BioWare finally released the Anthem 2.0 July Update blog post and as promised earlier by Anthem studio director Christian Dailey we got a first glimpse of the major goals and changes planned for the Anthem Revamp Prioject! The major goal before the team is to create a new loot system, while also improve the existing Gearing methods and redesign the UI of the game!
Christian Dailey is Anthem’s new studio director and his small team of around thirty developers are currently exploring new ideas and testing various implementations for the upcoming Anthem 2.0 revamp.
The first blog post from Christian back in May was more of an introduction of himself and to calm us all down by telling us that the Anthem 2.0 development has begun and is going well in its early stages.
During the month of July Christian was very active on Twitter sharing insights of Anthem 2.0’s development process. He teased a new faction coming, new melee weapons and builds and a possible PvP mode coming to Anthem at some point.
About two weeks ago Christian said that he started the next blog post. Nothing happens easy within EA, so this blog post had to wait for quite some time before it’s finished, approved and now finally live – on the last day of the month – July 31st.
So, let’s explore what news we got this time! Keep in mind that Anthem 2.0 is still in early development and nothing of what you hear or see is final, including the name.
BioWare has not yet officially named this as Anthem 2.0. It may be Anthem NEXT or even Anthem 2020/2021.
Anthem 2.0’s New Loot System
In the current version of Anthem the loot system is not horrible. It was at launch, though. There’s so much for improvement still. Christian’s team lists the loot system revamp and redesign as their major goal.
“A good player experience depends on the loot system being extensible and robust, and a lot can go wrong. A lot did go wrong. We fell short here and we realized that building something new from the ground up was going to be required – starting with taking a long look and understanding the best in class of the many great games that inspire us. Based on this research, along with your thoughts and feedback, we planned some high-level goals and changes we wanted to try”
Increased Frequency of Loot Drops
The current Anthem version drops a lot of loot, but the way the inscriptions system is designed, nearly all of the loot drops end up thrown away. Many players don’t even bother picking up blue items, even purples.
The increased frequency of quality loot drops is target number one for Christian and his team.
The blog post states that BioWare wants to “respect our time”. We want that too.
Loot drops will be more viable in Anthem 2.0. The items you get will have more meaning for your build and be more competitive. All tiers of items will have more meaning and strategic places throughout the progression.
Now what does that mean?
As many of you probably know, I have nine years worth of experience with another of BioWare Austin’s video game titles – Star Wars: The Old Republic. This game nailed down the loot system in its 6.0 expansion. It’s all randomized, but to a much lesser extend than Anthem’s loot system.
SWTOR’s vertical progression almost forces you to go through each tier of gear to reach the top. In Anthem’s terms this could mean that if such a system is implemented, it would mean that you wont be able to pick up Legendary 80 items if your Javelin is equipped with primarily Purple gear. Your loot would be tailored to your current gear rating.
Exceptional items
Among the things you loot there will also be a chance to get something exceptional. What are Exceptional Items in Anthem? Items with the exact stats that you want for your build would be my answer.
What are those really? Christian doesn’t specify exactly if these items will be a new tier or a unique category of items, or perhaps a new slot in our Javelin’s gear screen.
“Exceptional items are about getting the exact types of bonuses you want, instead of maxing values on every bonus” – Christian explained.
Purcuing a specific build will be easier
Not only will you be able to create more versatile and actually working and useful builds, but you will be able to tell the game what gear to give you.
BioWare wants to allows us to “embrace choice” and this comment from Christian attempts to explain how they plan to do it:
“You can pursue specific loot without relying on randomness alone; Quests; Specialized Vendors; Unique Loot Tables”
Modifying your Loot
This was something we all expected to be added to Anthem a lot sooner. I personally thought it would be in one of the first patches after the live release in February last year.
Come on, how high was the demand for personalized loot and the ability to tweak the items we get by spending some form of an in-game currency.
I go back to my SWTOR experience here – this is a possibility in the MMO at the moment. You are allowed, to a degree of course, to tailor the gear you get and make it unique just as you want and need it to be for your personal build and gameplay style.
“You can pursue specific loot without relying on randomness alone; Quests; Specialized Vendors; Unique Loot Tables” – the blog post stated.
Re-rolling Inscriptions and Leveling Items
Of course. That’s what we all wanted and it’s coming! Anthem 2.0 will offer a way to roll for a better inscription in an item we like, but it’s just not quite the best possible.
Leveling up items is another well-known technique in many other titles. One such game that comes to mind is the Shadow of War, which I also covered in great detail on VULKK.com.
There you were able to level up your favorite weapons. Anthem 2.0 will allow you to do that as well. There is no information how that would happen and if all items will be able to level up. I suppose we will have to pay Coin to level the items up and it will likely be an expensive adventure.
Each item in Anthem 2.0 will have a “budget” based on its Power and Rarity. This is actually not very different from what we currently have in the game.
The big difference is that we will no longer get trashy inscriptions on items where we can’t even use them like +Damage on an item that does no damage.
New Loot visual appearances and on-screen info
The blog post showed a number of images and a short clip of a few seconds – a Ranger player killing a Fury and looting it.
In Anthem 2.0 “Loot feels exciting and more noticeable when it drops, and is celebrated when collected” – Christian explained in the blog.
Rare Enemies
Anthem 2.0 will make use of what Christian called “walking treasure chests”.
Instead of simply finding a chest and opening it, a new rare enemy that will spawn on a certain time interval or only in specific locations under specific conditions.
This new rare special enemy will drop more loot.
Equipping new loot as you play
This is finally happening too. Anthem did allow us to use the Forge while playing, but it often buggs out and doesn’t work properly.
In Anthem 2.0 we will have the ability to see what we loot and decide if we want to equip it right there.
New Equipment Sheet with Detailed Stats
It’s finally coming. The detailed stats screen was not shown in this blog post today, but we at least know that it will finally be available in Anthem 2.0.
The new equipment sheet will have a brand new design than the current Forge has and it will be available for access from anywhere at any time.
New UI Elements and Visual Appearance Changes
As I said in the beginning it’s still too early do draw any major conclusions or extract meaningful date from what BioWare showed us in this blog post today. I am going to do it anyway!
Brin’s new Mission and Store Screen
This appears to be a screen of a new store. Several new stores are going to be available in Anthem 2.0 so we can better shop for the items we need.
In this case we see Brin’s personal store/page.
On the first row are Special Quests. There is no info on what these would be, but based on the color of the icons, they are going to yield the best loot and rewards.
Next are Daily Missions (Contracts). They may be similar or even exactly the same as we have in Anthem today. You go around Bastion and complete a set of three or more objectives that Brin asks you to do over the radio. At the end you get a chest with rewards, while each mob defeated may still randomly drop something.
The Weapons row is likely a new addition to Brin’s capabilities. Again, we don’t know officially what it is, but I would speculate that these are items she will offer you to purchase from her.
Same goes for the final row titled “Power Weapons”. These would probably be special weapons that you cannot get anywhere else or the chance to get them as random loot would be much smaller.
The new Equipment Sheet
This is what will replace the Forge, I think. In this screen there is so much we can discuss, analyze and speculate on…
On the top is the menu bar. The Equipment screen is the first one. After that we have Skills, Mastery, Appearance, Store, Settings.
What could be the skills tab? If you follow Anthem’s development from before the release of the game, you would remember the Player Skills system that was cut out of the game as BioWare likely ran out of time and could not properly balance it for the live version.
We also don’t know yet what the Mastery tab will contain. I expect it will be a new way to further diversify and modify our Javelins and builds.
It may just be another leveling system. If Skills are for the Pilot, as you see in the image above, the Mastery tab could be per-Javelin tweaks.
The Appearance, Store and Settings tabs are nothing new. The Store is likely going to be the Featured Store, which also combines within itself the Regulator and Seasonal Stores as well at the moment.
Another major change that sneaks in between the lines here are the individual armor parts that are visible on the new UI screen above.
There is no place for components, instead we have individual slots for helmet, chest, boots and gloves. Could this be a brand new gear system in Anthem excluding the components and the total chaos they introduce with their Inscriptions?
I don’t think so.
Replacing components with individual armor parts that actually bring stats to the table could be problematic when you include the visual component of these.
BioWare would need to develop a transmog system for Anthem, which seems to me like an unnecessarily long time and effort.
A much easier and logical solution would be to attach a single mod to each part of the armor and get rid of the Components. This will allow the developers to keep the cosmetic appearance of each exosuit and also simplify the gearing process.
On the screen above we see four slots for potential mods. Right now we have six component slots. If the new mods are indeed attached to the armor parts, this will allow the devs to create specific pools of stats and boosts that a mod can have based on the slot it is inserted into.
Let’s move on!
Below the menu, on the left hand-side we have a stats section. At the top is the current Javelin Power rating, which is displayed as 248. This is either a low level javelin or BioWare is also going to tweak the numbers and our Legendary Javelins may no longer be 960+ in Anthem 2.0. This is also still unknown.
Below the rating score we have three stats: Primary, Specialty and Defense. For each Javelin these would be differently important and, of course, with different values. The Specialty stat is intriguing and there is no info yet what exactly it will support or deliver.
I really don’t know what to make out of the next two modules below on the left-hand-side. You can press a shortcut button and get Rewards? This makes no sense to me.
And the Skills being 0? It could be that we will be able to assign earned skill points to each javelin and this we have to make hard decisions on which perks and how to balance them. This is just a speculation, of course.
On the better part of the screen we see items categories and specific items selected and compared.
I like the fact that we get a confirmation of the old weapons remaining valid and available in Anthem 2.0 as both the Glorious Result and Sledgehammer are currently available in today’s version of Anthem.
Each gear piece and weapon may receive new perks by the time Anthem 2.0 is shipped, so we wont pay much attention to the descriptions of the shown weapons.
New Weapons Categories
On the last image from this blog post BioWare showed us art work and designs of new weapons. They were all split into categories based on the faction they belong to.
We have Freelancer, Dominion, Urgoth and Scar. The Urgoth category looks very visually appealing to me, while the other three we have already seen plenty of items from.
The little hand-written notes say:
- Dominion section: “Let’s unify the color scheme on all of these”, “Find more places to add ? seals, but make them more triangular like the storm’s arm seals.” and “And this one is fine but they don’t all need this many”
- Scar section: “Let’s make the yellow parts orange color. Let’s make them the default color scheme on all of these”
- Urgoth section: “Let’s add the Urgoth motif to these two”.
I did my best reading the notes, if I made a mistake and you read something different, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks
The Fury Short Clip
In the blog post we also got a short clip of only a few seconds of a Ranger destroying a Fury (likely one of the new rare walking treasure chests bosses).
I will split the clip into several screenshots to analyze them separately.
The Ranger is just about to finish the Fury. Notice that this looks like a new area. It’s not finished by the looks of it. It’s an internal build, so that’s normal.
The ranger is positioned very much to the side on the screen, which may also be a new possibility. Although the player might also be zooming in for the whole duration of the clip.
The textile antenna-like vertical items (or whatever they are) look similar to the ones we saw in the Pirates Tease art image from Christian on Twitter a few weeks ago.
Yeah, this is most likely a platform in this new area. Take a look to remind yourself and compare.
As the player defeats the Fury, all of the loot spawns immediately. As the player approaches the Fury, the items start flying towards the player and get picked up automatically.
The number of items dropping from this NPC further proves the fact that this must be a rare boss encounter somewhere new.
After the player picked up all the loot, it showed on the right bottom of the screen. The huge new improvement here is that the items do now only show up with their rarity, but the types and names of each individual item that you have looted.
If you have a quick eye or are an experienced player you would immediately know how valuable this loot is for your javelin’s current build and its needs for upgrades.
If BioWare stays true to the item tiers the purple would be Epic and the orange would be Masterwork tier.
I specifically like the fact that this Fury kill alone granted the player +250 Coin! Confirmation that Coin remains the main in-game currency and it seems to be easier to earn if these creatures will drop it too.
One last remark – if the items on this screenshot are indeed Epic and Masterwork tier, then the above image with the javelin’s Equipment sheet means that this player is not on a high level javelin.
When will Anthem 2.0 be released
The big question has been on our minds for many months. Ever since BioWare first revealed they are working on an Anthem Redesign back in February.
As a response to the popular question Anthem’s community manager Ythisens/Sakaar posted the following on Reddit shortly after the blog post was published:
“Current ETA is when it’s ready :) Obviously we’ll share that information when the time is right but currently that is undecided”
And added also in another post:
“I will say that if you would’ve told me 2-3 months ago that that blog was going out today… I would call you crazy.
I can only really speak to my own struggles of working from home but as a team everyone is incredibly supportive over here. The work the Anthem team is doing is awesome, and it’s a constant source of inspiration and motivation. It’s a cyclical thing right? We all want to be doing out best work next to everyone’s best work so we, directly and indirectly, continually motivate each other despite this uncertain and overwhelming time period.
I don’t have an answer about consoles at the moment. (meaning I just can’t answer it at this time) I’ll note it though and of course we’ll tell you guys that information when it’s time.”
I hope you found my over view and analysis of the Anthem 2.0 New Loot System and all the other teasers useful and entertaining to read. Share your thoughts in the comments below the article if you like. I would be interested to hear your opinion on how the Anthem 2.0 development is shaping up!
Next up, check out the Anthem 2.0 August News Recap to find out what Christian Dailey has been showing, revealing, teasing during the month of August.
