Anthem (Bioware's Destiny)

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The trailer looked good and its nice to see the dev team interacting with the community but I'm keeping my expectations real low for this game. Lol. Everything sounds amazing but it can all easily turn to crap. The final game will probably have flight but it'll be restricted to specific areas only or ppl will complain about endless invisible walls. I'm sure they'll have pvp and the entire game will be balanced around it. And the moment they announce raids will be the end game is when I'll wait to buy the game until it drops to $10 or less. Lol.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

It's been delayed until 2019 like we all knew it would be. Even if a raid is endgame content. I believe there will be match making on this one. They have too much at stake here. After playing D1's VoG and Crota, and half of D2's raid. They aren't that hard TBH... the issue is having the time to get 6 people together for a 2-3 hour venture. That's the real reason Destiny's raids have ever been hard. D2 did a better job of making all 6 players needing some type of competence. These games need an GW2 LFG system.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Even if there is matchmaking the biggest time constraint for me is the endless loot grind for top gear to play the raids. The difficulty wouldn't be as much of an issue if it didn't take me 40+ hours of grinding to get max gear only to have a dlc come out and force me to repeat the grid process to continue end game content. I don't have the time or patience for that. Even if anthem has a set level limit like gw2 with a horizontal progression I still wouldn't want raids as endgame content because I'm to casual. 2-3 hours to play a raid will never work out for me. I barely get thru a session of two long 40 minute games of bf1 operations anymore without having something else to do with my time.

Every time I see a game with raids as end game content I see all that as non existent content for me. The devs love to put in raid exclusive rewards, skins, armor, weapons, etc. While at the same time not putting any new fancy rewards into regular new non raid content. For me that means no new content and no new rewards to play for and no in game goals. It's even worse when story content is locked behind raids because then I'll never see that story progression unless i watch a YouTube video of it. In the end every update in destiny 1 came with loot grind and raid rewards and that's why I didn't buy any of the dlc outside of my initial hype purchase of the collectors addition. The more I associate anthem with destiny I lose all hype for it. As it is I bet anthem will come out in 2019 and by 2020 we'll be watching a YouTube video about how the majority of anthem was scraped and all the real bulk of the game was designed in the last year of development. It's the new normal now.

With this game getting pushed back to 2019 it'll mean we'll have another year of YouTubers making more videos building more hype and bigger expectations that won't be met. For a game to be successful now I think they need to keep it more secret until it's closer to launch so ppl won't have any reason to be disappointed. Instead its all hype train to encourage preorders and once the company knows it has the money regardless of the quality of the final product they just don't care about the final polish or end results.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The thing about Destiny Raids though, is they only take 30-40 min once the mechanics are known. Bungie did a piss poor job with their guided games. You have to wait upwards of an hour at times, and people use them hoping to pick up fellow dudebros rather than someone that needs help. I've seen stories on Reddit where the person joining looking for help just gets teabagged until they leave if they die at any time.

The Division's current system is the best. The harder the content, the more likely you'll get a drop, but you can still get them at a much much lower rate in the open world. They also hold bi-monthly events where you replay story missions for special credits to buy these rare drop gear sets. I think that suits everyone best. But an LFG is necessary so people can decide what to post where it's looking for EXP only or willing to sherpa. 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Being a semi-MMO raids are probably going to exist in Anthem but I think BioWare knows how to handle it the right way as opposed to Bungie. They've had 4 years of watching Destiny fail and seeing just how much of a dud Destiny 2 was (especially raid wise). I have a feeling they'll do something similar but restrict just how much it means to the overall progression of your character. What that actually means is a mystery now but BioWare does have one MMO under their belt (TOR) and while it started out very badly they've had years to reflect and adapt to the market through it. Yes I know BioWare Austin is in charge of TOR but the development team has mostly shifted to other projects and you can no doubt most of them shifted to this (I believe the TOR team is only 5-6 members right now and they might not be doing it for much longer if the news that came along with this announcement is to be believed). I'll tell you this much if there is no LFG system in Anthem it will not be received well. Gamers asked for it for 3 years with Destiny and never got it and when D2 had a glimmer of having such a system we can Guided Games which is an atrocity. It's not that hard to program a system into a game to match people together to play, fuck Crucible does it so I can't understand why D1 or D2 never had it (outside of the devs developing it that way). Fuck WoW and FFXIV even have the ability to allow people on different servers to form raid groups and do content so I can't see why games similar to it can't get it done.

Sadly no MMO or semi-MMO has horizontal scaling, it's always vertical (GW2 might be the exception, I lost interest fast in the game and haven't really progressed past where I last was). Without something to work towards nobody will play the game. It's a problem every MMO type game runs into and while it sucks it's just something to get used to. My mentality towards this will always be the same having been a hardcore raider in WoW for a year (before I got burned out), it's part of the package. I don't raid in FFXIV, no real interest as it has other ways to get gear equivalent to raid gear. Is it grindy as fuck? Yes (it takes roughly 6-9 weeks to grind the currency needed to buy the gear, which with the way FFXIV patches its roughly 3 months through a content patch cycle but that gear lasts for 6 months by upgrading it (which is usually when the new raid tier and gear comes out)) but it's something to work towards. Horizontal progression/scaling would stagnate a game for me and, much like you Sledge, I'm the definition of a casual player. I spent the last 5 months getting my character to item level 339 (current max is 340 with raid gear and weapons) and on Tuesday I need to start all over again grind to the next current ilvl cap (it sucks but hey I get new story content and something to work toward again, the last month has been boring with nothing to really do besides gear my Samurai). Sadly not every MMO has a similar line of progression and semi-MMOs probably never will. Catering to much too one side always pisses the other side off and no one is really happy. We've seen it with Destiny 1, we're currently seeing it with Destiny 2, The Division suffered from it in the beginning, and Blizzard learned the hard way with WoW years ago (the game is finally turning into something I could see myself getting back into but I can't afford another MMO subscription). No company has found the perfect balance yet.

The other problem with raid content is that it will always be a time sink. When you first get into a raid it'll take more then 30 minutes to beat due to learning mechanics and gear. Once mechanics are learned and party gear gets better this becomes faster but you have to remember raids are designed to be hard, making them too fast and easy will just make the content boring. The best gear is always locked behind this content because it's your reward for successfully beating the content. Yea, it sucks for people like you and me but that's just how games like this work. I feel D2 dropped the ball there by making gear just cosmetic with little to no meaning for stats (yea they are there but honestly I don't give two shits as its effect on gameplay are minor at best (except for recovery)). I feel the whole raid is cheapened by that and it's no wonder why so many people were disappointed with the rewards considering a Crucible rewarded hand cannon is better then 90% of the weapons you get from the raid (which is supposed to be the hardest content with the best rewards).

Meh, my opinions on Anthem still stand no matter how much info comes out (until I see new gameplay footage highlighting the major features of this game I will reserve my judgement but I'm not allowing another D1 disappointment by pre-ordering). I'm done getting hyped for these big, blockbuster games which always result in disappointment and I'm done pre-ordering unless I know exactly what I'm getting. The only game I'm hyped for is Ace Combat 7 (which I will pre-order) because I know exactly what I'm getting, a mechanically sound air combat simulator that will be fun regardless if the story sucks or not (as long as they don't bring mechanics from Assault Horizon over).

Edited January 27, 2018 by Strider Hiryu

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

GW2 HAD horizontal progression. When Heart of Thorns came out it was pretty good IMO. You had to do certain tasks to gain mastery points, and invest those into new abilities. Each category of said ability required more points every tier you leveled it up. It was a pain in some places but overall it was doable solo. GW2's player base on a whole is super casual, HoT required more than just using auto attack to survive encounters. It actually made you use the skill sets they put into the game. It wasn't perfect, but it was refreshing to me. People cried and bitched that they couldn't get everything day one. So when Path of Fire came out, the horizontal progression was a joke, it all revolved around the new mount system, and you basically just had vertical progression for each mount type. On top of that, if you invested the time in HoT, you had enough Hero Points to get your new specializations unlocked day one, because everyone cried about the HP requirement back then, so they lowered it refunding the points for those that did it legit. Within a week I had everything maxed out and my interest in the game died off for the first time in 3 years. It took me a year to get enough mastery points on HoT.

There is absolutely no excuse not to have LFG, both consoles have a virtual keyboard built in to type out a description. Raids don't necessarily need the best rewards, they need unique rewards that aren't utter trash and are indeed among the best gear in the game. They should also have extra stats bonuses for the raid and future raids. This is one request I see a lot of on the Destiny Reddit. The problem I had with Destiny 1's first year was the only way to get any decent gear at all was the raid, even the standard legendary gear that dropped in the raid was better. After seeing what they did by Y3, and some of the awesome strikes they made, that had strike specific loot it baffles me why all this was left out of D2. I guess they thought they could get away with slowly readding it as "new" content and got called out on their BS. I was against random rolls at first because I thought getting legendary weapons were going to be as much as a grueling grind as it was in D1, but thats not the case so rolls would actually have been good for D2. Like Strider pointed out, they went from one extreme to the other instead of just dialing it down a little bit.

Anthem needs to follow The Division's lead on loot... and by that I don't just mean how it drops, but adding loot for free in patch updates. When I came back to the game there was a shit ton of new exotic weapons, and they had added 3-4 more in 1.8. Loot is why people play these games, and when you have everything, or at least everything worth having, thats when it gets stale. Borderlands is a semi-linear game, but I remember spending hours repeating bosses just to sort through the explosion of loot and pick up new guns.

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Look at this guy trying to rationalize the one dev leaving, coming back and leaving again... when it really means.. Anthem is doomed!  

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Not loot boxes. Skins and vanity items will be for sale as direct purchases. Everything can be soloed, but will be a little harder. Actual gameplay starts at around 13:13

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

It looks good but, again, so did Destiny before it launched. It was nice to see some actual game play and by what I can see it looks like at least that is pretty solid. Here's to hoping we get more footage like this in the months to come.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Fully agree. A lot of any MMO's issues is PvP ruining PvE's gear balance.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I'm surprised they're not doing PvP. Almost every game has a multiplayer pvp end game even when it's not needed.. mostly to sell loot boxes and more cosmetics. I'm guessing theres going to be so many weapons they'd rather not try to balance any of it and I don't blame them for that.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I watched this clip last night. Looks great. I'm a bit concerned of it trying to be too much like Destiny tho with those individual mission difficulty settings. One thing that I do love is being able to swap out to different suits. I hated being stuck as a hunter in destiny because I didn't want to level and gear another alt. The weapons and combat in this look really fun and that map does look pretty expansive.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The worse thing that can happen to this game is for people to think its like Destiny. From what I see, the only thing they have in common is a sci-fi setting. I guess Destiny was the precursor for this type of genre, but what I see is a more futuristic Division. Loot drops as what they are, instead of an RNG ball you have to go turn in. Also it seems to drop way more fequently, like the guy playing clearly skipped another purple drop after he got that pistol. The abilities and cooldown interface is more like the Division, and are abilities rather than a grenade and a melee.

I do like the 1 character, and multiple suits. The loot table is going to favor what you're using, but things can still drop for another Javelin. Since you don't have to swap and make more characters, It actually works to where you can put that loot to the side or install it on the other suit and build it up as you play on your main equipment. Going back to the abundant drops. I hope this game drops loot like candy. I much rather have a borderlands type system where there is so much shit, its overwhelming, while there is still a sense that you can get a god roll piece of gear. Nothing was more disheartening in D1 when you grind out that strike on hard only to get a blue, or a purple you already had... 3 weeks in a row. Hell, even Mass Effect 1-3 had a better wealth of guns than Destiny. This is BioWare... (not the BW that made Andromeda). They have a solid history of loot tables going back to KOTOR. If we can continue that tradition, I think it will be fine.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The fact that this game wont have PvP is paying dividends on the fun factor this title has the potential to contain. Without PvP they can't take the cheap way out in terms of content by trying to direct everyone to competitive modes.