Should Strongholds Be Much Longer?

Yes. The Strongholds are supposed to be endgame content but they're not any longer than Destiny's strikes (10 minutes max, typically). More of a mid-game activity. For another example, The Division has regular missions (about the same length) that you do on the highest difficulties for a similar mid-game activity. In Warframe, when you're geared to max a regular mission can take only a minute or over 10 minutes depending on mission type. Again, this is mid-game.

In Destiny, end-game is raids which typically take 20 minutes to an hour or more depending on your team's capabilities. In The Division, Incursions can be 20-40 minutes (though there are other end-game activities now that I haven't played much). In Warframe, the only real end-game is Eidolon or Orb hunts, which can be 10-30 minutes depending on your team.

If Anthem is going to have 10 minute (and let's be real, it'll be much shorter once people are more geared and learn better coordination) end-game activities it's not going to satisfy.

I'm sorry, what?

Strongholds are more akin to flashpoints from Star Wars TOR, lasting at most 30-40min.

Besides they can't be all that long or else you have the risk of alienate part of the player population who can't stay hours in a row online to finish it.

No, nuff said...

I know all we have access to is the Tyrant Mine at this point, but if it takes you 30-40 minutes to run that I'm not sure you're the type of person who most accurately represents an "end-game" player.

I thought Tyrant on normal was about perfect in length. Time it takes to do depended on group. I did a few that went thru it like a well oiled machine. Others got ugly and took longer but still enjoyable.

For me, the length of the Tyrant stronghold in the VIP demo should be longer if it is representative of the high-level end-game content we were promised. There should have been more objectives, and it should take 35-60 minutes (like a gold/plat round in ME3MP for normal players). If this is representative of a more medium-type group activity, then I think it was about right.

Unfortunately, it is. Strongholds and Legendary Contracts are all there's to do at launch, and likely for some time afterward.

IMO there should be both longer/more complex raids which span 30 minute~1 hour playtime and shorter/more robust missions that only require 10~15 minutes to complete. They just need to balance the loot drop rate so that the rewards players get are worth the time they invest in. For example for raids-like activities which normally demand ~1 hour to do there should be a 100% drop rate of legendary, masterwork or whatever the best gear would be at endgame. Players who can dedicate this amount of time and successfully complete it should be guaranteed to receive a reward of the most powerful equipment in game. Meanwhile the drop rate of these gears in shorter/more straightforward missions could be changed to, e.g. 10%~15%, so players who don't have large chunks of playtime (or just don't feel like doing an hour-long raid) should still be able to get their hands on the best loot if they do the shorter missions from time to time.



From what I got out of the the demo, Tyrant Mine is not long/complex enough to be considered the most challenging endgame activity, a.k.a raid...Even though it has multiple phases, the objectives of each phase are a bit...uninteresting and repetitive.(collect 8 fragments, then 12 more, then collect 6 more again and sit in a zone for 5 minutes... ) The final boss is just a bullet-sponge with 2~3 different moves. Its complexity and the need for communication/collaboration is more on the level of a mini-raid maybe? But to me it doesn't really matter the stronghold should be longer or shorter, as long as its reward is in proportion to the required time and effort. In the end I hope we would have a variety of endgame options to choose from, whether they are hour-long raids, mini-raids, revamped story missions, or hop-on-hop-off horde mode.And make sure the loot are equally rewarding in terms of player effort.



My biggest concern from playing the demo though, is the way how the difficulty level is done beyond Hard. I sure hope in the full game it won't be a mere cycle of looting better gear -> beating enemies with higher HP and damage -> looting better gear -> beating enemies with even higher HP and damage. Simply raising enemy stats(especially HP) to an absurd amount does not make the game harder, it only makes gameplay more annoying. At least for the highest difficulty rank(s), challenges should be introduced mainly by adding harder game mechanics, e.g. more enemy type/abilities, smarter AI, NPC status effect immunity, various damage or ability modifiers, limited revive, limits to number of retries after a team wipe, friendly fire...( ). Maybe others don't feel this way but I certainly won't be motivated to grind for loot if in the end it's just bosses with 100x longer HP bar.

If I recall, the embargo for that drops in around 4 hours...

What I liked about the Stronghold was that the first section wasn't trivial.
Wiped a few times on that one.

I don't want to see a huge difficulty spike on the final stage and lose the loot opportunity.