Anthem Wishlist

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Yesterday’s post and the follow up reactions that continue to flow through the twitter thread that I started a few days ago have been interesting.  Firstly I have no problem if someone simply checks out of the game because it isn’t for them.  This emerging genre of “MMO Lite” games just isn’t for everyone.  If you didn’t like Destiny, Division, Warframe or even Monster Hunter World in the way its interaction worked…  then you are not likely going to like Anthem either.  Of those I am not a fan of Warframe at all really, and was luke warm towards Division…  but Destiny and Monster Hunter World were strongly in my wheelhouse.  My commentary in general has been about folks going out of their way to express their anger over the game.  The thing is… the game has flaws.  They are not big enough flaws to keep me from enjoying it, but there are definitely flaws there.

This morning I thought I would take a bit and go through some of the things that I wish the game did differently.  As such this post is more or less going to be my wish list for Anthem.  Be warned this is likely going to be a train of thought post with little organization.  As is often the case with unorganized content…  this is going to be in a bullet list form.  May god have mercy on your souls.

  • Mini Map – The world of Anthem is very intricate with full usage of lots of different levels of verticality…  as such flying from point A to point B is never that clear and as such I find myself opening my map often trying to figure out where the hell I am going.  One of two things happens… either I overheat and go crashing down wherever I happen to be hovering because I could not be bothered to get to safety before doing so…  or I get sniped by a Scar.  I would love some form of a mini map that we can toggle on and use for navigation purposes.
  • Waypoints – In a similar vein…  the game does a good job of giving you waypoints on missions to reach the objective with icons that show where you should turn next to get there.  I want the ability to set my own waypoint in the world and have this same advisement system turned on to direct me there.
  • World Events Markers – I want to see all active world events at all times.  The world is too big for me to efficiently stumble across an event, and god forbid if you are doing it on harder difficulty modes with randomly matched people…  that you will get any help in doing said event you magically stumbled across.  Guidance towards events would be beneficial.
  • Strider Redeploy – There are many different Striders out in the wilds…  there should be the ability to redeploy at a Strider closer to the action.  I mean it happens if you die, but there should be a more formal system that allows you to pick a new strider and respawn closer to wherever a World Event is happening.
  • Corpse Waypoint – One of the most frustrating experiences I have had is you are working on a World Event…  and then you die…  and you have no clue where the World Event was happening in relation to the Strider that you just spawned in on.  Would be cool if you got a bonus of some sort for going back to the point of your death and taking down whatever mob killed you.
  • Larger Freeplay – I ultimately expected Freeplay to be more like Patrols in Destiny, where you are randomly matched with whoever else happens to be in that area and as you move between sub zones…  you get a different population of players.  The problem is right now when you go into Freeplay, you are matched with 3 other players…  who are often times on completely different ends of the map making the challenge of actually completing anything very difficult unless you bring your own four player team.  Essentially Freeplay needs two modes…  matched with 4 players and a subzone matching system like Destiny Patrols.
  • Better Hit Advisement – right now there are often times when I am being hit by something but I have no clue by what.  Last night there was a moment when I thought I was being hit by something in front of me… but in reality a shotgunner had snuck up behind me and was hitting me in the back.  I would like to see them implement a sort of “your damage came from this direction” system.
  • Better Quickplay Incentivization – Quickplay should be something that is incentivized better than it actually is.  Right now there are problems with about half of the Quickplay sessions being in some form of a bugged state, and that is something I am sure they are working on.  I’ve seen reddit commentary from Devs stating as much.  What concerns me more however is that after you have finished leveling… there really doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for playing Quickplay especially once you are completely decked out in level 36 purples.  At the end of a match for Quickplaying in… you are pretty much guaranteed two pieces of loot and I have NEVER seen these be a Masterwork.  Joining Quickplay should be considered a positive thing for the community given that you are filling a slot in a group that was otherwise empty…  more often than not because someone abandoned a mission.  There should be some reasonable reward for doing this thing that helps out the community as a whole.
  • Better Grandmaster+ Incentivization – Right now Grandmaster rank doesn’t necessarily feel like it is respectful of my time.  There is a big jump from Hard to Grandmaster and while I am struggling along…  I am also feeling like I don’t have an awful lot to show for my effort.  Other than weapons… which you can get in Hard mode and below I have 1 Component and 4 abilities that are all from the same slot…  none of which really help me to be more efficient in Grandmaster so that I have a hope in hell of moving at some point to Grandmaster 2.  I also feel like I have a better shot at loot in running World Events than doing QuickPlay or Strongholds, given that anything that drops other than orange gear is largely useless to a player once they have reached Grandmaster.  I hope that the Anthem team takes the post to heart that Travis Day from Diablo 3 loot 2.0 fame made on the Reddit.
  • Mass Dismantle System – This goes hand in hand with a comment I made above… that once you reach a certain point in the game any drops that are below purple are completely useless to the player… and honestly MOST purple drops are completely useless.  The current dismantling system is cumbersome and what we really need is a version of the Diablo 3 Smith system where you can say “dismantle all of a specific color” so I could grind all whites, greens, blues…  sift through the purples manually…  or once I am fully orange grind them as well.  This needs to exist in all three places where you can do this functionality…  on the post mission screen, the vault screen and the forge screen.  Similarly there needs to be a way to flag items as “Do Not Dismantle” and then let you grind everything else without that status.
  • General UI Tweaks – Anthem is a game without a great UI.  Many things are cumbersome or obtuse.  I think there just needs to be a general pass rethinking how the players interact with the UI and improving its responsiveness.  Additionally especially when Dismantling there are times when the UI just bugs out and you have to exit and get all the way back into the menu structure to get it responding again.  UI/UX needs a lot of love here,  because as a long time developer myself… I can look past it, but it will stop a lot of users straight in their tracks.
  • Ease Transition Between Hard and Grandmaster – This is mostly important because of the stinginess of the loot system right now…  means I feel like I am struggling transitioning between Hard and Grandmaster and that there is nothing much that I can do to ease that transition.  The feeling I get is like when you can first step into Torment 1 in a Diablo Season… and you can kill stuff…  but you aren’t doing it efficiently and nowhere near fast enough to push through a Greater Rift in time.  This gets eased a bit as you get better loot to drop, but in Diablo… you can always drop down a tier to make it more efficient while still getting the same loot.  There is a barrier between Hard and Grandmaster in that you simply cannot get the items you actually need to progress…  namely components and abilities to drop at a Masterwork level in anything below Grandmaster 1.  So I feel stuck, in that I have limited ways for me to actually better my situation.  I will grind through this barrier, but a lot of people will not and will get hung up here.  Essentially the only difference between the itemization of these tiers should be the frequency of drops.  So Hard…  Masterworks should be super infrequent but you do have the ability to get anything from the pool… just super rarely.  Grandmaster 1… Masterworks should be more plentiful, on a similar loot timer to Diablo 3… if one has not dropped in X minutes then drop one while Legendaries should be super rare.  Grandmaster 2…  timer to Masterwork lowers and the frequency of Legendaries increases as well.  Grandmaster 3…  hot and cold Masterworks running out of the Tap and again ratcheting up that chance of seeing a Legendary.  I don’t think you ever want Legendaries to feel common…  because I can see them like Diablo to continue adding tiers of difficulty on top of GM3.

I am certain the second I stop this list I will think of another dozen items that should have gone on it.  I may add those throughout the course of the day as I am off doing other things.  However like I said…  I am more than happy to admit that Anthem is not a game without flaws.  However I view it as a work in progress as ALL MMOs are…  since they have a live patching cycle that comes along and tweaks things.  I am sure all of the systems that are in the game now were put in with the best of intentions, but seeing how users interact with your creation often times makes you view it in a completely different light.  I learned this as a developer years ago, and you have to be willing to react to the situation post release and be willing to admit you were wrong about some of those cool features that you really liked in the development cycle.

Was there anything I should have put on this list?  Chime in with comments to let me know what I missed.

13 thoughts on “Anthem Wishlist”

  1. – Hit indications. There are red arrows indicating the source of damage on my HUD. Pretty clear it’s from behind me, or the side. Now finding the actual bugger is a challenge, if they are behind trees or whatnot.

    – launch bay. This allows you to collect all outstanding contracts and head back out, much
    faster than Tarsis. However, the actual exit is often blocked by a mass of bugged players. Neat when it works.

    I would like to see a manual quick summon button. The same thing as is automated now, but player initiated with a confirmation box. Combined with an active ping, this would make grouping a thousand times easier in Freeplay.

  2. I hover behind rocks and such a lot on my Storm, shooting from a position of nearly full cover. “Slicing the pie” as it’s known. I don’t last long otherwise against elites and titans.

    If no text chat, I would *really* like them to give us some improved means of identifying downed team mates, their location, who is going for shards, who is holding the line, etc. Basically anything that would improve team coordination without forcing me to put on a headset or hear xXPowerClamXx yelling at his wife over voip.

  3. The biggest ones for me are text chat AND when an event is triggered it shows up on the map. Those alone would basically fix Freeplay (for me).

    Rest of your list I don’t disagree on.

    • Honestly I am fine with never being able to communicate with strangers in this game 🙂 I think that is part of what makes it charming to me is that players cannot be toxic EVER because there is no vehicle for them to do so. Also the events thing… it ONLY shows on your map if you are within range of it. You have to be pretty close to it to get it to show up.

      • I’m on Team Belghast when it comes to text chat. I know people will say “But it would be optional” but you know how the community works. If they add it, there’s the danger that people who don’t have it on aren’t playing right. Of course with no team-kick maybe that doesn’t matter.

        I did see in a Twitch stream when asked about Text Chat they skirted the issue by changed the question to “We understand you want better ways to communicate with other players and we hear that and are working on it.” So I’m guessing we’ll see pings or maybe Apex Legends style ‘rich pings’ or something, before we get Text Chat.

        But yeah I *never* play with randoms, but I’m doing it in Anthem because there is no way for them to be asshats to me.

        • Now the place I feel like text chat does have… is when they put in guilds/clans. D2 launching without guild chat was a problem. I just have no interest in text communication with strangers in the same way I have no interest in voice communication with strangers.

  4. Did you see the plans for loot? What’s really impressive to me is that it is supposed to go live today or tomorrow. I mean, that’s a pretty quick turn-around. Anyway, do you think it will help you?
    https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/comments/avm9yn/anthem_loot_update/

    The other day I was in Freeplay with 3 randoms and we all congregated together and worked together for a while. It was this brief magical moment… the only time I’ve seen that happen! LOL

    • I think the loot changes are a really good step and might honestly make some of the purples I get more useful for the short term. However long term… it is more a frequency of drops problem than a quality of drops. So much of this game is about builds and right now I don’t have masterwork variants of the abilities that I need to tweak my build the way I want it. I am limping along but just feel like I don’t yet do enough damage to make Grandmaster 1 viable for farming, at the least not SOLO farming.

  5. Here was the list that I posted:

    -Remove all forced Public / Matchmaking.
    -Add text chat (very doubtful that would ever happen).
    -More obvious, or better notifications of squad mates down.
    -Better indicators of where damage is coming from.
    -Ability to change firing shoulder. (or am I missing this existing option?)
    -Improve Javelin HUD with more information and better enemy visibility. Maybe an infrared vision filter that you can toggle on and off?
    -Either make it possible to launch mission from anywhere in Tarsis -OR- increase Tarsis movement speed/reduce need to run back and forth.

    • I am not sure what you mean by firing shoulder, like what hand your are firing your weapon from? I guess I get that but since this isn’t a cover shooter I also get them not adding that feature. I mean it makes complete sense in a game like The Division where you are deeply penalized for not being behind cover. In Anthem I am almost never behind cover.

      I still am on the fence about text chat. I am more likely to interact with strangers in the game because they can have no negative impact on me. I also have voice chat perma disabled.

      • I literally sat for 7 minutes waiting on a revive in a Stronghold because I had no means of communicating with the team. Also, you have no access to menu, map, anything that I could find while in that state. And if they are far enough, you can’t even see your teammates outlines through terrain. Group list also disappears, so had no idea how many of the team were also downed.
        It was so much fun….

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