Anthem is a live service and despite the many drawbacks the game experienced since its launch, the team of developers that is currently working on it is not giving up. Instead, they seem to be very focused on the games’s future and are doing their best to improve it and use its potential. The recent announcement from Chad Robertson’s blog post reveals some of the studio’s plans, but not much. However, you know that this article is not simply going to deliver you the news. Instead, join me and let’s dive deeper between the lines for a more in-depth analysis of the blog post!
Anthem’s head of live service Chad Robertson, who many of you might remember for his clumsy gameplay skills during one of the earlier developer live streams from several months ago, reappeared today with an official statement and announcement from BioWare regarding Anthem’s future.Anthem is here to stay. It is changing constantly and a lot of the promises made prior to the game’s launch, were either not fully kept or completely ignored and seemingly forgotten. One thing is clear, though! The team working on this game is not giving up.
Anthem is a live service and as such changes should be accepted as something normal, not as a drama and a reason to throw salt and shout in anger at the devs, because they are not doing exactly what you (or I) think is best for the game.
In today’s post on BioWare’s official blog page Chad admits that the team has received a lot of very valuable help and assistance from players, who participated in the Public Test Server for the Cataclysm.
In fact, we now know that the next big update will again be delivered to us in raw format first on the PTS:
“What I can say is that we will continue to engage with you, our community, through PTS when we can show you what is coming.
Those of you in our player community that played on our Public Test Server gave us valuable feedback from your play that we used to influence our changes to the game. PTS is an invaluable tool we will leverage for future updates with Anthem.”
But that was the final line of Chads post. Let’s get back up for a moment to check the big announcement:
“We hear your concerns on core issues in Anthem and are acting on it. Those systems require a more thorough review and re-working versus quick fixes. We’ve got a team working on that now, and early results are promising.
In order to address these long-range plans, we are moving away from the Acts structure for updates. Instead, we have additional seasonal updates planned for this year that we think players will enjoy. These events will deliver challenges and chases similar to what you’ve seen, and are built around some fun themes we’re bringing to the game.”
So much trash has been pored over the devs for delaying the Act I‘s finale – the Cataclysm, and lately for not even mentioning the next two promised Acts that were expected before 2019 rolls out in front of our eyes.
The official announcement that the game is changing its direction is not good on its own. However, look at what the Cataclysm – a “Seasonal Update” – did for Anthem. The population increased significantly for these past seven weeks since Update 1.3.0 landed and delivered the “deadly storm”.
If the next seasonal updates deliver at least the same quality content like this one did, I do not mind having to go through this huge shift in direction at all.What I am missing the most is the developers’ voices and open communication. They talk and share a lot more now compared to what it was in the months leading up to the Cataclysm. It is not enough, though!
“Right now we are in the last week of the event and Chad’s post, while interesting and teasing, does not give enough answers as to what we can expect, when and why.
As I’ve said previously, we want to be transparent with you that we know more work needs to be done to make Anthem better. We also want to ensure we’re backing up our words with a great game you can play. So I don’t have any news today to share about the long-term changes we are bringing to Anthem.”
What? That’s not exactly transparent, man. Since Chad didn’t want or was not allowed (more likely!) to talk in greater details, how about we speculate for a moment?
The Cataclysm updated/upgraded all of our Javelin’s equipment slots except for the Components. Those six items you slot to make or break a build are as much of a valuable upgrade to use as all other items combined, I daresay.
So, whatever and whenever the next major update delivers, I expect and believe it will arrive with the new Level 66/80 Components. It has to.
Meanwhile I expect the Level 66/80 items from the Cataclysm to start dropping from the rest of the game’s content after the event is over. Either that or the Seasonal Store will remain open, allowing us to trade the War Chests for Crystals, but the currency will start dropping in larger quantities from Freeplay, Strongholds and Missions. Otherwise players, who missed the Cataclysm will be left out and that’s not something a live service game should allow to happen.
You know what? I don’t think we needed this blog post from Chad to come to the realization that the second and third acts, originally scheduled for 2019, are going to be either canceled or delayed. It is the middle of September and there simply isn’t time for two major updates to happen to Anthem’s world in the remaining two or three months until the Holidays.
With that out in the open, can we really consider the “moving away from Acts” announcement really a surprise? I think not. I personally accept this with a happy smile and positivism. But then again I have always been positive about Anthem. It’s hard to tell if it’s because I always believed they are going to do the same for the game like what DICE did for Star Wars Battlefront II or maybe because I always liked the gameplay (the flying and combat are insanely fun, despite the bugs that still occur).
How about you? How did you react when you read the title of this article? Is this a positive change for the game or not? Share your thoughts and opinion right there in the comments section.
