A gm2 what? You are guaranteed a masterwork drop off of legendary contracts and strongholds now at gm1+.
And yes, they keep nerfing drops in things like chests, because players keep exploting the crap out of them.
When I was watching footage of the golden master build from London/San Francisco, I remember thinking that masterworks were dropping like candy. If I had realized at the time that legendaries were just MW+ and not completely separate, I would have yelled at them the drop rate was too high. But given the randomness of the inscriptions, they might have overcorrected a bit.
For me, it’s a couple of reasons, that run through all Bioware games.
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Appearance. Look at a game like Borderlands 2 for example. The game is certainly “whackier” than Anthem, so it’s easier for them to go farther, but the loot has some really crazy and impressive looking visuals. Anthem tends to have weapons that all look very similar, that’s a problem that is difficult to overcome with “stats”. Visual appearance when dressing up your character is important. It’s something that Borderlands, and even games like WoW understood completely.
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Stats. Same problem with stats really. It’s just not exciting to get +21 to some stat. It IS exciting to get a weapon that once in a while will proc a lightning storm. Bioware has always had the 2 fold problem of unimpressive stat boosts coupled with pretty boring/mundane models.
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Immediate gratification. When you loot something in a loot based game, you want to use it, right now. When you deny people that instantaneous gratification, you are toying with the addictive properties of loot based games, and what their allure is. This problem is accentuated, as having to wait to see what something is, only to have it be less than inspiring is a double hit of negative reinforcement. The loot has to propel the moment to moment gameplay, and visa-versa. If one side of that loop fails, the whole thing collapses.
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Some loot needs to be overpowered. I think in general, a lot of games make the mistake of trying to make sure everything is within pretty tight parameters, and it’s another thing that makes your upgrades not seem special. Take Diablo 2 for example, when you got say…a Windforce, or a Buriza, and you’d been using something else, it’s a major major upgrade, that makes a significant and immediate difference to your gameplay. A lot of devs are afraid to do that. In Anthem, you go from doing 33 damage, to 34 if you get my drift.
Those are the 4 that stand out to me, and are the most obvious. There are other factors as well, but these are the easy ones.
Check out the latest Giant Bombcast for a pretty good discussion about the dry loot/ability system in the game, it sounds like they really dropped the ball on one of the biggest aspects a game like this should have.
Timex
1807
See, I’m not sure if agree with this, but maybe it’s why i don’t have a problem with the loot.
As an example, I’ve got a number of components on my interceptor, which i can use to create dramatic changes in how it plays.
One, the dual edged inscription, adds 35% to my damage, across the board. But it also increases all damage i take by 35%.
This is an large change in how the game plays as a result. With destiny, the kinds of buffs were often much lower (although i seen to recall doable having some things that doubled damage? I forget.) There were a handful of items in destiny that had memorable effects, like the boots that made you invisible when you got hit, or the sniper rifle that regenerated ammo (which, to be clear, was only useful for cheesing content). Most of the best guns in destiny simply had elemental effects.
Now, borderlands definitely set a standard in regard for crazy loot. You could have pistols that shot rockets and stuff. But compared to other looter shooters I’m not seeing some dramatic failing of anthem vs. them… And in not even at the top tier loot yet.
This just doesn’t bother me at all at this point. Perhaps it’s just because it’s how it worked in destiny, where no good loot every just dropped… It generally always came as engrams that you needed to have converted.
jsnell
1808
I think the distinction is that on the first playthrough of a Destiny 2 campaign there’s a good chance that any drop will be an improvement, and that it’ll be white/green/blue and thus instantly equippable. Legendary/Exotic engrams only start to matter when you get to the late game grind. So new players will get the satisfaction of constantly getting drops that are immediately useful, while the late game grinders for whom even Legendary engrams are probably garbage can just do the housekeeping of decrypting+dismantling in a big batch at the end of a session.
Have you looked at the properties on the masterworks? Some of them are pretty tame, but others are ridiculous.
But you will probably find that Dual Edged Inscription by level 4, and then at level 15 you’ll still be finding them. All with that same 35%. The only difference is the higher level ones will have a couple of largely unnoticeable bonuses like +18% Shotgun Ammo, because that’s pretty much all that changes with loot tier.
Other than masterworks it feels like I’ve effectively seen all the loot in the first few levels. And unfortunately I don’t feel any inclination to keep playing long enough to find a masterwork.
Oghier
1811
Most of your concerns are met once you hit masterwork/ legendary loot. A fair number of the weapons/ skills/ components do have game-changing special effects. For example, the ranger has items that heal the party. Colossus gets AoE ice CC and self-healing, etc. As for overpowered, that’s there, too – though it can be a long slog to get the ‘god roll’ combination of inscriptions.
They do need a lot more loot, and a serious pass at fixing broken inscriptions. There’s a ton of work to do there. But the high-end stuff is absolutely worth fishing for.
Pre-MW loot is a lot less interesting, true. But MW’s start dropping in the mid-20’s. By the time you hit 30, GM1 contracts/ strongholds are guaranteed to drop at least one. How long it takes to get there will vary a ton, of course. If it’s a useful measuring stick, a fair number of people got there in three days.
The high-end weapons are better, (unless you get a glitched +0% roll on your item stats) but they still have the issue of all the guns looking the same. Your level 1 assault rifle looks like the masterwork rifle. Just some colors shifted around, or some skull vinyls get plastered on the receiver.
It’s the most boring loot I’ve seen in a long while.
So there is a big discussion on reddit at the moment regarding the loot nerf recently.
Bioware finally responded saying that the increased loot we saw earlier was a bug… and this was how they intended it to be. rip.
Seems like they need to rewatch this:
Good post by one of the people that worked on Diablo 3 here.
MrTibbs
1814
ZhugeEX: “Anthem sold around 10% what Destiny sold in its first week. (UK Packaged sales comp).”
lordkosc
1815
Do they even count copies that are free with the Origin Access subscription? What about free copies that come with graphics cards?
MrTibbs
1816
He’s only talking about retail, and stresses those figures don’t tell the full story.
As Tibbs mentions, specifically NOT counting those, which with Origin Access are likely significant.
BUT…it’s also hard to see Origin Access and graphic card bundled versions as being particularly revenue-heavy when considered among launch + 7 and launch + 15 day topline numbers, either.
KevinC
1818
I thought it was a crazy idea to drop $60 on a new EA game when I can “rent” the Super Ultimate Edition for $15 for 30 days – and it comes with every other game in their library. At that point if I love the game I can get 10% off, so at most I’m out $9.
Really not sure why I would drop $60 or more up front on an unknown title. I wonder how many other people made the same calculation? I can’t see myself ever buying an EA game outright at release. That might be a problem for them, but that model probably works out nicely for GaaS like Anthem.
Right. And I have wondered how Premiere subscriptions are factored. I bought a year of premiere, because it seemed a good deal vs buying Anthem alone. Does that count more or less than a single purchase of Anthem? How about a 1 month sub?
rei
1820
Nevermind the looting or gameplay, I have serious beefs with the (lack of) story, lore, setting and narrative.
It would have been more interesting if the PC was Haluk. The battle of Freemark as recounted by Yarrow would have been great to actually PLAY through and there is NOTHING interesting or alien that happens as the result of a rift/cataclysm/whatever…just spawns monsters. Bioware also claimed that Andromeda’s poor Archon led them to improve their villain with “The Monitor” but this one’s still pretty dumb.
Fort Tarsis has the usual Bioware NPCs regurgitating their life story but there’s no urgency/liveliness or activity that reflects the so-called danger happening on the outside of its walls. No striders in motion (like the E3 trailer) and none as part of any (escort etc.) missions etc after they are talked up as the ‘lifeblood’ between settlements.
Overall, a huge letdown.
I feel like we aren’t playing the same game. I really feel immersed in this world more than I generally do when playing a game. I feel like I get what these people have been through on a deeper level. There’s lore everywhere. I love the radio plays. I felt a sense of awe in the middle part of the story because of a certain place we had to go. It feels like a rich tapestry to me. If you beeline the main story it isn’t super long, but I passed the 40-hour mark before finishing it.
I can certainly agree the monitor isn’t the best villain ever. Playing through the battle of freemark would also be really cool. Maybe that’s something we will get to do eventually.
rei
1822
There’s lots of lore but no story.
Ha ha, you’re paying attention to the story!
-Tom
