OPINION: Anthem's Overhaul Has Me Conflicted - MMORPG.com

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OPINION: Anthem's Overhaul Has Me Conflicted - MMORPG.com

In case you missed it, yesterday, Anthem-head Casey Hudson announced in a blog that the team was going to essentially overhaul the game top to bottom. I’m genuinely conflicted about this admittedly unsurprising confirmation from BioWare. On one hand, I don’t want BioWare to dump more resources into the objective failure that is Anthem. However, I do want to see the true fulfillment of that concept shown off to us at E3 2017. Let’s discuss.

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Avalarion

It takes balls to come out and say the game you launched sucked. A complete rework of a game can work ,FF14 proved as much. I wager Bioware has acces to the same resources of that of SE to put some real effort in to the rework.

I get what you say about leadership tough, FF14 became as great as it is now because Yoshi had a vision for ARR.

Groqstrong

Given the length and time it takes to make games from scratch. Im all for Bioware taking their existing assets and making the game better. NMS and FFXIV come to mind.

jgDuffay

well, now they just need to mod their game to make it fun. So they are probably good enough to make a mod ?, I really do believe that Anthem can be a good game, if you get the right people behind fixing it up. But as stated in the article, there probably is none left at Bioware to do that task, but it's probably either getting the expected income from anthem or go bankrupt, the dev's are probably thrilled to do more crunch on anthem ! xD

Sovrath

Isn't the Dragon Age series developed in Canada and Anthem developed in the US/Texas?

I don't think Bioware has to list all the things that led them to making a game that wasn't well received. They could, but I'm sure there's a lot that goes into that stone soup.

If they say they are going to remake it then it's not a fan project. They aren't doing it for the love of the game (or at least not entirely) but it's a business decision.

Now, they might not have the leadership in place to see this through or they made EA promise to not interfere so they can do what they need to do. We don't know.

All people can do is wait and see. I doubt it will negatively affect other projects if those other projects are a priority.

Iselin

Sovrath said:

Isn't the Dragon Age series developed in Canada and Anthem developed in the US/Texas?

No. The lead studio for Anthem was Bioware Edmonton and Bioware Austin kind of supported them. That might have been one of the bigger problems since the Austin team was the one with actual experience in online multiplayer games and what works and deosn't work in them thanks to SWTOR and the Edmonton team didn't have a clue about that.

Kind of the same thing with Bethesda doing FO76 with support form ESO's ZOS team instead of the other way around.

If you want a big read with all the gory details the old Kotaku article is pretty good: https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

hallucigenocide

i really want a proper anthem. the flight + combat is just so damn fun that all the other shooters feel dull in comparison. also i hate that most third person shooters seem to be all about that cover crap.

however this is bioware and i'm not sure they can do much more than small fixes.
to get this game where it needs to be they'd need a lot of money and competence.

also seems like there's a couple of new competitors about to step up this year so it may be too late.

Tokken

I don't know why they didn't just make the game right in the first place....

Vasel

They wanted to give us 1/3 a game and sell us the rest of it as dlc or expansions. They got caught on their bs and now have to do it right or let Anthem die.

momintim

Its going to be difficult to catch peoples attention at this point with all the big titles coming out that were coming in the spring now have been pushed back throughout the year. I personally have just crossed it off my list of things to play.

Iselin

momintim said:

Its going to be difficult to catch peoples attention at this point with all the big titles coming out that were coming in the spring now have been pushed back throughout the year. I personally have just crossed it off my list of things to play.

Yup. This is in the too little too late category. Could have been a good game but it wasn't. Time to move on to DA4 and prove that they still got it there... if they still got it, that is

Gutlard

I missed the game the first time, so if they release a good game now I'll be all set to check it out for a few months. Procrastination does have some positives!

Gut Out!

Octagon7711

Just have to wait and see.  I read about how the game was developed and how most devs assigned didn't know what was going on and learned much about the game from general announcements made by marketing.   Basically it felt like a good game that needed balanced stats all around.  

Gets me how they once improved the drops and said it was a bug and fixed it, and how they had planned to take our flying. O_o  Hopefully they will put someone on lead who has more experience with what consumers want in such a game.

rojoArcueid

If they make a proper overhaul (a la A Realm Reborn) then i would surely play it. I played the beta which was almost identical to launch in terms of content, and I have to say that they nailed the Javelins (characters). Now they just have to make an actual game and add those Javelin to it.

On the other hand, as other people have said pretty much everywhere, i rather they focus on DA4.

Albatroes

Honestly, anyone who's remotely interested in the "revamp" or whatever they're planning should probably buy in while its still dirt before they try and price hike.

Xiaoki

Tokken said:

I don't know why they didn't just make the game right in the first place....

Because they sat around doing nothing for FIVE YEARS and then when EA asked them where the game was they quickly made the entire game in 2 years.

Which is the exact same thing that happened with Andromeda.

A game like FF14 was able to pull itself up from the ashes because of Naoki Yoshida and BioWare does not have someone like Naoki Yoshida.

Datcyde

Vasel said:

They wanted to give us 1/3 a game and sell us the rest of it as dlc or expansions. They got caught on their bs and now have to do it right or let Anthem die.

This is Gold , why doesn't this post have make wilkes its the truth! I bought the game at full frakin price on Ps4 and when I found out found out ok you need 2 subscriptions to.pmay it in full on Ps4 I never played it and watched the terrible reviews and traded the game for less than $10 since value dropped so fast, there guys are s ppl greedy that they won't cancel.the game to rebuild it.

Bakgrind

I have to question why bother wasting time,money and effort on a failed adventure which just so happened to be development a couple of months shy of 7 years. I get that they want to save face, to learn from and make it better, but seriously the resources would be better spent on more successful game like SWTOR and other future projects than this one.

Theocritus

I always research these games before jumping in blindly...passed on it the first time, will most likely pass on it again.

Utinni

Avalarion said:

It takes balls to come out and say the game you launched sucked. A complete rework of a game can work ,FF14 proved as much. I wager Bioware has acces to the same resources of that of SE to put some real effort in to the rework.

I get what you say about leadership tough, FF14 became as great as it is now because Yoshi had a vision for ARR.

This may be cliche but I think FF14 relauch was so good because they are Japanese devs. I doubt the sense of defeat and regret at Bioware is anywhere near as potent as it was at the SE studio. You can see in the no-clip documentary that Yoshi's team was genuinely heartbroken. 

hallucigenocide

Bakgrind said:

I have to question why bother wasting time,money and effort on a failed adventure which just so happened to be development a couple of months shy of 7 years. I get that they want to save face, to learn from and make it better, but seriously the resources would be better spent on more successful game like SWTOR and other future projects than this one.

i've played swtor on and off since release but how they handled it is not really that impressive.
swtor rides it's star wars brand and that's about it.

bioware does interesting settings/stories
gameplay not so much
quality even less.

it's like they blow their budget on world building and spend what little they got left on actual development.

Wizardry

Avalarion said:

It takes balls to come out and say the game you launched sucked. A complete rework of a game can work ,FF14 proved as much. I wager Bioware has acces to the same resources of that of SE to put some real effort in to the rework.



I get what you say about leadership tough, FF14 became as great as it is now because Yoshi had a vision for ARR.

The only reason it worked for FF14 is because it is a Final Fantasy game, a very storied franchise.Yoshi had nothing to do with FFXIV,that was all a smokescreen blaming Tanaka because he was leaving anyhow and it looks good for the press laying blame then bringing in a new producer.I quit FFXIV because it is still imo the same game design,the combat and class structure is still inferior to FFXI.

Anthem was a horrible shallow game and does need a complete overhaul, a simple tweak here or there would not be good enough.Do i think they will actually overhaul the game and fix it,no i do not but it sounds good on paper.It needs top be changed right from the beginning with the exo suits idea.

I feel that ANY flying around in a game world cheapens the effect of the game world.

As to resources and SE versus Bioware.There is no comparison here,SE put a LOT of time and money into building FFXIV,i followed it from the Orange version many years ago.Anthem looks like a game whipped together in a year max with very little resources spent.Point being they could build another Anthem from scratch and still be a cheaper game than FFXIV.Yet again,i do not believe they will put in the work that Anthem needs.

StoneRoses

By now everyone should already be expecting this seeing as Square Enix created the notable trend.
If SE can do it why can't everybody else?

Shit how many suckers are backing kickstarters that are not delivering?
We got unfinished games launching, rinse and repeat, copy/paste relaunch to take your fucking money again.

For every game launched you have your suckers, whiteknighters, and the fuckers who wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

immoralthang

I would rather see Bioware making a new Star Wars game. Imagine a Mandolorian game with Anthem’s flying mechanics and the depth of Mass Effect’s storytelling.

Anthem’s flaws arent just in a poor endgame loop. The narrative and characters are cardboard placeholders. Not to mention Fort Tarsis is a complete black hole of fun. It’s a worse hub than Wolfenstein 2’s Nazi Uboat.

blamo2000

Seems like this would be a great time for them to add rpg elements and systems. Is adding rpg stuff for this on the table? Did they mention anything about rpg stuff? I just skimmed but didn't see anything.