Over on the BioWare website (opens in new tab), the new Anthem blog was posted yesterday. Before delving into any of the specifics, BioWare takes a moment to remind everyone that what they’re reading here is still very much a work in progress, and is likely to change by the time the updates are actually implemented in Anthem.

Speaking the updates themselves, Javelins will be changing in some pretty big ways. BioWare will be changing up Javelin load outs with a brand new screen, seen below, which allows players to change equipment and abilities on a single screen, items being categorized between 11 slots, and weapons being put into primary and secondary categories.

Next, there’s some significant changes for Javelin abilities. BioWare will be making abilities available through unlocks instead of random drops, and you’ll be able to boost these abilities by equipping them with mods. Additionally, you’ll be working to maximize three traits: Specializations, Abilities, and Equipment, each of which can be enhanced with Inscriptions.

There’ll also be brand new Skill Trees for Javelins. Each Javelin type will be able to level up, unlocking Skill Points which can then be used to unlock Abilities, Passives, and Stat Boosts. Finally, each Specialization will have its own dedicated Skill Tree.

Delving into these Skill Trees further, BioWare stress that they’re largely designed to replace your Pilot Level. They’re currently testing a system where each Javelin has a “basic” Skill Tree, where all the baseline Abilities, Passives, Triggered Abilities, and Stat Boosts for your Javelin can be unlocked. 

After this basic Skill Tree is complete, you’ll be able to unlock certain Specializations. Each Specialization has an Advanced Skill Tree, where you can unlock specific Abilities, Upgrades, and more for your Javelin.

Rounding out the blog, BioWare is also experimenting with an Artifacts system, designed to replace the Components. Artifacts are designed to superpower certain abilities and features of a Javelin, turning your Ranger’s Rocket Pod into a Skyfell Launcher Artifact, a pair of back-mounted pods that transform into powerful rocket launchers, for example.

This is the first news we’ve heard of Anthem’s big 2.0 relaunch since earlier this year, when concept art featuring sky pirates was unveiled in July. That same month, BioWare also revealed a look at the revamped loot system for Anthem’s reboot, which will eventually be arriving at some point in the future.

For a look at the stiff competition that Anthem’s reboot will be going up against whenever it arrives, check out our feature on the best MMORPG titles out there.

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It is going well. Hopefully we can spotlight some of the focus areas soon – player autonomy, proper progression (loot/javelin), endgame…and Pirates…. What topics would you like to see? https://t.co/0EK3KzNat1 pic.twitter.com/mbywBumPW0July 8, 2020

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As Eurogamer (opens in new tab) spotted, Dailey shared the first bit of pirate art on July 7, showing a faction of either pirate robots or robot pirates (you can’t be sure). Labeled the Pirates of Blood Wind, the first snippet shows a grenadier class pirate brandishing a mix of explosives. Given the story of Anthem, this is presumably an enemy soldier piloting a robotic suit rather than a true robot pirate, but it sounds like BioWare isn’t ruling anything out at this stage. 

Lots of good discussion around our Pirate friends and new factions. We want to share more on factions and the part they play in the future. One common question though is “where do the Pirates live?” Here of course …. Happy Friday all. pic.twitter.com/dhfFvNXGdyJuly 17, 2020

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This pirate art was only widely noticed after the more recent release of art showing the base where these pirates apparently live. Dailey also noted that “we want to share more on factions and the part they play in the future,” which suggests BioWare is building multiple factions to help flesh out Anthem 2.0 apart from just these Blood Wind pirates. 

Is this less blurry? pic.twitter.com/LEecuLJrYVJuly 24, 2020

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Most recently, Dailey followed up the pirate base with a closer look at a mountain capped with crimson-leaved trees. I have no idea what, if anything, lives here, but I like those birds in the background.  

It’s unclear how fleshed out these factions and environments are at this stage, nor do we know if they’ll be in the final update. The last formal update on Anthem arrived back in May, when Dailey confirmed that Anthem 2.0 is still a long way out. To add to that, it sounds like BioWare is still partly in the phase where it’s throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, with Dailey mentioning (opens in new tab) internal tests messing around with everything from battle royale to a Battlefield take on Anthem. He stressed that wild PvP ideas like those are “not the priority right now,” but there’s no doubt BioWare Austin is experimenting. Oh, and speaking of updates, it sounds like Dailey will publish another blog post (opens in new tab) relatively soon. 

Anthem will remain in full hibernation mode (opens in new tab) for a while yet. 

The post Anthem 2.0 concept art shows a new pirate faction and base appeared first on Game News.

Former live service development director Christian Dailey, now studio director at BioWare Austin where Anthem 2.0 is in the works, addressed the state of the game in a new blog post (opens in new tab). This is the first time anyone at BioWare has officially commented on Anthem since February 2020 (opens in new tab), when the studio set the stage for a year of thin updates while the team focuses on fundamental changes.

“The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses,” Dailey says. “Incubation is a term we use internally – it essentially means we are going back and experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem. We are a small team – about 30-ish, earning our way forward as we set out to hit our first major milestone goals. Spoiler – this is going to be a longer process. And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.”

The size of the overhaul team is a surprise, but Dailey’s explanation lines up with previous comments from BioWare general manager Casey Hudson, who said that the studio’s goal with Anthem 2.0 is “giving a focused team the time to test and iterate, focusing on gameplay first” in order to reinvent Anthem’s flawed core without skimping on its identity. He also touched on the experimental nature of Anthem 2.0, and how much of it is subject to change. 

“The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on – but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK,” Dailey says. “We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem. But, with that comes seeing how the sausage is made – which is not always pretty by the way.” 

The good news is that BioWare is looking to “start putting together some regular comms out to everyone to show and talk about these changes and our progress.” Hopefully we won’t need to wait another three months for the next status report, and perhaps BioWare will have more concrete details to share soon. 

The most recent Anthem patch notes (opens in new tab) outline a regular rotation of challenges that will essentially keep the game on life support.

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Hudson’s post comes roughly three months after a Kotaku report on an update referred to as Anthem 2.0 and Anthem Next (opens in new tab), which described a bottom-up transformation on the scale of No Man’s Sky Next and Destiny: The Taken King. It sounds like that’s exactly what BioWare has in mind. 

“Over the last year, the team has worked hard to improve stability, performance and general quality of life while delivering three seasons of new content and features,” Hudson says. “We have also heard your feedback that Anthem needs a more satisfying loot experience, better long-term progression and a more fulfilling end game. So we recognize that there’s still more fundamental work to be done to bring out the full potential of the experience, and it will require a more substantial reinvention than an update or expansion.” 

The studio now hopes to “reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges, and progression with meaningful rewards” without sacrificing Anthem’s killer app, namely “flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting.” 

This leads to what may be the most damning line in Hudson’s post: “And to do that properly we’ll be doing something we’d like to have done more of the first time around – giving a focused team the time to test and iterate, focusing on gameplay first.” 

A previous report (opens in new tab) suggested that Anthem came together in just over a year after spending several years in development hell, and while BioWare largely dodged the circumstances described in the report, Hudson’s comment suggests that Anthem’s final, prolonged sprint was far from ideal. 

Hudson says BioWare will be working on this long-term update “over the coming months,” but doesn’t nail down when players can expect it to come to the game. And while Anthem will remain online for the foreseeable future, seasonal content will be pared back to free up resources within the studio. Events and store refreshes will continue, and past seasonal and Cataclysm content will be revisited, but it sounds like new content will be nearly non-existent. 

“Creating new worlds is central to our studio mission, but it’s not easy,” Hudson closes. “Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we miss. What keeps us going is the support from players like you. Your feedback gives us guidance on how we can improve, and your passion inspires us with the courage to create. I look forward to working together with your involvement and feedback towards the best possible future for Anthem.”

Per the latest Anthem patch notes (opens in new tab), the game’s Christmas Icetide event is still going. 

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“After eight amazing years at BioWare I have made the decision to move on and have accepted an exciting opportunity at another gaming company,” he said on Twitter (opens in new tab). “Since the first time I played Baldur’s Gate many many years ago, BioWare was the dream place I always wanted to work.

“I will forever be grateful to all the people who gave me the chance to work on great products with amazing people. I believe Anthem has a bright future – there is a great team working on it and I look forward to following its progress (and playing it!) from the sidelines.

“I have really enjoyed interacting with the Anthem community – Streams, Twitter and Reddit. Through the good times and the tough times. You all are in great hands with [EA global lead Jesse Anderson] and [EA / Bioware global community lead Andrew Johnson]. I wish nothing but the best for all of you.” 

Irving’s departure comes at a decisive moment for Anthem. After a rough launch and an even rougher follow-up plagued by delays and repeated setbacks, the most recent Anthem patch notes (opens in new tab) outlined the long-awaited Cataclysm, not to mention a suite of Javelin upgrades. It’s not without issues, and the Cataclysm itself is a bit underwhelming, but the most recent update has been met with fairly positive reception in large part thanks to Grandmaster difficulty nerfs and more plentiful high-end loot. 

Anthem isn’t dead in the water and a single departure won’t change that, but a disconcerting pattern is starting to emerge among the game’s higher-ups. With its roadmap pushed back to who-knows-when (opens in new tab) and its leadership steadily moving onto greener pastures, BioWare and EA could stand to discuss Anthem’s immediate and long-term future.  

Irving’s departure is unrelated, but internal shifts at BioWare suggest the studio is doubling down on Dragon Age 4 (opens in new tab). 

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You can also check out our Anthem tips in the video below:

1. Be careful about salvaging your gear

When you finish an expedition you’ll see a list of all the things guns, gear and loot you’ve collected. Be careful here because the options are to ‘Salvage’ and ‘Quit’ and in Anthem-land salvage ‘Salvage’ means ‘break into tiny bits for crafting materials’ not save or rescue like it does everywhere else. So just make sure you don’t actually breakdown any higher level gear as it can make quite a quick difference to your abilities. However, do mince up anything you’re not going to use for the crafting materials. 

2. Try different Javelins and gear because they’re probably not what you’re expecting

They’re not quite what you’d expect. In the demo at least the Storm was super powerful for example, and the Colossus isn’t quite the tank you’d hope. That may change in the full game when you level up and get more gear but for now don’t expect the archetypes presented to play out quite as you might expect. It’s the same for guns. Something like a grenade launcher is usually more of speciality weapon in most games while in Anthem it’s a viable main option. Marksman rifles are also basically single shot assault rifles here and a pretty good all round choice if you don’t mind getting all squeezy-squeezy on the trigger. 

3. Try for a good mix of Javelins and gear on your team

It’s standard practice to not all be the same in a co-op game. You want a good mix of classes, guns and gear so you can mix up the range, area of damage and so on when you hit action. As we mentioned experiment with everything and try to identify any gaps or overlaps in your offensive and defensive capabilities. There’s no point in everyone taking in the biggest booms they can carry and no one bringing a shield. 

4. Get to the expedition screen to join any friends 

Anthem is a co-op game but in Fort Tarsis you walk alone. It’s only when you leave this single player game you’ll meet up with people. You can invite people to you game at any time but you won’t see them until you enter the expedition screen where there names should appear on the right. Once you all ready up the game will hopefully load and you’ll be in the open world together

5. If the game doesn’t load, don’t panic – your party will survive

One thing to look out for – since it was prevalent in the demo – is the infinite loading bug. The game would frequently get to about 95% on the loading bar and then hang. Don’t panic too much though. While it is a pain to have to quit the game, if you were playing with other people you’ll be asked if you want to return the expedition you were previously in. So, conversely, while if your game hangs you’ll have restart it, everyone else should stay in the game to let other people join them. 

6. Ammo can run out quickly so choose two good guns

From what we played in the demo, the max amount of ammo you can carry is pretty low. That will change as you level up in the main game, make sure you conserve ammo and use the best weapons early on. There will be more ammo around but enemy attacks can be pretty savage, with some tough to kill, high damage things to deal with – which means having a pile of ammo in open ground isn’t a great help. So always make sure you have two games that will work as a main. A sniper rifle is great for high damage precision but if it ends up being all you have ammo for when you’re in the thick of action things will get interesting (bad). 

7. Don’t forget consumables, and free roam to get crafting ingredients

Consumables were barely mentioned in the demo but are basically single shot buffs you can craft for a boost as long as you’re on an expedition. They cover things like armour, shield and damage boost and need to be crafted from resources you collect in the world. The best way to do that is head out in free roam and look out for anything that looks… a bit collectable. You can’t miss the piles of rocks and odd looking plants that are obviously meant picked up. 

8. You can quit an expedition at any time from the map screen

While the preset missions end once you’ve completed them, you can also jump out at anytime by heading to the map screen and holding down Square/B to quit out. Handy if you want to check what loot you got from a world event, or you’ve just had enough and want to get out. 

9. How to solve the light puzzle in the Manifold Chamber

This is a puzzle you’ll come across in one of the story missions in the game and it offers no hints or description of what you’re actually supposed to do. There are three platforms each with a coloured portal on them and you need to configure each one to open the door. The solution can be via different colored lights under the platforms with each one displaying the correct light for the portal above. But if you want to save time standing at the entrance is combination is left portal = Red. Far right Portal = Orange. Near Right Portal = purple 

10. Customise your Javelin in the Forge 

While you can customise your Javlin when you get it in to go on an an expedition there’s also the Forge which you can access via a small terminal in Fort Tarsis right next to your Javelin. From here you can equip new weapons, armour and a new lick of paint and generally set thing up just how you like without having to go anywhere. It’s marked on the map but can be quite hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. 

11. You can’t launch a squad expedition until your entire team is ready

When you’ve got all your buddies together to take on a mission, you’ll have to press square on PS4 and X on Xbox to let everyone know you’re ready to voyage into the wider world. The mission won’t launch unless everyone in your squad has hit that button, so remember to badger that one friend who always forgets to do it and leaves you all chatting in the lobby for way longer than necessary. 

12. Freeplay isn’t as open world as you think

Once you’ve worked your way through the story missions, you might want to delve into the game’s less structured Freeplay sessions. They’ll pop up on your expedition maps with an icon that looks a bit like a Star Wars’ AT-AT, and you just need to select one to dive right in. They play out a bit like dropping onto a planet in Destiny, and it’s up to you to find thing to do while you’re down there. World Events will randomly spawn, there are enemies and giant beasties to tackle, but they’re also strangely less open world than you’d expect. There’s an invisible boundary around each are that will stop you from just zooming around in your Javelin wherever you want. Unlike other games were your gameplay area is as far as the eye can see, you’re going to be hitting walls more than you’d like, and suddenly find yourself being transported back to the “mission area” via (another) loading screen. 

13. Fly close to rivers and waterfalls to cool down your Javelin

It doesn’t take long for your Javelin to overheat when you’re soaring through the sky, but if you skim the tops of rivers and plummet down alongside waterfalls you’ll go into cooldown mode. This means your flying meter will pause where it is and turn blue, letting you glide around without any limit – as long as you remain near water. The buff lasts a couple of seconds when you pull away from the river/waterfall/lake, so it’s worth doing if you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. 

Anthem microtransactions (opens in new tab) | Anthem ember locations (opens in new tab) | Anthem story explained (opens in new tab) | Anthem treasure chests (opens in new tab) | Anthem Hidden Places (opens in new tab) | Best Anthem Javelins (opens in new tab)| Anthem Tomb challenges (opens in new tab) | How to level up fast in Anthem (opens in new tab) | How to get Anthem multi-kills (opens in new tab) | Anthem problems (opens in new tab)

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For starters, while update 1.0.4 was intended to make Grandmaster Stronghold bosses “drop more loot with a chance at additional Masterwork and Legendary items,” many players reported receiving fewer Masterworks from Grandmaster bosses. And by fewer, I mean none. A previous update made it so that every Grandmaster Stronghold yields at least one Masterwork item, but following the latest patch, players said (opens in new tab) they often received nothing but Rare and Epic items from Strongholds. 

In a similar vein, where yesterday’s update was meant to buff loot chests so they yield additional rewards and crafting materials, loot chests in Grandmaster activities are now awarding Uncommon-grade Embers. An earlier update removed Uncommon and Common items from the loot pool for endgame (read: Grandmaster) activities, so it’s odd to see Uncommon crafting materials dropping once again. On top of that, yesterday’s update seems to have diluted the drop table with Embers, with some players (opens in new tab) seeing up to half of their usual drops replaced with the things. 

As if that weren’t enough, a bug in update 1.0.4 allowed other players to inadvertently pick up other people’s drops. You’d still receive items other players picked up, so they weren’t unwittingly stealing drops from you, but this did mean that all the worthless items now dropping in Grandmaster activities ate up a lot of inventory space. Most people don’t bother taking Epic or Rare items, let alone Uncommon ones, so you can see how this would get annoying. 

To top it all off, the newly added Elysian Caches are also bugged. Many players have reported receiving nothing when opening Elysian Caches even after spending an Elysian Key. This is especially painful – and a touch ironic – since a selling point for these caches was that they would never give you duplicate items. According to the EA Help Twitter (opens in new tab), resetting your game can send missing Elysian drops to your inventory, but players have had mixed results with this method. Many say they only received half of their missing drops after resetting their game, while others never saw any at all. 

Update: Per BioWare community manager Jesse Anderson (opens in new tab), resetting your game should properly display any Elysian drops you may be missing. However, you’ll likely only notice their reappearance if they’re cosmetics; it’s also possible to receive materials from Elysian Caches which aren’t easy to find in your inventory. So if you absolutely cannot find your Elysian rewards, it may just be that they were materials that went under the radar.

There is at least some good news. As BioWare community lead Andrew Johnson said earlier today (opens in new tab), BioWare just recently pushed a fix for a few of these issues. Johnson said Strongholds should once again guarantee Masterworks and players should no longer be able to pick up your loot. However, fixes for the Ember invasion and the Elysian Cache bug are still up in the air. For everyone’s sake, I hope the remaining issues are sorted out soon. 

Relatedly, here are all the Anthem problems (opens in new tab) we’d love to see fixed. 

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We’ve had troubled launches for as long as we’ve had online games, but it feels like the conversation around launch issues hasn’t really gone anywhere. We see the same questions pop up every time. Why did this happen? Why didn’t the developers anticipate this? Why did it take so long to fix? With so many big online games being released so close together, with the rise of Games as a Service in the industry, now seemed like a good time to bring some of these questions to developers in the hopes of demystifying the dreaded launch day downtime. Why do we keep seeing the same issues when games launch, and how do developers handle them?  

“Capacity is very rarely the problem”  

Whenever games go down or are slow to connect, many assume that it’s because they ran out of server space. That the developers underestimated how many players would log in and, as a result, their servers buckled under the strain. In that case, all they need to do is pay for more servers, right? Well, no, not necessarily; as is often the case when making games, it’s not that simple.

“One of the mindsets you see online a lot is, ‘Why hasn’t Company A got more servers?'” Alex Mann, a development manager and former QA analyst at EA, tells us. “At launch, you see the biggest amount of traffic on these games. Everybody’s been hyped, the marketing team have done their job well, everyone’s really excited to get online, and the moment that the game pops everyone’s clicking ‘Go.’ But you’ll notice with the life cycle of most games, you have this massive burst and then it tails off. If every games company out there bought the hardware to cover everything they needed within that initial burst, two weeks later they’d have 50% of their hardware sitting there never used.” 

This makes it difficult for developers to prepare for launch without overspending and buying too many servers. Luckily, devs now have access to virtual servers through companies like Amazon Web Services, and these can be activated or deactivated as needed. These kinds of servers also became necessary as games shifted away from the peer-to-peer connections – the type that supported games like Halo 2 back in 2004 – to dedicated servers that uphold massive, persistent games like Destiny 2 (opens in new tab) and Anthem. However, virtual servers aren’t a miracle cure, and they have problems of their own.

“Capacity isn’t necessarily about the number of servers,” says Mann. “Even if we’re expecting millions of players and we’ve got the servers, we’re not expecting them all to hit that login portal at the same time. It’s about having enough lanes on the motorway for people to come through. You’ve got two countries connected via bridge, and both countries have tons of space on them, but to move from the client country to the server country, how big do you make that bridge? That isn’t about ‘Let’s throw loads of money at it and make it bigger.’ At the end of the day, it’s often a bottleneck based on the technology and engine that you’re using.” 

Common misconceptions

One misconception that Mann often sees has to do with how development teams operate – specifically, the idea that anyone can fix anything.

“When you’re dealing with complex code bases spanning multiple files built by 200 people, if I look at my coders and they’ve built this, coder A doesn’t know that entire project,” he explains. “There’s this concept that everybody knows everything about the game code, so the level artist should be helping with the fix for level architecture. You know, community managers don’t fix bugs.” 

I heard the same thing from Fredrik Brönjemark, director of live services at Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division. “Large online games are extremely complex pieces of software, relying on a massive online server infrastructure to support it,” explains Brönjemark. “On top of that you also have the additional layer of first-party services, so there are a lot of different ways things can go wrong! For us on The Division, the main types of incidents that could cause downtime or connectivity problems were instability in the game software running on the servers, or hosting provider issues. Running out of server capacity is very rarely the problem. On The Division 2, our servers scale automatically depending on the number of players wanting to play the game.” 

Any number of things can go wrong on launch day, and more often than not, sheer player count is relatively low on the watch list. There could be a memory leak, a single but catastrophic line of incorrect code, or a spot of lag buried somewhere in the enormous server pipeline. A game might have an issue with a certain ISP, or as Brönjemark mentioned, the first-party services that a game relies on could go down. The problem could be anywhere, but no matter where it is, it’s everybody’s problem. Nobody is an island when it comes to online games, and that can make responding to issues incredibly difficult and time-consuming.  

“Every launch is different”  

All of the developers I spoke to described a similar triage process for fixing issues. Mann offered an overview of what a fix might look like from start to finish. First, a developer has to sift through the symptoms of the problem to identify the actual cause. Then they bring in the people who are responsible for that area of the game to work out a solution. Is it something they can update on their side, or do they need to issue a patch? Once they find a solution, they’ll have to test it to make sure it doesn’t break anything else, especially if it is a patch. 

“There’s a check before anything goes live,” says Mann. “There’s a lot of back-and-forth with platform holders [like Sony and Microsoft] to make sure we’re working towards success together; we’ve got to go through QA steps. And as we’re going through that patch, if we knee-jerk react and fix this now, but then half an hour later we have to do a second patch in the same day, it’s going to be a mess. So we have to say, ‘We’re doing this patch; what other critical issues can we fix as part of this? What other stuff is wrong?’ You can’t just make a patch in half an hour. You’ve got to make sure you’re being smart with how you’re patching that content.”

Once all that’s done, if the universe allows, the devs can push the patch through and begin monitoring it and communicating its effects through their social channels. But “there’s not a half-hour turn around,” says Mann, adding, “there’s maybe hundreds of people that will touch that before it goes out.” 

Frank Sanchez, a former BioWare and Gazillion Entertainment community representative with engineering experience, knows this paradigm well. As someone who’s spent a lot of time collating responses and drafting patch notes, he’s seen both sides of the update process, from player feedback to patch submission. He also knows better than most how complicated fixes can become, and how frustrating launch issues can be for players and developers alike.

“We are the last people that want to see a server go up and then two hours later lag so badly people can’t log in,” Sanchez explains. “I guarantee you if [the developers] bring a server up for a beta and it doesn’t work right, that’s probably at the tail end of somebody who put in time beyond what they were already crunching to get it to a state where it could launch. So when somebody online is like ‘Well, they’re just lazy,’ that’s completely and blatantly false. The work is put in, the challenge is how to respond to issues and communicate to players when they do happen. It’s an imperfect science … every launch is different. Even if two games are developed on Unity or whatever, even if the genre is the same, the process is different. You can’t say ‘This game was fine, what’s the problem with this game,’ because there’s a lot of uniqueness to every game.” 

Sanchez’s comments touch on another common question that crops up around launch time: why didn’t you anticipate this? Maybe game X ran into problems a few months ago. Surely the developers of game Y could see that and take measures to avoid those same problems, right? 

Differences in individual games aside, everyone I spoke to said that some issues can’t be anticipated. Internal testing can only do so much, and it can never truly compare to actually launching a game. 

“There’s just no simulation for live”  

“You can’t plan for live [concurrent players],” Sanchez continues. “It’s just impossible. There is no substitute. I’ve seen every method of stress testing something internally before you put it out there, and there’s just no simulation for live.” 

This is where pre-launch stress tests and beta periods come into play. They’re not perfect, but they are the best way to gauge how a game’s launch will look and what needs to be fixed before prime time. “Betas are massively helpful,” says Mann. “You cannot get the size and scale that you do with a beta test internally. You just can’t hire that many people to hit your servers. The best way to test live is by being live. If you look at a lot of alphas and betas, there’s this concept that there aren’t enough servers, that there are bugs and other issues, but within a week they’ve triaged and the latest or final release doesn’t have those issues. That’s only because it’s experienced [live] and investigated during those betas.”

“Recently, a studio ran a beta for its game and a bunch of my friends jumped in excited to play, and they hit a bug where they’re stuck in the tutorial because a key item hasn’t spawned in the server,” Mann tells me, noting how tricky it can be to anticipate flaws in an online game launch. “I guarantee in all the QA testing on that game, that item was always there. The only way you’re going to find that is by testing this flow on a massive scale. I suspect those guys are now well aware of that and all over that issue to have it fixed for launch, all because of that beta work.” 

You can’t fix everything  

If betas are so great, why don’t developers hold more of them, and why not hold them months before launch? As is often the case in games, technology and time don’t always let devs do exactly what they want to do. Due to the way most games are made, they don’t come together until right at the end, which is generally why betas appear so close to launch. And regardless of what devs learn from a beta, no matter what problems it may reveal, they can’t realistically delay their game in response to them. A web service provider doesn’t want a team to miss its server start date anymore than a publisher wants to miss their launch date. This is why, just as some issues can’t be anticipated, some bugs just can’t be fixed in time for launch. 

The Division 2 Betas

The Division 2 beta (opens in new tab) schedule was fairly comprehensive, with private and open betas as well as a more targeted stress test. Not all games can swing that, but those that do benefit immensely from what Brönjemark calls the “final rehearsal.” Its first open beta is planned for March 1 to 4, two weeks out from launch.

“I would love to ship with no bugs,” considers Sanchez, a comment you’ll hear from any developer that has gone through hell and back to actually ship a product. “But any team will tell you that’s very difficult to do. That’s just the reality of it. The list of things that need to be fixed is ever-changing. You have to understand that when it comes to bugs, there are bugs that are potentially shipped, and there are bugs discovered after launch. All that has to get prioritized and planned against and talked about. It’s triage. The luckier launches are the ones that have bugs but don’t have crippling bugs.” 

On top of that, making a beta build can be a lengthy and labor-intensive task of its own. Developers can’t just hack off a piece of their game and upload it to Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. Betas are often developed separately from (but in tandem with) a game, which takes more time and money. This is why issues that have long since been fixed in the main build of a game may still be present in its beta. We saw this in Anthem’s demos and in the latest beta for The Division 2, for instance. 

“Quite often I hear people saying that they think beta tests are only marketing campaigns, and the developers can’t learn anything from them anyway as the game is already finished at that point,” Brönjemark tells me. “I’d like to dispel that myth. Even when the game is already printed on disc and the day-one patch is already done, there are still a tremendous amount of things that we are able to address server-side, both in terms of tech but also in terms of gameplay and balancing.”

On the flip side, Sanchez says, “publishing schedules and game development timelines are very aggressive, sometimes too aggressive. When does something ship, how much funding do you have left, how long have you been in development. Sometimes the success of launching really depends on how many times you’ve had to push back your milestones, how many times did you delay your launch because you had something to polish. Some games can only be shipped with a certain amount of polish. You can’t say it’s completely and utterly fine once it goes gold. There are instances in which a game will ship in a state that’s launch-ready, but there might be a little bit of polish that needs to be done.” 

A launch is more than day one  

Developers and players both want their games to work perfectly the first time they fire them up, but the reality of game development is that there are so many moving parts and so many immovable limitations that some problems are bound to slip through the cracks, and the odds of that only increase as games get bigger and bigger. Sanchez reckons this is why we need to look at launches like these holistically. A game’s performance on launch day is important, but it’s not everything.

“It’s not the issues, those are always going to happen,” Sanchez says. “It’s how you address those issues. If you’re slow or you don’t address them properly, or if you’re hostile toward your players, it’s going to stick with them. If there’s one thing I wish players would understand, it’s that issues do happen regardless of how well you plan for them. You should hold developers accountable for how they get responded to. If you have a problem a week into your launch, put their feet to the fire and say ‘Hey, I’m not having a good experience, this is why, I’m concerned that these issues aren’t fixed.’ Those are the things we want to hear about.” 

No game launches perfectly. It just doesn’t happen. As Sanchez puts it, “anything you would consider to be a smooth launch is just something that never rose to the level where a player perceived something was wrong.” There’s always scrambling going on behind the scenes. Mann described it as a bunch of developers huddled together in a “war room” watching a wall of monitors for feedback and potential issues. Sometimes they catch those issues early, sometimes they don’t show up for a few hours, and sometimes they can’t be fixed for a few more hours or even a few days. 

The point is, massive online games are always going to have some technical issues at launch. Hell, all modern games have some issues at launch. That’s just the nature of today’s technology and today’s industry. That doesn’t mean players should blindly give a pass to games that are pushed out with catastrophic design or other issues, but it does put the average launch into perspective. A game might have minor issues we don’t even notice or it may have obvious game-breakers. In any case, all anyone can do is hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and call out problems when they do inevitably surface.

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Everything you need to know about the Anthem story

Lead Bioware writers Cathleen Rootsaert and Jay Watamaniuk guide us through Anthem’s characters and story (opens in new tab)

Of course that distinctive voice belongs to Kristen Schaal, also famous for appearing in 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords and The Last Man on Earth, as well as voicing characters in Toy Story 3 and Bojack Horseman. To us she’ll always be Louise Belcher though, and is it just us… or does her voice seem an odd fit for Sayrna? At least it makes her anecdotes about her Uncle Vonnie more entertaining. 

Schaal isn’t the only comedy celebrity to sneak into the cast list. Jack McBrayer, best known as Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock, is also in there as Amal, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Boyle – Joe Lo Truglio – plays Neeson. Starting to see a connection? They’ve both also appeared on Bob’s Burgers, so it’s fair to say someone on the team at Bioware is a fan of the show. Doctor Who fans will also be pleased to see UK comedian and actress Catherine Tate has a role too.

Listen to #CatherineTate, the voice of Max in #AnthemGame. A businesswoman who won a bar in a game of cards. pic.twitter.com/ei8dVXrBEmFebruary 19, 2019

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Of course Bioware has a track record when it comes to hiring A-list stars for their games. Mass Effect: Andromeda (opens in new tab) had Game of Thrones (opens in new tab) star Natalie Dormer and The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjiani.

Have you spotted any celebrity cameos in Anthem, Bob’s Burgers related or otherwise? Let us know on Twitter. 

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The post Is that Louise Belcher running a market stall in Anthem? appeared first on Game News.

ON THE RADAR: ANTHEM

Be sure to check out our GamesRadar’s On The Radar: Anthem (opens in new tab) hub to find all of our in-depth and exclusive coverage of BioWare’s latest.

I’m not saying this will happen, of course; I’m just saying this is what we’ve all seen before. It’s the template that’s been set thus far. It’s what experience has taught us. Thanks to games like Destiny (opens in new tab) and The Division (opens in new tab), we’ve learned the hard way that games as a service (GaaS) tend to have a rocky debut… so forgive us if we temper our Anthem-flavoured expectations a little. Everything Bungie learned from the missteps of the inaugural Destiny didn’t translate entirely to its highly-anticipated sequel; whereas with The Division, Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft Reflections simply took too long to course-correct the issues that plagued its own shared-world shooter experience. But if Bungie didn’t learn from its own mistakes, can any other studio expect to do so? What then can BioWare take away from Destiny and The Division’s bungled launches?

A balancing act

The key to most of the issues, I propose, lies in simplicity; either too much of it or too little. Take looting and loadouts, for starters. Destiny remained accessible despite its overcomplicated story and systems because no-one delivers meaty, satisfying gunplay quite like Bungie, and – to a greater or lesser extent – we’ve come to accept that MMOs are traditionally over-egged in the lore and loot stakes. The Division, however, fared less well; its complex loadout options and nebulous story gave players little to hold on to once they’d completed the campaign. Of course, there’s a little more to it than this – a player base rarely falls away because of one isolated mistake – but it begs the question nonetheless; if The Division’s dizzying RPG stats and loadouts hadn’t have been so complicated, could it have better retained those early adopters?

The same goes for the story and it’s here, interestingly, that Destiny and The Division lie at either end of this spectrum. Even now, several hundred in-game hours later, I’m still not really sure what Destiny is about. I ascertained the major story beats – I think? – but while subsequent expansions tried to pack flesh onto the skeletal foundations set up by Destiny’s vanilla release, it was too little too late. Players shouldn’t have to wade through Grimoire cards on a website to ascertain who’s done what and why. A story should unfold organically with gameplay, in a way that feels authentic to the player. DLC and expansions should only serve to expand on a story, not prop it up, and choosing to deliver much of this essential exposition via loading screens – a time where, let’s face it, many of us are engaging in party chat, or going to the bathroom, or just scrolling absently through Instagram – was a misfire. 

Be sure to watch the video above for GamesRardar’s hands-on impressions of Anthem.

But while Bungie’s story suffered at the hands of over complexity, The Division was too light touch, unfathomably so given the many other post-apocalyptic shooters all muscling for space at the same table. I understood how to play, and what to do, but beyond the polished cinematic trailers and occasional cut-scene, it was never clear why we were tasked to do so. Worst still, it’s incredibly difficult to become invested in a supporting cast if I know, or care, so little about my own character’s role in this world, too. 

Some of us are still not quite sure why there’s a character level and a power level in Destiny, either. We also don’t really understand why Bungie rebadged the ‘light’ level as ‘power’ later on, as though, somehow, that rebranding would inexplicably make it easier to understand. It’s another unnecessary complication, one that not only disadvantages players new to the game but also those returning to it, too. Reacclimatising to a game’s reward and progression system – not to mention mods, god rolls, infusion, and the rest of it – is hard enough, and when that game’s changed so drastically in a matter of months that nothing is as it once was, it can be impossibly so. Tweaks, revisions, and changes need to aid the player, not confuse them. Substantive changes – such as reducing Destiny’s Crucible’s team-count down from six players to four in order to stabilise servers – may seem dandy-o on face value, but to some, it’s disrupting an entire clan’s dynamics. 

It’s all about the endgame

But the most egregious mistake made by both Destiny and The Division is an astonishing lack of endgame content. In Destiny, there was little to spend our glimmer or motes of light on, whereas in The Division, it was possible for even casual players to platinum the entire game within just a few weeks. Incredibly, Destiny 2 doesn’t even let players sequentially replay the story missions, either, removing any opportunity for players to willingly explore beyond the hidden paths, and/or better understand the story. It’s as though the team has intentionally revoked all ways a player might generate replay value.

Teamwork needs to be rewarded, but not at the expense of the solo players. Exploration, too, should be encouraged by hidden loot and secrets, and weekly challenges and missions – such as Destiny’s Nightfall strikes – should never be a perk only afforded to those who’ve stumped up for expansions and DLC. Shoot ‘n’ looters only work when the shooting feels meaty and balanced and the looting gives adequate rewards, and for that to work effectively, you need content that feels meaningful and sustained. We accept RNG odds (even if it’s easy to become disenfranchised by it – Cryptarch, I’m looking at you). We’re not against a little grinding or rinse ‘n’ repeat challenges, either, but to tempt us back into recycling missions and well-trodden environments, there needs to be a suitable pay-off… and another fecking Edge Transit simply isn’t it. 

Anthem story and lore explained

Lead BioWare writers Cathleen Rootsaert and Jay Watamaniuk sit down with GamesRadar to discuss the Anthem story (opens in new tab), lore, characters, and factions

BioWare has kept the story and endgame elements of Anthem a closely guarded secret thus far. While GamesRadar has had the opportunity to run a deep dive on the former and get hands-on with the latter (opens in new tab), there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Ultimately, BioWare is a studio of storytellers and so the hope is that this sensibility translates to the studio’s first major attempt at the GaaS model; As for the endgame, it’ll no doubt take a few weeks for the community to get a proper read on how much work this area of the game will need and just how much the world-shifting Cataclysm events will really change the state of play.

As for console exclusivity? It only hurts the players. We can make our peace with a console-exclusive vanity item or two, but having whole segments of content walled off because you can’t afford two consoles and have somehow ended up with the “wrong” one is shortsighted and wholly anti-consumer. It’ll be interesting to see how EA’s hardware partnerships will affect the fortunes of Anthem players but, given how the release schedule took a complex graph to explain, the publisher isn’t off to a great start. 

In both Massive and Bungie’s cases, however, there was one thing the studios did right; they listened. When fans complained of a dearth of sandbox play and repetitious busywork, both companies worked to right the wrongs of their original releases. Of course, we can only hope that, in Anthem’s case, it won’t even come to that but, if it does, that BioWare is ready and willing to respond.

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