So, dear ME3MPers, anyone played that ANTHEM demo and wanna report ?

Kwallity Biovar Produx

Yeah - count me in on the like-some-impressions bit. I've not been too interested so far but the hype had me wondering whether to try it. ME3MP is my favourite MP ever just about so y'all know what I like.

Don't flog me as a filthy sinner, but I actually posted outside ME3MP forums for I think might be the first time ever? Here is my copy pasta.

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Having played on both console and PC, I really fail to fathom why the PC is about 10x harder to control during flight. It's like you suddenly engage F16 flight simulator mode and need to carefully manage any movement or you get stuck on these awful trajectories that are hard to correct.

My reality after ~2hours playtime (mostly playing Storm Jav);
My biggest gripe is playing a power class and having two active skills, sure the super is cool for nuking a whole spawn but it doesn't feel like enough flavour in combat to afford trimming active skills to two. If you fight an enemy that is resistant to one of your powers, you're down to one. I played with a few other power Jav's but didn't see any compelling combo action happening either. Most mobs were dead before combos could take place outside of elites.

I can see the appeal to a wide audience, it's certainly got flashy effects, filled with explosions and the initial cool I can fly like iron man feelings, but I can see myself hitting end game, grinding gear for 20-30 hours and getting bored. For reference this is exactly what happened for me with Destiny 1&2, The Division and Warframe. (ME3 must be ~500h and counting) 

Really don't like abilities and higher rank abilities being loot pick ups. There is fun to be had, it looks like there will be more ability customisation than Destiny, but I fear it will fall into all the same traps, this game will be made or broken by the quality of end game activities.

Story wise the characters are well animated and voice acted, however the content of discussion and the way the story is presented leaves it far from compelling, but hey lets not get caught up here, it's a loot shooter not a story based RPG, so it might be unfair to expect too much here.

No text chat on PC? This pretty weak for an online loot shooter, it will certainly detract from feeling like you are part of a community, I personally avoid voice chat ESPECIALLY in games where you're playing with randoms for 15 minute sessions.

Will not be getting this at release, pending feedback around quality of end game content.

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In addition to this for the ME3 forums (because I know you guys aren't scrubs) I played on Hard and did not find it hard despite doing content I was under geared for. It feels like balance of Destiny and Warframe in terms of combat pace, a game I enjoyed until I hit end game and found the depth and skill ceiling very lacking. Anthem's loot system is easily compared to Destiny2, I really don't like that your abilities are loot drops to get upgrades.

Going down in a fight is just boring, you're stuck on the spot waiting for someone to come revive you, there is no timer, no spectator mode. Playing on hard most shit died before I could even setup a combo, what primes and detonates was still confusing and it seems my team had no clue.

It's a loot shooter with a de-emphasised story told via Fort Tarsis. The dialogue during missions is easily tuned out when it boils down to kill shit, got to next objective marker. It's clear the script writing is miles ahead of ME:A that still doesn't mean it's good

When you have studio that has put out a bunch of stellar RPG's when ME and DA have landed on the mark, it's odd they've put soo much resource into a Destiny meets Warframe hybrid.

TLDR; It's not as good as ME3MP (are you surprised), Bioware simply cannot make lightning strike twice. If you enjoy Destiny or Warframe you'll have some fun here, your mileage my vary.

Everytime I looked at Anthem I thought "this looks like a poor man's Warframe" (which is ironic because you can start Warframe for free and Anthem is a full price game). I don't have much time anyways these days so I'll gladly give it a pass. If you guys were all like "this is THE best thing since ME3MP and two times as much fun" then I'd probably try it. But for now this just doesn't look appealing at all to me. Thank you guys for your opinions.

oooo helpful feedback - thanks. There's a demo? (I've not been paying attention). Maybe I'll look into that.

I played the entire weekend. The short answer is, for those who still play ME3MP, this is not for you. Mindless shooting, going around using iron-man suits. I couldn't go on playing for more than an hour at a time.

I'm not bashing the game. In fact, it is surprisingly alot, alot better than I had expected. I think this is what they'd envisioned the combat would be for MEAMP, which is sad cuz this is not what I would do to an already successful formula (me3).

Am not sure about the me3 veterans here, but for me everything about me3mp was done right when it comes to combat in addition to the likes of reload cancel, charge weapons, hiding reload animation to name a few..the whole combo provides an interesting experience that rewards timely button pressing for sustained dps, break a geth hunter stagger, or Dodge an impossible rocket trooper's triple rockets. I was hoping that Anthem would try to distinguish itself from the rest by implementing that formula, why not..but that clearly cannot be the case now..it's just like the rest with, seemingly, more narrative.

I will play the demo tomorrow to have a better opinion.

But I'm not a fan of looter shooters and prefer horde modes over raid style missions. If it really feels more like Warframe/Destiny than ME multiplayer, then I'm definitely out.

Hated both of those games.

Shinobu did an excellent writeup, I don't know what I'd want to add, other than my own flavor, since everyone takes away different things.

I felt the movement was a lot more like MEAmp than ME3mp, particularly the jetback-jump, the side-dodge, and the from-hover-heavy-melee. I only played the one javelin (ranger) so I don't know if the others have similar movement. I didn't do free-play, just the story-missions, I did them solo. Now, here's where I'll jump off a bit, because the only game I seem to want to play with other people is MEmp. I had absolutely no desire to load in with a bunch of randos in this game, and I didn't. It nags you if you choose to play solo - "Wait, are you sure? Press F to say you're reeeeeally sure!"

I like the small confined horde-mode maps of ME, but Anthem is a huge open map (with loading screens to get you into dungeon areas, or whatever the right words are) - so communicating with the other people you're going to play with seems like it would be Very Important. I never really did that in MEmp, 99% of the time, I load in, hit Quick Match, and off I go. That might make me a different kind of player - so if you like team/chat, this might work for you. If not... well, while the world was pretty, I'm not sure I'm interested at all. I'm still going to use my free demo time again this weekend, especially to try out the free-play area since I guess that's where most of the game will end up taking place in the future anyway.

There was definitely some git gud related to the control scheme and flying, so maybe another round would be less frustrating, and I can concentrate on whether I actually like gunning the enemies down or not. The parts I played with some of the boss units felt like I was taking down an Atlas with a Level -10 Predator.

ME had the whole SP campaign and two previous games to get me invested in the world, with the MP as the icing on the cake - way more fun that I ever thought it was going to be. I don't feel that magic here. Doesn't help that the first-person POV of the personal journey/story part gives me motion sickness...

Right now, I'm actually more likely to play The Division 2 and just solo all of it's co-op stuff like I did with the last one, unless there's some kind of super-sale. I still would recommend giving it a try for yourself though, especially as it's free (other than the 45GB download).

Aside from all the aspects there were already mentioned by some people here: let's talk weapons!

With a game in which the Warframes suits are called Javelins I just have to ask: is there some awesome sniper rifle that comes at least close to the beauty that is the ME3MP Javelin? And is there something as wonderful as the Claymore in it? The few bits of gameplay I have seen pretty much all had some pew pew pew automatic guns that "felt" lackluster and underwhelming when watching.

Addendum to my previous post... I really hit submit too quickly, because I did want to mention that I was totally hoping to find some kind of sniper. I honestly don't know if they're in the game or not as I didn't see one. I would settle for some kind of scope on another weapon, because I was really hoping to be able to snipe from a distance... and there is a lot of distance sometimes. The guns I had were more medium-range weapons and I feel like for the outside world longer range & melee or CQC would be my favored tactics, with not a whole lot in between.

At one point I got up on a hillside and just lobbed grenades into a pack of enemy... who just stood there, not sure what to do. I guess I was out of range, but the guns I had weren't effective at that distance - or maybe they would have been had I had something with a scope? but leaping off the cliffside, swooping down, and landing on a group with heavy melee, that was also pretty effective.

I think there are only 2 weapon slots?

Anyway, if you do decide to play it, and you feel like you might miss out on the ME3 experience, rest assured, it definitely has this in common...