BioWare is planning to totally revamp Anthem’s loot system, and it sounds like it might be the fix that Anthem fans have been waiting for.
Too bad it’s about a year too late.
Anthem has been in redesign mode for the past six months or so with a skeleton crew of about 30 working to reboot BioWare’s failed looter shooter. Things have been mostly silent since February with more news getting out about BioWare’s plans for Dragon Age 4 than Anthem.
Until yesterday, when BioWare’s Christian Dailey answered a few questions on Twitter. One of those questions revealed that there’s a battle royale mode kicking around internally, although that’s “not the priority right now.”
What is a priority is redesigning Anthem’s loot system. Probably the most complained-about aspect of Anthem since day one, BioWare has plans to revamp all of Anthem’s loot to just be better in every way.
“A good player experience depends on the loot system being extensible and robust, and a lot can go wrong. A lot did go wrong,” wrote Dailey. “We fell short here and we realized that building something new from the ground up was going to be required – starting with taking a long look and understanding the best in class of the many great games that inspire us.”
Nothing is set in stone, but from what we’ve read, it sounds like Anthem is on the right track. Anthem’s new loot system will ensure that all loot is useful and viable, with all items getting a boost to their competitiveness. For items that eventually lose their usefulness, Anthem will ensure that less rare items will still have strategic value throughout character progression, which likely means there’s some way to reduce weapons to its component resources in order to rebuild them into something better.
Besides that, Anthem will include new ways to get loot. Rare enemies will be “walking treasure chests” that explode into a fountain of loot, Borderlands style. Players that want to pursue specific loot can forgo RNG and focus their efforts through quests, special vendors, or unique loot drop tables.
Anthem also plans to make loot more accessible. This means making equipment easier to understand and equip right away. The equipment sheet is being remade to let players quickly determine an item’s value, whether or not it’s better than what they have, and swap out items as necessary.
There’s no timeline on when any of these changes are to be made. Expect another blog update with more details to come first before we see them actually hit Anthem’s live servers.
Source: BioWare
