ANTHEM - failed Destiny clone from BioWare

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah, of all of those Fortnite is the biggest example. Epic spent years developing a Tower Defense game, it came out and basically did nothing, on a lark they put in the Battle Royale mode and it became the biggest game around. Although Final Fantasy 14 I think is the only one where the game was completely remade.

Re: FFXIV, they could possibly do a similar thing with Anthem: where the prior failed iteration of the game is built into the remade game's backstory. I don't think it works with everything, but I think it could work with Anthem. Admittedly, story wasn't really where the game was lacking or anything that most of the multiplayer crowd cares about.

 

[eklektyk]

ppl leave warframe alone - they run nightwave almost a year and finnally decided to give us another inntermission - if we are good players this one maybe will run like 9 months or smth

this is a state of content in it and big item ticket railjack that was on marketing tour and everywhere was quielitly brought behind shed and put out of its miserry ...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

They already spent a gorillion dollars to create the game so they could try to see what happens if you get a team to come up with more interesting mission design and loot system (the combat and mobility are fine, and the unique weapons that were added later were more fun than the generic rifles). Or just copy a successful game since the "Iron Man gameplay" aspect would keep it unique enough.

(funny thing is that it would probably make for a good battle royale as it is)

 

[mediocrepoet]

They already spent a gorillion dollars to create the game so they could try to see what happens if you get a team to come up with more interesting mission design and loot system (the combat and mobility are fine, and the unique weapons that were added later were more fun than the generic rifles). Or just copy a successful game since the "Iron Man gameplay" aspect would keep it unique enough.

I agree, I was surprised when they didn't fully support this and it bombed. It felt like they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because the core gameplay loop was actually entertaining, and so was just flying around.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They already spent a gorillion dollars to create the game so they could try to see what happens if you get a team to come up with more interesting mission design and loot system (the combat and mobility are fine, and the unique weapons that were added later were more fun than the generic rifles). Or just copy a successful game since the "Iron Man gameplay" aspect would keep it unique enough.

(funny thing is that it would probably make for a good battle royale as it is)

They've had nearly two years to unfuck it. If they're incapable of doing it then it's just more money being tossed into the moneypit.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

A kid's allowance in comparison. It feels like setting fire to a house because you think the pest exterminator isn't worth the $100. With how popular this type of game became I find it hard to believe these giants are incapable of finding someone to salvage it.

Gearbox's Godfall is in a similar situation.

 

[typical user]

Fingers crossed if EA told them to fix this shit. Anthem had one of the greatest idea for combat. I don't recall many games which allowed me to hover in ironman suit and shoot giant crab or some other creature with other players. The game has pretty varied mechanics but the balance, level design and lore sucked. I can't comprehend why they have decided for some magic shit when the first draft was about colonists who split up and started fighting each other and local inhabitants & monsters.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Fingers crossed if EA told them to fix this shit. Anthem had one of the greatest idea for combat. I don't recall many games which allowed me to hover in ironman suit and shoot giant crab or some other creature with other players. The game has pretty varied mechanics but the balance, level design and lore sucked. I can't comprehend why they have decided for some magic shit when the first draft was about colonists who split up and started fighting each other and local inhabitants & monsters.

I vaguely remember it was because the original writer left, and the Dragon Age writer took over. He had no idea how to continue the original plot, so shoved in magic.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

city of heroes

I believe City of Heroes was profitable, even at the time of its shutdown; iirc, it was a matter of rights being transferred to some other company which thought that it could invest the maintenance costs elsewhere to make something more profitable than CoH was (which of course failed).

It's worth noting that after retarded drama (Where a "trusted community member" was given the source code in secret and used it to make a secret private server for him and his dick suckers whilst sabotaging all reverse engineering attempts and telling us all CoH was impossible to bring back for 7 years.) that CoH is alive and well. With several different private servers. Only Thunderspy seems to want to do new, interesting and balanced content though. Homecoming evolved from the secret Leo server and continues to do shady shit like lie about how many donations they need, being "in talks" with NCsoft whilst being downright orwellian, tranny ridden, and amateurishly run with hilariously unstable servers.

Seriously, Anthem is okay. But after replaying CoH recently I realised just how fun games used to be. CoH was just plain fun. There was an actual game to be played and enjoyed. Not just autistic grinding to get to more grinding like in modern "live service" games.

 

[J1M]

A kid's allowance in comparison. It feels like setting fire to a house because you think the pest exterminator isn't worth the $100. With how popular this type of game became I find it hard to believe these giants are incapable of finding someone to salvage it.

Gearbox's Godfall is in a similar situation.

They can't just put some GAMER in charge of fixing the design, it has to be a friend or relative of the EA inner circle. When you consider all of the constraints, it is unlikely they can find someone capable of the task.

Think of the chaos it would cause if the board started asking questions about how they spent $100M going in the wrong direction if all it took to fix it was some good ideas.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Atlantico]

tl:dw

- Bioware has become a soulless corporation
- Patrick Söderlund is a soulless corporate hack
- Bioware is the only company in the world that can't make a game with Frostbite 3
- David Gaider definitely used a toupee at one point

 

[rusty_shackleford]

what I learned from the video:
EA execs were responsible for the only thing I ever see praised about this game(flying)

also amusing how much "bioware magic" got shit on yet most of the game didn't come together until the last 12 months of development.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So is this the end for Bioware?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the only thing bioware should take away from this is that nothing got done until they treated their devs like slaves

 

[ADL]

So is this the end for Bioware?

No, Mass Effect 4 will release. It'll be incredibly mediocre but expectations will be so low that it's considered "shockingly good" and everyone will suck their dicks for another twenty years. This will be the end for their GaaS dreams though if they don't fund it. Who would buy another loot shooter managed by EA if they weren't willing or able to commit to the first one?

That's the thing Ubisoft seems to understand with The Division as a franchise. They haven't struck gold with Massive yet but if they abandoned it, no one would give anything else they do a chance. In a world where Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, No Man's Sky, The Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV and even Fortnite exist, not giving Anthem a chance is incredibly dumb.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So is this the end for Bioware?

No, Mass Effect 4 will release. It'll be incredibly mediocre but expectations will be so low that it's considered "shockingly good" and everyone will suck their dicks for another twenty years. This will be the end for their GaaS dreams though if they don't fund it. Who would buy another loot shooter managed by EA if they weren't willing or able to commit to the first one?

That's the thing Ubisoft seems to understand with The Division as a franchise. They haven't struck gold with Massive yet but if they abandoned it, no one would give anything else they do a chance. In a world where Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, No Man's Sky, The Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV and even Fortnite exist, not giving Anthem a chance is incredibly dumb.

Bioware already has one of the most successful live services game in existence right now: SWTOR

 

[True Ukrainian]

So is this the end for Bioware?

No, Mass Effect 4 will release. It'll be incredibly mediocre but expectations will be so low that it's considered "shockingly good" and everyone will suck their dicks for another twenty years. This will be the end for their GaaS dreams though if they don't fund it. Who would buy another loot shooter managed by EA if they weren't willing or able to commit to the first one?

That's the thing Ubisoft seems to understand with The Division as a franchise. They haven't struck gold with Massive yet but if they abandoned it, no one would give anything else they do a chance. In a world where Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, No Man's Sky, The Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV and even Fortnite exist, not giving Anthem a chance is incredibly dumb.

Bioware already has one of the most successful live services game in existence right now: SWTOR

SWOTOR is not big enough to support all the Bioware campuses. If the new ME and DA do badly, EA might choose to shutter most of Bioware.

 

[Atlantico]

also amusing how much "bioware magic" got shit on yet most of the game didn't come together until the last 12 months of development.

The problem was that nothing "came together". The final product was incomplete and substandard. There was no "bioware magic", there's no "magic" at all in delivering garbage.

The "bioware magic" was meandering on games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and last moment pulling something amazing out of their asses.

That simply didn't happen with Anthem. No magic.

 

[ADL]

He's dead, Jim
https://blog.bioware.com/2021/02/24/anthem-update/

Anthem Update

Friends,

In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.

Since Anthem’s launch, the team has been working hard to continually improve the game, releasing multiple updates that brought with them a variety of improvements and introduced new content to play. Towards the end of 2019 we expanded on that effort and started working on a more fundamental restructure of the game.

During the development we’ve provided updates revealing some of the team’s work through blog posts and conversations with you on social media and it’s been inspiring for us to see the positive reactions and feedback. I’ve been incredibly proud of the work the team has been doing, and excited to see and play each new build of the experience.

2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams.

I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we’ve been working on. It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career.

Game development is hard. Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

To the Anthem community, thank you for your passion and creativity. Your feedback and suggestions most certainly help shape the team’s direction, and on a personal note, your kindness and encouragement were much needed last year.

Please stay safe and be kind to each other. Strong alone, stronger together.

Christian

 

[Cyberarmy]

Rest in pieces.

 

[Miserable Panda]

I have no trust left in Bioware, but at least I'm happy that they are not going to be spending their time with this crap anymore

 

[Myobi]

He's dead, Jim

https://blog.bioware.com/2021/02/24/anthem-update/

I understand the decision, but… fucking hell mate, Anthem had way better foundations than games such as No Man Sky and Fallout 76, something fun could still be made out of it, and a Steam release, while it wouldn’t bring a player base as big as it could have with a proper released condition, it could still make it out.

… but then again, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise, they also pulled the plug and canceled Andromeda’s DLCs when it flopped, RIP Quarians.

Jfc, I used to love these mother fuckers… Larian Studios, you are my only hope now.

 

[Rahdulan]

SHOCKING TRUTH

 

[ADL]

I'm actually kinda disappointed. Easily their best game since Jade Empire gameplay-wise, it's content drought and god awful gear systems that killed it.

Look up a list of today's most successful games as a service titles and you'll see a large handful of games that everyone deemed "doomed" upon release. The suits are fucking morons for not finding some way to salvage this.