3147

I’ll just leave No Man’s Sky here, as it has been constantly improving since Day one.

3148

I don’t think they have an engine that can do the rapid iteration they need to recover the game, that’s one of the issues here.

3149

There’s been no new NPC content (voice lines etc.) for Cataclysm for their stunt-casting decisions (Boyle from Brooklyn 9-9 etc.). The production pipeline, not taking into account engine difficulty/limitations, for addition of new assets is too much work to be worth for EA to keep the lights on. Too resource-intensive.

The chests that give masterwork level support items are gone without info on if they’re coming back. Whatever morons are at the still helm, this is just another boneheaded decision.

3150

No Man’s Sky only became what it is now, because Hello Games have spent three years releasing 100% free updates for the game.

That ship already sailed because Anthem has a microtransaction store, but there’s also approximately a 0% chance that EA let Bioware burn through cash for that long, trying to salvage a game that currently has a tiny active player base.

3151

Fucking Anthem. When your game has lacked a best-in-slot (and 2nd-best-in-slot!) level of class-differentiating support item (which there are only two kinds for each javelin but with infinite permutations of shitty inscriptions), what kind of dumbass idea is it to then REMOVE them from the super shallow loot pool to drive Cataclysm event FOMO? After taking 6 months to come out with them?

3152

Now available as part of EA / Origin Access sub.

3153

But it always was wasn’t it? That’s how I played it…

3154

Only Premier tier before.

3155

I haven’t paid close attention since the demo at launch. I have EA Access on Xbox, is Anthem worth playing solo now days? (I don’t mean endgame, just the campaign)

3156

Basic connectivity remains an issue with intermittent disconnect and “pilot load error” issues persisting. If you don’t encounter them, maybe. If you do, well it may not be worth it to you since the skeleton crew assign to it now at BioWare Austin hasn’t yet fixed some launch box and reintroduced others patched previously.

3157

You know a AAA game is… bad… when I’m not even sure I want to play it free.

3158

I don’t have EA Access anymore, but if I do get Anthem, I’ll treat it like a single player game, and play through the campaign once, solo if I can. Or with automatic matchmaking at worst.

I take the lack of improvement as a good sign personally. Maybe it’s that way because they only have a skeleton crew on it, and everyone else at Bioware is working on the next Dragon Age, or the next Mass Effect, or the next new IP. Leave the looter shooter stuff to Bungie or Gearbox or whoever. Go back to what you’re best at.

3159

Don’t know about the Xbox version but on PC the campaign and freeplay are definitely worth cruising through.

3160

No, the abbreviated excuse for a story isn’t worth playing through for. There’s no point or pay-off or worthwhile build-up to wasted potential of good BioWare world-building and lavish pre-production work. Don’t invest any time into it.

3161

As a counterpoint, I think Anthem is a pretty good game now. The flight/ combat model is a lot of fun, and it’s a beautiful world to explore.

The endgame still needs work, a lot of work, and itemization has some deep flaws they should address. But Rei’s depiction of this as a bug-ridden pile of garbage does not at all match my own view of the current game.

3162

Nor mine.

3163

Enjoy silencing relics and collecting echoes over and over. No snark intended.

3164

If you enjoy the core moment-to-moment gameplay loop, the game’s story can be a decent time to see through to completion - but it’s absolutely a terrible story in the vein of Destiny 1, where you can tell they just cobbled something together late in development.

I can’t comment on the current condition of the end-game, aside from what I’ve seen and read, as I stopped playing ages ago. It was absolutely awful back then.

3165

Well, all the remaining acts are cancelled. Don’t get too vested into completing the threadbare “story.”

3166

“What is next for Anthem”
Literally nothing.
In that blog post they don’t give details of any future improvements o_O

I also love the way that they list one of the features they are proud of as:
“UX tips in load screens to better explain Cataclysm mechanics”