This is relevant to 2019, and the performance enhancements we’ve seen in relation to databases.  10 years ago… much different data models due primarily to the way indexing/searches taxed servers.  If that already went over your head, then this is going to be a rough post to read through.

Data Modelling

Most people are familiar with spreadsheets (Excel, Sheets) and that they allow an X/Y relationship (2 dimensions).  You can have fruit categories, then people, and figure out how many fruit each person has.  Advanced users are familiar with the concept of pivot tables, where you can further filter that X/Y data on additional criteria (Z or 3 dimensions).

Going beyond 3 levels of relationships, you need to get into databases (DB).  Really good DB engineers make a crap top of money, because it is both a thankless job and an extremely complicated one.  Back in my coding days, a simple calendar booking application I wrote for tanning salons had about 30 different “sheets” that were all interlinked.  Making any change to those sheets had to be meticulously planned so that it didn’t cause any bugs.

This is where data modelling comes into play.  You plan out your data markers, their main identifiers, and their attributes.  As you progress, you realize that you need more an more attributes.  That then becomes a table of potential options.  Let’s try a simple example, describing an apple.

The type, size, and color would be a good start.  Then you realize you want to track if it has seeds, the general shape, the time of harvest, the average price, and whole bunch of variables.  What you end up with is a table that is an index of those variables, and then a single table per variable type.  Could be a database with 50 tables by the end.

And that’s a simple example, since the relationships between the table are INDEX –> VARIABLE.  Complex tables have interdependence between variables, and that’s a rabbit hole that can have no end.

Long story short – you need an extremely robust data model before you start, and anytime you make a change, it needs to be really thought out.

Data Use

I am going to use a loot based mechanic with randomized stats as an example, as it’s relevant to yesterday’s post.  This will use Anthem specifically as an example.

The logic of a loot drop follows:

• Does an item drop
• What rarity
• Whom is it dropping for
• What class
• What type
• What sub-type
• What are the inscriptions

Each one of those questions has an associated algorithm.

• Rarity:  This is a factor of the Luck stat, combined with the enemy type.  Boss characters have higher odds of dropping better items.  Legendary contracts & strongholds guarantee a MW level item at the end.
• Class: There is a large weight associated to items a class can use, vs those of another class.  It is not possible to get a MW item for another class, but you can certainly get epic level items.
• Item class: Weapon, Skill, consumable, component.  The odds appear to be relatively even between them, with the exception of MW drops at end of missions (as per above).
• Item type: If this is a weapon, then what type of weapon.
• Item sub-type:  If this is a grenade, then what type of grenade. This factor is important in order to assign the necessary inscriptions.
• Inscriptions: The inscription pool is filtered based on all the items above, so that the inscriptions applied either work specifically for this piece or the entirety of the javelin.  Anthem applies a sub level to this step, with major/minor inscriptions, but the logic should be the same.

Each item in the game has a database entry with at least these variables.  Each inscription would have a basic yes/no table associated with these variables.  In effect, each inscription would have a validation phase that it can indeed be applied to a particular item.

Patches

The last patch changed the logic at the item type level.  Meaning that if you had a grenade, then you were pulling from the grenade pool.  Prior to this, all inscriptions were at the javelin level (the who step).  This is a major step forward, as it’s moved down two logic layers.  If effectively removed 75% of the “dead stats” in the game, things that provide no value at all.

Anthem doesn’t yet look a the sub-type.  Which means you can get inscriptions that apply fire damage to a item that only deals lightning.  These are the other 25% “dead stats”.  The logic check appears to be when the inscription is applied only to the item, or the entire javelin.  In the previous example, if the inscription was to the entire javelin, then it would potentially have some use (e.g gun, or other ability).  This is why sub-type is important, as the sub-type would indicate the effects of that particular item.

Final Example

Let’s use Frost Shards(X) as an example.  This is a Storm (A) ability, considered a Blast Seal (B) (the E button on PC).  It deals C damage of D type, has E charges, recharges at F rate, applies effect G at a rate of H.  It’s MW inscription is I.  Each of those letters is a separate table in the database. (For those counting, that’s 8 variables… and this is a simple example.)

Let’s say that you get a drop and you’ve moved all the way down the logic tree to inscriptions.  This list of options should include:

• generic traits (e.g. health, damage) at the javelin level (applies to all javelins)
• class traits at the javelin level (applies to only the Storm)
• Type traits at the javelin level (applies only to Blast Seal)
• sub-type traits that only apply to this specific item (X) at either the gear level or the javelin level

Explicitly, it should not be possible to have a gear level inscription on an item that cannot use that inscription.  That only works if there’s 1 more logic check in the steps than is current.

As complicated as this post is to read through, the actual implementation is relatively straightforward if and only if their data model supports it.  Entirely possible that this level of granularity has not been applied, but given the posts I’ve seen from BW… that would be exceedingly surprising.  So cheers on some major progress on loot drops, still a few more steps to go.

I am picking on Anthem here because it’s the flavor of the month.  In reality, all RNG looter should follow the same thought process.

Anthem’s combat foundation is like any RPG – number-based.  Each Javelin has their own set of gear and fundamental stats.  Each individual piece of gear has 3 different set of information.

1. Baseline stats due to item type (e.g. guns have damage, rate of fire, clip size, etc…)
2. Masterwork bonuses (only applies to Masterwork or Legendary items)
3. Inscriptions (a random set of stats)

In practical terms, this means that any two items of the same level and rarity will have the exact same stats for 1 & 2.  You are then chasing better rolls for 3.

God Rolls

This is a term meant to identify an item with perfect randomized stats.  In a well balanced game, a God Roll would have noticeable impact but would still be comparable to a true random roll.  The odds of getting this roll would be balanced around the value of the roll.

In poorly balanced games, God Rolls are extremely overpowered and the RNG gods need daily sacrifices to attain.  In some cases, the game is not playable until you achieve a God Roll.

History Check

Diablo 3 came out in 2012 (!!).  Reaper of Souls(RoS) came out in 2014.  For 2 years, D3 ran with an Auction House that allowed you to skip playing the game and outright buy gear.  The game had God Roll issues, where some items were orders of magnitude better than others due to extremely poor itemization.

All items pulled from a standardized stat pool at equal weight.  For example, all weapons came with STR, DEX or INT.  They could also come with additional effects like attack speed, critical chance, critical damage, gem slots, bleed effects, or heal on attack.  There were certainly more, and that inflated stat pool had different values for different classes.

For example, a Wizard had zero interest in STR/DEX or Bleed effects.  It simply could not use them.  It also couldn’t use half the types of weapons in the game (e.g. bows, 2hn swords, etc.)  Due to standardized pools, only about 25% of the items that dropped at any given time were actually usable.  From there, you then needed to find a usable item with stats you wanted.  And from there, stats that were an improvement on what you had.

For 2 years, the odds of getting an item that was even remotely close to an improvement was farcical.  This was compounded by the Auction House, since your poor odds (say 1/100,000) were amplified by having thousands of people finding no use for their gear (e.g. a God Roll for a Wizard that drops while playing a Barbarian).  An hour on the AH bypassed hours/days of gameplay (and Blizz made money during the RMAH too).

RoS came out and implemented weighted drops.  This meant that item drops were pre-assigned a baseline value based on your class.  There were no more strength bows dropping for Demon Hunters.  Boots could only come with run speed, not critical chance.  Stat ranges were reigned in (typically 8 different stat options per item, with 4 present).  If an item dropped, there were high odds that it was worth comparing to what you had equipped.  It reduced the dependency on randomized stats, and instead focused on the interaction between skills.  It also increased the difficult markers for end game, so that if you did find God Rolls, you still had a challenge.  It also introduced Rifts, an end-game activities that provided rewards outside of gear drops (gems & leaderboards).

Other Looters

Path of Exile and Grim Dawn are good example of looter games based on the Diablo model.  They are really good examples of applying lessons learned.  Both have weighted stat drop pools, and a focus on skill interaction rather than baseline numbers. More notable is that these are small companies.

Anthem Loot Changes

I had this set to go out, then BioWare put up a Reddit post explaining some incoming changes in the next few days.   To compare today vs. after the patch.

Today

• Items drop in 1 of 5 rarities (white, green, blue, orange, yellow)
• Orange(Masterwork) and yellow (legendary) items come with extra affixes that change gameplay (e.g. 200% damage while hovering)
• Pool of > 100 possible inscriptions, that apply either to the entire javelin (person icon), or specifically to that piece of gear (gear icon)
• Inscription values are randomized (e.g. 1% damage or 25% damage)
• No drop weights, meaning any item can have pretty much any inscription.  Like Grenade Launchers that improve pistol ammo capacity
• Inscriptions that make little sense, or are bugged and have no effect.
• The goal is to get orange+ items of the type you want, then upgrade them with versions that have better inscriptions.

After Patch

• At level 30, item drops only come in blue, orange, and yellow.  Assuming the same quantity of items drop, this has a net effect of increasing high rarity drops.
• Inscriptions will be weighted.  Assault rifles will come with generic inscriptions, or assault rifle specifics.  This drops the number of possible inscriptions from 100 to something closer to 30, per item.
• You can breakdown 15 orange items in order to craft a new randomized one (down from 25).

Those changes raise the floor of bad rolls.  That is a massively positive change.  The armchair designer in me wonders why this wasn’t crystal clear obvious during QA (there was a lot of feedback on this during the demos, as most of it seemed broken).  I won’t praise them fixing something that never should have made it to launch, but I will certainly recognize that they were able to pivot quickly.  This is going to have a very large impact on reducing burn out.

Great gun for Storms

Luck aka Magic Find

People always take the path of least resistance.  Always.

Luck should not be a stat people chase.  There’s a good reason all the others have removed it.  Right now, Luck has a hard cap at 90.  The effects are quite noticeable.  It makes people do things that go counter to helping the group.

Roll Luck into the difficulty level (above what’s already rolled in) and be done with it.

Repeatable Content

I have more fun in a Contract than I do a Stronghold, simply because there’s randomness in the former.  Also, they are generally equally balanced. Legendary contracts all end with some sort of super boss + waves.  Getting a Legendary contract to spawn… that’s some dark magic Harry.

Strongholds need work.  Tyrant Mines is ~20 minutes from start to finish.  Scar/Rage both take more than than for the boss alone.  Unfortunately, they also offer the exact same rewards.  I really don’t mind difficulty spikes at different spots in a run, but right now, no sane person would run either of those two locations for anything but the chance to say they did it.  That means people are going to burn out on Tyrant Mines – quickly.

Difficulty levels also need some changes, or perhaps clarity in intent.  Anthem does say “you should be this tall” to take this ride, granted.  GM1 really hard without at least 1 piece of useful MW gear.  GM2 is borderline unplayable without a full gear set of MW.  GM3 is like walking through hot coals, covered in baby oil.  And really, that’s a-ok.  What’s missing is the reward structure.  Since GM1 offers similar rewards to GM2, and the time to finish (TTF) is so much lower… why bother?  Again, path of least resistance.  (Side note – D3 had this issue.  They solved it by explaining what each difficulty had as an effect, and they players determined that if you could clear a rift in ~5 minutes, it was time to move up difficulty.  Again, this took 2 years.)

This after 2 beta weekends, and the main story completed.  Not at max level.

General

• Mechanically much more stable, but still a fair chunk of game breaking bugs (quests don’t complete, game crashes, sound goes out, infinite load screen)
• The game looks amazing.  Hats off to the world builders and asset designers.
• There is an absurd amount of rubber banding lag that causes:
  • Enemies to randomly appear
  • Shots to come from nowhere
  • Titan attacks to hit you even if you’ve clearly dodged.
• I find myself spending far too much time waiting.  Waiting for a loading screen, waiting for a spawn, waiting for the flight to the waypoint to complete.
  • Note: Flying between waypoints is ok.  It’s the flying at the start of the mission that’s irritating.  Why give me a 60s load screen to then make me fly for 3 minutes?
• Running in Tarsis feel much better.
• Voice acting is ok.  There are 3 NPCs for the main quest, then 3 faction leaders.  Rest of the gang is better than most others.
• There’s a ton of interesting lore and bits to be found, but damn does this game go to length to hide it, then make it a pain to sort through.
• It is way too quiet in town.
• The loading animation into the mech is cool
• There appears to only be 4 enemy types.
  • Scar – everywhere scar.  Snipers, bombers, mechs, casters, grunts…oh and Escarii which are spider tanks.
  • Outlaw – Not a whole lot of these, but they are much simpler than Scar.
  • Bugs – Either they blow up, or they attack you.
  • Big Guys – Ursix & Titans.  Rare enough.  Former will physically attack 1 player.  Latter will use AE attacks and summon minor elements to attack.
• Aside from the main story quest, and a few specific instances, every single mission boils down to the same routine
  • Fly through multiple waypoints (landing along the way to recharge thrusters) until you hit a point of interest (PoI)
  • Do one of four things (sometimes a combination of)
    • Kill all enemies, including spawn points
    • Play hot/cold to find objects
    • Place objects in a location
    • Defend a location
  • Repeat said 5 things up to 5 more times.  The variation has little to do with the game content, and more to do with the people with which you complete said content.
• There are 3 dungeons, 2 of which are repeats of main quest events.

Story

• Big baddie wants to become a god.  You try to stop him.  There’s one trick play in the middle that most people should see coming.  It’s relatively quick.
• I found the faction leader quests much more interesting, story wise.  There’s some appreciable progress outside of the NPCs you interact with.
• There’s a Tomb Quest that has you achievement hunt in order to progress.  It feels like artificial padding, because it is.  And the reward is an empty room with a chest.
  • Wasted opportunity for a lore piece on who the actual person was in this tomb… a quick cutscene, or just an image with some overlayed text/voice.
• The setup for the next part makes it feel like I played the prologue.
• Talking to people in town is ok. There are some interesting bits (Marelda, Cardea) but there are few cases of true interaction.  More like watching a cut-scene.

Mechanics

• Flying is fun.  Combat is generally fun.  The javelins all feel different, and allow for some customization.
• There’s no real difference between any of the guns in a given class.  Marksman rifles feel the same as assault rifles.  You end up just looking for highest damage.
• Combat feels “floaty”, as the weapons don’t feel any impact or provide consistent feedback.  Skills do!  Guns don’t.
• The inscriptions (random stats on items) are a real brain teaser, I can’t figure out what half of them do, and most don’t seem to do anything at all anyhow.
  • This feels a whole lot like the original launch of Diablo where awesome items are worse that common ones due to poor rolls.  (e.g. trade 8% pistol ammo for 25% skill damage.  Is that really a choice people have trouble with?)
• Not being able to test skills/builds sucks.  It just plain sucks.
• Mission length (~15 mins) is good.  Strongholds are good too, though some bosses are a bit more bullet sponge than I’d like.
• The net effect is that the time spent preparing for a mission feels more important than the actual battle.
• Combo system is neat.   Hard as hell to coordinate with other players.
• Ice attacks feel mandatory due to the stun effect.  A well placed attack can lock down an entire spawn point, and makes the Scar mechs a joke.

Way Forward

• There are plenty of Quality of Life (QoL) changes that would really improve my enjoyment.  Simple things, like not hiding my heat level with popups when I’m flying.
• There’s apparently a lot of new content coming, though a fair focus on freeplay.  The fact that freeplay has no “quick summon” mode, and no waypoints, it’s near impossible to play with another player.  Hard to compare, but as if in WoW you were in the Eastern Plaguelands and had to get to Ungoro to participate in an event with your friend.
• I won’t comment much on the end game, and the search for “perfect rolls”.  If BioWare hasn’t learned any lessons from Destiny, Division, or hell, even Diablo 3 by this point, then I will go and make some popcorn.
• For a game that’s supposed to be driven by social interaction, there’s a very large gap in terms of tools to help with that.  Anthem’s fun factor goes up to 11 if you’re able to play with friends.

Overall

• It would be easy to sink 20 hours here, wrinkles and all, while still having a lot of fun.  This goes for many Early Access games.
• People who paid to play a week early than others, thanks for doing more beta testing for me.
• There’s a pile of potential here, more than I’ve seen in other games of this genre.
  • Division 1 had to completely rebuild the end game
  • Warframe has rebuilt every system from the ground up.  Barely recognizable today.
• People buying Anthem today are buying an IOU from BioWare.  If you go in with that mindset, then odds are you’re going to have fun.
• My gut is telling me that the actual player demographic for Anthem is the 35-50 age group, in terms of “is this fun”, and in terms of cadence of updates.  Not certain how sustainable that model is (or any other for that matter).
• EDIT: This Reddit post from Travis Day covers a lot of the end-game thoughts.

Meta

I am going to step into the cesspool a minute.  Then take a shower.

• The model of Games as a Service reached saturation when Fortnite launched.  Whatever business model was thought of back then… Anthem is competing against giants in a market with no growth.  And recall that Games as a Service works BEST when the players are the content (e.g. PvP).’
  • Monster Hunter is a notable exception here.  I’ve sunk 80 hours into that game.  It feels like the opposite of Anthem (and shooter-looters) – melee battles and strategic boss fights.
• Anthem deserves a lot of (but not all of) the negative reaction.  This game was 6 years in the making, and has had ample examples to emulate.
• After Fallout 76 launched with minimal content and a slew of bugs, someone should have taken a hard look at Anthem.  No one can honestly say that the content launched on Feb 15th was a “full game”, what with a 6gb patch 7 days later.  3 months in the cooker would have put this in May, and learned a whole pile of lessons from Division 2.
• Early access players are the true fans.  Again a lesson from FO76.  They build momentum, one way or another.
• The Ways to Play Anthem bingo card grid is a good example of how not to do it.
• While true that it is launching in a better mechanical state that many of its competitors did when they launched… it is not competing against those versions of the game.  Given the choice between Warframe today and Anthem today…
• In the end, Anthem’s success depends almost entirely on it’s ability to deliver on the content promise before the novelty of flying combat wears off.

  

  It clearly says “Full Game” Feb 15

By the time this post goes live, I’d expect the actual value to change – but Anthem is sitting in the low 60s right now.

Some blogs have their thoughts as well.

I did play the beta.  I found it interesting mechanically and wondering if there was an actual game present.  It was not a demo, regardless of how it was sold.  Demos are smooth.  What those two weekends presented was a game with significant bugs.  The day 1 (how is it day 1 when it’s been out for 7 days?) patch addresses a ton of those issues, but somehow managed to create others.

I have a noted dislike for early access games.  It is a very rare game that actually delivers on that promise (Slay the Spire, Grim Dawn come to mind), while others stay in garbage mode for years.  I really dislike that when we’re talking about global publishers with massive pockets.

The short of it is that Anthem just isn’t finished.  It’s an idea that’s still being incubated, and EA wants your money to help fund that effort.  How you feel about that is entirely up to you.  It’s a market trend, entirely supported by revenue.  BlackOps4 is an example of simple greed, selling a full box price, then gradually selling every possible F2P MTX possible.  I wouldn’t so much put Anthem in the MTX spot… but man does this look fishy.

Is the game fun?  When it worked for me it certainly was.  Despite it’s best efforts to put in loading screens everywhere, to slow down the fun parts with a non-interactive movie, to have more technical issues than I could possibly list.   All of that still doesn’t change the fact that combat is simply fun.

And I think that’s where things get interesting.  Destiny 1 was a really bad launch, Destiny 2 had a rough go as well.  Division 1 was garbage until nearly a year after launch.  Warframe today looks nothing like when it launched.  In the “shared world shooters at launch”, Anthem is well above the pack.  The problem is that Anthem is not competing against those games from back then – it’s competing against their current versions. Just like every themepark MMORPG fought against the current version of WoW.

While I’d certainly recommend that people not buy the game at this time, if you really need to, then the $20 monthly fee (at least for PC) is probably your best bet.  Following other games that release in this state, with this score… we’re going to see a sale within the month.  Getting this for $30, yeah, that could work.  Getting this at $60, better off waiting a couple months for the game to find its footing.  There’s a pile of potential here, here’s hoping BioWare can deliver on it before EA starts cutting away.

Anthem early release (PC only, $5 for 10 hours, $20 for unlimited per month) was last Friday, so that gives us 4 solid days (Monday was a holiday for a lot of people in NA).  Where are we?

Day 1 patch notes for starters.  Or maybe the patch highlights, since sprinting in Tarsis isn’t listed.  Some pretty important things there – in particular the items under “high level fixes” that deal with simply accessing the game.

I know in the demo my load times were absurd – 2 to 3 minutes in some spots.  Not to mention the sheer amount of loading screens.  Seems the case now too, with the general recommendation to move to SSD.  Which, you know, cool for desktops that have them.  Less so for laptops.  Not sure how that would impact console players, so I guess we’ll see how that works out after Day 1.

There are various youtubers providing their “reviews” or “impressions” of an online game that’s technically still in beta.  Plenty of blog posts.  Gaming sites have early impressions as well.  I don’t quite understand how people can comment on “end game variety” by this point, but I guess they need the clicks.  If you’re curious about the game, I’d avoid browsing Reddit – that’s for sure.

Fair to assume that those playing the game right now are the same people who were more than looking forward to the game.  Passionate I would say.  Not the streamers, I mean the players.  The next wave coming, those in the “it looks interesting” camp, that will be the real test.

Related to this are the (insanely?) dedicated players who are already at level 30 and in full legendary/masterwork gear.  Quite a few used the a “loot cave” for easy farming, and it would seem that Strongholds (dungeons) are giving great rewards just from the chests (without killing the boss).  I know the latter example existed in the 2 demos, since bosses don’t visibly drop loot and account for ~30% of the total dungeon duration.  Curious as to how all this fits into BW’s player models for content consumption.  I mean they certainly expected a portion of players to go for gold, but where do they need to find the balance?

In some previous posts on the demo, I had a couple things that I thought needed addressing.  Sure, a lot of QoL things, in particular flight/swimming controls, load screens, and the UI.  It would seem a lot of those items are being looked at on the 22nd.

I’m sure I will have a few thoughts on Monday after having a decent sit down.  For now it will be just taking in the scenery.  Fingers crossed.