Anthem (Bioware's new property)

Yeah Titans are an absolutely nightmare for a complete melee interceptor. Getting too close to them is suicide. I'm still trying to get used to the attack patterns of titans - especially remembering to jump over their BURNIN' RING of fiiiiire.

Okay now I’m getting game-crashing errors.

Dammit this game was so not ready for release.

And it should’t have been always online.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 1st 2019 at 5:12:58 AM

You know, I think that something went wrong during the voice recording phase of Anthem's production. Meet Haluk's mocap actor. Notice that Haluk has that kinda ethnic Verbal Tic, when he goes "Ay ay ay" or "Oy oy oy". So someone wrote that with him in mind... and then he got recast with Nick Tarabay, whom you might know from The Expanse.

I just had an Oh, Crap! moment. What can happen when one weasely bastard of a Cypher wielding an ancient Super Prototype that was built to kick urgoth ass meets the urgoth?

Sure, judging from the roadmap we'll see that in Fall at the earliest, because first we have a Cataclysm season (and I swear, I saw the Monument move those flanges right after release) and Summer is Scar season, but I do sense that September will start with a shit-meets-fan situation.

I really hope so. that stinger felt a little bit throwaway. The Corvus lot seeming oh so casual that the ANCIENT ENEMY THOUGHT EXTINCT is actually still knocking about. And it'd provide a new enemy faction.

That's provided EA commit to future updates post the initial 90 day road map. Which I hope they do. But there's a lot of traction being made by negative Anthem press (Mostly justified, due to how unstable it seems).

That said, I've had no major issues or bugs (One crash) and I'm enjoying it. Still find the tethering a pain but I can cope with it.

And finally decided to unlock the Storm, post campaign. Gonna take it for a run in freeplay to try to nab some drops and get the legionary challenges done.

Okay I played the game long enough to unlock the Storm alongside my Colossus & I’ve decided to return my copy to Game Fly.

Gameplay is fun enough but I got bored with it & it needs numerous improvements like to make Fort Tarsis go by quicker.

I’ll come back to it hopefully after that road-map pans out.

Be careful with the bugs, there have been a lot of reports of console bricking.

I've heard. Though some of that seems to be error messages rather than actual bricking (though that was only one You Tuber stating that the reddit thread had people jumping on the hate train bandwagon and maybe exaggerating the issue. I'm not sure)

But I am being careful to limit play time as the game has a hideous memory leak issue.

One thing this game does make me wish for - a mass effect game with jetpacks like this. Hell, a Mass Effect game with THIS as the map. Jesus, you could've just had Andromeda set on this one map, the settlers trying to explore and grow from a crashed spaceship...

I finished the plot last night and whilst the Monitor was a fun boss, it felt anti-climactic. And him having a ruddy STRIDER fall on him steals your thunder a little... even if it does net a heartwarming moment. Also, I still want to punch Owen.

One thing I would like to see more of - some expansion on the Escarii - hell, a couple of the buggers TALK. And they're made up of clouds of insects! HOW DO THEY TALK!?

Console bricking is horseshit according to a Reddit post by a Sony service technician.

Oh, you want more Escari? Like I said, Summer is Scar season according to the roadmap. And them making talking noises? IDK, maybe they vibrate some parts of their anatomy in unison to make sounds or something. Don't examine this too closely.

Well then someone is lying about the bricking then.

Or they may just be exaggerations from the crashes.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 5th 2019 at 7:57:59 AM

Sometimes a PS 4 fails to properly startup again which can lead panicky complaints of bricking when all the user needs to do is plug a USB in to fiddle with some files or something. It's not catastrophic, but a bigger deal than simply freezing and requiring a reset.

Anyways chalk me up in the "Totally excited to play in half a year when it's good." camp.

Yeah the game has issues, but bricking is not one of them. This sounds like people getting on the controversy train, over-exaggerating to get some viral notoriety. The village gossip approach as the story expands in the telling "Oh, Anthem crashed for you? Well, uh, it, uh, deleted my entire OS on my PS 4!!!"

It has some major architectural issues and some connectivity problems; but as consoles get more complex they are also more susceptible when running these complex beasts. Duty of care is with the game designers to avoid these things and this game should definitely have had another few months of QA.

Seems like they wanted to beat the Division 2 to Market.

So far I've only got some minor glitches - conversation prompts on the map that aren't actually there.

I'm looking forward to more Scars. My storm is AWESOME at annihilating them. Also, in the open world I've found some world events allow you to go underground for a second stage of fighting - which basically gives you a room of harvestable materials and a HUGE fight with Scars and Skorpions. And gave me 2 masterworks.

So pretty good fun all told.

Also, if they get mages in DA 4 feeling like the storm, then bloody hellfire - class for life.

Scars are barely harder to beat than Skorpions, honestly. And paradoxically, it's the Scouts that cause the most problems, not Enforcers.

Any truth to the rumor that Anthem weapons do fixed damage and that weapon levels only alter the displayed numbers, not the number of shots it takes to hit something (And that therefore level 1 weapons do the same or outperform end-game gear)?

Theres videos of people showing the number values are just artificial But I don't know if that's real

EDIT: Apparently Bioware has confirmed this is a thing (prolly a bug they claim).

Still, it's kind of mind blowing you can just say the numbers get bigger and not actually do it... and most people won't notice. Says something about us gamers...

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 6th 2019 at 1:10:44 PM

Heckuva way to kill the incentive to grind for loot...in a live service looter-shooter.

Then again the incentive to grind for loot was killed once you realized each gun type had only one model.

So adding insult to injury really,

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:15:41 AM

There's been some funny takes on twitter for this.

...Even if this isn't intended to happen, the fact that displayed values and actual damage aren't necessarily the same thing is rather concerning

Concerning, yes.

But also goddamn hilarious.

Between this and Fire Emblem cheating the hit percentages Video Games are trying hard to make us bad at math.

Presses the "Do you want to know more?" button

Go on...

Hmm, now I'm glad I gave up on Fire Emblem after playing Shadow Dragon on the DS.

As for Anthem...yeesh, are we going to keep finding new things wrong with Anthem on a weekly basis ala Fallout 76?

Edited by M84 on Mar 7th 2019 at 2:43:56 AM

Honestly this particular "The displayed numbers are lies" is something I actually expected from Fallout 76.

Fire Emblem rolls two numbers and averages them to get the number that determines the hit or miss.

So a 50% hit rate is 50%, but a 10% hit rate is actually 2%.

... But that makes a bellcurve.

Why would you do that?

Like, I can understand Anthem fudging damage numbers. Humans are stupid monkeys, and stupid monkey brain likes seeing bigger numbers because it equates it with progress and gets to release endorphins when the numbers jump.

I don't agree with it, but from a design/decision standpoint I can understand the logic.

I cannot get the "Lets roll twice and make a bellcurve and fuck with people"

It's the same "Humans are stupid monkeys" problem. The bellcurve makes it so a "Totally guaranteed" hit is slightly more "Totally guaranteed" in exchange for completely obliterating the player's mind for random chance.

I don't see it as healthy, but that's because I work in a gambling hall.

I mean, its something I expected from Borderlands. Presumably with one entire series of guns specifically built around the concept and openly acknowledging and mocking it. It fits their thematics.

With Anthem... Like, I get that its cool to have big numbers, but isn't that lie going to be REALLY obvious pretty fast and result in a lot of people not understanding your game systems? Which is something a whole set of player base gets their fun out of learning???