And also cuz Anthem was bad.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.I’m reminded that Ubisoft is releasing their newest installments of Assassin’s Creed & Watch Dogs, both triple-a open-world Games a month apart from each other.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Ubisoft actually may have helped kill Live Service enthusiasm for the industry because they did a focus test and discovered that Live Service models actually are bad for long term profitability if you're a game company.
I can find the link but basically, it amounted to, "We have discovered that if you make video games, that live service is a bad model to follow. Keeping someone playing the same video game continuously discourages them from buying other video games."
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 3rd 2020 at 2:20:02 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Who could've possibly thought?
Trans rights are human rights.x5
That and anyone in their usual audience was utterly alienated by Anthem being so radically outside of any of their previous products. No RPG mechanics. No real story or characters to super grab onto. Not a whole ton to really make fan art or a fan community out of.
Even the most cynical gamer that hates Bioware's fan crowd can (hopefully) apprecieate that the fan art, fan fic, and general fan community is also what kept a lot of those games popular even a decade later.
Same thing that always happens. Something is a profitable hit, and the entire industry pivots to copying it as widespreadly as possible.
Happened with World of Warcraft. Happened with Grand Theft Auto. Happened with Call of Duty.
Although I think the only company that saturates the market with clones of its own games as often as Ubisoft is Koei.
That said, Anthem does kinda look like my jam on the surface I think I'll pick it up from the bargain bin soon. Worth at least a playthrough of the story. EDIT: Nevermind found Space Lords.
(Still find the "The game displays bigger numbers but they may or may not actually mean anything" as the most hilarious thing in video game history)
Edited by ShirowShirow on Aug 3rd 2020 at 12:55:52 PM
Bleye knows Sabers.Yeah, I actually think the setting is pretty interesting, but the execution drastically needs improvement.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.More creative weapons & abilities for one.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."For what little demo time I had with Anthem, I found the special abilities far more interesting to play with than the guns. Might not be a bad idea to take the Diablo III route and make it easy to constantly cast your abilities, and with firearms being the secondary and/or long range options. I'd rather not Bioware copy Destiny and Borderlands too much and become focused upon the firearms, something Anthem doesn't seem to have a very good feel for.
...That, or just copy Mass Effect's formula. That was a pretty good balance between the two.
Ended up never playing this, as it turned out. But what I wouldn't have given for an MMO-ish, "endless" co-op shooter based on ME3's gameplay. ME3 multiplayer but with NPCs. Surely someone at the company thought of that.
At least Ubisoft realized their failure with the Ghost Experience update for Breakpoint, that not only allowed people to disable the ill-conceived and generally annoying gear level mechanics, but also firmly put the last nail in the coffin of Breakpoint's Battle Pass mechanics.
And good for them, Breakpoint's Battle Pass was pure idiocy, but, the person responsible wasn't fired - they were allowed to design Hyper Scape's BP, which is even more moronic.
"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von LewisSo Bioware is making a decision this week about the future of Anthem.
Place your bets.
I'm Charlie Owens, good night and good luck. PSNID: CEOIII 1117I think it'll get canned, personally. We've heard nothing about it, and these days...much as it pains me to say it I don't trust Bio Ware to put out an actual good game. Everyone that made it what it was is gone now and I highly doubt Anthem's dismal failure will give them the kick in the pants they need to say "Hey we actually need to work on the game to make it good".
I'm skeptical on Dragon Age for Pete's sake, and I love that series.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.Well I got the game because it was over 80% off.
The hilarious lack of sound effects during what's supposed to be a crushing defeat in the opening mission was hilariously bad but other than that I'm impressed by how the game looks.
Will decide later on how the game plays.
I find it amusing that I might only have like, a year to play before they shut down the servers.
Edited by ShirowShirow on Feb 21st 2021 at 10:34:37 AM
Bleye knows Sabers.Okay so so far I've failed missions because a glitch caused my "Forge" screen to overlay over gameplay permanently until I reloaded, because I lost connection to the EA servers and because I spent three minutes to make a sandwich during a single-player expedition.
I've only played five missions today. More than half of my gameplay has been derailed because of the damn always-on live service internet bullshit.
Edited by ShirowShirow on Feb 21st 2021 at 10:57:52 AM
Bleye knows Sabers.It was inevitable, but BioWare is pulling the plug on Anthem NEXT.
Sorry if anyone here loved playing it...
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Feb 24th 2021 at 11:25:00 AM
I do enjoy playing it but, really, the game doesn't seem to want me to play it.
Bleye knows Sabers."Remember when we said how we were working hard to fix it? We lied"
Hopefully the dismal failure persuaded the Bio Ware higher-ups at Edmonton to get their act together. I'm already worried enough about the future of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and with Dragon Age 4 already on the way I'm really cagey about whether or not it will be good.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.It's weird how Anthem's problem seemed to be a lack of Executive Meddling. I mean, there was a lot of stuff going on (they were trying to make a Destiny killer and weren't even allowed to say the name Destiny), but there was an appalling lack of focus from start to finish. They didn't have even a solid story, world, or gameplay until an exec said "this flight thing seems cool, stick with that."
I am worried about their other properties, but at least there's already stuff going on there, so they're not trying to pull a killer app out of thin air again.
They've already had to restart development from 0 once after ditching their original work, and a lot of the people working on that 2nd attempt at making it, including the guy specifically in charge of the project left the company, and he's been replaced by the same guy who failed to deliver the Anthem reboot.
Yeah, from a creative standpoint I'm not exactly concerned. But the complete lack of organizational structure seems to be a real issue.
First Battlefront II kills the loot box, then Anthem kills the live service. Good job, EA!
Oddly, that's not really a future worry as flat out what happened. That's why so many MMO's failed both in creation stages and over time.
And live service is just another example of it.
No one played Anthem in part because, yes, they had Destiny and Overwatch.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 3rd 2020 at 2:11:42 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.