Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) had one of the best, if not the best, communication system in Planetside 2.
If you're brainstorming about it, it's definitely a good source of inspiration.
Awesome thank you Padawan, appreciate the heads up.
When Apex Legends dropped did half your studio start playing it? I'm just curious.
Yeah lots of buzz and love for that game going on right now. Partly because it’s Respawn and fellow studio, because it’s an extremely solid game, and because a lot of us love BRs.
Why not have some creative skills that don't require one Javelin? Like losing X% HP will make you get a burst of speed? Or when you use an ability you get a small heal? Using a melee and ranged attack on the same enemy within five seconds will give you a shield? Stuff like that.
I think with slightly more time we may have been able to thoroughly rework the trees into more meaningful choices like this. Which is something we want to do now after launch.
All throughout the demo I knew my flight time was an issue. But I wasn't going to get the heatsink component because there were much more important things to have for combat. However, I KNEW, that when the game came out there would be a skill tree to address things across all Javelins, like flight time.
from https://www.ea.com/games/anthem/news/pilot-and-javelin-progression
"Pilot progression applies to every Javelin your pilot uses, and focuses on those aspects of being a pilot that aren’t tied to a specific Javelin. You can put points into flying for longer periods of time without overheating, allowing for greater mobility during combat, and fewer stops when traversing long distances, for example."
I also heard the same on a Bioware video.
This one person and one Anthem pre-order may not be a big deal to Bioware, but I feel like this is a bait and switch.
...
I’m sorry you feel that way, that’s not the intent. We want choice between abilities, gear, weapons, and boosts to you Javelins to be meaningful. A choice between a 5% increase to ammo count or a 5% increase to ammo drops didn’t feel like it was meeting that standard for us. If we can get something that satisfies that type of expectation for a talent or skill tree in a way that feels good, we’ll build it.
Bait and switch is a strong phrase when we are trying to be open and transparent during development, caveating that it’s a work in progress, and then making a change in our design decisions. Sorry it’s not what you had hoped for.
This is a huge mistake. Components alone can not fill the niche roll to make unique and impactful choices/builds. Its going to feel cookie cutter now. Also without the skill tree, the game can in no ways be considered an "rpg" of any sorts.
I guess I disagree. You have about 22 or 23 component choices in 6 slots which can drastically boost or alter your builds and gameplay. Versus agnostic pilot skills that never impacted your specific abilities or javelins.
For example there is a Colossus component that increases fire and electric damage. Combine that with the other Colossus component for combo and explosive damage. Seems much more impactful for your flamethrower and lightning coil build than pickup radius or ammo drop chance could ever be.
We know people like skill or talent trees, we do too. We want to revisit this in the future with a better design, more meaningful player choice, and more direct and engaging changes to you gameplay. The pilot skills as they were just didn’t do that.
Read moreI see. Thanks for the clarification.
"base benefits of components that specialize components". This was a little confusing to read, but I hope i got the correct interpretation. So the entire component itself will basically be what the skill point was? And take up an entire component slot?
Do you think people will choose these components over the major ones that upgrade damage and defenses? I don't think so... This was not an issue before since they didn't compete slot wise.
My concern is that this will basically be lost and ignored since players likely will never choose those unless they have nothing else available.
For example. Let's say I have 6x component slots unlocked on my ranger:
Component 1: Assault Rifle component (assuming I use an assault rifle)
Component 2: Sniper Rifle component (assuming I use a sniper rifle)
Component 3: Shield/Armour/Health (maybe more than one taking 2 slots for example)
Comp...
Yeah sorry that wasn’t worded very well. But yes essentially the more meaningful of the pilot skills were converted to components. The bonus of which is basically the sum of the full value of 5 points in that pilot skill previously. While you’re right you may take it less often, we also think that the options we added with components (specifically how they add to javelin specific builds) was much better for build diversity and customization.
In some situations you might take hover time over grenade damage because you want a hover build.
Just need to put /u/[username] into a comment and it'll ping their inbox.
So, /u/BioCamden, can we get any update/clarification on whether Forge access is going to be available via the Striders in Freeplay or not?
Hey hey! Unfortunately this isn’t something that will be in for launch. Pretty cool idea but no plans around it at the moment.
Does that mean that the same item which gives 100 armor at pilot level 1 would give more than that at pilot level 30?
Yes it would
Extremely disappointed coming from an RPG lover. I understand your reasons and I don't fully agree with them.
You could have made the talent trees Javelin Specific.
You could have kept them regardless of it feeling a bit generic. I'd still have prefered this over having them on components. Now I'm gonna find that "item i been chasing" and then I will immediately be upset because it rolled "pick up radius" mod. A big let down in my opinion.
I think there may be some confusion about how exactly we incorporated these into the components. The tree wasn’t incorporated into components by adding those bonuses to the inscriptions (randomly rolled stats). Those always included things like luck or pickup radius and hasn’t changed. What changed is adding base benefits to components that specialize components like “gear does X% more damage but has Y% longer cooldowns”.
Sure there is the possibility that you won’t get the base stat component you want off the bat, but in practice as you level up you see a lot of not all of these pretty early. Then the supplemental crafting system allows you to invest how you want into those random inscriptions while keeping whatever base stat that changes your gameplay style.
Again we are looking at whether or not we can and want to bring something similar to a skill tree back, but having one that was full of stats or passives that didn’t marginally impact your gameplay felt empty....
Read more"Air-to-air melee attacks. This allows the Interceptor to more effectively and repeatedly hit enemies in air, especially in ultimate mode." Does that mean that the air-melee cancel speed jump is removed? https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/ameypx/psa_interceptor_things_interrupting_your_melee/?ref=share&ref_source=link
Not currently, but that is probably something that we’ll need to fix unfortunately. Reasoning being that there are certain vertical and horizontal streaming limits in place to improve performance. This is definitely going past our streaming metrics, as fun as it is.
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!
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