On March 6th BioWare did a developer live stream with some Anthem Colossus Freeplay in the background. The important stuff was the talk. Lead producer Ben Irving and community manager Jesse Anderson talked about many of the community’s hottest topics and concerns and the upcoming bug fixes with the Anthem March 9 Update.
There have been rumors and mini announces that BioWare is preparing another huge patch for Anthem. The update is targeting next week – March 12 (UPDATE: The Patch was bumped for earlier release on March 9), as a release date. Patch notes will likely be ready on the date the update goes live. In this client-side patch the developers managed to correct a huge amount of the most annoying issues players have been experiencing and reporting. Below is a summary of what Ben Irving (lead producer) and Jesse Anderson (community manager) previewed for us on the stream.One of the most frustrating bugs that caught the attention to even the big mainstream outlets and media was a crash on PlayStation 4 that powered off the whole console and forced a database repair after that. Some players even asked for a refund because of that and nobody can blame them. The game is literally (heh, that word…) unplayable for them at the moment. The good news is that the dev team believes to have isolated the issue and fixed it. Their “strike team” has been busy investigating many possibilities and successfully caught and fixed a lot of them. Not all, most likely, but at least PS4 players should be able to play the game more reliably now.
The devs made an attempt to implement a popular request from the community into a previous update, but failed. With this upcoming patch next week there will be no more Common and Uncommon loot drops in Grandmaster difficulty tiers.
Unfortunately the HP bug is still there. Ben Irving stated at first that this is simply a visual issue and despite all efforts, it will still remain present in the game after the March 12 patch. The bug is related to the number of segments you see on your javelin’s HP bar when you switch between difficulties and go into expeditions one after another. This wrong appearance does not affect your performance, Ben sinsisted. Later he confirmed via a Twitter message that this bug is NOT just visual. As the Storm video from Reddit proved that a couple of days ago, now BioWare acknowledged it too. (thanks to Scardust for showing me the tweet in a comment below)
Many instances of the Disappearing Sound Bug have also been fixed. I personally get this at least once a day. As you play, the sound of the game would completely disappear. I mentioned that in my Anthem Problems and Fixes guide. There was no other way to fix it apart from relaunching the client. Similar to the PS4 powering down bug, the team believes to have caught and fixed most if not all of the instances where this happens.
A fantastic new quality of life improvement has been made and it is once again a result of the community’s demands. A “Start Expedition” quick launch button is now available at all times for you in Fort Tarsis, even while you are not in a group.
Grandmaster 2 and 3 difficulties do not feel as rewarding as they should. The dev team is fully aware of the complaints and completely agrees with that. There is nothing scheduled to address this particular issue with the upcoming March 12 Update, but they are considering various options and solutions. The “no more common and uncommon loot” is a start to the solution, but more will be done in the near future.
Colossus gets yet another small, but valuable set of quality of life changes and a minor buff. The changes with the thick boy are related to their recovery timers when they overheat or get knocked down (hard hit or from hitting a wall during flight). Colossus players are now able to quickly get up their shields after an attack or getting attacked. In addition to that they will also recover much quicker now after an “incident” and can use their abilities sooner.
BioWare publicly agreed that most of the high-end weapons (Masterwork and Legendary) do not feel as awesome as they should, considering their rarity and effort (luck) needed to get them. In addition to inscriptions being more focused around the specific weapon and benefiting it, rather than a random selection of the general pool of inscriptions, the weapons themselves got a buff. Previously they were equal to 45 Power. With the March 12 Update Masterwork weapons will be equal to ~60 Power.
Following another popular demand was to help downed players get noticed by their teammates and not left in the dust, the dev team is bringing a rather strange and unexpected, but working solution. The Respawn timers are now 30 seconds and Respawn restrictions have been reduced significantly.
Some of the javelins’ abilities did not scale up properly for Grandmaster 2 and 3. The team has corrected that and things like the Ranger and Interceptor melee attacks and all ultimate abilities will now also get stronger on the highest difficulties.
In addition to that, the Ultimate bar appearance bug has also been finally fixed. You have no doubt noticed how your Ultimate appears to be ready in the very beginning of a mission or Freeplay, while it wasn’t really ready. At last, this bug is no more.
Quickplay has been plagued by issues. The devs have addressed as many of the bugs that put you in an empty map or mission with no progress mark and such. Quickplay will likely still not be 100% clear of bugs after this patch, but it should be a lot more reliable and will allow you to farm your Valor challenge easier.
One of the most popular requests for Anthem is for a Stats Page to be added to the game, so when you make your build, you would actually be able to tell which item does exactly what for your javelin’s performance without using spreadsheets and other third party tools. Ben Irving made it pretty clear that a Stats Page is coming and it will be rather sooner than later, but he was not willing to mention a date or at least a target window for when can we expect it in the game.
In terms of actual new content, no – the March 12 patch does not bring the previously announced and promised Legendary Missions and Appearance Chests in Strongholds. These are still scheduled to be released in March, but some time near the end of the month. New events will also be released for Freeplay. A world filled with Outlaws was teased, where you would have to find and defeat a special named Outlaw character.
There are around (or more) 300 changes in the upcoming patch. It has been announced for March 12th, but this is not a confirmed date. It will be a client-side patch, meaning you will have to download and update your game before the changes take effect.
Below you can check out the full recording of the live stream from March 6th.
