‘Anthem’ Gets Loot Drop Overhaul in Wake of Fan Complaints

“Anthem,” BioWare’s beleaguered “Destiny”-like looter-shooter, is getting a loot drop overhaul in response to fan complaints, Electronic Arts announced Thursday. The company plans for the changes to hit Thursday or Friday.

Player discontent seemed to culminate earlier this week when former “Diablo 3” designer Travis Day suggested changes Bioware could make to its loot system in the AnthemTheGame Subreddit post.

Day wrote that he’s enjoying “Anthem,” but that the latest action RPG from Bioware“seems to fall into a number of reward system related traps.”

His concerns echoed those brought up by fans in the Reddit thread. EA identified the key player complaints in a bullet list shared with press:

  • Many inscriptions are not useful to the item they are attached to

  • Due to this, players need to get many masterworks of the same item to find a “good one”

  • Players want the frequency of masterwork drops to increase to help with the above or …

  • They want us to change how masterwork inscriptions work so that they are more “useful”

The changes coming very specifically address those concerns, according to EA:

  • Inscriptions are now better for the items they are on

    • This applies to new items earned in Anthem (not existing ones in your Vault)

    • If an inscription applies only to the item it is on (gear icon), it will be useful to that item. Otherwise the inscription will provide a Javelin wide benefit

    • For example, an Assault Rifle will not have an item specific +pistol damage inscription. It may have a +electric damage suit wide inscription (cool for a lightning build)

    • Some more information below

    Removed uncommon (white) and common (green) items from level 30 drop tables

    • This was a highly requested change and we agree, so that’s that.

    Reduced the crafting materials needed to craft a masterwork from 25 masterwork embers to 15 masterwork embers

    • As you salvage or harvest, you should be able to craft more masterwork items to get the inscriptions you are looking for

    • Now that inscriptions are more relevant to their item, this should yield better results for players

    Another major change that will be included will change the generic nature of the inscription pool. Each item type will now have a specific set of inscription options for each of their inscription pools. The pools are smaller and are targeted to the specific item type

    For example, there will now be an Assault Rifle pool, which has four pools for each of the inscription types.

    Other changes include:

      • Primary inscriptions are focused on damage or survivability

        • Any item specific inscriptions (gear icon) will always benefit the item they are on

        • Javelin wide inscriptions (suit icon) will benefit damage or survivability across the whole Javelin

        Secondary inscriptions focus on utility and can be targeted to the item (gear icon) or the entire javelin (suit icon)

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