General Gaming Update: RIP in Peace, Anthem

[Biggie]

24 minutes ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

I've been playing a bit of the story and have been busy trying to find a color scheme I like for the Intercepter. The graphics and load times seem fine to me on the PS4 basic. All I can compare this to is the demo but everything is much improved. The wind and rain efffects almost feel real. 

 

Also outrage culture on youtube gets a lot of traffic. Youtube is these peoples main source of income. And message boards are full of kids, complaining is easy. 

I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I don’t get what’s all the complaining about. 

[skillzdadirecta]

8 hours ago, Zaku3 said:

I am at the tomb part. My only problem with it is that I need friends. In freeplay everyone seems to run off and do their own thing. I doubt I can take on a world event by myself. (Lvl 19 or 20 with about 218 power jav)

I did three world events by myself at level 14.... beat an Ash Titan solo. I have two of the four tombs down and just need to complete one challenge apiece for the remaining two. I don't know how hard the Tomb thing was before the patch, but it doesn't seem that bad to me. Reminds me of some of the grinding you had to do in Destiny for certain questlines. If you're trying to beat the game on a deadline because you have to write a review,  then I can see the frustration. But most of us play games at our own pace and like the Shadow of War thing, this seems to be overstated.

 

EDIT: I'm playing on hard btw.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

@Mr.Vic20

[Biggie]

The loot is p’cool so far. It’s addicting to keep finding better gear and salvaging the rest. 

[JPDunks4]

Another patch tomorrow to fix some bugs, and also reenable HDR on consoles.

[Biggie]

Played for three hours last night. Matchmaking was great. Didn’t experience any problems. Love getting more powerful weapons and destroying shit. Messed around with the customization for a bit. My Ranger is looking p’bad ass. Wish people used mics. Only ran into one person that was talking. Guess I’m used to playing CoD where a lot of dudes talk. Other than no communication it was a blast. The sound is incredible using a headset!

[Anzo]

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I think I have my javelin geared up enough that Normal is way too easy. When I play a bit tonight I am going to try Hard again. 

[Zaku3]

Followed advice set difficulty to medium and have only 1 more world event to open all 4 tombs. Will do it later.

[Biggie]

Crafting is deep. I like it. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Last night I also finally picked up my Legion of Dawn stuff. The armor looks nice, and the scout rifle pretty good. It has a bonus where upon emptying the magazine tour shields recharge. Plus it has nice damage output. 

[nublood]

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

[Keyser_Soze]

16 minutes ago, nublood said:

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

 

2019 the year critics got it wrong

[Xbob42]

20 minutes ago, nublood said:

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

Ignoring what elephant? The middling reviews? We're all well aware. Bioware nailed the most important part: The gameplay. They just fumbled like 60% of the rest of the shit, which is why it's getting hammered so hard. Very legit complaints, but it's the first looter-shooter I've played where movement and combat are something I find really fun. For some people, that was Destiny. But I felt like Destiny was too slow and limited when it came to combat, both in scope and potential expansion of that combat.

 

I'd say in terms of features and polish and stuff, this game would be a rung or two (probably two) lower than Destiny 2 at launch, which people were super hyped about for like a month until the bottom fell out. This game's got some more baffling issues like no map waypoints and weird shit like that, but I find it significantly more fun to actually play, and the game has already made a weekly event that wasn't there last week and put it into the game, which is the kind of dynamic world updates I can get behind and never really saw in Destiny 2, where everything felt really set in stone until it was expansion time, or in very rare cases for like a secret weapon zone or something, which was rare but neat.

 

On the other hand, the campaign is pretty uninspired, there's not a ton of mission variety, and there's a big disconnect between field gameplay and town gameplay which fucks up the pace of the story and frankly the flow of getting in and out of missions. To continue the Destiny 2 comparisons, I find this particular complaint funny, because Destiny 2 had 6,000 year long load screens for basically anything, disguised by a ship floating around in front of a planet. To be fair, you could change your gear and stuff during those load screens, which is another thing Anthem has failed to get, but it's also Bioware's first game of this type, not their second fuckup like Destiny 2.

Of course, as we already discussed in this thread, there comes the fact that people are getting sick of half-finished looter-shooters at launch. Again, fair, but I dunno why this game in particular was the stopping point for so many after Destiny 2 literally repeated all the same mistakes the first game did right down to its fucked up dev cycle where they rebooted development halfway through, just like the first game.

 

And that's not to deflect this game's issues onto Destiny 2 or to try to say it's as good or better or whatever, I just feel like a lot of rhetoric we're seeing seems like it could've just as easily been directed at similar games, but for whatever reason wasn't. What's happening with Anthem isn't special, it has happened with every other game in the genre, not that there are many. If we're sick of it, that's fine, but we should've been sick of it a lot sooner.

As an aside, I think it's weird that we're supposed to... what? Not like a game because of bad reviews? You like what you like. Sometimes you agree with reviews, sometimes you don't. But I'm sure none of us have any games that got high scores that we didn't like or vice versa.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

10 minutes ago, nublood said:

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

That’s because most of the complaints aren’t really that major. Many already got patched, or are pretty typical for the looter shooter genre. For example mission/objective variety, which is no worse than Division’s or Destiny’s. Or story and world building which has so far been handled better than Division and Destiny. 

 

This video from Aztecross can give you an idea. 

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

11 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

On the other hand, the campaign is pretty uninspired, there's not a ton of mission variety, and there's a big disconnect between field gameplay and town gameplay which fucks up the pace of the story and frankly the flow of getting in and out of missions. To continue the Destiny 2 comparisons, I find this particular complaint funny, because Destiny 2 had 6,000 year long load screens for basically anything, disguised by a ship floating around in front of a planet. To be fair, you could change your gear and stuff during those load screens, which is another thing Anthem has failed to get, but it's also Bioware's first game of this type, not their second fuckup like Destiny 2.

 

Boy, Destiny is the king of shit load times. You float in space watch your ship, your ship flies above the planet and you watch it fly there then there is another load while you load into the planet. Make sure you do all your stuff on the planet because you don't want to go through that again.

[Biggie]

29 minutes ago, nublood said:

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

Review opinions are like buttholes. We all gottem. And they know a good review won’t get as many clicks as a edgy bad review. 

[Biggie]

I have a question. When you are finished playing how do you shut down your session? Do you go to settings and return to start up screen or can you simply just shut down the game at anytime?

[skillzdadirecta]

4 hours ago, Biggie said:

I have a question. When you are finished playing how do you shut down your session? Do you go to settings and return to start up screen or can you simply just shut down the game at anytime?

During the times early access trial I went to settings and returned to the home screen before quitting to make sure the game knew I quit and the timer didn't keep running.  A couple of folks I know had the timer keep running on them.

Now with the full game, I just shut down like any other.

 

In other news, this Polygon article seems to acknowledge that most of these "reviews" didn't take into account the day one patch of the release date and may have jumped the gun...

 

https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/23/18236665/anthem-early-access-reaction-analysis

 

I've seen sites do reviews in progress for games like this so why a lot of official sites didn't do that for this game is beyond me but if you guys think I didn't pay attention to the joke that is videogame reviews before, they've REALLY become irrelevant for me now.

[The Dude]

I truly believe tho once the rhetoric is set people just go with it and everyone follows suit, and then it just domino effects from there downward. 

 

The game is alot of fun tho, I'm enjoying it... And once they continue to tighten it up even further, optimize it more, add quality of life tweaks.... It'll be pretty solid. 

 

I do want to see some more enemy variety and things of that nature, but that can all come in time

 

What I'm loving is how the gameplay from one class to another is very different, and opens doors to enjoying many playstyles 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, nublood said:

This is the weirdest thread ever. Game is getting mediocre reviews nearly across the board. But almost everyone in here is ignoring the elephant in the room and enjoying it anyway. That being said, I’ll probably get this after a few patches in the future. I think Bioware is really listening and I like that.

 

46 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

2019 the year critics got it wrong

Or the year critics jumped the shark.

[atom631]

I think I’m missing something with alliance tiers. I’m getting grouped with players a level or 2 lower but I’m by far the lowest on alliance tiers. I think I’m at tier 2 and other are like 4-6. Is there something I’m supposed do to increase that? 

[Xbob42]

10 minutes ago, atom631 said:

I think I’m missing something with alliance tiers. I’m getting grouped with players a level or 2 lower but I’m by far the lowest on alliance tiers. I think I’m at tier 2 and other are like 4-6. Is there something I’m supposed do to increase that? 

Think of the tier thing as bonus experience and a sort of bar you fill up each week. Like a mini-leveling progression. Basically, aside from the experience, if you and your friends (people in your rando groups are irrelevant, I think, so don't worry about them. It probably shouldn't even show their tiers as it confuses things.) have higher tiers at the end of the week, you get lots of extra bonus Coin, which is the currency you use to buy stuff.

 

Essentially, you do more stuff, your tier goes up, you get more stuff from that. Reset at end of week, repeat. So your experience points continue to have at least some affect.

[skillzdadirecta]

55 minutes ago, The Dude said:

What I'm loving is how the gameplay from one class to another is very different, and opens doors to enjoying many playstyles 

 But the Javelins all play the same! I know because the reviewer dude on the internet told me!

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

In other news, this Polygon article seems to acknowledge that most of these "reviews" didn't take into account the day one patch of the release date and may have jumped the gun...

 

https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/23/18236665/anthem-early-access-reaction-analysis

 

I will definitely file that under “no shit, Sherlock”. Not you, Polygon. 

 

I said this paiges ago. These “reviewers” knew. most would not be playing the game until 2/22 at the earliest, and they knew there was a huge day one patch addressing many of their issues with game. Yet they had to rush to publication to proclaim Anthem to be garbage and irredeemable. 

 

lol Skillup titled his review “BioWare made the wrong game and made it badly.” Which sounds like he hated what Anthem was trying to be, and even in his review he laments that it isn’t Mass Effect. Sounds like Anthem wasn’t going to get a fair shake.

 

Anthem is not perfect. But it seems like even the flaws it has it shares with its genre counterparts and the ones that were due to (and now have been) fixed are being blown way out of proportion, to the point BioWare and Anthem are being vilified. The guy at the Quartering said that if the anyone enjoying Anthem is blind to being ripped off. I mean, what? lol 

[Biggie]

21 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 But the Javelins all play the same! I know because the reviewer dude on the internet told me!

I like Colossus. And no, the Javelins are all different play styles.  lol. 

 

Reviewers are the reason that games fail sometimes because people believe their opinions are facts. 

[Mr.Vic20]

Good lord Grand master level difficulty is tough! 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

14 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Good lord Grand master level difficulty is tough! 

How’s your gear? Are you all purple? 

[Moa]

Fuck it, bought.

[Mr.Vic20]

2 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

How’s your gear? Are you all purple? 

I'm sitting a 416 with all masterwork weapons and one masterwork component of the six available slots.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Damn. Makes me fear GM2 and 3. 

 

 

So on the issues Anthem does have, I wonder how many of them are because they got saddled with having to use the Frostbite engine. If they had been able to use UE4 many things would have been easier to implement and the experience more polished. 

 

Andromeda said Frostibe was an issue that hindered development, and they said the same thing about that Star Wars game that got canceled. It seems the only people that do not have issues building a game with Fristbite are Dice, who only makes FPS games that are meant to be far more modular. 

[SimpleG]

3 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

It seems the only people that do not have issues building a game with Fristbite are Dice, who only makes FPS games that are meant to be far more modular. 

Even they have  issues with it. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

lol oh lord. Then Frostbite is an absolute pointless engine. EA should just scrap it. Not needing to patch as much, and having a smoother development cycle would likely more than cover the expense of licensing a decent engine. 

[skillzdadirecta]

I haven't played since yesterday afternoon but I when I went to log on this morning there was a 4GB update?  Any idea what this addresses?

[Xbob42]

Haven't been having any issues with GM1 -- you guys didn't just hop right into Strongholds, did you? Strongholds are like the hardest content of any given difficulty tier. Start out with some contracts and stuff! You still get good rewards, not quite as many masterworks, but you'll get shit done at least!

I only started GM1 this morning, got a Masterwork component which dramatically increased my health and shields, and then wasn't having much luck with drops for several contracts (regular contracts, not legendary) and then all of a sudden a little yellow box popped up from a random mob! My first legendary outside of the weird pre-order one. It's a pistol that gets a 75% damage boost every time you dash... and I dash a lot, so this should be interesting.

 

I partially retract what I said earlier, the higher end guns DO put out some really good damage. I still haven't seen one as good as my abilities, but they've had some interesting perks. I have an assault rifle that has like a 33% proc chance to do heavy lightning damage on strike, which translates to about 4k per lightning strike. The bullets only hit for about 250, so having the damage range be 250 to 4250 is pretty extreme, however you may recall that lightning does a ton of shield damage, so the gun is fucking incredible for taking out shields if I'm not lightning specced, and if it procs several times in a row it can deal an insane amount of damage.

 

Saw a video of a Colossus with a minigun that had 1,000 ammo and was doing 1,000 damage per shot, firing very rapidly. So at least on that Javelin, weapons may be king. Interesting the amount of diversity I'm seeing at higher levels, it's great.