Anthem 2019: why is there a hole in my bread?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Anthem 2019: why is there a hole in my bread?

DarkDobe: Jul 11, 2008; Things are looking up...

Nuts and Gum posted:

CoD is thriving more than ever, though. Has it radically changed since the first blops? (maybe it has, I honestly don't know)

Nope.

But what CoD has (at least this time) managed to do is carve out a yet-improved, refined, stylized, 'sexy' version of the games before it.

Seriously the new Moderner Warfare is gorgeous, with - not even probably - the best 'gun feel' of any game I have played. Movement and handling is crisp and fast - they just dropped the ball on the level design end, and with a few over/undertuned pieces of equipment.

Otherwise, no, nothing startlingly different than any CoD before it - but they found a formula that appeals that they can keep polishing.

# ? Nov 16, 2019 18:29

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 23:49

Lambert: Apr 15, 2018; by Fluffdaddy; Fallen Rib

If they're actually doing a big overhaul, it seems very likely they'll try moving the game to a F2P model. Seems like the only chance Anthem has.

# ? Nov 16, 2019 18:32

Kaysette: Jan 5, 2009; ~*Boston makes me*~
~*feel good*~

f2p more like free 2 piss on anthem�s grave

:bioware:

# ? Nov 16, 2019 18:44

DarkDobe: Jul 11, 2008; Things are looking up...

Free to Pass

# ? Nov 16, 2019 18:48

Tetrabor: Oct 14, 2018; Eight points of contact at all times!

At this rate, Anthem is going to last shorter than Firefall did.

# ? Nov 16, 2019 19:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Anthem should get some easy press next month when game sites start compiling their Worst Of 2019 lists.

# ? Nov 16, 2019 21:18

Orv: May 4, 2011

Tetrabor posted:

At this rate, Anthem is going to last shorter than Firefall did.

I mean if you consider each overhaul of Firefall as a separate game some of them were pretty short. :v:

# ? Nov 16, 2019 23:50

Lambert: Apr 15, 2018; by Fluffdaddy; Fallen Rib

exquisite tea posted:

Anthem should get some easy press next month when game sites start compiling their Worst Of 2019 lists.

Problem for Anthem: Nobody actually reads those lists.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 01:27

Moongrave: Jun 19, 2004; Finally Living Rent Free

Dapper_Swindler posted:

schreier is great but like alot of Journalists in the gaming field, he loving hates his audience, obviously some of that is justified but it also results in weird poo poo like that and dumb ingroup bullshit or because of he thinks he is irreplaceable which with the current crop of journalists is probably true.

them being entirely replaceable is why we had so many articles a while back about how "youtubers aren't reviewers and can't do the job we, perfect games journalists* do"

# ? Nov 17, 2019 02:03

Olympic Mathlete: Feb 25, 2011

"...it may become another game entirely..."

Can you imagine if they pull this move? :allears:

# ? Nov 17, 2019 02:39

Orv: May 4, 2011

Well we all know you turn failed MMOs into hero shooters, so.

E: I was joking but the more I think about this... yeah.

Orv fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Nov 17, 2019

# ? Nov 17, 2019 02:50

Happy Noodle Boy: Jul 3, 2002

Nuts and Gum posted:

CoD is thriving more than ever, though. Has it radically changed since the first blops? (maybe it has, I honestly don't know)

This year more than anything in the past 5 years has been both a return to the classic while also changing loving EVERYTHING about it. Modern Warfare is an incredibly good and fun game with some of the best gunplay in any FPS that also happens to be one of the worst designed games ever.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 03:47

drkeiscool: Aug 1, 2014; Soiled Meat

Man, why did BioWare use a "piles of sand" development structure? I don't like sand. It's all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 05:26

Vermain: Sep 5, 2006

drkeiscool posted:

Man, why did BioWare use a "piles of sand" development structure? I don't like sand. It's all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere.

Because the "pile of poo poo" development structure would've been too on the nose.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 07:29

Wheeee: Mar 11, 2001; When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

drkeiscool posted:

I don't like sand. It's all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 08:17

hobbesmaster: Jan 28, 2008

Wheeee posted:

Imagine what a clusterfuck this game would�ve been if modern BioWare had done it.

# ? Nov 17, 2019 09:58

Eastbound Spider: Jan 2, 2011

He feet don't even touch the ground

# ? Nov 17, 2019 20:12

Pozload Escobar: Aug 21, 2016; by Reene

Eastbound Spider posted:

He feet don't even touch the ground

A shameful jeda

# ? Nov 17, 2019 23:54

ashpanash: Apr 9, 2008; I can see when you are lying.

I do love how the article basically says "Bioware is planning to update Anthem! They don't know what shape that will take or what they are going to update or how it might look, but they're having meetings about updating the game right now!"

Which sounds like the same old :bioware:

poo poo that gave us Anthem in the first place.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 00:20

DarkDobe: Jul 11, 2008; Things are looking up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvY3lzJQPA

# ? Nov 18, 2019 08:42

SpaceDrake: Dec 22, 2006; I can't avoid filling a game with awful memes, even if I want to. It's in my bones...!

Posting from a few pages and a week ago, but:

Onmi posted:

My thesis is literally on ARR vs Anthem and how the latter is a tremendous failure trashfire while the former is a success story.

The first major difference is that Square realized they hosed up pretty immediately and was adding content (actual content) and supporting 1.0 (As well as making it free to play) during the time they were making 2.0. Not only that, they did the exact OPPOSITE of Anthem, going with constant live letters to discuss changes coming, compared to Anthem's uh... disappearance of anyone in charge?

Like sure, if you sat down, and remade the game from scratch with an actual vision, you could make a Good Anthem. But they're not going to.

I mean, the main problem we can see on the "live letters and constant discussion" front is... a lot of the higher-level folks at Bioware appear to be getting out of Dodge. I wouldn't be surprised if, at the producer level and above into the vice-c and c-levels, there's now a fair bit of discussion about Doing The EA Thing to Bioware and much of the folks in potential leadership positions are getting out to look for work elsewhere in the industry or in adjacent industries.

The issue is that, at current, Electronic Arts is (or believes it is) too big to be heavily affected by just one studio or brand failure. Even if all of Bioware goes away, taking away immediate plans for Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and anything else they might have come up with (and Anthem already being a wash), EA still has all its sports titles (particularly FIFA, Madden, and NBA Live), Battlefield, Sim titles, Plants vs Zombies, and its licensed titles like Star Wars. For Electronic Arts to truly be in trouble, like three or four of those game lines would have to simultaneously produce actual stinkers that sold poorly and cast doubt on the ability of said lines to continue, and the even bigger thing is, outside of perhaps FIFA and Madden, none of those product lines are truly central of the entire identity of "Electronic Arts". The company is too diversified to have an wholly defining product line like that.

Square-Enix, meanwhile, does have a couple of product lines that more or less defines who they are, what they do and have been with the component companies since nearly their inceptions: Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. SE is still highly diversified at this point (and perhaps even moreso than EA, in some ways, as SE is a major player in the manga market in Japan and its ancillary, hobbyist goods biz in Japan is also a big deal and is involved with significantly more than "just" video game merch) but the kind of real, lasting damage to FF or DQ that the original FF14 represented had a serious effect on their business as a whole and raised questions about how well they were able to conduct business in the first place. While on the outside Yoshida going to the board and saying "we can either putter along and eventually close down and leave people significantly dissatisfied or we can try to be bold and reinvent a game and hopefully produce something that will be seen as actually great" seems ~crazy~, it's actually not as wild a decision as it's made out to be, as taking the former option would be potentially lethal to the company and to the value the shareholders would get out of it, even in the short term. For anyone who gave even the remotest poo poo about the viability of the company and their own bank accounts going forward, it was the right call to make.

Electronic Arts isn't the kind of company that would, or could, make that kind of call or support the sort of person who would suggest that kind of call, because American investors have a different _{and vastly more nihilistic} mindset and not even their sports titles are quite as foundational to their identity as a Final Fantasy title was to Square-Enix. Certainly a brand new IP with a single, lovely game to its credit is in no danger of sinking or truly damaging EA's overall brand whatsoever. There may be will to save it within what remains of Bioware, but there's no incentive from higher up to do so in the same way that FF14 was reborn.

All these :words:

being said:

Disargeria posted:

Guys this sounds exactly like the style of development that led to Anthem in the first place. It sounds like they haven't actually done any work since launch, just had daily meetings. Just these snippets show that nothing has fundamentally changed at Bioware. The higher ups are disconnected, there's no vision, everyone's been working hard but progress isn't actually being made.

Granted, if you had asked around SE Business Division 5 back when 14 was first being reorganized, you probably would have gotten a fair amount of the same kind of vagueness. IIRC, Yoshida didn't even give his "Plan A and Plan B" presentation to Corporate until March 2011, and he'd been helping the team since like December 2010 or January 2011, and even he wasn't entirely sure what kind of shape the game's changes would take until Corporate came back with "all right, go with Plan B".

People were skeptical as poo poo about the whole idea of relaunching ARR back in 2011 and 2012, and for very good reason.

SpaceDrake fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Nov 18, 2019

# ? Nov 18, 2019 09:00

RoadCrewWorker: Nov 19, 2007; camels aren't so great

We all know 90% of their current meetings are them removing flying from the "Reborn" version of the game, then re-adding it the next day, perpetually

10% is spent exchanging tips on how to write resumes

or, if you don't want to give them the benefit of doubt reverse those percentages

# ? Nov 18, 2019 09:09

Pozload Escobar: Aug 21, 2016; by Reene

SpaceDrake posted:

Posting from a few pages and a week ago, but:

I mean, the main problem we can see on the "live letters and constant discussion" front is... a lot of the higher-level folks at Bioware appear to be getting out of Dodge. I wouldn't be surprised if, at the producer level and above into the vice-c and c-levels, there's now a fair bit of discussion about Doing The EA Thing to Bioware and much of the folks in potential leadership positions are getting out to look for work elsewhere in the industry or in adjacent industries.

The issue is that, at current, Electronic Arts is (or believes it is) too big to be heavily affected by just one studio or brand failure. Even if all of Bioware goes away, taking away immediate plans for Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and anything else they might have come up with (and Anthem already being a wash), EA still has all its sports titles (particularly FIFA, Madden, and NBA Live), Battlefield, Sim titles, Plants vs Zombies, and its licensed titles like Star Wars. For Electronic Arts to truly be in trouble, like three or four of those game lines would have to simultaneously produce actual stinkers that sold poorly and cast doubt on the ability of said lines to continue, and the even bigger thing is, outside of perhaps FIFA and Madden, none of those product lines are truly central of the entire identity of "Electronic Arts". The company is too diversified to have an wholly defining product line like that.

Square-Enix, meanwhile, does have a couple of product lines that more or less defines who they are, what they do and have been with the component companies since nearly their inceptions: Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. SE is still highly diversified at this point (and perhaps even moreso than EA, in some ways, as SE is a major player in the manga market in Japan and its ancillary, hobbyist goods biz in Japan is also a big deal and is involved with significantly more than "just" video game merch) but the kind of real, lasting damage to FF or DQ that the original FF14 represented had a serious effect on their business as a whole and raised questions about how well they were able to conduct business in the first place. While on the outside Yoshida going to the board and saying "we can either putter along and eventually close down and leave people significantly dissatisfied or we can try to be bold and reinvent a game and hopefully produce something that will be seen as actually great" seems ~crazy~, it's actually not as wild a decision as it's made out to be, as taking the former option would be potentially lethal to the company and to the value the shareholders would get out of it, even in the short term. For anyone who gave even the remotest poo poo about the viability of the company and their own bank accounts going forward, it was the right call to make.

Electronic Arts isn't the kind of company that would, or could, make that kind of call or support the sort of person who would suggest that kind of call, because American investors have a different _{and vastly more nihilistic} mindset and not even their sports titles are quite as foundational to their identity as a Final Fantasy title was to Square-Enix. Certainly a brand new IP with a single, lovely game to its credit is in no danger of sinking or truly damaging EA's overall brand whatsoever. There may be will to save it within what remains of Bioware, but there's no incentive from higher up to do so in the same way that FF14 was reborn.

All these being said:

Granted, if you had asked around SE Business Division 5 back when 14 was first being reorganized, you probably would have gotten a fair amount of the same kind of vagueness. IIRC, Yoshida didn't even give his "Plan A and Plan B" presentation to Corporate until March 2011, and he'd been helping the team since like December 2010 or January 2011, and even he wasn't entirely sure what kind of shape the game's changes would take until Corporate came back with "all right, go with Plan B".

People were skeptical as poo poo about the whole idea of relaunching ARR back in 2011 and 2012, and for very good reason.

Sir this is a Wendy�s

# ? Nov 18, 2019 14:19

Wheeee: Mar 11, 2001; When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

Thing with FIFA is, while it brings in WoW money for EA it's doing so via the kind of bullshit microtransactions model that's a couple pieces of legislation away from being outlawed in its major markets.

EA needs a major money maker that doesn't lean on gambling or other exploitative means which the general public and legislators are increasingly becoming aware of.

It'd be interesting to see the breakdown in Apex earnings, and how large a portion comes from lootboxes versus the fixed cost store items and battle passes.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 14:41

Pulcinella: Feb 15, 2019

ashpanash posted:

I do love how the article basically says "Bioware is planning to update Anthem! They don't know what shape that will take or what they are going to update or how it might look, but they're having meetings about updating the game right now!"

Which sounds like the same old poo poo that gave us Anthem in the first place.

I love the part that says they don�t know if they want to release it as one huge update or a series of smaller updates. That�s like when my friends and I would debate whether the final boss of the game we were totally, for real, I promise, making would have 5 different forms or 6. Also it was going to be better 10 times better than Quake. Of course we were children instead of a large AAA company.

Pulcinella fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Nov 18, 2019

# ? Nov 18, 2019 17:03

Orv: May 4, 2011

Pulcinella posted:

I love the part that says they don�t know if they want to release it as one huge update or a series of smaller updates. That�s like when my friends and I would debate whether the final boss of the game we were totally, for real, I promise, making would have 5 different forms or 6. Also it was going to be better 10 times better than Quake. Of course we were children instead of a large AAA company.

The actual best part of that is "or a whole new game maybe!" like bitch who the gently caress would even.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 17:09

Iacen: Mar 19, 2009; Si vis pacem, para bellum

You know there are people willing to do it, benefits of doubt and all that.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 20:15

Vermain: Sep 5, 2006

There's people who are playing the loving Archeage relaunch. There'd absolutely be a base of people who would play a relaunched Anthem, but I cannot imagine it being a profitable enough base to recoup the losses of redeveloping the game's systems from the ground floor up.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 20:59

chaosapiant: Oct 10, 2012; White Line Fever

If I want to take a positive spin on things, I'd like to think/hope that their work on Andromeda and Anthem, as under-performing as those games are, give them the foundation and knowledge necessary to go forward with an actual good Mass Effect game. I won't touch Anthem, but Andromeda had its moments and Dragon Age: Inquisition was overall my favorite of the series. Despite the new tech and weird MMO approach, it had a lot of great quests, dialogue and storytelling. If they can collectively get their poo poo together and stop expecting things to "just work" then they have a shot.

But as much as I want all that to be true, I know in my heart it probably isn't. And I don't want to be right.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 21:07

grack: Jan 10, 2012; COACH TOTORO SAY REFEREE CAN BANISH WHISTLE TO LAND OF WIND AND GHOSTS!

Maybe they'll finally let you gently caress the ship in the new Mass Effect

# ? Nov 19, 2019 02:12

Tetrabor: Oct 14, 2018; Eight points of contact at all times!

grack posted:

Maybe they'll finally let you gently caress the ship in the new Mass Effect

Maybe you'll be the ship and your goal is to gently caress everyone else.

# ? Nov 19, 2019 02:17

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."