Just did the intro thing on a trial. I really like the way the game plays, the controls are great and everything has a terrific amount of feedback. The audio team did a good job with that, you absolutely feel the weight of the javelin and the impact when you hit the ground.
Well, in the beta there was that giant scorpion boss thing too.
I’m trying to think back to Destiny 1 though, and thinking about the bosses in the main game aside from the Vault of Glass. There weren’t really many variations, were there? Most of the bosses were just normal dudes from one of the game’s 3 races.
Paul posted that 4 hours ago. Pay attention Lord King!
“Soulless” is the new “fun”.
Ack! my bad. Not really following the game at all, just figured others were interested.
I watched McMaster stream a bit last night, it looked ok.
That PC Gamer review was kind of funny… When I read it I was like, “So… the combat and the exploration is fun? That’s… pretty much the entire game, right? So like, 90% of the game is fun?”
I feel like some of these folks just wanted a totally different game. I’m not sure what that game is, but if the combat and exploration are fun, then that sounds good to me.
So, the finale mission left me rather whelmed.
Summary
Seriously? You have the Big Bad in a long-ass battle, but as soon as he drops below 20% on his health bar he escapes in a cut-scene and that’s it. You don’t even knock him down all the way to 0. You’re left expecting he’s going to re-appear, but nope. It’s cutscene with Hayuk and Faye, and over.
My experience is similar to what some of these reviews are saying, base combat and flight is good and the world looks great but boss encounters are all very similar with bosses being mainly bullet sponges. I hit the tomb mission and it basically took me completely out of the game because its not organic to the story at all and everything just stops until you’ve done it which means repeating missions and going into freeplay. It doesn’t help that freeplay is not engaging at all being only 4 players who on the whole do not work together.
I think the lack of content criticism is also valid with the campaign being short for a Bioware game and 2 of the strongholds being repeats of story missions. The lack of variety in encounter design also doesn’t help this. The hub is also badly designed being so artificial and you moving so slowly through it.
EDIT: Plus there’s the technical issues with the load screens and tethering which are valid complaints.
Yeah, exactly. I don’t think the game is perfect by any means, but I really like the foundation they have created. I also like the story so far and have found some of the little side things rather poignant.
Day One Update Details (Feb 22)
High level fixes
Improved loading times
Fixed many infinite loading screens
Fixed multiple challenges not tracking properly
A number of issues have been fixed that were causing players to disconnect or crash
Weapons and gear now have numbers present for modifiers
General Fixes and Improvements
Loot Reveal and Expedition Summary now correctly play during the end of expedition screen.
The gather party mechanic has been made more lenient in a number of situations
At the end of expedition screen players will no longer get stuck on “Recording Victories” or “Skipping All”.
Game no longer hangs in Javelin menu when unlocking the second, third or fourth javelin
During the mission “What Freelancers Do” dying after killing Junkmaw & freeing Arcanists leaves you unable to progress, this has been fixed
Challenges now unlock for players at the correct levels
Fixed some camera issues during cutscenes
Legendary Contracts can now be accepted from the Social Hub contract board
Some enemies have had their shield values decreased
Loot now properly drops for players who are downed
The texture quality on the NPC Prospero has been improved
Final boss of strongholds now drop loot instead of only being shown on the end of expedition screen
Fixed the time outs on echoes and relics to prevent griefing and to handle disconnections properly
Players can no longer fall through the floor during the 3rd trial in the Fortress of Dawn
Completing the tutorial expedition will now show the correct Ranger appearance
After disconnecting, rejoining an expedition will now place you back into a squad if you were in one previously
Corrected an issue where players could not interact with each other in the launch bay in certain circumstances
Corrected an issue during the Mission “Bad Deal” where outlaws won’t spawn, blocking progress
The start of expedition screen has been improved
Addressed a variety of situations where killing enemies does not properly progress world events
Opening a chest now increments Tomb of the Legionnaire progress for all squad members present
Scar snipers can no longer shoot through Storm Shield
Corrected an issue where players would get stuck on the end of expedition screen in some situations
Players will no longer get disconnected if joining the “Finding Old Friends” mission while the cinematic is playing
Addressed a number of situations where players can get stuck on the environment in the launch bay
Increased the damage of the electric status effect
Corrected an issue where the Shield of Dawn could be crafted with less materials then intended in some situations
The Platinum Mission feat now grants completion as intended
Status effects can more reliably be applied to Titans
Strongholds
Fixed an issue that would cause a Stronghold server crash after defeating the last boss
Temple of Scar - Players can no longer get stuck in the mined tunnel in the explosives room
Temple of Scar - Players can no longer be blocked from entering the explosives room due to fog wall
Fixed Tyrant Mine so people that join the stronghold in-progress do not end up locked away from their team
Adjusted lighting in Tyrant Mine underwater section to make it easier to navigate to the exit
The Swarm Tyrant will no longer get stuck in the side cave entrances in some situations
Corrected an issue where players would spawn into different areas of the Tyrant Mine in certain situations
Gear and Weapons
After having 1st pilot unlock suit after tutorials, creating a new pilot and going to forge no longer causes load screen hang
Ice damage bonuses are now correctly applied on ice gear
Suit-wide bonuses from inscription are now functioning properly
Players can no longer salvage equipped items
Javelin specific gear and/or weapons are no longer able to be used on javelins they aren’t intended for
Corrected an issue where in some circumstances Masterwork Components do not have any inscriptions
The Endless Siege Masterwork Autocannon no longer displays a damage increase of 0% in its tooltip
Javelins
The Colossus javelin is now able to activate its shield more quickly after using an ability or firing a weapon
The Storm javelin now reacts to getting hit when its shields are up
Fixed an exploit that allowed the Storm’s ultimate attack to be used more times than intended
The Colossus javelin can now shield and revive at the same time
Interceptor Combo Aura has been increased in power and now has a damage over time component
Crafting
Non-Masterwork materials purchased from the crafting store now show as their proper rarity instead of incorrectly showing as Masterwork
Controls
Additional Mouse and Keyboard control improvements have been made
UI
Some conversations were not popping up the reputation points post conversation completion, this has been fixed
The squad screen now displays the correct information for each player
Fixed a number of issues where subtitles will no longer get stuck on the screen after dialogue has finished as often
Settings should no longer reset upon exiting and restarting the game on Xbox One
Motion blur can now correctly be turned off
The Electric Status Effect now shows scaled damage properly
An option has been added to hide the Squad Member HUD
The edge of the compass will now pulse to indicate enemy locations
A notification has been added in Fort Tarsis if a player’s vault is at the cap of 250 items
On the “Repair the Strider” step of “A Cry for Help” the search radar has been adjusted to correctly lead the player to all 4 tools
Primer and Detonator icons have been added to all Interceptor gear
Corrected a user interface issue where a player’s ultimate would show as available when it isn’t
- at light level 450 currently. (or whatever Anthem calls it)
Titans are kinda nice, although they take ages to kill - with a group, and are really really time
consuming solo, near impossible if your supers do fire damage. But kinda like them as enemies though.
The biggest problem with the “freeplay” mode so far is that EA seem to shutdown the servers quite often and you can not see events on the map until you’re really close to them.
If anything, Anthem wants me to pickup wingsuit flying once I’ve done a few more parachute jumps.
Biggest issues so far:
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extreme loading times
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spawning in when party is in another zone, then getting teleported to them, with another huge loading time
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instances bugging out (fixed apparently)
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Vague item tooltip - like this one:
I suppose “impact” with the little avatar icon means it is my melee damage? or is it kinetic weapons? or Impact from being hit by a fireball/ice?
Support luck - no idea.
Pickup radius - I have probably a few hundred % of this in total yet it seems to have very little effect. -
No way to reroll weapons…
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Spawning at the tower, having to run over to the platform to start a mission
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Completing a mission, you have options to go to forge, tower, or the “mp setup zone”, but no way to just go back to the map and pick a new mission
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Having to run over the city to pickup contracts, although its nice to see the city ‘growing’ as you complete missions and level up your factions, and so many lore items that appear around the city
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mission boards for each faction shows an image with a lot of notes… yet there’s only ONE mission available from each, and it requires you to complete an existing one, then respawn in tower to pickup a new one.
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Daily, Weekly and Monthly objectives having a very limited “pool” of achievements to complete.
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Master difficulty contracts not counted correctly for Weekly bounty
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material cost on crafting seems very excessive compared to what you get back. One item costs like 25% of all materials I have
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Inventory count for items stops at 99 in vault screen
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Randoms being… pretty pretty bad sometimes.
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No way to quickly add people to ‘friends list’ or ‘would group again’. You can only block people when you also mute them from voicecom.
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Forge UI filtering options - only for quality - not for types
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Forge UI in general is cluttered.
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No explanation what item stats do. “Support % Luck” for example…? I have it high and imagine it helps me get exotics, but no idea.
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Difficulty seems broken at “endgame”.
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Weapons seem pretty much useless at Master 1+. It kinda suffers the same issue Warframe had at times where only a few weapons were viable at highlevel but you mostly used your skills. Except in anthem, most of your skills have pretty bad cooldowns and you cant change them MID mission, and since you are going with randoms you have no idea about the synergy between your team mates and you…
Good stuff:
- radio adventures around town.
- Loading into quickplay missions to help others, 30% of the time they are stuck at a bugged instance.
- The map/missionselection/quickplay could do with some hands on. Including showing “average wait time… for quickplay”
Gotten two legendary weapons so far… and they were duplicates of masterwork weapons I already had, and all their stats were terrible. One of the weapons was a sniper rifle with so little ammo you can not really use it for anything above hard difficulty, as you’d spend your ammo to kill 3 mobs before having to forage for more.
Spoiler image from one weapon as legendary compared to the masterworked version:
Gotten ONE cool weapon so far… but not sure if its ability is considered for combo effects.
Playing with randos suuuuuuuuuuucks in this game. Apples and oranges, I know, but I can’t help but compare this experience to Apex Legends where playing with random folks is generally a pleasant and productive thing. Here, not only do I get the normal mis/non-communication problems that plague most team co-op games, but Anthem gives me the added pain of loading screens as the leader of the group drags me along.
Fuck this so much.
The problem with all these “I told you so” reviewers bee lining through the main story is that, in this game, main story missions unlock side missions, which unlock faction missions, which unlock contracts, which in turn unlock more faction missions. I am at 30 hours mark and lvl 25, haven’t finished the main story yet. I’ve done a bazillion of unique missions but I have never seen more than 3-4 missions active at the same time in the mission selection screen. The non-main story content is probably 3-4 times bigger than the main story but “rushers” are completely oblivious to its existence because they simply never unlocked it.
If you only do main story missions, all you see is a couple of choices in the mission selection screen.
I do have concerns about the endgame’s variety, who doesn’t. But to complain about the game being too short is ridiculous.
It’s like everyone saw the sales of Skyrim and decided this was the key to success.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but the recent talk of the reviews on this game brought it back up. Does it seem to anyone else that we’ve just done a 180 from the days of the 7-9 review scale?
Instead of even the most terrible game getting a 7, I’m seeing reviewers just butchering games and it’s left me scratching my head. FO76 probably isn’t a good example because the game genuinely is littered with all kinds of problems, but a lot of them are the same problems that existed in Fallout 4. The game might be a bad game in a lot of ways, but coming from someone who played it, it felt like reviewers were trying to outdo each other on dunking on the game.
I see the same thing going on right now with Anthem reviews and Crackdown 3 reviews, both of which are superior to FO76 but are also getting eviscerated.
None of these games are perfect or anything, but I feel like reviewers try to outdo each other on thrashing games. Are they finally unshackled because publishers are sending their money to “influencers” instead of buying ads or something?
Anyway, sorry for the tangent, it’s just been something I’ve been scratching my head over for the past year or so.
I think you could chalk some of it up to, ‘a dying mule kicks the hardest’, as the world is really changing in terms of how people view and explore content and purchases. I know for myself, reviews mean almost nothing to me at this point. I’ll go watch someone play it, and it’s very easy for me to make up my own mind.
That being said, we are also living in a world that is increasingly becoming a race to the bottom. The louder and more vile you are, the more attention you get, it’s a horrible trend with no end in sight.
Where are you reading the reviews?
The days of reviews as we knew them ten years ago are over. Barely anyone reviewing games in 2019 is a professional. There are no freelancers anymore like there were even then as far as I’m aware. Nobody is paying $400 for half a page anymore except in the UK for Edge I guess? The people writing these things in 2019 are all enthusiasts at best and trying to make a name for themselves at worst.
On top of that, you’ve got these YouTube “influencers” as you call them, and can anyone who fits that moniker be trusted to be impartial? I really don’t think so.
I’ve been out of the review game since 2008 but from what I can see, the people who are doing it today are nothing like those of us who did it back then.
Yep. There is a tremendous audience for negativity. So much of youtube is 800 flavors of Angry Joe.
I’ve had several instances now where I had to catch-up to my party, and I was figuratively a second or two away from re-joining their zone, but the timer hit 0 and I hit a load screen that took much longer than the one or two seconds I needed in the first place.