Mass Effect: Andromeda

Tup3x said:
I'm struggling with this more than DA:I mostly because this has worse quality issues. I did try to start another DA:I playthroughs but just couldn't finish after putting a hour or two in it.
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The main thing that separates ME:A from DA:I for me is the combat. In ME:A the combat is pretty good. In DA:I it was appaling. So at least the combat is enjoyable in ME:A on it's own merit, but it's not enough to get me to finish the game again, at least not yet.
 
M76 said:
The backlash for me3's ending was just as bad, it didn't stop them from releasing three dlcs for the game. But of course the difference is that in the case of me3 the dlcs were already planned and under development when the main game came out. Now there were no planned DLCs I think.
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I'm thinking they are doing this because of the backlash from ME3's ending plus MEA if they rush out one more game that would be 3 strikes

im just guessing though. Really makes me sad ME2 is still one of the best games I have played, ME3 was great till that last mission lol

wonder if we will get any DLC for MEA though. I'm sure they had some planed. ether way this just bums me out :/
 
Even if we did get DLC for Andromeda, I don't know that I'd be compelled to buy it. Even after 3 patches the game has all the same issues for me as when it was released. I still cannot go into a menu on the Tempest without it lagging the game to a fps standstill. The characters are still all High School level, forgettable throw-aways, the story is still bland, and EA is still only going to want to focus on Anthem, so any effort that does go into DLC will be cash-grab level.

I hate to hate on ME, or sound like just another EA basher, but the facts point to EA fully deserving the bashing.
 
Frraksurred said:
Even if we did get DLC for Andromeda, I don't know that I'd be compelled to buy it. Even after 3 patches the game has all the same issues for me as when it was released. I still cannot go into a menu on the Tempest without it lagging the game to a fps standstill. The characters are still all High School level, forgettable throw-aways, the story is still bland, and EA is still only going to want to focus on Anthem, so any effort that does go into DLC will be cash-grab level.

I hate to hate on ME, or sound like just another EA basher, but the facts point to EA fully deserving the bashing.
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On counter-point, the ME3 DLC, after the bashing that game took, was actually very good- so it's possible that ME:A DLC could follow the same formula.

Mostly, I have a neutral outlook, and will likely wait for reviews.
 
I just read today that the director of ME1 and 2 (which are the best ones in the series) is in charge of the new game Anthem....This is explains why the series went downhill after 2 :(
 
Brackle said:
I just read today that the director of ME1 and 2 (which are the best ones in the series) is in charge of the new game Anthem....This is explains why the series went downhill after 2 :(
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I don't know about director but Mass Effect 1 & 2 lead writer (also KOTOR), Drew Karpyshyn, is working on it.
 
Tup3x said:
I don't know about director but Mass Effect 1 & 2 lead writer (also KOTOR), Drew Karpyshyn, is working on it.
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Yea thats what I mean. Been a long day at work, 4 of hours doesn't do a body good
 
Tup3x said:
I don't know about director but Mass Effect 1 & 2 lead writer (also KOTOR), Drew Karpyshyn, is working on it.
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Sadly I don't think putting a great writer to work on a burlap sack of turds is going to make it even remotely appealing to me.
 
M76 said:
Sadly I don't think putting a great writer to work on a burlap sack of turds is going to make it even remotely appealing to me.
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But that's kinda it. BioWare Montreal fits that description but BioWare Edmonton is completely different animal. Well, they did make DA:I but...
 
Tup3x said:
But that's kinda it. BioWare Montreal fits that description but BioWare Edmonton is completely different animal. Well, they did make DA:I but...
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I'm referring to the game they're making not the company. It's turning out to be everything I hate and don't want in a game.
And if the18 months rumour is true, then Bioware montreal are made of miracle workers.
 
Yea- if you look at it as an 18 month game it's incredibly good. Shame it's not ever going t obe graded on that curve...
But it's also not bad (all in all), and I'm having fun in multi- I was playing a scrawny little adept last night, and a Krogan charged me right after I empried a magazine into him. Another adept landed right next to me and we both punched right as he headbutted me. Half my barrier but he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Right as I laughed the other adept yelled "Wonder Twin powers activate!" and ran away.
 
The game is definitely decent. It's even worth a single play through at least. It isn't good enough for me to play it through, five, six, or 20 times like I have the original trilogy.
 
What Dan said. I am still walking through it. I am going to savor it as we probably will not see another one.

As always, fuck you ea.

Specifically the idiots who push developers to rush it out. Stop it. You have to allow for a reasonable time frame.
 
spaceman said:
What Dan said. I am still walking through it. I am going to savor it as we probably will not see another one.

As always, fuck you ea.

Specifically the idiots who push developers to rush it out. Stop it. You have to allow for a reasonable time frame.
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In fairness, if the timeline from Kotaku is correct (and I suspect there is some truth in it at least), then much of the 5 year development window was squandered by the "B-Team" trying to figure out how to make a Mass Effect game. The team that knew what they were doing was working on Anthem, which I now hope flops. I don't mean flopping like Andromeda, or flopping like fat titties that remind me of the shake mix bags from working at Arby's. No, I mean the kind of flopping that eel or octopi do when they are used in Japanese pornos.
 
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Dan_D said:
In fairness, if the timeline from Kotaku is correct (and I suspect there is some truth in it at least), then much of the 5 year development window was squandered by the "B-Team" trying to figure out how to make a Mass Effect game. The team that knew what they were doing was working on Anthem, which I now hope flops. I don't mean flopping like Andromeda, or flopping like fat titties that remind me of the shake mix bags from working at Arby's. No, I mean the kind of flopping that eel or octopi do when they are used in Japanese pornos.
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If there's any truth of it...the lack of focus, direction, and waste of time and resources is staggering.

The entire first year they basically tried to a No Man's Sky like concept and then it all went down in flames and they had to essentially start over to what we eventually got.

^^ That's my understanding anyways from all the information overload. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong.


I think it's amazing ME:A is as good as it is when we sum it all up.
 
Q-BZ said:
I think it's amazing ME:A is as good as it is when we sum it all up.
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As much as I'd like to lay a lot of Mass Effect 3's ending on the foot steps of Mac Walters, bringing him onboard to bring some direction to the game and get the product we have no also makes sense and seems plausible. He was there to help make 2.9 good Mass Effect games. A feat that shouldn't be undervalued. Ultimately, I think the Kotaku article is largely true. I think the developers had some grand ideas to make a Mass Effect game like we'd never seen before and ultimately couldn't deliver on their concepts. So the developer switched gears to give us a pale copy of and an open world version of ME1 because that was the safe bet.
 
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Got it on sale on Friday... well, as expected some dialogs are ridiculous, animations are terrible, game bugs are multiple. But I have to admit, I spent a lot of time playing it on the week-end. Just one more quest... hey, why the clock shows it is 3am?
 
Right? It's a wierdly addictive game. On the Multiplayer front it's not D3, but often much better but cretainly has quirks that I blame on frostbite. But sooo fun when you get a good PUG.
 
The open world is starting to get to me. Lots of side quests to keep you busy but they are extremely shallow and uninteresting. Even with the use of quick travel, the quests start to become tedious. Started to notice this alot on Voeld.
 
cvinh said:
The open world is starting to get to me. Lots of side quests to keep you busy but they are extremely shallow and uninteresting. Even with the use of quick travel, the quests start to become tedious. Started to notice this alot on Voeld.
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Yes the sidequests do get tedious after a while. Not as much as in some other games, but still quite a bit. This is an ever recurring problem with open world games, creating engaging and interesting side quests.
I expressed this a few times in my reviews and I Think the problem with side quests in most games is that I suspect that they're relegated to the "night shift". As in the least experienced designers get to do them as they're the least wanted part of the job.

I think the best way to tackle sidequests, would be to think of them as part of the world you're creating. So not part of the gameplay but part of the universe. Think of things and stories that would happen anyway in the setting of the game and then think of how would you get the player involved with those events.
As long as the developers think of sidequests as chores to do, the quests themselves will turn out to be chores as well.They're looking for ways to distract the player. Sidequests should be small stories that could play out even without the player within the game world.
And side quests should have clear effects on the game world. In most games the quests start, then end, and they have absolutely zero reverberations in the game later. That's a problem.
 
Side quests are there to length the game. Over the past 3-5 years, game length has become a marketing bullet point. You can blame this on gamers, who often complain a game is too short. Well, this is the result. The sweet spot to hit is 66 and 33%. 66% being required, main game stuff, the other 33% being side quests. This keeps the game focused, as most of the time you're doing the main campaign so you don't loose track and forget half the important details. The 33% figure is likely low enough to ensure just about everything is meaningful with well crafted scenarios. Enough to give you some more time to test out upgrades, unlocked weapons and different tactics. But you don't want to have players running around for 4-6 hours doing side stuff.

But as always, gamers are largely to blame for this. They want their Steam to display 60 hours rather than 30, because they feel they're getting more out of their money. For most, quantity over quality prevails.
 
Flogger23m said:
Side quests are there to length the game. Over the past 3-5 years, game length has become a marketing bullet point. You can blame this on gamers, who often complain a game is too short. Well, this is the result. The sweet spot to hit is 66 and 33%. 66% being required, main game stuff, the other 33% being side quests. This keeps the game focused, as most of the time you're doing the main campaign so you don't loose track and forget half the important details. The 33% figure is likely low enough to ensure just about everything is meaningful with well crafted scenarios. Enough to give you some more time to test out upgrades, unlocked weapons and different tactics. But you don't want to have players running around for 4-6 hours doing side stuff.
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I don't think quantity necessarily have to mean lack of quality. I want to get the most gameplay out of a game as well. I'd say the bare minimum where I'll say the game was worth it is around 25-30 hours. Of course the game can still be good with less but I will complain about the length then. They probably shouldn't go beyond 50 hours either, instead of adding more shit to do, try to make the shit that's already in there less of a shit.

Anyhow ME:A is not that bad in quantity vs quality terms. DA:I was much worse imo.


But as always, gamers are largely to blame for this. They want their Steam to display 60 hours rather than 30, because they feel they're getting more out of their money. For most, quantity over quality prevails.
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Ultimately I think blaming the gamers is a cheap excuse. The control is always at the developer. They decide. You as a game designer have to filter what the gamers want, because sometimes they do say stupid things. I mean this is game design 101 don't listen to the gamers. This was already a well known industry fact when I was first introduced to the gaming industry in the early 2000s.
 
M76 said:
Ultimately I think blaming the gamers is a cheap excuse. The control is always at the developer. They decide. You as a game designer have to filter what the gamers want, because sometimes they do say stupid things. I mean this is game design 101 don't listen to the gamers. This was already a well known industry fact when I was first introduced to the gaming industry in the early 2000s.
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This, all of this! If you are not going to put effort into the side quests, don't have them.
 
M76 said:
I don't think quantity necessarily have to mean lack of quality. I want to get the most gameplay out of a game as well. I'd say the bare minimum where I'll say the game was worth it is around 25-30 hours. Of course the game can still be good with less but I will complain about the length then.
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An excellent 10-12 hour game that is an excellent experience triumphs over a 25-30 hour game that is stretched out as long as possible. Once it gets below 10 hours I'd agree, but even a good 8-9 hours is fine. Once you go lower I'd start complaining.

But you do have to place blame with gamers to. The developers often don't make these decisions, but the publishers and marketing people do. And they are simply reacting to what people want. And that means lots of cheesy social features (most played games on Steam are DOTA and CS GO), adding hours to make the game as long as possible, making every SP game a crappy GTA "do it all poorly but do nothing well done" clone, ect. Was it a surprise that Rainbow Six was dug out from its grave, made into a PvP only game that mimicked CS? No, it wasn't. Ubi looked and saw what was popular among gamers for shooters - and that is CS GO. EA looked at it and we got BF1, which clearly has GUI influences from CS GO, such as cheesy avatars displayed at the end of round, match making, ect.

The rage these days among SP games is hour length. I would have been happier if ME:A was 18 hours long and 90% of what you did was partake in excellent main story missions with well crafted diolgue. But, gamers will rage about the short length, marketing types will figure this out, and there you have it. It is now a design point, quality comes second. Hence the open world aspect of ME:A and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Both games suffered from it more than gained, but EA and most gamers won't realize this.

But this is fairly off topic from ME:A itself... so I'll stop here.
 
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I'd prefer lots of side quests and other explorables to flesh out a world over a shorter, strong main storyline.
Of course MEA went "too far" in that direction and kinda wandered into MMO-quality territory. The theme of the game perfectly fits its playstyle but lazy writing and grindy content brought it down.

It would be my game of the year (so far) if I hadn't played BOTW.
 
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Main issue I had with the side quests is not that they didn't add to the world- but that they didn't grab on to you well. They certainly fleshed out the world and added backstory to the Angara, Kett, and to some degree the Jardaan (Remnant builders).

But you had to care enough to attack them and finish them, and it should be the other way around (the 'night shift' explanation sounds as good as any).
 
Flogger23m said:
An excellent 10-12 hour game that is an excellent experience triumphs over a 25-30 hour game that is stretched out as long as possible. Once it gets below 10 hours I'd agree, but even a good 8-9 hours is fine. Once you go lower I'd start complaining.

But you do have to place blame with gamers to. The developers often don't make these decisions, but the publishers and marketing people do. And they are simply reacting to what people want. And that means lots of cheesy social features (most played games on Steam are DOTA and CS GO), adding hours to make the game as long as possible, making every SP game a crappy GTA "do it all poorly but do nothing well done" clone, ect. Was it a surprise that Rainbow Six was dug out from its grave, made into a PvP only game that mimicked CS? No, it wasn't. Ubi looked and saw what was popular among gamers for shooters - and that is CS GO. EA looked at it and we got BF1, which clearly has GUI influences from CS GO, such as cheesy avatars displayed at the end of round, match making, ect.

The rage these days among SP games is hour length. I would have been happier if ME:A was 18 hours long and 90% of what you did was partake in excellent main story missions with well crafted diolgue. But, gamers will rage about the short length, marketing types will figure this out, and there you have it. It is now a design point, quality comes second. Hence the open world aspect of ME:A and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Both games suffered from it more than gained, but EA and most gamers won't realize this.

But this is fairly off topic from ME:A itself... so I'll stop here.
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You make the assumption that the only two options are "short and good" or "long and crap". If that was a valid starting point I'd agree. But being good or long are not mutually exclusive.

I'll also disagree on the point about only focusing on the main story. An open world game without side quests and additional content would feel empty and void and a waste of effort to craft an open world if all you're going to do is tell a linear story in it. Like Assassin's Creed, damn I hated that for being so empty.

Also there is the option to skip sidequests entirely. No-one forces you to do all the grind in any game, you choose to do it. For example in ME:A I did almost all sidequests. In Wildlands I only did a few that I felt like doing, and the game still lasted over 50 hours.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
I'd prefer lots of side quests and other explorables to flesh out a world over a shorter, strong main storyline.
Of course MEA went "too far" in that direction and kinda wandered into MMO-quality territory. The theme of the game perfectly fits its playstyle but lazy writing and grindy content brought it down.

It would be my game of the year (so far) if I hadn't played BOTW.
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What is BOTW? I have no idea.

DA:I went much further into MMO territory than ME:A did. It was still called game of the year by many.
 
I've now given up on HDR being fixed, so I'm finally starting the game as-is.

Any tips or advice I should be aware of? Is there finally an option to specialize in sniper rifles and shotguns? Based upon the first mission (the only one I've done so far) that seems to be an ideal setup and previous games tended to handicap it.
 
Yea, the skill tree really lets you do whatever you want, and on anything below hardcore it's going to work fine.
 
Domingo said:
I've now given up on HDR being fixed, so I'm finally starting the game as-is.

Any tips or advice I should be aware of? Is there finally an option to specialize in sniper rifles and shotguns? Based upon the first mission (the only one I've done so far) that seems to be an ideal setup and previous games tended to handicap it.
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All the weapon specializations are under the combat skill tree, but you can mix and match what ever you want at any time. I've generally been building an infiltrator with skills in the combat and tech trees, focusing on sniper rifles and assault rifles in the combat tree.
DWolvin said:
Yea, the skill tree really lets you do whatever you want, and on anything below hardcore it's going to work fine.
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I'm on Insanity picking skills with only a general idea of what I want and I've run into no trouble so far.
 
I just cannot compel myself to login and play, I'm going to have to shelf the game. Ultra repetitive for me.
 
DWolvin said:
Yea, the skill tree really lets you do whatever you want, and on anything below hardcore it's going to work fine.
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By the end of my first play through, I had all the skills I wanted maxed out. Near the end of the game I was just filling in the holes with extra points. I'm at level 99 I believe and I think I have skill points and no place to put them.
 
polydiol said:
I just cannot compel myself to login and play, I'm going to have to shelf the game. Ultra repetitive for me.
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I have also put it on hold currently. The story wasn't progressing that well and the combat was getting a little repetitive. Currently have alot more fun solo questing in ESO.
 
I put the game on hold as well. I don't feel I can get anything more out of it that I didn't on my first playtrough. Hardcore difficulty only makes it more tedious and take longer. So that doesn't really give me a better experience either.
 
I asked my wife about it and she shelved it, too. I thought she marathoned it (like she did with 1-3) but I guess she bailed on it after about 15 hours. Not very encouraging, but I'm still planning on putting in some serious hours this weekend.
 
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