[2019] The endgame loot system does not feel rewarding

Originally posted by Leimone

I'm currently farming GM1/GM2, freeplay & legendary contracts with a bunch of friends.

When more people reach this stage (you'll be farming GM1 for masterwork & legendary items once you reach level 30) people will really see how poorly the loot system works.

Before I point out the big flaws with the system, let me start off with saying that I absolutely LOVE the gameplay, the flying and the combo system, it's insanely fun and BW nailed it.

1. When you get a MW/Leg item drop, the affixes can be completely useless which is EXTREMELY underwhelming & frustrating. I do not want 20% Harvest Bonus on my Seal, neither do I want Pistol 18% Ammo as an affix. The difference between getting 20% Harvest bonus and getting 100% Element Damage or getting 200% Gear damage is HUGE. The game should give you relevant affixes to your weapons/seal/components, but the numbers should differ so have a sense of "always progressing" by getting higher percentage stats on your affixes. People will 100% quit when they've gotten 3 duplicates of an item they need but with useless affixes, it's just not fun and MW drops rare and leg drops are very rare to drop.

2. Affixes on items don't make much sense and there's no information about them. BW should right now just release a list of what every affix does. WHAT does "Gear 15% speed" mean? What does "Support +23% Luck" mean? What does "Ultimate +13% speed" mean? These are 3 examples out of 10-20+ different stats that no one I've spoken to understands what they do.

3. Why is there no reroll system? Why can't I reroll the affixes on my masterwork/legendary items? I'm guessing BWs "solution" is to get people to craft the same item over and over again, but with the affixes being so wide spread and the %numbers varying between 1-200 it's very unlikely you'll get something that works for you,

To have a sense of progression and getting a dopamine kick out of MW/leg items dropping, things have to change.

If you've played vanilla Diablo 3, this game suffers from the exact same issues and I don't understand how BW launched the game with these issues. Loot 2.0 is what this game needs.

Originally posted by Phobos_Productions

Don't want to sound rude, but whoever designed it did poor research and had no idea what makes a good looter / shooter

Originally posted by Psychotic_gecko

The only issue OP brought up that should be relevant at the moment (Ealry Access) is the inscription information. Other changes can/will come down in time as the game grows. Although maybe passing along that Masterwork/Legendary items should only have 1 other weapon inscription on it, instead of having 3 different weapons when we can only use 2 at a time... but again the tweaks will come in time. Thanks for the hard work on the game so far!

Originally posted by DeliClerk001

Please do not take away my ability to stack inscriptions on all pieces of gear. Add rerolling specific inscriptions, that much is needed. But absolutely do not take away from someone trying to stack +harvest on every piece of gear to enhance endgame mat collection or others that want to experiment with inscriptions and builds. That's all I ask.

Originally posted by Leimone

Glad to hear! I love the game and want nothing but for it to succeed.

Originally posted by horrificabortion

Check the rising tab. There are plenty of posts just like this offering constructive criticism whilst being respectful. You act like this is the only post where the community is trying to work together with respectful criticism

Originally posted by BashfulTurtle

Avid division players should be cognizant of the content void at the end of the game. Is anything being done to address this?

Thanks for your extreme work ethic, it’s highly appreciated!

Originally posted by RascalJack

I have to say, the positivity of the Bioware on this subreddit is honestly infectious. Thank you for being active with your community!

Originally posted by ArchbishopTurpin

The comparison to the diablo 3 launch is I think one to note. Random affixes and % are great, but the delta has to be relatively controlled for each piece of gear.

Diablo helped this problem with the 'minor' and 'major' affixes, so you we're never trading a damage increase for pickup range by way of example.

Not sure if that exact system would be right for Anthem, but maybe just a little determination in the loot roll would be enough. So if a roll comes for say, LMGs, all further weapon related rolls will be locked to that. Or if the algorithm settles on a "qol" stat like harvest or pickup range, the other stats are guaranteed to be in crunchy categories (damage, recharge, etc)

My 2 cents into the pile. (I spend wayyy too much time playing designer while afk)

Originally posted by BashfulTurtle

we are committed to this.

Love to hear it. You guys absolutely nailed the gameplay so far, I believe the content can be filled in. Thank you for the prompt reply, continue to be fascinated by the quality of the community engagement. This is a golden standard.

While I have your ear - I would like to suggest more ways to get coins once Challenges and more coin sinks.

One way to boost the vanity shop offerings could be player housing if done well. ESO sells quite a bit of RMTs through that mode.

Thanks again and I hope you get some time to yourself this Sunday!

The game handles like a dream.

Originally posted by Halefire

Ever since the gear reveal stream we have been trying to tell you guys that the affixes, especially with no reroll system, was going to be a disaster in endgame.

Why did we have to learn this lesson the hard way? The Division has been out for years. Destiny has been out for years. Diablo 3 has been out for nearly a decade. And yet here we are, making the exact same mistake all those games made. WHY??

In fact, it ended up being even worse than we feared. Why is +pistol damage rolling on an LMG?? Did we seriously just create an enormous pool of affixes with no restrictions on where they can roll? This is straight up amateurish guys, come on now. I can't believe this is coming out of one of the most famous studios in history; these mistakes have been made by multiple games in this genre in the past.

Originally posted by yakri

Please give serious consideration to releasing notes on what each bonus actually does in particular.

Right now it's extremely frustrating because there's no way to know if some drop is better than some other drop because you don't actually know what either of them even do in some cases.

Just a small amount of work here would make a huge difference to us.

Originally posted by echof0xtrot

if so, what was the thinking behind the relatively same-y nature of the objectives in quests?

• kill all enemies in an area

• gather echoes

• defend a point from more enemies

• gather relics

• a handful of puzzles

• boss fights

will future live content take this repetition into account when developing new objectives? I know people always shit on escort missions, but hell, even adding a few of those would spice things up.

was it a monetary concern? a worry that it would take too much time designing varied quests objectives? just because everything embraces its own grindy nature doesn't mean there should only be a handful of different things to do.

Originally posted by yakri

Well to be fair, half the reason why there might only be 10% horseshit going around is the incredibly aggressive post deletion here by the mod team.

Originally posted by yakri

Well to be fair, half the reason why there might only be 10% horseshit going around is the incredibly aggressive post deletion here by the mod team.

Originally posted by CKazz

Part of the trouble here is you have QoL meeting real 'field builds' type stuff.

The issue got even more troublesome taking away pilot skills and throwing them on loot.

IMO needing Harvest, Pickup, Flight Time doesn't work well as you should still be able to design a great synergistic build delivering the pain and hurt. Since who wouldn't want more Harvest, Pickup, Flight Time these types of things were Javelin agnostic and a perfect thing for Pilot skills... which you removed...

​

Originally posted by Kryptosis

Btw I think you guys are really nailing the community interaction too. On the front lines facing the (often unfair) criticisms in stride.

As someone in the industry myself I know how hard it can be to not allow the sometimes wholly misplaced unbridaled hate of anonymous users to get to you. So I just wanted to say keep it up! You guys have made something really incredible here imo. I'm 15 hours in and I hope to stay engaged for a long time.

Originally posted by RascalJack

Any time! It's easy for us as consumers to forget that this is a project the devs have put years into and care about very much.

Originally posted by MrDysprosium

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.

Originally posted by labatomi

Drop the day one patch today!

Originally posted by stoyo889

Simple solution is available:

-Add in a re-roll function but dont make it too cheap, dont make it too expensive. It could maybe use 1000 coins, and some materials that you farm from freeplay.

DO NOT do what Destiny did, removing random rolls completely is also another way to kill the game. Backfired badly on Destiny 2.

Originally posted by Brilliant_Schism

I'm so glad y'all are taking the proverbial bull by the horns from the start. The game is breathtaking, but as many have mentioned there are a lot of little issues.

The biggest annoyance I have had on Xbox is that any time I leave the game or it crashes my settings revert to default. It is royally annoying to have to invert flight and dive cameras every time I start the game (not to mention how it wasted precious minutes of my 10 hours).

I just figured I should leave a comment somewhere about this as for some reason I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere on this sub.

Originally posted by Neknoh

Perhaps move QoL to a post-30 system similar to Diablo's Paragon levels that is infinitely respeccable in the forge?

Want flight time? Move your points from gather to flight, eventually you'll have both maxed out.

Originally posted by Nudelraiben

You're doing a lot of typing for an Audio Director! *NOTE: NOT COMPLAINING*

Originally posted by BaconSock

Ah, well there's the problem. We don't need new. This is a HUGE case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". You don't need to reinvent the wheel here, just give us one that spins well. The current loot system in Diablo or even The Division works exceedingly well, really no reason to deviate from that. And it still gives you plenty of leeway to change up things like what we equip. Like with the components and the randomly rolled abilities and things like that.

I totally get wanting to do something new and innovative, but you're doing it the wrong way. Comparisons will ALWAYS be drawn. It's just what gamers do. They'll look at the loot system here and the loot from games like Diablo or The Division and go "Well in Division I can do x,y and z but here I can't even do x". You NEVER want to be on the can't side of that. Take what other games have and add, don't subtract. Especially when it's simple stuff like rerolling.

If you want it to be close to perfect, just copy what those games did. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who says the loot system for Diablo or The Division sucks. But what you're doing is closer to what Destiny has, and it's not hard to find people who don't like that. I would love to see this game succeed. The combat is fun and even just flying around is great, but this loot and the freeplay need a massive overhaul. There are other games coming, I'd hate for this one to fall by the wayside. It really doesn't take much to turn a Borderlands into a Brink.

Originally posted by TheBigLman

Your war room is silent.

Originally posted by arathorngr

Man are you responsible for the audio in this game? It's brilliant! An eargasm!

Originally posted by SwabianStargazer

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.

Originally posted by MrDysprosium

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.

Originally posted by Garrand

+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.

Originally posted by labatomi

Tell the higher ups. Some of us are having horrible performance issues. Not to mention all the other stuff 🐒

Originally posted by Vindicer

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. :)

Originally posted by MrDysprosium

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.

Originally posted by ITriedLightningTendr

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.

Originally posted by Garrand

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.

Originally posted by Belgeirn

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?

Originally posted by Belgeirn

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?

Originally posted by FlameInTheVoid

I assume this isn't your wheelhouse, but its relevant to randomized loot so here goes.

It seems to me that there is a common theme with randomized loot in looter games that becomes especially noticeable when there is no way around the RNG (e.g., crafting the exact thing you want with a high enough skill or some kind of rotating vendor stock with curated decent rolls). It seems like a lot of the time the devs just call a random function and twiddle the knobs until people don't complain as much.

I'm given to understand that even data science and ML fields often struggle to find enough people with a solid foundation in statistics, so I assume the same goes for game studios. But it really seems like randomized loot systems could benefit greatly from a regular assessment by somebody with even a basic understanding of statistics running some simulations and doing a basic estimate of how long it takes to get gear and how often that gear is essentially trash.

For something like Destiny, for example, the loot system is horrendously ignorant of the cereal box problem. To the point that getting the last few exotics you need is soul crushing in most seasons, if not flat out impossible for even most hardcore players. This begs for a basic bad luck protection system, which they've implemented poorly at this point.

In anthem's case, (the Diablo system, as it were) it's more a problem of how many useful but sub-optimal options should there be and how rare should truly powerful gear be, and whether it makes sense to include contradictory garbage in the pool at all. This is not so much a curated RNG problem as a proportionality issue. Before anybody sets any random ranges or makes any perk/loot pools, they should be sitting down and deciding how much of the pie is going to be in each "tier" of usefulness (e.g., S: 5%, A: 10%, B: 25%, C-F: 60%). Then, once they system starts to take shape, somebody should be running quick simulations of a bunch of drops to make sure the results line up with the desired outcome. Then, if the results aren't rewarding enough, start at the top again and twiddle knobs accordingly (e.g., change the loot pool so nothing anybody would call D-F tier ever drops, and bump everything above C up by a few points), then twiddle the random ranges and pools accordingly.

This seems like a basic design process to me that I used to assume devs followed some version of. But the more games I play, the more it seems like everybody just drops random calls in where they need them and just tweak them based on feedback and hope for the best, without any real understanding of how the tweaks will look and feel before they're implemented.

TL;DR: please find the biggest stats nerd(s) in the building and put them on the loot team, or maybe in charge of it. Make them do math or run several thousand simulated drops every time a change is made. Or do both, either should be quick after some initial setup.

Originally posted by Vindicer

You're awesome.

Originally posted by FastRedPonyCar

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.

Originally posted by Woolfus

Ah yes, 5+ years of development time but it takes the last month to learn significant, game changing lessons.

Originally posted by achmedclaus

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

Originally posted by Woolfus

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.

Originally posted by Owlikat

Just chiming in here to say that for me, as long as you guys don't give up on the game and work on making it awesome, I'd be perfectly happy to stick around to see how things go. I'm content with the game as it exists because it is what I expected it to be based on what I played from the demos, but it would be very nice to see it built into a fully featured experience with a very positive reputation.

I've been there before.. Many years ago, I backed a little game that was in closed beta called "Warframe". Bought in because I liked the idea of what they had going on, and.. Well, you may have seen how well it's been doing. Those devs never gave up and despite issues I hold with the game nowadays, it's still an awesome creation. I hope you guys can stick to Anthem and do something cool like that too.

Originally posted by Drinknrun152

I just wanted to say that I love the mindset shown here. Being willing to try things, but also being willing to take feedback and fix things if they don't work.

I sunk a bunch of time into Heroes of the Storm, but after recent events there I'm looking for something new and I'm really hyped for Anthem. With HotS Blizzard wasn't very good about communicating with the players, taking feedback on ways to improve, adding in badly needed features, or admitting they made a mistake on something. That game had the potential to be great but dev mismanagement sunk it. So far I really like what I'm seeing from you guys, and I really hope you guys are able to follow through.

Originally posted by my_name_isnt_clever

What a roller coaster that must be between each game launch. Everyone seems to think that it must be obvious during game development if a part of a game is good or bad, but it must be more complicated than that. No one wants to release any part of a game in a bad state.

While there are some who love to point fingers when they dislike something (and being active in the community makes that worse, they have an actual person to point at) I fully support you guys behind the scenes, even acknowledging that the game has flaws.

Originally posted by Insane_Unicorn

Have you run into the bug where the voices get higher or lower pitched when you switch the audio output device during the game? It's weird as I never have encountered anything like this but pretty hilarious.

Originally posted by heliumguy12

Don't you love it when people say 'dont want to sound rude' in order to get away with being rude?

Anyway, one thing I think us gamers note is that sometimes devs stumble on what looks like obvious roadblocks, because they were 'trying something new' from their perspective, but from the player's perspective it doesn't seem like a new take, it just seems wrong. Especially in a genre that's had as many false starts as the ARPG with later adjustments. There's certain things that we just expect to be baseline by now, not a 2.0 patch. Like: no layered RNG. Can mitigate RNG with effort. Playstyle changing loot. Diverse levels of rewards (things that give hardcore players something to aim for, and things that casual players can aim for). I'm sure there's more but I'm just going off the cuff here.

Honestly wouldn't be afraid of tossing out what the dev team is thinking in weekly updates like Bungie does with their TWAB.

Originally posted by marximumcarnage

Did you guys and gals feel like maybe you could have used an extra 6 months to really pump out a more fleshed out experience or was it more or less the gameplay is finally good and the content that is there is hopefully enough to hold over?

Originally posted by BioWareJer

I think we feel like that on every game we make.

Originally posted by marximumcarnage

The team should have delayed 6- 8 months and launch in fall. No Destiny expansion and no division in site. Would have gotten the time the game actually needs to flesh out bugs and end game content. It’s unfortunate that after so many games as services that have launched some with sequels that these problems for anthem seem like Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 year one issues. Which shouldn’t have happened given the public Out cry yet here we are again.

Originally posted by c0howda

If Path of Exile was on that list, I would feel more comfortable. They are the best in the business in creating fun short-term content that blends in with the core game to add to the repetitive gameplay loop. One of their founders is giving a talk at GDC about how they designed Path of Exile to be played forever. Hopefully some BW devs can take notes.

I really enjoy the moment to moment gameplay of Anthem, but time spent in Tarsis feels bad. Slow movement and the amount of npc interaction feels overwhelming. Also, I feel like the feedback the player receives when taking damage is lacking. So often I find myself missing health with no feedback as to how

Originally posted by Felix_Von_Doom

While we're on the subject of whose responsible for the Audio....when I played the public demo, something struck me as amusing: The sound file that plays after you 'fix' a relic sounds awfully similar to that of what I recall is an obelisk in Andromeda being reactivated.

Ironically, that sound file fits in Anthem better than it did in Andromeda. I'm glad that Andromeda, or at least the good parts of it, live on in other projects.

Originally posted by Thagyr

You make it sound like herding cats.

Just find one when its distracted. Tie a rope around it and drag it to reddit!

Originally posted by c0howda

So there appears to be a really easy way to farm MW and legendary gear. Putting game on GM3 and doing free roam and farming a route with likely chest spawns. This seems really bad for the game if the best way to get gear is not doing strongholds, contracts, etc. you can see this at www.twitch.tv/datmodz

Originally posted by Jerry_from_Japan

In all that research you guys didn't find the absolute necessity of having a character stat screen at all? Because that is a HUGE fundamental flaw in the game.

Originally posted by Karock44

I super appreciate how involved you are in this thread, in reading feedback and passing it along even when you're not directly responsible for the systems themselves. Thanks so much!

Originally posted by amadoose

You guys keep at it. Don't get demorilzed for the negative reviews from Youtubers: they do it for the clicks and for shilling because they get payed off. Specially Skill Up, brace yourselves for impact. The rational people know that the game has a lot of potential because its core is brilliant, and your content for it will deliver.

Originally posted by Stranglebat

With the Crazy maneuverability offered by the game i would love to see Chase quests, ones that really push the limit of how you handle your javelin. (Being chased or chasing both works :) )

You can take inspiration from some other genres as well. You dont have to be like only shooters. Have a look at some of the older space sim games like Descent Freespace. They had great mission variety

Originally posted by Belgeirn

Thanks for the quick feedback!

Originally posted by Vindicer

The Tier II and Tier III challenges for the 'Bombadier Grenade Launcher' appear to be missing entirely. They're not in the challenges list, and cannot be completed even when their objectives are met.

I can't say yet if that extends to other Grenade Launchers as I haven't cleared those yet.

I've been clearing weapon challenges all day, and the others seem to all be working perfectly.

Edit 1: The Tier II and Tier III '<weapon> Master' challenges also appear to be missing? That's a question, because the Tier I versions are all named '<weapon Master I>' implying there are other tiers, but I can't see them referenced in any of the 'meta' challenges.

Edit 2: Confirming that the Tier II and III challenges for the 'Aftershock' Grenade Launcher are also not present.

Originally posted by verymoist42

if people start to flame about random rolls its certain that the discussion will at some point lead to the idea of removing random rolls and introducing static crap like in destiny, ultimately killing the whole purpose of these kinda games.

please do not make it too easy to get that perfect piece of gear

Originally posted by VanillaTortilla

As one of the few people (apparently) who loved DA2, I say keep up the good work.

Originally posted by zenabiz

Can I also suggest that if you do change the rolls to be more item specific you change the weapons/items that have already dropped to avoid a lot of saltiness from people that already grinded. Thanks for being so active and the great responses.

Originally posted by Jordan_rockk

I firstly want to thank both you and the BioWare team for being so engaged with communication. I'm loving the combat system and gameplay so far, but I'm worried about the lack of repetitive/lack of content in the game for the average gamer. I understand that this game is a live service, but are you not worried that things may be added in the game too late to keep a lasting audience interested?

We are 3 days into the advanced launch, and people are already becoming uninterested and bored with the content and loot system. The combat system is fantastic IMO, but it doesn't seem like a big enough draw to keep people engaged with how monotonous the game becomes over a short duration. I was just wondering what you guys are doing to address these criticisms?

Thanks again for being so active in the community, I want/hope this game becomes everything the community wants (needs) and more!

Originally posted by CKazz

Thanks. I tried before release, had a thread on it, mostly got beat down.

Hope you guys turn it around, lots to do but you have a fun game.

My 10hr X1 trial went so bad (crashes, screen tears, reboot with plug pull, out of time now with troubleshooting) I'll have to wait on diving in unforunately :(

Original X1, haven't had troubles like this with any game across my library including alpha / beta / pre-release / emulated, if you need someone to work that I'd consider re-entering that pain, gamertag there is CKazz.

Cheers

Originally posted by Flostation

Going back to what others have said, diablo had some randomness in enemy design also. They had some elites with different abilities that were randomly assigned to make for unique challenges. Consider adding something like that to your game, at least in the GM difficulties to add for greater challenge. A bump in difficulty should NOT just be more enemy HP and damage. New fight components, more adds, more elites, more challenging strategy, but do NOT go the division route of more HP bullet sponges.

Also, as you consider endgame and the loot reward cycle, allow some reward for all endgame activity. Maybe you unlock elite missions by returning items earned for daily faction missions. everything in diablo gets you something in endgame. No time is wasted. No content is wasted. The have bounties, they have boss runs... lots of content to maintain the loot reward cycle. What I hear is that after you complete the main campaign you can't go back and do it again on a higher difficulty? Why?? You made the content. Why limit it to one and done? Give people a reason to redo that content and they will spend time doing it (BTW fix looting so you can't get loot from an encounter until you complete it to fix people farming titans).

Finally, I'm really surprised your gear/loot system is so far off from your other games. Mass effect had a way more involved gear leveling system. You had to level up your guns in multiplayer. You also had sockets in both dragon age and mass effect for modifications to the gear. More gear customization to fit your build is what you need. It provides more drops for people to collect and farm for. It also provides more control over the stats of their gear so they are not at the mercy of RNGesus.

Anyway. I'm having a blast playing the game. Please fix the play loop so I can keep playing it and so that content isn't broken down the line.

Originally posted by amadoose

Yeah. Just dont lose morale. It also seems the criticism is fake, there might be a campaign against this game for some reason and all of the criticism here is Influenced by YouTubers.

Originally posted by amadoose

Np bro, won't bother you any further but know the game, the world and everything is amazing and in excited for what is to come for the game.

Originally posted by verymoist42

keep at it, i really like where this is heading and remember to shoot everyone suggesting to remove random rolls

Originally posted by Vindicer

Hopefully you don't mind this somewhat unorthodox means of reporting bugs. It's nice to know they're not being forgotten, even if they won't be fixed anytime soon. :)

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Picking up ammo off the ground reloads all equipped weapons, but does not trigger effects that are triggered by reloading. I believe this is a bug (perhaps an unintentional one), as picking up ammo off the ground should never be detrimental to gameplay.

For a specific example, the 'Papa Pump' shotgun increases damage on a reload and requires you to be close to the enemy (it's a shotgun). If you kill any enemy who drops an ammo pickup, you won't be able to reload Papa Pump after the kill, and don't get the damage boost from its Masterwork effect.

Originally posted by Videu

Any luck with this? :)

Originally posted by Thagyr

If either of your cats can reddit, I'd encourage you to get one on here. For science!

If any of the devs are like your cats, then maybe go with the above suggestion and feed them coffee.

https://i.imgur.com/NMbvLud.jpg

Originally posted by letsyeetoutofhere

The people who designed this game did a ton of research and are avid Diablo/Destiny/Division players

Then how exactly did you make the same mistakes as those games when they launched?

I wont lie, i have a feeling EA is going to bring the hammer down on you guys. This game's launch is not going well and enough people are sick of the "just wait itll get better" approach to games as a service.

Originally posted by Wellhellob

Hello. Off topic but i need to know:

I have Creative soundblasterx ae5 soundcard and Beyerdynamic dt770 pro(250ohm) headphone. I'm using soundcard software for surround effect and it works very well. Probably best virtual surround software out there. Only dolby atmos can beat it but it needs support from game. This one works for every game. My question is: Which dynamic range setting you recommend for my setup ? What is the difference between them ? I saw ''headphones'' setting but i think it's intended for stereo. I'm using home theater currently.

Also i'm wondering your opinions about game audio, soundcards, virtual surround topics. Some say soundcards are useless, game audio worse than old games etc... I heard ray traced audio is becoming a thing. Sound is big part of the experience but people ignores it imo.

Originally posted by CKazz

You guys had me right on the line right to the release ticker and I really hope you guys turn it around, big ME fan - and then ME3 co-op fan, wish Andromeda's co-op would have had more time / updates, is what that is.

I had such a bad time in VIP Demo (on with EA support, level 0 bug, didn't play), played on a different account Open Demo (problem persisted) and then early release, I couldn't pull the pre-order trigger. Once I hear some key things are going better I may check in, but buying EA Access to spend half my time with bugs (tried EA support again) and no way to see if the game works any better for me outside of $60/$80, time to put it on hold.

There is a lot cool here, but here's just one example of a viscious cycle - I had bad problems, I missed story, I can't replay solo / private and even if I could it'd be difficult as its designed for mulitplayer, I've heard of replays playing again on a much more difficult setting -> likely that much more difficult to play solo / private duo or something.

I can start a different pilot I guess to do it solo or private small group, but there is no shared stash as I understand it either. So every minute of wanting to hear all the lines from story, side story, even contracts have interwoven pieces... nets me 0 on a main account, or I start again. But then stay away from public games, and playing (with at least most) friends. Putting all these together it's just so disjointed it's tough to sign up for that, even if my technical problems ended up getting a lot milder. It seems you really have to pick between story and friends.

I think it's unfortunate so much was held back from an early release patch, maybe the early release was a bad idea, wasted my sub / trial on it and then unable to validate further changes would help or not. You guys may want to allow a second trial, as instead of securing my getting Anthem it did the exact opposite, just way too problematic to play :(

good luck! really hope to hear it turns around, I'd like to get it down the road