BioWare's Anthem Catch-All

Kehama wrote:

If you're getting masterworks from hard missions it states that "some" masterworks are available at that level while grandmaster 1 difficulty and up says "all" masterworks are available. So I'm guessing they have a small pool of masterworks available at hard difficulty to act as starters to let people at least kill enemies in GM1 difficulty but they don't want you hanging out in hard to farm all your loot.

It seems like at hard difficulty there are only MW weapons, and that other slots are at grandmaster level.

Garrcia wrote:
Kehama wrote:

If you're getting masterworks from hard missions it states that "some" masterworks are available at that level while grandmaster 1 difficulty and up says "all" masterworks are available. So I'm guessing they have a small pool of masterworks available at hard difficulty to act as starters to let people at least kill enemies in GM1 difficulty but they don't want you hanging out in hard to farm all your loot.

It seems like at hard difficulty there are only MW weapons, and that other slots are at grandmaster level.

That's correct. And not all weapons are available on Hard.

The upshot of this is when you transition into Grandmaster you will be able to kill things, but you will be VERY fragile until you loot some orange components.

I keep saying I'm done with this, but the legendary contracts are good little chunks of the gameplay I still enjoy, so I'm still doing 2 a night. (Come to think of it, I'm only getting them offered by Brin and Yarrow, I assume the Matthiases should also be offering them too, I wonder if that's a bug or if I'm failing to do something to tic that along to the final step--I did complete the Maur storyline FWIW). Last night I had to search to see if they'd fixed the loot or something, because in one legendary contract I snagged 1 Legendary and 3 Masterworks. Don't see any reports of changes out there, though, so I guess I just got some lucky RNG.

For the last few days trying to open Anthem has been an exercise in frustration. If I reboot my PC I can launch Anthem. If I exit the game though I can't relaunch it until I completely reboot the PC again. No idea what's causing that. Two things can happen, either the Play button in Origin will be transparent and not clickable or if I launch from a desktop icon the screen will flash one and then nothing will happen. I've made sure it's not updating and I've tried completely closing and logging out of Origin but nothing works. It's frustrating when you can't even launch a game.

Assuming I can eventually play the game again, how have some of you geared up your Storms for GM1? I've got some weapons for them but haven't found any of their real skills that I use. Do I have to just hope for a few carries in GM1 to start getting MW upgrades to my lightning strikes or is there a chance of getting some in hard difficulty since that one suit really needs those to kill stuff in GM1?

I got a set of MW weapons and a complete set of MW components in hard before transitioning to GM1, and from playing through with my son he was getting the same things in missions rather than strongholds; only thing I only got in GM1 were abilities/seals. The armor/health difference of the MW components will make a huge change in survivability.

I recommend for your first foray into GM1, try to group with someone whos already done it, be careful, craft purple consumables. Storms are good and valuable even a little under leveled. Frost is the most useful, followed by lightning. Frost isnt clear cut better, because so many colossus run fire, and that reduce frost effectiveness. Lightning is gret for clearing shields. Make sure to run at least one primer. Under-leveled, double detonator or a non-primer detonator is a no-no.

If you can, run a legendary contract or first. Then dabble in the strong holds after getting a few MW components from contracts. THEN, go strong holds for MW gears. After a few gear and components slots filled, the worlds your oyster.

If you do run with GWJ on PC, Cow, Black, Spy, me and a few others are always happy to run GM1 if you see us online.

These changes include:

Masterwork & Legendary drop rates have been increased for Grandmaster 2 and Grandmaster 3 difficulty levels.

Masterwork & Legendary drop rates have been increased for harder enemies at all difficulty levels. This includes: Legendary Titan, Epic Titan, Legendary Fury, Legendary Acid Ursix and Legendary Luminary Elder.

Time to hit up GM2+3!

Kehama wrote:

For the last few days trying to open Anthem has been an exercise in frustration. If I reboot my PC I can launch Anthem. If I exit the game though I can't relaunch it until I completely reboot the PC again. No idea what's causing that. Two things can happen, either the Play button in Origin will be transparent and not clickable or if I launch from a desktop icon the screen will flash one and then nothing will happen. I've made sure it's not updating and I've tried completely closing and logging out of Origin but nothing works. It's frustrating when you can't even launch a game.

I've had similar issues. I've had some success bringing up the task manager, looking at the advanced view, and killing the Anthem process that's still running in the background. The tell for if I need that fix is if Origin doesn't reopen its window when I exit Anthem.

Yeah I always manually kill anthem in task manager :/ it sucks.

I haven't been on Anthem in a while due to lack of content after all the javelins are geared up, but I decided to try it out again today. Still a pretty miserable experience. First I tried running a GM3 contract. Only one other person joined the whole time and the mobs are still way overtuned, even at 710+ gear score. It would seem no one is running GM3 because of the terrible difficulty/reward ratio. Tried to run another contract at GM2 and the game locked up 3 times in a row during the load in screen.

This game is a significant disappointment.

Nomad wrote:

I haven't been on Anthem in a while due to lack of content after all the javelins are geared up, but I decided to try it out again today. Still a pretty miserable experience. First I tried running a GM3 contract. Only one other person joined the whole time and the mobs are still way overtuned, even at 710+ gear score. It would seem no one is running GM3 because of the terrible difficulty/reward ratio. Tried to run another contract at GM2 and the game locked up 3 times in a row during the load in screen.

This game is a significant disappointment.

Bummer to here about the GM3 contract, I think people only run contracts for the guaranteed component so most just stick with GM1.

They did push out a loot adjustment last night and GM2 Freeplay was great. 11 masterworks and 1 legendary in about 90 minutes.

The game's a mess, no doubt about it, hopefully they keep plugging away until it finishes baking.

Some anecdotal data, Ran a ton of GM1 strongholds yesterday and usually got 1-2 masterworks and topping out at 3 one time. Ran my first GM2 stronghold and got 6 masterworks on the first run. I've only run across 2 legendaries so far and both of those came from GM1 elite contracts.

I was running a masterwork level ranger with a legendary weapon and GM2 already feels like the mobs are massive bullet sponges so the idea of trying GM3 isn't very appealing. Pouring a ton of rounds into a run of the mill skorpion to kill it got pretty old pretty quick.

Anyone know if you can replay core story missions eventually? During the Dawn Fortress mission the game forgot who I was, (Error: Unknown Pilot Data) ejected me from the mission, but claimed I finished it all the same. I had to go look up the cutscene I missed with Owen to make sense of the other conversations at Fort Tarsis afterward. And I wasn't able to earn the trophy (PS4) for completing the mission because technically I didn't. I'm still a ways from level 30, and from the end of the story, so I figured I would ask to see what my chances are...

You can play quick play roulette and hope to land into someone else's playthrough of that mission. Or team up directly if you have a friend that's behind you in the story.

And supposedly, they are adding 4 legendary missions by the end of March which will be specific story missions that you can run again but I don't think have given a list of the missions.

Was able to run gm3 with my colossus and got 1 legendary universal component and like 7 masterworks.

It seemed faster and better than running gm2 stronghold. Interestingly I have some legendary assault rifles that I first ran with but I do better with 2 mw grenade launchers. Guess the synergy is more important than the overall score.

They're working on a way to go back to story missions with basically a new game plus version. It'll be out in a few weeks.

Edit: ferret beat me to it.

Just got this with my video card and just finished the tutorial. Is there a GWJ clan/guild at all or anyone want to group?

There's no formal clan system (yet). If you're looking for people, I recommend joining the GWJ discord, and hanging out in an Anthem channel. That's your best bet.

I don't know what the head count is right now, as I'm in the midst of night-school mid terms, but I think the division took a chunk out of the player base. They'll prolly swing back when they chew through the division, and Anthem has a content update.

Yah, I have nightschool midterms this week as well, so time has been limited, mostly just long enough to test my new pc.

Man, I can't get motivated to finish the story in this. I think what I'm really missing in this game is the feeling of a really open world. Sure Fort Tarsis seems prettier and I can see my actions making a difference, but the whole game just seems so closed and cold.

Am I the only one feeling like this?

Haven't had much opportunity to play anything since I built my new pc last weekend, so only an hour into the game. Hoping maybe this weekend I'll get some time in on this game and Division 2.

I enjoyed Anthem more than I expected. However, Division 2 is just simply a better looter/shooter. I may come back to Anthem once they had some real content/endgame. However, currently the only time I have even started it in 3 weeks is when I miss clicked on it instead of Apex because they both start with A in Origin.

escher77 wrote:

I enjoyed Anthem more than I expected. However, Division 2 is just simply a better looter/shooter. I may come back to Anthem once they had some real content/endgame. However, currently the only time I have even started it in 3 weeks is when I miss clicked on it instead of Apex because they both start with A in Origin.

Yeah, I've enjoyed Anthem a lot too but going back to Anthem after Division 2 will probably be hard for me. Anthem is WHAT I want to play (sci-fi Ironman looter shooter) while Division 2 is HOW I want to play a game like this (true open world, no loads once in game, an abundance of loot, map/navigation, developed endgame, myriads of other quality of life things).

When thinking about going back to Anthem, I now feel it's so archaic and unfinished. And judging by the news, not much has changed in the 2+ weeks that I am not playing it. I am not even sure if they can change the HOW stuff I've listed above.

Hedinn wrote:

Yeah, I've enjoyed Anthem a lot too but going back to Anthem after Division 2 will probably be hard for me. Anthem is WHAT I want to play (sci-fi Ironman looter shooter) while Division 2 is HOW I want to play a game like this (true open world, no loads once in game, an abundance of loot, map/navigation, developed endgame, myriads of other quality of life things).

When thinking about going back to Anthem, I now feel it's so archaic and unfinished. And judging by the news, not much has changed in the 2+ weeks that I am not playing it. I am not even sure if they can change the HOW stuff I've listed above.

I think you captured my thoughts also, and used my favorite performance management framework to boot! I am looking forward to hearing post-mortems on this game in a few years, I have trouble thinking of a similar game that nailed the feel of a core mechanic so well that simultaneously dropped the ball in almost every other area, so I’d love to understand how the developers ended up in this spot.

Schreier's article on Anthem is up.

Dozens of developers, many of them decade-long veterans, have left BioWare over the past two years. Some who have worked at BioWare’s longest-running office in Edmonton talk about depression and anxiety. Many say they or their co-workers had to take “stress leave”—a doctor-mandated period of weeks or even months worth of vacation for their mental health. One former BioWare developer told me they would frequently find a private room in the office, shut the door, and just cry. “People were so angry and sad all the time,” they said. Said another: “Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.”

“I actually cannot count the amount of ‘stress casualties’ we had on Mass Effect: Andromeda or Anthem,” said a third former BioWare developer in an email. “A ‘stress casualty’ at BioWare means someone had such a mental breakdown from the stress they’re just gone for one to three months. Some come back, some don’t.”

"Even when a project feels like a complete disaster, there’s a belief that with enough hard work—and enough difficult crunch—it’ll all come together."

What kind of philosophy is that?! I don't understand how in this day and age a company can still believe in this kind of work and treat it's employees like this.

Management - Hey, go build something new. We don't have any direction or core theme but we want flying and armor. Make that part work and then we'll figure out the rest. We want to showcase something at E3 next year. We need you to start tomorrow.

Programmer - Ugh, it's Christmas.

Management - We realize this but we need something to test in 8 weeks. We'll pay you extra if you almost kill yourself.

8 Weeks Later...

Management - "No, we don't like that. The flying isn't like we thought it would be."

Programmer - "Well, we didn't get any feedback from the samples we sent you..."

Management - "Well, you should have realized that we wouldn't like it. Build something different. You have six weeks".

And so on and so forth.

BioWare Austin developers recall offering feedback only to get dismissed or ignored by BioWare Edmonton’s senior leadership team, a process that was particularly frustrating for those who had already shipped a big online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and learned from its mistakes. One developer described it as a culture clash between a group of developers in Edmonton who were used to making single-player box product games and a group of developers in Austin who knew how to make online service games.

“We’d tell them, ‘This is not going to work. Look, these [story] things you’re doing, it’s gonna split up the player experience,’” said an Austin developer. “We’d already been through all of it with The Old Republic. We knew what it was like when players felt like they were getting rushed through story missions, because other players were on their headsets going, ‘C’mon cmon, let’s go.’ So we knew all these things, and we’d bring it up repeatedly, and we were ignored.”

Response was posted before the article was it seems.

Also that's a super generic response.

Basically, Bioware has a dearth of people with leadership qualities. The head of the Dragon Age inquisition team being an exception, and the only reason why anthem was finished.

That was a rough article but very interesting, really explains a lot about the final product we got.