Today’s Anthem update has removed special Elysian chests from the game just over a month after they were added. This comes on the heels of several delayed updates, leaving the game’s remaining players bewildered and frustrated.
Anthem’s 1.1.1 patch went live earlier today and fixed a handful of small bugs, including one which was causing the wrong equipment stats to be displayed. The patch notes also included a note encouraging players to use up their remaining Elysian keys before they vanished from the game completely.
“A reminder that Elysian Caches will be going away on May 7th, so if you have any keys left be sure to use them today!” it read.
Elysian Caches were special loot chests that appeared at the end of Stronghold missions and had unique cosmetics like decals and fabric textures inside. They were originally added to the game in a March 26 update, the game’s first major new piece of content since its February release.
The cosmetics inside the chests weren’t fantastic, but they did give players an additional reason to keep running through the same old content over and over again.
“I know they weren’t very rewarding but Elysian Caches were literally the only thing that kept me in the game. Log on. Do a daily. Get a key. Heart of Rage. Log Out. Easy enjoyable experience,” wrote one player on the game’s subreddit. “Not rewarding mind you. But I still had fun. Hell, sometimes I would run TWO strongholds in the same night.”
In the comments section of Reddit, BioWare global community manager Jesse Anderson responded that the Elysian Caches were never meant to last. “They’ve always been planned as a temporary thing since there was a timer under the challenges,” he wrote.
“There is a chance that they’ll come back again at some point.”
A post on EA’s website about the chests does indeed allude to them being temporary. “You’ll have to move fast, though, because Anthem’s world is always changing, and the Elysian Chests won’t be around forever,” it reads.
But that hasn’t made the game’s remaining players feel any better about their removal given Anthem’s overall lack of content.
It’s especially discouraging in light of the several updates that were originally scheduled for April but never arrived. There were 14 new additions to the game planned for April in BioWare’s original 90-day calendar, but only the new Sunken Cell Stronghold mission made it, with things like guilds and a new mastery-progression system falling to the wayside.
A fortnight ago, BioWare announced that the big Cataclysm event planned for May was being indefinitely delayed as well.
In the meantime, the game’s popularity on Twitch has plummeted, and some of its players have taken to the subreddit to announce they’re taking a break. Last week, Chad Robertson, the game’s head of live service, took to Twitter to try and reassure fans that Anthem wasn’t dead.
“We remain 100% committed to Anthem and look forward to showing players the new content we are working on,” he wrote. “We want to make sure we aren’t overpromising, so our updates on what’s coming in the game will be focused when we have things near completion.” Unfortunately, the removal of some of the game’s only new content since release isn’t the type of update many were hoping for.
Comments
12 responses to “Anthem’s Latest Update Removes Special Loot Chests”
And the sh*tshow continues.
Removing the one thing people were still logging in to do without adding something else to keep them around seems like an odd move.
The game might not be dead but pulling the life support was prob not the best idea.
The logic of cutting cotent at this stage for artificial scarcity seems absolutely bonkers.
*pinches bridge of nose*
So… when it comes to implementing improvements, delays are acceptable, but when it comes to taking things away… full steam ahead?
At a time when the biggest concern from the player-base is a lack of content and unsatisfying loot, they decide it is appropriate to remove content and loot (including fixing an exploit which allowed extra loot), without a replacement.
And as a bonus, their bugfix then introduced a new bug that stops legitimate sources of loot from dropping as well. This patch introduced negative content and double negative loot, at a time when the player-base is crying out for content and loot.
Golf claps all around. Way to read the room, Bioware.
I have a rule that any new online game will be near dead in 3 months due to lack of content to keep players interested before the Next game comes out (or return to their favourite like WoW, Fortnite, CoD)… the game release with a below average serving of content and we already saw players leaving after one month (especially when bpth Apex and Division came out weeks layer) but to see even hardcore fans call it quits after just hitting the 3 month mark with content delayed and this being pulled… No matter how many times the “live” guy says its not dead, its fatally wounded without drastic surgery.
Serious Prismatic Facet vibes here with the (what sounds like) “retroactive “Oh, they were always intended to be temporary” statement. Bioware, seriously,
letencourage your devs and planners look at other games to learn from. Destiny did this last year and copped a huge amount of flack for it.Sounds retroactive… cause it bugged out and needed to be hotfixed.
When the timer hit Zero it did so an hour after the daily reset and the keys and chests were still active. Its the rush to hotfix that while they still have bugs from the last patch still haunting players is hilariously out of touch.
The problem is the higher-ups actively demanded that people do not compare the game to destiny or others.
What an absolute fucking disgrace. I don’t have the vernacular to express my frustration with this game and this industry in general so I’m just gonna make up my own word…..BLABERFUNKT!!!!
How the hell long does it take to increase the loot drop rate? As someone who knows nothing about coding, middle-ware or game design, it seems like it should be just updating a field in a spreadsheet. Whatever they’re planning to do to fix this game, they need to start at least talking about it, because even if it’s not dead people are grabbing shovels.
Oh no they removed the temporarily available aesthetic items that are probably gonna be replaced by a new set of items.
This game is basically dead now.
Updates have been delayed and basically slowed to a crawl.
The player base has plummeted
And most of the dev team has left to go make Dragon Age.
The game is basically in caretaker mode now.
Glad i never bought the game. Division 2 has been well worth every dollar i spent on it.