dr_rus
Member
Own IP which doesn't sell have no value.
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The Mass Effect Community Thread |OT2|
- Thread starter Patryn
- Start date
Own IP which doesn't sell have no value.
It's an IP that does demonstrably sell and blows people's dicks off critically. One of four entries getting a lukewarm commercial and critical response doesn't change that. EA knows that people are interested in the IP, my point is they'll more likely deal with the failings of this particular production both organizationally and technologically than freeze it permanently. The latter seems extraordinary excessive and misguided.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Wut?
I don't have a problem with the writing. What the hell does COD have to do with anything?
My thoughts exactly, especially the bolded. Give us a great ensemble cast and have them have cool adventures in the milky way. It is what ME2 did so good: don't care much about the overaching story (only 4 missions with actual collectors!) and just dick around in the already established world.
Not that I don't like MEA, but I don't care even half as much about Andromeda as a galaxy as I did about the Milky Way. I wanted to see more of Illium, Thessia, Omega etc.
Ivory Samoan
Gold Member
Lots of people in here pushing the panic button on Andromeda already, I think it's better to wait on sales numbers first before freaking out - if it sells well, the reviews will be a thing of the past - seemed to be tracking well before release.
They should release the alternate version of the launch trailer with Sara in it soon too; the general gaming public don't go by meme universe, they go by simple marketing more often than not, don't neglect the casuals BioWare.
Just look at Dragon Age 2, that was an abomination (literally and figuratively), and didn't kill off the series and people still bought Inquisition in droves. I'm really loving my time in Andromeda, 30 hours in and taking my time: enjoying myself in space.
They should release the alternate version of the launch trailer with Sara in it soon too; the general gaming public don't go by meme universe, they go by simple marketing more often than not, don't neglect the casuals BioWare.
Just look at Dragon Age 2, that was an abomination (literally and figuratively), and didn't kill off the series and people still bought Inquisition in droves. I'm really loving my time in Andromeda, 30 hours in and taking my time: enjoying myself in space.
SliChillax
Member
Location isn't the problem but it's not making me fall in love like the milky way did. So many unexplored places that they teased us with in the milky way and we didn't see enough of them. Hell, we didn't see enough of the places that we visited in the original trilogy and now they're just taking it away from us. I seriously hope we can go back to the milky way, one way or another.
Um, the general gaming public take everything from the memes. With things like Pewdiepies video having over 3million subs, and the vast proliferation of images out there, I wouldn't be so sure.
Have you played Horizon? ME is quite pretty, but it pales in comparison to that unfortunately.
I do think one of the things hurting this game is that it's been released at the tail end of the best release period I can remember in my entire life of gaming. The sheer number of extremely polished, utterly superb games in the last 3 months is completely ridiculous and ME unfortunately is only standing out for the wrong reasons.
Eh, I'm sure the fans would forgive them for just retconning that entirely. Klingons didn't have ridges in Star Trek TOS until Next Generation and the later TOS movies, then had them again in Enterprise (prequel to TOS). Not sure you'd get a real Mass Effect feel from the first contact war, though, as you'd have no aliens on your squad.
dr_rus
Member
The problem with this line of thinking is in assuming that EA can and want to fix whatever went wrong with MEA instead of just opting for a higher selling power of Star Wars brand. The second option would require exactly zilch of effort on EA's part and is thus immensely more attractive from a business point of view. And again, putting some IP on hold while concentrating on another one is pretty much what EA does all the time - should we review the history of Medal of Honor for example?
The truth is that ME has been going downwards for three successive releases now, not one. It's very questionable that EA/Bioware even has what it takes to produce something akin to ME1-ME2 right now (I'm specifically not saying ME2 only as without ME1 it's just would be a mediocre shooter in my opinion). The sole fact that Edmonton ME team is working on a Destiny clone tells me that EA doesn't really want to make classic wRPGs anymore, and thus shelving ME after MEA in favor of some Star Wars ARGP seems like a perfectly possible outcome.
Um, ME2 in absolutely no objective way can be described as "going down". It had a better critical reception, and sold more. I know there's a minority of folks here who miss the MAKO and the empty worlds of ME1, but objectively Me2 was a smash hit for Bioware in every respect.
Barring the ending, ME3 blew everyone away to a far greater degree than ME1 too, was a commercial success too. The reality of the situation is that ME games have been in a progressive incline in commercial and critical success, it's only now in the fourth entry that they've stumbled with a lukewarm reception. Frankly it makes no business sense to kill it in favor of a 3rd party IP. Disney's no less.
FrontalMonk
Banned
I think the problem I'm running into with Andromeda is I end up on the fence of whether or not I'm seeing through the design to the ugly bits beneath. Like, most of the time I feel like I'm really getting lost in the setting...I mean beyond all else, it's Mass Effect through and through.
But there are times where I wonder how much was sacrificed as "lessons learned" from ME2 and 3 or from rough development from a new group. Like, how many systems do you go to where there's only like one or two anomalys in the whole system? How many decisions do you *actually* make through dialogue, and how much of it is just snarky vs. professional reactions to say the same thing, with nothing actually changing? It feels like the primary takeaway the devs had from ME3 and all the problems they had dealing with the decisions you made in ME1 and 2 going into 3 was to say "well, what if we make it *feel* like the player is making decisions, but we only have one path to follow, and that way when we do Andromeda 2 we don't have to worry about all these decision trees." And as a backup to that, it also feels like they wanted to make this big huge galaxy to explore, but then didn't really think about how to fill it, so...they just...didn't.
But there are times where I wonder how much was sacrificed as "lessons learned" from ME2 and 3 or from rough development from a new group. Like, how many systems do you go to where there's only like one or two anomalys in the whole system? How many decisions do you *actually* make through dialogue, and how much of it is just snarky vs. professional reactions to say the same thing, with nothing actually changing? It feels like the primary takeaway the devs had from ME3 and all the problems they had dealing with the decisions you made in ME1 and 2 going into 3 was to say "well, what if we make it *feel* like the player is making decisions, but we only have one path to follow, and that way when we do Andromeda 2 we don't have to worry about all these decision trees." And as a backup to that, it also feels like they wanted to make this big huge galaxy to explore, but then didn't really think about how to fill it, so...they just...didn't.
Retrofluxed
Member
Bioware isn't exactly swimming in IPs. The Destiny ode quite frankly better be the "next big thing" because even though Bioware is my favorite developer, I won't be buying it. I have children, I'm married and I work full time, I don't exactly have time for this pseudo MMO bullshit everyone is trying to push these days.
If MEA doesn't sell well, it will probably be given a cool down period of maybe a few years before development of the next installment kicks into high gear. Montreal will be given the reigns again, but with better oversight. If they fuck that one up, watch out.
In the meantime, I'm sure the next DA is well under development, with an aim to release in 2019. The MEA followup, or ME4 will probably be tentatively slated for 2022 if this one sells poorly. If not, we'll probably see another in 2020.
If MEA doesn't sell well, it will probably be given a cool down period of maybe a few years before development of the next installment kicks into high gear. Montreal will be given the reigns again, but with better oversight. If they fuck that one up, watch out.
In the meantime, I'm sure the next DA is well under development, with an aim to release in 2019. The MEA followup, or ME4 will probably be tentatively slated for 2022 if this one sells poorly. If not, we'll probably see another in 2020.
I don't expect another ME for 5 years at the earliest regardless how how this does. I don't expect them under any circumstances to go back to the milky way either. I think 2019 is the earliest date for DA too. New IP probably first to arrive.
Yeah, I believe EA wants 1 Bioware game a year, so 2018 should be new IP and 2019 should be DA again.
I only really care about DA4.
Babylon 5 it, javik goes back in time and helps humans win the first contact war.
The mass effect feel seems like it will be something hard to define going forward. Seems like a greater focus on combat is where things are now. So that ME feel is biotics, omnitool, and milky way aliens.
DOWN
Banned
If this is considered a DA2 kind of misstep then I guess we may get the ME answer to DAI next, with some ME Archives import but only loose ties to the team itself of Andromeda while a new cast carries on with the Andromeda Initiative plot
That's fine by me because DAI was the best thing that could have happened to that franchise
That's fine by me because DAI was the best thing that could have happened to that franchise
I'm maybe two hours past the trial and this has not been broached or even mentioned yet so I'm more asking if this was in a codex or maybe material I missed. Is the implication that the other race's Pathfinders also have SAM access or some equivalent? I'm still trying to wrap my head around why the Pathfinder itself would be important at all.
Agreed. DA3 has issues that Laidlaw has made​ clear he's very aware of. Throw Kennedy​ into the mix and DA4 looks like it could be great.
FrontalMonk
Banned
Alec built SAM into all the arks, but I don't think any of the other Pathfinders can uh, do what you can do. As far as I know, they're just highly trained specialists, they don't get "a little help from SAM".
oh......maybe I should just do this instead lol.....that way I can enjoy the game a bit more. I literally ran the first planet (not Eos) with my scanner out and was like god damn this sucks.
Switching to the xbox due to friends and multiplayer. PS4 Pro version didn't seem like as big of a jump as I thought compared to some other offerings out there. So I might as well enjoy it with buddies. So was reading up on things to make the experience more enjoyable of going through the planet again.
Man Called Aerodynamics
Member
Did the Nexus arrive in Andromeda early, or did the arks arrive late?
Man Called Aerodynamics
Member
I just checked out the Nexus Uprising novel on Amazon, and there are only two reviews, one of which is a diatribe about how Mass Effect is trying to teach men that they're inferior to women or some trash. Something about this series really gets under the skin of these trolls.
Yep. Last week I answered some questions for an article about LGBT representation in BioWare games, it's on the french website of Le Monde, if anyone is interested/can read it. There's some good insight in there, one person mentions that he started to realize he was bisexual when he tried the sex option with Zevran in Dragon Age, that's pretty cool I think
I'm glad BioWare doesn't back down on LGBT representation at least, even if they constantly make mistakes (and they did some again in Andromeda apparently) The journalist mentions the gamergate and I was pleasantly surprised because it has been ignored by most of the gaming press outside the US and it's really frustrating. There was enough negativity around the game as is, but the worst trolls are out in full force now that the game is out.
Ivory Samoan
Gold Member
I actually think ME:A is more beautiful than Horizon (but not really a fair fight, since I'm playing ME:A in 4K upscaled/60fps and Horizon was on my Pro in checker4K/30fps).
Both are amazing looking, and ME:A has wonky facials, where Horizon had wonky lip-sync : love them both though, although after 35 hours in ME:A, I'm preferring it over Horizon (put 45 hours into that playthrough).
ChemicalCutthroat
Member
I had the worst luck introducing the game to my wife last night. She's bad at shooters, so when we do a Mass Effect playthrough I do all the combat and she does all the decision making. She went and made her own Sara Ryder... aaaand we went back to the default after the first cut scene. Once the animation started she looked like Chunk from The Goonies.
Then, every time we went and tried to load in the opening cutscene, it apparently took the save profile from my playthrough and overlapped it onto her NEW playthrough. When it opens and Ryder is sitting on the medical bench getting checked out, Greer was also in the exact same place, clipping through her character constantly. We hope after the zero G sequence it would fix itself... nope, it now had the people from the opening sequence, along with the floating crap still hanging around, as well as all the people from the post Habitat 7 experience ALSO there at the same time.
Which mean we had freshly awake Fisher, sitting right in front of "I Just Got Beat Up" Fisher.
It was uniquely bizarre and irritating.
I closed everything down, did a hard reboot, and tried a third time, and it finally sorted everything out. But fuck was that buggy.
Haven't had a problem since and I'm really enjoying it. Looking forward to MP with a few of the GAF folks tonight.
Then, every time we went and tried to load in the opening cutscene, it apparently took the save profile from my playthrough and overlapped it onto her NEW playthrough. When it opens and Ryder is sitting on the medical bench getting checked out, Greer was also in the exact same place, clipping through her character constantly. We hope after the zero G sequence it would fix itself... nope, it now had the people from the opening sequence, along with the floating crap still hanging around, as well as all the people from the post Habitat 7 experience ALSO there at the same time.
Which mean we had freshly awake Fisher, sitting right in front of "I Just Got Beat Up" Fisher.
It was uniquely bizarre and irritating.
I closed everything down, did a hard reboot, and tried a third time, and it finally sorted everything out. But fuck was that buggy.
Haven't had a problem since and I'm really enjoying it. Looking forward to MP with a few of the GAF folks tonight.
Heckler456
Banned
Alright, that's the book finished right in time for launch here in Europe!
Jimmyfenix
Member
there were talk of amazon placements in the UK it's still number 1 and 2 currently since the game comes out tomorrow but in USA it's dropping and MLB . Persona and KH are over taking it.
in terms of best sellers of the year mass effect is still at number 20
in terms of best sellers of the year mass effect is still at number 20
Yep. Last week I answered some questions for an article about LGBT representation in BioWare games, it's on the french website of Le Monde, if anyone is interested/can read it. There's some good insight in there, one person mentions that he started to realize he was bisexual when he tried the sex option with Zevran in Dragon Age, that's pretty cool I think
It showed up in my twitter feed this morning. Pretty cool article, as much as I enjoy the romance in Bioware games I never really track their evolution from game to game. And yeah there's never too much attention on those gamergate guys, the bane of modern gaming culture.
The release of the game, even if it had been uber-polished, was still not idea. We're in a post-Witcher 3, post-Horizon, post-Breath of the Wild world. Those games are still fresh in our minds and are the new standard-bearers for a lot of what we're comparing ME:A against. "How does the quest structure compare to The Witcher? How do the visuals stack up to Horizon? How does the open-world compare to Zelda?"
The fact the game is undercooked and plagued by so many technical issues that well and truly DO suck people like me out of the experience does it no favors. When I'm replaying Mass Effect 1 right now and NPC animations and expressions are superior to a majority of what I'm seeing in Andromeda, something clearly went wrong.
If they're going to patch the game to even the standards of the original trilogy, there's a mountain of work ahead of them.
wesleyshark
Banned
Finally got up to a high quality loot chest high up on a rock I could see from the ground level on Eos. Took some jetpack cheese to get up to it.
Linked its location in case you want to find it on your own unspoiled.
http://imgur.com/mlhPSS6
http://imgur.com/15FDro7
Linked its location in case you want to find it on your own unspoiled.
http://imgur.com/mlhPSS6
http://imgur.com/15FDro7
The tone is definitely more humorous than the previous games. There is an awful banter where Ryder tries to mimic an Invictor. It's bad.
The most annoying and repeatable bug so far is enemies clipping/disappearing through structures and being impossible to kill unless you singularity explode them and often this glitch prevents you from progressing since enemies must all be dead for the event to take place.
The most annoying and repeatable bug so far is enemies clipping/disappearing through structures and being impossible to kill unless you singularity explode them and often this glitch prevents you from progressing since enemies must all be dead for the event to take place.
Heckler456
Banned
I agree with everything you're saying, but this is profoundly delusional. The game is out now, there is no need to be hyperbolic anymore. The animations are subpar in some sense, but they're far beyond what Mass Effect 1 managed, if only in the combat and general locomotion alone.
In terms of conversation animations, it's not hyperbole at all. There's something flat out wrong with default male Ryder - he doesn't look right at all, he's constantly got weird expressions on his face or his eyes are moving oddly. How the hell they turned a model that good looking into the peculiar shaped face in game is beyond me.
Also, there's enough comparison videos out there right now to see it's not exaggeration - NPCs in conversation scenes move and look a lot more natural than in ME3. Their heads and eyes move for one thing.
Also, there's enough comparison videos out there right now to see it's not exaggeration - NPCs in conversation scenes move and look a lot more natural than in ME3. Their heads and eyes move for one thing.
Heckler456
Banned
Myeah... No. Cherrypicked footage doesn't convince (or at least, it doesn't convince me) when you're making such outrageous statements. Requires a preponderance of evidence. I just played an hour, because I have to get to bed soon, and I can already think of a handful of scenes that would barely be possible during any of the games in the trilogy. The doctor checking you up, the weightlessness scene, the bridge scene, planetfall. And in terms of facial animations, while it's clearly the weakest part of this game's animation-game, it's still very evidently better than the trilogy. Just because you're able to handpick some choice animations due to the fact that facial animations don't really evolve as much as pretty much any other graphical effect, even other types of animations, that doesn't meant that "Mass Effect 1 has better animations than Andromeda, full stop!" Just the fact that they simply have a tremendously larger amount of available space for different types of animations should tell you how ridiculous it is to claim that, overall, Andromeda's animations are worse than Mass Effect 1's.
The reason that the facial animations look "bad" in Andromeda, and better in some very specific cases in Mass Effect 3 is the same reason why Andromeda and even Horizon's facial animations look worse than The Witcher's, overall. It's because The Witcher 3 aimed very conservatively, and knew what they were doing with the means that they had. By the time Mass Effect 3 came out, they knew what they were doing, which causes some scenes where it's just a talking head to look pretty convincing, just like in those PS2 games like Silent Hill people like to throw up as a comparison. In Andromeda's case, what I'm seeing is that they may have aimed too high, and certain rigging shit or whatever just didn't work out, and they weren't able to use a whole bunch of capture data and had to last-minute jerry-rig everything. Not that specifically, but something just seemed to have gone wrong with Andromeda's facial animation; it's not a meticulously pre-determined production in terms of the facial animations. But all-in-all, it's evidently still more complex than something like Mass Effect 1.
Couple bugs that may or may not be common knowledge that I came upon (Multiplayer).
There's a bug when you join as a guest that makes it difficult to do certain actions. When you try to disarm an object it will constantly break even if no one is around.
Stealth Grid is also affected by this. When you join as a guest sometimes you may notice that Stealth only lasts a second before immediately breaking with nothing around. Occasionally stealth grid bugs out and causes near perma invisibility for your teammates.
In short, hosting a game tends to give you the least amount of problems (outside of client crashes).
Still having fun, but my god does it suck when I crash on the rewards results screen and get no xp and no credits.
There's a bug when you join as a guest that makes it difficult to do certain actions. When you try to disarm an object it will constantly break even if no one is around.
Stealth Grid is also affected by this. When you join as a guest sometimes you may notice that Stealth only lasts a second before immediately breaking with nothing around. Occasionally stealth grid bugs out and causes near perma invisibility for your teammates.
In short, hosting a game tends to give you the least amount of problems (outside of client crashes).
Still having fun, but my god does it suck when I crash on the rewards results screen and get no xp and no credits.
GGNKovalski
Member
About ME:A:
About 15 hours in and I'm loving it so far. I think the whole facial animation thing is blown way out of proportion. Besides a few animations here and there and one really awful looking character (Addison), I think their fine. Not great and they could/should be better but I just stopped noticing them after a bit (just like the OT). I also like most of the writing. It seems more light hearted than the OT. A lot of joking around and sarcastic remarks. I enjoy it.
This game also manages to make me feel like a small insignificant being in this huge galaxy. Something ME1 did really well.
About 15 hours in and I'm loving it so far. I think the whole facial animation thing is blown way out of proportion. Besides a few animations here and there and one really awful looking character (Addison), I think their fine. Not great and they could/should be better but I just stopped noticing them after a bit (just like the OT). I also like most of the writing. It seems more light hearted than the OT. A lot of joking around and sarcastic remarks. I enjoy it.
This game also manages to make me feel like a small insignificant being in this huge galaxy. Something ME1 did really well.
Ivory Samoan
Gold Member
When you're playing it, it seems fine to me and feels like Mass Effect. I'm 38 hours in and loving it, the world they've created is great and I am enjoying myself more than I did in Horizon for sure, even though that game is amazing (put 45 hours in on that).
I get that the animations of the characters can pull some fans out of the adventure, but I guess I'm lucky in that it doesn't affect me: graphics are meh for me, it's all about my overarching feel for the game, and Andromeda is delivering that through it's storytelling.
After coming off my 10th full trilogy run just prior to this, I can say with full confidence that I personally like the 'overarching' story of this better than ME2's and ME3's (not ME1's, that's miles ahead of all of them), the moment to moment storytelling I prefer to ME3's (ME2 was king here and it feels about the same as ME1) and the environmental storytelling is best here - ambient chatter about things, little awesome touches and details plus the subtle yet very noticeable homages to the trilogy spilled throughout....Andromeda does this best (with ME3 being the worst, that game felt extremely rushed in that regard, ME1 was very sparse and ME2 was pretty good for this).
I'm constantly seeing critic and fan's scathing opinions of the game, and thinking "are you playing the same game as me?" - makes me one sad Volus, even though I know it shouldn't.
No.
It's a major drawcard for game sales as it adds value, and us, as fans, want this game to sell well: unless you don't want ME to continue as a SP franchise.
The game glitched on me and now I think I may have to restart the entire game. I died near the end of A Better Beginning on EOS and the game's checkpoint system put me back across the bridge. Problem is I can't activate the switch anymore to extend the bridge and I can no longer get across. WTF was Bioware doing to miss this glitch?!
BizzyBum
Member
I had a similar glitch happen during the Eos vault. You don't have a bunch of auto saves to go back to?
Typical first galaxy problems.