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The wub wub destroyed the world, and here we are picking up the pieces of the most epic stage performance mankind ever knew.
Ok I'm in...tell me more...
The wub wub destroyed the world, and here we are picking up the pieces of the most epic stage performance mankind ever knew.
Ok I'm in...tell me more...
Oh hey, i didnt even expect a dev response here!
For clarification - when talking about "gear" here, do you mean weapons only, or also unique audio/visual possibilities for abilities (e.g. Storm Focus Seals)?
Sorry yes gear meaning abilities! Some of them received minor screen effects, particle effects/emissives, or color changes, but we want to keep improving them long-term.
Oof....
Man, you guys should probably have a sit down with your player investment lead and revisit this. While, on paper, absorbing the pilot skill tree into the component system may seem like a lateral movement. From an “RPG” aspect, you guys are effectively “removing” an avenue for player customization, in a genre where people obsess over wrinkles and nuances. Simply on principle, players want a character skill tree. Even if it’s totally for show. There is a psychological component to “tailoring” your pilot and distributing skill points as you see fit.
So I kind of spoke to it here https://reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/anlasz/_/efuur5b/?context=1
But yes we totally understand, and we are already working on plans to revisit it and make it better. Not sure how far out we are from seeing it return (and in what form) but we do agree that a skill-tree type of system for customization and progression is important.
The pilot level is so that you don't have to start all the way from scratch leveling up each javelin; you can pick up better loot for all your javelins, even if you're not currently playing them.
Unless you could respec your pilot skills differently for each javelin, you could get stuck with a bunch of increased melee damage on your Storm, which would be much less useful than increased ability damage. And if you could respec for each javelin, you might as well have ability trees for each javelin (which actually sounds cool imo).
Pilot skill trees would just pidgeonhole you into specific javelins instead of being able to change stuff on the fly. That's why it's good to have all of the actual stats on the javelins themselves.
Pretty much this. Because they were pilot skills they had to be agnostic of Javelin (pick-up range, health pack drop rate, ammo drop rate). And because they were javelin agnostic well... they just weren’t that interesting or impactful. They didn’t change the way you play the game or your builds because they couldn’t by nature.
So instead we created the Javelin specific and Universal components. With 10 Jav specific ones they are much more focused on specific play styles and build changes that allow you to better customize.
Unlocks different things im guessing. Based on the demo, Pilot Level 2 unlocked a 2nd Javelin and level 4 (14?) unlocked 2nd Augment Slots. I want to say the 30 unlocked Grandmaster difficulty but I can't remember.
Yep all unlocks are gated by pilot level. In addition items scale based off level.
Is there any way we can possibly get some sort of ground-to-air ability to use as well? Possibly in the form of a Strike system that launches enemies and yourself into the air to set them up for an air-to-air then air-to-ground melee combo for a quick burst of single target CC damage.
Nothing planned for that currently, but that could be awesome. We’d have to see what work would be needed to support that type of system.
Oof, gut punch right there.
Hope skills come back in an expansion or something.
So we love skills and talent trees, they just weren’t as impactful and engaging as we had hoped. So if/when we reboot it we’re wanting to make it a little more rewarding.
but improving in-game communication to teammates (in whatever form that is) is something we want to do.
If that's truly the case then a reply is desperately needed in this thread as soon as possible. And preferably not one referencing CVAA.
Thank you, u/BioCamden, for your time and attention.
Hey Manic I appreciate the tag and the heads up. For overall direction on in-game text chat and communications I’m going to have to leave that one to the Community Managers and Leads. That one has escalated well past my sphere of influence.
I’m pretty limited in my interactions with those systems. My domain is primarily on combat, creatures, gameplay balance, loot, gear, weapons, etc. Me stepping any further into that topic just leaves the potential for me to under/over commit, misrepresent, or spread misinformation. That’s the last thing I want to do. It’s an extremely sensitive and important topic so I’ll leave that one to the folks who actually have the power to execute on a plan for something like that. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help there.
From the perspective of a console player, what do the left and right d-pad options do? I can't remember if they were used to access the other emotes, or served a different function. If they are used for emotes, maybe you could consolidate all emotes into the down d-pad button. Pressing on the d-pad uses the currently selected emote, while holding it down would bring up the emote wheel (until you hit down again) and let you change your emote. Assuming left and right were used for emoting (again, I'm not sure), that free's up those buttons for a ping-system.
Yes that’s actually something we’ve done since the demo, consolidate the emote button. I’m not sure if they were remapped. But this is certainly a good candidate.
Read moreDISCLAIMER: It could very well be that everything I talk about here is actually in the game. I just haven't found any information on this, so I wanted to raise this discussion.
So what makes legendary gear exciting? That moment it actually drops, for one. Also all those situations when your build finally clicks together and you obliterate the enemy. And then there's...VISUALS. Stuff that other players can see. Fireworks that make you go "OH I WANT that thing!!".
For legendary weapons, exciting visuals are somewhat "easy". The gun looks different than other guns, more flashy, easily distinguishable. But by now, we all know that abilities are where it's really at.
I really hope that legendary abilities come with more than "just" interesting perks. There are so many ways in which legendary abilities could stand out from their "base" versions, especially in a game without PvP (and therefore no nee...
So this is something that we talk about a lot and it’s certainly an important aspect to these types of games. One thing we did get to do some of, but nearly as much as we wanted, was unique VFX and audio for the Masterwork gear. Some of the have unique models or color variants.We also do have the gun colors/meshes for Masterworks that you mentioned.
That being said, we do want to spice these up if we can.
Hmm that’s entirely fair. Is there a way to code it where if status applied by Inty aura then enemy=primed? We definitely don’t want the exploitation, just would be nice, all the same though, with these other changes and Inty ult being the an hero ult, I’m not bothered without it.
Thank you for the response boss, you (and everyone else at BW) absolutely are rocking it and it’s such a huge difference for us all.
Not sure if we could support something like this, but potentially. And thanks for the kind words shadow!
Are pilot trees still a thing or has the idea been scrapped?
So Pilot Skills as previously implemented won’t be in for launch. We largely redesigned the components system to fit that need for power increases and build defining support stats. We may revisit this system in the future.
Doing the Lord's work, friend. I didn't have the cohones to do it myself.
We talked about this today. The work that Respawn did with this system is incredible and very intuitive. Certainly good inspiration.
I can’t speak to any immediate plans, but improving in-game communication to teammates (in whatever form that is) is something we want to do.
/u/BiowareBen any chance you able to spread some love on this topic?
Hey yes this is something we are aware of and have addressed. At the moment I can’t remember if this made it in for launch or for shortly after, but it is a known issue.
Read moreSo to double check, even team mates can’t combo off of Inty aura? So as Inty, I go and drop a venom bomb on a scar scout, get the acid aura by combo’ing that myself, then zip over to that legendary enforcer with the aura, and apply the acid to him, that elemental effect can not then be detonated by anyone to include my team mates?
I understand not being able to combo it myself because then I would have a permanent acid aura, however it would be very good, tactically, if my team mates could combo off of it, particularly since inty aura should theoretically have the best chance of applying status/primer to boss level mobs. One could open a fight/damage phase on a boss with int comboing to get the aura to keep acid on the boss for as long as possible and then the ranger could detonate for the damage, otherwise it effectively plays out that on boss fights Inty is lacking.
Though if it’s by design that elemental spread doesn’t allow another combo I understand ...
That last part is exactly why we limited it. A single Storm player could freeze 5-6 legendary enemies down permanently with very little effort.
However, the limitation on teammates may be something we reconsider. But again then you could lockdown with two Storms. It just gets a little too exploitable.
Why wouldn't you make it so if you reapplied the same effect, but after being comboed, that would allow it to be comboed again? Having to wait for an effect to fall off wastes time, especially when you get into grand master difficulties.
In practice this doesn’t seem to be a problem. At least from what we’ve played/tested so far. Most of your primer gear pieces are close enough to that status effect duration that it’s maybe a couple seconds between. Time you can fill with melee, guns, alternate gear, etc. The only time this really plays a factor is when multiple teammates are running the same primer type. If this becomes a problem we could take a look.
I am kind of saddened to hear this - the ability to constantly chain combos and shut down adds at the cost of being in the thick of it because you're reliant on your melee was my favorite part of storm - it encouraged very aggressive play, versus its sounding like this change will encourage floating up in the rafters.
But that risk-reward wasn’t restricted to melee. You could permanently lockdown 5-6 targets at nearly any range by rotating the combo over and over. It was pretty broken.
I encountered some confusing behavior with interceptor auras in the demo and I'm hoping you can clarify.
- With an aura up, it didn't seem that I could trigger combos, even on status effects that had not been comboed (e.g. fresh effects using different elements and applied by teammates). Is this intentional? If it's not, would the aura from the new combo overwrite my existing aura or stack with it?
- Interceptor ice and acid auras behaved differently from one another. I could apply ice, combo and trigger the aura, apply ice to a second target via the aura, and then combo that second target once my aura wore off but the target was still frozen. Substituting acid for ice, I could not combo off the second target in the same situation. Which is intended?
The first one is something we need to look into. This doesn’t sound like it’s working as intended to me. My guess would be we want to always allow combo and you’d inherit the aura of the last primer you combo’ed. I’ll double-check.
This second one is not working as intended. When Storm and Interceptor apply additional status effects via their combo, those targets are not able to be combo’ed. This is because it was extremely easy to lockdown ~5-6 creatures with 1 Storm by just rotation the combo chain over and over, forever.
Are there any concerns about how this might discourage use of gear that extends the duration on these effects since letting it fall off to reapply (in the case of a very high health target like those that would be found in higher difficulties) would be preferable with how devasting and necessary combos are?
Like if you increase the duration of the flamethrower’s burn, wouldn’t that lower damage to the target since they’ll be primed for combo less frequently?
Potentially, but we haven’t quite hit that point yet but it’s a good call out. In nearly all cases it’s still pretty beneficial to have the status effect on the target. It may not be optimal like you said but currently it doesn’t appear to be reaching that tipping point. If it does we’d likely review this again.
Do you know if there are improvements to this we can expect for release or would it be for some time after? The filter in the demo was frustrating because it felt like I had to choose between seeing the UI and seeing the actual world.
Likely not for day0 - but I think it's something we'd like to address soon after. I'll poke some folks again and make sure it's on their radar. 😊