Hey, remember Anthem? Hello? Anyone? The silence may be deafening, but we’ve got good news for those of you who are still invested in BioWare’s online multiplayer exo-suit game. In a new blog post, the developer revealed some of the changes that would be coming to Anthem’s loot system – one of the title’s arguably worst aspects.
“A good player experience depends on the loot system being extensible and robust, and a lot can go wrong. A lot did go wrong,” admitted BioWare. “We fell short here and we realized that building something new from the ground up was going to be required – starting with taking a long look and understanding the best in class of the many great games that inspire us. Based on this research, along with your thoughts and feedback, we planned some high-level goals and changes we wanted to try.”
As Anthem players might have imagined, BioWare is fixing the loot system by making it more satisfying – that not only means an increased frequency of rewards, but drops that are actually exciting to equip and result in significant improvements to Javelins. Here’s everything that’s coming in Anthem 2.0:
- Respect Your Time
- Increase the frequency of Loot Drops
- Loot is viable more often; All items are better and more competitive, but there’s still a chance of getting something exceptional
- All loot rarities have strategic value throughout progression
- Embrace Choice
- You can pursue specific loot without relying on randomness alone; Quests; Specialized Vendors; Unique Loot Tables
- Modify your loot, including rerolling inscriptions and leveling up items
- Create a Rewarding Loot Experience
- Loot feels exciting and more noticeable when it drops, and is celebrated when collected
- Rare enemies (aka “walking treasure chests”) create exciting moments to get a burst of loot all at once
- Keep it Accessible and Immediate
- Reveal and equip loot right away
- Complete revamp of the equipment sheet – including a detailed stat sheet (not shown)
- The equipment sheet can be accessed from anywhere, allows you to easily see what you have equipped in each slot
- Reliability of Equipment and Rewards
- Each item has an inscription “budget”, based on its Power and Rarity
- No more useless items because they were missing must-have inscriptions (see “Increased weapon dmg by +225%”)
- Exceptional items are about getting the exact types of bonuses you want, instead of maxing values on every bonus
- Scale for the Future
- Your power cap can be easily increased, and the loot system scales accordingly
- Advanced telemetry data allows us to identify trends and make meaningful balance changes
BioWare also claims that it has made the response and feel of Anthem much better. “Gunplay is overall more responsive with enemies reacting to hits near instantly with improved client-side prediction, we are looking into the role of melee items and builds, and of course, being able to spend skill points to unlock new types of equipment and synergies,” the company wrote.
We’re not sure when Anthem 2.0 will debut or if it’ll be significant enough to re-attract players who have moved on to bigger, better games out there (Destiny 2?), but for BioWare’s sake, let’s hope that it’s good enough to convince EA not to shut down the game and developer entirely…