Anthem

Anthem Dev Tracker




18 Feb

Comment

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?

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

Comment

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.

Well said - thanks and I'm sure the live team has ideas that are similar to TWAB.

Comment

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.

Yep! I covered that in another post - I'll recap:

Basically the sample rate can be changed by USB/Bluetooth devices - this causes Frostbite to either play to fast or slow depending on what it was.

The fix is to set ALL your audio devices to the same sample rate (48k recommended) - then when you switch back and forth it should no longer occur! Hope that helps!

Comment

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.

Thanks!

Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Did this happen after you crafted and equipped it?

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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.

Thanks! Me too :)

Comment

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.

That is EXACTLY our goal, so thanks for the support!

Comment

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.

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!

Comment

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

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.

Comment

Originally posted by Woolfus

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.

Comment

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 Ex...

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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!

Comment

Originally posted by Vindicer

You're awesome!

Comment

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.

Fo...

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Good feedback, thanks!

Comment

Originally posted by isaeus-

/u/BioWareJer I fixed the progression bug on my end where all the challenge items are completed, but you can’t interact with the tomb. I visited another tomb and went back to the bugged Tomb of Yvenia. I was able to pick up the quest item and complete the Tomb quest.

Nice, thanks for sharing!

Comment

Originally posted by Nihkou

While i'm also onboard of this kind of stat meter, i feel like it'd be best left for everyones personal use. Making it squad wide and displaying everyone's stats to everyone may lead to some Freelancers getting upset over the perfomance of others, leading potentially to toxicity among Freelancer teams. But, i'm no expert on the subject, just my 2 cents!

Thanks!


17 Feb

Comment

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?

And sorry I didn't really answer your question - it's being actively discussed, but I don't know the status. I'll ask.

Comment

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?

It's definitely a thing now.

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Originally posted by EthioSalvatori

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!

Comment

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.

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.

Comment

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 ...

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All true - but I'm definitely not lying (I may be wrong though!).