Panel of Knobs

I swear this time change has been significantly rougher than other ones because of the whole giving up energy drinks thing.  That said I am starting to finally feel like I am getting adjusted, and I am trying really hard not to simply replace downing lots of monsters/rockstars a day with downing a bunch of tea.  I still feel like I probably have another full week of feeling miserable before the symptoms start to pass and I can get on with my life.  I do however now suspect that I had been living in a constant state of mild dehydration, so I guess getting away from that is probably a good thing.

Panel of Knobs

Yesterdays post is probably the most critical I have been of Anthem, and honestly this morning is going to add its own frustrations.  I still very much love the game and I still honestly enjoy it…  but like a family member that is wildly fucking up and making stupid life choices…  I am disappointed because I know they can do better.  Legendaries are way too rare and last night while playing my Ranger main…  I saw the glimmer of lime that indicates that I got another one.  I got super excited, and because you can’t actually see what just dropped until you end the mission I was almost giddy to return from Freeplay and open my present.  Much like the disappointment of opening socks on Christmas morning…  I saw that I got a Legendary Component…  for a class that I was not playing at the time.

So I don’t mind the idea that you can get components for other classes, because at least on some level this helps you build out your other frames.  I’ve picked up things for all three other frames while playing my Ranger, and so long as they were Masterworks I didn’t mind much because I have reached the point where other than a god roll… only a Legendary is going to improve my build.  However there is no reason why a Legendary being as freaking rare as it is should ever drop for an alternate class.  This is just a bad choice…  and as a programmer I get how this sort of thing happens.

Panel of Knobs

This is the best analogy I can give you for making updates in a very complex system.  You essentially have this giant panel of knobs and switches, not all of which are labelled because you were in a rush when you installed the knob in the first place…  to also install about a hundred other knobs.  Your comments made sense at the time you wrote them, but six months later you have no clue what “controls sound temperature” means right now.  As you start tweaking you see the result you were after  without also seeing the thousand other tiny tweaks that you accidentally caused as a result.  So I fully get how we end up in a state where accidental changes make the game feel better, and fixing those bugs removes the joy once again.

Panel of Knobs

Unfortunately the devs have run out of the good grace that a lot of players have given them, and ultimately as of yesterday they ran out of time.  Division 2 had been looming on the horizon but Ubisoft seemingly released it a day early, giving access to anyone who bought Gold version of the game or higher immediate access to start playing.  For the rest of the world it launches on Friday, and from the sounds of it they have their shit together.  Granted Division 2 is an easier launch than Anthem was because it seems that unlike Destiny 2 they took to heart the lessons they learned while maintaining the original game and have simply iterated on a lot of ideas so that what you see instead is a very polished game state.

Panel of Knobs

On a personal level… I am still enjoying the game and still playing on a nightly basis.  With the starting of my friend Grace I am quite honestly probably going to continue playing an awful lot as she finishes the story and starts doing the higher tier content.  I know this can be a freaking amazing game, and it is on so many levels.  However Bioware has left the mode of “how do we keep players” and needs to start being concerned about “how do we win back players”.  They had a month to prove that there was enough fun here to keep people from moving on to the Division 2 and as the tone of Reddit has drastically veered off from a positive love fest to joke memes about how bad the loot is…  the community has lost its patience.

To be honest… I get it.  Bugs like the latest one that has been discovered don’t help.  Folks have realized that if you create a new profile and NEVER equip a support item…  your damage is massively increased since apparently it doesn’t take that slot into the damage calculations and since there are no Masterwork or Legendary support items in the game…  you can’t get higher than 38 in that slot.  If you think back to the panel full of knobs analogy…  I get how that happens.  It doesn’t make it feel good though.  Nor did getting a vaunted legendary component.. only to quickly realize it was for the wrong damned class.  Thankfully in my case I have been playing my Interceptor quite a bit so it won’t actually go to waste, but it wasn’t the results I actually wanted.

 

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