Anthem, BioWare’s loot-based shooter, has had its share of worrying bugs, but a newly discovered one presents a problem for the game’s gameplay loop. Players have recently discovered that the starting rifle is actually the strongest weapon in the game.
The bug was reported yesterday on the Anthem by a user named ‘YeetLordSupreme.’ They were messing around with guns and their components to quantify their damage amounts when they found something interesting. When testing out their level 45 masterwork rifle Ralner’s Blaze on a basic Scar enemy, the rifle did 1184 damage per shot and took it down in six shots. Meanwhile, the basic Defender rifle did only 286 damage, but took a Scar down in four shots. They did additional testing with other weapons and enemies, but the Defender rifle always wound up being the best weapon. Other players confirmed similar findings.
Anthem is a game heavily based around the loot players can get. A glitch like the one Yeet found could wind up turning the game into the video game equivalent of the improv comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway?, where the numbers are made up and the stats don’t matter. Fortunately, Yeet’s post attracted the attention of Anthem’s technical design director Brenon Holmes, who suspected it might be problem with the scaling system that allows lower-level players to play comfortably with higher-level parties.
Additional Anthem staff also provided some commentary on the bug. Community manager Andrew Johnson responded in the thread and confirmed the bug has to do with having default items being used in combination with higher-level gear. In developer livestream on Twitch yesterday, lead producer Ben Irving said they can fix that bug “super easily.” The bug should be cleared up with an upcoming March 12 patch. The patch will also fix the bug PS4 users have been having that causes their consoles to crash.