To be fair to Anthem’s mind-numbing loads, Destiny had that stupid design choice where you had to load in and out of your ship lobby for no reason other than to vindictively waste my time.

As good as Taken King and Rise of Iron were, this was never fixed (maybe it couldn’t be). They did fix it for Destiny 2, but managed to fuck up just about everything else...

I didn't know which thread to post this in, so this will suffice.
HEYOOO, shit's borked in Anthemland (again): https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/ay0oh7/psa_the_level_1_defender_rifle_is_the_best_weapon/

I can appreciate their efforts to equalize players' damage output regardless of pilot level, but holy shit this is bad and hilarious.

BioWare has a stream scheduled for today, I eagerly await what they have to say about this.

This is legit super concerning. Essentially the number popups are meaningless. It almost seems like their are fundamental issues at the core of the damage system.

That Reddit thread jumped the gun a little bit. Based on some testing people did:

Enemy health scales to the item level of your weapon/ability and the damage of your (low level) weapon scales to the highest item level (up to 30) of your other equipment.

So damage numbers are technically accurate and enemy health is just scaling wrong. At level 30 with endgame gear, damage numbers should still provide the use they're intended for, which is comparing DPS. There should be no smoke and mirrors in terms of balance, as long as the scaling caps at item level 30 and enemy health values don't actually keep adjusting beyond that and isn't based on the weapon or ability you're using.

They should just remove all scaling from GM content. It's a good thing that they're trying to keep low level players on board with their friends, but there's no reason to have that system in place on Grandmaster difficulties where you're supposed to be level 30 with decent gear to begin with.

People are making a bigger deal out of the scaling issue then is really necessary. Its bug with just the level 1 guns. It doesnt reveal anything about the backend of Anthem's scaling other than this one set of weapons is bugged and dealing more damage than intended. It happens literally all the time in games with scaling like this.

I think the bigger problem is more that, just like Destiny and The Division, it wasn't a "good game" out of the gate. This has happened so many times at this point that people are fed up with it.

Personally, I have not bought it yet for this exact reason. IF I do every want to play it, I'd rather wait when all the content is there and it's a stable experience.

I put maybe 5 or 6 hours into Anthem in the first few days of release. I keep trying to go back but it's just not a very good game.

It's not terrible and I think it can definitely get better, but as it stands, it's weak.

If they try charging £30 or more to add content that makes it a decent game, I'll pass.

The problem they run into is because they decided not to go for dedicated, expansion style addons, it's much harder to sway public opinion in a meaningful way.

Even though smaller, frequent content additions will add up over time and probably make Anthem a better experience, they will not have the impact a Taken King or Forsaken level overhaul had.

People who tried Anthem and and left the game by now will probably not come back for some extra freeplay mission, one extra stronghold or QoL improvements.

I just don't get how you can supposedly be in development for so long and... have it turn out like this.

Mass Effect 3 launched in 2012, then inquisition in 2015? ...4+ years and there is just so little there.

They have done fucked it up. The reputation this game picked up is so bad, I believe the developer will only invest minimal effort to deliver what they promissed in terms of new content and then let it die. I wish I was mistaken, I would love to buy and play this game, I was really excited for it but damn, they really did a number on this one.

@junkerman: Really, really poor management. From top to bottom.

The thing is I do not have the time to deal with games as a service like this. My time is rather limiting when it comes to play video games, so a game asking me to play so much and then to eventually get better over time is just a complete waste of my little time I have.

@mrgreenman: Agreed. Treadmill games are bullshit. What’s sacrificed to make them work is not worth what comes out the other end.

@quipido: People were crapping on Destiny 1 and Division when they came out. It took months for Division to get good. D1 never got good to me since the good content was behind another paywall. At least everything coming to Anthem will be free.

Look Anthem fans, even if you accept the premise that Anthem is equal or better than D1 and Division on launch, that is no excuse. Why? Because its been years since those games came out and EA/Bioware learned zero lessons from their mistakes. Anthem is a weird game that feels like it was developed in some type of maximum security prison where the developers weren't allowed to play other games in the genre.

Also you know what D1 had on launch that Anthem won't get until May? An actual endgame with a raid that is still looked back on fondly to this day by Destiny fans. Also, visually distinct armor/guns/loot. Also, multiple visually disntict open areas(Anthem with its one biome smh). Also, really good enemy design. Also, great gunplay.

D1 had a lot of issues, but there're also many positives that you can point to as the reason that Destiny persevered until Taken King.

Meanwhile, Anthem has great flight and good abilities(that become less useful in the endgame). Oh, and a publisher with a notoriously itchy trigger finger when it comes to under performing games/studios. The future does not look rosy.

After past Friday's patch hit I am fairly confident to say Anthem is flawed to its core and the devs either lack experience or simply try to put out too many fires at the same time.

They changed the base power level on legendaries and masterworks effectively increasing the relative power of legendaries to make them more desirable. However they did not adjust any of the elements that directly scale off your javelin power level, foremost ultimate abilities and melee abilities. They are now so grossly overpowered that the game comes down to 1) equip the highest item level gear in every slot, abilities/stats are secondary 2) use melee exclusively and the ultimate whenever ready.

This should have been very obvious - it's nothing obscure some user finds out days after the patch hit. I can't see how that passed internal testing - like it takes you one minute in a colossus or interceptor to understand the scaling is way off.

On top weapons have become stats sticks since their "fix" on the infamous overpowered level 1 guns has broken pretty much all weapons. Outside of the ones that have an op elemental or blast proc, regular guns don't do damage anymore once you hit gm3 freeplay or gm2 stronghold levels of hp.

Beyond that limitations caused by how the mechanics have been designed became apparent, so in the big picture the low drop rates of masterworks and legendaries don't matter all that much.

That was the intent behind increasing the power level of masterworks and legendaries, it's not an accident. Those damage sources are now viable in GM2, which is good, but I don't know if it's enough for GM3.

@briarpack said:

Intend or not isn't the argument - it was executed in a way that completely destroyed all balancing.

Instead of buffing abilities and Ultimates a reasonable amount you effectively took weapons and even abilities out of the game for the most part.

Now you don't care about what items to equip - just slot in the highest gear available.

Abilites? Don't care, pick the highest ones you have, same goes for weapons.

Use melee and Ultimate exclusively. That's your meta right there now!

Half of your post was about them accidentally increasing the damage of those sources and lack of testing, so that felt like it needed a correction.

It's a change that needed to happen though, a static buff isn't enough unless you overdo it and make those damage sources viable in GM3 from the get-go.
They need to figure out what the fuck they want to do with damage scaling, since additive boosts don't cut it.
Yeah, it's a band-aid fix and gearscore by itself shouldn't matter, but I won't shed a tear over GM2 being farmable with melee now, especially as an Interceptor.

That's not what I wrote - obviously it was intended to buff in particular Ultimate and Support abilities, that's also what they pointed out in the last dev stream.

But they not ended up making them better but the end all be all!

That's where they are - now it's all melee and ultimate spam.

If you are fine with it being a one button spam fest all power to you.

I am out at that point since mindlessly hammering the melee button isn't only one version to get through the content it's the most powerful way to play Colossus after the patch.

@wolfstein_3d: Those damage sources are the best way to play the game right now, but only because they haven't made drastic changes to the ways other sources scale. Like I said, this is a band-aid, guns and abilities will see buffs later down the line to bring them up to the same level, because they have to.

Again that's just plain wrong - guns where fine for the most part as have been abilities relative to each other - only ultimate abilities and support abilities lacked behind.

They buffed now ultimate and melee that everything else becomes completely irrelevant.

This is one step forward two steps back and there is no reason why you would not be able to buff these sources in a reasonable way without killing everything else in the game!

@wolfstein_3d: Those damage sources needed the buff, not just ults and supports. Just because those damage sources were balanced with everything else, that doesn't mean it was good.

You could steamroll through GM1, sure, but GM2 and 3 were not worth suffering through because there was literally no way to do enough damage to make that content efficient to grind. Everything they buffed was useless on GM2 and 3 and because of the massive increase in health that enemies have on those difficulties, there is no "reasonable" way to buff them that doesn't make them a lot more powerful than the current damage output guns have. Hell, combos and Interceptor melee still do dick all for damage, you're basically just relying on procs from components and abilities.

I'll reiterate my point again: this change was good, now they need to buff guns.

@briarpack: Yeah, these changes have not totally fd up the balancing - like not at all.

And again - intend doesn't excuse bad execution that creates a multitude of new problems without actually fixing the one you aimed at properly.

@wolfstein_3d: Oh yes, this one oversight totally invalidates the change /s. Can you stop moving the goalpost, having a conversation about this is hard when your argument changes every two seconds, this bug is basically irrelevant to what we were talking about.

And again - intend doesn't excuse bad execution that creates a multitude of new problems without actually fixing the one you aimed at properly.

What do you mean "again"? Your previous point about intent was this change making those damage sources unbalanced, not about a bug. They fixed what they were aiming for, melee, ults and item procs are now viable in GM2+.
BioWare just forgot how averages are calculated :D

To get back on topic: like I said five days ago, they should remove scaling from GM content. Because, like with all scaling, this is BioWare trying to future-proof their loot mechanics for harder content, they're just scaling to the wrong stats. Nevertheless I'll settle for this while they come to the conclusion that they need multiplicative stat boosts.

@briarpack:

I don`t move anything anywhere - my claim from the very beginning was that in their intention to buff some parts they completely overshot the target and effectively removed other aspects from being utilized at all.

How you can argue it has to be done that way, they will bring up the rest again and for the time being it's fine to use a fraction of your toolset only is beyond me.

If you are fine with that all power to you,

@wolfstein_3d:

I don`t move anything anywhere - my claim from the very beginning was that in their intention to buff some parts they completely overshot the target and effectively removed other aspects from being utilized at all.

Yup, that was your claim in the beginning. And in the previous post it was that the way they implemented the change was bugged, so they shouldn't have done it.

How you can argue it has to be done that way, they will bring up the rest again and for the time being it's fine to use a fraction of your toolset only is beyond me.

They don't have to do it this way but because of the health difference between GM difficulties, if you want to make GM2+ playable, every base level buff will trivialize GM1 (it was already kinda trivial, though) no matter how you do it. They could've waited and buffed every damage source at once, but they don't have to wait on that if they've settled on this method of scaling. I'm sure gun balance is a more complex issue to fix than secondary damage sources. I'm still holding out hope that they abolish scaling altogether, but making that function requires a lot more time and work.

Guns are just as good as they were before (some are actually better, because of procs), if you don't want to rely on melee and ability procs, you can stay in GM1 and use guns just like before. I used a shotgun build in GM1 just because it was fun to play, Sniperceptor would've gotten shit done faster, but it was boring as hell. This would be a different situation if they'd nerfed something, but since it's a buff and it makes GM2 viable, that's forward progress and it's good.

The game is on life support right now, changes need to happen and they need to happen fast. They're hestitating with drop rate increases because fucking it up by overdoing it will kill the game much faster than any power increase or balance issue. Meanwhile, moving players from GM1 to GM2 and giving them that very slight increase in drop rates (TBD if the drop rates are actually better, a lot of people are still sticking with GM1) will breathe some new life into the game.