ANTHEM Demo

[THraShArD]

Anyone try this yet ?  There a bunch of issues and was getting anywhere between 60-90+ fps, it was bouncing all over the place and other people having issues.

 

Somehow I went inside this water hole and was trying to explore - probably needed to adjust brightness but could not see and got lost under-water.   The whole game was constantly spinning in circles and I almost threw up from motion sickness.

 

Ended up figuring how to use the Jet Pack properly, but kept hitting my head on the ceiling and bouncing off the walls.   Very wacky controls. 

 

OMG, never got sick from a game before but there issues going on and other people reporting Motion Sickness.

[MrTiC]

Im currently downloading it, ill let you know how the performance is on my pc

[BlockedTheShot]

I was running the demo an hour ago actually. My i5 4690k bottlenecks my rtx 2070 on ultra at 1080p, but its fine at 1440p.(gonna need to upgrade cpu)

 

That said, its lower performance than i expected out of frostbite.

 

Besides the cool enviorments and flying mechanic and third person, it imo feels like a destiny clone.

 

I also agree with @THraShArD the flying is wonky. But somehow i dont feel motion sick, then again, im the kind of guy to not feel motion sick with a oculus rift at 40fps

 

Overall, good, but not great. I could see myself buying this if ea doesnt screw up with microtransactions and when it is on sale for 30 bucks

[THraShArD]

I'm going to wait till the 14th full version and then play with the settings.

 

Something about being trapped underwater, really wigged me out for a few hours being woozy.  Everything else was ok.  This game has lot of controls I need to map for my Belkin Speedpad.

[Cyberspirit]

Just tried it out and yeah, the flying feels really weird but, you can probably get used to it after a while.

 

My biggest problem is the awful motion blur which, I hope is just bugged out because even with it set to off there is still a lot, especially in the city.

 

Other than that I could only comment on the loading times which take way too long even on an SSD.

[THraShArD]

I was confused about those settings - Motion Blur , Dept of Field and Chromatic Arberration.

 

All of them were set Off. I heard some people having issues turning it On/Off, so I think all those settings are jacked up.

 

 

[MrTiC]

Ryzen 7 1700x @ 3775Mhz

16GB 2666Mhz

Vega 64 (+25% power)

1080P 144hz panel

VSR enabled for 1440P

 

1080p Ultra settings

Open world: 35 - 75 fps

Instanced: 90 - 150 fps

GPU usage is 55 - 95% and all over the place (same with the core clock)

 

1440p Ultra settings

Open world: 35 - 75 fps

Instanced: 55 - 75 fps

GPU usage is 95%+ all the time

 

Game really struggles in the open world part

And the M+K controls are REALLY BAD, plays much better on controller

 

 

 

[Guest]

I was selected for the beta but forgot to try it. 

Anyone play the demo want to share what kind of game it is? 

[THraShArD]

I heard it's similar to Mass Effect.  There a huge mega thread discussion on this forum.  Tons of issues, does not look good

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/anthem-demo-thread-open-feb-1st-3rd-time-to-fly-freelancera.95459/page-186

[Richard Webster]

Digital Foundry have an analysis. A locked 1080p60 Ultra isn't possible with either a 1060, RX 580, 1070 or a Vega 56. RTX 2080 Ti can't manage 4k60 Ultra.

 

 

[THraShArD]

It's hard to determine what is going on and how much of the Demo was stripped.

 

That lobby is brutal and felt like 1 fps.  Some people have mentioned no difference between some settings on or off , so will have to wait for full version

[Chett_Manly]

I've been trying it today. I've had to resort to custom settings to get near 60 fps at 3440x1440 on a GTX 1080. Cut down the post processing, the AA, the vegetation, turned off motion blur. Luckily I have GSync.

 

List of things I hate about this demo.

1. Starting Audio on game load crackles. 

2. User Interface Menus are slow and stupidly designed. I click video settings, I see all the settings on the right, yet I click on them and nothing happens. No I have to click into that sub menu before I click the control that I can already see! 

3. Poor Performance, this is not optimized at all and you can tell. Why is it so bad?, it doesn't seem that much better looking than Battlefield 1, same engine, which gives me over 100, and has quite the draw distance. We are two weeks from launch.

4. Starting Area, North African bazar meets Avatar... really? What kind of silly world is this that you have a stone cobbled streets and brick buildings? And everyone has some stupid helmet on. This IP is looking pretty terrible.

5. Go to talk to someone, Dialog options, hit 1... nothing happens, hit 1 notice the hold to activate graphic... check options to disable the anti moron hold to activate setup. No options for disabling the moron proofing UI. 

6. Go to the armor suit... and Its loading me into it, and we are in a menu, and now we are in another menu, okay lets try that quick launch thing, nope back to other menu, hit F... hit F... yes hit F... okay and were loading into an instance to do the quest.... so its the World of Warcraft Dungeon Finder. Its not a real open world game its a bunch of instanced garbage.

7. In the world, how do I configure my armor... check menu... check again... Google it... Only at Forge not in the world... FML 

8. Go to fight some flying bats, shoot shoot shoot... gun doesn't seem to have much power to it... Weaker than the Assault Rifle in Halo. Weaker than that garbage full auto AR in Mass Effect. I DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES TO FEEL WEAK AND PATHETIC. 

9. Quest objective seems to be Blue Dots, as that is the only UI element and nothing I can see stands out. I go to blue dots, and they are players. Triangle is the objective, except Triangle F#@$%ing disappears randomly. Nice. 

10. Quit and try again. Get to Forge, change armor to all black. Man there are a lot of materials. Realize the point of this is to sell them at $5-10 per. 

11. Load up on new gear, get 2nd weapon... Assault Rifle was super weak, clearly the Shotgun with its slow firing rate and very long reload will do immense damage... NOPE 

12. Well at the very least I can roleplay as War Machine and strafe enemies while flying right.... NOPE cant fire while flying, only hovering... 

13. Well at least I can commiserate in chat with my fellow players. Hit enter for chat... nope, hit K for chat nope... looks at keybindings for chat... NO CHAT. F#$%ing Console Port! 

 

I didn't really like Destiny but it at least felt like a competent shooter, the guns felt good, killing enemies felt good, the game just lacked a story or characters for me to care about. I thought Bioware could deliver on that story and characters, but I am not seeing it here, and it is not a good 3rd person shooter. Toss on top EA's shenanigans and now I am even questioning if it is worth the $15 for a month sub to play through the story.

[SolarNova]

I played it. then uninstalled it.

 

Let me be clear, i have played Warframe, and i have enjoyed it. I stoped playing due to the game mechanics being to tied to the MTX system that it made it a hassle. I like the game type. the genre, its somthign i feel i could really get into if the right game came out.

 

So Anthem.

 

Its in open beta .. it should still be in Alpha. Its not ready ..

There are a bunch of bugs that make it unplayable, from sound cutouts that require game restart, to crashes, to DC's , to UI disapearing. and more. They happen very often, making trying the Demo a chore.

The controlls are at best a Console analogue emulation, K/M feels terrible. This in itself makes the game a struggle to enjoy. Especialy flight.

The demo itself is poor, being introduced with no idea what the story is up to that point, and no point of reference for anything in the game.

Much like Warframe the gameplay seems designed around avoiding damage rather than mitigating it, which is ironic considering the sluggish gameplay.

Point of note here is i said 'sluggish' ,not 'heavy'. A game like Anthem should communicate a sense of weight, but its hard to feel that when the controlls are so 'slugish' and 'numb'.

 

long story short, the game feels veyr limited atm in the demo, it would have helped if i could play it all without issue to get a better idea of everythign it has to offer, but i couldnt deal with the constant bugs kickign me out from the game for one reason or another. The game when it did work also seemed, unfinished.

 

in the end Anthem came acorss to me as a game far from finished, needed more complexity added, more customisation in weapons and loadouts, better balanced combat which can include tanking and mitgating damage instead of just avoiding it, more reward for marksmanship instead of spray and pray combat.

 

Al lthat said, im not upset ..im not surprised. Its EA, it may be Bioware, but its still EA, my expectations were very low , i got what i expected, and while ill keep an ear and an eye out for how the game goes after launch, im not holding out hope in ever buying the game. EA and BioWare would have to have really hit it out the park with the game to get me to consider giving EA any money. They havnt, soo..yea. .... Moving on.

[THraShArD]

My long term view is never get too comfy with a game because support and updates is never a lifetime.

 

What a horrible way to launch a Demo.  My definition of a Demo would be something like the original Tomb Raiders game.

 

Have an exercise course, so you can get familiar with the controls and functions.  Throw in some bots to shoot and call it a Demo.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Tried it. Found many spots that are unoptimized and swung fps in half, and in between all the time.

Sticking to 40fps locked for some reason 80% of my time, ended up capping it to 40outside of the game because 40 to 80 and back... All the time but still wanting to stick at 40fps for most of it, unoptimized seen via OSD stats and usages.

Uninstalled this joke.

 

Laughed internally while playing at the state of it, UI with a mouse is an afterthought, precaching shaders and such 100% CPU tasks when you jump in, awaiting them to smooth out but without the OSD showing you, it still stutters,..

 

1 of 30 games currently installed, the only real bad problematic game to try out of all of them.

So I read around online, & moved on.

 

"Years in the Making" and this qualifies as a "Demonstration" for 2019 release?

 

 

[zassou]

this game have so many protentials to be a next gen shooter title, but they really botched the demo.

 

technical stuff:

my cpu is 4790k, oc to 4.5. the game cant even stable at 60 fps even at lowest settings on 1080p. the cpu usage is always 100%, even im idling at town where there's no player around. why? is moving a handful of npcs is so taxing on the cpu that you need more than 8 threads? more so than x264 encoding? yeah i know this is not the latest intel chip but hey, if this high frequency cpu can't handle it, i doubt 8 or 9 gen i5 can.

 

that been said, until i read someone tested the executable, and found it denuvo positive....

 

hahaha

 

gameplay stuff:

for a next gen shooter game, the core gameplay looks surprisingly conservative in this demo. select your mission, and launch it. a room-like game where you don't realy get to see other people, until you head out. on this is kinda like warframe, with weaker player interactions.

 

compared to modern multiplayer shooter/ rpg title, ill say anthem is the weakest one on gunplay, or control in general. if you tried archwing control on warframe youll knew what is the right way to do flying on kb&m, not this "emulate-joystick-by-mouse" nonsense. while not everyone can into warframe's deep sea creature aesthetic and ninja controls, and forma. it does make a benchmark of what you can achive in 3rd person shooters, and some of that gene is pass along to destiny 1/2. compared to warframe, destiny is more emphasis on shootings, which is by far the biggest disapointment of anthem. shooting games comes long way from days of quake and doom, and still one of the main staple of pc gaming. the control feels floaty, not instant, meaning delayed input. the flying mechanic is bad, yet i got used to, but the swimming is aweful, i got motion sickness the first time i plunge into the water, sping in dark watery mess in glorious 30 fps while not able to text chat to teammates and tell them to lead the way.

 

this is not a game from bioware should be. it even makes mea's gunplay better in every possible way, except the jump, i love the jumping control in anthem.

 

all in all, peasantry is a desease, that all game devs in america have. if you test your game on controller only, you wont making good pc games.

 

and this reddit post summerised how to not make a peasantry game.

[Cyberspirit]

12 hours ago, Richard Webster said:

Digital Foundry have an analysis. A locked 1080p60 Ultra isn't possible with either a 1060, RX 580, 1070 or a Vega 56. RTX 2080 Ti can't manage 4k60 Ultra.

 

 

My 1070 had no problem running the game on max settings on 60+ FPS. It usually bounced around 58-74 I think.

Granted it is Overclocked so, that could've gotten a couple extra frames.

[Lathlaer]

I really want to try it out but I will probably give it a good 2-3 months before I buy. Then I will see how much I can achieve being a lone wolf in this game and how the gameplay looks like.

 

Some of my best memories were during ME3 Multiplayer when I soloed gold and platinum waves so if Anthem can recreate that feeling then I will spend some time on Anthem 

[Cyberspirit]

18 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

I really want to try it out but I will probably give it a good 2-3 months before I buy. Then I will see how much I can achieve being a lone wolf in this game and how the gameplay looks like.

 

Some of my best memories were during ME3 Multiplayer when I soloed gold and platinum waves so if Anthem can recreate that feeling then I will spend some time on Anthem 

The demo is still available today so, you can give it a quick check.

It will definitely need a lot of work though.

[Embroysia]

I had a lot of fps problems as well. I would be from 60-90 in most places, but would dip to 45 in that city area.

Also, when I was in a certain area of freeplay, it capped me at 30 fps in one small region for some reason.

And, whenever I do the stronghold, I lag out or the "server crashes" when I get to a certain part. (I tried 5 times).

I was going to pre-order, but I'm going to wait to see how it goes at launch before I waste my money... 

[SolarNova]

I'd also like to add on from my previous post , 2 of the other major bugs.

 

Dispite many youtubers, and the usual 'crap' games journalist websites, stating the game games disconnection problems were mostly solved, i would point out that if you had selected the eastern most free roam area, not the south western one, u would never be able to connect, it would start loading but upon trying to enter would immediatly disconect and the 1st thing u see after the loading screen is the main game start screen.

 

Additionaly, loosing connection eventualy after spending an hour or more in free roam will result in you loosing xp and loot, as XP and loot isnt awarded permanantly until lafter you return to town. While i can understand this method, andi  have no real reason to dislike it, it does ofc mean that it is highly suseptable to disconnection and crashes resulting in possibly hourso f lost gamplay time. I would at the very least have the system take snapshots of xp and inventory earned at regular intervals udring free roam gameplay so that if one does DC or crash, then that snapshot can be added to your next free roam session and then at the end of that session u get the rewards at the reward screen.

 

 

Ill also point out that, as far as i could tell, EA/BioWare had not setup any way for players to provide feedback to them. Which signals to me that they really dont give a fk about player feedback and are using this 'demo' as nothing more than advertisment, which surely has backfired due to the horrible state the game is in.

 

 

If im to ever play Anthem , and spend money on it, i would very much like to see the games weapons customisation screen expanded to included weapon modifications, skill modifactions , etc, not just a weapon selection and skill selction bassed on which 'rarity' and specic minor buff the item comes with.

I'd also very much like to see the control scheme massivly stream lined for KB/M as it feels terrible to play.

Beyond that the only other issue i , and everyone, am having with the game is the optimisation, it is a terrible port and needs much work, however ,historicaly, games with this kind of level of PC optimsiation rarely get much better, so i wont hold my breath, especialy as this is a EA published title.

 

[Chett_Manly]

6 hours ago, SolarNova said:

I'd also like to add on from my previous post , 2 of the other major bugs.

 

Dispite many youtubers, and the usual 'crap' games journalist websites, stating the game games disconnection problems were mostly solved, i would point out that if you had selected the eastern most free roam area, not the south western one, u would never be able to connect, it would start loading but upon trying to enter would immediatly disconect and the 1st thing u see after the loading screen is the main game start screen.

 

Hahaha Yeah. I didn't even try Free Roam, every time it would crash on load and I gave up and just did the quest missions. But hey its a whole 2 weeks till launch, clearly this issues will be fixed. 

[THraShArD]

I keep hearing the full version does not have the issues the Demo has.

[Cyberspirit]

1 minute ago, THraShArD said:

I keep hearing the full version does not have the issues the Demo has.

I'd still stay far away from it until it gets released and people start exploring it. Give it a month or two after release.

[Franck]

Played with 3 friends this weekend. Only 1 person got a bug and it's he audio that cutted out during a large battle in open zone. Not a single other but the whole weekend. 

 

The bad :

- interface need to be reworked. Not super intuitive you have to click on a menu so that it enable the right menu you are actually seeing. Just enable everything. This doesn't make it unplayable.

- Interaction between menu slow. Other games are like this but an option to allow to skip all animation and go directly to the menu we want would be great.

- Salvaging items cause sometime to salvage the wrong item due to the animation that trigger and move the items in the list. Again a skip check would solve this. Instead of Press and hold F just click something to bypass the press and hold to just be press would fix everything.

- cannot run in the main city. This make things long. Just going from the javelin to the weapon shop is horribly long.

- The javelin control and overall ability uses are confusing to use at first. I believe the fact we started higher level without a tutorial control mission of some sort hurt that. After about 3 hours of gameplay this settled down. So this will probably a Demo only bad and not full game as i expect some kind of tutorial.

 

The good :

- The game run very very smoothly

- The post filters applied to the graphics makes duplicate textures look different. Reducing the cartoon/game color scheme and look more like a movie quality

- lighting, god rays as wonderful. Surface reflection and water diffuse is great.

- Weather effect are great. Wind, tempest and volumetric smoke looks very realistic.

- The high quality audio sound effect. Reminded me of the battlefield BC2 war tapes quality upgrade over standard audio. Quite a big jump compared to the other games i have played so far. I just wish they upgrade all the other sounds too like the Colossus ultimate launcher ability (the X). Majority of the sounds are normal quality.

- Lots of customization for each item slots.

- Appearance alteration allow for a lot of choices. Texture and color. That's a endless supply of combinaisons to satisfy everyone taste.

- Voice acting is in perfect sync with the lips of the 3d models.

- You character HAS a voice which make the story mode completely voice acted.