Line #46 YMMV/Anthem2019


1	* AbridgedArenaArray: Of the three Strongholds available on release, the Tyrant Mine is the easiest out of all of them. And since all three Strongholds give the exact same rewards, there's no incentive to run the longer and more difficult Strongholds so most players exclusively grind the Tyrant Mine for gear.
2	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome:
3	** The Colossus is by far the most commonly used javelin amongst players. This is because it has much higher attack power and durability than the other javelins, comes with a shitload of health, is the only javelin that can use heavy weapons like autocannons and has a cool, menacing look to it. Its only real weakness, the lack of a regenerating shield to protect its health, is also offset by the massive tower shield it comes with that absorbs a lot of damage before needing recharging.
4	** After the Colossus, expect to see a lot of players using the Storm javelin. Although it's a SquishyWizard, it can stay in the air far longer than the other javelins can and has access to a multitude of elemental attacks that can deal crazy damage to groups of enemies and freeze them to allow teammates to perform powerful combos.
5	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
6	** From the gameplay reveal, Kim has become a power-levelling MemeticBadass in the eyes of the fandom.
7	** In terms of the actual game/story, Owen is popular (even by [[WebVideo/IHateEverything some]] who hated the game) for being a [[PluckyComicRelief genuinely funny]] and enduring companion that reminded people of characters from Bioware's [[Franchise/MassEffect other]] [[Franchise/DragonAge games.]] [[spoiler: Many were saddened by or even outright criticized his FaceHeelTurn later in the story.]]
8	* GoodBadBugs:
9	** The Gentle Touch Marksman Rifle had a very funny bug. Every time a bullet is fired and hits a target, the gun gains a stack of a buff called "Striker's Balance" that reduces the recoil of the gun by fifty percent. However, once three stacks are reached, the bullet will fly off to the right of the crosshair by a significant margin, requiring the user to aim well off to the left of the target to make the shots hit. This led to the buff being reduced to thirty percent.
10	** For a brief period, [=BioWare=] accidentally changed the drop rates of chests so that they would drop masterwork gear more often than usual. While the bug was fixed within 24 hours, it didn't stop masses of players farming chests while the bug was still live.
11	** For a little while, the starting auto rifle was doing more damage than any other gun in the game, able to kill Elite Scar Hunters in four shots.
12	** Once again, [=BioWare=] accidentally introduced another bug that greatly increased the drop rate of masterwork items from loot drops, giving many players a sudden rush of satisfaction until [=BioWare=] swiftly fixed the bug.
13	** [=BioWare=] again accidentally introduced another bug in one of their patches that tied the damage abilities and ultimates dealt to the player's average gear score. Players quickly found out that they could easily manipulate their average gear score by taking off their lowest rated gear, inflating their average gear score and thus inflating the damage they dealt. The issue was that the scaling didn't count empty slots towards the average, so rather than taking the 75, adding ten 0 values to it and then dividing by 11, the game just divided the 75 by 1, giving the player an average gears core of 75.
14	** In the Swarm Tyrant’s arena, there are 2 ledges on opposite sides of the area that are considered in bounds by the game, meaning you won’t take continuous Acid damage from standing on them (which is what happens if you try to camp on the stalagmite in the center). While on either ledge, you can’t be hit by any of the Swarm Tyrant’s or its flunkies’ attacks, creating a safe zone where you can chip away at its health, only having to jump down occasionally to refresh your ammo. It makes the fight much easier on Grandmaster 2 and 3.
15	* HarsherInHindsight: Anthem's CreationMyth being that the world was abandoned by its Gods before it was finished ended up matching what happened with the game's development after it was released as an ObviousBeta and the promised 2.0 overhaul was cancelled in 2021.
16	* MemeticMutation
17	** Kim needs the XP.[[labelnote:Explanation]]A line spoken in the gameplay reveal, despite Kim in the video having a higher level than everyone else in their group.[[/labelnote]]
18	** "It's not a delay." [[labelnote:Explanation]]After the announcement that EA had delayed ''Anthem'' to early 2019, EA CEO Blake Jorgensen tried to tell people that it "wasn't a delay." He offered the explanation that they were trying to release Anthem during a quieter quarter so the game wouldn't have to compete with other games like ''Call of Duty'' or their upcoming ''Battlefield'' game. Many people pointed out the ridiculousness of the statement, as regardless of the reason, [[DistinctionWithoutADifference pushing a game's release back]] ''is'' a delay.[[/labelnote]]
19	** "We want to make the game [[DefiedTrope unmemeable]]." [[labelnote:Explanation]]One of Bioware's apparent mandates in developing the game was to make it so it couldn't be memeable, especially with the facial expressions, for which Bioware's previous release, ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'', was heavily guilty of. [[StreisandEffect Unfortunately, it would seem that Bioware forgot the rule that the more you don't want something to become a meme, the more likely it will become a meme.]] Then upon ''Anthem''[='=]s release, let's just say things didn't go according to Bioware's wishes.[[/labelnote]]
20	** "Don't say ''Destiny''!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]The game has come under fire for repeating a lot of mistakes made by ''{{VideoGame/Destiny}}'' and ''VideoGame/Destiny2'' in their own early days. Jason Schrier's article (see [[https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964 here]]) noted that higher-ups in [=BioWare=] forbade employees from talking about or even mentioning the name of ''Destiny'', leading to a cavalcade of rookie mistakes like unsatisfying loot and confusing menus... because employees couldn't draw upon ''Destiny'''s example for gameplay, good or bad.[[/labelnote]]
21	** The audience at E3 2017 and Bioware both sharing the reaction "Oh shit, '''that'''[='=]s the game!" [[labelnote:Explanation]]Joe Vargas from ''WebVideo/TheAngryJoeShow'' was quick to rip Bioware to pieces in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUopKcRLNGA&t=32m03s his video]] concerning the revelation of the game's TroubledProduction via a Kotaku article, comically vulgarizing that the E3 2017 demo essentially had both the gamers and the developers exclaim that it's ''the'' game they are looking forward to, when in reality ''Anthem'' was nowhere as defined at that point and the E3 showing really was just a fake tech demo with the false claim that it was using live gameplay footage.[[/labelnote]]
22	** "Get glitched!" [[labelnote:Explanation]]A line the Freelancer says to the Monitor, which quickly became widely-mocked after ''WebVideo/IHateEverything'' played it multiple times in his review of the game.[[/labelnote]]
23	** The "Bioware Magic"[[labelnote:Explanation]]Apparently, a factor in the rushed state of ''Anthem'' and the horrors suffered by the developers during the tumultuous production of the game was [=BioWare=] management's belief in the "Bioware Magic," where the developers would experience an ''insane'' amount of crunch yet somehow someway produce a brilliant game at the end of it all. After the disastrous release of ''Anthem'', many have outright stated that the magic is gone (or never existed in the first place).[[/labelnote]]
24	* {{Misblamed}}: Many fans were quick to blame Electronic Arts for everything wrong with ''Anthem'', given how the publisher is widely hated for its monetization schemes. However, the issue is a bit more complex according to a Kotaku insider report. EA did mandate the use of Frostbite engine, which wasn't meant to work for [=RPGs=], and didn't provide much technical support. However, EA also provided 6 years of development time, which is more than double that of industry standards, and it was [=BioWare=] who was responsible for the poor management and bad creative decisions like the employee burnout. Importantly, it was [=BioWare=], not EA, who wanted the game to be an online multiplayer game and not a single player [=RPG=]. In short, while EA didn't give the right tools for [=BioWare=] and seemed hands-off to a fault, many of the bad decisions rested almost entirely on [=BioWare=]'s shoulders. Ironically, EA's real error was being entirely too ''lenient'' towards [=BioWare=] -- actual ExecutiveMeddling, as they were formerly accused of doing, probably would have saved the game (or at least saved years worth of time and tens of millions of dollars).
25	* {{Narm}}:
26	** Quite a few people have expressed their amusement over the fact that the main villain of the game is named The ''Monitor''.
27	---> '''Random [=YouTube=] Commenter:''' The monitor fits perfectly as the main villain of Anthem. You're basically forced to watch it during [[LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading every load screen]]. Menacing.
28	** The painful, obviously scripted "banter" between the two players in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL5GSfs9fi4&t=191s first game demo]] for Anthem, which was clearly written by a dev team trying to sound like how real gamers talk.
29	* OvershadowedByControversy: ''Anthem'' is mostly remembered for a disastrous launch consisting of barebone content compounded by lots of {{Padding}}, uninspired narrative and very unpolished gameplay and design overall; a far cry from the 2017 E3 trailer that impressed the gaming world. Ironically, EA's infamous monetization scheme is the ''least'' of the worries this game has, with the reveal of a very nasty TroubledProduction taking center stage in the controversy and the developers applying patches that somehow make the game run even worse. Criticism reached to a point where the content roadmap was removed not even half a year after launch and the game languished in mediocrity ever since. And now that the "NEXT" overhaul has been cancelled, any chance of it escaping his trope has been completely destroyed. As it stands, unless a miracle happens, ''Anthem'' will forever be known as one of the worst games made by [=BioWare=] on multiple fronts, with any hope of success getting hamstrung out the gate and having little to show for it beyond blatantly copying its competitors while refusing to learn from their mistakes.
30	* {{Padding}}:
31	** There is the infamous "Tombs of the Legionnaires" mission, which in the release version required hours of mindless grinding to complete. See ThatOneLevel for more details.
32	** The three strongholds were disappointing, to say the least. One stronghold is a repeat of a story mission you already played in the campaign, the second is a repeat of the final boss fight, and the third simply recycles a boss that you had fought previously in the campaign.
33	** Even if you do a majority of the sidequests, contracts, and other activities available to you, you'll probably be around level twenty by the time you defeat the Final Boss. However, the level cap of the game is at thirty, leaving players [[AbsurdlyHighLevelCap with about ten levels worth of grinding]]. This is a big issue because you can't play Grandmaster difficulties until you reach level thirty, and outside of a small selection of Masterwork weapons, Masterwork and Legendary items don't drop on any difficulty below Grandmaster 1.
34	* TheScrappy: Prospero for constantly talking about how it “doesn’t matter how good you are unless you look good” and existing solely to hype up the game's {{Microtransactions}} store.
35	* ScrappyMechanic
36	** Free Play mode is seen as one of the weakest parts of the game, since it essentially boils down to aimlessly wandering around [[QuickSandbox the large but rather barren open world]] hoping you'll stumble across a world event or rare boss, since none of those are marked on the map or announced when they spawn.
37	** The way that the player earns Coins and the incredibly meager size of said Coin rewards. Coins are earned by completing daily challenges, ranging from completing a certain number of contracts and strongholds and killing a certain number of Outlaws, Scars or Dominions. The latter tasks grant 2,000 Coins while the former two grant between 500 to 750 Coins. For reference, the cheapest items in the store cost 5,000 Coins while Armor sets are a crushing '''61,000''' Coins. Since the former tasks can only be done once a day and the latter tasks once a week, you’ll have to spend weeks, if not months, of grinding to build up a sizable Coin reserve that will get emptied on only a couple of items.
38	** Adding to the above, the fact that Items are only available in the Store for 3 days, changing every Tuesday and Friday. If you don’t have a shitload of Coins saved up, [[MoneyDearBoy be prepared to cough up some cash for those Shards]], as the low Coin rewards ensure that whatever items you’re grinding for will be long gone by the time you can pay for them with Coins.
39	** The way that the player gains experience. Defeating enemies doesn't directly give experience. Instead, experience is earned by completing Feats, such as killing enemies with specific weapons, killing enemies with specific abilities, killing enemies with your Ultimate, gathering resources, scoring multikills, etc... Since these Feats always award the same amount of experience, but the amount of experience needed to level up increases from level to level, the average player will start experiencing massive slowdowns as they get to higher levels.
40	** Reviving is widely considered to be awful. If you're downed in a no-respawn zone, you can't spectate your teammates and there's no option to self-revive after a certain period of time, leaving you to stare at your "Waiting for Revive" screen until one of your allies revives you or you finish out the encounter. If you do have the option to self-revive, then instead of reviving right where you were downed, you get a loading screen and are placed back on a Strider or the Fort Tarsis spawn point, far away from where you were downed. It's even worse if you're on a mission because you'll end up being outside the tether zone and have to sit through another loading screen while you're teleported to your teammates.
41	** The crafting system has been a great source of criticism. Once you reach max level, you have the ability to craft masterwork quality gear. However, crafting a masterwork item requires 15 masterwork embers, which requires countless hours of grinding to either obtain the embers or enough credits to buy the embers directly with in-game currency. And even after you craft an item, the fact that ''every'' property of the item is randomly determined means there's a very high chance that the item you invested so much time and resources into crafting ends up getting a bad roll and being useless.
42	** The UI in general. Many players have complained about how needlessly complicated and unintuitive the game's menus are. One example is having to dive through no less then ''four'' menus just to keep track of your quests. Another UI complaint is the lack of a unified stat page, which is perplexing given the game is a stat-based loot shooter.
43	* SoOkayItsAverage: The game received mainly lukewarm to middling reviews after release, with many critics noting that on a whole, the game is solid and competently put together, but they also felt that it lacked the charm of [=BioWare=]'s storytelling, and that the gameplay doesn't feel unique or polished enough to differentiate itself from its competitors within the genre, such as the ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'' series. The overall scores were so mediocre that ''Anthem'' has become [[https://www.vg247.com/2019/03/04/anthem-lowest-rated-bioware-game-ever/ BioWare's lowest-rated game ever]], around a 60/100 on Metacritic.
44	* TaintedByThePreview:
45	** The first few images and revelations of ''Anthem'' made on 2018's E3 really soured possible fans to it. The reveal that there would be no companions or romance in this game -- two things [[CreatorThumbprint that have been a staple for BioWare]] and one of the fans' favorite mechanics -- resulted in fans deciding that [=BioWare=] has lost contact with them and don't know what they want anymore, while gameplay footage caused the game to be accused of being a ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'' knock-off.
46	** Unfortunately, any hype for the game was hampered due to the performance of past [=BioWare=] and EA games. For example, the SoOkayItsAverage but fairly disappointing ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' tarnished the [=BioWare=] brand name in the eyes of many fans, even though the game was technically developed by their less-competent Montreal branch (and its WideOpenSandbox and fluid character movement were the spiritual predecessors to this game). Additionally, the lootbox debacle over ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefrontII2017'' led many fans to cynically predict that EA would find a way to ruin ''Anthem'' with lootboxes and microtransactions. Turns out, it wasn't ''EA'' [[TroubledProduction that was the problem...]]
47	** The VIP Demo. While most people who played it agreed that the mechanics were quite solid and fun, quite a few were put off by the bugs and glitches in the demo, as well as subpar performance, and major server issues that prevented a significant number of people from logging in for quite some time. The fact that it was advertised as a demo of the finished game and not an in-progress beta made many people concerned, as the game was scheduled for release not even a month later, that the game would face a rough launch. [=BioWare=] assured people that the demo build was six weeks out of date and missing quite a few of the bug fixes (and even features) that would be present in the final game. [[BlatantLies They lied]].
48	* ThatOneLevel: The "Tombs of the Legionnaires" quest in particular picked up heavy criticism. Rather than following a traditional mission structure, the Tomb quest is instead a set of achievements the player must complete in the Free Play mode in order to unlock four tombs and progress the story. While most of the achievements are easy to complete, there are a few that are incredibly difficult or time-consuming. For example, some of the objective require you to kill a legendary enemy or open a chest, except credit only goes to the person who scores the killing shot or actually physically opens the chest. Another objective is to find 10 secret collectibles hidden throughout the game world. Suffice to say, many players were angry at the level of grind needed to complete a '''required story mission''', which brought the pacing of the entire campaign to a screeching halt. [=BioWare=] quickly changed the quest so you can passively fill the requirements at the start of the game.
49	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
50	** The Dominion assault on Freemark was restricted to a single cutscene instead of a playable mission. Had the battle been a playable tutorial, it would've introduced players to the world and setting through immersive gameplay. While they ''kind'' of do this with the tutorial mission involving trying to silence the Heart of Rage, it's generally agreed that the aforementioned route would have been a better move.
51	** The Anthem of Creation itself counts as a wasted plot element. In his review, [[WebVideo/TheAngryJoeShow Angry Joe]] pointed out how the device could've been used to offer interesting gameplay scenarios like warping reality, reversing gravity, or even opening up new dimensions, with its ''actual'' implementation ([[spoiler:it just spawns more enemies]]) being relatively mundane in comparison. This is because the game had its name changed from Beyond to Anthem very late in development, about a week before the E3 2017 reveal, because "Beyond" would be too hard to copyright. So the developers went with Anthem as one of their backup choices, and then created the concept of The Anthem of Creation to justify the title.
52	** A big deal is made out of striders, about how they're the lifeblood of humanity, transporting supplies and people to and from the various settlements and ferrying the Freelancers into battle. An early trailer even shows one being attacked while the player is roaming the world. This never happens ''once'', and the only striders you see are either abandoned, wrecked, completely stationary, or in cutscenes.
53	* UnderusedGameMechanic: Flying. For something that was presented as a major feature, it's really not much more than a glorified sprint button. No levels have any kind of flying challenges or puzzles, and the game never really subjects the player to any kind of test of skill. This likely has to do with the fact that flying was actually taken out of the game and added back in multiple times over the course of the game's development. This, combined with the game's TroubledProduction, meant that the developers didn't really have time to design levels that would use flying in a creative way.

Context YMMV / Anthem2019