In the short time since the official Anthem release, BioWare's latest action RPG has received an abundance of fans and critics alike. One who seems to be straddling that fence is Travis Day, a lead designer for Diablo 3 who was largely responsible for the rewards structure rework in the Reaper of Souls expansion. He states that he has been playing and enjoying Anthem, but he also feels that the game falls into "a number of reward system related traps," which he follows up with a few ideas on how to fix.

He first address the issue of dead inscriptions in Anthem, which is when an item rolls an inscription that doesn't work in any real way. Day points out that there is a difference between a "bad" inscription, which is normal in looter shooters, and "literally doesn't work" inscriptions, such as a item specific bonus cold damage inscription on Venomous Blaze — an acidic weapon that does not in any way deal cold damage. BioWare does this, Day assumes, to create a large spectrum of power based on random rolls, which occurs with other looter shooters. To fix this, Day offers up the idea of "changing the relative weighting of affixes while restricting them to things that actually work on the item."

Day also addresses the 3 strongholds in the game - The Tyrant Mines, the Temple of Scar, and the Heart of Rage - and how there is no real incentive to complete one over another, so players will play the least difficult of the 3, currently the Tyrant Mines. This can be fixed, he says, by making them similar in difficulty or adjusting the rewards to match the difficulty and somehow adding more variety to the runs in Anthem.

He also addresses issues of player agency, targeted farming, and granularity in difficulty, but it's worth highlighting that Day's ideas did not go unnoticed. BioWare's Camden Eagar thanked him for the ideas and insight and stated he was passing it along to the team. Eagar and Day respectfully shared admiration for each other's work, so this ties in with the idea of BioWare listening to its community.

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Day's thoughts seem to be popular in the community, so perhaps something will come of this exchange. Until then, Anthem players do have the world of Bastion to explore, a story to complete, and loot to earn.

Anthem is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Reddit