get so attached to this piece of loot that you decide to beef it up by socketing gems in it instead of hoping to find a better 'base' to plop your gems in. It's not impossible to have gear that feels exciting at lower levels.

@efesell: I’m not saying this is good game design, but I want to say Destiny 2 gives you epic or legendary gear (whatever they call the orange shit) PRETTY damned early.

My friends and I never replaced those early items because 1) they were some of the best items available and 2) leveling stuff was so cheap.

As far as getting kinda boring gear that makes the numbers change slightly, then go up slightly, then go up more, then offer a cool perk, then look cooler, then offer more perks, then better perks, then look amazing...I wonder if there’s the patience for that these days. I like that kind of design as an old Diablo 2 guy (duping killed D1 for me), but I think people want cool shit faster in loot shooters.

My understanding of current-state Anthem is that it doubles down on bland with boring weapons, kinda-okay armor modifiers, and no skill tree. I think loot games need cool, meaningful gear, cosmetic customization, and a meaningful skill tree. I’d like to see attributes make an appearance in the genre so you can really customize and commit to a build, but that seems to be a design from the past...

I'm not going to sit here and tell people that they're wrong, because a lot of the main arguments I see against Anthem are subjective, but I can give you an accurate view on the current state of Anthem in things that I think are more or less objective, mainly the loot. And I'm going to get pretty micro here.

Without comparing Anthem to other shlooters, early game loot: bad. It's boring compared to the endgame stuff. They could've sprinkled in some story unlocks that give you early game specific loot. Light of the Legion is an exclusive to the speshul edition of the game, and it probably shouldn't be. Having special abilites on loot is fun, obviously.

Endgame loot: pretty good. Most weapons and components have special abilities that synergize with a specific class or other pieces of gear, and gear has randomized stats and is (rather, hopefully will be, more below) min/maxable, which gives the game room for steady player progression that is nuanced while still having good drop rates.

This is where I get a bit subjective.
Gearscore system is good. It's literally there just to describe the level of rarity your loot has, it has no impact on difficulty from what I can tell. Having a full set of masterwork or legendary gear will probably mean your build is unoptimized, unless you aim to be a jack of all trades.

The difficulty system in Anthem means that you can play any piece of content without having to grind for dozens of hours. There is no power level gating, and god do I hope that they keep it that way.

By far the number one issue in terms of design at this point (IMO): The randomized stats on loot is too randomized. It's entirely possible and actually pretty likely that your drop will roll with a stat that is dead. This +225% blast damage roll is completely useless since that piece of gear doesn't do blast damage.
Apparently the BioWare staff has described themselves as avid Diablo fans, so it's baffling that they've fallen for this specific oversight.
A solution of some kind is coming "very soon". Whatever they do, I hope it's reasonable, because from where I'm sitting: the legs of this game depend on it. No one can play the two highest difficulties (or at least GM3) effectively at this point, because it requires min/maxing, which does have a bright side to it, I guess.

I don't know how much cosmetic customization people are looking for, but currently you can buy two sets of armor per javelin with ingame currency and cosmetic loot drops are coming next month (I think it's the first thing on their roadmap). And you can customize colors in any way you want.

And here is where I get a lot subjective.
I like the game overall, it's like a solid 8/10. Gameplay in Anthem feels unique to me and the classes feel different from each other, with the caveat that at this point I've only played Ranger and Interceptor (and vastly prefer Interceptor). The early game is bad but the gameplay is fun and I think the endgame loot design is good.

Now, I'm as much of an outlier as can be, but for me the problem with Destiny 1 was never the lack of enough unique content. I made three characters of the same class in that game and grinded them to max level just so I could play the raids six times a week and have a better chance at usable loot. I played Monster Hunter: World for 450 hours last year, changed platforms and have played it for 140 hours this year.
The biggest thing that can ruin a loot based game for me is unsteady player progression, and the progression in Destiny 1 coughed and sputtered like a motherfucker.

@briarpack: Those sound like some hours of dedication.

I’m fine grinding if the grind itself is fun. Even if it’s not rewarding, that old “30 seconds of fun” from Halo: Combat Evolved will keep me going.

Destiny’s number progression didn’t bug me. What bugged me what when I needed to grind for materials that came from driving around looking at material spawn points for hours on end.

I LOVED the way that using a gun would improve it. That’s one thing Destiny 1 did really well. It felt like you were investing well-spent fun time into gear. I just wish you could then do more with that gear then scrap it for peanuts when you were done with it...hell, have it give you some spin metal to lessen the flower-picking that game had you doing early on...

It looks infinitely more interesting than the Division but it's not nearly enough for me to buy it. Live service games really aren't my thing though so it was always gonna be a tough sell for me.

People talk about Destiny/Division having rocky starts, id argue division still sucks, and Destiny while lacking content was always a joy to play

The fact that this is selling worse than Mass Effect Andromeda puts a wrench in the thought that this game will continue

Where do I begin... Bioware isn't dead, Anthem won't kill them (even as bad as it's being received, EA made specific remarks about this but I can't find them, called a poor Anthem release possibility a "learning experience for Bioware"). There seemed to be some misrememberings about Roadmaps for both the Destiny Franchise and Division (Examples: D1 Pre-Release Expansion Pass Info, Destiny 2 Launch Month 1, Forsaken and Post Launch, Destiny Current Season Pass, The Division Pre-release). Honestly Anthem has to do at least this (and what they did is pretty piss poor compared to others in the current climate) because it's one thing Bungie has gotten extremely good about this in recent years, and keep in mind Bioware isn't competing with 2015 Bungie, but rather Destiny 2: Forsaken and The Division 2 (more directly Div 2). There is no doubt Bioware has an uphill battle on it's hands after this release of a rather lackluster Anthem, a game in which I'm enjoying a mild amount. I think several people in this thread have identified it's issues, but I think some of you are both overstating it's issues (Edit: I really wanted to defend Anthem more, because I do kind of like the Gameplay, but the more I talked about it's issues the more I realized how annoyed I've been playing it) and others understating them, and that's mostly because Anthem has two major types of problems at the moment. Full on Systemic issues that just can't be fixed without a full on sequel, and major balance issues that can and will be fixed in the coming months, and both show the game in a pretty bad light at the moment (again I'm still enjoying it a mild amount despite all of this). Destiny at launch suffered a ton of balance issues, which is why it was "fixed" (to a large degree) with DLC releases (it's content pipeline issues are a whole other topic that Destiny 2, and 2 additional Studios helping, was needed to fix that I won't get into). The Division suffered, like Anthem, from both Systemic and Balance issues, which is why all things point to The Division 2 being a much better game.

Anthem's fixable balance issues, imo, are as follows. Extremely repetitive gameplay loops (kill the same 3 enemies in a mission but each have more HP... are you for real Anthem?), uninteresting loot progression (specifically no ways to upgrade early found Masterworks, like if I get a 41 God Roll, it's useless when I hit 30 because it's not 45), limited build paths (not enough abilities for Prim/Det in each slot and boring/useless Supports), bad level scaling (difficulty scaling between Med/Hard and then Grandmaster 1-3 take that to a whole other level), broken reward system for Endgame, unrewarding Endgame (they just changed this to be far less rewarding to a massive community backlash on Sat, breaking the rewards for GM 2 & 3 in the process where players are reporting less Masterwork droprates at GM 2/3 than 1 when it's suppose to be a 300%/900% increase (over the 4%ish rate of GM1, making GM 2 about a 12% chance and GM 3 36% chance)), lack of Endgame content (only 3 Strongholds, 1 of which is a repurposed Story Mission), poorly communicated loot attributes, loot attributes that don't work with gear at all (fix incoming), cheap too smart AI (they have a focus on the weakest player AI where if you take damage all enemies focus on you and ignore your teammates, making it extremely frustrating at times to play Storm/Interceptor classes), too slow flying speed and it doesn't last long enough, abilities/gunplay don't feel like they have enough "weight" to them (felt better in the demo honestly), poor utility and ugly UI, one of the worst in game matchmaking systems, and various server crashes and bug fixes. I know it's a laundry list but I've been around these games with Destiny, The Divison, etc to be pretty confident these things will be rectified in the coming months and Anthem will be in a much better place. So, if these are your biggest issues, like myself, just wait it out after the next week or so of End Game (or wait to buy altogether). The only real concern for you should be if EA allows Bioware the space to expand enough on Anthem to fully flesh out Contracts, World Events, Strongholds, and that Cataclysms deliver the type of Raid experience many of us are hoping it will be. I'm hopeful that this will all happen, but at best, Anthem is currently a game I will likely drop in a week or so, and maybe pick back up in a few months after The Sunken and the first Cataclysm has launched.

My bigger issues with Anthem are those that are Systemic. To be honest, it's very clear Bioware just doesn't know how to make a satisfying looter shooter. Making the game Always Online Co-op was a massive mistake imo. It has created a multitude of Anthem's issues. These range from annoyances to getting Quest out of order when playing Co-op and having to redo them and having to sit and wait on friends for 15-20 minutes at a time to watch cutscenes or listen to conversations (and thus often skipping the vast majority of the granted bad Campaign), to the massive issues like a bad campaign that won't change, and an incredibly dull and lifeless Fort Tarsis. There are many other Systemic issues as well like seemingly unnecessary loading screens (especially the Forge which should just be on the Mission Menu), one rather boring and samey looking environment, rather bland shooting mechanics (probably the worst of any AAA shooting game in memory), customization options build only to seemingly yank microtransactional monies from the playerbase, and a seemingly lack of API tools for community use outside the game. I don't see any way any of these issues will ever be touched or impacted by balance changes outside of an increase in Alliance Coin to help players who refuse to purchase cosmetics with Microtransactions actually be able to afford more than 1 or 2 Armor sets ever.

All this said, Anthem doesn't seem to be doing very well, both critically and sales wise (likely for many of the same reason I listed above). Whether right or wrong, the 10% of D1 physical sales stats being thrown around, I will say this game seems to have a very paltry following of GB users and others as far as I can tell as well. I have about a 175 player friends list on PS4, almost all pretty dedicated Destiny players of whom regularly play games like Destiny, The Division, Diablo 3, Monster Hunter: World, etc, and I think I have about 6 of those friends who even own/played Anthem. At least 20 of them are on Apex Legends every night right now, and more are still on Destiny 2 routinely even when the vast majority of the playerbase has jumped ship post Forsaken. I also hate throwing out Metacritic Stats, but Anthem's numbers are pretty horrific for a Bioware Game, at 60/61 and 4.3/4.1 User, 12 points lower than Andromeda.. The last EA game to review worst was NBA Live 15. So it's hard to say EA will have a whole lot of incentive to keep pushing development money down the drain on Anthem for long, but I hope I'm wrong there. I think the biggest thing they are kicking themselves for, and I'm a bit disappointed in as well, is their weird line in the sand stance on no Paid DLC or Sequels. I feel like they are shooting themselves in the foot there. This game needs paid DLC and a Sequel in a few years to fix all of it's Systemic issues like Division 2 is doing. That, even more than the fierce competition in this market at the time, is pigeonholing Anthem into a corner they may never survive.

Though the idea of this thread that it even has a chance to be a better live service game than the Destiny Franchise has got to be a joke though. If anyone seriously thinks that about Anthem right now, there is no way you've touched or even read a single thing about Destiny since September of 2014. I'm not saying it's all sunshine and rainbows for Bungie right now, Black Armory was kind of an epic failure and Joker's Wild looks to be just as bad if not worse, but Forsaken was as good or better than most AAA releases in 2018. And to be honest, Black Armory, one of Destiny's poorest showings in franchise history, has more to offer content wise than Anthem will, not now, but even 3 months from now after it's first Cataclysm releases. That's kind of pathetic.

Note: After writing this, I'm realizing I might not actually like Anthem, I just like my friends I've been playing it with, haha. Gameplay moment to moment is decent though, and I like the Gear Score idea's. I just wish it was a little more Diablo 3 than it is, pushed away from being like Destiny at all, and embraced it's Mass Effect Story identity more than it did. I do feel like if the balance issues of Anthem are fixed over the next few months and the Cataclysms not only come out but are good, Anthem could be in an ok position from a Game perspective, but I'm worried it just won't have any kind of audience anymore.

Will it though?

Or will it be more of an "EVOLVE" situation?