Anthem

Anthem Dev Tracker




29 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by XorMalice

we're currently having a lot of internal discussions on the future of loot and progression

I'll be a little bit harsh, because this matters a lot:

At some point real soon, we need to know how loot and progression are planned to work throughout the lifecycle of the game

Everyone talks about WoW or Diablo or whatever, but when they do so, they take for granted that the developers will, mostly, follow the same pattern that they always have. In WoW (or SWTOR), every expansion drops by making previous gear worthless, by adding levels to players. Then, as the expansion progresses, the player gains more and more power by finding gear. Eventually, this recurs, wiping the gear again and delivering more content.

Diablo did a similar thing early on- they raised the level cap, destroying all the (real money purchased in some cases!) loot that everyone had spent time on. Meanwhile, Diablo has two overall types of cha...

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Thank you for the very well though out post! You make some really good points, and I'll be sure to bring it up with systems guys.

Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Is there something else you'd like me to say when a new issue is brought up?

This is currently all the information I have, but if there's a different way of framing things that you would find more helpful - I'm all ears!

I could say nothing if you'd prefer... but I tend to think that acknowledging that there's a problem and letting people know that we're working on it is the right way to go! 😊

Comment

Originally posted by donSefer

There's currently a problem with the newsfeed - we're looking into it... While that's being worked on, the news tiles have been disabled.


28 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by sonoma12

Did a design director of a loot based game 6 years in development just admit that their entire loot drop system is bugged?

What in the actual heck am I reading right now?

No... there's a bug that is awarding you drops for the wrong suit... that's what we're talking about. 😊

Comment

Originally posted by Mephanic

I see someone also got a legendary for a Javelin they're not even playing... XD

Yes... Yes I have 😊

That said this discussion is giving me a few ideas - going to head back to the office after lunch and check something (might be promising?)

Comment

Originally posted by berninhell

I agree. I hope your team gets it sorted out soon.

I saw your other comment about the internal discussions. I think we all look forward to some clarity on the path forward.

Any chance you could address the topic (at a super high helicopter level - no details reqd) of the loot quality calculation? Specifically, whether the calculation for quality of a loot drop contains factors that are predetermined at the start of a session (contract, mission, SH, freeplay) or whether every single loot drop has quality randomly determined when it pops? It really seems like something nerfs loot drop quality on a session by session basis and it's not an equal RNG chance from one session to the next (all other factors being equal).

Loot type (weapon, gear, component, etc) and rarity are determined at the time of the drop.

Hope that helps! 😊

Comment

Originally posted by TARichter

I just don't particularly understand why loot is this way currently. I personally stopped playing because honestly chasing a build was taking long periods of time to get any piece because there was no real way for me to chase anything specific and my luck feels extra trash even running 90 luck. I recall spending about a week and a half trying for the life of me to get a mw component for ranger as well as I still have never seen a last argument or a single mw light machine gun which were my favorite weapons all the way up to when I started gm1.

I just sincerely hope the team understands the problem. I can't speak for everyone but for me getting anything I want feels unattainable and ending a mission with a barren rewards screen after I salvaged everything is about the worst I've felt in these types of games.

As a comparison in td2 I'll run around for an hour or two and then have to pick through my inventory to clean it out after all 100 slots of my inventory fill. I...

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I think we understand what some of the core issues are... there's a huge problem with variance for example... with a large enough sample "everything is working fine". But the issue there is that that isn't the case for people actually playing the game... you don't get thousands of drops in a night for example - so statistics aren't really comforting there.

So longer term fixes to the base system will likely include reducing variance and narrowing the band between "lucky" and "unlucky" people.

Comment

Originally posted by Paul_Indrome

Speaking in my function as a programmer: That doesn't really sound like a simple bug anymore. That almost sounds like a fundamentally broken system in need of re-implementation from scratch. I am not meaning any offense and I'm just speaking from experience. When I try to adjust a system to correct a misbehavior and it takes me longer than a week working within the established confines, I start to seriously consider rewriting it from the ground up.

It has some development overhead but in the end it saves on HOURS of unnecessary debugging and builds on previously acquired knowledge, allowing a forward-thinking approach to its scalability.

Yep, and that's something we're considering. "Rewriting Loot" isn't a quick thing though... so regardless of whether or not we want to proceed with that, we're still left with this annoying bug that we want to fix. 😊

Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

It's ok, like I said... I understand that people are frustrated.

I'm definitely not the right person to get into the conversation about how we got here... All I can promise to do, is to raise it - and we'll have to see what happens there.

Comment

Originally posted by Gildian

If the drop chance for legendaries/mw for other javelins is a low chance and not some other issue, raising the drop rate will indirectly fix that.

In D3 you can always get legendaries from other classes but you get so much loot it doesnt matter in the end and it feels ok.

It would, but as I mentioned in the other reply - it still leaves us with an unknown bug in our systems... and who knows what other issues that might cause as we continue along.

Comment

Originally posted by braddeus

Well, it's two separate issues... and I don't think changing drop rates would be a good fix for the bug.

I would agree. However, what are your (I say "your" but of course mean the devs as a group) thoughts on changing drop rates being a good thing for the game itself?

That's a much larger conversation... we're currently having a lot of internal discussions on the future of loot and progression and this is tied up a lot in that.

Comment

Originally posted by berninhell

I appreciate your responses. My last response was cheeky and lighthearted fun, but to be serious for a moment, the lemon drop rate in GM3 content appears to .. have an issue beyond just RNG that exacerbates issues like the one discussed here. I posted a bit about it here if you are interested:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/b6gyih/i_might_be_the_luckiest_guy_on_earth_in_anthem/ejkhq6q/?context=3

Why don't you think that changing the lemon drop rate (even if just on GM3) would be an acceptable solution?

Edit: and to be super clear, by drop rate, I don't mean raining more loot, I mean increasing the chance that the loot that does drop is lemon drop quality. I've seen some dev comments in the past where the issue between loot frequency and loot quality seems to have been a bit confused.

Yeah, I know you were messin' around - I usually avoid joking around too much as it can get taken out of context 😊.

Why don't you think that changing the lemon drop rate (even if just on GM3) would be an acceptable solution?

Well... it's more that there's a bug in the way that loot is selected, and it's not working correctly. Adjusting the drop rate in response to that would be addressing the symptom - not the root cause. There are cases where you might want to do something like that... but generally, it's best to address the root problem.

Comment

Originally posted by blue_nation

Ah yes the good ol' non-answer answer

Not sure what you want man...

I literally cannot say more than I just did. I get that you're frustrated, I am too... but this doesn't really help. πŸ™

Comment

Originally posted by DisposableTowel710

When are you guys going to start a PTR to beta test patches and prevent these issues from recurring???

Quite bluntly it seem foolish to not have a PTR at all. These patch gafs are doing a lot of harm to Anthem and its reputation.

It is very frustrating to me because these issues seems easily avoided.

Clearly your test setups are not catching bugs that only manifest "in the wild." A PTR is the obvious solution this problem.

Also I noticed the "fix" for the armor bug is that is now forced to visual only all the time. People not understanding this may be incorrectly telling you it is still bugged dur to perceptual bias.

It would be worth explaining you can see your full amount of health pips when taking damage. The pip shadows are fleeting and you have to pay attention to notice them.

I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I can't comment specifically on a player test environment - but I think we are in agreement that it would be good to have one set up.