What are you currently playing? Last game played?

[Dazey]

43 minutes ago, action said:

@Dazey sadly not, I only have a switch.

I bought it digitally a while ago on XBox and thus far had only really played a few minutes here and there. I finally got some time to get into it last night and it's fucking brilliant! Really got me engrossed until my power supply overheated and turned itself off.  

[Dazey]

1 hour ago, lukepowell1988 said:

The new resident evil is great I am enjoying the extra puzzles that have been added and the few little tweaks they have made here and there.

I love the new map system where it records the locations of various items and tells you when you've completely finished each area.

[OmarBradley]

On 3/7/2019 at 7:10 PM, OmarBradley said:

 

Yeah Anthem's lack of unique content is really a travesty. I imagine putting 40 hours on the game to complete the main story and side narratives/some challenges, but those 40 hours are spent doing the same 3 mission types in the same environment over and over and over again. I still can't wrap my head around some of the game design choices. Really think proper production on Anthem didn't start until 2015-2016 and then when 2018 rolled around they had to cut content and rebuild the game with a limited pallet. Some NPC storylines seem like they should go further than where they end, only a few I'd say feel like they have completed arcs for those characters. I understand it's a live service and more will be done with those characters, but that does not excuse an incomplete game priced at $60 (or $80 for the version that comes with a few extra things). If the price-tag was $30 or free, pretty much every single grievance I have would be disappear. But charging $60 for this downgraded, limited experience is nuts. Why should we pay $60 on the assumption the game will at some point have enough content to warrant the price/marketing.

I don't generally watch YT reviewers, but Angry Joe had some good suggestions on what Anthem should have been. The game he described sounded really interesting.

I don't know, I just don't understand how a studio of 600 people (I'm estimating at least half worked full time on Anthem during production) could put out something so clearly contentless and functionless compared to the other games in the genre. I believe Destiny and Warhammer had rough starts too, but that shouldn't be allowed to be a norm in this genre. 'Live service' is quickly becoming 'incomplete game,' and that's really unacceptable in general, but especially in what's supposed to be an immersive RPG experience.

New patch with minor QoL/bug fixes dropped today. However, there has been a lot of discussion in the community regarding loot drops. The entire endgame of Anthem is trying to get the best loot for your build, which for most of the game's existence, has had pathetic drop rates for the two highest tiers of gear.

There was an 11 hour period right after launch where loot dropped in a plentiful manner, but that was apparently a "bug" and BioWare quickly nerfed loot drops. It looks like the same thing happened again. Last night, many people noted the loot drops seemed to have increased, I verified that in my playing as well. The community was overjoyed: finally BioWare listened to us and increased the loot drop rates so they weren't ridiculous.

Well, checking back into the community now, it was another bug and they have reverted loot drop rates to where they have been for most of the game's life. People are pissed and rightly so. The entire impetus of this genre is loot, and this game has 0 other content to pursue once you've finished the NPC storylines. 

Look at the front page of reddit, literally only one post (which I've crossed out at the bottom) is not about the loot situation:

I don't know how BioWare doesn't understand that loot is Anthem. The core gameplay is fun, but if players don't feel like they can improve their builds any further due to insanely low drop rates, the game is not going to thrive.

 

EDIT: Someone took the time to carefully calculate the incredibly complicated loot/fun ratio in this genre, and they then posted the results in a chart that hopefully is digestible enough for BioWare: 

Edited March 9, 2019 by OmarBradley

[MillionsOfSpiders]

I’m currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2.

I got Dirt Rally 2.0 at the same time, I thought I’d play both at the same time by switching when I get bored with one but so far I haven’t been able to stop playing RDR2. 

[DeadSlash]

Some additional reasons Anthem is shit:

(Curios if anyone else playing it feels the same)

1. The lore seems forced.  I'm not sure how to explain it.  There are lots of games, books and movies that make up lots of crazy ass lore, for whatever reason, the made up shit in Anthem, feels exactly like that... made up shit.   It just all sounds so hokey.  I don't recall any other game where I had that feeling.  Something is just off about it.  The closest I even came to this feeling was years ago, was seeing a commercial for "Lemony Snickets" and thinking "That's so fucking stupid, that is some shit that a writer made up when they were like 4 years old, and put it in a script when they grew up."   As on example, there are these unimportant background animals roaming around that are scifi rabbits and their name in the game is "grabbits."  It gives me that same feeling.  Some shit heel writer had an imaginary pet as a kid and called it a "grabbit" and when they grew up, thought it was clever and cute, so now I have to tolerate this fucking shit.

 

2.  So little of the game makes any fucking sense.  Basically, at it's core, Anthem is if Oprah was a video game and announced to the audience "Look under you seats, you get an Iron man suit, and YOU get an Iron man suit! WE ALL GET IRON MAN SUITS!!"  Like, that's the game,  everyone gets an iron man suit.  It's not called an Iron Man suit, it's called a "Javelin"  However, they needed something to provide exposition, so there is this whole thing about everyone in an iron man suit need a "cypher."  The cypher is someone with psychic powers who sits in the base and tells you what they are "sensing."  Their purpose for being in the game is clear, they provide waypoints.  Instead of just getting an arrow pointing to the next objective, you get the voice over of a cypher telling some stupid ass shit about sensing "power spikes" or "distress signals."  The thing is, I understand their purpose of being in the game (exposition) but lore wise, it makes no fucking sense.  You are in this super tech flying armor suit, its hard to imagine it would have super weapons, but not shit like a radar and GPS.  I mean, my Ford fusion has collision detection, but this iron man suit needs some bitch in a special chair to "sense a car in my blind spot."  Why?  Why can't my super suit detect a stress call?  Why do I need a "cypher" to sense it?  

 

3.  So there are like 3 main types of people<factions, I guess> Freelancers, which is you, flying around to save the day.  Archanists, which are basically science nerds that study old texts, and Lancers.  Lancers are basically the exact same thing as you.  They fly around in Javelin suits, the only difference is that they are organized, and the part of one large organization... Oh, and their on your side.  You're all friends.... so whats the fucking difference?  Why make a distinction?  I mean, it makes sense that you need to help out and save the nerdy science guys, and it would make sense if you needed to bail out the military, if you know, they didn't have the same fucking super suit as you.  So you use your super suit to save scientists in peril, and organized groups of trained soldiers, where they are all wearing the same fucking super suit as you. 

 

Also, The mission system is soooooo broken.  As I mention in an earlier post, after you complete the story line, there are 3 "strongholds" They are like "super missions" where it's really like 4 regular mission, but strung together, and loot chests between the different parts.  Basically it's what you grind for better gear<The end game.> In and of itself, the concept is ok, that's not the issue I have with it.  They are actually, literally broken, that's the problem.  The main issue is that they are uneven in loot distribution, as an example, the 3rd Stronghold is a variation of the final missions of the story.  For the first half of the mission, you are fighting groups of enemies, all capable of dropping loot, and getting a chest after each group.  The second half of the mission, you fight 1 single boss character that you have to beat 3 times.  The first 2 times, he flees and you chase him down and the 3rd time, you get a chest.  So the first half of the mission takes like 7-10 minutes and can gets you a shit ton of loot(30 weak enemies = 30 chances at loot when they are killed), the second half takes 10 to 20 min, and gives you one chest with 4 items at the end.     So what happens is everbody quits when the boss fight starts, because it's worthless, and the chests all contain the same quality of loot (You don't get better items for the chest earned after 15 minutes of fighting vs the 3 you get prior, after 5 min of fighting).   The side effect of this is that 50% of the time when you choose that stronghold, you get dropped into the goddam boss fight instead of the beginning, because everyone vacates the fucking game when the boss fight starts!  (PS. when you get dropped there, at the beginning of the boss fight, if you stay, you'll see 10 or 15 people cycly through, because they just quit and relaunch the mission, hoping to get in at the beginning.)

 

Anthem is like one of the hottest girls in the world offering you blow you, BUT, you have to have a fork shoved up your ass while she's doing it. 

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by DeadSlash

[OmarBradley]

On 3/6/2019 at 8:31 PM, OmarBradley said:

But what I didn't not there is: I think Frostbite is the problem. It's an engine designed for Battlefield, not versatile RPG experiences. But EA has enforced an "every dev must use Frostbite" edict.

Okay, it turns out this is untrue. This is part of why I don't like reddit, lots of people sharing lots of information that is rarely fact checked or 100% accurate. But, it's the nexus of gaming communities and gaming communication, so I have to deal with it. 

From what I've read from people who have actually worked with the engine, yes it's true that it was built for Battlefield and EA's in-house engine team generally works on Battlefield related upgrades first, but the engine itself is pretty versatile and it's more up to the developer to adapt it to their game, as people have noted many different genres have been successful on Frostbite. The accusation that EA forces Frostbite is also apparently erroneous, EA just prefers developers use Frostbite, but doesn't require it. There are a few articles from years ago where Aaron Flynn (BioWare GM at the time) discusses why BioWare chose to pursue Frostbite. So, can't blame EA for this one, and as it turns out can't really blame the engine either. Seems like all fingers point at BioWare for Anthem (and ME:A) being shoddy experiences that didn't reach the original visions set out for the games.

There is some confusion on whether Anthem started as a singleplayer ARPG like most BioWare games and then was forced to pursue live service by EA or if Anthem was always live service/MP to begin with. Haven't been able to find definitive answers on that. Regardless, I still think if it were a singleplayer game it would have half the bugs and twice the content. It sucks, but I guess we have to give it X amount of months before Anthem is the game we all expected and hoped for, if it can reach that.

On 3/13/2019 at 1:55 AM, DeadSlash said:

Some additional reasons Anthem is shit:

(Curios if anyone else playing it feels the same)

1. The lore seems forced.  I'm not sure how to explain it.  There are lots of games, books and movies that make up lots of crazy ass lore, for whatever reason, the made up shit in Anthem, feels exactly like that... made up shit.   It just all sounds so hokey.  I don't recall any other game where I had that feeling.  Something is just off about it.  The closest I even came to this feeling was years ago, was seeing a commercial for "Lemony Snickets" and thinking "That's so fucking stupid, that is some shit that a writer made up when they were like 4 years old, and put it in a script when they grew up."   As on example, there are these unimportant background animals roaming around that are scifi rabbits and their name in the game is "grabbits."  It gives me that same feeling.  Some shit heel writer had an imaginary pet as a kid and called it a "grabbit" and when they grew up, thought it was clever and cute, so now I have to tolerate this fucking shit.

2.  So little of the game makes any fucking sense.  Basically, at it's core, Anthem is if Oprah was a video game and announced to the audience "Look under you seats, you get an Iron man suit, and YOU get an Iron man suit! WE ALL GET IRON MAN SUITS!!"  Like, that's the game,  everyone gets an iron man suit.  It's not called an Iron Man suit, it's called a "Javelin"  However, they needed something to provide exposition, so there is this whole thing about everyone in an iron man suit need a "cypher."  The cypher is someone with psychic powers who sits in the base and tells you what they are "sensing."  Their purpose for being in the game is clear, they provide waypoints.  Instead of just getting an arrow pointing to the next objective, you get the voice over of a cypher telling some stupid ass shit about sensing "power spikes" or "distress signals."  The thing is, I understand their purpose of being in the game (exposition) but lore wise, it makes no fucking sense.  You are in this super tech flying armor suit, its hard to imagine it would have super weapons, but not shit like a radar and GPS.  I mean, my Ford fusion has collision detection, but this iron man suit needs some bitch in a special chair to "sense a car in my blind spot."  Why?  Why can't my super suit detect a stress call?  Why do I need a "cypher" to sense it?  

3.  So there are like 3 main types of people<factions, I guess> Freelancers, which is you, flying around to save the day.  Archanists, which are basically science nerds that study old texts, and Lancers.  Lancers are basically the exact same thing as you.  They fly around in Javelin suits, the only difference is that they are organized, and the part of one large organization... Oh, and their on your side.  You're all friends.... so whats the fucking difference?  Why make a distinction?  I mean, it makes sense that you need to help out and save the nerdy science guys, and it would make sense if you needed to bail out the military, if you know, they didn't have the same fucking super suit as you.  So you use your super suit to save scientists in peril, and organized groups of trained soldiers, where they are all wearing the same fucking super suit as you. 

Also, The mission system is soooooo broken.  As I mention in an earlier post, after you complete the story line, there are 3 "strongholds" They are like "super missions" where it's really like 4 regular mission, but strung together, and loot chests between the different parts.  Basically it's what you grind for better gear<The end game.> In and of itself, the concept is ok, that's not the issue I have with it.  They are actually, literally broken, that's the problem.  The main issue is that they are uneven in loot distribution, as an example, the 3rd Stronghold is a variation of the final missions of the story.  For the first half of the mission, you are fighting groups of enemies, all capable of dropping loot, and getting a chest after each group.  The second half of the mission, you fight 1 single boss character that you have to beat 3 times.  The first 2 times, he flees and you chase him down and the 3rd time, you get a chest.  So the first half of the mission takes like 7-10 minutes and can gets you a shit ton of loot(30 weak enemies = 30 chances at loot when they are killed), the second half takes 10 to 20 min, and gives you one chest with 4 items at the end.     So what happens is everbody quits when the boss fight starts, because it's worthless, and the chests all contain the same quality of loot (You don't get better items for the chest earned after 15 minutes of fighting vs the 3 you get prior, after 5 min of fighting).   The side effect of this is that 50% of the time when you choose that stronghold, you get dropped into the goddam boss fight instead of the beginning, because everyone vacates the fucking game when the boss fight starts!  (PS. when you get dropped there, at the beginning of the boss fight, if you stay, you'll see 10 or 15 people cycly through, because they just quit and relaunch the mission, hoping to get in at the beginning.)

Anthem is like one of the hottest girls in the world offering you blow you, BUT, you have to have a fork shoved up your ass while she's doing it. 

I agree the lore isn't up to BioWare's normal standards, it feels shoehorned in and all over the place. I believe this is due in part to what I previously mentioned about storycrafting: good stories generally start with the story, Anthem feels like they said "OK, we want to make an Iron Man simulator and we want it to be live service - now let's fit a story into those constraints." Really feels that way. Yeah I found the name 'grabbit' to be kind of dumb too. Another cardinal rule of storytelling: your inside/nostalgia jokes are not amusing to 99.9% of people consuming your content. 

Agreed re: the tech. Somehow Bastion has the tech for incredibly advanced personal weaponry and flight via exosuits. Yet the main forms of entertainment are... listening to radio shows and writing letters. Almost everything about Anthem except the suits feels pretty low tech, which makes little sense considering the suits are uber high tech. I don't think the game ever really explains how javelin's were created. Just that Helena Tarsis "built the first javelin." It doesn't say how she found the steel (or titanium, what are these made of?), the armor plating material, or the rocket technology. Maybe a lore reason for no GPS is that the Anthem of Creation/shaper relics screw with radioactivity/signalling? I know there is a lore reason for no satellites/planes: the high turbulence area in the sky, don't remember if the Anthem created that or if it's natural to the planet.

I think by Lancers you mean the Sentinels, which is the faction name. But I'm also confused about Freelancer vs. Lancer, I finished the main story and I'm still not sure if Lancer is short for Freelancer OR if it refers to anyone in a javelin who's not a Freelancer. I think it's the latter, Freelancers are basically Lancers who don't belong to a faction? (even though you work for Corvus throughout the entire game). Yeah I do see the discrepancy that Sentinels have basically the same capabilities as you, but for some reason they're utterly helpless at everything. I don't think the game went too far into Freelancer or Sentinel training. The game does say Sentinel's exist mainly to protect the royal family and citizens, think they're sort of like a National/Coast Guard. They're equipped to handle border security issues, but not really for power projection.

I'm at endgame as well. We need more Strongholds, varied mission types, and more loot drops for MW/Leg (bonus if we could also reroll specific inscriptions at a certain cost). The lack of uniquely modeled loot is also very troubling - every MW/Legendary weapon (the two highest tiers) is a reskin of a weapon you've already had. 

Angry Joe basically said Anthem's main story should have been something like 10-15 unique Strongholds, instead of the fetch quests that were copied/pasted all over the place. He was staggered that BioWare didn't lean into the lore. They literally have the capability to do whatever they want with the world: weird gravity changes, maybe a Stronghold gets partially flooded so a lot of fighting underwater, maybe one Stronghold messes with time and puts you through different time periods/decades, etc.. So much cool stuff could have been done with missions and Strongholds due to the lore, but no. We have the same 3 or so mission structures for every single thing we do in the game.

Another reddit chart:

I fortunately have yet to experience people leaving in HoR. I just started my GM1 playing two days ago though, so I expect to see this practice soon. I can't really blame the players, why fight a boss that you know has 0 chance of dropping the loot you're looking for? That's BioWare's fault for bad design. 

I have on a number of occasions been dropped into a story mission 25-50% through it via the regular Mission selector, not Quickplay! Since Quickplay exists (although it's apparently pretty bugged), there is 0 reason why a player should be put into a story mission anywhere except the very beginning. I'd much rather wait in matchmaking for 2 minutes than miss story dialogue or part of a mission (that's missing XP too). Again, bad design on BioWare's part.

Also want to mention again that the stats system is really flawed. BioWare pursued a simple mechanical and mathematical system (compared to other stat-emphasized games) and combined it with a lazy scaling system. The result: damage numbers, health numbers, anything you see on the UI is most likely a lie or partial truth, in regard to stats. Ex: +250% Weapon Damage only actually adds 3.5% DPS in some cases due to scaling and additive formulas. This system resulted in people finding out things like the literal default starter weapon is the most powerful in the game and if you remove one of your gear pieces (the Support piece) you become more powerful - has something to do with overall player level. And I'm sure there are more I haven't seen yet/haven't been discovered or discussed.

Another point I don't think we've discussed yet, the enemy types and AI is pretty lacking in the scheme of things. At first, it feels like there is a decent variety of enemy types. But you quickly learn their tactics and how to deal with them and the fights feel less varied as you progress (this is in part due to the awful fetch quests and repetitive mission structures). Honestly, I think this issue wouldn't be so noticeable if the game's other flaws didn't exist, but it's like every flaw in the game reminds you of another flaw, and another, and another, etc. If we had more loot, I could deal with the lack of content. If we had more content, I could deal with the lack of loot, etc.

More bad points:

- ridiculous amount of loading screens, between bugs and having to change missions or go into the javelin editor, Anthem at times becomes Loading Screen Simulator 2019. I have a SSD and I'd still say the loading screens are a medium-level annoyance

- A tiny amount of cosmetic content is in the game, despite the fact that previous dev streams have showed off many armor sets, customization materials, vinyls, etc.. They are clearly drip-feeding it into their MTX store, apparently it's a marketing technique but I can't find anyone who's happy with the arrangement

- The MTX scheme itself is disgusting, two fully voiced NPCs standing 10 feet from each other that lead to the same store. I 100% ignore them, both have dialogue markers above their heads but fuck that, if you're not moving the narrative along (whether it's main or side) you are wasting my fucking time BioWare. Some NPCs make comments as you pass by them, and those I listen to because they're often funny, but they're not forced and they're generally 5-10 seconds long. A lot of those are lore related too.

- I am skeptical the roadmap has the content the game needs to survive, seems like a lot of repeated things and faux-content like "more Outlaws spawn for 3 days here, more Dominion spawn for 2 days here" etc. We are getting a new Stronghold either later this month or next month and I think that's the biggest thing coming.

- there's no way development was smooth or went as planned. Anthem is either a result of bad project management, unrealistic original goals, high level staff member departures (which there were quite a few throughout development), restarting of development to go from SP to MP/live service, or something else (or likely a combination of some of those things). Given all of the cut content we were shown at both E3s and the immense hype propagate by BioWare itself, there's no way the game as released on 2/22/19 is what BioWare set out to make when they started in 2012/2013.

Okay, the good:

NPC dialogue is mostly excellent. Anthem's best stories are in the NPCs you talk to at Fort Tarsis. I think Owen, Faye, and Haluk (your main crew) are fairly mediocre characters with not a whole lot interesting about them. Haluk and Owen are particularly archetypal. But Leyton, Maralda, Neeson, and Amal are some of my favorite characters I've seen in an RPG in a while.  Really powerful stories and great writing (the latter two are comic relief, but they're excellent). Mattias is pretty well written too, I think. I only wish they were part of my party and affected the story with me, like a normal BioWare game!

Flight and combat are where Anthem shines. I know some other games out there do have versatile player transit and some flight systems, but people seem to agree Anthem is in a league of its own in this regard, and I can see why. Despite the legions of fetch/repetitive quests, flying has yet to bore me. Combat is a similar story. Although it can get repetitive as you progress through the game, it's just very entertaining and engaging to be a part of.

Javelin customization is very good. You can get really creative with color schemes. I do wish you could create custom emblems/vinyls, but not a huge deal that you can't. I have my N7 vinyl and I'm set.

World design is very nice. A lot of work clearly went into building the world. The verticality and traversal ability is amazing, I would like some new biomes, as then entire map area is basically jungle and green, but it's not a huge complaint.

Overall, it's a fun game and has enough content to keep you moderately interested for at least 30-40 hours. But a lot of people are hitting progression walls at endgame levels, and for a live service looter/shooter, 30-40 hours of engaging content is not good enough to be competitive with other games in the genre (or so I've heard, I haven't played them). I'll say it again: Anthem would be a much better game as a typical singleplayer BioWare experience. 

EDIT: Of course, since posting this I've tried to load up HoR GM1 twice, both times was put in during the Monitor fight. At least I get the guaranteed MW. I also got my first Legendary drop, Venom Darts. Not my favorite, but not terrible. Had 5 MW drops today and all were garbage except 1 which is for a Javelin I haven't used yet... FIX THE LOOT BIOWARE

Also, realizing at this point we probably should have had a dedicated Anthem thread. Doesn't matter much to me as I think we've discussed about all we can with it, until new content arrives at least, but if a mod/admin wants to cut this and a few of the more recent posts out of this thread into a new one, I'd be fine with it. Up to ya'll.

Edited March 15, 2019 by OmarBradley

[DeadSlash]

Yeah, I meant Sentinels.  I wonder if I said Lancer because there is something in the game called Lancers, or if I just projected Lancer in as a generic name, because I look at everything's name as generic in Anthem?

 Excellent call on the tech being so out of whack, you basically live in a Colonial village, with Colonial tech + futuristic Iron man suits and radios.  I even found a note that remarked on the children making toys out of like potatoes and bird shit.  It's fucking dark ages, and they literally haven't invented the wheel... 

 

Hilarious side note: Something that jumped out to me as dumb, but I felt it was too nitpicky to mention? The radio shows.  Not the concept that they only have radio shows for entertainment, but the premise of the radio show.  For those not playing, the radio shows are 2 competing soap operas about Javelin life.  Simple enough, Cop dramas are popular in real life, makes sense... here's the problem... in the radio show, the sound effects are all lazer sounds, but there aren't lazer guns in the fing game, so why are there lazer gun noises??  It would be like if you took law and order, or NYPD and kept evert premise exactly the same, meaning they were a "reality based drama" but just swapped out the police guns for lazers… WTF?

 

@OmarBradley With the strong holds, it might make a difference that I was playing at tier 2 (Grand Master 2.)  I was lucky enough to be on during the loot bonanza "bug" and got enough good loot that night to be able to hang on tier 2, so the majority of my playing end game is there.  I'm shocked you haven't been dropped at the boss fight, because for me, it happens 2/3 times.  Yesterday, the loot spiked up again, not sure if it was a "bug" or if they adjusted it up, but I switched down to tier 1 and it was a lot more fun to play, much quicker, and still more loot than tier 2 was before the adjustment.  The whole reason I did the super grindy and long GM2 runs was because of the increase in loot.  If it bumps up macros the board, I'll stick to 1.

Another problem, that isn't Anthems fault, is that people with garbage equipment queue up to essentially be carried.  Sometimes, I'll be dropped into a tier 2 strong hold with 3 people who's suits are in the 400's or low 500's and they drop immediately.  It's a dead run at that point, because I can do Grand Master 2 without dying, and doing some decent damage, but I can't pass it alone.

 

PS.  My 2 cents on Reddit: The best thing I ever did, was get out of the reddits.  It was the opposite effect I expected, as I am a far superior informed gamer sans reddit.  While following Reddit might offer the luxury of hearing about something a day or 2 before legitimate media picks up on it, so much of what is said on Reddit is completely false, it's worth it to be 2 days late to the party, knowing I have the correct information.

[OmarBradley]

17 minutes ago, DeadSlash said:

Yeah, I meant Sentinels.  I wonder if I said Lancer because there is something in the game called Lancers, or if I just projected Lancer in as a generic name, because I look at everything's name as generic in Anthem?

 Excellent call on the tech being so out of whack, you basically live in a Colonial village, with Colonial tech + futuristic Iron man suits and radios.  I even found a note that remarked on the children making toys out of like potatoes and bird shit.  It's fucking dark ages, and they literally haven't invented the wheel... 

 

Hilarious side note: Something that jumped out to me as dumb, but I felt it was too nitpicky to mention? The radio shows.  Not the concept that they only have radio shows for entertainment, but the premise of the radio show.  For those not playing, the radio shows are 2 competing soap operas about Javelin life.  Simple enough, Cop dramas are popular in real life, makes sense... here's the problem... in the radio show, the sound effects are all lazer sounds, but there aren't lazer guns in the fing game, so why are there lazer gun noises??  It would be like if you took law and order, or NYPD and kept evert premise exactly the same, meaning they were a "reality based drama" but just swapped out the police guns for lazers… WTF?

 

@OmarBradley With the strong holds, it might make a difference that I was playing at tier 2 (Grand Master 2.)  I was lucky enough to be on during the loot bonanza "bug" and got enough good loot that night to be able to hang on tier 2, so the majority of my playing end game is there.  I'm shocked you haven't been dropped at the boss fight, because for me, it happens 2/3 times.  Yesterday, the loot spiked up again, not sure if it was a "bug" or if they adjusted it up, but I switched down to tier 1 and it was a lot more fun to play, much quicker, and still more loot than tier 2 was before the adjustment.  The whole reason I did the super grindy and long GM2 runs was because of the increase in loot.  If it bumps up macros the board, I'll stick to 1.

Another problem, that isn't Anthems fault, is that people with garbage equipment queue up to essentially be carried.  Sometimes, I'll be dropped into a tier 2 strong hold with 3 people who's suits are in the 400's or low 500's and they drop immediately.  It's a dead run at that point, because I can do Grand Master 2 without dying, and doing some decent damage, but I can't pass it alone.

 

PS.  My 2 cents on Reddit: The best thing I ever did, was get out of the reddits.  It was the opposite effect I expected, as I am a far superior informed gamer sans reddit.  While following Reddit might offer the luxury of hearing about something a day or 2 before legitimate media picks up on it, so much of what is said on Reddit is completely false, it's worth it to be 2 days late to the party, knowing I have the correct information.

LOL re: the laser noises. I haven't listened to the radio shows myself. Technically the Spark Beam (I think that's what it's called?) is a lasery thing for Ranger's Assault Launcher, but yeah the guns seem to fire ballistic rounds. One of the E3 demos had an elemental shotgun... which doesn't seem to be in the game.

One thing regarding the tech I just thought of, Fort Tarsis is supposedly an outskirts/frontier type settlement. So maybe in Antium the daily tech is more reflective of a semi-advanced species? I know travel between settlements/cities is a problem due to the world state, so maybe Tarsis just has the bare essentials because transport is too difficult to get more out there. That's a fair lore point if this is the case, IMO.

I did play during the Lootapalooza the other day, but I wasn't level 30 yet so all of my drops were Epics and 1 MW. I only hit 30 a few days ago. I'm power level 610 or so and I did try to find a GM2 Legendary Contract today, but I spawned in alone and no one joined. 0% chance I can solo anything at GM2, probably not even GM1.

And yeah I just edited my post, you must have been typing as I edited it: I tried HoR GM1 twice today, both times put in toward the beginning of the Monitor fight. I have no idea what the loot drop between modes is, some people on reddit have run tests and they basically say GM2 and GM3 are wastes of time at the moment, especially if you're just farming MW. I still have quite a few MWs to go before I set my sights on Legendary only. 

Fair point re: reddit, the other reasons I visit is there is so much genuinely entertaining and funny content posted too, and some dev teams communicate directly through reddit even more than their official forums (looking at you, Ubisoft). It's funny, I didn't start redditing until last year, I've been a gamer for almost two decades and I can't imagine how I got on without reddit, but I did. So I suppose that means I still can!

Think I'll give HoR another shot right now. 

It's odd. The game has so many problems that are head-scratching, frustrating, and seemingly preventable, but my eagerness to load it up hasn't really dissolved compared to when I first loaded it up in February. I really hate Anthem for a lot of reasons, but I keep playing and at the moment, I have no intention of stopping soon. 

 

Edited March 15, 2019 by OmarBradley

[Chewbacca]

On 04/02/2019 at 10:29 PM, DeadSlash said:

As I understand it, Epic's storefront takes less, and this apparently makes it very attractive.  The flip-side seems to be that people hate the Epic launcher because it's 40% owned by tencent, and tencent is apparently the devil.  Hard to get solid info on it though.

It IS the devil. Sadly I had to download to play unreal 2018 or... 19 and... it development ceased.

Anyways. I used to only have steam and that was fine, then came GOG galaxy (Diablo 1 is available on it, BTW). Ok by me. Then epic came along and it became crowded, then I needed Bethesda's to download the Quake Champions Beta, thankfully it came to steam, but it seems Rage 2 won't be coming to steam as well and I'm really worried Doom Eternal might follow suit. It is really getting out of hand.

[DeadSlash]

6 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

It IS the devil. Sadly I had to download to play unreal 2018 or... 19 and... it development ceased.

Anyways. I used to only have steam and that was fine, then came GOG galaxy (Diablo 1 is available on it, BTW). Ok by me. Then epic came along and it became crowded, then I needed Bethesda's to download the Quake Champions Beta, thankfully it came to steam, but it seems Rage 2 won't be coming to steam as well and I'm really worried Doom Eternal might follow suit. It is really getting out of hand.

Launchers are kind of like streaming platforms now, they will duke it out and 1 or 2 will remain, but everyone wants in on the money!

Shame about UT, I was playing a lot of that too.  My glory days of gaming and actually being "good" peaked during the UT2k4 days, did a lot of shoutcasting then, too.

Edited March 18, 2019 by DeadSlash

[OmarBradley]

22 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

It IS the devil. Sadly I had to download to play unreal 2018 or... 19 and... it development ceased.

Anyways. I used to only have steam and that was fine, then came GOG galaxy (Diablo 1 is available on it, BTW). Ok by me. Then epic came along and it became crowded, then I needed Bethesda's to download the Quake Champions Beta, thankfully it came to steam, but it seems Rage 2 won't be coming to steam as well and I'm really worried Doom Eternal might follow suit. It is really getting out of hand.

Yeah I'm going to get Rage 2 and I'll have to do it through Bethesda's Launcher. Doom also being a Beth Soft title, will almost certainly be exclusive to Bethesda's launcher.

______

Regarding Anthem, I'm still playing. I don't really know why. Something about the game keeps dragging me back, despite the lack of content, the incredibly stingy drop rates, and the repetitive nature of the content that is present. I have graduated to playing mostly GM3 and while it is the hardest mode available, with a decent build and a coordinating squad it's really not that difficult. The design of the difficulty is stupid, the only difference from GM1 to GM2 to GM3 is that enemies have more health. I think GM3 has 30x health of GM1 or something like that.

My big problem is that the loot drop rates for GM3 (even after their server-side hotfix on Friday to improve drop rates) are still pretty poor. I spent more hours playing Anthem GM3 this weekend than I spend playing games during the week, and I got 3 Legendaries. 1 of which I could never claim because I got a Pilot Error (connection drop on server's part, basically) and it disappeared, the other 2 were junk because for some reason, Legendary items can have junk inscriptions. Not sure how much longer the game will keep me going given the hardest difficult just doesn't reward the player for their time.

AC:OD's newest DLC is out, I guess I'll get around to that.

Metro: Exodus is still waiting for me, I only put 3-4 hours on it despite really really enjoying it. But I'm really annoyed at a massive plot spoiler I saw on reddit (in the title of a fucking thread) and I think that's been putting me off from playing. 

[CheapJon]

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

I'm having so much fun slaying orcs! Nemesis system is brilliant.

[downzy]

Cuphead.

On the last boss fight (the Devil).

Easily one of the hardest games I've played since probably Super Ghouls and Ghosts on SNES.

Enjoyed it but will be happy to have it completed.

[Dazey]

16 hours ago, downzy said:

Cuphead.

On the last boss fight (the Devil).

Easily one of the hardest games I've played since probably Super Ghouls and Ghosts on SNES.

Enjoyed it but will be happy to have it completed.

I still remember getting to the end of Super Ghouls and Ghosts only to be sent back to the beginning to get an item and have to play all the way through again just to finish it.  

[downzy]

8 minutes ago, Dazey said:

I still remember getting to the end of Super Ghouls and Ghosts only to be sent back to the beginning to get an item and have to play all the way through again just to finish it.  

Yeah, that game was brutal.  I think I had to rely on a warp or something to actually beat the game.

[Dazey]

21 minutes ago, downzy said:

Yeah, that game was brutal.  I think I had to rely on a warp or something to actually beat the game.

Brutal and didn't have a way to save your game either if I recall correctly.  

[DeadSlash]

1 hour ago, Dazey said:

Brutal and didn't have a way to save your game either if I recall correctly.  

Nope, none.  That game broke many a controller.

[DeadSlash]

On 2/24/2019 at 8:49 AM, RussTCB said:

I've been messing around Crackdown 3 because it was free with Game Pass. It's fun for free but I'd be really mad if I'd paid for it. 

Gamepass was free for 14 days and CD3 was available for PC with it.  You are 100% right, it's fun, but $60 for that game would have pissed me off hardcore!

 

Anyway, thanks for the heads up on that.  I wouldn't even have known it was a thing.

[DeadSlash]

FYI to anyone who was vested in the "epic exclusive" aspect of Metro Exodus.  It is now available on Humble Bundle.

[Coma16]

Finally beat the Watcher Knights in Hollow Knight. Those mofos have been the bain of my (gaming) existence for a while now lol

[Homefuck]

I'm playing heroes of might and magic 3. That game is so addictive and a time thief from hell. 

[MillionsOfSpiders]

I love this game and the co-op on it works really well. 

[GNRfan001]

I’m playing far cry new dawn, I’m on the last story mission and can’t win, to lazy to go back and earn a higher weapons level to make it easier on me. So I haven’t played in At least 2 weeks. 

Anyone play “days gone” ? I’ve heard good and bad things. Is it worth spending 60 bucks? 

Sorry if it was talked about already didn’t read the full thread 😬

[DeadSlash]

On 5/7/2019 at 5:37 PM, GNRfan001 said:

I’m playing far cry new dawn, I’m on the last story mission and can’t win, to lazy to go back and earn a higher weapons level to make it easier on me. So I haven’t played in At least 2 weeks. 

Anyone play “days gone” ? I’ve heard good and bad things. Is it worth spending 60 bucks? 

Sorry if it was talked about already didn’t read the full thread 😬

I read it wasn't that great, it did worse than World War Z, and WWZ was review bombed for being on Epic, and still pulled a better overall score with said review bombs factored in.

The main drawback about Days Gone that I read was it was very repetitive, but some people really liked it.  The only thing it has in common with WWz is that they both feature Zombies.

[MillionsOfSpiders]

Currently playing Wolfenstein 2, never played the first one and I only got this because it was £10, love it so far. Might have to get the first one now. 

Also started replaying RDR2 because I miss playing it and I just want to stay in Chapter two forever.