-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Anthem |OT| GaaS Effect
- Thread starter iFirez
- Start date
I wonder if the world of Anthem is actually a moon? I notice the two "moons" in the sky and one of them is big as hell. Just a curiosity as the people of the world never mention that they live on a moon.
The problem with the highest level gear dropping like candy is that it requires a larger pool of items to sustain the chase and right now Anthem doesn't have that. I get the D3 analogy, but the amount of legendary and set items for D3 is exponentially higher than it is for Anthem and that's why you can have them drop as they do without really causing issues. I DO feel like a buff is needed, but if I were to get ~8 masterworks for a single 20 minute run constantly I'd be fully decked out in no time at all and, as much as I like the game, would struggle to find an incentive to continue playing at that point until we see new content.
I can see a relatively low chance of getting MW items as justified if you could use the crafting to take up the slack but that recent change to embers (has it been confirmed that was intentional?) makes that all but impossible. If these were planned together it's definitely somewhat suspicious given the insane cost requirement for a MW ember - if memory serves you're looking at 75k coins to buy a single reroll on a MW item? That's not something I'll ever do, and I certainly wouldn't pay real money to speed along the process - I'm actually a little surprised the fact that you can pay real money for crafting items hasn't caused more of a fuss as it's directly related to an increase in power, something I thought wasn't going to happen for MTX in the game.
I can see a relatively low chance of getting MW items as justified if you could use the crafting to take up the slack but that recent change to embers (has it been confirmed that was intentional?) makes that all but impossible. If these were planned together it's definitely somewhat suspicious given the insane cost requirement for a MW ember - if memory serves you're looking at 75k coins to buy a single reroll on a MW item? That's not something I'll ever do, and I certainly wouldn't pay real money to speed along the process - I'm actually a little surprised the fact that you can pay real money for crafting items hasn't caused more of a fuss as it's directly related to an increase in power, something I thought wasn't going to happen for MTX in the game.
Is anyone else pleasantly surprised by the story in this game? I heard some bad things going in, but I really like it! I just got to the part where
and I was fairly surprised! I'm enjoying a lot of the characters, I can definitely see bits and pieces of the old Bioware in there. I've heard the ending is pretty bad though so I'm not looking forward to that though. I'm really curious to see how they add story to this over time.
Owen betrays you
Exactly. The reason why we're not getting all these "so simple it's mindboggling" fixes is because there's nothing there, they're building it as we speak....and breaking things just as quickly lol.
Just like, why on earth don't we have a stat page? I think it's because the guts of the numbers and builds is probably smoke and mirrors lol.
I just hope they get it together for their Taken King moment.
People aren't chasing MW, they're chasing good rolls on MW. Having 8 MW in 20 minutes is meaningless if the stats are garbage, and they often are. For Legendaries, it's even worse as you can't reroll them, so you end up with legendaries often worse than MWs you could re-craft. In the end people can't experiment builds because they don't loot enough and can't craft anymore now due to the dumb ember nerf.
So yeah, when your small pool of items is 95% of shit, counting the legendaries, you better make it rain for the players having some chance looting something useful.
I really liked the story and characters. The lore and world are great, too.
I really enjoyed the story, lore and the characters. They nailed it. Best I saw in the genre. The ending is really not bad, especially considering it's not over yet.
I wasn't blown away by the story, it felt clipped short and I had your spoilered part ruined for me because the game crashed resulting in missing that cutscene (had to YouTube it after). I love the characters though and I search out and read every bit of lore I can find, I wish they had been able to spin that into a longer story.
It would be a very good first arc in a typical BioWare game before you moved on to the next hub. It's just so short I don't feel enough is done with much besides Haluk and Faye, who are great.
That was of course not in the patch note, but they stealth nerfed MW ember drop rate in free play. To the ground. Good bye MW crafting ! We got so much to do in game anyway !
From reddit, a perfect summary :
"We lowered mw embers needed for crafting by 40%."
proceeds to lower mw ember drop rate by 90%
Not bad, I'm still clutching my bags to zero lol
Should have known you had started playing this when drop rates dropped through the floor.
Yeah drop rate sucks but it depends on your level, the higher level you are the higher tier the drop rate it seems up to level 30. At 25 you should be getting a mix of purple and blues. At level 30 you will pretty much get purples exclusively.
My first legendary was the ranger frost grenade with a gear only +225% physical damage inscription. For an elemental grenade that does no damage. That was before they fixed the inscriptions but it really shows how garbage legendaries can be.
I had the 95% load bug on the big spoilerish reveal as well, when I loaded back in the game I got the cinema referencing the reveal and was like what the hell. Just about the worst place ever to not see a scene. Was super pissed. I had to youtube to figure out what happened :/
Got 2 legendaries and 2 MW while running a legendary contract on GM1 last night (not including the contract MW drop) Out of these 5 drops, zero made my build better or were usable as a colossus. One MW was straight up a Storm component, and I only just recently hit GM1 so I only have 3 MW in slot right now. The two legs were garbage weapons that were useless and worse than my MW assault rifle and papa pump. There are way too many shield based unique inscriptions that have no use on colossus. You can only attack with your shield up with the lightning coil ability so all of these weapons and other procs to buff shield are pointless. So frustrating to finally get a boon of luck with drops and have it all be worthless shit. After reading that Reddit post on how the core mechanics of solely additive damage is capped and broken, I think I am done with Anthem. I was going to play it until Friday but what the fuck is the point. Even if they turned on the loot hose, it seems like running GM1 is pretty much the end game cap without perfect rolls and endless grinding.
So Reddit is proposing a blackout from 3/11 to 3/15 to send a message about loot to the dev team. I've got to start packing for my move next week, so I won't be playing anyways, but what do you guys think about this idea? Will it send the right message, or doom the game in the eyes of EA and get more support pulled?
Yeah, my runs yesterday were very disappointing which is weird because i had much better luck the day before. only one masterwork per stronghold. from end game bosses.
I think they need to make the droprate in Strongholds higher in both Grandmaster 1 and 2. The problem is that the community keeps finding ways to farm enemies so they nerf drops from enemies which ends up affecting enemies in all other modes effectively nerfing drops in the entire game. Especially on grandmaster difficulties.
I understand why they are doing this. the entire point of making a GaaS game like this instead of an RPG people can finish in 20-30 hours like Mass Effect is so people keep playing for hundreds of hours. They want to limit your loot drops. they want you coming back everyday to do those dailies. they want you grinding. and to do that, they cannot give you everything so fast. just look at how many videos were on youtube about that loot cave farming method. that was only up for what two days? No dev wants their fans playing the game like that. especially a game designed to be played with people.
The loot cave had to be nerfed.
What didnt need nerfing was farming for embers. it's literally the only point of freeplay. it gets people in. it encourages crafting. its ridiculous to see it get nerfed. it goes against the entire point of GaaS games.
I think the problem is with the way the game is designed. It's obviously much better engineered when compared to Destiny. they can quickly make these server side changes to fix drop rates on enemies, but with that means global changes that negatively effect everything else. i dont think they knew that nerfing the loot cave enemies would affect all enemies everywhere else. especially in contracts and strongholds. who knows? maybe they can put out another server side change to have the loot drop nerf only affect cave dungeon enemies, but their system first must allow for that kind of differentiation between enemies and i dont think it does.
i still think the end game isnt as bad as everyone is making it out to be. you still have three other classes to level up and unlike destiny and diablo, you dont have to replay the entire campaign. just run some strongholds and contracts and even freeplay to get some masterworks and build grandmaster 1 capable builds for all four characters until the figure out what they want this game to be.
the best thing Diablo did was add customization. its what ive been asking from destiny for years now and they just dont want to. in diablo, you can transfuse one weapon/item into another. you can inherit perks from one item to another. you can get lucky and get weapons and gear to drop with mod slots and make it even stronger. you can even craft your own mods. i legit spent dozens of hours just customizing my character. Even a loot game dev knows you cannot rely 100% on loot drops. its defalting. its not rewarding. people want to have control of their customization. they want to be able to spend ingame currency on making their builds. Bungie and Bioware just dont get this and have made everything a 100% RNG. If people got some kind of xp or currency from running contracts and strongholds that let them craft their own masterworks and legendaries, we wouldnt have this issue where everyone is mad at devs for drop rates.
I think they need to make the droprate in Strongholds higher in both Grandmaster 1 and 2. The problem is that the community keeps finding ways to farm enemies so they nerf drops from enemies which ends up affecting enemies in all other modes effectively nerfing drops in the entire game. Especially on grandmaster difficulties.
I understand why they are doing this. the entire point of making a GaaS game like this instead of an RPG people can finish in 20-30 hours like Mass Effect is so people keep playing for hundreds of hours. They want to limit your loot drops. they want you coming back everyday to do those dailies. they want you grinding. and to do that, they cannot give you everything so fast. just look at how many videos were on youtube about that loot cave farming method. that was only up for what two days? No dev wants their fans playing the game like that. especially a game designed to be played with people.
The loot cave had to be nerfed.
What didnt need nerfing was farming for embers. it's literally the only point of freeplay. it gets people in. it encourages crafting. its ridiculous to see it get nerfed. it goes against the entire point of GaaS games.
I think the problem is with the way the game is designed. It's obviously much better engineered when compared to Destiny. they can quickly make these server side changes to fix drop rates on enemies, but with that means global changes that negatively effect everything else. i dont think they knew that nerfing the loot cave enemies would affect all enemies everywhere else. especially in contracts and strongholds. who knows? maybe they can put out another server side change to have the loot drop nerf only affect cave dungeon enemies, but their system first must allow for that kind of differentiation between enemies and i dont think it does.
i still think the end game isnt as bad as everyone is making it out to be. you still have three other classes to level up and unlike destiny and diablo, you dont have to replay the entire campaign. just run some strongholds and contracts and even freeplay to get some masterworks and build grandmaster 1 capable builds for all four characters until the figure out what they want this game to be.
the best thing Diablo did was add customization. its what ive been asking from destiny for years now and they just dont want to. in diablo, you can transfuse one weapon/item into another. you can inherit perks from one item to another. you can get lucky and get weapons and gear to drop with mod slots and make it even stronger. you can even craft your own mods. i legit spent dozens of hours just customizing my character. Even a loot game dev knows you cannot rely 100% on loot drops. its defalting. its not rewarding. people want to have control of their customization. they want to be able to spend ingame currency on making their builds. Bungie and Bioware just dont get this and have made everything a 100% RNG. If people got some kind of xp or currency from running contracts and strongholds that let them craft their own masterworks and legendaries, we wouldnt have this issue where everyone is mad at devs for drop rates.
Can someone explain the sheer outrage at Bioware with the loot situation? If you were to visit the subreddit for this game, it has gone full nuclear. People are actually staging a week-long boycott of the game to prove a point. Many of the people complaining have played the game for well over 100 hours already, some of them into the 200-300 hour range. For the rest of us plebs, who would be lucky to sink 100 hours into a game over the course of 6-8 months, if ever, is the loot that much of a detractor from playing this game? If you've already played a game for 300 hours in the course of 3 weeks, is it maybe time to step away from the computer - I understand everyone has their own hobbies, but how angry can you be at something if you've already invested that much time into it?
I think it is completely insane, and comes across as extremely entitled and petulant. I don't know what these people expect to accomplish? Do they sincerely think Bioware is sitting on their asses and reveling in how great their game is? I am certain they are working towards an adjustment and have already communicated as such. It just feels ridiculous.
I think it is completely insane, and comes across as extremely entitled and petulant. I don't know what these people expect to accomplish? Do they sincerely think Bioware is sitting on their asses and reveling in how great their game is? I am certain they are working towards an adjustment and have already communicated as such. It just feels ridiculous.
I do think that's the issue. There's no reason for most people to keep playing once they get a perfect build (or one for all the javelins they like playing).
There's no true end game content like a Raid or whatever to be trying to gear up to get through/get through more easily. What incentive is there to keep playing the 3 legendary contracts, 3 strong holds and free roam stuff if you've got the builds you want right now? Most people are bored as hell of replaying that limited content long before getting a perfect build.
These type of games need pretty regular updates with new end game content that requires high power level and good builds to get through to keep most people playing long term. There has to be a steady stream of both new loot to chase and new content, special events etc. that require getting that new loot and powering up more to clear.
Last edited:
I feel like my friend an I played this game at a reasonable pace. We hit level 30 last week and started our first GM1 runs Friday. After you get the boost of a few masterwork items to up your survivability in GM1, you plateau rather quickly. It didn't take a ton of new MW gear to feel comfortable in GM1 as we did in Hard. So now it is a question of what is next? Going to GM2 and GM3 requires an insane bump in your gear quality (aka random rolls of an insanely large and broken inscription pool) from a loot system that is very stingy to begin with. So you don't have to drop 100+ hours to hit a very annoying and unejoyable loot plateau. On top of that, there are scant end game activities to play in the first place. Dropping two hours into a session and walking away with no upgrades very early on in the end game is lame and makes it feel like a waste of time.
tl;dr You hit an end game grind plateau very early, well before 100+ hours. The loot curve during the story is good, but once you hit max level and Grand Master 1, it flattens out and you start really butting up against a lack of content, a horrible inscription system, and a paltry amount of drops.
Edit: Oh yeah and what is mentioned below, the devs seem utterly clueless. And of course, still shit tons of bugs.
Last edited:
To be perfectly honest the developers don't know what they're doing over there. They don't even know how to balance the game properly and they're throwing in hot fixes and patches all willey nilley at this point hoping things stick. Since they're obviously not play testing it themselves and having the player base do their dirty work, I completely get the outrage. I personally quit playing myself because the droprates really don't respect my time. After 120 hours, I still would have liked to play the game, but Bioware doesn't understand that buffing droprates substantially and taking them away TWICE, is not good for the psyche. All they seriously need to do is increase those drops and everyone would be pleased again. It's THAT simple of a solution and they've proved they don't even need to patch the game, just push a server side hot fix. Whoever is in charge over there I suspect is stubborn and is ruining the game even more than it's already ruined. If I were there I'd try to convince them to just give in and let their player base have fun with it. It's the least they can do. I actually hope enough people do quit playing right now so the devs realize what they've done and don't make the same mistake a third time or something.
Last edited:
what's the point of gearing up and chasing god rolls?
Thanks - my friends and I are starting it tonight, and I wouldn't expect us to hit the end game for at least a month, given our schedules. Hopefully by then things will be sorted out, but I guess it's always an option for me to just blast the devs anonymously on Reddit until they kowtow to my demands!
But doesn't this just sort of contradict your feelings? If everyone quits the game, the pressure will be to release another hotfix, or another rushed patch that has not been fully tested. Why not just let them actually figure it out and then release it on a schedule, like they've intended. If people don't want to play the game, that's fine, but to think they're proving a point by staging a boycott of a game is asinine.
My friend and I had a lot of fun playing the game. If you enjoy the combat system, it is enough to carry you through with friends. I still love the feel of playing the colossus. But now when it is a question of, "hey you want to do some runs in Anthem or play Rocket League?" We are skewing back away from Anthem because we got a few fun MW items to feel OP again in GM1, but there isn't much to chase and knowing that there could be major inscription overhauls soon that don't retroactively apply, it is a wait and see with this game. I also have Division 2 pre ordered and am very excited to play that. I intend to go back to Anthem and I am sure I will get the itch to just blow some shit up occasionally, but once you hit end game, there is very little incentive to play, long before you hit the insane grind levels of streamers/youtubers etc. Enjoy the ride and go with the colossus! Best javelin in the game.
I really enjoyed the dialogue with the NPCs around Fort Tarsis. A lot of them have very interesting stories that I kept going back to follow up on. The caretaker of Fort Tarsis was great.
I seriously think they can't figure it out. That's the problem. It's sad to say but their design team has never given me any confidence. They originally had inscriptions roll on gear pieces that didn't even work for that piece of gear. They overtuned the difficulties and recently overtuned melee and Ultimates making them by far the best thing to focus on. They nerfed the hell out of an otherwise cool enemy type just because they thought people were having trouble but now they're a push over. They made an entire character class be at odds with itself due to the odd gear choices in it's component buffs. I can go on and on but these are just a couple things off the top of my head that screams to me they don't know what they're doing. Right now, I think they should actually take the advice from Blizzard and what happened in regards to Diablo 3 and it's loot. When the folks at Blizzard realized they were wrong and they should appease the players instead of stubbornly shoving in what they thought was right. Bioware needs help realizing what to do with Anthem right now, and who better than to ask the thousands of people who played more than 100 hours worth of the game? In this case, I trust everyone who's been playing it more than the devs themselves.
I know it sounds harsh, and in all due respect to the devs they made a damn fine combat system which is why I even played the game for as much as I did. So thank you Bioware for making Anthem really fun to actually play. Having this good base game play is more important than the surrounding factors, since those can be fixed.
Until the loot/ember and drop rate business is sorted out, I've been playing a lot less. Mostly just quickly finish contracts with fun builds, since y ou can now run them on GM1 and it's mostly a cakewalk.
They definitely can...I sure as fuck don't want to wait 1+ years, though.
The tweet from Chris Robertson really makes it sound like they're working toward a loot 2.0 solution....which is really nuts considering the game only launched a couple weeks ago. Even other games that had loot revamps weren't so rapid in their admission they fucked it all up. Kind of makes me wonder if they punted out a bare-bones system while they continue work on the 'real' solution.
The Reddit response is just bonkers, BioWare plainly state they are aware loot isn't right and they're working on a fix and the reply is....to impotently screech about fixing loot? They literally just said they know and are working on it, what more can be expected? As mad as people have a right to be about this mess devs are only human, they need time.
The Reddit response is just bonkers, BioWare plainly state they are aware loot isn't right and they're working on a fix and the reply is....to impotently screech about fixing loot? They literally just said they know and are working on it, what more can be expected? As mad as people have a right to be about this mess devs are only human, they need time.
i really don't want to keep making posts about how bad the game is. I mean I have enjoyed some of it. But dear God, it's a steaming mess of a game. Got a connection problem at the end of a mission and I was just standing there whilst the graphic showing the game trying to connect to a server went round and round and round. And then it went and nothing. Still stuck there. Could'nt move but as soon as I fired my weapon the graphic came back up. The only way out was to manually close the game from the desktop. Honestly, Bioware have no idea what they are doing.
Sometimes I imagine they delayed the game til October or November and worked out a lot of the major issues. I think it could have been a hit. But as it currently stands I'm afraid the well is already poisoned for too many prospective players. Even if they fix and expand the game in the coming months, the damage is done.
I think it's what myself and others mentioned above. They have a lack of content problem, so that makes it hard to make loot drops more prevalent as there's no reason for most people to keep playing once they get builds they're happy with for the javelin(s) they play.
Vs. say Destiny where it's gearing up to be able to do the raid, and then to be able to get through it more easily. And then to gear up for harder version of the raid, and then to be able to do it easily. And then there's special events that need higher level gear, usually a couple DLC expansions a year that up the power level cap, bring a bunch of new loot to get there and add new raids and other end game content.
They had to launch with pretty much no true end game content in place, so the only end game loop is just grinding three strongholds (Destiny strike basically), three dailies and free roam hoping to get good loot. That makes it tough to make the drops frequent enough to keep people happy, without having people either getting the build(s) they want to fast and walking away or getting annoyed at getting tons of drops but nearly all with trash stats.
I'm just not sure there's a fix here for most until they get some real endgame content in place that makes grinding for better stats worth it. For now even if drops are higher it will only really appeal to the people who just obsess over optimizing builds as there's nothing real worth running those optimized builds through right now for the rest of us.
Last edited:
This game totally needed more time in the oven but if they improve it I know I'd at least come back. I can't say the same for the masses and who knows if EA would even want the game to continue after it's player base drops off... But still, I don't think it's entirely a lost cause. They could pull an Ubisoft and have a successful game well after a disappointing launch.
Yeah.. that seems to be the way it goes for shlooters, for some reason. If they markedly improve the technical side and keep supporting the game with solid content, I will continue to be on board too. The latest patch seems to have helped a bit, I've noticed better load times and its great to launch expeditions right from the get go. Its a start I suppose.
The only thing they can do is pad content and drip feed until they have their Taken King.
The only thing everyone should really be concerned about, is if they can actually accomplish a taken king like patch. The problem is everything they say they'll fix, either doesn't get fix, or it breaks something else.
That's not good obviously if your hedging bets on a hail mary, mother of god content drop in time for Cataclysm.
It's not a lost cause but I really don't know if there's enough time for them to turn it around before EA pull the plug. As much as I've had a lot of fun with this game and will keep playing, it needed another year of development. They're playing massive amounts of catch-up and the resources required to both a) fix the myriad technical issues and bugs and b) churn out enough content in a relatively short space of time to give it a lot more mission variety and proper endgame and then c) improve the loot and add enough MW & legendary items to make the loot chase feel less shallow are pretty substantial.
I knocked out the 80 Runes as soon as I got to the four tombs stage of the campaign. Youtubed up a vid. There's no way to know which ones you already got, which is why I got them so early. I'd say there are at least 90. I've found quite a few after hitting 80.
The 80 Writings are easier. There's also a vid out there showing 81 of them (and I've since found an 82nd). Each one gets logged under either Notes, Scrolls, or Books & Diaries, so you can cross-reference what you've collected against the vid's time-stamped links.
The 25 Scar/Outlaw/Dominion/Sentinel/Arcanist Intel reports (EACH) are what really suck because whether they spawn or not is all up to RNG. And if someone on your server grabbed it already, it's gone until it respawns. Best bet to is to learn the kinds of structures they CAN spawn on, then loop around 2 or 3 potential locations waiting for them to respawn. It's awful.
You'll knock out all the destinations chasing the runes and writings. So those are no big deal.
Yeah, it's damn near a complete rework of the game beyond all the cool design assets. Destiny and Division were able to do it, but they also didn't constantly break stuff to do it.
I think the problem here is that people in this thread and on the subreddit believe we've already seen the solution live on the servers: drop more loot. Bioware doesn't think this is the solution, but until they outline what they think the solution is (or even why the proposed solution doesn't) you'll always have people who saw the boosted drop rates and wonder why they can't just have that instead of waiting for potentially months for some other solution that may or may not work as well as an eight-hour hotfix mistake did.
They're protecting their Shard Market. Too many MW Embers drop, and you'll have no need to buy more on the market with coins, which means you'll have plenty of money to buy decals/armors. And rolling your own MW weapons with embers seems like the most viable way to get good rolls these days, since they're keeping the MW/Legendary loot drop chance so low.
I can't imagine they're making a lot of money on the Shard market as is, the amount of paid content they've been rolling out in the store has been paltry at best. And without a thriving currency market, I doubt EA is going to give Bioware a lot of time to fix this game. Bioware are really stuck between a Rock and a GM3 place.
I comment on this game regularly because I really do love the moment-to-moment of it. I'm as equally frustrated on the meta however.
The return on time as you move up the GM levels is off. I'm at the point that I need MWs or Legendaries to move my numbers at all on any character, which means I can have complete runs on GM1 that yield nothing of value, and since XP is rather worthless post 30, the runs are time wasters. Yet GM2 and above is kinda punishing for time / effort vs. return. Unlike D3, which had the clearly defined torment levels, plus rifts with the "earn base gems in this mode, upgrade them in this (more challenging) one" - Anthem doesn't seem to have any of that mentality in it, which is... weird.
I really wish the game had been scaled somewhat like (assume game difficulty is tuned to accommodate these ranges):
GM1: Limited masterwork set can drop! All random stats and perks. You should be using blue buffs by now regularly. Blueprints for purple buffs can drop.
GM2: Full MW list with possible higher point values and better rolls. Legendaries start dropping (limited set). Materials for forging are plentiful. You're expected to be using purple-tier buffs unless you're getting close to fully geared / tuned. MW level buff blueprints can drop.
GM3: Put your tuned build to the test and go for legendary drops (and sets).
Oh and I finally got my first legendary: Victor's Resolve (meh)... for the Ranger... while playing a Colossus. =P
Shades of Barb set drops while playing WD in D3. Sigh.
The return on time as you move up the GM levels is off. I'm at the point that I need MWs or Legendaries to move my numbers at all on any character, which means I can have complete runs on GM1 that yield nothing of value, and since XP is rather worthless post 30, the runs are time wasters. Yet GM2 and above is kinda punishing for time / effort vs. return. Unlike D3, which had the clearly defined torment levels, plus rifts with the "earn base gems in this mode, upgrade them in this (more challenging) one" - Anthem doesn't seem to have any of that mentality in it, which is... weird.
I really wish the game had been scaled somewhat like (assume game difficulty is tuned to accommodate these ranges):
GM1: Limited masterwork set can drop! All random stats and perks. You should be using blue buffs by now regularly. Blueprints for purple buffs can drop.
GM2: Full MW list with possible higher point values and better rolls. Legendaries start dropping (limited set). Materials for forging are plentiful. You're expected to be using purple-tier buffs unless you're getting close to fully geared / tuned. MW level buff blueprints can drop.
GM3: Put your tuned build to the test and go for legendary drops (and sets).
Oh and I finally got my first legendary: Victor's Resolve (meh)... for the Ranger... while playing a Colossus. =P
Shades of Barb set drops while playing WD in D3. Sigh.
I honestly don't understand why none of these "lessons learned" from loot-based GaaS have taken root with the majority of developers of these types of games (not even limited to Anthem, though it's just the latest and one of the most egregious examples). Even given the fact that Anthem had a lengthy development cycle, they should have been learning from the early mistakes of Diablo 3, Destiny and Warframe, and not trying to reinvent the wheel every goddamned time. There just seems to be a well tread cycle now of these games releasing with minimal content, bad loot, bad UI/UX, or bad shared-world mechanics that they then scramble to fix over the course of the first year. For me, the key to these types of games that expect me to play the same content over and over indefinitely is not only a satisfying gameplay/loot loop, but a UI/UX that removes as much of the friction as possible to facilitate that loop. Anthem seems to fail on almost all of those counts, with a dearth of endgame content, a clunky UI, and matchmaking mechanics that feel like they are a decade old. Massive Entertainment seem to be the only ones who have really taken stock of what makes for a good loot shooter experience, and it really shows in the amount of QoL that was present in the Division 2 beta; whether they can deliver on the content and loot aspects remain to be seen, but they seem to be the only ones interested in the nuts-and-bolts details of what makes a good looter.
Just compare the map of The Division 2 and the one in Anthem Freeplay. I don't even know how it's even possible to screw the latter that much with so much missing basic functionalities.
I don't know what the precise gear number would be anymore but I'd go into GM1 once you're equipped in all epics. Some MW weapons from Hard would be nice but not essential.