Anthem - BioWare's take on Destiny

[Timex]

So far the only thing that’s rubbing me the wrong way is playing with all these randoms who want to race through the goddamn missions like there’s candy at the end.

Yeah, just do the story missions in private with people you know, or alone. This is what you want to do.

From Tom’s stream it also looks like it fights you every step of the way in trying to secure a private game. Probably not for me, then.

Eh, they clearly want you to play with others, but with the exception of strongholds, you never need to play with others.

[rei]

It’s just an extra button/key press since it will ask you “Are you sure you don’t want Pubic?” each and every time.

[Timex]

It’s just an extra button/key press since it will ask you “Are you sure you don’t want Pubic?” each and every time.

I think it only does this once, when you change from public to private. It remembers your choice, and it only asked me that once.

[rei]

It does remember it from then on but keeps asking “Are You Sure?”

[ShakesMcQueen]

The thing I find insane about the load screens, as that at least a few of them seem completely unnecessary. Why is there a substantial loading screen between when a mission ends, and the screen showing you what you earned for it? That’s insane! Is it because of that elevated platform your characters are all standing on? Then get rid of it!

Why is there a substantial loading screen just to get into the Forge? Destiny loads up a character screen that shows your player model and all of the gear it can equip instantaneously, and it does it from anywhere - why does Anthem need a 10 second load to do the same thing?

Why does the Launch Bay take nearly as long to load as Fort Tarsis does? It’s one room!

I’ve mostly enjoyed my time with Anthem so far, but man is it a game that just screams out “this needed another six months in development”.

Two other things: 1) They need to make Fort Tarsis livelier. It’s too quiet, and everyone just stands in place. Even the market area is creepily devoid of ambient noise. 2) The expedition setup menus are a confusing dumpster fire of UI Design, right down to the “Launch” button having a weird two second delay before it starts matchmaking, which initially made me keep hitting the button, wondering if something was wrong.

The core gameplay feels great, but everything else just feels like Bioware stepping on rakes like Sideshow Bob - no doubt at least party caused by EA pressuring them to get it out before it was really done.

[Timex]

Why does the Launch Bay take nearly as long to load as Fort Tarsis does? It’s one room!

I don’t even understand why the launch Bay exists. It’s totally pointless.

I understand that it’s akin to destiny’s tower, but guess what? Destiny’s tower was, unquestionably, the dumbest and most useless part of the entire game.

For all the complaints about fort Tarsus, it’s infinitely better than destiny’s tower, because there’s actually stuff to do in the fort. You can find lore items, you can talk to characters. Destiny’s tower had literally nothing of value to do. It was just a 3d environment that provided a clunky replacement to a menu based lobby, and that’s what the launch Bay is.

After your third mission or so, you get introduced to the launch Bay… At which point i said, “well, I’ll never be loading this up again.”

[ShakesMcQueen]

I assume they put it in as a “quick” option for people who just wanted to switch out their gear or visit a couple of vendors, then jump back into the missions - the problem is, it takes nearly as bloody long to load as Tarsis itself.

So aside from not having to walk as far to visit the shops or whatever, it’s completely pointless.

[Timex]

Looks like they have released the 1.03 patch, which addresses some bugs and crashes.

[instant0]

s there a way to turn off the word COMBO in the game? I find it so dumb seeing it pop up. Like they couldn’t have found any other possible visual cues to show a combo occurred.

Yes. Disable anything but crit messages.

No one who’s actually very good at low level coding works anymore on PC, they’ll just raise the hardware requirement.

Every time you see a console game that is CPU limited on PC that’s your refresher to the fact that PC ports have been, for years, afterthoughts. At this point no one knows anymore how to do that.

Time is money, and time spent on PC optimization isn’t worth it. You can now bruteforce it by spending $2000 every three years or so on beefy hardware.

Vicarious did an excellent job at porting Destiny 2 to the PC. Anthem on PC plays like a bad console port, similar to the shit Capcom or Konami did in the past.

[WhollySchmidt]

It’s just an extra button/key press since it will ask you “Are you sure you don’t want Pubic?” each and every time.

We’re all just letting this go? What a lame bunch of mature adults in this thread.

[Oghier]

I don’t even understand why the launch Bay exists. It’s totally pointless.

When you’re done with all the storylines, the Launch Bay is great. You can pick up all the contracts, access the forge, vault etc and launch a mission all in one room. It saves a lot of downtime.

Of course, it would be a lot better if we could communicate with each other there. VOIP only works when grouped, and there’s no text chat anywhere. How Bioware expected us to build a community is completely beyond me. I assume their team had no devs with actual MMO experience (or they were ignored).

[instant0]

It would be even greater if you’d actually spawn there each time you entered the game.
Or that loading times didn’t take forever, or that instead of loading it immediately you’re matchmaking to load it.

If you look in the latest preferences file you’ll see loads of settings related to “clans”.

[KevinC]

From Tom’s stream it also looks like it fights you every step of the way in trying to secure a private game. Probably not for me, then.

Hasn’t been my experience. I invited my friend, set my matchmaking to private, and done.

[Oghier]

If you are solo, it’s one extra click before each mission. An annoyance, but a very slight one.

[Timex]

It does remember it from then on but keeps asking “Are You Sure?”

Nah, i just confirmed this. It only asks for that confirmation the first time after you switch. After that, it remembers it, and doesn’t ask the confirmation again.

[tomchick]

For instance, I realized the other day that I was working towards the daily/weekly/monthly challenges without any idea of what I’m actually getting for doing them.

Isn’t that spelled out under the challenges section of the Codex? I mean, Cortex?

@Tomchick solved the load screen problems on his stream last night, all you gotta do is play elevator music or Musak during the wait.

I love that @marquac thought that was actually in the game! I felt briefly how @Chappers must feel when he tricks me into thinking there’s a game called Golf Wars 2 or that Barry is based on a British TV show.

oh wait, Tom never actually did anything with McMaster in his party , due to the cortex not working I guess?

Yeah, it was showing me offline and without any friends, so I didn’t get to twink McMaster’s toon, if you know what I mean. The issue went away shortly thereafter. I was shown as online and all my friends had reappeared. Phew. I was worried for a sec.

I played with a single friend, on hard… And on hard, it can be pretty brutal. But totally doable.

When I played through it before, I tried to solo some of the missions on hard and it was definitely the Wrong Thing To Do. Some of the boss battles with certain builds are absurdly difficult. Trying to plink away ten hit points at a time at something that has 10,000 hit points and will one-shot you. Ugh. But, yeah, on normal, you never have to see another player if you don’t want to.

That said, I think some of the really cool combat comes from the combinatorial possibilities among different classes and damage types. There’s even a dedicated skill slot for abilities meant to be used in support of other players.

The thing I find insane about the load screens, as that at least a few of them seem completely unnecessary.

I hope all that junk gets reworked now that the game has gotten all these bad reviews. It’s a baffling design decision. Surely they must have known how much everyone would hate all that junk in the hub?

From Tom’s stream it also looks like it fights you every step of the way in trying to secure a private game.

That was mostly a user error on my part. It’s pretty easy to tell the game, “Look, game, I just want to play solo. Seriously.”

-Tom

[kerzain]

I love that @marquac thought that was actually in the game! I felt briefly how @Chappers must feel when he tricks me into thinking there’s a game called Golf Wars 2 or that Barry is based on a British TV show.

Honestly, the only reason I realized it was fake was because you forgot to turn it on once during one of the loading screens you sat through on your way back to Fort Stasis. Aside from that it blended in just perfectly.

[Gedd]

Isn’t that spelled out under the challenges section of the Codex? I mean, Cortex?

That’s where they stick all the lore and flavor text, right? People actually open that?

Seriously, I didn’t realize until last night that’s where Anthem sticks literally everything. I found where it has the challenges, but didn’t think to click down yet one more level to find the reward until Misguided mentioned it above. I guess I just kind of expected it to be with the hourglasses.

[tomchick]

Here’s how my loading screens look and sound. I’ve cued it up to the appropriate point:

-Tom

[kerzain]

^like^