[2019] [Spoilers] Bug Report and Thoughts from a maxed player

Originally posted by Nishimba

Hey r/AnthemTheGame! I'm Nishimba and I've been playing the Anthem Demo (obviously) on PC. I don't intend the title to sound like I'm bragging, but I thought that you might consider my thoughts to be more trustworthy. I've played the game for 13 hours, and I've got all 19 gear on my Storm (which appears to be max gear in demo). I'm loving the game so far, currently I'm going through and completing as many available challenges as possible to get all of the Blueprints + more Coin etc.

tldr, game is great, some issues, some negative thoughts, but it's still a fantastic experience.

So far the game has been a great experience. I've had a few hitches here and there, some rubberbanding, some infinite loads, sometimes getting booted to the main menu, and so on. But other than that it's been fantastic. First I'll cover what bugs and issues I've found so far, then I'll go into my full thoughts on some of the game systems. So here we go!

Bugs:

• Scar Snipers will occasionally shoot through solid objects such as rocks.
• Scar Sniper bullet trails will occasionally not appear, leaving with the sound effect only for evading.
• Voice lines do not originate from the player model saying them.
  • This is shown when playing world events when saving freelancers, the voice lines will not originate from the freelancer which is really strange.
  • This is also shown in the bar in Fort Tarsis, the ambient noise is coming from the walls, as opposed to being produced by people in the bar.
• Audio fails many times. I've had audio cut out all together, I've had the Scar Sniper audio not play sometimes (which makes evading sniper shots very difficult).
• Assault rifle audio occasionally does not play at the start of the clip after reloading.
• When using assault rifles with burst fire, a burst will occasionally fire during reload.
• Other players will occasionally appear as though they are constantly shooting, even during reloads.
• During "Expedition Complete" screen, XP bar, Compass, and Objectives are all shown as well.
• When in the "Expedition Complete" screen following Freeplay, it will show the player as being level 0, and even if 2nd Javelin has been unlocked, it will tell you that you have unlocked a new Javelin again.
• If not using the vanilla helmet option for any given Javelin, the textures for the helmet will be shown when getting into the javelin, as opposed to sliding down onto the players face as they should.
• Storm ultimate ability UI will occasionally randomly(?) come up, and can only be dismissed by charging your ultimate and discharging it.
• During the Signal segment of the "Silence The Relic" part of the Stronghold, the Skorpions may not spawn. This just means you wait around for a couple of minutes for the signal to reach full strength with nothing to do.
• At the start of the stronghold my ultimate bar has been full with the button prompt present, but I do not actually have the ultimate and I cannot press the button. Due to this, I can't see when my ultimate actually is charged, and I need to spam the button until my ultimate is used and the bar is emptied.
• When reviving, the screen will say "000" (for the downed person") and the hold circle will be full for the person who is doing the repair, but the person getting repaired will not stand up, and the process needs to be repeated to actually get them up.
• When hovering over "New Messages" on the news page, and then pressing Enter, you see a "System Messages" screen. Pressing enter again on this screen causes the game to lose focus for some reason.
• When entering your Javelin, the entire "Summary" page may appear orange.
• Storm's Wind Wall will occasionally not place, despite the graphic showing where it will place and using the ability. This is weird because I can see where it's going to go, but when I click my button nothing happens and I've wasted an ability.
• Storm Ultimate orbs that show where you are going to put the ultimate go infinitely far back, but the ultimate actually has a radius. This means that even though it looks like I should be able to put the ultimate far away, the ultimate will actually take effect closer to me than the graphic shows.
• Storm Glacial Spear ability distance isn't very clear, sometimes I'm too far and sometimes I'm not, but there is no way to tell this.
• You are unable to dismantle an item if it was just unequipped. e.g if I equip a new gun, I cannot salvage the previous gun that was in that slot even when it is not equipped on another Javelin, another Loadout, anything. I often want to scrap old abilities for newer ones, but for me to scrap an ability that I just unequipped I need to leave and reopen the forge to salvage it.
• Colossus text about Mortar Launcher causes last piece of equipment to have text cut off.

Issues:

• The player will sometimes get booted out of Freeplay, losing all progress made that session. You will get booted to an infinite load screen for no reason.
• Text inconsistencies.
  • On the repair screen it says "Cannot be repaired" (or something similar), so why can I then be repaired by other Javelins?
  • The two bars underneath Components said "Health" and "Armor", but Components labeled "Armor" improve health, and Components labeled "Shield" improve armor. These labels need consistency.
  • The repair screen says "Respawning..." after a certain period of time, but I never actually respawn until my team wipes, or I get repaired.
• Party issues. If I am party leader and I have set the difficulty to Normal, my party members will often tell me that the difficulty is on Easy, and I will have to change the difficult off and back on to Normal for them to see the difficulty properly.
• Mouse negative acceleration. I'm sure you've heard this plenty already but it's really off putting when you are so used to raw mouse input in games, and all of a sudden it's being tinkered with.
• Gatekeeper in the Stronghold isn't targeted with an objective marker above his head, and lots of players get confused during this phase when you have 8/12 Echos delivered and the rest are locked in cages. It took me a couple runs to realise we had to kill the Gatekeeper to get the Key drop that opened the cages.
• When two players collide one or the other gets put into a new position seemingly randomly, this can be quite disorienting, especially if the whole team is moving through small passageways.
• When on the screen to set up a mission, if you click to the "Consumables" tab and then directly back to the "Summary" tab, the "Squad" tab adopts a different appearance.

Thoughts:

Some things that aren't bugs and aren't issues, just general gripes with the game.

Menus. They are way too layered and complex. If I see an option I should be able to click it. I shouldn't have to click on the tab to get to it and then click on it. That's super clunky. There are just way too many clicks and buttons etc. that need to be used to navigate menus.

Swimming. Your camera angle is jarred when going into water which is disorienting. When you move your camera in water your player spins a lot even with a low sensitivity, which is disorienting. There seems to be some invisible orb around your player when swimming to stop you from hitting the top of underwater caves, which feels weird, perhaps this should be replaced with bonking like it is above water.

Text Chat. This is almost a requirement for PC games, as decided by PC gamers. Not everyone can be on mic at all times. Explaining "We have to kill the Gatekeeper" or "Come this way" in the water is really difficult without a mic or text chat, and that should be remedied. Text chat isn't just preference either, it can be an accessibility thing too.

Fort Tarsis. We need to go a little bit faster. Either an option to sprint or just a slightly faster base movement speed. It's a little boring to have to walk back to my Javelin every time I boot the game, especially if I've just restarted after a crash.

Controller prompts. When using emotes, a controller D-Pad is the symbol. Some prompts in game for actions like dropping items show a D-Pad prompt. This feels really weird on PC because I don't have a D-Pad, so I shouldn't ever see a D-Pad unless I had a controller plugged in. Secondly, the way we have to sort through emotes is awkward. Iterating through them using , and / is weird. Why can't I bind my emotes to arrow keys? 4 buttons on a D-Pad, 4 arrow keys. This would be really easy to translate over and would greatly improve the QOL of using emotes on PC.\

Enemies despawning. This happens at really awkward times a lot of the time. I've seen a group of Brutes disappear just as I was flying towards them to fight them. At the end of world events or mission/stronghold stages, any leftover enemies will just despawn rather than letting us finish them off. I enjoy the combat so let me kill things if I want to, don't just take them away from me please.

Now, on a more positive note, the things I've really liked about the game.

I loved the interactions I could have in Fort Tarsis, giving the bartender love advice and him accidentally killing a home invader, your fellow Freelancer Lucky Joe (can't remember if Joe is correct) asking you for advice about what missions he should go on etc. It was all really cool and interesting and I felt like part of the world and I felt like I was making a difference, it was awesome.

I love the way that every movement option flows smoothly into every other. Double jumping into a hover, flying into running, evading and ground-pounding with melee. It feels fantastic to play and it all handles well (once you've got the right sensitivities). Movement just feels incredible and feels natural, and it makes my just enjoy getting from place to place even if I'm not really doing anything.

I loved the story missions and how they progressed. It was good to get to know Matthias(es?) and see him interact with others (and himself). It was cool to save someone outside the walls and see them appear as an NPC within the walls that I could interact with, it felt as though the world was really alive.

I really love the customisation. There is so much depth to what I can do with my Javelin and how I can make it look unique to me. I think that the wear is super cool, making your Javelin look torn or brand new really gives extra depth to where that Javelin may have been.

Overall, I must say that the game is probably one of the most fun games I've played in a while. I've never wanted to just hold Shift + W in a game more than I have in this one, it just looks, sounds, feels, so marvelous and I can't wait for full release. Good work Bioware, I think you've hit gold with this one.

Cheers to everyone for reading! I'll reply to comments so that we can have a discussion if you've got any thoughts about anything I've said, or if I've missed a few bugs here and there.

*edit: Added paragraph about controller key prompts, and using an emote wheel instead of the current emote system.

*edit 2: Added paragraph about enemies despawning at weird times.

*edit 3: Added new bug about the game tabbing you out in the News menu.

*edit 4: Added orange "Summary" bug.

*edit 5: Added some Storm ability/ultimate bugs, and bugs with salvaging after unequipping.

*edit 6: Colossus text bug added.