Anthem Players are Tired and Without Loot
Controversy after controversy, bug after bug, Anthem plays like a cursed open world for many players, and they’re no longer having it. The online shooter is currently under boycott as a result of the recent decisions to roll back loot drops. Frustration peaked in the form of a recent, lengthy Reddit thread that exposits all the issues with the game and communication thus far. It starts with expectation vs. reality.
Reddit user Harishcs covers, point by point, just about every stumbling block in Anthem. He highlights the false promises in the game’s marketing, the overcorrection of bugs (while many bugs still linger), and a general lack of communication on the part of BioWare. It really is a beast of a thread and sits at 4,733 votes at the time of this writing, which is to say a lot of people agree with him. He refers to himself and the Anthem community as a bunch of test dummies, where some players work hard to report the best feedback before they’re met with silence.
The silver lining is that BioWare wasn’t silent about this thread. Community manager Jesse Anderson responded with an open letter to the Anthem community. In it, he answers as many questions, prompted in the thread, as possible.
“First, I want to thank you for writing this up. I appreciate the honesty of how you (and others) feel about the current state of things. I also want to say that I can’t talk about everything, simply because it is not my area of expertise, or because I don’t have the information you’re looking for. I stand by our statement of being transparent though and will continue to do so here and on other channels.”
Harishcs also covered the topic of game devs and their past interactions with the fanbase. BioWare devs used to be active on social media channels and forums, but there’s a reason for their post-launch absence, as Anderson explains:
“To start, things used to be a lot friendlier here for dev team members who normally don’t talk on social channels or forums. They could answer questions, give information and know that they aren’t going to have people getting upset at them. Why would a dev team member take time away from working on the next update to post when they know it’s likely to be met with hostile replies, or they get flamed because can’t answer other questions that players are asking? I don’t mind posting here when things aren’t so nice, but that’s because it’s my job. For the devs it isn’t their job, and I’d like to ask that people remember that when replying to them. When some people say “be nice or the devs will stop posting” it’s 100% true. Be respectful and constructive with your feedback and more team members will likely reply.”
Ultimately, BioWare and EA can’t respond to every piece of feedback because it’s just not practical, especially when the team is already aware of the issues. When smaller issues get rectified first, it’s because the dev team can deal with them quickly.
“All I’ll say on this is that Anthem is here to stay,” Anderson concluded. “Do we have a lot of work to do to fix parts of the game? Yes, and the team is committed to making improvements and releasing new content.”
With so much said, what are your thoughts on the community manager’s letter? What about the state of the game? Comment down below.