Bioware's "Anthem"

Blitz said:

As someone who hasn't played any of these persistent world shooters: Division, Destiny, Warframe etc... What is the current best one? On just a casual basis?

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Definitely Warframe.

Anyone having audio cut out completely at times? If so, I'm wondering if you have VLC media player installed? I've had Anthem do that twice today, along with two CTD's. I've noticed that since I installed the Origin Client I am seeing something called "LAV Splitter" appear in my system tray. I think this is part of VLC, and both times the audio has cut out, it was in the system tray. Of course, the game was running without any crashes yesterday (while LAV Splitter was up), so who knows if there is any relation.

Blitz said:

So, this sounds like it's shit?

As someone who hasn't played any of these persistent world shooters: Division, Destiny, Warframe etc... What is the current best one? On just a casual basis? Certainly not looking to be the Michael Jordan of some faux-MMOFPS.

Click to expand...

Probably Destiny since you can play pretty casually and see all the content you want to see. Warframe is a good choice since it is free, but it tries very hard to make its cash shop pretty appealing with its grindy nature and time consuming crafting. There will come a point where I think Warframe becomes less casual friendly and you'll need to deep dive into all its various systems to tweak your character a lot to make it strong enough to run the higher level content like you ran the lower end stuff.

"The Anthem of Anthem has uncovered an Anthem of Anthem which will power the Anthem to catastrophically Anthem the inevitable Anthem of Anthem. Quickly Freelancer, you must Anthem the Anthem before Anthem is able to Anthem the Anthem"

i am now the head writer of Anthem

Zindan said:

Anyone having audio cut out completely at times? If so, I'm wondering if you have VLC media player installed? I've had Anthem do that twice today, along with two CTD's. I've noticed that since I installed the Origin Client I am seeing something called "LAV Splitter" appear in my system tray. I think this is part of VLC, and both times the audio has cut out, it was in the system tray. Of course, the game was running without any crashes yesterday (while LAV Splitter was up), so who knows if there is any relation.

Click to expand...

LAV Splitter is just part of the excellent LAV Filters Codec pack. It may be getting bundled with VLC these days. Usually will load whenever some audio/video content on your PC cannot be processed automatically by Windows' own codecs. (or they can be configured as defaults, perhaps VLC did this at installation?)

I've been using them for years, and they should not be causing you any problems.

LAV Filters by Nevcairiel

Here's a laugh for you guys.

First off where did those last 2 hours go? I go and load the game just to fart around for a few minutes and after hitting the space bar to load my character the game took so long to load I actually ran out of time to play and the game closed itself. Hilariously infuriating.




edit: Ok that was really fast. Contacted support and in under 5 minutes they tacked on another 10 hours for me. Rage subsiding just slightly.

I initially installed this on my HDD because with many games the load difference is almost negligible. I switched the install to my SSD and holy shit it is like 4x faster. I'm talking like 40-45 second loads on going into a mission and loading into town and like 20 second loads for the forge and mini areas with my HDD.

This may be the biggest loading difference I've ever experienced In any game ever.

article from 2018
Anthem's Open World is Completely Seamless | USgamer
"It's contiguous," says Anthem lead producer Mike Gamble. "Once you're in the open world, you just run around the open world. There's no loads. Everything's contiguous. You have access to the whole thing."

Anthem is built in such a way that the game is always loading another section just out of sight. That allows BioWare to have huge maps strung together in a way that makes it feel like you're exploring the face of a hostile planet.

Given that the world is seamless, BioWare is planning to handle its boundaries in other ways.

Delly said:

I initially installed this on my HDD because with many games the load difference is almost negligible. I switched the install to my SSD and holy shit it is like 4x faster. I'm talking like 40-45 second loads on going into a mission and loading into town and like 20 second loads for the forge and mini areas with my HDD.

This may be the biggest loading difference I've ever experienced In any game ever.

Click to expand...

I do have it installed on my SSD. Samsung EVO 860 for comparisons sake.

Woefully Inept said:

I do have it installed on my SSD. Samsung EVO 860 for comparisons sake.

Click to expand...

I believe mine is an Samsung 840 pro. It is pretty much my back up SSD and almost nothing gets put on it.

spronk said:

article from 2018
Anthem's Open World is Completely Seamless | USgamer
"It's contiguous," says Anthem lead producer Mike Gamble. "Once you're in the open world, you just run around the open world. There's no loads. Everything's contiguous. You have access to the whole thing."

Anthem is built in such a way that the game is always loading another section just out of sight. That allows BioWare to have huge maps strung together in a way that makes it feel like you're exploring the face of a hostile planet.

Given that the world is seamless, BioWare is planning to handle its boundaries in other ways.

Click to expand...

They are right though. If you go into one of the mini dungeons you're leaving the open world! So seeing a load screen is perfectly acceptable. ;p

Ok just fired it up again and I timed it. 38 seconds this time. WTF was that 10+ minute long load horseshit?

I think the long load times is mostly due to the matchmaking system syncing up players. It can go fast, but most of the time it is slower than zoning into the same mission while solo (in my experience so far).

I was loading into the game from the title screen. There shouldn't be match making to worry about with that.

I have this installed on a SSD. Load times for me have never been much more than Destiny. I've never tried quickplay, but any missions (done everything up until the demo mission) loads either solo (private) or matchmaking in around 30ish seconds. Forge is close to instant except when going from mission to forge, then it's about 10 seconds.

I think it's fun so far. If whatever studio owns the rights to Ironman isn't looking at the flying part and thinking "ohh, let's do that" I don't know what will.

Lore seems to be hidden in codex and if you're just listening to conversations and quests, it kind of sounds strange. Though there is Hopps the Grabbit that has a nose that knows. Those radio shows....

Horrible release window for them though. Metro and Apex are hurting it now. I think they should have launched it world wide on all platforms at the same time in 7 days rather than now. For the people who like these types of games, I think The Division 2 will be far more successful and populated. Not sure how much people will want to grind after hitting end game at around level 25 (strongholds).

Could the game grow to be better, sure. But I suspect the dropoff in players due to The Division 2 will be so large that they won't have anywhere near the dev team to keep working on it in the future compared to now. Highly expect the current roadmap they have show to be altered either in time when things come out or outright removed. If this game was released a year ago, it would have done much better.

Overall my thoughts are
- Runs well and looks great. Optimized compared to the demo
- On a SSD, the load times are no worse than the other games in the genre
- Flying is great (playing on a controller, so no issues underwater either)
- Combat is meh to fun to great
- Loot grind seems identical to Destiny
- Story is bad\meh so far (one great action cut scene), but gets better if you read everything. It's a nail in the coffin for Bioware though in terms of "story" reputation if they have any left. At this point they're like a person who bought a high level character in a MMO. They have a pedigry and a reputation to the name, but the new people in it have no ability to replicate what the name represented.
- Hub seems kind of dead, but no worse than any in Destiny or Division. On par for these games I guess.
- Matchmaking has been quick so far

6.5-7/10 for me so far.

That said, if you have Origin Access, I'd easily recommend it. $15 for a month playing this seems well worth it.