Future of Anthem?

Freak

Freak

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So after hearing the news about the 3 main developers dropping focus on Anthem and moving onto Dragon Age, what do you think the future holds for Anthem? After all that mess after launch, it has lost a lot of interest by players and the developers. Is this the end?
 
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Never had much interest in Anthem as I'm not an online gamer all that much. Still when three of the main leads leave or go on sabbatical you know something is wrong.

Anyway in the last few years I've noticed BioWare has recessed as every other studio has improved dramatically. Hard thing to admit as I loved most of their older RPGs.

Now as for Anthem it might improve in an year but that will be to late for a lot of day one buyers who have left the game already. Hopefully Dragon Age 4 isn't messed up.

I shared this a few months back.

Link - https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheG...oware_a_successful_rebuild_and_relaunch_of_a/
It's pretty scary how hard these points hit BioWare. Every single one of them can directly relate to Anthem.

  • An unhealthy obsession with graphical quality.
It should be obvious that's where most of the time and money went when it comes to Anthem. Not to mention performance is still very shaky because of it. They threw everything at how the game looked (and then had to strip most of it away). Instead of focusing on the core, fundamentals of the game.

  • A lack of 'genre' knowledge by the developers.
BioWare have never really done anything like this and it shows. They get even the very basic fundamentals of a looter rpg wrong, or are completely missing the basest of systems necessary for the genre (stats screen). Not to mention the emaciated end-game and loot situation. Heck, they somehow didn't even get the RPG aspects down, despite experience with Mass Effect, SWTOR, and Dragon Age. How?!?

  • The belief that everything can be fixed in future patches.
BioWare have said repeatedly that they are taking 'small steps' (patches) in order to reach an end-goal for a system or issue, in order to monitor how each change affects the game. That approach is simply not working and before the game gets to any 'okay' state through these small patches, the game will be dead. Anthem needs some major reconstructive surgeries, not a thousand band-aids that cause another thousand cuts.
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Quietly dies in a year or so. ( sobs, sobs)

Hell, even that rusty heap of engine Bethesda's still using is better fit for long service online title.

"Oh, we said Anthem will be 10 year journey?
We meant months people, months!"
 
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Yes, it will quietly die, but soon rather than later I think. There are only a few special games that were able to capture the extremely short attention span of the modern crowd for longer than a few weeks (e.g., WoW, PUBG, Fortnite). Even Apex Legends seems to be already declining...

Off topic but a fun fact I found while googling for the proper English words:
http://dl.motamem.org/microsoft-attention-spans-research-report.pdf

Do you have a longer attention span than a goldfish (9s)?
 
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To be honest I think EA should be blamed not Bioware. Mind you someone somewhere might have made a good Anthem but EA sucks out creativity and forces a methodology set of rules and they forget that for certain developers it is the creativity aspect that drove the initial quality game. Of course having said that many say Biowware was on the way down prior to EA acquisition and since the acquisition much of the better talent moved on.
 
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you said:
To be honest I think EA should be blamed not Bioware. Mind you someone somewhere might have made a good Anthem but EA sucks out creativity and forces a methodology set of rules and they forget that for certain developers it is the creativity aspect that drove the initial quality game. Of course having said that many say Biowware was on the way down prior to EA acquisition and since the acquisition much of the better talent moved on.
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Eh, BW had a full freedom on this. They couldn't made up their mind what to with here, mucking around and making pancakes for freaking six years around the studio, while getting paid.
Funny enough, for best feature in the game ( flying), you have to thank EA's CEO.
 
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Why do you think they had full freedom ?

BoboTheMighty said:
Eh, BW had a full freedom on this. They couldn't made up their mind what to with here, mucking around and making pancakes for freaking six years around the studio, while getting paid.
Funny enough, for best feature in the game ( flying), you have to thank EA's CEO.
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EA draws them the big picture and gives resources and tools to make magic happen inside certain guidelines. They wanted Bioware to deliver a kickass multiplayer fps aimed for casual audience, but didn't quite get it.

Whatever are the real reasons behind this failure, I wouldn't be surprised if heads started rolling in Bioware due to this failure. I think six years should be enough time to deliver a great game no matter whether you're AAA studio, indie or something in between.
 
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I know BioWare directly stated they are working on DA4, and stated support for the Mass Effect Franchise, but has anyone actually confirmed there would be another Mass Effect game?

Either way, I doubt they can work on unfucking Anthem, developing DA4 and pre-production on ME5. Best case scenario is DA4 is 2020, and ME5 wouldn't be until... 2025? Gosh that's a long time away... Would anyone even remember the franchise by then?
 
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Of all the games from the quasi Bioware status now this one was at the very bottom.

I still hope to see a good DA4 even though DAI was a bit of a let down.
 
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Well, it's been a financial disappointment.

gamasutra said:
Electronic Arts had been banking on BioWare's Anthem and Respawn’s Apex Legends to lead its Q4 but, while Apex Legends performed well, Anthem didn't meet EA’s sales expectations.

In a conference call covering its latest earnings report, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen noted that the game hasn't lived up to its sales goals, but didn’t share any specifics on how many copies Anthem sold beyond that comment.

However, a previous goal shared by EA last quarter (and picked up by GameSpot) had the company estimating that Anthem would move between 5 and 6 million copies before March 31, 2019.

While Anthem didn’t set any sales records for EA, Jorgensen did say that the game saw the largest percentage of digital purchases for any of the company’s games to date and that it (along with the free-to-play Apex Legends) helped the company’s full-year digital net bookings increase by 14 percent year-over-year to $1.19 billion.

Despite that underperformance, EA leadership said that the company continues "to invest heavily in Anthem, with developers working on game quality, content, systems and game mechanics. It's great original IP and we've doubled down on the product."
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you said:
Why do you think they had full freedom ?
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There was an article on this, a while back, from Schreier that made big ruckus, on how development went on.
Most of it falls on Bioware who had no idea what they were trying to do ( for 5 years), though EA did not provide them tech backup ( with Frostbite programmers who were working on FIFA).
But it seems even switch to Frostbite was not EA's decision, hell they even held back on microtransactions ( well, compared to how they normally go).

I know BioWare directly stated they are working on DA4, and stated support for the Mass Effect Franchise, but has anyone actually confirmed there would be another Mass Effect game?

Either way, I doubt they can work on unfucking Anthem, developing DA4 and pre-production on ME5. Best case scenario is DA4 is 2020, and ME5 wouldn't be until… 2025? Gosh that's a long time away… Would anyone even remember the franchise by then?
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There was a hint of it, in a tweet from Hudson, a while back, but even DA4 seems to be still in early production.
Lately with BW seems like a chain reaction of fuck up on one project always leading to another.
 
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