Much to my chagrin, the loot love that Anthem was giving out turned out to once again be a loot bug. Feel free to go to the Reddit and read the 100+ posts about how the game was in a great spot until the reversion. It is definitely up to Bioware on this and their long term plans for loot, but it is still a PR nightmare for the sole fact no one has come by (at the time I am writing this) to “own up” to it. A simple:
“Hey guys, another loot bug was introduced and we weren’t happy with those rates for our long term plans. We do understand that it is something you would like to see but we are going to try a few other things to make inscriptions a bit stronger based on drop. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda….”
Hundreds of feedback posts like this
OR, basically anything. Just respond. When your bugs are making your player base happier than your game design, you may need to look at what you can do to get closer to that. Or at least respond to your player base. It’s not good mostly because they have set a standard of being reachable and open in discussing things.
Of course, as you may be able to guess by the title, I had a really nice string of Legendaries drop for me this weekend. I was hoping it was due to a change they made in the patch (which they could then own, and share with the player base) but I suspect it may just be luck. I had one Legendary Item (flamethrower) for my Colossus in the first 70 or so hours of me playing. This weekend, over another 10 or so hours I had four more drop.
The argument for a patch change is that they all happened after the patch. The one variable that changed, however, was that I was finding Grand Master 1 to be a bit boring and zero challenge so I started doing Grand Master 2 difficulties. Now, if you read Reddit you will hear that the time/reward isn’t worth the time to do GM2 over GM1, but in my case I am sold. Of course, none have a “God roll” on them, but I am happy enough with them.
The downside to this – if there is one – is that it was a typical “luck” and I am playing GM2 based off of nothing but a few lucky rolls. It is more of a challenge but not necessarily “more fun”, as it’s a less smooth experience, bad teammates are even more apparent (under skilled/geared) and with all of that in consideration it takes more time, for what could very well be not any more loot. My success is highly anecdotal.
Bioware has plans for better loot, but currently those plans are months away. As much as I enjoy playing the game the lack of a clear progression path (All 4 Javelins are Master Work now for me, but spending 90 hours for 4 Legendaries, and each Javelin needing a dozen of them, and THEN of course optimizing those rolls, we are literally looking at thousands of hours – of doing 5 repeatable tasks.
Anthem just isn’t there yet. It’s worth the investment and first 60-80 hours, but time to let it grow a bit. Of course I will be paying close attention and hopeful the devs get it right. I am anxiously awaiting a reason to log back in.
UPDATE: after posting this I read two similar articles worth linking. Both are bloggers that are current fans of Anthem and it’s potential, and we are all basically on the same page.
I’m not playing Anthem and never will but I’m finding the unfolding disaster fascinating to watch. Just read this back for a moment, assuming all you knew about the game was what you’d seen in reviews and news items and blog posts: “… another loot bug was introduced and we weren’t happy with those rates for our long term plans. We do understand that it is something you would like to see but we are going to try a few other things…”
If I may parse that:
We made a mistake
Regardless of how our customers feel about it, we are going to correct our mistake because our plans are more important than our customers feelings
We will, at some unspecified future time, make further changes.
Our forward planning is superior to any synchronicities that might arise and must take priority.
If Anthem players take away from that statement a sense that the developers care more about internal timelines and benchmarks than they do about player feedback or, indeed, behavior then they would appear to be are entirely correct. Most MMO/Game devs have this attitude to an extent but this is off the scale.
There’s a well-known phrase about holes and digging that comes to mind…
I had to leave for work earlier than usual this morning so didn’t get a chance to reply until now — but yes. You’ve perfectly nailed the issue and I think the reason I had such an emotive response to Chad’s tweets.
I focused more on how tone-deaf and lacking in empathy the messaging was, and you’ve perfectly (in my view) parsed the actual meaning and reason for such a response to what was said.
Another well known phrase regarding nails and heads, comes to mind as well here on your reply =)
The gameplay is some of the most fun I have had in years. The advancement loop some of the most frustrating. The dev response is by far the most mind boggling. It’s like they want to be set free like Bungie from Activision or something….