Hello Freelancers, RubyJavelin here. This is my first article here on Vulkk as an official Author. Naturally, Anthem’s Second Anniversary is upon us, so we’ll be taking a look back into the blog posts and seeing what can be pieced together to get an understanding of what Anthem 2.0 may be like. We’ll also be covering the ongoing #IBelieveInAnthem as well as the news that started it.
Anthem’s Second Anniversary
Anthem’s second anniversary is here, but so far we have yet to find out if anything will be happening in out out of game to celebrate this event. Last year, we happened to be getting the last of the updates Anthem would see in recent times, Update 1.7.0. Along with the normal content from that update, we also got a set of wraps for all four javelins to celebrate.
It’s likely that assuming we do get any kind of in game event, it will likely be a time limited set of Daily/Weekly Cortex Challenges. While a new set of wraps isn’t entirely out of the question, only time will tell if we will get anything.
#IBelieveInAnthem
This hashtag has been blowing up all over the r/AnthemTheGame Reddit as well as Twitter, even reaching one of the highest trending hashtags for gaming there. Though the reason it started was to support the game and Bioware as it was leaked that Anthem 2.0’s incubation progress was to be reviewed. This determination to decide whether 2.0 gets fully green-lit and a gets extra funds and a larger to to push it into full development mode, or if it will be shelved as a project.
The hashtag itself got quite the unexpected and large following. Many members of the Anthem community, both past and present came out in support of the game. As it began trending, even members of other communities came out in support of what quickly became a movement in favor of keeping Anthem going. It was certainly an incredible movement, gaining not only support from other gamers, but other devs even. A few of the Bioware and Anthem staff even spoke up thanking everyone for the support.
I reached out to a couple of the people that started and kept the hashtag going to see if they wanted to comment on what they think of what the hashtag had become.
Faidren, who started the hashtag and has been a large part of keeping it going strong had this to say:
I Just love the idea of Anthem as a game. The art direction, animation, world building, characters, everything speaks to me. Obviously Bioware didn’t stick the landing, but that’s hardly a reason to abandon such a unique game. I believe the foundation for a truly incredible game already exists, so I wanted to give a voice to players like me who believe in Anthem’s potential.
A lot of studios and publishers stay in their lane. Activision makes the same CoD game annually with a different skin, Ubisoft has their open world template games that are all the same, but Bioware loves creating new worlds. They took a chance on Anthem when they could’ve become stale like Bethesda and only made their Fallouts and Elder Scrolls or comfortable like Rockstar with their GTAs and Red Deads (Bioware’s lane: Mass Effect and Dragon Age), but instead they took a chance. That’s why I love that studio. They’re always challenging themselves. Anthem has more personality than any of those games I’ve mentioned, but making new IP is hard. It takes time. I commend Bioware for swinging for the fences rather than sticking to the games they knew they had an audience for.
If Anthem’s 2017 trailer came out today or let’s say a hypothetical 2021 E3 it would still be my most anticipated game. In 4 years of trailers, new game announcements, and next gen arrivals I still want that game that was shown to us in 2017. I want Bioware to have the chance to try and give that to us.
Faidren
Elendel19 of Anthem Enclave, who has been a driving force in keeping the hashtag going on Twitter had this to say:
I never expected #IBelieveinAnthem to become anywhere near what it did. I figured we would see a little burst of activity from the die hard Anthem fans, and it would fizzle out pretty quick. I just hoped that the Anthem team would see it and know that at least some of us still care, and appreciate all the work they have put in.
It went so far beyond that though. Thousands of tweets, devs from other games, articles were written, other game communities flooded in with support for ours. It has been one of my favorite experiences all my years (decades) of gaming. The goal of showing support and appreciation for the devs at BioWare was more than reached, and it’s possible that it may have even been considered in EA’s decision of the fate of Anthem NEXT considering how wide spread the support became.
One thing is clear, a LOT more people love this game than most would expect.
Elendel19
While we still are waiting for word of the outcome of EA’s decision, the amount of support from both in and out of the community has been nothing short of amazing. Most people, like Elendel19, believe this movement and hashtag may have had a bigger impact than expected or hoped for.
Potential Design of 2.0’s Gear and Skills
While Bioware has posted several blogs on these topics, I don’t feel like they have ever been covered all together at length yet, even here on Vulkk. Just keep in mind the ideas I present here are speculative, and may not be what they actually intend to do but may at least give an idea of the overall goals. That said, let’s begin this dive into the information we already have, starting with the basics.
The Basics of Gear
We’ll start here with this image, specifically the stats in the upper left. While there’s not much information to really go off of here, the following can be assumed through context: Primary may be a general totaling of stats that contribute to Weapon and Gear Damage, including Weapon Power; Secondary (previously called Specialty in May blog) may total stats that contribute to Combo, Ultimate and other sources of damage, possibly including item passives; while Defense is a totaling of both the Armor Power and Defensive bonuses.
Next, we have the indicators below the items. Based on what comes up in the UI when GIF continues to select the mod for Melee, it can be assumed this is an indication of your current Mod inventory. The brightness of each space also seems to indicate if the mod is new or not, as two are lit up on the UI and two are marked as new in the area to swap them out.
If this is really a indication of Mod inventory, I hope the display is closer to a showing of the strongest and not all of them. I really hope that we’re not that limited on space for carrying mods.
Up next, the basic stats on gear. In the first images above, we have the placeholder preview of an Artifact and of a Melee weapon Mod. These are fairly similar, but we can see a few things in common. They have a Power Rating, a Damage Value, a “Firing Mode” which is indicated as rapid fire, a pair of placeholder stats and a pair of placeholder Inscriptions.
With both of these being largely placeholders, it’s hard to get any info out of them. However, It’s likely the stats are intended to be Primary and Secondary values for these pieces, or rather indications on how much they boost those stat groupings. Comparing to other weapons, it could also just end up being stats for that item in particular, how Magazine Size and RPM are shown in the weapon comparison.
This Weapon comparison image does also give us a better idea of how weapons and some inscriptions will be changing as well. From just the two sets of inscriptions shown, here’s what we can assume:
First, Weapons get 3 inscriptions unlike Melee and Abilities which appear to inherit theirs from mods. These also appear to be two Primary and one Secondary, based on the existing inscription pools. Damage and Resist stats both falling under Primary and Resupply and Thruster Duration falling under Secondary. So there’s a good chance weapons won’t be losing any raw damage, with the new Power to Damage ratio being the only determining factor.
Next is the possibility that the text for the shown Sledgehammer isn’t a bug, and that it may be possible to move a perk to a different weapon in some way. While this is interesting and could create some crazy strong weapon combinations, that thought alone makes it seem more like a bug. Imagine a weapon like a Devatator or Truth of Tarsis that has one of the perks for bonus damage. There’s certainly potential, but also some really broken combos too.
Finally the obvious buffs to some inscriptions, particularly defensive and utility focused ones. By the stats shown in the comparison image, the Resupply Drop Rate is nearly double the current max roll of 60%, and still not maxed out, appearing to top out at around 200% based on the strength meter and how much of it is left. Physical and Acid resist, while being lower than their current max of 25% appear to be able to reach a max of 50%, which depending on how that works out, could mean some very durable javelins in the future.
The Basics of Javelins and Skill Trees in 2.0
With the general idea of gear out of the way, let’s talk Javelins and Skill Trees. Specifically, I want to cover how they may work and what that could mean for build diversity. While mods will impact this as well, those will be covered later as they have the most to talk about.
As stated in the blog for Skill Trees and mentioned in our article covering the Skill Trees, everything the the basic tree of a javelin is available. So Getting everything in this tree can be highly beneficial, regardless of Specialization, if skill points become limited however, there may be some nodes that you’re better off not getting unless they fit your build. It will however allow you to skip abilities later on, assuming they allow tree resets and there’s limited points, letting you save points for stronger things in the Specialization tree.
The Specialization tree is where things get interesting, giving you access to a new Ultimate right out of the gate as well as housing several ability passives. However I feel like Mods may also house passives too, but weaker ones, as it seems all skills do not have them naturally.
It’s worth pointing out that skills found in the Specialization trees DO NOT carry over to other Specialization. While this may limit your options within the Specialization, it does seem like each specialization has a fair amount of things to work with in terms of abilities and passives. Build diversity could still end up being worse than current, though currently each javelin only has one or two reliable builds anyways, so this could fix that.
Loot and Mods
As stated previously by in the blogs, BioWare’s goal is to make your play time more rewarding. Mods and how they change the existing loot is the biggest way that’s likely to happen. Given the way mods and abilities are both presented, it’s very likely they’re making changes with a couple target goals in mind.
First, Abilities seem to be tied to the Skill Tree, and therefore progression and mastery of the Javelin or its Specialization. While this means you won’t have immediate access to everything while progressing, you will however have access to it as an option afterwards. This may not apply to weapons in the same way though. For some abilities especially the more fun or sought after ones however, this is great news. This mean less of a focus on farming for the skill itself and more on the mod.
With Mods seeming to be the way these get inscriptions and therefore a lot of their power, it’s a good thing they’re interchangeable between items. All mods seem to be tied to a specific slot, so you’ll be hunting those more than abilities themselves. It’ll likely still be a very comparable grind to now, but a bit more relaxed due to the fact that even if you don’t get something that’s good for the loadout or you’re using, it can be held on to and used in a different loadout to better effect.
Now, if they wanted to make the grind even more comparable to the current grind, since mods have rarity, they could also potentially have special Masterwork and Legendary variants, like current abilities do. This could mean taking the idea of a current ability and adding another passive to it, making it both unique to your build and increasing the potential diversity. It will be interesting to see where they take this concept.
The “New” End Game
While not much has been shown in terms of new end game-level activities, most would agree there’s a lot of potential ideas that could be used. The Icetide Update has shown that, using some of the Cataclysm’s mechanics and adding them to the existing strongholds. However for a lot of people, Creating and optimizing builds tends to be the real end game, so the focus will largely still be on mods unless new, harder content is added.
So in terms of what they have currently without adding anything and only making changes to existing content this brings up one good idea, Conjunctions. These were a couple good concepts, put into one event type. Specifically, expanding the horde aspect of Conjunctions would make for a fun endgame experience, or at least an entertaining way to grind that isn’t just strongholds. Though they’d need to make enemies scale somehow or it’d end up being a boring event after the first few times. The other variations which are basically mini-strongholds are fun too, but since strongholds already exist, making them feel newer or even make them harder wouldn’t be quite as easy.
What else would make for interesting way to make endgame content? Honestly for simplicity’s sake, a combination of Time Trials and Strongholds. Who needs Icetide’s scoring system, I wanna see what squad can complete the stronghold the fastest. This would be more of a fairer leaderboard anyways, since a lot of the current exploits for score don’t help with speed and can break Strongholds.
The possibility of Raid-like content was also mentioned, which could be a good way to pursue end game content as well. Most games do feature raids or something very similar, and it does seem to work well within the Looter Shooter genre. The question there is how to make it satisfying within Anthem’s mechanics. Flight would need to be involved for sure, and not shuttered as it tends to be in some Strongholds, either by status or a grounder.
Conclusion
While Anthem is still in a very uncertain place for the moment, there’s high hopes of a comeback story for it. Not only is the Anthem community rooting for it and hoping it does get to continue, so are many others. Here’s hoping that EA will sign off on giving Anthem 2.0 a chance to be realized.
The game has a lot of potential, especially so with what’s been teased thus far. It will certainly be fun to continue covering Anthem. That’s it for the Anthem News and things we can talk about for now. See you around Freelancers.
