I logged into Anthem for the primary time the day passed since the new stronghold turned into launched, which I right away performed as soon as and then wandered away from the sport once more. 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 there was also a top-notch wrap and paint cloth too. So I bought those as well.
Then I left once more.
Aesthetically, that is one aspect that Anthem has gotten very, very right. While its gun designs are really constrained and lackluster, Anthem is better at setting out really splendid armor sets for its four javelin classes. No matter the game adding little content considering that launch has introduced several really badass armor loadouts. Combine that with Anthem’s intense paint and material customization gadget, and you could spend hours designing your Javelin to appearance 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 with how your appearance makes you dress up like a cop or come up with a scary masks. Destiny has had proper armor sets within the beyond, certain, however the ones 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 Are similar to in this regard are probably Diablo and Warframe, and it gives deeper customization than either of these.
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 middle to 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. And while it also promised no loot bins, that means it has a outstanding store that consists of each armor set, alongside types of vinyl, decals, materials, emotes and poses.
It’s no longer even approximately being pressured to pay for cool armor, due to the fact you may truly earn it in-sport. With sufficient coins, you can buy complete sets of armor in preference to spending $10 for them, that’s about what they cost in any other case, but 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 obviously 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 just feels…wrong. I’ve previously stated that Destiny shouldn’t put (generally excellent looking) armor in its Eververse store, but that’s only a handful of sets over the route of a yr, and there are still hundreds of sets to find out of doors of that. Anthem’s device is each armor set being inner 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 needs to drop in the real international and be rewarded thru demanding situations or quests. It may be rare or tough to get, sure, given which you handiest need one drop to permanently liberate it, and you’re now not chasing one-of-a-kind rolls like you will with tools that has stats, but it desires to be grindable, findable. Anthem sincerely has a trouble with loot as-is, however this could at the least be partly alleviated by way of 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 chasing. Like, 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 maximum attractive element the game is selling properly now. And yet I think EA and BioWare need to consider whether they’re greater interested in bringing the entire game back from the brink via making it greater fun and profitable, or if they’d rather squeeze a couple of bucks out of the 1% of the unswerving player base that also remains. With no obvious plans to exchange armor availability, it seems like they’ve already made that preference.
