Anthem NEXT has been cancelled

[[McD] James]

I hate being the bearer of bad news. I'm sure a lot of you were looking forward to the reboot of the critically acclaimed Anthem. 

 

https://blog.bioware.com/2021/02/24/anthem-update/

[snapshot]

Poor man's Destiny

[Chezza]

Not my kind of game but it's a shame for some fans who purchased the game and stuck with it being eager for the next big update.

 

I got burned with;

Postal 3

Aliens Colonial Marines

 

No mans sky gets a pass.

[Murdoch]

To the shock and surprise of absolutely nobody.

[Biodegradable]

The "Live services" model is a death sentence for games and Anthem's rotting, neglected corpse is proof.

[Devalaous]

It had EA behind it, of course the vultures were looking for a fresh video game corpse. Thats two of Bioware's games in a row killed early, if the ME trilogy is remotely not perfect, they are dead too.

[NoXion]

Why the fuck would they even try rebooting a game that has done so poorly? How the fuck does that make any business sense whatsoever?

[seed]

8 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

The "Live services" model is a death sentence for games and Anthem's rotting, neglected corpse is proof.

 

Precisely.

 

"Game-as-service" is a scam and it should be illegal. You're basically investing into games that the developers can drop entirely any moment, rendering them little more than "digital trash". Besides yeah, I don't think anyone cares much for Anthem around here.

[lazygecko]

On 2/25/2021 at 6:26 AM, Biodegradable said:

The "Live services" model is a death sentence for games and Anthem's rotting, neglected corpse is proof.

 

It's funny to think how quickly the mindset turned and just a short while ago it was viewed as the surest bet there is for all those big budget flagship projects. Square-Enix probably thought they had a golden goose by doing it with the Avengers IP and that failed spectacularly as well.

 

The critical thing that probably completely flies over the head of the corporate suits responsible for these decisions is that the psychology of consumer purchasing habits in a GaaS market are very, very different from a traditional games as products market. At this point in time people are already going to be deeply entrenched in whatever comfort food they already have, and as these games are designed by their very nature to demand all of your time and attention at the expense of other games, convincing someone to jump ship is going to be a really tough sell.

[Biodegradable]

4 minutes ago, lazygecko said:

It's funny to think how quickly the mindset turned and just a short while ago it was viewed as the surest bet there is for all those big budget flagship projects. Square-Enix probably thought they had a golden goose by doing it with the Avengers IP and that failed spectacularly as well.

 

I feel like it's a misshapen consequence of them having always forcing games out before they're properly finished and fixing them later with Day One patches and other assorted bullshit and essentially tricking people into buying broken games for what feels like a little over a decade now. The live service scheme feels like they went a step further by coming up with the idea of doing it to a game in a perpetual state. Fortunately, it's blown up in their stupid faces.

[seed]

2 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

The live service scheme feels like they went a step further by coming up with the idea of doing it to a game in a perpetual state. Fortunately, it's blown up in their stupid faces.

 

And with multiplayer-only titles, again, it's nothing but a scam. Same for online-only functionality in itself, which has made it even into singleplayer games more recently too.

 

When the developers shut down the servers for these games, they'll quite literally be rendered into nothing more than digital garbage. You may not have technically lost all your access to the game, but that ain't gonna help your cause because the game is just unplayable and unusable now.

 

Modders sometimes save a few formerly online games, if at all possible, but this will never become common. Once the plug is pulled, they'll be gone in most cases. So cool beans, you've wasted both your money and time for absolutely nothing.

[Silhouette 03]

A tribute to Anthem by Silhouette

"Sometimes dead is better....."

 

We come here to mourn... and to celebrate( but mostly celebrate) the unremarkable life of a project that somehow lasted this long, despite middling reviews and player opinions on the game. Born a mediocre project out of a run of the mill concept and idea, lived a middling and mediocre life and died a mediocre death by the hands of it's developers, who came to the realization that they weren't going to be able to milk more cash out of this neglected, decaying, cow. May we all hold virtual hands and say a few words of grace about the deceased. Or just repeat after me....

 

… Meh, it's okay....

 

Amen..... 

[seed]

47 minutes ago, Silhou3tte said:

A tribute to Anthem by Silhouette

 

I rate this 10/10.

[Rudolph]

On 2/25/2021 at 3:13 AM, NoXion said:

Why the fuck would they even try rebooting a game that has done so poorly? How the fuck does that make any business sense whatsoever?

Well, it seems to have worked with Destiny 2 and No Man's Sky, no?

[Doom_Dude]

19 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Well, it seems to have worked with Destiny 2 and No Man's Sky, no?

 

No Man's Sky isn't a reboot of anything. It had a spotty release but they fixed all the initial issues and went above and beyond with all the free updates.

[snapshot]

4 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

I feel like it's a misshapen consequence of them having always forcing games out before they're properly finished and fixing them later with Day One patches and other assorted bullshit and essentially tricking people into buying broken games for what feels like a little over a decade now. The live service scheme feels like they went a step further by coming up with the idea of doing it to a game in a perpetual state. Fortunately, it's blown up in their stupid faces.

Can developers not put one last update to make the game playable offline (if it doesn't already have offline mode) or use dedicated servers whenever they're done with it? also plenty of games using the GaaS model that have largely proven to be successful. PUBG, GTA Online, Warframe, Division 1, 2, Overwatch, ESO, Final Fantasy 14, TF2, R6 Siege, BF1, Diablo 3, Destiny 2, CSGO....etc

[seed]

15 minutes ago, sluggard said:

Can developers not put one last update to make the game playable offline (if it doesn't already have offline mode) or use dedicated servers whenever they're done with it? also plenty of games using the GaaS model that have largely proven to be successful. PUBG, GTA Online, Warframe, Division 1, 2, Overwatch, ESO, Final Fantasy 14, TF2, R6 Siege, BF1, Diablo 3, Destiny 2, CSGO....etc

 

They could, yes.

 

But let's be serious and realistic now - how many of these games will seriously see such an update? None of them, once the developers drop them they'll probably just die an instant death. Some of them do have an offline mode though - you'd still be able to play CS:GO with bots for instance. Not great and optimal, but at least it would still work, just not the official servers, as opposed to some games that require connecting to a server to even start. Online-only functionality is death.

 

As a basic example, think of NFS 2015 here, a game that has both an online and a singleplayer experience. Support for that game ended years ago and last year Ghost Games was shut down and much of its staff was relocated to Criterion. When EA decides to pull the plug on the servers for that game, it'll die, and most likely stay that way. I doubt it'll be brought back in some capacity by modders, like they did with NFS World.

 

27 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

No Man's Sky isn't a reboot of anything. It had a spotty release but they fixed all the initial issues and went above and beyond with all the free updates.

 

Make that a disaster but otherwise this is true.

 

For all that shit, the developers eventually put their big boi pants on and really updated the shit of that game, to the point it's now a worthwhile experience. Now if only more developers would do that...

[Rudolph]

31 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

 

No Man's Sky isn't a reboot of anything. It had a spotty release but they fixed all the initial issues and went above and beyond with all the free updates.

Wait, so by "reboot", you did not mean just an overhaul and Anthem NEXT was supposed to be a completely different game?

[Devalaous]

5 hours ago, lazygecko said:

Square-Enix probably thought they had a golden goose by doing it with the Avengers IP and that failed spectacularly as well.

 

Square is now going to attempt another one milking FF7 on mobile, so they didn't learn.

[mrthejoshmon]

On 2/25/2021 at 2:46 AM, [McD]James said:

I hate being the bearer of bad news.

No.

 

This is good.

 

Anthem will stand as the kick in the arse that game companies need, they need to be shown just releasing some barebones foundation for full retail with promises of fixing later will and should backfire, so be it that it was unfortunately Bioware that took the brunt (hopefully, Dragon Age 4 will now steer clear away from these practices).

 

Anthem should stand as a case study on failure, poor management and the pitiful state of "live service" "buy now we fix later" full retail games that should be early access at best and Alphas at worst. It was a failure from the start, should have spent more time in the oven and should have been an actual game before it launched, not a doomed vaporware demo.

[Silhouette 03]

1 minute ago, mrthejoshmon said:

No.

 

This is good.

 

Anthem will stand as the kick in the arse that game companies need, they need to be shown just releasing some barebones foundation for full retail with promises of fixing later will and should backfire, so be it that it was unfortunately Bioware that took the brunt.

 

Anthem should stand as a case study on failure, poor management and the pitiful state of "live service" "buy now we fix later" full retail games that should be early access at best and Alphas at worst. It was a failure from the start, should have spent more time in the oven and should have been an actual game before it launched, not a doomed vaporware demo.

I'm fairly sure that [McD]James was being sarcastic.

[mrthejoshmon]

Just now, Silhou3tte said:

I'm fairly sure that [McD]James was being sarcastic.

Yes, it was obvious, I just wanted to complain about Anthem because I actually got invested into it like an actual idiot.

[Mr. Freeze]

Oh no!

Anyway,

[Devalaous]

20 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

hopefully, Dragon Age 4 will now steer clear away from these practices

 

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/news/news-33273-dragon-age-4-has-reportedly-cancelled-previously-planned-multiplayer-features.html

[Doom_Dude]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

Wait, so by "reboot", you did not mean just an overhaul and Anthem NEXT was supposed to be a completely different game?

 

I don't know much about Anthem Next, but from the OP and what others have posted in this thread, Next was to be a reboot of the first game. So I was just pointing out that No Man's Sky isn't a reboot.

[seed]

30 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

I don't know much about Anthem Next, but from the OP and what others have posted in this thread, Next was to be a reboot of the first game. So I was just pointing out that No Man's Sky isn't a reboot.

 

In context of Anthem, reading the article implies Next was going to be a major update for the game. "Reboot", as it is usually used, refers to a separate but related product.

 

Either way, at this point this is debating semantics lol.

[Rudolph]

So I guess I was correct to point out that a lackluster title can be salvaged through a massive overhaul; both Destiny 2 and No Man's Sky pulled it off.

 

It is just that in Anthem's case, Electronic Arts decided to pull the plug instead. Shame.

[[McD] James]

2 hours ago, Devalaous said:

 

Square is now going to attempt another one milking FF7 on mobile, so they didn't learn.

 

The timed exclusivity for them is one year, so we'll almost certainly see them on other platforms. 

[seed]

59 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

So I guess I was correct to point out that a lackluster title can be salvaged through a massive overhaul; both Destiny 2 and No Man's Sky pulled it off.

 

It is just that in Anthem's case, Electronic Arts decided to pull the plug instead. Shame.

 

You could say that, if the concept was good enough in the first place and the game was not a hopelessly broken mess from day-1, yep, it's definitely doable.

 

In the case of NMS, its main issue was just how barebones and half-baked it was at launch, as opposed to being broken to the core no patch could ever fix it.

 

An example of that would be Aliens Colonial Marines, which even after some 9GBs of patches, was still not a worthwhile experience - bad story, abysmal AI, buggy multiplayer, dated graphics, way too much killing of synthetics instead of Xenos, mediocre gunplay, and the list goes on. That stuff was just bad, simply put. You can't polish a turd.

[silentzorah]

And nothing of value was lost.