Everything we've been feeling about SWTOR, the dearth of content and the lack of developer talent for the previous two years (prior to Ossus) has basically been confirmed. While the article doesn't say as much, Ossus was 6.0, but it got pushed very prematurely and incomplete to release because there isn't enough time to work both Anthem support and SWTOR expansions.

 

The article goes into exhaustive detail in regard to Anthem's development and launch. It says that the Austin team is now responsible for whether or not Anthem succeeds, which means SWTOR will still be starved of resources considering its age. We basically paid for the development of Anthem, with our subscription money, and in return EA gave us degraded, lukewarm attention for nearly three years. What we're going to get is more commonality in interface design and cartel market function. Apparently, that engine stuff that keeps popping up may not be all that far fetched as EA has some powerful dude from Sweden that is forcing its adoption across all EA games, whether it works or not. Bioware did have a Star Wars idea, something that was ground breaking, but it got crushed. Non public facing (and very public ones too) developers have been shed from both the Edmunton and Austin offices at an alarming rate. The article is really thorough, and if you're still holding your breath for some SWTOR resurrection, you're probably going to die:

 

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964?utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

Edited April 3, 2019 by Akevv

Anthem is broken trash. It will never rise above that station. They should just cut their losses and get rid of it and focus on SWTOR. All they need to do is make story and companion interactions and release it in regularly spaced nuggets. No one wants another stupid shooter. Edited April 3, 2019 by Lunafox

I don't know from where you got that info about Ossus being 6.0.....

 

Again, you read an article and you post your own version of it as news.

 

There is no real rocket science why Anthem is trash. It was very obvious from the early game play footages that it's going to suck big time....

 

That game was simply just not interesting, and Bioware have made the same mistakes like with SWTOR in 2011......

 

And lastly Anthem has nothing to offer apart from flying, big armors, shooting and cosmetics you pay for with real money..... All this leads to failure from early release. Players wan't a game to lose themselves in.. characters to care about, a story to enjoy and replay multiple times. Anthem offers NONE of that.

There's a lot talk about in the article, BW Edmonton has some serious mismanagement that they need to address. it is an eye opener, I fear the worst for BW at this point. I do feel this belong in Off topic kind of, even though it mentions swtor it about Anthem, and Edmonton Vs Austin, not really about swtor. It's horrible how the higher ups treated there employees, it something that needs to be adress.

 

1. However no where in the article does it suggest Ossus was 6.0, The old republic was mention but no where does it talk about how much it effected Swtor, it only talked about how Austin and the devs try to warned Anthem team and how lot of Devs where on Anthem. Nothing in the actual Ossus story does it suggest that, so I don't think it was.

 

2. BW has confirm 6.0 will be announce at celebration and there is heavy advertising from the official Star wars celebration from BW themselves, in there celebrations Newsletters website, ect.. You would not do that if you have nothing to show.

3. BW austin working on the Live service is nothing new BW themselves said it, how much it would effect Swtor is unknown at this point.

 

Unless nothing happens In celebration I wouldn't go all doom and gloom at this point IMO of course.

Edited April 3, 2019 by commanderwar

I said as much, so I suppose I'll reiterate it. Ossus being 6.0 is my speculation. There is nothing in the article that says anything about it. My reason for saying as much is the fellow in Austin that is mentioned that says to push forward with what you've got, not what you're waiting on. Pretty sure that person is in our food chain, which is why I mentioned it. Ossus, to me, when I'm playing it, is just a whole different direction. Its pretty apparent that its not something that should have been released as is. As an example, they keep calling it "tier 5" yet it has nothing at all to do with galactic command. Edited April 3, 2019 by Akevv

Instead of reading articles on trash sites like Kotaku, maybe you should watch what the developers actually tell you:

 

 

Anthem and SWTOR have different teams. Some people work on both, but they do not affect one another. They are different teams.

6.0 news will probably come on the star wars celebration as they pretty much confirmed (asterisk as things happen).

 

This game has already clearly changed. It returned to a multiplayer focus with story mixed in. Iokath was the first step in that direction, Ossus is the confirmation.

 

Finally, i may be biased but i do not enjoy shooter looters. Honestly, not even the single player ones. I did enjoy Fallout 3 and NV but 4 was pretty bland. I think it is ungrateful that Austin is left to pick up the trash, but i do think it's good news for fans of the game because Austin already learned a lot of lessons with SWTOR they can apply to Anthem.

But, as far as potencial goes, SWTOR has a big IP tied to it, investment from players on the brand and story. Anthem doesn't. So, i don't see it smashing hits after release. But having multiple sucessful projects is good for BW Austin. If SWTOR keeps bringing the money and the new xpac is a sucess, i'm sure things will get interesting.

 

Also, people are making fun of it but changes made in 5.10 and .11 show me that BWAustin has been slowly fixing their engine, wich like Frostbite now was a real problem with Vanilla development. That is certainly a good sign to me. The deal breaker for me back in the day was how I could trigger a GCD withought my character actually doing anything. That was a huge issue with the engine that is now, thankfully, finally gone and i can enjoy the game more than ever.

 

PS: Fingers crossed for a new class/advanced class/specs. I think those would help a lot. I keep dreaming of a spec based on starkillers unique lightsaber stance. It would be awesome.

Edited April 3, 2019 by Nemmar

Confirmation Bias

Ossus was never supposed to be 6.0 that is being prepared and should be launched maybe in middle or 3rd quarter of the year.

 

This whole "delaying" started back with Gods of the Machine. If Gods were ready already during KOTFE/KOTET. If you remember the Star Fortresses which you had to destroy, there was this achievement that you had to find the logs hidden on these stations. These logs contained Lore that talked about Tyth, Scyva, Izax etc. Even the Zakuul nights use the slogans, like "Izax take you" etc. So the ground was set for this ops. Instead it was greatly delayed. This was when it all started. We were supposed to get Gods and Ossus much sooner, yet it was delayed due to Anthem.

 

There are indeed more teams that work for Bioware development, but these teams keep swaping and lending people between themselves. For the Anthem development they use most of the Devs ofc.

 

The important thing now is that Anthem is out and we are getting back the needed attention to swtor. The only issue now is that EA has problems as a company. The stock is going down and they are laying off people. Sure, Anthem is out but its disappoitment could hurt the studio in a very big way.

I said as much, so I suppose I'll reiterate it. Ossus being 6.0 is my speculation. There is nothing in the article that says anything about it. My reason for saying as much is the fellow in Austin that is mentioned that says to push forward with what you've got, not what you're waiting on. Pretty sure that person is in our food chain, which is why I mentioned it. Ossus, to me, when I'm playing it, is just a whole different direction. Its pretty apparent that its not something that should have been released as is. As an example, they keep calling it "tier 5" yet it has nothing at all to do with galactic command.

 

while I agree somewhat GC was not one of them, that made it apparent. I believe tiers means a set of gear nothing to do with galactic command, as an example 230-234, one, tier 2 is 232-236, ect... While i do agree that there were problems with ossus like bugs wise and gearing effecting negatively PVP, that made it not fully ready for launch, it was not something that would of taken that long to fix imo.

 

Except for gearing while it was not a good gearing system since it effected PVP in a bad way, but for PVE it was better than Galactic command. however it's something that should of been rethought for PVPers, while they could of made tier 5 for GC, however GC is also would not work for PVPers in the end. But two reason I believe why their is not a tier 5 in galactic is

 

1. Galactic command is mostly for solo players at this point and PVPers if they get lucky with the RNG, and since there was no rebalance like what they do for an expansion, there was no need to up GC (well except for PVPers but it wouldn't have help them)

 

2. There moving away from galactic command

Edited April 3, 2019 by commanderwar

All they need to do is make story and companion interactions and release it in regularly spaced nuggets No one wants another stupid shooter.

 

not everyone wants huniepop star wars edition either .

Edited April 3, 2019 by benmas

<snip>

 

And lastly Anthem has nothing to offer apart from flying, big armors, shooting and cosmetics you pay for with real money..... All this leads to failure from early release. Players wan't a game to lose themselves in.. characters to care about, a story to enjoy and replay multiple times. Anthem offers NONE of that.

 

There is nothing in Anthem's cosmetic store that requires RL money. It can ALL be purchased with in game money. Actually some of it can only be purchased with in game money. They've also added more cosmetics that can only be obtained by doing in game activities.

 

Also, I enjoy Anthem. Yes, it has issues but so does SWTOR and I enjoy SWTOR too so *shrug*. I keep hearing "broken" about Anthem although my personal experience suggests otherwise. I infrequently come across a mission that breaks. I rarely get disconnects. The loading times are too long. This issue existed in DAI and Andromeda - both of which used the same engine - so I'm disappointed they didn't learn and fix it. Maybe I'm just lucky in my experience.

 

Anthem is one of those games where I think it would have made an awesome single player RPG. The story was too short although I enjoyed what there was of it and I find the game's world and lore interesting.

 

Honestly my biggest issue with Anthem right now is the same issue I generally have with SWTOR ... both games need more story content.

Yeah, I read the article late last night. Everything they said just reinforced everything we already suspected was happening behind the scenes with Swtor being gutted.

Anthem is a mess and it’s a mess because of mismanagement. Anyone else see a similarity between that and the life span of swtor.

Yeah, I read the article late last night. Everything they said just reinforced everything we already suspected was happening behind the scenes with Swtor being gutted.

Anthem is a mess and it’s a mess because of mismanagement. Anyone else see a similarity between that and the life span of swtor.

 

Its not quite the same. Launches of both games are similar, but major change in direction for swtor came only with 4.0, which was asinine. What kind of genius thought, that mmo rpg doesnt need actual mmo stuff is beyond me. But, aside of that, there is no evidence of mismanagement in austin studio of that scale. Yes, there were **** ton of miscommunication and completely retarded decisions over the years, but its not a product of that. Then, of course, we all knew, that new content aint coming any time soon, because of release of garbage called "anthem" and dlc to it, i believe its called cataclysms or something. After it launches in spring, may be and only may be, than they will swap back onto swtor to make 6.0.

If you ppl think S W T O R is gonna survive this - t h i n k a g a i n.

 

B3/\/ !r\/!/\/6 needs to be fir3d after this!

Thank God they have Ben Irving to make the game exciting again. Look at all the good he did for this game...hopefully he can spread his Bioware magic all over Anthem too.

Confirmation Bias

 

You think:rak_02:

Excellent article. I feel terrible for all the Bioware staff subjected to such awful stress.

Excellent article. I feel terrible for all the Bioware staff subjected to such awful stress.

 

Same. I hope the article has some positive affect for the Bioware employees. No one should have to work under those conditions.

not everyone wants huniepop star wars edition either .

 

There are more shooters to choose from than what star wars is. Story and companions make it unique.

Same. I hope the article has some positive affect for the Bioware employees. No one should have to work under those conditions.

 

Sadly, it's not just them. That is the state of the video game industry across the board. It's horrible. I usually am anti-union (because of the financial political abuse members suffer while the teamsters get rich), but the game design industry is one of two areas (pro sports being the other) where I think Unions are a necessity. Now more than ever with the way publishers now abuse those who are often having to forgo even medical insurance to work on a work of passion that in the end the people who play it may not even like.

 

It's rough being in game design.

Sadly, it's not just them. That is the state of the video game industry across the board. It's horrible. I usually am anti-union (because of the financial political abuse members suffer while the teamsters get rich), but the game design industry is one of two areas (pro sports being the other) where I think Unions are a necessity. Now more than ever with the way publishers now abuse those who are often having to forgo even medical insurance to work on a work of passion that in the end the people who play it may not even like.

 

It's rough being in game design.

 

This time around its not ea bruh, its devs themselves. EA gave them 6 years and 400mil to develop a game with literally no pressure, aside of insisting of frostbite. The fact that devs didn't and still dont see the vision for anthem is hardly ea's fault, not to mention postponing huge amount of work until last year or so. I think bw's devs call it bioware magic. All this stuff started from DAI, which received positive reviews, despite it being a massive let down, in comparison to first DA and older games. If anything, EA should fire lead managers and others who facilitated this **** for so long.

Instead of reading articles on trash sites like Kotaku, maybe you should watch what the developers actually tell you:

 

 

Anthem and SWTOR have different teams. Some people work on both, but they do not affect one another. They are different teams.

6.0 news will probably come on the star wars celebration as they pretty much confirmed (asterisk as things happen).

 

This game has already clearly changed. It returned to a multiplayer focus with story mixed in. Iokath was the first step in that direction, Ossus is the confirmation.

 

Kotaku is trash? Hmm.

 

As for Anthem vs SWTOR teams, you may be somewhat correct. But to what do you attribute the 2 new devs on the forums in March 2019 immediately after Anthem was released? i.e. DanielSteed and MikeB, and whoever is running QADroid. Why haven't we had an expansion since 5.0? (2 years and 4 months ago, but I'm not counting) If you can even call 5.0 an expansion... it was more like a large content update for SP Chapters. So if 4.0 was the last real expansion (SP focused as it was), then 3 years 5 months.

 

I think that for the past couple of years, we've had the skeleton crew of Musco/Charles/Scruffy working on SWTOR, while all the "crossover" devs were working on Anthem.

 

 

But all that said, I feel generally positive about this game. 6.0 is coming and we know that we are interested in multiplayer MMO content (well... many of us anyway). I hope there are more raids, more planets with rep, and less RNG gearing.

Edited April 3, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

Think you are wrong on Osus being 6.0.

 

Great article, really feel for the devs - BioWare should not treat its employees in such a way as to negatively affect their health in such a manner.

 

Hope that now Anthem is released some effort will be put back into keeping SWTOR on the rails....though it looks like they will be juggling plates over on Anthem too for a while.

 

2019 is already better than 2018 in SWTOR imo as devs are communicating better and PTS is being used in a better fashion than it was before.

 

Star Wars has an enduring attraction to generations of fans and if cherished SWTOR should endure and flourish.

Instead of reading articles on trash sites like Kotaku, maybe you should watch what the developers actually tell you:

 

 

Why would we trust that more than Kotaku?

 

Ben Irving told us "RNG was exciting", he was clearly lying.

 

Keith told us the Conquest changes would mean more fun for more people, and more chance for smaller and medium guilds to win - that was lie too.

 

I am not saying I trust Kotaku at all, but I don't trust the Devs either.

 

I'll believe 6.0 is "real" that day after it hits the live servers.

 

Until then it's just another potential broken promise from Bioware.

 

 

All The Best

Edited April 3, 2019 by DarthSpuds

Why would we trust that more than Kotaku?

 

Ben Irving told us "RNG was exciting", he was clearly lying.

 

Keith told us the Conquest changes would mean more fun for more people, and more chance for smaller and medium guilds to win - that was lie too.

 

I am not saying I trust Kotaku at all, but I don't trust the Devs either.

 

 

All The Best

 

Agree with you on RNG, but for our medium sized guild, Conquest is fairly easy. I'd say it's about the same difficulty as before for large yield. You know your guild doesn't have to be in the top 10 right? It just needs to make it's conquest number (1.1 million, i think?).

Edited April 3, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller