I logged into Anthem for the first time. The day passed since the new stronghold had been launched, which I performed as soon as I and then wandered away from the sport again. I signed on for one purpose: I noticed that there had been a store refresh, and there was an unwell set of Ranger armor there. I dropped a group of tough-earned coins on it; then, I saw a top-notch wrap and paint cloth. So I bought those as well.
Then I left once more.
That is one aspect that Anthem has gotten very, very right. While its gun designs are constrained and lackluster, Anthem is better at setting out splendid armor sets for its four javelin classes. No matter the game, adding little content, considering that the launch has introduced several badass armor loadouts. Combine that with Anthem’s intense paint and material customization gadget, and you could spend hours designing your Javelin to make it appear as specific and lovely as you want. Because armor is cosmetic, you don’t worry about your stats or abilities.
To me, that is a (rare) advantage that Anthem has over its competition. The Division is stuck in contemporary, so the coolest component it could do is how your appearance makes you dress up like a cop or come up with a scary mask. Destiny has had proper armor sets within the beyond, certain. However, the one’s days are basically in the back of it, plus it ties stats into armor so that you will often be forced to seem like a multitude that allows you to get the loadout you need. Borderlands doesn’t do armor at all. Anthem’s most effective video games similar in this regard are probably Lo and Wrame, which give deeper customization than either.
And yet it’s far squandering this opportunity by means of putting all this armor in the shop, and actually nowhere else in the game.
The trouble is in the middle of Anthem’s monetization model. The recreation promised that it might now not have any paid DLC, so it needed to make up-launch revenue in other ways in flip. While it also promised no loot bins, it has an outstanding store that consists of each armor set, alongside types of vinyl, decals, materials, emotes, and poses.
It’s no longer approximate; you are just being pressured to pay for cool armor because you may earn it in sight. With sufficient coins, you can buy complete sets of armor instead of spending $10 for them, thainsteadtofhey cost in any other. That’s really; it feels just as lame as it’d be if you had been shopping for it. And the longer Anthem is going, the extra sources of cash have seemed to dry up, mainly for the reason that weekly coin incomes are in part tied to your friends actively gambling Anthem at some stage in the week. And with ninety%+ of the player base having fled, this is a hard prospect at this level.
But even without loot packing containers, even with a course to shop for the armor without cost in the store, it still feels…wrong. I’ve previously stated that Destiny shouldn’t put (generally excel excellent-looking in its Eververse store, but that’s only a handful of sets over the route of a year; there are still hundreds of sets to find out of doors of that. Anthem’s device is each armor set being in its microtransaction store, and even if there may be a path to earn that stuff without spending a dime subsequently, it isn’t satisfying.
Armor must drop in the real international and be rewarded through demanding situations or quests. Sure, it may be rare or tough to get, given thatyou need one drop to permanently liberate it, and you’re now not chasing one-of-a-kind rolls as you will with tools that have stats, but it desires to be grindable and fand indable. Anthem sincerely has trouble with loot as-is. However, this could be partly alleviated by liberating armor units into the wild as new things to chase, even if they may be just beauty. The cosmetics are so suitable here that they would be worth pursuing. I should have spent a few hours an afternoon grinding for that newly released ranger set through some questline or in global drops. Instead, I…threw a few cash at it if I didn’t have the coins, a few greenbacks. Not fun.
Yes, taking armor out of the Anthem store could eliminate the most attractive element the game is selling properly now. And yet, I think EA and BioWare need to consider whether they’re more invested in bringing the entire game back from the brink by making it more profitable or if they’d rather squeeze a couple of bucks out of the 1% of the unswerving player base that also remains. They’ve already made that preference with no obvious plans to exchange armor availability.
