Desperate Times: ‘Anthem’ Needs To Kill Its Store, Distribute All Loot In-Game - Forbes

Anthem

BioWare

I was going to write another article wondering where Anthem’s Cataclysm is as we approach August in a few days, but I feel like I’ve written that same article so many times by now it’s self-explanatory. BioWare is still testing the activity in PTS, despite (minor) pre-Cataclysm events rolling out in-game, there’s still no date for the actual arrival of the thing, but it had better be in August because it will be facing off against Destiny 2 and Borderlands 3 otherwise in September.

There’s a lot of talk about BioWare’s Anthem-saving strategy now, the no-dates, head-down philosophy similar to what we saw with No Man’s Sky when Hello Games was working hard on free updates to get players back into the game.

There is one key difference, however, between No Man’s Sky and Anthem, in that Anthem has been running a microtransaction store from launch to present day, and that’s where most of the “new” loot has arrived during this dead time since release. Yes, you can scrimp and save and buy rotating purchases from the store, but I think we can all agree that Anthem is in DEFCON 1 crisis mode and some major changes need to be made.

One part of the No Man’s Sky philosophy was that they wanted to make the overall package better so people would return to the game and buy new copies of it. But with Anthem, they’re still trying to sell a significant number of microtransctions to a playerbase that barely wants to show up in the first place with so little to actually loot in-game.

Kill the store. Kill it dead, at least temporarily, and bring it back if Anthem ever recovers, or let it stay dead as the series continues its decline. Either way. But it can’t hurt, as I cannot imagine it is a revenue stream of any significance to a game with a playercount this low right now.

Anthem

BioWare

But what it is doing is preventing a whole bunch of loot from being in the game itself, namely its armor sets which are the single best-designed thing in Anthem, and look better than anything its competition has come up with, including how customizable they are with Anthem’s unique materials/layers-based design system.

Anthem thought they solved a loot shooter puzzle by offering “components” that serve as functional pieces of armor while separating out actual, physical armor pieces as cosmetics to be found in the store. This may be avoiding accusations of pay-to-win, but let me tell you, in a loot-based game without a whole lot of loot, keeping dozens and dozens of armor pieces locked into a store, whether you can grind for coin for them or pay IRL cash for them, does not equal fun.

Anthem famously introduced cosmetic loot chests into Strongholds at one point, and players were furious that they only included decals and a couple materials, with no armor pieces or sets to be found. They do not seem to have taken that lesson to heart.

Anthem has been hanging onto this idea of store-based armor sets for far too long, and given that we are in desperate times, it’s time for desperate measures. I personally would close Anthem’s Prospero store indefinitely and put its entire current stock into the wild as findable loot. That’s armor sets, materials, decals, wraps, hell even emotes, who cares. This game needs more loot. Give people more loot to find. The end.

Anthem

BioWare

If we’re getting into detail, you could give certain Strongholds specific armor sets, meaning players would have reasons to grind things other than Heart of Rage if they were trying to collect a full kit for a class. Others could be in free play, legendary missions, etc. You get the idea.

I understand that killing what is effectively the only revenue stream in a game that has promised nothing but free DLC in the future is difficult, but if EA and BioWare want Anthem to have any chance of surviving past this first game as a series, they have to do anything humanly possible to try and get players back, this kind of drastic step included.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/07/26/desperate-times-anthem-needs-to-kill-its-store-distribute-all-loot-in-game/

2019-07-26 13:46:50Z
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