After complaints from players - and other developers - about its endgame drop rates, BioWare has made some Anthem loot changes designed to improve access to useful endgame gear and improve the crafting process for endgame equipment. This was announced by the game’s lead producer, Ben Irving, in a Reddit thread outlining some other significant changes that would arrive in the upcoming patch.
Anthem has only been out for a week (two, really), but the pushback from players and criticisms from press reviews have been vocal in the wake of a variety of issues that warranted a significant Day One patch. A few days into the game’s official release, the community caught wind of BioWare beginning to look into potential issues with loot and drop rates and this has likely eventuated in the changes that will be implemented either on February 28 or March 1.
The loot system in Anthem has previously been criticized for the infrequency of drops, or broken stats on drops, in end-game content that are not actually useful for players at that level. Once players hit the level cap of 30, it’s a case of diminishing returns on gear below Epic, Masterwork, or Legendary tier. The Day One patch caused some exceedingly generous loot drops for players early on, but it looks like scaling that back has since resulted in Common, Uncommon, and Rare items being picked up en masse by players instead.
BioWare’s next Anthem patch aims to fix some of that, along with the wider problem of access to Masterwork and Legendary gear, by implementing two major changes. One of those changes is a commitment to removing low-tier (Common and Uncommon) gear from max level loot tables. This should mean that players are better rewarded for persistent engagement at a higher level of play. Another major change is how Masterwork gear is now going to cost less resources to craft (15 masterwork embers instead of 25).
There will be a few other quality of life changes here and there associated with Anthem loot overall, including making the randomized inscriptions on gear more specific to the types of item that they’re on. This should enable players to better fine tune their Javelin builds by removing the problem of redundant bonuses.
While the BioWare’s attentiveness looks like they intend to stick to their 90-day improvement plan with Anthem, this patch to fix loot issues hasn’t gone live yet, so the real impact of these proposed changes is still up in the air. Anthem is a beautiful game with a host of other issues beyond the rarity of gear available once players cleared the main questline, and it remains to be seen if BioWare can keep this machine well-oiled into the future and start addressing other design elements, and the bugs on the PC and console versions.
More: Complete List of All Anthem Masterwork And Legendary Items
Anthem is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: BioWare (2)
