BioWare Is Attempting to Fix Mass Effect: Andromeda

Megalith

Megalith

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BioWare will be releasing a patch on Thursday that will improve the Mass Effect: Andromeda experience somewhat: changes include tweaks to the inventory system, improvements to the appearance of characters’ eyes, movement animation fixes, and refinements to matchmaking. The company says that it will be releasing additional patches over the course of two months to address other important issues plaguing the game, such as improving male romance options for Scott Ryder.

Animation glitches, framerate drops and other bugs have marred the launch window, while general complaints about gameplay oddities have also been frequent. Things got so bad that BioWare promised an update on support last week. Today, we have the details on the patch, and planned future additions to the game. Coming this Thursday is a patch that "addresses technical fixes" like crashes and improves performance, and also adds the tweaks to gameplay and systems.
 
Potential is just a waste of energy, let's see what you can do not what you can say.
 
Good on them, but this shit should have been handled in QA. How did they not realize that sitting through multiple cinematics just to visit a new planet / system was going to piss people off.

I actively avoided space travel in Mass Effect because of the unskippable animations.
 
NeoNemesis said:
Good on them, but this shit should have been handled in QA. How did they not realize that sitting through multiple cinematics just to visit a new planet / system was going to piss people off.

I actively avoided space travel in Mass Effect because of the unskippable animations.
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Assuming they had any QA.
 
Armenius said:
Assuming they had any QA.
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...you may be onto something...

There are several incredibly obvious mistakes that should have been ironed out long before it hit the shelf.

It's a shame really, because I loved the game, but there were just so many cut corners.
 
If I remember correctly this game was supposed to be in development for 5 more months. For the most part, it was released way earlier than the team wanted it to.
 
RogueTadhg said:
If I remember correctly this game was supposed to be in development for 5 more months. For the most part, it was released way earlier than the team wanted it to.
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I always prefer a game be left in the stove to cook to completion. Unfortunately a large public company like EA has too many people who want a quicker ROI.
 
RogueTadhg said:
If I remember correctly this game was supposed to be in development for 5 more months. For the most part, it was released way earlier than the team wanted it to.
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If that's the case then EA are idiots.

Five more months would have been more than enough time to fix the animations and lip syncing issues.

The rest of the game was fine for the most part. I'd argue that the missions could have been a little more interactive and a little less scanner dependent.
 
So will they fix the same face for all aliens issue?
 
why would EA or any other publisher want to release a game earlier for?...it makes no sense...it's not like fans are going to care if the game came out 5 months from now...it only becomes an issue for fans once the game is announced but before the game is officially announced there is no game coming so it doesn't matter what the date is (does that make sense?)...so why wouldn't every publisher just give the developer as much time as needed?
 
M76 said:
So will they fix the same face for all aliens issue?
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I wouldn't count on it. That would require the creation of new assets including models, textures and animations. Then they would have to make sure each one is integrated into all of the other content that already exists without creating other problems.

As much as it bothers me, in all honesty, I'd rather them just fix all the bugs and QOL issues. Learn from the mistakes made this time and make a better product next time. Though they should have known better after the ME3 debacle...
 
Armenius said:
I wouldn't count on it. That would require the creation of new assets including models, textures and animations. Then they would have to make sure each one is integrated into all of the other content that already exists without creating other problems.

As much as it bothers me, in all honesty, I'd rather them just fix all the bugs and QOL issues. Learn from the mistakes made this time and make a better product next time. Though they should have known better after the ME3 debacle...
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Cannot learn from your mistakes if its a whole new team.
 
I'll agree with many, while playing through the game although much of it is enjoyable, due to the issues within the game it feels like a mid-late stage alpha or early stage open beta at best.

Well I will say this for them...

Instead of starting out on the X-Box 360 & spitting out a subpar PC Port, it runs almost as horribly on X-Box One / PS4 & PS4pro / PC.

Many many bugs have been submitted, hopefully some of the more frustrating ones are taken care of when the patch launches on Thursday.
 
They also need to fix the female Ryder face. She just looks... off. Male Ryder looks ok but the female one is strange. Extra strange, given that the models were based off of actual human models.
 
Armenius said:
One doesn't need intimate knowledge of the code base or design process to learn what wrong in another project.
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'That wasn't me, I'm a different person and my thoughts/ideas are way better than theirs.'

I think your over estimating ego, particularly given the snippets of the MEA dev team that have surfaced. I think entitled might be a decent word for it.
 
Armenius said:
One doesn't need intimate knowledge of the code base or design process to learn what wrong in another project.
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The problem here is vastly different to ME3's "artistic integrity"

Unless they choose not to fix the ugly effect due to the same reason.
 
Sycraft said:
They also need to fix the female Ryder face. She just looks... off. Male Ryder looks ok but the female one is strange. Extra strange, given that the models were based off of actual human models.
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Yeah, but then they purposely made her look like a dopey fucking android that's trying to fake human emotion.
 
meh, i'll replay ME2 & 3 then get this in discount when the kinks are ironed out. I dunno, I just don't feel as excited for this as for when I first saw the previews of ME2 & 3. Man I wish demo's were a thing again.......
 
The game has issues that is for sure, but so far I am enjoying myself. It does feel rushed though. I feel like if it had another year it would have been just about right, but I am guessing EA needed something to spruce up their Q1 earnings.
 
Oh, if they break PS4 save games I will be pissed and sell this shit on ebay asap. I am NOT starting over.

I made my own female Ryder and she looked good in the model maker... but in the real game she doesn't look so great. And you can't even CHANGE THE MAKEUP once in game. Stupid.

I'm not hating it, but there is some seriously strange shit going on with the lighting and lipsync etc. I was recently replaying ME2 on PC and it was better.
 
Ea is run by corporate asshats that never get it. A game is ready when it is done. Releasing it unfinished leads to what we see here. They never learn. The issues with battlefront never got fixed. Bf1 with its server issues never got fixed. Both games could have been runaway smash hits if they had been allowed to be fully developed by people with a clue. Learn from your mistakes? Not ea.
 
polonyc2 said:
why would EA or any other publisher want to release a game earlier for?...it makes no sense...it's not like fans are going to care if the game came out 5 months from now...it only becomes an issue for fans once the game is announced but before the game is officially announced there is no game coming so it doesn't matter what the date is (does that make sense?)...so why wouldn't every publisher just give the developer as much time as needed?
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Development time costs them money. So, if they send their game out 60% finished, people will still pre-order, and many more will buy it after launch because it's the next big thing. Then, they are getting money coming in for this "early access" version while they finish the real game.
As a game fan, I think this stinks, but it is a business. This may not be the optimum formula, but "take as much time as you want" is what leads to vaporware.
 
Don't take as long as you want but set specific goal dates and manage them intelligently. I suppose it comes down to having a good project manager to balance expectations and what is possible while still releasing a finished product. Who knows what ea's process is? Seriously. Is it just money based and fuck the consumer? I really believe battlefront could have been huge and they really missed on that. There seems to be ahuge disconnect be ea management and making a good game. Especially in regards to multiplayer. They just do not learn or listen.
 
It's cause company's and their share holders only care about short term gains. When it comes to big name games they know they will sell a boat load even if the game is half finished. Doing this cuts down on development cost. They will move the majority of the team onto the next thing and leave a skeleton crew to fix the mess that is left. Sad but that is how it is when a company is ran by suits.
 
polonyc2 said:
why would EA or any other publisher want to release a game earlier for?...it makes no sense...it's not like fans are going to care if the game came out 5 months from now...it only becomes an issue for fans once the game is announced but before the game is officially announced there is no game coming so it doesn't matter what the date is (does that make sense?)...so why wouldn't every publisher just give the developer as much time as needed?
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You must be new here!

God/EA decreed 'the game' would be released at a set Day and time amid much hulabalou and rejoicing!

The Day came and there was much glitches and gnashing of teeth.

God/EA said holy Patches are forth coming and beautiful DLC ! (payableinexchangeforfirstbornmale;daughtersacceptedonatwoforonebasis)

And so the gamers forgave EA and declared 'meh'
 
NeoNemesis said:
Good on them, but this shit should have been handled in QA. How did they not realize that sitting through multiple cinematics just to visit a new planet / system was going to piss people off.

I actively avoided space travel in Mass Effect because of the unskippable animations.
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That's not really what QA is for. The things you mention would more be the responsibility of the Design team. QA, for better or worse, is agnostic to the quality of a game and pacing issues.

Considering the scope, QA team did a pretty decent job for MEA from what I've seen. The number of glitches (not including animation which, again, wouldn't necessarily be QA's responsibility) were not too bad compared to many other AAA titles recently.

That said, someone from QA may still have done a solid by raising their hand saying "yeah, it works, but it still sucks" :)
 
Rahh said:
This is why you don't pre-order or even in this case buy when first release. ESPECIALLY FROM EA! I'm so sick of customers giving in to these developers pumping out unfinished games.
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I'll second this. I had the fucking thing pre-ordered, cancelled last minute. Then bought it on Green Man Gaming for $43 less than a week later.
 
harmattan said:
That's not really what QA is for. The things you mention would more be the responsibility of the Design team. QA, for better or worse, is agnostic to the quality of a game and pacing issues.

Considering the scope, QA team did a pretty decent job for MEA from what I've seen. The number of glitches (not including animation which, again, wouldn't necessarily be QA's responsibility) were not too bad compared to many other AAA titles recently.

That said, someone from QA may still have done a solid by raising their hand saying "yeah, it works, but it still sucks" :)
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Um, done QA. It is. To some degree.

It's QA's responsibility to report bugs. It's dev responsibility to fix them. The dev(s) that worked on this should have caught this themselves before releasing it to the build. This is a critical A bug and should not have made it to release candidate as is.

It's been a while since I worked in QA, but there's certainly a standard to be upheld. You wouldn't believe the hours and lengths my team went to to find bugs and the unbelievable ones we found to the point where development was just 'wow, how did you reproduce that'.

That being said there is a lot of pressure from management to release games. In this day of "oh we can patch that in later", some things slide. But with that said, this is absolutely unacceptable.

Source: worked a few years doing QA on AAA games for a large publisher / producer. No, not EA.
 
If you can wait this is a great example of a game worth waiting until November sales to play. Buy it on Black Friday for $29, and enjoy a fully patched game with great driver performance. For the price it will be a fun experience and if you don't like something about the game there are plenty of reviews ahead of time to know what you are getting into.
 
Minimum Viable Product, a useful strategy in consumer electronics development but in gaming it has a lot of negative backlash.
 
If it's released undercooked, they get shit for it and twats harass developers on social media. If they announce a delay, twats start posting death threats on social media, and then still give it shit when it's done. One way or another it was never going satisfy some people. Personally I would put it as my joint second favourite Mass Effect after 2, tied with 1.
 
Stop the pre-orderes!!! Stop buy half baked garbage!! And then maybe publishers and devs would finally stop sending out bug filled garbage to maybe be patched latter.
 
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>improvements to the appearance of characters’ eyes,

Hahaha, how did they not catch that one?
 
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