You're awesome!
That's nice and all but our frustration is in the fact that it should not have to require a patch. Loot drops are decades old with proven ways to do things right. I know that there are plenty of you guys at BW who grew up playing lots of these loot-based games and it's truly baffling how core concepts are just largely being ignored with this game.
Creative freedom is totally fine with the items and stats and rolls and things like that but there has to be an underlying set of rules based on the type/tier item that constrain it to only pulling certain values.
One tip I would suggest is the ability to click an analog stick or hold shift on PC when hovering over an item to display the possible range that an attribute can roll so if you want to know if you got a good roll on a stat, you can easily see.
A nice rare item drop to allow re-rolling of stats or even adding an additional stat to a blue/purple/etc item would be really cool. Path of Exile did this extremely well with the Chaos, Blessed, Divine, Exhalted, etc Orbs.
I don't think you would get much push back adding something like that into the game. It wouldn't detract from the experience and would eliminate the disappointment of getting duplicate leg/MW items.
Even items (again from Path of Exile) that turn a regular item to a rare/uncommon would be nice. POE's currency system is hands down one of the best game design systems I've seen in the loot chase. Incorporating some similar elements like that into Anthem would really shake up the way loot works and in good ways IMO.
Again, I'm guessing/paraphrasing for the design team, which I'm not on. I'm going to try to corral one of them on here so they can answer questions and field feedback directly. Thanks for the response though!
Ah yes, 5+ years of development time but it takes the last month to learn significant, game changing lessons.
Probably more true than it should be.
Why are these changes slated for the day 1 patch? Our day 1 has come and gone yet we get to play the worst version of the game during it's most crucial time (the hype is high.) It sucks that we don't have any patches coming during the week and we have to wait until friday to get anything fixed
Short answer? Certification process and testing.
Kind of like there are 3 or 4 'buses leaving the station' at different times, but buses wait for more people (features/fixes) in order to maximize each trip, not every bus takes one person. Kind of crap analogy but the best way I can explain it.
Sorry for all the sourness you must be experiencing. As fans, it's hard to see BioWare's latest game not live up to it's notably lofty expectations. When your pedigree has KOTOR, Mass Effect and numerous others, people expect a lot. Hope you don't take any of this personally and that you get some time off this long weekend.
Hey it's all good - it's been more fun than the Andromeda launch at least :)
I've worked on every game since ME1 - so I feel ya. We have high expectations for ourselves too, and thanks for the kind words I really do appreciate it!
Any ideas or talk of putting in a decent stat page so that all these random affix's on them can actually be put to some kind of use in a build or are we just going to be guessing as to what our actual stats are like we currently do?
From what I have read about the day one patch this wasn't thought to be a big deal at all, so I'm just wondering if it will be in the first month at all?
It's definitely a thing now.
Any ideas or talk of putting in a decent stat page so that all these random affix's on them can actually be put to some kind of use in a build or are we just going to be guessing as to what our actual stats are like we currently do?
From what I have read about the day one patch this wasn't thought to be a big deal at all, so I'm just wondering if it will be in the first month at all?
And sorry I didn't really answer your question - it's being actively discussed, but I don't know the status. I'll ask.
I hear you.... Sorry I'm being so rough. I wish you all the best.
My only advice, look carefully at Destiny 2 Year 1, and the Curse of Osiris DLC that came right after. It took a bad situation and made it way worse. Its better to wait on a big release, than it is to scramble and get something out the door that no one is proud of.
All good - I understand the frustration (we are all frustrated watching everyone hit so many points of friction) - thanks though. Regardless of our emotions, we still value (and need) people to call us out, and make suggestions like you are - so thanks for that.
I dont believe you, honestly. This system has almost nothing in common with the games mentioned besides randomness and colorcoding.
The games in question have a rather robust item generation schema and not only could what you put together have been created in an hour by tutorial (as there is literally no pruning for incompatible modifiers), the wording is confusing and ambiguous in many cases.
I appreciate that there may have been snafus in the development cycle, but own up to them. PR as a last resort has proven ineffective. The division took like 2 years of updates to get to where it is, and you're operating at a deficit from their base experience, combined with the fact that that game already exists.
What you have is what looks to be someone direct translating what they found by just looking up key words. You have 0 UX or sorting support for anything.
I am guessing some low totem pole employees were vocal about how trash everything was for a long time and they were told to just do their jobs, and now they're being told to fix shit without being given the proper credit for having been aware of problems early on.
Either that or it was discovered the previous system was nonfunctional 3 months ago and this is what was thrown together as an emergency. There is no way anyone with any market awareness would have considered what you released as being even at a modern standard.
Even classic RPGs show aggregated stats.
All true - but I'm definitely not lying (I may be wrong though!).
Yeah, it works fine as long as I remember to do it before I launch. I just reset the desktop speakers back to the higher rate when I quit playing and forget to adjust it again when I play with the headset.
Yeah, we have raised the issue with Frostbite (we actually don't own the underlying audio code) and hope to patch a fix for this in asap.
The fact that you're giving us an actual metric of resources being attributed to community demands is astounding.
I want to not pre-order, but you guys make it so hard
Yeah - on a Sunday to boot :)
A lot of really talented people want very badly to make this game as awesome as it can be. We will keep trying!
Man are you responsible for the audio in this game? It's brilliant! An eargasm!
Not me really, a team of folks, composer, audio QA - takes a village :)
I will pass on the kind words!
I really do not want to be the jerk here but seriously this is NOT how we "need" to work together to address issues. You (and with you I mean the entire Team behind Anthem) need to do your jobs and deliver a polished and ready to go product because we, the customers, are paying for that. You make literal millions off this product so better deliver something and not make the customers feel like they need to be a part of the design a bugfixing process, this is pathetic.
Well I agree - we are charging money and should deliver quality (and I think we have, in a lot of areas), the other option is to go dark and just fix what we want, which I think is worse. I dunno, I'm not in charge, just trying to help who I can :)
Nice ! May I also ask if it's planned to add shield/arm vfx color customization for the storm in the future ? I've seen quite a few AI enemy storms with differently colored shields ( red, gold, and dark grey, if I remember correctly ) ?
I think a LOT of people have been asking for that - so I expect something but actually have no idea :)
I wholeheartedly disagree. Obviously you have to draw the line at some point, or you would never release. But, man, you have people 48 hours in and already hitting a wall.
Also, comparing yourself to other live service games is not a great idea. Destiny gets flack CONSTANTLY for the way they deliver content. Same goes for Division... You had a chance to be better, but instead you took it as an excuse to deliver your minimal viable product.
Well we will keep trying regardless and hopefully one day it will be compelling enough to draw you back (kinda our only option as devs now).
So I think I'm unfortunately part of those with a bug in their journal. I got the quest properly and everything, but I cannot access the tombs or progress at all. Why? Because I cannot see ANY challenges whatsoever. Though it has marked two of the tombs challenges as complete. As in no challenges show at all. The challenges tab is empty beyond the "Tracked Challenges" category, which has no challenges in it.
The really weird thing is that I followed a "fix" in the forums and tried using a VPN which worked. Challenges show ONLY if I'm using a VPN, which really, really blows.
We have 8 designers working on 3 fixes RIGHT NOW. I expect to be able to communicate an update very soon :)
+1 for fantastic audio. Annoying slow audio bug but apparently that's a sampling rate issue you guys already know about. But the guns, the monstrous-type mobs, the ambient sounds, movement, all sounds really great.
Thank you! Have you made sure ALL your devices are set to the same sample rate?
Tell the higher ups. Some of us are having horrible performance issues. Not to mention all the other stuff 🐒
Oh they know. We have all been cross posting the sh*t out of everything on here, and Twitter. Then there is the EA site, which also has a ton.
This won't go unnoticed or un-fixed.
Would you be able to add 'stop objective competition between squadmates' to the list of things to fix?
If I have an objective (or challenge) to open a chest and then do so, only I get the progress towards the objective, even though my buddy was literally standing right there.
As far as I can tell, this applies in other places too, like getting kills with specific weapon types, reviving allied Javelins, gathering, etc.
Anywhere where there is an objective that can be interacted with, but goes away once done so, should really apply to everyone in the current squad.
That way we can avoid situations like the Tomb Challenges, where it's faster for a group to split up and progress solo than it is to progress together.
Secondly, as a solution to the much-debated 'Teleporting to mission area' frustration, I saw a suggestion to remove that entirely in favour of adding the ability to teleport to allies at will (likely with some restrictions) and wanted to give it a signal boost here. I personally believe this is the most elegant solution.
Thank you for your time and commitment to this game. :)
Yeah, both of those are tracked issues being actively investigated! Thanks!
It sounds like you're aware that you released a game that isn't feature complete. You seem to be willingly admitting that you got Anthem's core down, but left additional content to DLC...
"We wanted to make a good core, and sell the rest of it to you later as DLC"
That's rather brave of you to admit.
Every live service game has to make that call I think, what you can finish and release polished within your schedule and what you can't.