Mass Effect: Andromeda

I have a vendetta against those who are clearly biased either way. And then you immediately pivot to ME2, when my post was clearly focused on ME1, can you get any more disingenuous?
ME2 is clearly the best game in the series. And one of my all time favourite games. That doesn't mean MEA needs to be judged 10 times as harshly because it had a great predecessor. It needs to be judged against the competition now. If Andromeda is mediocre then what is Prey, Dishonored II, or Mafia 3? Because to me MEA seemed infinitely better than any of those three.

There's a comma, I said ME, 2 weeks ago as in, I played Mass Effect 1, 2 weeks ago. Stop being so defensive, you're misreading my posts.

I have not played Andromeda yet nor any of the other 3 games you mentioned so I can't compare them. But looking at critic reviews it seems Mafia 3 is on par with Andromeda and Prey/Dishonored 2 actually did rather well, above average.
 
Figures it was Nvidia's newest drivers causing it. Reverted back to the previous release and no more crashing.
 
Figures it was Nvidia's newest drivers causing it. Reverted back to the previous release and no more crashing.

Again, that's why I've avoided updating NVIDIA drivers. They've released a shit ton of terrible drivers over the last six months.
 
Again, that's why I've avoided updating NVIDIA drivers. They've released a shit ton of terrible drivers over the last six months.
Yea I had to go back even farther to get it stable. I reverted back too 380.33 and it got me past the conv I was crashing on bit it crashed again on the next. I running 378.xx now and seem stable.
 
ME1 - Inventroy management sucked, Mako sucked, planets sucked.
ME2 - No inventory or items, minimal RPG elements.
ME3 - Brought back RPG elements, brought back inventory, more items, messed up storyline.

ME:A - Inventory management sucks, minimal RPG elements, boring storyline, animation issues, Asaris ALL look the same (why?!? You that lazy that one of the most beautiful races in the series you just give everyone the same look?)
 
There's a comma, I said ME, 2 weeks ago as in, I played Mass Effect 1, 2 weeks ago. Stop being so defensive, you're misreading my posts.

I have not played Andromeda yet nor any of the other 3 games you mentioned so I can't compare them. But looking at critic reviews it seems Mafia 3 is on par with Andromeda and Prey/Dishonored 2 actually did rather well, above average.
And I played all mentioned games recently, and I'm telling you Andromeda is better than those. The only game better than Andromeda that I played this year was Ghost Recon wildlands. I'm simply outraged by the spread of misinformation. And if you haven't played Andromeda yet you're probably just one of the countless victims who believed the lie.
I'm going to go with what I'm actually seeing rather than what "critic sites" tell me about ME:A

Actually I think ME:A is slightly better than DA:I as well.
 
ME:A - Inventory management sucks, minimal RPG elements, boring storyline, animation issues, Asaris ALL look the same (why?!? You that lazy that one of the most beautiful races in the series you just give everyone the same look?)
Actually there are more skills and classes in ME:A than all three previous games combined, they fucked it up with the profiles system which means you can switch classes mid battle.

And not just the asari, all aliens look the same way, ofc you first notice the asaris because they're the most human like. But all turians / krogan / salarians / angara / kett also look the same. Or actually all have two models one female and one male.
 
And I played all mentioned games recently, and I'm telling you Andromeda is better than those. The only game better than Andromeda that I played this year was Ghost Recon wildlands. I'm simply outraged by the spread of misinformation. And if you haven't played Andromeda yet you're probably just one of the countless victims who believed the lie.
I'm going to go with what I'm actually seeing rather than what "critic sites" tell me about ME:A

Actually I think ME:A is slightly better than DA:I as well.

My only complaint were the animations, I don't have to play to know they were pretty bad. It's a shame Bioware placed the majority of its people to work on Anthem.
 
if its in fact true that they hamstrung Mass Effect to make Anthem then between this and the cheating problem with Battlefield 1, I'm just about done with them.
 
I tried to jump back in to ME:A yesterday....I just can't get over how it feels like one giant cartoon parody of what used to be an amazing franchise. After seeing Anthem I can see that people are right....they shelved ME:A to focus on a Destiny killer.
 
My only complaint were the animations, I don't have to play to know they were pretty bad. It's a shame Bioware placed the majority of its people to work on Anthem.
No, you actually have to play to see the full picture. I explained it numerous times already that the youtube videos cherry picked the content of the game. There were a few glitches and weird moments here and there, but the overall quality of animations is nowhere nearly as bad as it was made out to be. Yes the glitches are a problem, I don't want to whitewash anything. But my overall gaming experience was barely affected by the animation quality. There were about 3-4 WTF? That's really bad! moments for me through my entire 70 hour playtrough of the game. Probably constituting about 2 minutes of cringe overall. That's less than 0.05 percent of the game!

The repeated face models for all alien races are a much bigger problem. I'd rather let a few animation issues slide in hundreds of hours of spoken text than let them get away with that.
 
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Actually there are more skills and classes in ME:A than all three previous games combined, they fucked it up with the profiles system which means you can switch classes mid battle.

And not just the asari, all aliens look the same way, ofc you first notice the asaris because they're the most human like. But all turians / krogan / salarians / angara / kett also look the same. Or actually all have two models one female and one male.

All Turians, Krogan, and Salarians basically had the same models in the earlier games too unless they were a squad mate or an NPC that you would see a lot. In which case they might have had alterations to the model to set them apart. Asari were varied in the earlier games, but even then they only had three or four heads with a seemingly infinite amount of face paint and color combinations to make the illusion work. This game only uses face paint to set them apart. Until the Omega DLC, we had no sense of what a female Turian even looked like, so this game is a step forward for Krogan and Turians and a step back for the Asari.

No, you actually have to play to see the full picture. I explained it numerous times already that the youtube videos cherry picked the content of the game. There were a few glitches and weird moments here and there, but the overall quality of animations is nowhere nearly as bad as it was made out to be. Yes the glitches are a problem, I don't want to whitewash anything. But my overall gaming experience was barely affected by the animation quality. There were about 3-4 WTF? That's really bad! moments for me through my entire 70 hour playtrough of the game. Probably constituting about 2 minutes of cringe overall. That's less than 0.05 percent of the game!

The repeated face models for all alien races are a much bigger problem. I'd rather let a few animation issues slide in hundreds of hours of spoken text than let them get away with that.

Yes, they did cherry pick content to bitch about. What's odd is that most of that stuff was in the earlier parts of the game and the trial version people were making videos off of was based on an earlier build of the game. I've said it before, in a lot of ways this game is better quality than the previous games on several technical levels. After all the patches, I'd have no problem backing that up. Andromeda has fewer collision issues and fewer instances of squad mates or the protagonist having weapons in cut scenes they can't equip or don't yet have in game. I can also agree with the sentiment about the faces being a bigger immersion breaker than the animations. It's one thing to reuse voice actors a lot but the repeated faces everywhere stand out every time.
 
All Turians, Krogan, and Salarians basically had the same models in the earlier games too unless they were a squad mate or an NPC that you would see a lot. In which case they might have had alterations to the model to set them apart. Asari were varied in the earlier games, but even then they only had three or four heads with a seemingly infinite amount of face paint and color combinations to make the illusion work. This game only uses face paint to set them apart. Until the Omega DLC, we had no sense of what a female Turian even looked like, so this game is a step forward for Krogan and Turians and a step back for the Asari.
That's demonstrably false.
These are clearly different variations of salarians from previous ME games:


tumblr_inline_onbaxsKg7s1qdycvw_1280.jpg

And 4 variations is still 400% more than one. And there were no female turians in previous games, so what? Seems to be completely unrelated to me. The point is that in MEA they didn't even bother to set apart important NPCs. The only ones who got unique models were your squad.
 
They all look alike. :)
That has to be racist!

Seriously, look at the size of the eyes, the shape and height of the mouth, how wideset the eyes are for starters. But the overall shape of the head is different in a few cases as well.
Even if it was only an illusion achieved with clever bump maps, textures and displacement maps. The whole game is an illusion. The point is to sell the illusion, and ME:A failed miserably to sell the illusion of diversity among aliens.
 
Information overload gloss: I think it had something to do with Frostbite 3.0 and time/budge/lack of FB 30 aptitude that resulted in all the clones??? (Correct me if I'm wrong)
 
That has to be racist!

Seriously, look at the size of the eyes, the shape and height of the mouth, how wideset the eyes are for starters. But the overall shape of the head is different in a few cases as well.
Even if it was only an illusion achieved with clever bump maps, textures and displacement maps. The whole game is an illusion. The point is to sell the illusion, and ME:A failed miserably to sell the illusion of diversity among aliens.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm just being racist in saying that all Salarians look alike. :)
 
Information overload gloss: I think it had something to do with Frostbite 3.0 and time/budge/lack of FB 30 aptitude that resulted in all the clones??? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

It's most likely the 18 month development cycle after all the fucking around with the game's direction and prototyping game elements that ultimately got dropped if the Kotaku article has any truth to it. The cloned faces were probably intended to be used as place holders until they could build more varied assets for them, but never had the time.
 
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It's most likely the 18 month development cycle after all the fucking around with the game's direction and prototyping game elements that ultimately got dropped if the Kotaku article has any truth to it. The cloned faces were probably intended to be used as place holders until they could build more varied assets for them, but never had the time.
I may be naive but asset building is done by different people than those prototyping the story and the gameplay elements. So even if the core concept was changed and dropped multiple times. They knew it for a fact that they will have numerous characters in the game. So a bunch of models could've been done regardless.

I don't think there is much truth to the 18 month development anyway. If that's true the game is a miracle that it's as complex and as finished as it was.
 
I may be naive but asset building is done by different people than those prototyping the story and the gameplay elements. So even if the core concept was changed and dropped multiple times. They knew it for a fact that they will have numerous characters in the game. So a bunch of models could've been done regardless.

I don't think there is much truth to the 18 month development anyway. If that's true the game is a miracle that it's as complex and as finished as it was.

There's enough truth to it that I really think Bioware Montreal should be hailed as heroes. EA Corporate is wearing the black hat in this story for me.
 
Actually there are more skills and classes in ME:A than all three previous games combined, they fucked it up with the profiles system which means you can switch classes mid battle.

And not just the asari, all aliens look the same way, ofc you first notice the asaris because they're the most human like. But all turians / krogan / salarians / angara / kett also look the same. Or actually all have two models one female and one male.

But I can only use 3 abilities during battle. I do the same thing every battle and can't pause and tell my guys what to do. This is a straight up 3rd person shooter, don't let it fool you.
 
Yes, they did cherry pick content to bitch about. What's odd is that most of that stuff was in the earlier parts of the game and the trial version people were making videos off of was based on an earlier build of the game. I've said it before, in a lot of ways this game is better quality than the previous games on several technical levels. After all the patches, I'd have no problem backing that up. Andromeda has fewer collision issues and fewer instances of squad mates or the protagonist having weapons in cut scenes they can't equip or don't yet have in game. I can also agree with the sentiment about the faces being a bigger immersion breaker than the animations. It's one thing to reuse voice actors a lot but the repeated faces everywhere stand out every time.
Yes, most glitches were concentrated at the first few hours of the game. EA basically shoot themselves in the foot and fell over face forward with the trial period. And the problem is that the biggest loosers here are ME fans, because they might drop the franchise completely after this fiasco.
 
Yes, most glitches were concentrated at the first few hours of the game. EA basically shoot themselves in the foot and fell over face forward with the trial period. And the problem is that the biggest loosers here are ME fans, because they might drop the franchise completely after this fiasco.

There's no more franchise. EA said they are not doing any more ME after ME:A due to low sales and poor reviews.
 
There's no more franchise. EA said they are not doing any more ME after ME:A due to low sales and poor reviews.

Source, please?



I haven't seen anything this definitive stated anywhere.

Frankly a lot of the frustration out there has been the complete lack of definitive information.
 
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I may be naive but asset building is done by different people than those prototyping the story and the gameplay elements. So even if the core concept was changed and dropped multiple times. They knew it for a fact that they will have numerous characters in the game. So a bunch of models could've been done regardless.

I don't think there is much truth to the 18 month development anyway. If that's true the game is a miracle that it's as complex and as finished as it was.

If they only had 18 months to build the principle assets for the game, I can see it. The only reason I brought up the prototyping of game play elements and all of that was to illustrate the wasted time in that five year span where they weren't doing what you'd think they should have been doing during that time. As for the truth in the 18 month cycle, based on what I know of game development, I believe this may not be all that far off the mark. They probably built assets early on for testing purposes that did get used in the final game or were modified for it, but the ways in which the game lacks polish suggests that the 18 months Kotaku referred to as being where the bulk of the game was built makes some sense. It doesn't take as much time to build a game like that as one might believe. It does however take a long time to polish a game of this size. The dialog smacks of early script drafts with little to no refinement. The story feels like it was a rough outline that simply wasn't fleshed out fully. The animations are almost alpha / beta quality. Also, there are clear issues with various event triggers and scripting issues within the game.

I've seen people build assets for games and computer animation before. A lot of people in the industry can be used for more than one task, though you generally do have people that lean towards modeling, animation, texture work, scripting, engine coding etc. If the team is lean enough you'd be surprised how many hats an individual might wear getting the job done.
 
From your first link:
Following middling Mass Effect Andromeda review scores and negative feedback, reports have emerged that BioWare Montreal has been downsized and that future Mass Effect games have been put on hold.

From your second link:
Fans of BioWare's alien-boning space opera games shouldn't give up all hope, however. Mass Effect remains massively popular, and it's unlikely that the franchise will be shelved for good.

Both articles are clickbait, speculating based on what anonymous sources had to say. All Bioware has stated was that the team has been downsized while the rest of the team has been distributed to other studios to help with other projects.
 
best bet they will shelf Mass Effect for a few years to let people forget just how bad things got
 
From your first link:
Following middling Mass Effect Andromeda review scores and negative feedback, reports have emerged that BioWare Montreal has been downsized and that future Mass Effect games have been put on hold.

From your second link:
Fans of BioWare's alien-boning space opera games shouldn't give up all hope, however. Mass Effect remains massively popular, and it's unlikely that the franchise will be shelved for good.

Both articles are clickbait, speculating based on what anonymous sources had to say. All Bioware has stated was that the team has been downsized while the rest of the team has been distributed to other studios to help with other projects.

http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285

You can claim the article are clickbait or fake news but Mass Effect is not coming out again for a long long time. Deal with it.
 
http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285

You can claim the article are clickbait or fake news but Mass Effect is not coming out again for a long long time. Deal with it.
BioWare has put Mass Effect on hiatus and turned Andromeda’s developer, BioWare Montreal, into a support studio, according to four sources close to the company.

hiatus: a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process

That doesn’t mean there will never be another Mass Effect game, of course. It’s unlikely that BioWare will kill the popular sci-fi franchise. But BioWare is letting Mass Effect sit for a while rather than putting staff on Andromeda’s follow-up right away, those sources said.


This article clarifies its sources, but it's still saying the same thing: Mass Effect is on hold, for now. No where does any of these articles say the franchise is dead, or "no more" in your own words.
There's no more franchise. EA said they are not doing any more ME after ME:A due to low sales and poor reviews.
By the way: the previous articles are clickbait because of the title, not the content.

First article: the URL says "Andromeda update DLC sequel cancelled PS4 Xbox One," includes link in first paragraph for search crawlers that says "Mass Effect Andromeda DLC might be the last we see of the franchise on PS4 and Xbox One." Neither this article or the linked article contain content that suggest any of this.

Second article: "BioWare Says No More Mass Effect: Here's Why." Again, the article says nothing of the sort, making it clickbait.

Third article: Title and URL actually reflect content of the article, making it not clickbait.
 
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http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285

You can claim the article are clickbait or fake news but Mass Effect is not coming out again for a long long time. Deal with it.
Why are you so angry about it? Like it's our fault you make unsubstantiated claims?
First you said it's killed forever, now you act like you were only saying it's on hold.

I don't know what they're planning but I certainly hope they release more single player story content. #fuckthehaters.
 
Agreed- I have finished (most of) the common weapons and mods in multi, and am starting to get better stuff. Now that I am not geared to weak to stand up to a gang of mooks it's really fun. They have added a new maps and weekly missions with rewards, bring on some more!
 
best bet they will shelf Mass Effect for a few years to let people forget just how bad things got
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.
 
Now there were no planned DLCs I think.

This is the problem: We don't know. There has been a frustrating lack of concrete information along these lines and that's just fueled the fire for speculation and FUD. (Not accusing you of this.)

One sketchy Kotaku article went up a month ago and it's been off to the races ever since.
 
Started again with a slightly tweaked Ryder. I kept the same base face as with the original one. They now added some features in the CC that should have been there in the first place. It's still worse than in the original Mass Effect though...

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The problem is the same as before though... It feels pretty boring. Especially when doing the same things again now. Oh and I really hate when NPCs twitch a bit when their animation loop starts again. Rather distracting.
 
Started again with a slightly tweaked Ryder. I kept the same base face as with the original one. They now added some features in the CC that should have been there in the first place. It's still worse than in the original Mass Effect though...
Do you mean worse in terms of the end results, or in terms of the character generator itself? Because in terms of the results I could get a better one on my first try even before patches than I ever could in the previous games. But if you say it's harder to get results and use then I agree. Although I haven't even bothered yet to load up the game again to check the updated character creator.

The problem is the same as before though... It feels pretty boring. Especially when doing the same things again now. Oh and I really hate when NPCs twitch a bit when their animation loop starts again. Rather distracting.
I thought I could easily get 2-3 playtroughs out of the game. But I abandoned my second attempt three or four hours in. On the first try I didn't think it was boring, but on the second it was. I realized there is no room to do anything differently than before. The only choice you have is how much grind you do besides the main story. It's very similar in this regard to DA:I the only difference is that I already struggled with DA:I on the first go, here it only started during the second try at Eos. I mean when I realized I wasn't having fun while playing.
 
Do you mean worse in terms of the end results, or in terms of the character generator itself? Because in terms of the results I could get a better one on my first try even before patches than I ever could in the previous games. But if you say it's harder to get results and use then I agree. Although I haven't even bothered yet to load up the game again to check the updated character creator.


I thought I could easily get 2-3 playtroughs out of the game. But I abandoned my second attempt three or four hours in. On the first try I didn't think it was boring, but on the second it was. I realized there is no room to do anything differently than before. The only choice you have is how much grind you do besides the main story. It's very similar in this regard to DA:I the only difference is that I already struggled with DA:I on the first go, here it only started during the second try at Eos. I mean when I realized I wasn't having fun while playing.
Just lack of control. In ME1 you could pick different eye shapes for example.


Now that you mentioned it... Sure, you can do things in slightly different order but that doesn't really make any difference. Compared to Kotor2 for example... Heheee... Oh boy.

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.

Nice face, minor changes or did you need to work at it?
Rather minor changes in terms of facial structure. The biggest changes are the hairstyle and face texture, compared to my first version.
 
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