Anthem (Bioware's new property)

If EA does give them time then that will be a geniune miracle.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 2nd 2019 at 12:34:20 PM

Played about 8 hours of the demo trying the different frames. Bugs aside, the game is pretty OK to mediocre.

Something unexpected, depending on your choice of class, gunplay is far less relevant than I expected. It's all about the abilities. For me, this is a plus because conceptually/aesthetically I don't like the idea of robots/exosuits/mechs/power armor using handheld firearms.

Will this kill any game, let alone genre juggernauts Destiny or Warframe? Not a chance. Both of those have way more content and one of them is free. I will play Anthem, probably, just for the fact it's got the Colossus.

see. thatsd actually a problem for me.

I'm fine with having powers be more important than guns. but the guns feel very unsatiosfying as a result, and you only actually have 3 slots for said powers.

The sad thing is, if this had been a truly great game right out the gate, it probably would flatten Destiny (I say from the probably biased point of view of someone who thinks Destiny is currently an irredeemable shitshow)... okay, so during typing that I realised it's a ridiculous claim; Destiny almost certainly has many confirmed players and probably a lot more people who still play and don't care enough to try something else, *but anyway*...

If this had been a better game on release (I know it's not released yet, but I don't think there's any reason to expect it to be wildly different from what we saw in the demo), it might have been a much stronger competitor. I'm losing all conviction in what I'm saying here; we don't know how it's going to play in the long term, and free content updates down the line is a significant advantage over Destiny. It's just a shame that it seems to be repeating a great many of that game's errors, along with a few missteps of its own.

Yeah the fact you can only use 3 abilities is trying.

It quickly got boring spamming the arm rocket & grenade constantly especially since one of my only two offensive abilities is strictly fucking grenades.

You’d expect an Iron Man-esque armor to have more shit than just grenades. It’s not even fun grenades, Warframe has a frame whose entire ability-set is tied to grenades but at least you can use various types at once.

First tweak would be to increase gun power, increase ability power, and increase ability cooldown. Make them feel more meaningful instead of basically forcing you to use them as your primary weapons. After that we can argue about making them more unique.

right,

the pug I was in wiped because when theres like 4 elites with shields and like 25 mooks at the fight we were at, we couldnt organize well enough to flank and didnt even know that did shit, and so were just chipping down shields slowly to get some poke damage in before waiting on our rockets to go off cooldown.

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Feb 2nd 2019 at 2:37:37 AM

Yeah, I suppose the cooldown abilities do lack a bit of flash. Things like grenades in Destiny had a satisfying bang to them, which seems to be lacking here.

It is weird how when you look at the guns stats, Damage is absolutely minuscule in comparison to everything else.

Only sniper rifles seem to have any actual kick.

That shotgun damage? It's per pellet. And the gun chucks about ten to twelve of those per shot. Shotguns deal just as much damage as sniper rifles up close, and some of the pellets hit weak points and proc extra damage from that.

But yeah, the abilities are the shit. Ranger's grenades are boring, but they work. Storm, on the other hand, needs to target his skills, but when they land, it's pure pandemonium.

I'm not worried so much about the actual numbers but on how it feels. And the assault rifle felt like crap. Sure I managed to take a few greys down with it, but it took a second of continuous fire to the head. And against elites it was basically useless. Compare to the abilities, which were better but still didn't have quite as much of a punch as I was expecting.

Maybe the enemies are just too bullet-spongy, but the primary problem is that your gun feels practically decorative, and you have to rely purely on the abilities. Which... isn't the end of the world, but then you've only got three abilities and an ultimate.

My preference would be for your gun to be your main weapon, which you should be using to start and finish enemies at least half the time. Then each of your abilities is a one hit kill, each one a little different (grenade is one hit kill against ground, missile is one hit kill against air, melee move is more of an emergency ability, and ultimate of course just kills everything everywhere), but they have a hefty cooldown so you can't use them exclusively.

The weak guns make it feel like it's not a shooter. That's the summary of the problem, I guess.

Edited by Discar on Feb 2nd 2019 at 4:22:57 AM

yep. and even warframe another game with a limited skill list of very gamechanging superpowers per frame also lets the guns do serious damage.

My current guess is that the damage is pathetic to make the grind for coinage harder and encourage the purchase of premium.

With this being EA I wouldn't be surprised.

I have noticed that after several missions & doing a couple stuff in free roam, I have only gained....... 5 coins.

Played one mission and it's okay. I do agree that the guns feel underpowered. I really wish that flight and mobility had just a bit more emphasis. Like, it feels like I should be able to shoot and fly at the same time, but I can only hover. Hovering is fine, but I keep finding myself wanting to fly by and just carpet the ground with bombs, but it's just not that kind of game. And the flight is the big draw for me, since it's not something Destiny or Warframe do.

The armor customization is cool though. You don't usually get so many textures options. I'll play some more and see if I can get a better feel for things. I hope that flight gets some kind of upgrade as you level up, at least making it not overheat so quickly.

The lack of a proper tutorial is partly responsible for this confusion.

For starters, some elements deal bonus damage to certain armor (Ice /Electric to Shields and Acid / Fire to Armor).

Since Shields prevent you from afflicting the target with status effects and thus priming them for combos, Ice and Electric are the clearly superior force, especially Ice helps you to flank enemies to attack their weak spots.

Speaking of weak spots, slow firing weapons like sniping rifles and heavy pistols seem to get a larger multiplier when shooting weak-spots making them a must to bring to boss fights.

The demo does some wonky crap. Like, it does them no favors winning people over. For starters, your third ability and first component isn't even equipped from the start, and the game throws you into combat before it even tells you that you can modify your loadout.

The starting guns are level 10, but I suspect some of the abilities you get, especially when you unlock the second javelin, aren't level 10 but default much lower.

They're basically throwing people with the worst possible gear, all with identical (bad) builds at early-mid range content. No wonder that spider-tank is racking up team wipes on Normal. I later soloed it in Freeplay with a reasonably kitted out uncommon Colossus.

Warframe sometimes runs into the opposite problem, where direct-damage abilities just can't keep up at high levels, so it's easier to use a carefully modded gun. At high level play, utility 'frames are the go-to choice, since they have abilities that aren't level-dependent.

Of course, one of the subtle things I love about Warframe is that you don't have to play at high level, and you'll need to bounce back down to mid-level maps for resources, leveling weapons, and so on. You don't want to spend days carefully tweaking your build to be able to fight level 200 enemies? That's fine, there's more than enough stuff to do against level 60 enemies.

I definitely feel like they need to focus on the flight mechanics. It's very different from Destiny and Warframe (Warframe does have a flight mechanic, but it's a bit wonky, definitely not as easy to just jump in the air), and that can be their main selling point.

I understand that they were going for some A Taste of Power type thing, but it didn't work. We're left with little understanding of the mechanics or story, and certainly no feeling of power. It's too confusing. They should have just let us start the game like normal, then cut off the demo after a certain story mission. That's how most demos do it.

Coins for in-world activities are gained from performing Feats. Kill Elites, kill Legendaries, find collectibles, revive Javelins, collecting them gets you coins. Additional coins in the release version will be gained every week based on the amount of missions you and your Origin friends did, based on the bonus XP gained through the Alliance mechanics.

I think you also get coins from doing Strongholds, but I'm not sure whether that's tied to the Stronghold Master feat or built into the Stronghold reward system.

Also, there's a weird-ass statue tangled in the Eddian Tree. Looks like a Prothean with two eyes instead of four. What might it be?

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Feb 3rd 2019 at 4:07:00 PM

Unless things change before launch, or the full game has more options, it looks like every Colossus will be running Lightning Coil with Flamethrower/Acid Spitter.

It allows the Colossus to self-combo and more importantly, attack with his shield up. No other Ordnance launcher allows for this, and that means anything else seriously cuts into your ability to survive because you need to be both shielding to tank damage and defeating enemies to sustain yourself with health drops.

Also everything else either lacks combo synergy or has clunky aiming mechanics that require you to stand still un-shielded like the mortar strikes.

The build lets you go toe to toe with almost anything in the demo, which feels great, but you're locked into it, probably along with any other Colossus you're teamed with, which doesn't feel as great.

As an aside, has nobody else pointed out before that the Colossus looks and operates like a mechanical Krogan?

Edited by CitizenH on Feb 3rd 2019 at 11:51:20 AM

What's sad is that if they'd used THIS design with Andromeda, maybe the mech suits, that game could've been markedly different... plot aside of course.

I've had fun but agree the Colossus just feels... better? Reminds me of being a heavy in Tribes - vulnerable in some ways but damn intimidating if you run into an experienced one; mortars, resilience etc.

The shield needs to be more useful with the weapons if they want it to be a "proper" tank; like the Ranger needs to be better augmented with guns and the Lancer needs to be augmented with proper melee gear.

The need to lean into the classes a tad more, have the guns be "sidearms" or fall back options.

LOL, that is so hilariously broken.

Also, the new demo is also testing live events, one started three hours ago. There's an Ash Titan running rampant, and it's the biggest one you've seen yet live (not counting the trailers). And I stumbled upon this article from September, quote:

"Aiming to take the studio’s famous storytelling to a shared world, Bio Ware executive producer Mark Darrah and lead producer Mike Gamble cited Fortnite's cube when I chatted with them at PAX West about their post-launch plans for Anthem."

Now that is interesting. Minor content updates every once in a while, for free. If the journos are as eager as they were hyping those in Fortshite, we might have a winner.

I really don't think its feasible combine intensive story with this kind of multiplayer shared world stuff.

Andromeda tried the same thing only with procedurally generated worlds & it turned into a disaster.

What? Andromeda didn't have procedurally generated worlds. Apparently they were planning it, but there definitely wasn't anything like it in the final product.