Electronic Arts and Bioware have released a new update for Anthem dubbed 1.0.4. The update in question hasn’t gone over well with the community in that it has introduced more bugs and issues, and even got Global Community Manager for Anthem to comment on the messy situation.

Firstly, Reddit user Dredgen1994 over on r/AnthemTheGame — who managed to make it on r/Games and accrue 2.4k upvotes — posted up a piece titled “Anthem 1.0.4 Update: The loot portion of this update is a complete disaster and actually a regression from what it was before.” The post in question now boasts 6.4k upvotes and reads:

“The loot portion of this update is a complete disaster and actually a regression from what it was before:

 

– Stronghold bosses no longer guarantee masterworks, just received 4 purples from the monitor on GM2. Get ready for everybody to start leaving at the boss again!

 

– Teammates can now pick up your loot for you, so your inventory is constantly getting filled up with blues and purples and you don’t get the satisfaction of being able to pick up your own drops.

 

– Half the items in freeplay and stronghold chests have been replaced with embers. That’s a pretty shady stealth Nerf. Could be a bug, regardless, it needs to be fixed

 

A hotfix or another client update needs to go out ASAP to fix this, because this is horrible.

 

Edit: Just received three blue Embers and two purples from a stronghold chest LOL

 

Edit 2: They really needed to get the loot portion of this update right, and they actually made it worse than it was before, I have no idea what they think they’re doing over there.

 

Edit 3: Thank you for all the gold and silver awards you wonderful people 🙂 ….Hopefully bioware sees this post

 

Edit 4: no response from bioware on this post yet. Maybe it’s not “polite enough” ?”

Furthermore, another r/AnthemTheGame member by the name of Washout81, who happens to work on software development and performs all forms of testing for his company, has this to say about Bioware and the latest 1.0.4 Anthem update:

“Let me start by saying that I work in software development. My specific role is to support software once it is in the field, and I am also included in all forms of testing since I use it more than anyone in my company. We develop software that is used by hundreds of field staff. However my company moves obscene amounts of data every single day.

 

I test for hundreds, 1 person as a last line of defense before a piece of software is rolled out into the field. It can be a bit stressful at times but my testing processes are always signed off by management before we make the official call.

 

This brings me to Bioware. They have software that goes out to millions of people. After yesterdays patch I am convinced that they either do very little to no testing at all. The only thing I think they actually test is if the game actually runs. There are tons of variables that go into testing an online game, and running these tests on a private test instance with a 4 man squad vs a production with millions connected at one time can cause unforeseen issues. However here is why I don’t think they even test with a 4 man squad.

 

– Squad mates picking up loot – This bug would easily be caught if they tested on a private instance. It is not something that would only show up in production. It has nothing to do with thousands of people connecting to an instance vs a few in a closed test.

 

– Chests in GM1+ dropping uncommon embers – This is laughable, while not technically a bug, it is however a massive mistake, and tells me that they didn’t open a single chest in testing. In a previous patch they removed uncommon items dropping from chests, now they have added embers, but forgot to remove uncommon (which is worse than items). If I were to test this scenario, I would only have had to open 1 or 2 chests to see this, but I would have tested about 20.

 

– Embers diluting loot pools – This again isn’t even a bug. It’s simple math and a huge lack of foresight by their development team. If you add something to the loot pool, and don’t adjust the drop rates of other items, their drop rates will always be lower.

 

– Post mission screen not showing results – This is a bug, and I ran into it probably 7 out of 10 times last night. Now this is a bug that might have only shown up in production due to the amount of endpoints vs closed testing.

 

As a professional in this field, I feel like I can offer a fairly solid opinion on their testing procedures. It is my honest opinion that their developers make changes to the multipliers, and essentially feel like it will work in theory, without actually testing it. Their management has too much faith in their developers and approve the changes as well. It’s very sad that we, the consumer are essentially their beta testers. As you can see by the points that I made, there is very obvious evidence that a lot of these bugs and mistakes can be caught by a 4 man test team on a private instance. Does Bioware even have a test instance? I get testing is expensive, but it’s obviously necessary, and in this case, using a day of testing with a 4 man team would have prevented a ton of headaches. Anthem is a piece of software with a goal in mind to reach millions of people. They need to improve their testing procedures. If a bug like these got through my testing and hindered production, I would get written up for sure, and if it kept happening, which it is in Bioware’s case, I would be fired.

 

Pick up your game Bioware. You have a potential for a great, lasting game here. The core gameplay of your game is amazing and better than all your competitors. You are losing fans by making simple preventable mistakes.”

Speaking of beta testers, a Twitter user by the name of Herb Rogue questioned Jesse Anderson, Global Community Manager, in a humorous way that those who paid for Anthem are pretty much beta testers:

https://twitter.com/deathrogue3/status/1110718910477697024

What will be the ultimate tell-all moment is when Electronic Arts holds its next earnings meeting. The Q4 2019 Earnings Conference Call is set to go live on May 7th, 2019, which is going to offer info on official Anthem sales and if it reached the target number of 6 million copies in six weeks.

Anyway, Anthem is out now and is available across PC, PS4, and Xbox One.