No one can deny that Anthem got off to a rough start; actually, it’s still in a pretty rough place even now, but it’s still hanging on somehow. That said, the fact that they are completely changing the way future major updates will work after only just recently releasing one of those updates is a sign that something isn’t working, at least from their perspective. In short, BioWare has announced that they’ll be scrapping the whole ‘Acts’ business in favor of seasonal updates.
It was announced before Anthem was even released that Acts would be the way BioWare updated the game, but following the recent conclusion of the Cataclysm Act, they informed players that seasonal updates should be expected from now on. The reason they are making this change is apparently to tackle the ‘core issues’ that some players have been experiencing.
BioWare’s Chad Robertson said, “We hear your concerns on core issues in Anthem and are acting on it. Those systems require a more thorough review and re-working versus quick fixes. We’ve got a team working on that now, and early results are promising. In order to address these long-range plans, we are moving away from the Acts structure for updates. Instead, we have additional seasonal updates planned for this year that we think players will enjoy. These events will deliver challenges and chases similar to what you’ve seen, and are built around some fun themes we’re bringing to the game.”
“We also want to ensure we’re backing up our words with a great game you can play,” Robertson said. “So I don’t have any news today to share about the long-term changes we are bringing to Anthem. What I can say is that we will continue to engage with you, our community, through PTS when we can show you what is coming.”
Apparently this disclosure is an attempt by BioWare to be more upfront and transparent about the changes they are making to the game in order to improve it. Frankly, it’s unlikely that anyone has a problem with that, as we all want to see the game improve.
That said, it’s not as though Anthem did extremely poorly, as it is the 5th best-selling game of 2019 so far. Even so, it launched with a lot of issues that can’t be fixed by a handful of patches, and whether or not this new update system will manage to rectify any of those issues is something we’ll just have to hope for.
