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What's wrong with Anthem exactly?
FuryV
Member UncommonPosts: 515
As many others I'd been waiting for a long time for Anthem to come out, although as soon as it was released I saw it had been getting extremely bad reviews. What exactly went wrong? Is it really THAT bad of a game, or are people exaggerating? What I've heard so far about it is that there's hardly any content, especially at endgame, but does this necessarily mean it's ALWAYS gonna be like this? A lot of games have launched and received bad reviews straight away, yet made some necessary changes and ended up being a must buy (Elder Scrolls Online for example).
What makes The Division 2 far superior to Anthem? I keep seeing articles claiming that Division 2 is everything Anthem SHOULD have been. Is Anthem destined to become a game comparable to Fallout 76, and lose all of its players, or do you think it'll be able to turn things around and get people playing again?
It's a shame as I've wanted to play a brand new looter/shooter for a while now and had always been set on Anthem, but if I'm gonna be investing my time on a game over the next year or so I'm finding myself being drawn more towards The Division 2, which is weird considering I always preferred the looks of Anthem.
Comments
I hope Anthem fails horribly. I want the failure of this game to send a message to these studios and publishers that this is no longer an acceptable business model.
I am completely fed up with the toxicity of the AAA games industry - their practices are openly hostile towards consumers and employees alike. Publishers having record years and firing 800 employees, or a game selling 7.3 million copies to be called a "disappointment" is disgusting and it makes me feel very sorry for passionate people who work on games. Rushing half-baked games to market and charging full price plus yearly passes with the intention to patch them over the course of year(s) is openly hostile towards consumers.
Load screens killed it for me primarily. On the PS4 it was awful. Trying to run a mission - "you're too far from your group"... >BAM< 90 sec load screen to get dropped somewhere only to see they have moved on yet again...
That's the simplest way to say it.
Although BioWare probably should have make more/better effort at promoting the game for what it is, which might have then save them from stupid comparisons to games like Destiny, Diablo or "Division 2 is everything what Anthem should have been".
But I guess that is a price you pay when you make something little different...
I was disappointed since their last game, ME:A, had hands down the best rpg systems of all 4 MEs, so I figured Anthem would have something worth playing.
Except with a lot of that missing...
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
If it all looks fake,feels fake,no immersion then it is nothing more than a bunch of computer code with graphics.
just like i complain about lazy ass cheap factions games giving us only 2-3 factions,this game right out of he box did not have enough choice in characterisation from class to actually looking like more than the same mech different color.
So then seeing them blatantly copy paste the same model in some cases right beside each other,you can see this was a rushed lack of effort game.Sure models get rehashed in all games but you can make it look less obvious.
Then the flying aspect.It became very apparent the cost cutting idea and why flying,they needed a way to just pretend there was this world but in reality just empty space with hub drop ins.They didn't want to have to populate the entire game world so just let players skip over it by flying.If you removed flying,then you would see just how weak sauce the game is.
One of the reasons i detest flying gimmicks in my games,it tries to cover up bad game designs by giving players that gimmick so many love,well idc about flying at all so it had no effect on me.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The moment to moment gameplay and combat in Anthem is AWESOME, the combo/elemental system looks and feels amazing, especially as they continue to address bugs. The problem is, everything else is kinda "meh". Not a lot of content and (until the most recent patches) stingy loot.
Personally, I still think the gameplay is great but I haven't picked it up since I hit level 30 because I'm waiting for them to add in more content. I know if I play now i'll get burned out by the same 3 strongholds and such.
Anthem also had TONS of loading screens, which prompted me to get an SSD because of how many and long they were. Go into a mission, load screen, get back, load screen, change your loadout, load screen, go back out of your loadout (since you can't launch missions from there), load screen. Division 2, after you first load in, there are no more load screens unless you fast travel or join someone else's group instance. Anthem's gameplay flow is broken up WAY too often, and I'll say Ft Tarsis is just a pain to deal with and grows very stale after the story is over.
I was also hit with many many bugs in Anthem, missions wouldn't update, so I couldn't progress, they would update but they kept tethering my squad and I back to the previous mission point over and over so we couldn't progress, the sound would cut out completely, and I got a few crashes. The mission issues weren't infrequent either. The only issues I've had with the division 2 so far were the skill bugs that shut down skills early. This was a bad bug, but it was fixed within a few days.
Anthem's loot, during the first month I played, was very lackluster I rarely got masterworks or legendaries, the end game items with interesting effects, but got tons and tons of epic drops that I had already grown out of. With the Division 2 I'm showered in interesting loot, set pieces right from the start, then more and more gear with talents, then mods for armor and skills, loads of things to try out, and the weapons within any given category feel very different and LOOK very different, with Anthem, not so much. Anthem also requires you to finish the current mission, or return to Tarsis to see what you picked up, whereas Division tells you and allows you to use something right when you pick it up.
Lastly, for the open world free play, Anthem had no map markers to tell you what was going on where, so most of the time I was flying around aimlessly hoping an event would activate, Division's map is very clear about what is going on where, so I know where to go to find gameplay, or just wander around exploring stuff.
Disclaimer-I stopped playing around the March 7th, so some bugs and loot may have been fixed since then, but I got it through EA access and my sub ran out and I dont really see myself renewing just to give anthem another go, too many other games I want to play and too little time.
There is a lot of potential in the game but it's going to take while to flesh out. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying I believe it will be around for a while. Sales have been better than the reviews would seem to merit.
A $20 dollar DLC for The Witcher 3 has more content than Anthem that costs $60.
Don't get me wrong I have a blast playing anthem, it is fun but now that im playing division 2 I don't feel a need to log into anthem. In Div2 I can see and feel there is more to do in just the first couple hours of the game then what I can get in anthem after playing the entire game. I really hope anthem comes together and I would say give it a go but just know what your getting into as well.
Its a good game that is lacking but with a good future should bioware/ea keep there end and actually deliver what they say. Things still need to be added that imo should have been there at launch.
In short, good fun game but not worth 60.
They made over $100M despite officially selling the game for six days in Feb.
Coupled with.their success with Apex, is it any wonder EA doesnt really care what some people think.
Gamers will buy practically anything these days if enough hype is applied, why would they bother to change?
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-20-npd-anthem-was-the-best-selling-game-of-february
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-22-superdata-apex-legends-had-best-ever-launch-month-for-a-free-to-play-game
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