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Rion_Starkiller

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https://www.gamesradar.com/bioware-says-anthem-is-here-to-stay-in-a-lengthy-open-letter-to-the-games-frustrated-community/

 

 

  • BUGS - We are officially beta testers Clicky
  • NINJA NERFS/CHANGES - ...Perceived gaps in Anthem's patch notes. Update 1.0.3, for example, included a number of accidental changes, and some players felt that additional changes and perceived nerfs went unreported in the patch notes.
  • BOORISH COMMUNITY - "Why would a dev team member take time away from working on the next update to post when they know it's likely to be met with hostile replies, or they get flamed because [they] can't answer other questions that players are asking?" Clicky
  • LOOT - Anthem players are actively protesting the game's broken loot system. Clicky

 

Any of this sound like another game you play? :cool:

 

Who is running the show at EA BWA? I think it's safe to say that it's not the actual dev's descions, it's management decisions.

 

Reading about Anthem launch-pains is a fascinating, popcorn-eating affair. I can't wait for the next Anthem drama to unfold. This is better than reality TV :D

Edited by Rion_Starkiller
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https://www.gamesradar.com/bioware-says-anthem-is-here-to-stay-in-a-lengthy-open-letter-to-the-games-frustrated-community/

 

 

  • BUGS - We are officially beta testers Clicky
  • NINJA NERFS/CHANGES - ...Perceived gaps in Anthem's patch notes. Update 1.0.3, for example, included a number of accidental changes, and some players felt that additional changes and perceived nerfs went unreported in the patch notes.
  • BOORISH COMMUNITY - "Why would a dev team member take time away from working on the next update to post when they know it's likely to be met with hostile replies, or they get flamed because [they] can't answer other questions that players are asking?" Clicky
  • LOOT - Anthem players are actively protesting the game's broken loot system. Clicky

 

Any of this sound like another game you play? :cool:

 

Who is running the show at EA BWA? I think it's safe to say that it's not the actual dev's descions, it's management decisions.

 

Reading about Anthem launch-pains is a fascinating, popcorn-eating affair. I can't wait for the next Anthem drama to unfold. This is better than reality TV :D

 

It’s ironic that Ben “RNG is exciting” Irving is the lead producer. I wonder if they’ll sack him this time or promote him again?

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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I was actually playing with the idea of buying EA stocks since I wondered if they would go up cause of the release of Anthem, but luckily I didnt buy :D the stock went down after release.

 

The game is naturaly on twitch and I was checking the viewer numbers and then went down pretty quick in the first week with being around 2k atm, but thats only cause of some known streamers playing it. I am giving it 1 month before it becomes same as the newest Battlefront.

 

This was definitely a shot in the dark and a blow for EA. The only positives I see here is that EA will reconsider making new stuff and will focus a bit more on their currently running products like swtor. It is definitely better to invest more into what actually works rather then test new stuff.

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As so many have said past and present, until the consumer stops buying these games up front and stops buying the "big box set, platinum edition" these big companies like EA, Bethesda and Activision will continue to produce inferior products. In fact, I'll go even farther and say, these companies cannot return to good game making. They will just implode on themselves.

 

The Elder Scrolls series is over. E6 will be garbage if it's ever attempted at all. Hello, Valve and the Half Life series, looking at you here. Bethesda can't put out an Elder scroll's game now but every 20 something years? They should be growing in development staff, but they've been corrupted by profit. Same with EA. If consumers stop pre-purchasing, these companies will go belly up.

 

Sadly, little Johnny will keep asking mommy for blind money, or the gullible (let's face it, these folks are plentiful) will get excited by the marketing. I'm still subscribing here because of the original game before KOTFE. If this game was KOTFE and everything going forward, I'd never be here.

 

There are the few that can seem to overcome this corruption but I no longer have any confidence in EA, Beth, etc. I will certainly never pre-purchase another game from them and haven't in many years. I think ME2 was the last one.

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As so many have said past and present, until the consumer stops buying these games up front and stops buying the "big box set, platinum edition" these big companies like EA, Bethesda and Activision will continue to produce inferior products. In fact, I'll go even farther and say, these companies cannot return to good game making. They will just implode on themselves.

 

The Elder Scrolls series is over. E6 will be garbage if it's ever attempted at all. Hello, Valve and the Half Life series, looking at you here. Bethesda can't put out an Elder scroll's game now but every 20 something years? They should be growing in development staff, but they've been corrupted by profit. Same with EA. If consumers stop pre-purchasing, these companies will go belly up.

 

Sadly, little Johnny will keep asking mommy for blind money, or the gullible (let's face it, these folks are plentiful) will get excited by the marketing. I'm still subscribing here because of the original game before KOTFE. If this game was KOTFE and everything going forward, I'd never be here.

 

There are the few that can seem to overcome this corruption but I no longer have any confidence in EA, Beth, etc. I will certainly never pre-purchase another game from them and haven't in many years. I think ME2 was the last one.

 

The diff between SWTOR and Skyrim (and the Sims, for that matter) is that Skyrim and the Sims are moddable where SWTOR is not. The modding community has added both breadth and depth to both Skyrim and the Sims.

 

I have almost exactly (4.99) 5 gig of mods for the Sims. Talk about playing Barbie! I've also 23.4GB of mods for Skyrim. That's a lot of arrows in the knee!

 

So, to your point about releasing new versions, in a way, at least for players who avail themselves of all the free content to be had from the modding community, those games sort of morph into spin-offs of their own, especially Skyrim, where you can create entirely new species, lands, etc. I wrote a few mods myself for both Skyrim SE and the Sims.

 

There's even a Skyrim mod called USSEP which is the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch which (is huge) aims to fix all the bugs in the game, because in Skyrim, the bugs can be overridden by mods. Yay! Could you imagine if we could do that with SWTOR?

 

But you get the idea.

 

Invest enough time accumulating enough mods, things will stay different / fresh / interesting a lot longer.

Nice if SWTOR could have that, but eh.

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you guys shouldnt laugh too loud about athem failing.

if bioware doesnt produce any good games anymore and therefor wont make any profit, EA might as well close the whole studio. that would be the end for swtor as well.

 

Yes, no one should root for their demise but you also have to hold them accountable for choices they made themselves. People keep blaming EA for the state of the games but it's the studio creating the games.

 

From what I can tell, EA didn't force BW to put all their eggs in the Anthem basket, BW chose this direction to go. BW also chose how to use their funds and they chose to put SWTOR on the back burner while Anthem seemed to get much of the resources for development.

 

I think BW spread themselves too thin, and it was a gamble doing Anthem. Sometimes though, for your mind and soul you got to follow your heart and I assume the BW team simply wanted to go where their passion was leading them and that was into the Anthem rabbit hole.

 

For me, it's hard to not hold some resentment towards them only because I feel like SWTOR was neglected while Anthem was given funding and resources. However, it's also not fair for me to think any game studio owes me anything, and I have to admit I have been wrong in my perception of it all regarding Anthem and SWTOR.

 

In the end, it's a business first but BW is made of people with hopes, dreams, aspirations and the studio as well as EA have the right to do what they want. Whether that means trying to fulfill fans expectations or following the hearts and dreams of the studio into the daunting task of trying to create a brand new title like Anthem, it's their choice.

 

Personally I would have liked to see them put everything into SWTOR from launch till now and beyond, but that's not what they wanted and so it is as such.

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The diff between SWTOR and Skyrim (and the Sims, for that matter) is that Skyrim and the Sims are moddable where SWTOR is not. The modding community has added both breadth and depth to both Skyrim and the Sims.

 

I have almost exactly (4.99) 5 gig of mods for the Sims. Talk about playing Barbie! I've also 23.4GB of mods for Skyrim. That's a lot of arrows in the knee!

 

So, to your point about releasing new versions, in a way, at least for players who avail themselves of all the free content to be had from the modding community, those games sort of morph into spin-offs of their own, especially Skyrim, where you can create entirely new species, lands, etc. I wrote a few mods myself for both Skyrim SE and the Sims.

 

There's even a Skyrim mod called USSEP which is the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch which (is huge) aims to fix all the bugs in the game, because in Skyrim, the bugs can be overridden by mods. Yay! Could you imagine if we could do that with SWTOR?

 

But you get the idea.

 

Invest enough time accumulating enough mods, things will stay different / fresh / interesting a lot longer.

Nice if SWTOR could have that, but eh.

 

Indeed, the life of BGS games in the PC platform and now on consoles are the mods. They can fix things, they can add things. Heck people have built entire games using Skyrim's engine... it's crazy. Sad that it can't be applied to an MMORPG.

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  • 2 weeks later...
it's crazy. Sad that it can't be applied to an MMORPG.

 

I am amazed by the lack of progression game development has gone for MMOs.

 

The most successful MMOs are actually some of the earliest ones created which is odd because you'd think newer games would have an easier time of determining what players like and what they do not like.

 

Graphics have little to do with the longevity of a game, as we can see with EQ1 which still when compared to other MMOs has some of the most dynamic gameplay to ever be in a MMO.

 

My point is it seems so much focus goes into the graphics and that a lot of the gameplay seems to suffer as a result. Anthem sounds like this, to me.

 

I am just surprised it had such a rough launch because after 5+ years of development, I thought for sure BW would have a well-polished and well-done game.

 

Most disappointing is the fact they put everything else on the back burner while Anthem was getting developed which caused other projects like SWTOR to be neglected.

 

It's hard to justify letting SWTOR waste away, when Anthem ended up launching with so many problems after so many years of development. :(

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I am amazed by the lack of progression game development has gone for MMOs.

 

The most successful MMOs are actually some of the earliest ones created which is odd because you'd think newer games would have an easier time of determining what players like and what they do not like.

 

Graphics have little to do with the longevity of a game, as we can see with EQ1 which still when compared to other MMOs has some of the most dynamic gameplay to ever be in a MMO.

 

My point is it seems so much focus goes into the graphics and that a lot of the gameplay seems to suffer as a result. Anthem sounds like this, to me.

 

I am just surprised it had such a rough launch because after 5+ years of development, I thought for sure BW would have a well-polished and well-done game.

 

Most disappointing is the fact they put everything else on the back burner while Anthem was getting developed which caused other projects like SWTOR to be neglected.

 

It's hard to justify letting SWTOR waste away, when Anthem ended up launching with so many problems after so many years of development. :(

 

Yesterday was the first time I noticed on twitch that Anthem had less viewers than swtor (yeah Snave was streaming with 96 viewers :D ). It was only for a while, but for such a game there should be much more. Ofc viewers on Twitch are not a meassure of how good or successful the game is, but it does give some indication.

 

What I would want now from the Studio is to realize that its far better to invest in old but solid products rather than such new experimental stuff.

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you guys shouldnt laugh too loud about athem failing.

if bioware doesnt produce any good games anymore and therefor wont make any profit, EA might as well close the whole studio. that would be the end for swtor as well.

 

I'm not happy Anthem is failing, quite bummed, actually(not as bummed as I would have been if I'd actually dropped $60 on the game, but still). On the other hand a commercial and critical failure might end up being a good thing for Bioware. It might help them realize that they've been believing their own marketing a bit too much.

 

As it stands, it's looking like the game will hobble along for a few years with a decent number of casual players propping it up and small group of dedicated fans getting more and more frustrated with the game as time goes on(that sounds oddly familiar, for some ungodly reason). Which is a lose-lose for everyone as BW keeps wallowing in mediocrity with the occasional spark of it's former magic and the loyal, die-hard playerbase that they had built slowly erodes down to 4 people on a forum alternatively swapping stories of the good old days and bashing each other for being either too negative or not negative enough about whatever steaming pile of "revolutionary gameplay with the patented Bioware flair for story-telling" the studio puts out. /rant

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EA laying off people. That was to be expected based on the companies perfomance on the market. I am glad Anthem failed, but I am not glad that it may cause the Studio to suffer as a whole. We will see if they will come to their sences and invest more into the SW franchise to boost the earnings.

 

Instead of investing in their developers, their products and grow their business, they push out games that aren't ready and when they bomb, they realize the executives won't get the bonuses they "deserve" and so they lay off staff to compensate and send out a letter blaming the gaming industry.

 

I worked at a large American Bank (hint) for twenty years and watched them cut, cut, cut program after program, laying off workers as they went. Something strange happens to the human mind when gorged on wealth. But, it's been happening for centuries. Why stop now. :(

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The most successful MMOs are actually some of the earliest ones created which is odd because you'd think newer games would have an easier time of determining what players like and what they do not like.

:(

 

I agree with this, and my two cents is that software houses these days go on the cheap, follow the least line of resistance to get mediocre work done in hopes that mediocre is good enough to make near-term profits to satisfy (enough) investors and shareholders.

 

Obviously, online magazine critics in the gaming world don't fall into this calculus, or such mediocrity wouldn't be produced. It's always a race: get the game out to market, then tell (very loudly and often) investors and shareholders that deadlines have been met and operational costs minimized BEFORE critics and players have a chance to actually trash the game. The investor meeting, the shareholder meeting, is over, long done, their participants having walked away with a feel-good rosy picture of the product as offered, and totally miss the dose of reality supplied by critics and gamers. That's the bet software companies make.

 

Part of the mediocrity in such a bid lies in not hiring good story tellers and quest designers. Those cost serious money. So you get the uninspired hacks, the creatively bankrupt wanna-be's, the guy muddling through his MFA degree in creative writing who never put pen to paper before, for your content developers.

 

And you are right about the graphics. Graphics in Everquest One make my eyes bleed they're so bad, despite their occasional remakes (the latest being the opening tutorial area), but good luck finding many MMO's with EQ1's depth after 20 years of expansions, so software houses don't try.

 

Demonstrably (i.e., we've seen it happen) the mentality for software development houses these days is let's get something out, and 60% of a disaster isn't as bad as a 100% disaster so let's aim for 60% inconceivably horrid and we'll tell investors that game upgrades and expansions will improve quality over time.

 

Depth is out. On the cheap and quick-to-market is all that matters, and we get what we get with that.

It's the difference between buying a hand-made piece of New England furniture actually produced in New England by a family steeped for the last several generations in making high-quality furniture versus the crap you get from China at Walmart that attempts to approximate the same thing. People who care know the difference.

 

/rant

Edited by xordevoreaux
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https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

 

This is a really good article about Anthem, BW, and EA.

Yep, a real eye-opener. Looks like the SWTOR team is actually the best-run Bioware department at the moment, having learned the most from their experiences and seemingly not being mismanaged to the degree that Andromeda and Anthem appear to have been. I feel terrible for all the staff put under so much pressure. :(

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Yeah, and they try to say that Anthem had nothing to do with SWTOR's resources, yet suddenly in March/April -- post-Anthem launch -- we get 3 new forum people MikeB, DanielSteed, and QAdroid, coupled with 3x the number of normal Musco posts. We're also told that there will be a big announcement in April concerning 6.0.

 

But hey, Anthem had nothing to do with SWTOR's resources.... right? :rolleyes:

Edited by Rion_Starkiller
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What I found perhaps most interesting about the article was how many of the problems seemed internal to Bioware itself. Sure the forced name change imposed by EA due to licensing issues was annoying, but it's not like "Beyond" was such a great title to begin with. And, sure, the ubiquitous problems plaguing the Frostbite engine...

 

But it seems like a lot of the problems with Anthem (a game I played for a week) can be placed squarely at Bioware's doorstep due to indecision. As the saying goes...

 

The calls were coming from inside the house. :eek:

 

It obviously touched a nerve too given Bioware's near immediate issuance of a statement.

 

http://blog.bioware.com/2019/04/02/anthem-game-development/

 

Dasty

Edited by Jdast
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Very illuminating and interesting to read that whole article (and Bioware/EA completely and utterly missing the point in their response)

 

A couple of things that struck me in relation to SWTOR--the developers felt to the higher ups the same way the players in the PTS feel when they try to let the developers know of potential problems that we feel get ignored or missed. Like talking to a wall, as the article says. It's probably just as frustrating to our devs here to see our complaints/criticisms/feedback knowing that they won't be given the resources or feedback from their own higher ups that they'll be able to do anything about it. Hence why they are always so cagey about what they DO give back to us as far as feedback, or why it seems to us like they are maliciously ignoring us. There has got to be SO MUCH out of their hands by now--new stuff built on old stuff built from an old, hacky engine built on high-pressure, unrealistic internal deadlines just to make outside artificial deadlines important only to stockholders who don't play the game (probably don't play ANY games, tbh).

 

And the thing about too many cooks in the kitchen--developers with all these ideas of what Anthem should be/have been from a directional and narrative standpoint over so many years--people bleating about what it should be and no one actually being able to give examples or reasoning to support their demands/ideas and then nothing concrete happens due to so many unfocused ideas not being decided upon ultimately until it was too late. It reminds me of every single time someone posts something like "this isn't/wasn't 'Star Wars'-y enough" then don't go into any detail about what that means. The writers have a thousand voices that want something but can't voice it into existence what the H they're talking about and crap all over what does get put out--then act like they were betrayed that their unvoiced and unfocused statement "this isn't Star Wars" or "I want Star Wars" is supposed to magically mean something concrete that should have given immediate, focused direction to the writers/developers. (applies to the cute rage people express for the new movies--Disney didn't consult with them on a personal level or just KNOW what it means when they are told this/that wasn't Star Wars enough for them.)

 

Lots to unpack and think about in the article but those two things really jumped out at me

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  • 2 months later...

They are doing with Anthem,what they've been doing with SW:TOR for the past 8 years. But problem is,that Anthem doesn't have STAR WARS ip and it's crazy,stupid and LOYAL fanbase. So while they are getting away with not talking to it's community for months on end in SW:TOR, they can't afford that **** in Anthem.

 

Even if they did close game now and worked on it for another 2 years,like what Square did with FF XIV, it won't matter. Too many people got burned from it and probably won't even bother coming back. Personally I never played it,but I did follow discussion going around it.

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It has been long overdue...

 

I think EA has rights to SW games till 2023. They will probably milk out these last 3 years. In September 6.0 comes out, which will last probably 2 years at the very least.

 

Isn't it weird, how many games have something coming out in September....out of all the months in a year, every game is chosing September.

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