Everyone has a fighting chance
One of the loudest complaints that many in the Anthem community have had is the poor quality of the loot system in a game that is largely billed as a “shooter looter”. In a new job posting on the EA/BioWare site, it appears that the team is in the market for a Senior Systems Designer (Loot).
In the latest editorial at GameSpace.com, Poorna Shankar takes on the recent happenings with BioWare with regard to Anthem’s Development. He examines Kotaku’s well-researched article about the difficulties and issues inside BioWare while Anthem was being developed as well as provides his thoughts on BioWare’s response to the article.
After the bombshell Kotaku article yesterday that revealed deep problems in the working environment at BioWare, studio General Manager Casey Hudson sent out an internal memo to staff acknowledging the article. He acknowledges that the issues are present and that “it’s our top priority to continue working to solve them”. Hudson then goes on to talk about efforts already underway to ease some of the top level concerns, but mentions that “there’s much more to do”.
After the bombshell Kotaku article yesterday that revealed deep problems in the working environment at BioWare, studio General Manager Casey Hudson sent out an internal memo to staff acknowledging the article. He acknowledges that the issues are present and that “it’s our top priority to continue working to solve them”. Hudson then goes on to talk about efforts already underway to ease some of the top level concerns, but mentions that “there’s much more to do”.
Earlier today, Kotaku put up a scathing article about the missteps in the development of BioWare’s Anthem. Most notably, employees have reported crushing development cycles, mismanagement, trademark issues and much more that led up to its February 2019 released that “was panned by fans and critics”. Moments after the article was published, BioWare published a response to the article citing its value of studio workplace culture and its appreciation of its staff.
As part of BioWare’s commitment to “continually update and add to the shared-world action shooter” in Anthem, a new patch has been deployed that brings a number of much-requested action items into the game. This includes the ability for players to re-experience Legendary Missions on a much higher difficulty level and the addition of new Elysian Caches that will show up at the end of Strongholds.
BioWare’s General Manager Casey Hudson has written a new blog on the company’s site to provide his insight into the post launch of Anthem. “On the one hand, it’s been a rougher launch than expected. But then as I think back, we also knew that big new online games tend to hit some kind of problem once they go live,” he wrote. He indicates that the team could not “see” the issues until the game was “operating at the scale of millions of players”.
BioWare’s General Manager Casey Hudson has written a new blog on the company’s site to provide his insight into the post launch of Anthem. “On the one hand, it’s been a rougher launch than expected. But then as I think back, we also knew that big new online games tend to hit some kind of problem once they go live,” he wrote. He indicates that the team could not “see” the issues until the game was “operating at the scale of millions of players”.
The Anthem team has heard the tidal wave of complaints about the endgame loot system. On Friday afternoon, a new patch was launched that makes the “loot drop rate in specific scenarios” much better. The patch was launched without the need to download anything as the tuning updates were server-side.
The Anthem Reddit is a hotbed of angry players since the last update applied a number of changes to the loot system which did not, according to the community, make significant enough changes. Several posters on Reddit and in other locations have suggested boycotting Anthem until further changes are made to the loot system to make it more lucrative, particularly at endgame. BioWare has responded, with Head of Live Service Chad Robertson lamenting that BW is’t “fully happy” either.