Mass Effect: Andromeda

Tup3x said:
You know what? You wouldn't feel burned if the content was actually fun and interesting to play... I could replay ME2 over and ovee again but this? I haven't finished this yet because even the combat feels somehow worse than in, say, ME3 (I really hate how much the fov changes when you pull your gun in ME:A).
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The combat feels fine, it's just the environments in which we fight have changed a lot due to the "open world" setup. But I do agree with you on the FOV point. With the vertical FOV multiplier maxed you get a fish eye effect with your gun holstered while it looks fine with it drawn. With the default FOV multiplier it looks fine with your gun holstered, but feels cramped with your gun drawn. But I still find myself using the default in SP while using max FOV in MP.
 
spaceman said:
How the fuck do you guys have time? I don't have any kids and I barely get 30 minutes to an hour a day in tops. lol

I think I am about 16 hours total.
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This is a personal issue. I work two jobs and have no kids. I'm a home owner and I've got a lot of hobbies. I still can scrounge up more time to play games than that.

Samson4EiT said:
I've made it to Voeld so far, in the low 20's viability. I think I will stop playing for awhile though, I'm running into a lot of bugs and performance issues. I'm getting pretty much the same performance at 1080p as I am at 4k. I was swapping my updated save file between my main and htpc going from my main system on 4k and playing it in 5.1 in the living room with a pad. I'm running into the 20's a lot at 1080, whether I vsync or try a framerate limiter the minimum is bad at ultra or a mix of settings, a lot of jumping around from 20's to 60, so its never fluid very long. In the beginning of the game on Eos it wasn't too bad, only ever saw a few gameplay bugs. Issue's pop up quicker though it seems. I've gone back to finish Eos stuff up and I started getting freezing during combat for a few seconds, then it recovers. Since that started happening though I can never play longer than half hour or so without it cropping up. For me it happens if I try using my pistol ADS and in the middle of chain shotgun shots.

I've tried a couple different drivers, newest optional ones resulted in some CTD's that I didn't get with others so those were shortest tested. Seems stuttering/hanging in combat can be triggered in a lot of ways; rapid fire weapons, shooting weak spots, detonating combos with primer skill, pulling up a scope on pistol. A few people report being able to fix the hanging issue if they had Asus software installed, but I just did a thorough check and I don't have any.
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There is definitely something wrong with the game on the performance front. One minute I'm at 60FPS solid and the next I'm in the high 20's. I've figured out some things that can impact your frame rates and what doesn't. Strangely, few of the in game options have much of a performance impact. There are some settings like temporal AA that do have an impact but I'd argue that these improve the visual quality so much that the minor hit is worth it. V-Sync is a big problem with this game. Enabling it will cause you no end of trouble. Adaptive V-Sync works better, but again you will still have issues with it. Enabling V-Sync in any form seems to cause the frame rate to become far more erratic which is the opposite of how it should make the game feel. In windowed mode, in a 1080P window for example the game will run at over 100FPS and show no signs of screen tearing. At 4K, 60Hz I get tearing without V-Sync of some sort on whether my frame rate drops below 60 or goes above it. With V-Sync on the frame rate above 60 doesn't cause tearing. Either way I get tearing under 60. No V-Sync on, with or without a frame limiter, I get tearing. Its really quite annoying. I wish I had a G-Sync monitor around to play with. I'm curious as to whether or not that would help.

Another observation: This game is not smooth at all unless you are at 60FPS. There are a few games out there that feel OK in the sub-60FPS realm and even down to 30FPS. This game feels terrible at 55FPS. That could be related to SLI, I don't know. These are my experiences alone. I also get bad lag in the menus no matter what I do. Alt-tabbing out and back in sometimes helps the frame rate. Also, cut scenes take a huge dive in performance. What's sad is the game seems to run worse after the 1.05 patch than it did before it. Sure many bugs have been fixed, but performance wise this seems worse than it was at launch.

Tup3x said:
You know what? You wouldn't feel burned if the content was actually fun and interesting to play... I could replay ME2 over and ovee again but this? I haven't finished this yet because even the combat feels somehow worse than in, say, ME3 (I really hate how much the fov changes when you pull your gun in ME:A).
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You are practically alone in this thinking. The combat has been praised as the best in the series by far. Despite a few exploits here and there I think it's a solid shooter. The FOV change isn't really any worse than it is in ME2. For some reason the dumb ass developers of Mass Effect 3 decided we didn't need the option to holster our weapons when on mission and as a result you never had the FOV change from center / further back to over the shoulder. Your character took up just as much space and had roughly the same FOV in ME3. You just didn't have the transition between them. ME3's cover system, while better than ME2's is worse than what we have in Andromeda. I hate getting stuck on cover. I can't tell you how many times I got killed because I got stuck on cover in my Insanity runs or on a Gold match in multiplayer.
 
Finished my first playthrough, ended up at level 71 once I had finished everything. I'm sure I missed a quest / mission here and there but at the end the only uncompleted missions in my log were the Roekar manifestos and the upgrade for the Nomad (which I had built but the quest never went away).

Played on hardcore and was tech all the way besides dipping into Combat for some weapon skills and passives, and Biotics to get the passives and make sure I had Sentinel profile rank 6. I found Sentinel to be the best for me, the Engineer profile seemed more geared to using the automated turret and Remnant VI, also the engineer profile gets the tech recharge boost from the little orb that follows you but too often enemies get close and it detonates. I preferred the always on tech recharge bonus from Sentinel.

I thought the game was a good time. It's not at all uncommon for me to buy games with the best intentions but then they sit and rot in my library. This kept my attention and made me want to finish.
 
Tup3x said:
You know what? You wouldn't feel burned if the content was actually fun and interesting to play... I could replay ME2 over and ovee again but this? I haven't finished this yet because even the combat feels somehow worse than in, say, ME3 (I really hate how much the fov changes when you pull your gun in ME:A).
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I don't think so, I burned out of Zelda after the 100+ hour mark as well. Putting that much time into a game over 2 weeks will make you tired of it.
 
spaceman said:
How the fuck do you guys have time? I don't have any kids and I barely get 30 minutes to an hour a day in tops. lol

I think I am about 16 hours total.
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I get about 2 hours in a night, if I'm lucky. My son goes to bed around 8 and my fiance likes to watch her netflix shows at that time.

That's when the gaming commences!
 
For me, gaming is something I do heavily in cycles. There are times where I hardly game at all and other times where If I'm not working I'm usually playing games.
 
Tup3x said:
You know what? You wouldn't feel burned if the content was actually fun and interesting to play... I could replay ME2 over and ovee again but this? I haven't finished this yet because even the combat feels somehow worse than in, say, ME3 (I really hate how much the fov changes when you pull your gun in ME:A).
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You probably haven't played DA:I then. Now that was exhausting. Compared to that this is infinitely more interesting, even the last fetch quest in this. I couldn't wait for da:i to be finally over and I couldn't touch it ever again. I'm not sure it will be the same case with this game. I definitely want to have a go at it with a male ryder as well.
 
M76 said:
You probably haven't played DA:I then. Now that was exhausting. Compared to that this is infinitely more interesting, even the last fetch quest in this. I couldn't wait for da:i to be finally over and I couldn't touch it ever again. I'm not sure it will be the same case with this game. I definitely want to have a go at it with a male ryder as well.
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Scott Ryder's facial animations and some of his dialog isn't nearly as cringe worthy as Sara's.
 
Dan_D said:
For me, gaming is something I do heavily in cycles. There are times where I hardly game at all and other times where If I'm not working I'm usually playing games.
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I get bored too quickly. I can play for an hour then I start watching youtube videos or TV shows. Unless the game is really engaging and I haven't had that experience since Witcher 3.

Well, battlegrounds has kept me pretty occupied lately...
 
M76 said:
You probably haven't played DA:I then. Now that was exhausting. Compared to that this is infinitely more interesting, even the last fetch quest in this. I couldn't wait for da:i to be finally over and I couldn't touch it ever again. I'm not sure it will be the same case with this game. I definitely want to have a go at it with a male ryder as well.
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I have. Somehow managed to finish it and tried to start another playthrough but I just couldn't bare all that borefest again. This has similar issues and for that reason I'm not going to play this until they are finished patching. I probably wouldn't do another playthrough.
 
Tup3x said:
I have. Somehow managed to finish it and tried to start another playthrough but I just couldn't bare all that borefest again. This has similar issues and for that reason I'm not going to play this until they are finished patching. I probably wouldn't do another playthrough.
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I felt the same way about DA:I. I got about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through, and had to force myself to finish.

There were just only so many rifts I could close...
 
Dan_D said:
Scott Ryder's facial animations and some of his dialog isn't nearly as cringe worthy as Sara's.
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Actually my Ryder doesn't seem bad at all. I'm looking constantly like a hawk to catch something weird in the facial animations but it just isn't happening very often. The default Sara Ryder is goofy looking by default without the animations. So not going default specs might actually have helped a lot in that department.
I don't plan on going default with the male either. So I hope that won't be that bad either.
 
Anyone had any trouble with the Dar'hegah system? I went there and the galaxy map flipped out I couldn't move at all after scanning an anomaly. I barely could escape. I thought I'd loose progress. I didn't dare go back for seconds yet.

I also encountered probably the funniest bug yet. Someone stole the nomad from right under our asses. We're driving merrily along the road one second, the next second poof the nomad is gone and we're falling to the ground all three of us,
 
I have always played with Ryder and have not noticed many glitches. The only weirdness I have seen is people sometimes ZOOMING away after a conversation. That was early on though. I have not seen it since.

What dlc is scheduled? Or is it? I don't recall seeing any.
 
spaceman said:
I have always played with Ryder and have not noticed many glitches. The only weirdness I have seen is people sometimes ZOOMING away after a conversation. That was early on though. I have not seen it since.

What dlc is scheduled? Or is it? I don't recall seeing any.
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I doubt they even discuss DLC until the next two months' proposed patch cycle is done.
 
I figured out what was up with this game's performance. I remembered it being better before, and perhaps it was. In the options menu all I had to do was switch the multi-GPU mode from quality to performance. Now I'm getting anywhere between 50-110FPS depending on what's going on. What's funny is I'm getting less tearing with V-Sync off now than I was before.
 
Ok. Welp. My 15 minutes of free time is up. Time for bed. Looking forward to tomorrow. Should get off early. I am determined to turn the clock back a few years and just game the fuck out.
 
Dan_D said:
I figured out what was up with this game's performance. I remembered it being better before, and perhaps it was. In the options menu all I had to do was switch the multi-GPU mode from quality to performance. Now I'm getting anywhere between 50-110FPS depending on what's going on. What's funny is I'm getting less tearing with V-Sync off now than I was before.
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I need to look at this. I'm rolling a 165Hz G-Sync monitor with a pair of 970's, and while performance is usually pretty good in the open world (and really good in multiplayer), I see low framerates around the ship while the CPU and both GPUs are at around 50% utilization.

I keep V-Sync off in game, and forced on from the Nvidia control panel (this is how you enable G-Sync). But at the same time, I do see significantly better framerates with the game windowed.
 
I'm not sure if someone has posted it in here, I kinda skimmed most of it. ;) But, here's a nice shortcut to get back onto the ship while you're out in the world. Press, and hold "T" while you're in the Nomad. You will automatically leave the planet. No need to go all the way back to the ship.

Learned this from that stupid asteroid, and it works on any planet that you can get into the Nomad in. But, is it bad when you have to Google how to get off a planet? I don't remember it saying anything about hitting "T".

Also, if you have the Logitech G910RGB it will automatically change your keyboard. It'll light up just the keys that you can use. And, the 1-3 keys will blink red while it's recharging. Just figured that out this week. OK, so I'm slow. ;)
 
JeffBlair said:
I'm not sure if someone has posted it in here, I kinda skimmed most of it. ;) But, here's a nice shortcut to get back onto the ship while you're out in the world. Press, and hold "T" while you're in the Nomad. You will automatically leave the planet. No need to go all the way back to the ship.

Learned this from that stupid asteroid, and it works on any planet that you can get into the Nomad in. But, is it bad when you have to Google how to get off a planet? I don't remember it saying anything about hitting "T".

Also, if you have the Logitech G910RGB it will automatically change your keyboard. It'll light up just the keys that you can use. And, the 1-3 keys will blink red while it's recharging. Just figured that out this week. OK, so I'm slow. ;)
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Yeah I learned that on the asteroid as well. I had to google how to get off that fucking rock as well. Been using that ever since. It'd have been really nice knowing about this from the get go. Oh how much time I'd have saved on not having to drive back to the tempest from the end of the world .
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I need to look at this. I'm rolling a 165Hz G-Sync monitor with a pair of 970's, and while performance is usually pretty good in the open world (and really good in multiplayer), I see low framerates around the ship while the CPU and both GPUs are at around 50% utilization.

I keep V-Sync off in game, and forced on from the Nvidia control panel (this is how you enable G-Sync). But at the same time, I do see significantly better framerates with the game windowed.
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The performance mode states that it may lower some settings to improve performance. It seems that the Temporal AA isn't as aggressive with this option enabled. I'm wondering if the "quality" mode isn't some sort of higher quality AA. I don't know. It's a weird option and an odd way to word it. I figured "quality" should be fine as my hardware is powerful enough. There is no doubt the game looks slightly better in the quality mode but the performance hit is fucking massive. I can still get 60-80FPS in most places but I'm down in the 20's sometimes on the Tempest and in cut scenes. Set to performance, I'm anywhere between 55 and 110FPS now. I will say that without V-Sync of some kind, you can feel a little micro-stuttering here and there even with the frame rates showing 80+. Then again, with adaptive V-Sync the game never felt smooth unless it was at 60FPS. The menus aren't as slow now either. That makes things like crafting and inventory management much more pleasant.

I still see the lowest frame rates on the tempest with the biggest hits occurring on the bridge or when running to the research station. That's when my FPS hits the 55-59 area.

As a side note, I've been playing with Ansel on this game. I've done a few 8K super resolution screen shots out in the open worlds. They are quite spectacular.
 
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86 hours and first playthrough finished at least in terms of main story and I personally couldn't be happier with the game across the boards and especially after that patch. I still have some "tasks" and odds and ends to finish up.

I personally have no weighty or meaningful complaints to speak of past quibbles like, yes, I wouldn't mind some menus more streamlined and certain bugaboos like that, that everyone agrees on.

I have been very fortunate vs others out there in terms of some of the bugs and glitches I have seen some people complain about.

Frankly it can only get better from here and I'm looking forward to it. :)
 
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I haven't seen the same number of animation glitches or other problems that people generally report with the game. I've seen a fair bit of problems of course, just not as many as most. I think I've figured out why this is to a degree. Cut scenes out of the priority missions allow the player to approach the conversation at different angles. Depending on how fast you got to the NPC, your squad mates could be anywhere as well. Their AI pathing could have them jet packing on top of crates and other things. Because of this, those types of cut scenes are especially error prone. The way I usually click on the NPC's to start conversations generally has my squad mates situated behind me. This takes them out of the picture and thus I don't see them placed awkwardly in those scenes. I've also found that rapid use of the space bar for conversations you don't want to sit through can cause glitches as well. Kallo seems notoriously problematic in his positioning when you do this. Suvi doesn't get out of her chair that much so it doesn't happen with her.

Other animation glitches like Ryder's hands clipping through an equipped, but holstered gun is due to BioWare not tuning the animations. All they had to do was equip Ryder with the largest guns (largest when folded up anyway) and work the arm movements around those. In some cases the 1.05 patch made this worse. The Piranha shotgun used to sit lower on Ryder's thigh than the other shotguns so the bulky parts of it never clipped with Ryder's hand. Now that it sits higher after the patch, it's the worst offender when it comes to these sorts of collisions / clipping issues. That shit actually bothers me as much as the bad facial animations. I will sometimes equip weapons with fewer clipping issues, or not equip some slots at all so I can do cut scenes without these issues. I generally leave the helmets on too to avoid the bad facial animations.
 
JeffBlair said:
I'm not sure if someone has posted it in here, I kinda skimmed most of it. ;) But, here's a nice shortcut to get back onto the ship while you're out in the world. Press, and hold "T" while you're in the Nomad. You will automatically leave the planet. No need to go all the way back to the ship.

Learned this from that stupid asteroid, and it works on any planet that you can get into the Nomad in. But, is it bad when you have to Google how to get off a planet? I don't remember it saying anything about hitting "T".

Also, if you have the Logitech G910RGB it will automatically change your keyboard. It'll light up just the keys that you can use. And, the 1-3 keys will blink red while it's recharging. Just figured that out this week. OK, so I'm slow. ;)
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If you go into the key bindings in the options you'll see it there. I learned about it right away since I like thoroughly going through and changing my options before I start a game. Nothing pisses me off more than a game that throws you into gameplay without allowing you to change the options first.
 
Armenius said:
If you go into the key bindings in the options you'll see it there. I learned about it right away since I like thoroughly going through and changing my options before I start a game. Nothing pisses me off more than a game that throws you into gameplay without allowing you to change the options first.
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Remember that you can use the Tempest's icon on the map just like a forward station too, so you can fast travel straight to the Tempest if desired, then enter the ship.
 
also.... if you are dying because you were not paying attention to the environment.... you can pop open the map and fast travel to somewhere and be fine.
 
Finished everything up today. Last mission was especially great, same for the epilogue.
Might start a new character (not NG+) or move onto Ghost Recon Wildlands.

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I am at 41 hours of game play and I am enjoying the game. The only problem I have had is connecting or staying connected to the multiplayer porting of the game. There is no issues with my internet service provider and my router and modem are working with no issues. I play BF4 online with no issues.
 
I tried it round a friends and like it a lot so now own it too :)

There was a strange performance issue that occurred at exactly the time I first went outdoors, framerate tanked and jumped all over the place.
It was most unsmooth and averaged around 40fps on a 1080ti !
It took me a while to realise the game had changed my display mode to something strange, a bit less than 1080p.
Putting it back to 1080p made it very smooth despite being higher res.

So worth checking what res it has set if you have performance issues.
 
Nenu said:
I tried it round a friends and like it a lot so now own it too :)

There was a strange performance issue that occurred at exactly the time I first went outdoors, framerate tanked and jumped all over the place.
It was most unsmooth and averaged around 40fps on a 1080ti !
It took me a while to realise the game had changed my display mode to something strange, a bit less than 1080p.
Putting it back to 1080p made it very smooth despite being higher res.

So worth checking what res it has set if you have performance issues.
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You have to be careful with resolution scaling. It will set this for any resolution south of 1920x1080 by default.
 
So I finished as well.
64 hours played according to Origin.
96% completion. I did not complete the lowliest fetch quests, but I did everything else. Except for the quests that bugged out and aren't finishable.
Topped at Level 60

I'll write my full review tomorrow. Which is today as it is 1 am here.

Until then all I can say is that I'm eagerly waiting for what the andromeda galaxy throws at our feet next. And I'm already planning my next playtrough as the male ryder.
 
Girlfriend bought me an MSI 1080 Ti (Gaming X) for helping her with some urgent work stuff. Chick's a keeper! (y)

It's been several weeks since I last played MEA, so I'm going to start fresh with a new game. Just installed the new card and downloaded the patch. Gonna try to approach it with an open mind and make the best of it.
 
M76 said:
Yeah I learned that on the asteroid as well. I had to google how to get off that fucking rock as well. Been using that ever since. It'd have been really nice knowing about this from the get go. Oh how much time I'd have saved on not having to drive back to the tempest from the end of the world .
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Even using fast travel took a while. Fast travel to the Tempest->wait on load screen->run to the Tempest, and board -> wait forever on launch cut -> finally be able to do something.

Makes you want to get a book during all that.
 
Now this is strange.
I've started a new game and Alec Ryder looks completely different. Did they change the character in the patch, or is it randomized? WTF?
 
M76 said:
Now this is strange.
I've started a new game and Alec Ryder looks completely different. Did they change the character in the patch, or is it randomized? WTF?
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I didn't notice a difference between release and 1.05, and my second playthrough has been entirely on 1.05. What do you mean by 'completely'?
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I didn't notice a difference between release and 1.05, and my second playthrough has been entirely on 1.05. What do you mean by 'completely'?
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I mean different face, different skin tone, different everything except for hair style. Doesn't even resemble what I saw in my first go. It's as if the face customization you apply to your own character also applies to Alec.

Come to think of it. I think I understand what they were trying to do. They tried to mimic some family resemblance this way. But I think it didn't work out best. With my first playtrough It didn't even occur me that something like this is in place, because there was absolutely no resemblance between my Ryder and Alec.

And now when I play the male version he looks like Johnny Bravo.
 
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Played all mass effects twicce except the 3rd one, actually liked the 3rd mostly due to one of the dlc toon, yall think i will enjoy andromeda?
 
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