In an Anthem update released today, BioWare lead producer Ben Irving and head of live services Chad Robertson announced that a number of updates planned for the game, including its limited-time Cataclysm event, have been delayed.
“While we have delivered many of the Act 1 features on time, we are not going to hit all the goals on our Act 1 Calendar,” the two wrote.
“We set aside time for this work, but the reality is there are more things to fix and improve than we planned for. While this is the best thing to do for the game, it means some items from the calendar will be delayed.”
The list of delayed features includes:
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Mastery system
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Guilds
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Legendary Missions – Phase II
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Weekly stronghold challenge
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Leaderboards
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Some freeplay events
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Cataclysm
The leaderboards, guilds, and weekly stronghold challenges were some of the bigger updates planned for April intended to help build out the end-game. BioWare has been light on details about some of the other delayed content, like the Mastery system.
Cataclysms have been described as limited-time events that will bring new enemies and dramatic changes to the world’s terrain and climate. They were promoted in a video prior to the game’s release as Anthem’s “most challenging and ambitious content.”
“Cataclysms will obviously not be every day; they’re designed to be content that you engage with for weeks, and they would come out less frequently,” executive producer Mark Darrah told GamesRadar in an interview in February.
“They’re more meta-changing; they’re designed to be more seasonal.” In an interview with Variety, Darrah said Cataclysm missions would be somewhere between a Destiny raid, which can be several hours long, and a strike, which are much shorter.
Anthem has been light on content, especially in the end-game. Many players have been desperately waiting for the first Cataclysm event to hopefully introduce some traditional raid-like content into the game. Currently players have only had strongholds to focus on, half-hour missions whose difficulty is mostly a result of spongier enemies.
But while the game’s first Cataclysm has been delayed, BioWare hasn’t given any more specifics on what the new time frame is. “A lesson we have learned is we have been talking about things too early,” wrote Irving and Robertson. “Our goal is to tell you about new content and features once the work is closer to being done.”
Comments
22 responses to “BioWare Delays Anthem’s Big Cataclysm Event”
LOL!!!! What a trainwreck. I really hope EA and BioWare are taking stock. Won’t hold my breath though.
I am all for delaying things if they arent ready, but when virtually every single roadmap point is delayed that is simply laughable.
This patch and live stream (and communication in general) really needed to hit it out of the park, and on every single point, they basically tripped over their own shoe laces. There wasnt a single ‘selling point’ from the patch or stream.
I never see this game in stores or advertised/ promoted in anyway anymore. Do the publishers believe it is irredeemable? I seem to remember people had complaints about Destiny 2 at launch, however you log into that game now and it is rad, and I see more adds for Destiny 2 Forsaken that I ever see for Anthem.
Not sure, I got Destiny 2 with Humble Monthly bundle (first Destiny i’ve played) and I don’t see the fun beyond the first few days of playing. There’s little to no content in the base game and if they can’t impress me with that then why would I fork out for more content?
Glad I stayed away from Anthem, i’ve normally been a ‘buy without question’ for bioware games and although I kind of enjoyed Andromeda, it had enough issues to be a big warning sign for future games from them.
Bloody frustrating too cause I so want Bioware to succeed but EA just won’t let them!!!
There is a pretty solid amount of content in base destiny 2. more than most shooter games tbh, plus the replayability is higher than them.
destiny/bungie can be a bit scummy with how much DLC they charge for on top of MTX, but i really never have gotten all the massive complaints on content amount for base D2 when you get more for your money than tons of games (especially when you got it for $12).
Then theres the cheating way of having multiple different character classes you can play which artificially gives it even more time.
Did you do every strike? did you play nightfall strikes? did you do the raid? did you do the side missions (actually some interesting ones)? Did you find and do the different exotic weapon quests? did you give each character type at least a try? Did you try crucible PvP (though admittedly this can be a clusterf*ck of massive proportions with P2P connection and bad matchmaking). You could even hop on now and they have a spring event going which is in a modified section of one of the DLCs (but pretty sure you could play without it).
They’re not handling this well…
The roadmap was not carefully planned at all.
They’re not even contrite about any of it. The delays to content, the abysmal drop rates that are compounded by the useless inscriptions (have shitty drops or shit drop rates, but not both, for fuck’s sake!), the bugs that persist even after patch notes say they’re fixed, the lack of promised content drops, the fact that scaling has completely fucked all sense of endgame progress, rendering all scores/points/stats effectively meaningless… They’re not apologetic, because they don’t think it’s their fault or within their control.
There’s obviously deep, underlying flaws in their systems that they refuse to admit to, made worse by the fact that they can’t agree internally what the endgame should even look like, which means they can’t communicate meaningfully about possible solutions because they don’t even know what those solutions are.
All that’s happening now is the folks in charge of what should be ‘communication’ are petulantly holding their breath over the fact that players have intuited these realities that Bioware don’t want to acknowledge, and they’re annoyed that everyone isn’t playing along and letting them get away with not acknowledging it.
It’s a baffling attitude that’s doing them more harm than good.
Hehehe kind like Australian politics.
What are we asking for here?
Do we want the staff working longer hours to make sure the patch is released on time?
Will be then also show our outrage when an investigative article reveals staff crunched to release the patch on time?
But then, I care little for the plight of live service games.
Ideally? Competence. But in the (apparent) absence of that?
Honest transparency.
Truly honest. Truly transparent.
Not the half-assed fake-transparency/fake-honesty that involves only being up-front about things which are flattering, then clamming up about anything controversial, unwilling (or unable) to justify their position.
Ask a question about the most pressing topics in the community’s mind, and you will get silence. There’s clearly subjects they are either unwilling or not allowed to discuss, and they just happen to be the subjects that are most pressing for the health of the game, the most pressing in the eyes of the community.
They’re afraid of saying things that will disappoint or upset people, such as, “Never going to happen, had to scrap it, don’t like/agree with what you want, and here’s why.”
They’re afraid of saying that they have no idea how to fix it, because the systems are tangled and Frostbite’s a bitch and they can’t go down through the strata to fix the underlying problem because there’s a thousand layers of dependent shit stacked directly on top of it and it’ll take 2 years to redo the lot.
They’re afraid of saying they’re internally divided into a few different camps, and here are the pros/cons for each; especially if something so transparent means revealing that prevailing attitudes are based on personalities championing them instead of actual pros/cons.
They’re afraid of saying that they’re spending this week working on what they spent last week working on, which they just happen to have also spent the week before working on, because god damn it’s a stubborn bug that will not shift and we get that this looks like ‘no progress’.
They’re afraid to reveal too much about the machines behind the curtain that might let people see past the smoke and mirrors. Whether for exploits, or for security, or because it might just reveal how fragile the whole fucking thing is, or how what they’re doing is subtle psychological manipulation that stops working when you know what’s being done.
They’re afraid to admit that the theorycrafters are correct and that the way scaling works means that the numbers mean literally nothing, but they did this with the best intentions of having you play with your friends at different stages of progress.
They’re afraid (or too proud) to admit EARLY when it looks like they might not make a deadline; either because they’re afraid of the naysaying or backlash that they might possibly be able to avoid if they just crunch a little harder, just a little harder, and pull off a last-second win that would mean early admission of failure was untrue after all and they opened themselves up to criticism when they didn’t have to.
They’re afraid to say things that make them look foolish, conflicted, disorganized, pig-headed, or incompetent… but it’s a stupid fear, because in their desperate avoidance, that’s how they end up looking anyway.
True transparency does not require crunch. If anything, it reduces the need for it.
It just requires being honest and – crucially – a little humble.
(So clearly they can’t/won’t fucking do it.)
I’d be content with the game if it didn’t f%&^*g hang, dx error, ctd & bsod randomly about every half hour! Hasn’t been fixed since the f%&^*g alpha!
I feel pretty stupid for defending this piece of shit early on, at a time when I thought the gaming industry could not possible get any worse. I was wrong.
Don’t feel stupid, it’s not you it’s them.
What a complete fuster cluck. Vote with your money people.
I agree we should all get a refund on the free updates. The delays are totally inexcusable. Shame BioWare, shame!
Obviously he meant because the game as a whole costs money and was a clusterfuck. these updates are barely bringing it up to a properly functional and as advertised game that it should have been.
I see a lot of these sorts of comments from people who don’t own the game. I’ve finished the story in Anthem, hit the level cap, and started running content at grandmaster 1 difficulty. The amount of content at endgame is thin but the core gameplay is fun. No complaints about loot although it is a struggle getting gm2/3 difficulty ready.
Delayed updates aren’t the end of the world.
It launched with less content than Destiny games, thats how you know you fucked up.
Core gameplay was definitely alright (though simultaneously kinda annoying imo, just doesnt feel as smooth as it should), but arguably worse than division on its TPS feeling and definitely worse than Destiny with its probably industry leading FPS gunplay. Anthem only wins some back with cool flying which does not make enough of a change for combat (except for as a storm javelin.)
Delayed updates for this game absolutely might be the end of the world, its already going worse than destiny or the division did on release, whether your metric be content amount, reception or sales. Plus coming off the back of all the other shit EA and Bioware have released/done its in an even worse position than either of those other games.
That’s arguable. I mean it has 2 fewer dungeons than Destiny 1 or 2 at launch, although there are zero raids. Anthem with the longer story campaign and larger map.
Did we forget about “if you can see it, you can go there” already? Industry leading gunplay, yet the loot cave was a thing for how long?
Anyway now I have to try out this latest update.
>it has 2 fewer dungeons than Destiny 1 or 2 at launch and zero raids
2 fewer dungeons and no raid is a decent bit of the best content for these types of games. and where the best replayability comes from.
>longer story campaign
Than D1, definitely. But D2 i’d say its close, D2 has tons of missions and ‘adventures’ that aren’t part of the main story but are good little side stories and continuations of each planets ‘story’ and all together adds up to anthems story content.
>larger map
Bigger single map sure, but destiny had like 4 planets each with a decent size map, D2 even more so.
>Did we forget about “if you can see it, you can go there” already?
Honestly it feels a bit the same with anthems flying what with the pretty low ceiling, the cooldown and just generally being a massive target while flying so it sucks ass for combat, in the end its still a cool addition but still worse than hoped. But yes at least it was not in any way falsely advertised about flying details.
>Industry leading gunplay, yet the loot cave was a thing for how long?
What does a screwed up loot spawn spot have to do with gunplay?
All this said, i actually hope bioware can pull a “Taken king” (awesome DLC with massive improvements, if not understanding the reference) out of there ass to save anthem like bungie did for Destiny 1, because even though im being harsh on it i really want it to be better.
Just that the loot cave shouldn’t have been a thing if people were content with the available dungeons and top notch gunplay.
Have you seen the comparison of the EDZ to Anthem’s map? I doubt it’s 100% spot on but it’s quite the difference in size.
I had low hopes for Anthem based on articles and Reddit posts. Bought it for half price and figured if it’s crap then at least I didn’t pay full price. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I hope they can follow through on the roadmap content even if it means delays.
>Just that the loot cave shouldn’t have been a thing if people were content with the available dungeons and top notch gunplay.
There are always people that will take the easier method in games. just like when rare loot in some mission of anthem accidentally went way higher than they were supposed to and people farmed it. Its nothing to do with the quality of the gameplay, its lazy people wanting all the good stuff ASAP.
>Have you seen the comparison of the EDZ to Anthem’s map? I doubt it’s 100% spot on but it’s quite the difference in size.
I can only find the early one that includes only like half the EDZ, plus that ignores the fact that destiny 2 has 3 other planets.
Still anthems is a little bigger overall (which really with flying it has to be or it would be fucked). I guess thats a balance between variety and size on that one (anthem one bigger map, destiny 2 with 4 smaller but very different maps.
>I had low hopes for Anthem based on articles and Reddit posts. Bought it for half price and figured if it’s crap then at least I didn’t pay full price. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I hope they can follow through on the roadmap content even if it means delays.
I figure ill buy it some time soon if i see a real good sale because while it certainly seems to be a disappointment, it also seems to have enough to be worth a play at a discount while hoping it gets improved to come back to later. I did play a decent amount of the beta and on the EA acces type thing (i got a month for free, sadly anthem came out in the last week of it lol), and i decided it was not worht full price, but definitely a shot later on.
Hope you have fun with it, and i hope the updates keep coming
40$ on Amazon for PC and Xbox, or $30 for the PS4 version.