Anthem is a shared-world third-person shooter from BioWare. BioWare is the studio behind famous franchises like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. The title launched on February 22, but if you're on PC and an Origin Access Premier subscriber, you gained access to the full game last Friday. Just like Destiny, the developer wants to support the game for the next ten years.
Anthem has been criticized for its loot drops and how often players find useless items. Perks — or "Inscriptions" — are not useful to the item they're attached to and "Masterwork" drops are very rare. This has to change in order to make collecting loot fun. Luckily, BioWare was aware of this issue and a fix should be rolling out today or tomorrow. It tweaks how certain items and Masterworks drop. You can read about the major changes below.
- Inscriptions are now better for the items they are on, this applies to new items earned in Anthem and not existing ones.
- If an Inscription applies only to the item it is on, it will be useful to that item. Otherwise the Inscription will provide a Javelin-wide benefit. For example, an Assault Rifle will not have an item specific or pistol damage Inscription. It may have an electric damage suit-wide Inscription.
- Removed uncommon and common items from Level 30 drops.
- Reduced the crafting materials needed to craft a Masterwork from 25 Masterwork Embers to 15 Masterwork Embers.
- Each item type now has a specific set of Inscription options for each of their inscription pools. The pools are smaller and are targeted to the specific item type to yield better weapons.
- Primary Inscriptions are focused on damage or survivability.
- Any item-specific Inscriptions will now always benefit the item they are on.
- Javelin-wide Inscriptions will benefit damage or survivability across the whole Javelin.
- Secondary inscriptions focus on utility and can be targeted to the item or the entire Javelin.
While the list may be a little technical, what is means is that weapons shouldn't be useless from now on. We'll have to wait and see until the patch rolls out to fully test out all the changes, but this is a promising start.
Hopefully the chance of getting "Legendary" items will go up soon too. The loot system is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game right now.
A new franchise to play with
Anthem is an entirely new franchise for EA, with new game mechanics and new mythos to explore. Its third-person format with emphasis on flying exosuits is something new and exciting. Let's hope it can live up to the hype.
