ANTHEM - failed Destiny clone from BioWare

[fantadomat]

From what i heard they were going for a hub/mission based action rpg before the retard said that flying and shiny graphics is a must. Still all the information is very subjective and there is no sure way for us to know. No matter how incompetent the studio is,they would have still made a few builds fro those 6 years. I believe that casey hudson was the first lead,and he wanted to make a popamole MMO looter,thus that is what he sold EA. Then he got kicked out and the one of the old school guys step in(forgot his name). He wanted a classical Bioware game,which would have been a far better thing than anthem. Then the swedish cuck said that he wanted pew pew ironman and in time the old school guy just packed his bag and left. I have noticed that after the article every retard with an internet connection and camera is trying to shift the blame from EA to Bioware,which is retarded. Both of them are garbage companies,when your dog eats somebody,both of you take responsibility.

Imo, the article tries to shift away the blame from the shitty devs and they're actually succeeding. Yeah, EA/Bioware are the ones hiring the useless turds, but shouldn't paint those slackers as innocent bystanders. Poor overworked snowflakes...

 

[J1M]

It may be the other way around. EA may not have let them use frostbite as a partner to keep the source code internal.

 

[markec]

I was wondering how much is using Frostbite actually at fault with the whole fiasco, seeing how so many games has been made with it became broken shit only when it got into hands of Bioware.

It just sounds like a convenient excuse, "Its a shitty engine, it was dragging us down!".

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

We need a "da bitch" button.

Imagine going to a job interview and being shown the "cry room" room.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I was wondering how much is using Frostbite actually at fault with the whole fiasco, seeing how so many games has been made with it became broken shit only when it got into hands of Bioware.

It just sounds like a convenient excuse, "Its a shitty engine, it was dragging us down!".

I've wondered this too for quite a while. Like, back when BioWare was first talking shit about Frostbite they'd only done one thing on it, and basically only one first person shooter had come out on it. But now there's tons of shit built on Frostbite across a number of different genres. It also seems weird they bitch about it being an engine designed for shooters when they're making fucking shooters on the thing. If it's so fucking hard to made third person shooters on this engine they say was designed for first person shooters, then maybe the genius collective at BioWare should rethink the game's perspective.

Respawn was also seemingly not forced into using Frostbite, as Apex Legends uses Sorce like their previous Titanfall games.

 

[Zer0wing]

Everyone seem to be in agreement that flying in a hueg overworld map is p. cool and impressive. Been here in some licensed PS2 game so can't say it's an impressive feature.

This is some crowbar-tier material.

Spoiler

Seems like Bioware can't even surpass Playstation 2 now, even with Frostbite which seems made for huge overworld maps in mind.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Flying. With actually combat in flight mode.

 

[thesheeep]

Who the hell would fly with a minimap blocking half the screen most of the time?

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

https://www.gamesradar.com/new-anth...at-launch-has-already-quit-the-game-for-good/

 

[fantadomat]

It seems that Apex legends is not working for EA also. It seems that the games as subscription is not working as intended.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'll probably pick it up to check out the singleplayer campaign when it falls to $5

 

[Kem0sabe]

I'll probably pick it up to check out the singleplayer campaign when it falls to $5

Strangely they are refusing to put it on sale... Recent releases already are, like division 2.

 

[abija]

That statistic for anthem is beyond fabulously optimistic. It's typical for grind based games with AAA (at least in theory) production and/or marketing to have a very high number of people that buy them and only play "story once".

 

[markec]

I'll probably pick it up to check out the singleplayer campaign when it falls to $5

Even if the game was free it would still be a price too high.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I'll probably pick it up to check out the singleplayer campaign when it falls to $5

Your time is probably worth more than wasting it on Anthem

 

[fantadomat]

 

[Morgoth]

1 month after release, this shitshow is already 64% off on cdkeys.com.

 

[Infinitron]

lmaooo: https://www.newsweek.com/star-citizen-director-chris-roberts-reveal-how-fix-anthem-1401588

‘STAR CITIZEN’ DIRECTOR CHRIS ROBERTS REVEALS HOW HE WOULD FIX ‘ANTHEM'

Chris Roberts, Director of Cloud Imperium Games, is the mastermind behind the record-breaking early access game, Star Citizen. Through seven years of active development, the persistent universe sci-fi project has raised more than $200 million in funding from thousands of backers eager to live out their space-sim fantasies.

Given Roberts’ three decades of games industry experience and passion for sci-fi open worlds, Newsweek sat down with the influential auteur to get his take on BioWare’s controversial 2019 release, Anthem. In our chat, he discussed how he would respond to fans’ widespread outrage and pondered how his own studio deals with the complexities of criticism and crunch. This is one part of a much larger conversation about the impact of the Star Citizen community. Check out that feature here.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How would you respond to the negative sentiment surrounding Anthem?

You've seen it from No Man's Sky and Sean Murray. Let me put it this way. There's was 13 of them and they built something amazing. They should not have taken the amount of abuse and flack they had when it came out. As a technical challenge, to build something that big with that much stuff and such a small team, I am hats off very impressed by their talent.

The problem was players' expectations were so far beyond that. They imagined all this extra stuff. When they were first showing it maybe there was some stuff that, through iteration or whatever, they couldn't get into the game. They took a huge amount of abuse, they were written off and they just put their heads down and they kept updating, delivering and making it better and better. Now the perception has changed.

I would say the same for Anthem. I've played it, so I know there's plenty of nice stuff in there, stuff that works, and then there's some stuff that doesn't work. It's like what we're doing on Star Citizen. It's just iteration. I hope EA and BioWare don't give up on it, that they get their heads down, roll out and improve things to make it work. Destiny was an ongoing process. That's kind of how these games are.

A lot of gamers don't understand quite how difficult it is to deliver everything working flawlessly. The expectations keep ramping up, and in some ways those expectations may be higher than people are humanly possible of always delivering. Then you've got some other realities that come in, like if you've been working on it for a while and just need to get it out. In the case of the live side, just keep working at it. Keep on swimming.

So would you say there's always a chance for a live game to be reborn?

There may be some games that are totally broken, but I wouldn't call Anthem that. It's definitely got some fun aspects and fun mechanics, and I think some of the criticisms can be addressed. I don't look at it and say it's terminally broken. I look at it and see that there's a bunch of stuff here.

I wish there was a bit more and it was a bit deeper, and I wish maybe some of the lore and story stuff was a bit more dynamic. I felt like when it was originally pitched to me it was supposed to be more dynamic, and it felt static when I played it. To be honest with you, Destiny had some pretty static story stuff. It wasn't that different from what I'd experienced.

Part of the problem is that Anthem comes with the EA penalty so people are predisposed to hate on it because they feel EA messes everything up. Then there was Andromeda which happened before, so there was already a thing where they felt like that was rushed out the door. And now they feel like the next thing was rushed out the door too. Then you have the Kotaku article which sort of pours a little fuel on the fire of that narrative.

Were you surprised at all by anything that article said?

Game development is messy. Whenever you have personnel or leadership changes it's always difficult. I would also stress that there was 19 people they were talking to, so it's not all the people that were on the team. Some people would've had a more positive experience than some of the people that were talking to him.

People don't really get to see how games are made. With us they do. We're super open about it, and we still get accused of all sorts of things. We try. We genuinely try to improve all the time. We get plenty of things wrong, but we always try to improve. Most of the people I know that make games on all levels love games and want to make them. They also want to create a good environment for their people.

For situations like Anthem, it's the result of friction between the needs of a public company and development. In development, if you didn't care so much about quarters and stuff, you'd put it off for a year to polish, add more stuff and release it when it's ready.

Do you still feel pressure to work long hours on Star Citizen even if there’s no big publisher involved?

I don't think I work 100 hours, but I'm doing what I love. If I'm not working on Star Citizen, I'm still reading various gaming sites and playing games. It's the conflation of my hobby and work together.

I know there's a bit of an outcry, but in general, everyone I know in the industry is doing what we do here. We try to have a better work-life balance. The crunch that I remember when I was at Origin we just don't do here, and even some of the same stuff we did back in the Digital Anvil days. When we've got a release ready to come out over the next week or two sometimes people stay a little later to fix bugs, but it's meant to be pretty much 40 hours a week with people coming in from nine to six.

The two groups of people for us that maybe get bad hours are the testers and live release people. The coders have done their stuff, but then the testers have to play it to make sure it doesn't break, and the live release peole need to make sure it uploads to the cloud and everything. They tend to work late, but then we also don't have them come in so early in the day. And then also some of them have to be around on the weekends. If a server blows up on the weekend and you've got 100,000 playing, they're all screaming bloody murder.

We try, and I think it's important for all studios whether they're small or big. It's better than it used to be. It can definitely get better too, but I feel like, because people don't know the business so well, they can look at things out of context to get an impression that isn't as nuanced as maybe it should be.

 

[commie]

lmaooo: https://www.newsweek.com/star-citizen-director-chris-roberts-reveal-how-fix-anthem-1401588

What Anthem needs is more jpegs of ships Suits......

 

[Alienman]

What a boomer.

The problem was players' expectations were so far beyond that. They imagined all this extra stuff.

Think he forgot that there was some lying involved from a certain someone about features.

 

[fantadomat]

What anthem needs is 20 years of development circle and playable alpha where you could milk whales.

 

[Gerrard]

What Anthem needed was a competent dev team.

By the way, on the matter of how bad the engine (or Bioware) was for an always-online, open world multiplayer game, it would intermittently lockup your controls (including being able to move the camera!) either because of network issues or CPU usage. There was no way to determine which, because there's no way to show your ping to the game servers in game, despite the fact that Frostbite has this command built-in. It was disabled on purpose.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Anthem's mistake was being a bad game. Star Citizen's triumph is in being a first rate fantasy.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

What it needs most of all is someone in the team that actually plays the game - whoever decided to fill the elysian chests with filler rewards never got how discouraging it would be to have a player do something like completing 6 open world events (fly around the map in freeroam until something happens - 4 or 5 people per instance, so the map is deserted with a couple of player names in the horizon behind a mountain) to get their single daily key, then do one of the three strongholds (that they know by heart at this point), only to open the chest at the end and possibly get 20 weapon parts.

There is a madman on reddit that recently opened all the 162 chests just by repeatedly running strongholds on easy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheG...an_cache_completed_did_it_for_the_breakdance/

Sad part is I’m at 50 of 160 on the caches and all I want is the breakdance animation as well. Good news is in the 50 I have I’m almost 95% sure 25 of those the crafting pieces. Of which there are only supposed to be 30. Honest to god who thought it was a good idea to pad the caches with that crap? What can we do with it?

Yeah...there are only 73 actual rewards(please correct me if I'm wrong), the rest are crafting garbage. So 89 of them are materials of some kind. Expect to get materials half of the time.

 

[Infinitron]

Everything delayed: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/bgkgl3/update_on_anthem_from_the_development_team/

Update on Anthem from the Development Team

Here is an update from Ben (Lead Producer) & Chad (Head of Live Services) on the Act 1 90 day calendar.
________________

Hey Everyone,

It’s been 10 weeks since the early access release of Anthem. While we have been quiet publicly, we have been hard at work in the background and we wanted to provide an update on the state of the game.

The Past 10 Weeks

We have learned a lot since the game went live. We have heard a lot of feedback from all of you, and we have been working diligently to improve as many things as we can in the short term.

We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and made changes which we believe begin to point us in the right direction for the future. That being said, we know there is a long way to go before Anthem becomes the game we all want it to be. So where are we at today…

Game Update 1.1.0

Game Update 1.1.0 went live today and includes some new content and improvements to the game:

• A new Stronghold called “The Sunken Cell”
• Access to the Forge anywhere in the world
• Ability to launch a new expedition from the end of expedition menu without loading into Fort Tarsis
• Access to contracts without having to run around and pick them up

There are a bunch of additional fixes and improvements – the patch notes for Game Update 1.1.0 can be found here.

There is also a livestream later today where we will show you the Sunken Cell Stronghold and some of the other improvements in Game Update 1.1.0

Act 1 Calendar

While we have delivered many of the Act 1 features on time, we are not going to hit all the goals on our Act 1 Calendar.

We have been prioritizing things like bug fixes, stability and game flow over the new features of Act 1. We set aside time for this work, but the reality is there are more things to fix and improve than we planned for. While this is the best thing to do for the game, it means some items from the calendar will be delayed.

Features delayed:

• Mastery System
• Guilds
• Legendary Missions – Phase II
• Weekly Stronghold Challenge
• Leaderboards
• Some Freeplay Events
• Cataclysm

We want to make sure everything we add to the game has a purpose and fits with our long term goals. When we have information to share on the items above, we will do so.

Cataclysm

The Cataclysm is an important addition to the game and it’s currently a big focus for the team. The Cataclysm will bring new challenges and rewards and pushes the story of Anthem forward. As our work continues, we will share more with you in May.

Loot

We have heard your concerns around end game loot. We agree that our loot and progression systems need to be improved and we are working towards this. When we have more information to share, we will.

Communication

A lesson we have learned is we have been talking about things too early. There are so many factors that can cause us to pivot on our plans – whether it’s bugs & stability issues, player feedback, or complications with a feature that require us to take more time to deliver it. Our goal is to tell you about new content and features once the work is closer to being done.

At the same time, we want to provide more ways to get your feedback and for you to tell us what you think is fun (or not fun). To facilitate this we plan to introduce a Player Feedback Environment (PFE), an opportunity to get your feedback before we go live with major features (in the short term for PC only).

Closing

We know you have been waiting for these updates, and that you might not be pleased with where we are today. We understand and respect these perspectives.

The only thing we can say is this – We Believe in Anthem. We believe the game will be great, but we recognize getting there will take a lot of hard work. We want to do that work and we want you all to join us on the journey to get there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this update.

Ben and Chad

https://www.pcgamer.com/anthems-big...s-are-all-being-delayed-until-god-knows-when/

Anthem's biggest upcoming features are all being delayed until god knows when
In a Reddit post, Anthem's lead developers reveal a host of features that won't be arriving on time.

Anthem received a major 1.1.0 update today that, in addition to adding a new Stronghold to play, lets you finally access your inventory during missions. But, as players had suspected for weeks, this update also brought news that Anthem's planned April roadmap (and potentially well beyond) is being delayed for an indeterminate amount of time as BioWare struggles to fix more of Anthem's fundamental problems.

"We have learned a lot since the game went live," a Reddit thread from BioWare reads. "We have heard a lot of feedback from all of you, and we have been working diligently to improve as many things as we can in the short term. We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and made changes which we believe begin to point us in the right direction for the future. That being said, we know there is a long way to go before Anthem becomes the game we all want it to be."

Because of that, many of the features promised to arrive in April won't be coming until sometime later. When Anthem's roadmap was unveiled during launch, BioWare promised features like guild support, leaderboards, a Mastery system, the still unknown endgame Cataclysm group activities, and many more. All of those and other features are now delayed as BioWare continues to work on "bug fixes, stability and game flow."

Anthem's original roadmap also included six "Freeplay Events" that were supposed to change the world and provide a weekly rotation of interesting things to do—but BioWare's Reddit post doesn't comment on why these events are still missing in action.

Of course, this isn't surprising to Anthem's dwindling fanbase, many of whom suspected that its April and May roadmap would be delayed as the fundamental flaws in BioWare's shooter became more apparent. Weeks earlier, Kotaku published a damning report of Anthem's disastrous development that contextualizes why Anthem was such a mess at launch.

What's frustrating players, though, is how little transparency BioWare is giving into these features and their delays. Since before launch, BioWare has teased Cataclysms as Anthem's hardcore endgame content (similar, perhaps, to Destiny 2's raids), but no one knows what the hell they actually are. Similarly, players have been complaining about Anthem's shallow loot system for nearly three months and BioWare still doesn't have anything to say beyond agreeing that "loot and progression systems need to be improved."

"It's super concerning seeing that after all this time there's not even sliver of 'We are moving in this direction' or anything," writes one redditor. "It's always 'Yup. We hear ya'. Just let the people know what your direction is, you obviously can't fix things right away but damn guys...make a plan already."

But it's not all bad. Like I said, today's 1.1.0 update fixes some of Anthem's biggest annoyances. Now, players can access their inventory and change their equipment anywhere in the world (yes, including during missions) without a loading screen.

You can also now load into a new mission directly from the summary screen at the end of a mission, negating the need to sit through multiple loading screens forcing you back into Anthem's singleplayer-only Fort Tarsis area.

It's baffling that Anthem didn't have such basic features at launch, but now that they're here I'm finding Anthem slightly more enjoyable to play. But now that it's been nearly three months and the only new activity is a Stronghold (which only takes 30 minutes to clear), being able to access my inventory anywhere feels kinda pointless without anywhere new to go.