1924

Yeah, that seems like a likely explanation… the missions that are most likely to be open are ones that are bugged.

Ultimately, quickplay is kind of weird anyway. I mean, you’re explicitly joining some mission that’s already underway. I’m not sure that’s actually what you want to be doing, right? You really want to just pick the mission you want to do, and join it, but start from the beginning.

1925

Exactly. I’ve been trying to get devs attention the last few days, because I think they could reduce this issue dramatically by making a server-side change with matchmaking by setting it to not reinforce instances that have been active more than 5 minutes (or something along those lines).

In the long run, they need to stop the missions from breaking, but I think Woolen is exactly right here. Each broken instance is probably cycling a bunch of different people through it.

1926

This seems like quite a lot of content, quickly.

February will see the addition of three new Freeplay events, with four more to be introduced in March alongside Legendary missions, new cosmetics, and new item rewards. Anthem accelerates in April, with the arrival of guilds, a Mastery system for character progression, and a new Stronghold named The Sunken, in addition to seven new Freeplay events and more Legendary missions.

1927

Hopefully I will have some time to play tomorrow or on Saturday. I feel like I am missing out on either some good nerd rage or good team shootin’.

1928

Both :)

There is plenty of good shooting, and flying, wrapped up in a few dozen high priority fixes.

1929

Big loot changes coming either tomorrow or March 1. Short version: Loot will no longer have useless inscriptions:

Text is below for reddit-phobes ;)

First off, thank you for all the feedback around loot drops, this is what we have heard:

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  • Many inscriptions are not useful to the item they are attached to
  • Due to this, players need to get many masterworks of the same item to find a “good one”
  • Players want the frequency of masterwork drops to increase to help with the above OR…
  • They want us to change how masterwork inscriptions work so that they are more “useful”

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There is more feedback, the above is a summary.

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This is our plan for changes to go live on February 28th or March 1st (central US time)

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  • Inscriptions are now better for the items they are on
    • This applies to new items earned in Anthem (not existing ones in your Vault)
    • If an inscription applies only to the item it is on (gear icon), it will be useful to that item. Otherwise the inscription will provide a Javelin wide benefit
    • For example, an Assault Rifle will not have an item specific +pistol damage inscription. It may have a +electric damage suit wide inscription (cool for a lightning build)
    • Some more information below
  • Removed uncommon (white) and common (green) items from level 30 drop tables
    • This was a highly requested change and we agree, so that’s that.
  • We have reduced the crafting materials needed to craft a masterwork from 25 masterwork embers to 15 masterwork embers
    • As you salvage or harvest, you should be able to craft more masterwork items to get the inscriptions you are looking for
    • Now that inscriptions are more relevant to their item, this should yield better results for players

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Additional inscription change details

Its hard to write a short version of this, but I’m going to try. If we need to add more information later we can do that…

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  • Current: There are a large pool of inscription options available to roll on items, the inscription pools are generic (e.g. Weapons)
    • Every masterwork item has 4 inscriptions – Major Primary, Minor Primary, Major Secondary, Minor Secondary
  • Change: Each item type now has a specific set of inscription options for each of their inscription pools. The pools are smaller and are targeted to the specific item type
    • E.g. there used to be a Weapon pool, now there is an Assault Rifle pool and the assault rifle pool has 4 pools for each of the inscription types listed above
    • Primary inscriptions are focused on damage or survivability
      • Any item specific inscriptions (gear icon) will always benefit the item they are on
      • Javelin wide inscriptions (suit icon) will benefit damage or survivability across the whole Javelin
    • Secondary inscriptions focus on utility and can be targeted to the item (gear icon) or the entire javelin (suit icon)

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There are likely a bunch of questions, we will read through the comments and if we need an additional post to clarify things, we can work on that.

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Thanks again for all of your support

1930

Looks like a solid step forward. This needed to be done. They can always re-evaluate drop rates after. And I won’t shed a tear for people that raced to the end, used exploits, then burned through embers on rerolls.

@Timex FYI they are overstating the case a bit. There are not 4 NEW freeplay events in March. There are 4 events, but only one new type (Cortex Locked), which occurs twice.

1931

Can you explain what this means?

1932

Sure. I was referencing this statement:

February will see the addition of three new Freeplay events, with four more to be introduced in March

There were three new events in February (well, two so far. Supposed to be one more). If you look at the March calendar here:

There are four freeplay events scheduled for March. One of those is an event we have not seen before (Cortex Locked). The other three will be repeats (Outlaw Outrage, There be Giants, and Cortex Locked).

1933

Ohhh, ok, they are some sort of event like killing those names Titans. I thought they meant new tires of things to do in Freeplay.

1934

Right. The named titans (war, ruin, etc,) was “There be Giants”. As they add more of these, there will likely be something going on most of the time. Hopefully, the rewards will be different when they repeat stuff (at least if the reward is a vinyl, like that event was).

I didn’t do the outlaw one. No idea what the reward for that was.

1935

I suspect it seems like a lot of content, because a bunch of it is stuff that was supposed to be in the game at launch, that they had to cut to make the quarterly financial window for EA.

Anyway, had a better night tonight with the game. Ran a few Grandmaster difficulty strongholds - it’s definitely harder, but it feels like it needs to be tuned a bit. Reminds me of the first “end game” mission for The Diivision, where virtually the only way to survive on higher difficulty was to hide under the floor in the middle of the room, because you took so much overwhelming damage so quickly.

Anthem isn’t quite as bad as that, but it felt the same in some respects. I’m up to gear level 454 now, and got my first legendary drop tonight - a component for my Colossus that is lvl 47.

I think I also put my finger on what I dislike about the dialogue stuff in the game: it’s like improv in a comedy club. People stand in one place, talk about doing things, and then just keep standing there, pretending as though they are doing the activity. Like people awkwardly standing on a stage, giving a performance.

Tonight I had a dialogue segment where I went to someone’s home “for dinner” with two other characters. The three of them were just standing there like any other time, but they talked about making dinner, and then the conversation ended with something along the lines of “lets eat before the food gets cold”… at which point they continued just standing there. Do they not have the ability to animate the characters sitting a table, with a bowl of soup or something in front of them?

It’s a baffling design choice, and definitely lends to that air of “lifelessness” that has been cited in many reviews.

I suspect it’s going to be an interesting next few months for Bioware, as we see whether Anthem manages to find a longer-term audience, and whether EA are going to do something stupid and consequential in response to the seemingly tepid sales and reviews.

The smart thing would be to realize that Bioware Edmonton’s pedigree is in RPGs, and LET THEM MAKE THOSE AGAIN, but no one has ever accused EA of having smart executives.

1936

Those loot changes are rubs bleary eyes exactly what the community asked for…not sure how I should react to that, lol. Solid, solid changes with a quick turnaround. Very encouraging.

I guess it’s obligatory to say “if it works and doesn’t break more things,” but I’m optimistic.

Having a fine time playing the daily legendary contracts. Ran my first GM1 stronghold (temple of the scar) last night at 454 light level and it went really well! I ran it with randos but the team worked well together. Rezzed fallen teammates quickly. And even without voice chat, everyone seemed to know their role on the final boss.

No crashes or sound bug all night.

I can’t stress enough how having a good master work weapon makes the higher difficulties manageable. After playing around with all four javelins I’ve settled on the Interceptor as my “main” for now. Being able to plink at things from cover with my Thunderbolt of Yvenia and then zipping around the map to get a hover vantage point with my Avenging Herald, not only lets me actually kill things on GM1, but changes my tactical approach to every encounter. Really digging the flow of combat. Gear matters.

1937

I had the opposite reaction. The freeplay events aren’t anything special, and unless they really change it up with those, I fear the game won’t have any meaningful content update until we get that new stronghold.

I do however think that the cosmetic stronghold loot drops are an important addition, just because it’ll be adding a new element to the end-game loop.

May, with the addition of a cataclysm (still no clue what this will be), will be a very important marker in the sand for this game.

1938

My bet is some boss spawn that requires 6 players.

1939

That would be bad.

1940

image

1941

I think my only complaint regarding the actual gameplay is the Titans.

Titans just aren’t really that much fun to fight. They’re not particularly HARD, as much as they just take a while and are kind of boring.

Some additional variety in terms of the big bosses would be good, although the epilogue scene suggests that additional variety is on the way.

1942

HAHAH, what shall we call it? Javelin score? Is there an actual term?

1943

Titans…they do kinda suck don’t they? I’ve got the fireball dash down pretty good, but for the life of me I cannot reliably deal with those rings of fire.

If they bust out a new faction within the first three months I’m going to be super happy. And I do think that’s a strong possibility, as Timex said, it was strongly suggested at the end of the story.