TL;DR:
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a massive rise in live-service games with huge AAA budgets that close after failing to find an audience. […] Some studios are finally learning that live service is not always a guaranteed cash cow, and in retrospect Anthem feels like an early symptom of the carnage we’re seeing now. […] Too often, as we’ve seen from the staggering number of layoffs already in 2024, it’s the ordinary people, the rank-and-file developers, who are paying the price. Anthem may have been a warning, but unfortunately, it seems to have gone unheeded.
I played the Anthem beta and quite a bit at launch. Really enjoyed the game play but stalled out at the final difficulty tier in endgame. A combination of low drop chances and bad itemization made the progression ridiculously punishing at that point. And having only 3 dungeons, and useless open world content made the loop even less enjoyable.
Anthem could have been a great game if it had a little more content, had worried less about player retention and provided borderlands style loot quantities, and had tuned the items better (having 1%-400% ranges was bullshit, and that variability across the 4 different modifiers per item, with some modifiers being useless, like +ammo pickup vs +damage for example, made most drops useless. And most drops being useless made the low drop rates brutally aggravating.)
Also FOMO shops are dumb as hell and I’m convinced they generate less money. If you offer something cool that I’d want to buy, but I was at work so I missed out, now you don’t get my purchase, and I’m resentful. Just sell shit like normal.