Anthem - Demo Issues

DSOGaming reports on Anthem's demo issues.

The VIP demo for Anthem was released a little more than one hour ago and things are not looking good. Electronic Arts and BioWare claimed that this demo is not a beta and would represent the experience that gamers would be getting at launch, however this definitely feels like a beta.

For starters, we could not login at first at all as we were receiving numerous connection network errors. At some points the demo was claiming that the demo period was not live yet (even though it was) and at other times we were getting a connection network error regarding its maximum capacity.

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More information.

And thus ends the story of BioWare.
I knew I heard some hammering... must've been nail & coffin.

How is it that the people driving the train are the last ones to see the wreck incoming?

For starters, we could not login at first at all as we were receiving numerous connection network errors.

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Oh well, online only, haha, what could go wrong, eh?

I suspect there won't be much love for this game on this site anyways, and that is as it should be.

What'd you expect from EA?

Not surprised as even Blizzard has launch issues with it's online only Battle.net games on release. Still I have no interest in playing this & hope it fails very hard, but it wont.

As many non-rpg Destiny & Titan Fall fans will buy this. As they are the target.

They made the game ddos their own servers funny enough.
Seen some of it streamed and looked pretty crappy to me though apart from complaining that flying controls where awful the players I did see did enjoy it. Combat where better than Andromeda which don't say much really but that is the only comparison I heard so far.

I don't fathom at all how something like this will be popular at all. None of the people that I know would pay for this thing, then again, I don't know many tweenagers, maybe they are the targets for this mess. Even at five dollars I wouldn't buy this product.

Funny paradox is that the demo was intended to make better impression. They deliberately make it easier and altered balance and economics a lot (as they admitted). Why balance and economics? In case of EA its veeeery probable there will be some kind of microtransactions.

Opinion about the demo:

Server issues were very bad yesterday. Today is better.

Overall, I'm reasonably impressed. It's a little clunky here and there - and it has a very awkward console-inspired UI for the most part.

But the actual shooting is very good and close to Destiny-level, which is the best in this genre.

I was particularly pleased with the challenge and nuance in terms of movement and the moment-to-moment gameplay. There's a lot of room for skill and personal preference in terms of how to approach combat, which is unusual for the genre.

Where it really shines is in terms of customization and the loot diversity. It's already miles ahead of Destiny - and, unlike Warframe, it's an actual loot hunt instead of a loot grind.

It's a little too early to tell much about the end-game - but the core experience oozes potential for this genre.

However, I wouldn't expect anything beyond what it clearly is: Bioware's version of Destiny with their typical emphasis on the story and lore.

Darth Tagnan said:

Overall, I'm reasonably impressed. It's a little clunky here and there

Where it really shines is in terms of customization and the loot diversity. It's already miles ahead of Destiny - and, unlike Warframe, it's an actual loot hunt instead of a loot grind.

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Dont forget that some things will probably change in final game.

@Darth Tagnan;

How well do the flight controls work for you (with mouse/keyboard)?

Cacheperl said:

@Darth Tagnan;

How well do the flight controls work for you (with mouse/keyboard)?

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After a bit of tweaking, they're not too bad. In fact, I find the overall freedom of movement quite refreshing.

The approach is different enough to be a little awkward at first - and it's the sort of thing you have to adjust to, even as a fan of the genre.

But it's definitely not perfect - and the default controls + sensitivity are not great no matter what.

On the upside, the whole thing feels very refreshing once you get the controls down. It took me a couple of hours to get comfortable with the sprint/dodge/fly/hover/jump combinations.

But once I gained access to the Interceptor - I knew I'd found my new love

Clearly, they put a lot of work into fine-tuning the differences between these Javelins - and I think people will eventually warm to the concept.

After the initial issues with connectivity and network, I played for about an hour.

And realized why I don't play these types of games, looter-shooter games, anymore. They're basically designed to keep you grinding at them in order to obtain items and gear that you can use to gain social status within the game. And I don't have time for a second job, regardless of fun the gameplay loop is.

I was hoping for more emphasis on story and world-building, but after hearing the NPCs talk for a little bit, I think I may have misplaced that hope. It seems all tongue-in-cheek style of writing, with nothing taken too seriously.

So, I'm gonna skip this one. I realize Diablo is probably the only game of this type that I'll return to, and that's probably because I have history with the series. But even with that, I usually just played to go over new content, and then drop off.

As I said, I just don't have time for endless loot grind, with little to no narrative context. Also, games should definitely have an ending. I dislike this trend that I see with most gamers, always obsessing about "end-game". Wanting to get hundreds of hours of generic content out of their 60 dollar investment. And this definitely pushes developers to build these types of endless games.

Anyways, my 2 cents on the matter.

But, to end on a positive note, I do have to say I liked the flying. Took a little practice, being that I used m&k, but it was fun.

Well, it's hard to say what Bioware/EA think they're going to do with Anthem.

It's certainly not a jump for the genre. Not in my opinion, anyway.

To me, the genre has only really had two jumps. The first was from Rogue/Nethack/Moria to Diablo - and the second was from Diablo to Hellgate London.

Since HGL, we've seen an array of mostly inferior takes on the looter shooter genre, including Borderlands, Destiny, Warframe and Division.

They all have their own flavor with pros and cons. Personally, I think Division is the most wholesome example of doing something different, because it changed the gameplay into something more tactical and it has the most compellingly unique setting - by far.

Anthem is what I would consider a modest evolution from Warframe and Destiny in a few key areas. It takes the mobility and flexibility of Warframe and combines it with the production values and narrative approach of Destiny.

But Destiny is definitely the game it mostly resembles - and it's the game it most expands upon. The "classes" feel much more distinct and the powers are vastly more interesting and play a much bigger part in the gameplay.

But that's not really saying much. Personally, I've always considered Destiny a 90% missed opportunity - because it's really rather basic and bland when it comes to RPG elements and the looting. Both of those are absolutely vital for this genre to thrive - so it's only because it's so damned slick that it actually works.

Warframe has a vastly superior set of mechanics and it has an absurdly vast arsenal of classes and weapons. Unfortunately, the core design is simplistic and hollow - and the game we see today is a strange mish-mash of ideas thrown together in an effort to please a very large audience by adding all sorts of features that don't really gel together. The setting is confused and half-assed, and it has absolutely no content worth exploring if you want more than endless procedural nothingness. It does have a few singleplayer "story" missions - but since 99% of the game is based on cooperative gameplay, that's rather worthless.

Anthem is being a little smarter than both Destiny and Warframe when it comes to the overall design and approach to the progression. It's clearly very inspired by Diablo 3 when it comes to "Masterwork" and "Legendary" gear - because they change how abilities work and offer a ton of customization and personal touches to how you want to play. It's also emphasizing the narrative in a way that seems to gel well with the lore and the setting, meaning it doesn't feel separated from the actual game like it does in Warframe.

Ultimately, I don't think it will make looter shooter fans of traditional Bioware fans. But the audience for this genre seems to be pretty big and I can definitely see it becoming a reasonably big hit overall.

But there does seem to be a large amount of opposition to anything touched by EA - and quite a lot of vocal hatred for Bioware - most of which is completely misplaced.

I can't predict how those things are going to affect the outcome - but I think if people are objective about it, they'll find Anthem just might be the best in the genre since Hellgate London - without being anything like a revolution.

Too bad I've really got trust issues when it comes to EA. I will await release plus a couple of months before judging if it's even worth my money and time.

I would certainly recommend waiting a few weeks or months post launch. There's no reason to expose yourself to the inevitable beginner issues.

Personally, I've made a deal with myself to only buy 1 game each month. I'll wait until March for Anthem and April for Division 2

For February? I'm not sure. Maybe the Civ 6 expansion. I didn't really care for the first couple of Metro games - but the third one looks a little more interesting. So…. maybe that one.

I've had no interest in Anthem up to this point. Having said that, I've watched a few gameplay videos and there were a couple things that caught my eye which I found rather appealing.

-Movement. This seems to be getting a lot of praise because alternating from walking to rocketing away in the air gives you a sense of satisfaction.
-Loot seems varied enough in that it feels like less of a grind and more of an actual loot hunt. I personally find this fairly difficult to balance well.

I don't expect a grand epic with Anthem, and never did. We knew what this was going to be from the start. I was initially apathetic toward Anthem, and the EA name being attached does have me worried about microtransactions, but I'm still willing to give it a shot. I'd have booted up the demo this weekend if not for the fact that performance seems all over the place (full rooms, disconnects, infinite loading screens, bugged AI, etc). I'll keep an eye out and see if they patch that up.

There are a lot of games arriving soon that have my interest, like Ace Combat 7 (love the series), Crackdown 3 (also love this series), Metro Exodus, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2's recent remake, and so much more, and I wonder if I can fit Anthem into all of that.

I put some time into the demo on Sunday (4 hours, using primarily the Storm) once the disconnect issues were resolved and the hype died down a bit. I played on Hard, and encountered only one bug. Not a single disconnect was had that day. Here's my take.

Ground to air transitioning is incredibly seamless. It's wonderfully fun to jump in the air and just boost away to your destination. However, flying itself feels a little wonky, though this is supposedly not an issue with a controller. I used the KB+M control scheme, but I've heard positive reception with a controller.

Like everyone else, I started with the Ranger, then moved on to the Storm. It wasn't until I unlocked the Storm that things really took off (pun intended).

I wasn't impressed all that much by the game's gunplay. My bullets often lacked the feel of impact. Maybe this was an issue with audio feedback, but it felt more like firing a plastic gun than something loud and explosive.

Spells, however, were the exact opposite. Freezing enemies in their tracks then casting a massive lightning bolt was incredibly satisfying. Video and audio feedback was impressive on both sides, and it was remarkably addicting to chain them together as it often landed me a combo. Combo'd attacks mean damage bonuses. Spell cooldown was forgiving. There was a healthy flow of alternating from guns to spells, as I couldn't sit there and cast into infinity.

I didn't interact with the town inhabitants at all, but that's only because you have no reason to. I do feel that you move a bit too slow in town, and it seems odd to me that there's no sprint function. I feel like I'm slowly inching toward my objective markers when there's downtime, but that's a minor issue. I think the menus could use a good cleanup, it feels unnecessarily complicated at times. It took me a while to find out how to change my Javelin's armor color while in the paint tab.

The game didn't feel repetitive in regards to combat or enemy design. I'd see the same enemies, but no two encounters were ever the same. Boss fights felt relatively easy, but being in the air 90% of the time with a blink ability probably allowed for that. As a Storm player, I did take quite a bit of damage thanks to my glass cannon design and difficulty, and I think there's a major emphasis on being able to use your dodge/blink abilities consistently.

I ran the game on ultra settings, and had a smooth 60 FPS except when multiple ultimate attacks were executed at the same time, which dropped me down to 46 FPS. Aside from that, it ran well with few hiccups and no stuttering. I used Vsync with a Gsync monitor, and as such experienced no input delay.

For someone who had no knowledge of the game (I didn't know what a Javelin was until Sunday), I rather enjoyed it. There's a lot of potential here.