BioWare's Anthem (PC/XB/PS)

[YNWA14]

I think gamers in general are hard to please, tbh.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

I think gamers in general are hard to please, tbh.

Disagree.

There are plenty of games that do well and please a lot of people.

Online games tend to have a ton of detractors because they try to please everyone. Eventually the big publishers will realize that it doesn't work, what works is having a clear vision in terms of design and sticking to it.

 

[PeteWorrell]

I think gamers in general are hard to please, tbh.

How so? Gamers just want to be treated fairly. When you go see a movie, you get a finished product. Same thing when you buy a music album. Only in the video game industry do you pay full price for games that are works in progress or sold as live services. Gamers are expected to shell out money with the promise of more content but if the game bombs, you never get the promised content as the developer abandons the game.

 

[18Hossa]

I think why people are so fed up/negative about Anthem is that everyone thought that this would finally be the looter shooter to get most things right at launch. They saw the weaknesses of Destiny, Destiny 2, Division, Diablo, etc etc but instead of building off those mistakes, they're replicating them. Sure its a fun game but it definitely shouldve had another 6-12 months dev time imo.

 

[Morbo]

I'm not sure another 6 months would make a difference. what we now have is 6 years in the making, and really it's an embarassing release given this fact.

 

[PeteWorrell]

I'm not sure another 6 months would make a difference. what we now have is 6 years in the making, and really it's an embarassing release given this fact.

It is more embarassing that EA buys Bioware who are known for their story driven RPG's only to force them into making a game like Anthem with barely any narrative in a totally different genre. I do not not feel bad for EA but i do feel bad for the employees being thrown to the wolves because they made something they probably never really wanted.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

If this was really 6 years in the making, and if their player base starts to dwindle quicker than they think, I think Bioware is f***ed. Gone the way of Viseral, Westwood and many other EA owned companies.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I may be overly optimistic, but I think BioWare still has one life left in the upcoming Dragon Age title. However, who knows what that'll twist into, with EA pushing live service after live service to compete with their own live services, thereby defeating the purpose of a live service to begin with.


If that flops and BioWare gets Westwooded, that'll be two of my favourite devs EA has destroyed.

....and Activision's working hard to destroy the third.....

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

I have a feeling that Dragon Age will be a very similar MMO-like game where it'll have bare features and then they'll add more AFTER you've paid for the game already. Just like what they did with Anthem.

I could legit see Blizzard and Bioware going under in the next few years. We will get to the point where EA will essentially rely on two (MAYBE 3) IPs to live on because anything new they make will be just like Anthem. Activision will basically live off of COD... some f***ing how.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I have a feeling that Dragon Age will be a very similar MMO-like game where it'll have bare features and then they'll add more AFTER you've paid for the game already. Just like what they did with Anthem.

I could legit see Blizzard and Bioware going under in the next few years. We will get to the point where EA will essentially rely on two (MAYBE 3) IPs to live on because anything new they make will be just like Anthem. Activision will basically live off of COD... some ****ing how.

How anybody can think that having every single game be a "live service" is a sustainable model is insane to me. The whole idea of a live service is something you update over time to keep people playing. You can't keep people playing every game you release and also release 3 or 4 games a year...especially when they come out barebones so people leave to play the already mature games and then you axe the updates.

It's a bizarre industry right now.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

How anybody can think that having every single game be a "live service" is a sustainable model is insane to me. The whole idea of a live service is something you update over time to keep people playing. You can't keep people playing every game you release and also release 3 or 4 games a year...especially when they come out barebones so people leave to play the already mature games and then you axe the updates.

It's a bizarre industry right now.

I can see a live service working fine if you have a good foundation for people to come back and play more until more content comes out. Rainbow Six Siege is a great example of this. It released with a good (not great) amount of content but the gameplay and CS-like feel keeps it alive from year to year allowing Ubisoft to release new content every year.

Anthem though has almost nothing. And the fact they expect you to do the same nothing missions and strongholds over and over for months until May (when the first RAID comes out) is pure insanity. Anthem has nothing. 6 years and it feels like they didn't even work on the content until the last few months or the last year of development. The fact that they have a roadmap of exactly what they want to do in the next 90 days says to me that they cut content or they seriously sat on content that should have been in there from the beginning.

I can't see this game surviving until May.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I can see a live service working fine if you have a good foundation for people to come back and play more until more content comes out. Rainbow Six Siege is a great example of this. It released with a good (not great) amount of content but the gameplay and CS-like feel keeps it alive from year to year allowing Ubisoft to release new content every year.

Anthem though has almost nothing. And the fact they expect you to do the same nothing missions and strongholds over and over for months until May (when the first RAID comes out) is pure insanity. Anthem has nothing. 6 years and it feels like they didn't even work on the content until the last few months or the last year of development. The fact that they have a roadmap of exactly what they want to do in the next 90 days says to me that they cut content or they seriously sat on content that should have been in there from the beginning.

I can't see this game surviving until May.

Oh live services work great, no question. The problem is, there's a limited market and a limited amount of time that a player has.

You can't have new live services be sustainable without cannibalizing your existing live services, at least to a degree....I would think.

The advantage to the traditional game format is a renewable market. The advantage to the live service format is renewable revenue using the same assets. I don't know if you can reliably double dip....at least not at the pace that these companies are making games.

Live services that are seen as the pinnacle of success got there over time working within the same game. If you keep replacing them at a rapid pace, I would think you run the risk of just having a lot of unfinished games.

I could be wrong...


It seems like what we are getting from the AAA industry isn't a live service model at all, but rather some weird hybrid abomination of live service and traditional that gets a lot of hate.





I mean, just think of EA. In the last few months, EA has released THREE shooters with some sort of live service model. Two of those are unfinished with promise of future updates, and use traditional pricing models. The third is a free to play game following a hot trend. What did they honestly think would happen?

 

[KingBran]

I think gamers in general are hard to please, tbh.

I won't completely disagree but I think with social media, streaming, youtubers... etc. Peoples perceptions of what a game should be and what it is gets mixed up.

You will get people who want to know EVERYTHING about a game before it is released. They want to see every screenshot, every video, interact with the devs, watch streams and videos, play in the beta... etc. By the time the game actually releases they wanted more already and are just left with what they have already been experiencing for months / years and have nothing left to be surprised or get excited about.

Im not saying game companies don't lie or give false hope about gameplay (See Fable and Watch Dogs and a bunch of other games.) However hype can lead to disappointment. Happens all the time.

 

[YNWA14]

Indeed.

Part of the problem too is that if developers take too long making a game people complain, so they rush to get it out without maybe a polished product because otherwise people lose interest and move on to the next new big thing.

Gaming is very different today than when I was growing up, that's for sure. Especially with so many different factors to consider. Everyone expects every game to be perfect and if it's not it gets torpedoed. Just from my experience. I find it fairly common for people not to just be satisfied with enjoying a game; it has to blow them away. That's not to say that those people won't play those games, but rather than a constructive and supportive culture in the gaming world it seems all very entitled and toxic at times.

 

[S E P H]

Anthem seemed like a game which would survive or die by the game's world and it seemed they did not spend enough time on the world to make it into a triple A game. Way too short of a development span for a game that did have a lot of potential, but when I saw it was EA I wasn't surprised reading all the problems about it afterwards.

 

[Ceremony]

This doesn't look like the kind of game I'd play or have any interest in, but it looks really boring.

EA is a disaster, as it happens.

 

[Tonneau]

Part of the problem too is that if developers take too long making a game people complain, so they rush to get it out without maybe a polished product because otherwise people lose interest and move on to the next new big thing.

It's almost as though companies would be better off waiting to announce games until they're nearly finished.

 

[Commander Clueless]

It's almost as though companies would be better off waiting to announce games until they're nearly finished.

Hype can be good, but only if the game is good.

If it's anything less than good, hype is a negative.

 

[Whiplash27]

Yeah, I'd much rather never hear about a game, then devs say hey, look here's our game, it's going to be released in 6 months, then boom. Rather than announcing it 2-3 years out. 6 months of building hype is plenty. If it's a multiplayer only game, you probably don't even need that much. Heck, look at Apex Legends, no one even knew about the game until it came out.

I even take a look at Cyberpunk 2077 and we originally heard about that game back in 2013. Did the game really need 6+ years of hype? I know that a smaller company like that can't just make it seem like they're working on nothing for years at a time, but they could have easily waited until after they finished with TW3's DLC (B&W came out in 2016) before even announcing development.

 

[Fistfullofbeer]

Its ok. I mean its not going to win GOTW awards but its entertaining enough. It has its flaws but I think it is getting more flak than it deserves because of the pedigree and history of Bioware.

I played it as I have EA Access Premier. I would not pay $60 for it.

 

[Warden of the North]

Disagree.

There are plenty of games that do well and please a lot of people.

Online games tend to have a ton of detractors because they try to please everyone. Eventually the big publishers will realize that it doesn't work, what works is having a clear vision in terms of design and sticking to it.

By far the largest problem with many online games (not including MMORPGs) is they just arent worth the full price of $60USD/$80CDN

People pay that much for a game and they expect a lot. They dont get it.

 

[Morbo]

By far the largest problem with many online games (not including MMORPGs) is they just arent worth the full price of $60USD/$80CDN

People pay that much for a game and they expect a lot. They dont get it.

yeah. I mean that's certainly one answer to the "people are spoiled" thing.

I wasn't asked to pay $20 for a shallow lark of a game, I was asked for $80 to invest in an evolving MMO AAA type title. I didn't give it that hype and that price, EA/Bioware did.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

By far the largest problem with many online games (not including MMORPGs) is they just arent worth the full price of $60USD/$80CDN

People pay that much for a game and they expect a lot. They dont get it.

I bought REmake 2 for full price and got about 25 hours of gameplay out of it and am satisfied.

The whole "isn't worth full price" is a nebulous area. I don't disagree that online games have a problem of being rushed out/incompelete at first but that it a very specific kind of game.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I bought REmake 2 for full price and got about 25 hours of gameplay out of it and am satisfied.

The whole "isn't worth full price" is a nebulous area. I don't disagree that online games have a problem of being rushed out/incompelete at first but that it a very specific kind of game.

True. There is a big difference between the "live service" game and a self contained adventure, yet they cost the same up front. It throws the expectations out of whack.

And then, of course, there's the games that do both, complicating the formula further...

 

[KingBran]

It's almost as though companies would be better off waiting to announce games until they're nearly finished.

Look at Apex Legends. Game is killing it right now.

Surprise people and give them no time to have expectations.

At the very least do what Nintendo does which is say "yes, we are making this game." But dont show it off, have tons of betas, release a bunch of the story, cutscenes and screenshots.

On the other side games like Spiderman, RDR, Halo, Gears, God of War... dont have years / months of content being released to get everyones hope up. They leave it for people to find out after release. Games like Anthem, Sea of Thieves and Faout 76 showed off too much too soon and people / media got their opinions out there too early. It makes people want to release the game sooner too.

People also expect beta's to be full games which is silly as hell. Look at Sea of Thieves. Tons of content now and still has a good player base. Same with Destiny 1 and 2. Problem is too much hype and preview and demand to be released before it should have with lower content.

I fully expect Anthem to be a great game.and take a path like Star Wars Battlefront II. They just really effed up the release of both games.