Gaming News

pixelburp

At this stage, why even bother? Not like EA to stubbornly persist with something this big of a failure...

JimBurnley

Flogging a dead horse comes to mind

one armed dwarf

Well hey it worked for FFXIV

nix

one armed dwarf wrote: »

Well hey it worked for FFXIV

It had to, that was a subscription beast

Penn

Don't try and fix Anthem. Just start making Anthem 2, fixing all the issues of the original etc, and hope for the best.

one armed dwarf

Penn wrote: »

Don't try and fix Anthem. Just start making Anthem 2, fixing all the issues of the original etc, and hope for the best.

They are kind of doing that though, aren't they?

What are Anthem's problems? Are they structural/progression based or are the gameplay systems themselves terrible?

Gbear

Penn wrote: »

Don't try and fix Anthem. Just start making Anthem 2, fixing all the issues of the original etc, and hope for the best.

That would require people to buy it after the first one failed to hit the targets they set.

I would think the best bet would be to bin it and start again with something new.

Maybe see if they could get an existing IP to work on, like Star Trek or something.
That seems to be having a bit of a resurgence at the moment.

J. Marston

Or bin it and get to work on the Mass Effect trilogy remake that is sorely overdue.

Rely on past glories, Bioware. It's for the best.

Zero-Cool

J. Marston wrote: »

Or bin it and get to work on the Mass Effect trilogy remake that is sorely overdue.

Rely on past glories, Bioware. It's for the best.

EoinHef

There wasnt much wrong with the gameplay for Anthem,it was the loot system and an over reliance on repeating content that wasnt that interesting.

Im glad to see there going to stick with it. To all those saying just move on,what about the people who bought anthem? Should they just pay for anthem 2? Its at least showing some sort of loyalty to those people.

More and more games are being improved after rocky launches. No Mans Sky comes to mind. Tbh i didnt expect to see this from EA,i thought they would just cut their losses,glad to see there going to try fix some core issues.

Retr0gamer

J. Marston wrote: »

Or bin it and get to work on the Mass Effect trilogy remake that is sorely overdue.

Rely on past glories, Bioware. It's for the best.

But people have now played divinity original sin 2 and Witcher 3 and will realise mass effect was never that good in the first place.

Retr0gamer

EoinHef wrote: »

There wasnt much wrong with the gameplay for Anthem,it was the loot system and an over reliance on repeating content that wasnt that interesting.

Im glad to see there going to stick with it. To all those saying just move on,what about the people who bought anthem? Should they just pay for anthem 2? Its at least showing some sort of loyalty to those people.

More and more games are being improved after rocky launches. No Mans Sky comes to mind. Tbh i didnt expect to see this from EA,i thought they would just cut their losses,glad to see there going to try fix some core issues.

EA have done it before. EA Los Angeles have done stellar work saving battlefield games post launch.

RobertFoster

Retr0gamer wrote: »

But people have now played divinity original sin 2 and Witcher 3 and will realise mass effect was never that good in the first place.

Sci-Fi > Fantasy

Retr0gamer

RobertFoster wrote: »

Sci-Fi > Fantasy

But Mass Effect isn't Sci-Fi, it's space opera. and personally I wouldn't even go that far. It's more fantasy with a sci-fi skin. The different aliens are just D&D archetypes but look different. It's even got the same game of thrones, ancient evil returning plot being ignored by the powers above that Bioware have been regurgitating for every game they make.

pixelburp

I liked Mass Effect, I liked its characters and their respective charisma (except Jacob), and enjoyed the journey I went on with them. It felt like a perfect blended mix of all the biggest space franchises, from Star Trek, Farscape to Star Wars. One of the few games whose characters actually left an emotional mark on me *shrug*

Not that impressed with an obvious attempt to shít stir a little TBH, the obvious bait of "oooh, they were bad games really". There are plenty of games out there, and we've all played 'em, whose mechanics might be ropey but other more emotional or perceptual factors have been the attraction. We all know the Mako sucked so, so bad, but some of us could look past it

SolvableKnave

Gbear wrote: »

I would think the best bet would be to bin it and start again with something new.

Maybe see if they could get an existing IP to work on, like Star Trek or something.
That seems to be having a bit of a resurgence at the moment.

Oh please god no. While I would love a new Star Trek game (bring back the 4x strategy game from years ago please), don't give it to a company that's pretty much fcuked it's last two IP's, due to continued mismanagement, and a dictat from EA to use Frostbite.

gizmo

SolvableKnave wrote: »

Oh please god no. While I would love a new Star Trek game (bring back the 4x strategy game from years ago please), don't give it to a company that's pretty much fcuked it's last two IP's, due to continued mismanagement, and a dictat from EA to use Frostbite.

Conversely, I'd happily see a Frostbite powered, Elite Force-esque shooter in the Star Trek universe.

Doesn't mean we can't have a Birth of the Federation or even Armada follow up too though, both of which I'd be all over if done right.

On a related note, Star Trek: Continuum looks pretty neat.

Retr0gamer

pixelburp wrote: »

I liked Mass Effect, I liked its characters and their respective charisma (except Jacob), and enjoyed the journey I went on with them. It felt like a perfect blended mix of all the biggest space franchises, from Star Trek, Farscape to Star Wars. One of the few games whose characters actually left an emotional mark on me *shrug*

Not that impressed with an obvious attempt to shít stir a little TBH, the obvious bait of "oooh, they were bad games really". There are plenty of games out there, and we've all played 'em, whose mechanics might be ropey but other more emotional or perceptual factors have been the attraction. We all know the Mako sucked so, so bad, but some of us could look past it

I never said they were ****. I enjoyed them but they were far from the god tier games people make them out to be. They did get me to stop turning my nose up at western RPGs as I learned how to actually play them (combat is usually bad but the fun is in roleplaying characters) but since then I've realized that there's way better examples of these types of games in the genre. The dialogue and narrative are ropey, although Mass Effect 2 was a step above 1 and 3 in that regard. The morality system was too black and white, a hold over from KOTOR were it worked there due to the black and white nature of the force in the star wars universe.

one armed dwarf

I never liked Mass Effect cause of the purely binary nature of its morality system tbh. It's so boring when they funnel you into 'dark' and 'light' paths. Means that near every decision you make is less informed by actual decision making and moreso by what's optimal for my gameplay strategy/build? Or who do you want to romance etc.

SolvableKnave

gizmo wrote: »

Conversely, I'd happily see a Frostbite powered, Elite Force-esque shooter in the Star Trek universe..

So long as it was a single player, then maybe yeah. It just seems that trying to shoehorn a massive persistent Destinyesque collectathon onto an Engine which has been shown / reported to be not fit for that type of game, would be a bad idea, and result in yet another lacklustre title.

Retr0gamer

SolvableKnave wrote: »

So long as it was a single player, then maybe yeah. It just seems that trying to shoehorn a massive persistent Destinyesque collectathon onto an Engine which has been shown / reported to be not fit for that type of game, would be a bad idea, and result in yet another lacklustre title.

I very much doubt Frostbite is the cause of Anthem's issue and more a failure in game design. It's a barely competent loot'em up released into an already saturated market where Borderlands 3 and Destiny 2 already exist.

Skerries

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I never said they were ****. I enjoyed them but they were far from the god tier games people make them out to be. They did get me to stop turning my nose up at western RPGs as I learned how to actually play them (combat is usually bad but the fun is in roleplaying characters) but since then I've realized that there's way better examples of these types of games in the genre. The dialogue and narrative are ropey, although Mass Effect 2 was a step above 1 and 3 in that regard. The morality system was too black and white, a hold over from KOTOR were it worked there due to the black and white nature of the force in the star wars universe.

*Skerries will remember that*

gizmo

SolvableKnave wrote: »

So long as it was a single player, then maybe yeah. It just seems that trying to shoehorn a massive persistent Destinyesque collectathon onto an Engine which has been shown / reported to be not fit for that type of game, would be a bad idea, and result in yet another lacklustre title.

Absolutely. One hopes that the recent strong performance of Fallen Order has reminded them that there's definitely a strong demand for a single-player experience that allows them to tap into the more cinematic elements of the licence.

SolvableKnave

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I very much doubt Frostbite is the cause of Anthem's issue and more a failure in game design. It's a barely competent loot'em up released into an already saturated market where Borderlands 3 and Destiny 2 already exist.

I think it was in the Jason Schrier article on Anthems development hell where it was mentioned that Frostbite coudn't correctly handle the amount of storage required for an online looter-shooter, which was one of the reasons behind the pretty bare bones loot. It also described, if I remember correctly, that they didn't want to use Frostbite, but EA insisted.

Retr0gamer

SolvableKnave wrote: »

I think it was in the Jason Schrier article on Anthems development hell where it was mentioned that Frostbite coudn't correctly handle the amount of storage required for an online looter-shooter, which was one of the reasons behind the pretty bare bones loot. It also described, if I remember correctly, that they didn't want to use Frostbite, but EA insisted.

Failure of management then. Engines can be modified and rewritten and don't see how that could be impossible for frostbite but EA maybe skimped on the technical staff required?

pixelburp

Engines aren't modified easily, especially if at its core, it doesn't have the kind of architecture to support a persistent online element. Of course, to use the classic maxim: you can have it fast, good or cheap, but you gotta pick 2, so EA should have given Bioware more time to scope and develop the backend toolset needed to make Frotbite work with their projects, but they clearly weren't. IIRC, the same happened with the C&C Generals game Bioware had on the go: they were told to move to Frostbite, but weren't given the runway to actually mould the engine to work with RTS games.

The dictat that teams had to move to Frostbite has been a really bull-headed & stubborn one, even if it kinda made sense in context to use an in-house engine; pretty much most high-profile EA teams have had to switch, right? On the fact of it there was nothing wrong with the idea, but it's increasingly clear nobody was given time to read the docs and figure out whether Frotbite could work with Genre X.

Shiminay

EA financed the development of Frostbite (through Dice Studios) with the expectation that it would be the engine behind all their games. You can see why "executives" with no understanding of game design might think that this was a successful problem solving exercise and, for the most part, it was. It's not a bad engine, but the idea that you can build a single engine to manage all possible requirement scenarios isn't exactly the best solution. Unreal and Unity are big money makers and EA was probably thinking about a pivot into that sort of business too, but by all accounts, Frostbite just isn't that good of a solution for people who need a ready-made engine. Again, you can understand why executives would be scratching their head at the idea that the game engine "problem" that they felt they solved years ago should somehow be related to their big new game from Bioware being way off course and about to miss all its targets. So many of their problems could be improved if they had experienced games development staff at all the decision making positions.

SolvableKnave

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Failure of management then. Engines can be modified and rewritten and don't see how that could be impossible for frostbite but EA maybe skimped on the technical staff required?

That article describes how monumentally epic the failure of management was though. A 7 year development cycle, where for the first 5 years, no-one actually knew what "Anthem" was. Flying, no flying (terrain needs to be adjusted because there's no longer any verticality to the game), to be told flying is back on the agenda. Bioware take most of the blame for Anthem's failure, EA maybe a little with 'It must be built in Frostbite'.

As for the game itself? I found it meh. Coming from Destiny, there was no 'weight' to the gameplay. Say what you want about Destiny, but there is one thing Bungie got right from the very start, gunplay. Each archetype felt different. It's a very satisfying feel to it. Anthem's all just felt the same, to me. Another thing was how movement felt, especially in Fort Tarsis. There, it felt like all I was doing was moving a camera around the place. The character just ... floated around. There was no weight to how you moved. I found it very jarring and off-putting. Movement in the Jaegers or whatever they're called felt better, but overall, the game just didn't click with me, and I thought it would.

I hope they can turn it around. Other games have been turned around after a less than stellar launch: Diablo 3 / No Man's Sky / Destiny (A lot more with 2) / FF:XIV?. And they've all gone on to be pretty well reviewed and received since.

Gunmonkey

SolvableKnave wrote: »

I hope they can turn it around. Other games have been turned around after a less than stellar launch: Diablo 3 / No Man's Sky / Destiny (A lot more with 2) / FF:XIV?. And they've all gone on to be pretty well reviewed and received since.

Its possible, but would imagine the suits in upper management/marketing will push for a F2P system with micro-trans after the spike the New Light update brought to Destiny 2 with its F2P model.

EoinHef

Retr0gamer wrote: »

EA have done it before. EA Los Angeles have done stellar work saving battlefield games post launch.

Thats not the same at all,BF games had technical issues. Anthems problem is a structural one. Gameplay elements are good its just the systems around it need work.