Anthem (Bioware's new property)

Article from Gamerant about the shard prices.

Alright so 500 shards is equivalent to around 5 dollars so 850 shards should be around 8:50.

So a full armor cosmetic kit costs nearly 10 dollars.

That's not so bad, but definitely not "Micro"

Yeah, it's a lot, but not truly outrageous. More expensive than Titanfall 2's extras were, if I remember right, and they were approaching the upper limit of what I felt comfortable buying

[snip]

Converting $8.50 into sterling comes to £6.59 (I only remembered to do this conversion as I was already busy typing my opinion and had the figure £8.50 in my head), so yeah, it's not outrageous, but it is at the top end of what I'd feel just about comfortable spending, if I'd already got a lot out of the game I already spent about £50 on.

Edited by artfulscruff on Feb 15th 2019 at 9:54:41 AM

Indeed. At least it's only cosmetic; you can just pick color schemes if you want, and even then that's only if you apparently can't get the materials together to make them yourself?

Yeah, someone did say, and I would expect, that you can earn shards through normal gameplay, but like any such system, it'll be slow.

At least it's not fucking lootboxes.

Actually, did someone say that the cosmetic store stock rotates, or did I imagine that? Because if it rotates, that sucks too.

Edited by artfulscruff on Feb 15th 2019 at 11:17:55 AM

It most probably rotates, which is actually a good thing since some stuff that was available in the demo is not available now (might be unlockable in some other way, though). I'm salty as fuck that the camo cloth is gone. The shop itself blows at the moment, as the "featured" section they showed on the leaked screen is about 80% of all cosmetics available right now.

Also, I went material farming with a buddy today, we did a couple of low-level world events and got over 20k coins from that trip. Three farming trips and you have a three-part armor set (which goes for 61k coins). The N7 vinyl is 23k coins IIRC, and you get 40k right off the bat (I spent some on the Relic chest for Ranger as it looks better than the default one).

Kristen Schaal, or someone who sounds a LOT like her, is doing the voice for a vendor in the marketplace. Didn't hear any other familiar voice actors.

Oh right, EA early access. I was wondering how you guys were playing.

Also, did I mention that the optimization and stability have improved immensely since the demo? Instead of the game constantly crashing during my livestreams, I had only managed to crash OBS once. That and it runs fluidly on High details.

The only remaining issue for me are lagging controls.

I'm getting insane loading times. The demo was fine, and I usually load first or second in any other multiplayer game, so I don't think it's just my hardware. Plus, I see a lot of complaints on reddit about it. It's bad enough the mission is half over by the time I get in. It's actually affecting my leveling because I'm getting the XP but not the loot drops so all my stuff is way underlevel.

Edited by CitizenH on Feb 16th 2019 at 9:42:38 AM

well, from what ive seen watching twitch streams the game has bugs, some hilaeriously cringey writing, weird-ass facial textures that sometimes look positively inhuman, and some amazingly generic quests. On the bright side the core gameplay loop is good, but it feels like it needed another year in the oven.

Nope, gotta be your hardware or connection. Anthem's netcode is terrible, I was lagging like crazy while watching a Twitch stream in 480p on the second monitor, but the loading times are less of an issue for me (however, I witnessed a buddy take over half a minute longer to get into the freeplay session I initiated).

other interesting balance decisions that seem like Bioware has never played a single game of Destiny or Warframe.

if you're dead when a boss goes down, no loot spawns for you. if you're partied together, quest objectives like opening chests arent shared. this is a problem when there are main story quests demanding you open 15 chests in the open world, because now a full group needs /60/ chests, also apparently the main plot is about..10 hours ish long

Huh that's just unfair.

So the shotguns took a serious nerf between the demo and release. What didn't take a nerf was the Resolution heavy pistol. It fires two-round bursts, deals slightly less damage per shot than the heaviest pistol and has a pretty good rate of fire... which coupled with the 3x headshot damage multiplier means that it tears through pretty much everything, including shielded opponents.

Since I have Origin Access Basic, I decided to give my 10 free hours of Anthem a spin, while the servers are still young and full of fresh new faces. Some thoughts:

• FUCK THE LOAD TIMES. This is by far the worst case of game loading screens I've seen in years: starting missions, entering instanced zones, catching up with the team if you fall behind, the end of a mission - all of these result in load screens, and they take FOREVER to pass. Just as one of the previous Tropers mentioned, it's ugly enough that you'll lose exp and loot drops due to loading into a mission so late, and then get hit with yet another loading screen for being so far behind. No excuse for my hardware either, because unless they've got some bizarre setup that draws more from the CPU than GPU I should be able to load anything they have, easily. And I thought Destiny was bad...
• I can't say for certain since Guam's internet quality ranges from merely sufficient to absolutely trash, but connectivity issues are negatively affecting my gameplay, and are somehow WORSE than in the open beta period. More than once I had attacked an enemy, thinking he was still untouched, only for the gameplay to re-sync a moment later and show that the target I was going after was already dead.
  • A couple of times I just randomly dropped dead - probably because the server-side client thought my body was in the blast radius of an explosion, or that I hadn't dodged an attack, despite me doing so on my end.
• Texture and graphical pop-ins during cutscenes is common. Worst one had to be the first time your Freelancer flies out of the Shaper artifact cave and sets sights on Fort Tarsis; at first I thought they were trying to show off the whole valley in the background, but nope, apparently the screen had yet to load the terrain around and in front of my character, creating one jarring visual introduction.
• Gameplay is good, and largely feels similar to the open beta period. Nothing outstanding from the typical MMO FPS grind; heck if you played Destiny before then you know exactly how things play out. Avoid over-leveled enemies and areas, constantly upgrade your loot with items which have the higher stats, gradually unlock new upgrades and powers as you level up, etc.
  • Heck, I'm kinda reminded of how combat in Mass Effect 2 plays out in that if leveled up correctly, your powers become more effective in rapidly dispatching enemies than most of your firearms, save for maybe the Widow, Locust and Revenant.
• The cutscenes and dialog isn't as bad as others make out, at least. Heck, I found the voice acting enjoyable, its only the minor characters who seem to have less spirit in giving their roles a sense of life and uniqueness.

I dunno man. I watched a streamer do the whole main story and I cant say it felt ever like anything but "generic action rpg story beats done in a competent but not brilliant way"

thats the problem with anthem. Its not a bad game, its just So Okay, It's Average

I'm feeling some dissonance between the world the game is set in, and the style of Fort Tarsis.

The fort and its people are distinctly desert style; you've got people wearing a lot of wraps, sun bleached stone work, not a lot of wood, etc. Feels like Egypt, Mos Eisley, etc.

But, the world outside is all New Zealand with jungle and it rains a lot. Probably a very humid place looking at the kinds of vegetation.

The two places feel very disconnected.

Southeast Asia can have that sort of look in some countries. And given that everybody in Fort Tarsis seems to dress lightly, one can assume it's probably pretty humid there, hence the clothing.

I found a particularly stupid bug that involves infinite loads. If you try to spawn on the strider in Shadowmark for purposes of free play early in the game, you get stuck with infinite load. Congratulations.

Alright so it’s coming out in 4 Days so might as well say my final worries on it.

I’m worried & my fears appear to be true that when it comes out it really will feel incomplete or not have enough content for a Triple A game. Like how Destiny gets released with barely any shit in its base game. I mean it’s a game that’s been in development for years with a lot of money & man-power at its backing, it should already have a lot of stuff.

Sure Warframe started out incomplete but at least it had the excuse of being a small, experimental indie title, while Anthem is most certainly not that.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 18th 2019 at 3:13:45 AM

It helps that Warframe was also Free-to-Play from the beginning. Anthem is not.

Edited by M84 on Feb 18th 2019 at 7:04:41 PM

So from the release side on PC friends have said it's pretty much feature complete - the plot side is quite short by comparison to, say, Mass Effect; however, the repeatable missions and loot grind aren't terrible. And they seem to have a series of live events planned out similar to Ubisoft.

Whether it has the longevity we shall see; remember D2 launched with no Raid and most of that is essentially the same missions on repeat. it's a similar formula and it only gets content in Expansion Packs.

Warframe is probably the better comparison for their plans at least; Destiny I think is a bit too unwieldy.

I'm taking a risk on it, haven't gone for the PC release, being patient and I'll go for PS 4. Worst case is I can trade it in for something else down the line that way.

Same. It's like other looter shooters, it's gonna take a while to find its stride.