Yeah, the game basically ends when you hit those gear scores. The odds of an upgrade dropping are astronomically low. GM level doesn’t make much difference.
BW has work to do.
Someone took a Reddit thread and turned it into an Article.
“Anthem is here to stay,” Anderson said. “Do we have a lot of work to do to fix parts of the game? Yes, and the team is committed to making improvements and releasing new content … The team is listening to all of your feedback for Anthem on how you’d like to see the game improve, or how you’d like to see us engage with the community differently. I know that players want to see updates faster, but these things can take time to make sure they are done right. We’re very appreciative of this community and look forward to the days, weeks, months and years ahead.”
I’m most impressed that in that entire letter, he didn’t refer to a single player as a “toxic cock waffle”. Good job!
I hope EA feels the same way, because I do love the core of this game.
Endgame progression needs a ground-up rework. My favorite Anthem youtuber is RyanCentral. He’s generally positive about the game – he enjoys it. But he has also analyzed the issues with endgame loot in an insightful way:
Bioware can’t fix this with a few tweaks to drop rates and inscriptions. They need a Diablo3-style Loot 2.0 transformation to keep this sucker interesting long-term.
Yeah, I think having the best inscriptions available in GM1 was a terrible mistake. Honestly not sure how they didn’t see that coming.
That was a great video. I think he has a good handle on where the problems with the game lie.
Despite the fact that this task is going to take some time, the good news for Bioware is they have the hard part done. They have a gorgeous open environment built and they have a combat system that is very very well liked. Even the people I know that hate/dislike the game tend to praise the combat, it’s typically the loot system or technical issues surrounding it that turn them off.
In the short term, Bioware can make some fixes. They can tweak the drop rates and can reduce RNG by allowing you to re-roll inscriptions via the crafting system. I think that will get them into a pretty decent place in a 1.1 or 1.2 kind of patch so that they can work on the future. That probably means rethinking how loot works and is obtained in general, like the Diablo 3 loot rework.
I really really enjoy this game, but I am hitting that nasty plateau now and am likely going to start looking for something else to play here in the near future. It’ll probably be Division 2, but I’m going to be following Anthem and am going to eagerly jump back in as soon as I hear about updates coming out.
Also, I have to say, the EA/Origin Access stuff is such a steal. I played the crap out of Anthem and got access to a slew of other games for 15 bucks. I wouldn’t have minded spending $60 on Anthem given how much I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m not about to complain I was able to get all that entertainment for a quarter of that (not sure how EA feels about it, though… :)).
Yeah I’m hitting pause on Anthem, mainly to start Division 2, but I know I’ll be back. Not many games offer this kind of experience.
Would appreciate thoughts on this:
Uh oh, more basic design completely fubared?
They aren’t wrong, but they are overreacting. It isn’t the basic design so much as something they did in 1.0.3 to improve scaling for melee, combos, and ultimates.
It is easily fixed (and needs to be). They could do so by scaling on total gear score instead of average or by turning it into a fraction of max score.
Letting level one characters equip any gear they want is a separate issue that might be a bit more sticky. They probably need to cap max gear score at 1-9, 10-19, and 20-29.
The Story is Right but Is The Wrong Story.
the real story here is endgame players getting oneshooted or almost oneshooted and asking “why”. the game is setup in a way that you progress in power, and the more advanced the weaker you are. and at some point, things break and players are fragile, and the mobs are made of nokia phones
Sounds more like players not being properly geared and thinking they can go solo gm2 just because they have masterworks on.
Well, that and a nasty health bug or three that’s in the game.
It sounds bad
I tested this on my Storm, who normally rolls with five legendaries and the rest MW. I removed all but the legendaries and had a go at some dominion caves in freeplay. He did a lot better than I expected, but not nearly as well as with the full gearset. Those MW’s have a bunch of special effects that come in very, very handy.
I can increase my ultimate damage by removing my purple support item. But that item has 35% shield, 35% luck and 25% Harvest, so why would I? The ult already provides three AoE blasts, each of which will oneshot anything in GM1 Strongholds, other than bosses.
Yeah, the scaling is screwed up and needs to be fixed. But the idea that exploiting this leads to top-tier performance is incorrect.
I am mad jealous of that support item, FYI 😄
The storm might not be a great fit for something like this, because you typically don’t want to melee much. For something like an interceptor it could be ridiculous.
All of these are just symptoms of the underlying problem with gear and how they try to play games and scale a bunch of stuff. That leads to stupid crap like the starter assault rifle melting everything despite doing far less damage than high-tier weapons.
Just stop the nonsense already, particularly when it comes to GM1+. No wonder a bunch of things are a mess when fundamental concepts like “How much HP does this mob have?” changes drastically based on what the players do and do not have equipped. I don’t even know how you begin to playtest that and make sure there’s a smooth progression curve. This latest problem is a result of them slapping on a bandaid on the last one.
I probably crafted a hundred purple Wind Walls to get that. Took some farming ;)
I believe it. I crafted a fair few just to get a good harvest bonus for my farming build. I’m probably swimming in epic embers and parts now, though, which I wasn’t at the time…should give it another go.
Yep. I think the root cause is deeper, though. Nobody there really knows how multiplayer games work. They think you make a single player game, then let others in. And really, loot progression and scaling aren’t the biggest issue.
How do you release a multiplayer game that doesn’t allow communication with (95% of) other players? How do you build communities with no clan structure, chat, or a working in-game friends list? They thought that stuff was in the “we’ll get to it later” category?
They’re completely out of their element. They did great at the stuff in their skillset (combat, worldbuilding, movement), but everything else looks like their first draft. I doubt they can fix it themselves, and I hope to hear an announcement that they’ve brought in someone with experience in proper multiplayer gaming.