Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

[Padzi]

Shepard


Ryder...

 

[Freddie]

Finally I don't buy the argument Bioware simply isn't good at making open-world games and should go back to their thing. There is no going back. Being bad at open world games means being bad at games full stop. I'm absolutely certain if the MEA team made a traditional corridor ME sequel it'd be just as terrible.

Have you played Omega DLC for ME3. It was done by the same team that made Andromeda and it was the worst piece of DLC (maybe except Pinncale Station) in the series history.
The shooting sections were dull, side quests consisted of finding some unimportant crap and weren't even actual side quests.
And the story was terribly written. It had this Andromeda vibe - like Aria being an actual superhero and tearing a force field with her hands.
Not to mention the final boss fight was very similar to the final boss fight of Andromeda. Survive waves of enemies and deactivate some reactors.
And your squad mates Aria and That Turian Girl (basically proto-Vetra) were boring as fuck.

Omega DLC was an indication that Andromeda will be an utter piece of shit.
Bioware Montreal can't produce a good game weather it is open world or corridor shooter to save their lives/

Don't see how it's really teams fault, they don't write the story arcs, they just implement them. It wasn't even supposed to be DLC (prequel comic, etc) but something happened and Mac got on it later. It's pretty messed up as some Arias's conversations on the Citadel don't make sense after DLC. There are few technical fuck ups, one being being that BW animators couldn't animate enemy models created for Omega.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Snip.

I'd be surprised if it has done anywhere as well as dragon age 2 did, even with DA2s poor sales results.

EA bragged DA2 sales were good but even so they're not working on a sequel afaik. I guess that means much worse MEA sales rule out Andromeda sequel too? Problem is almost nothing got explained in the end of MEA, despite Walters clearly saying MEA will be self-contained, with the plot fully completed.

Btw still following the total mess that's MEA multiplayer. With the community on the brink of revolt the devs keep stolidly mumbling on their stream they're listening to the feedback and looking into balance changes but don't wanna "overreact". A month after launch they're apparently still just collecting notes and comments while reddit and unBSN are reaching boiling point. This game delivered much entertainment after all.

Something is happening with their multiplayer? I thought they just ported over the multiplayer from ME3? Of all the things to fuck up, how could they manage to ruin that as well?

 

[Freddie]

Snip.

I'd be surprised if it has done anywhere as well as dragon age 2 did, even with DA2s poor sales results.

EA bragged DA2 sales were good but even so they're not working on a sequel afaik. I guess that means much worse MEA sales rule out Andromeda sequel too? Problem is almost nothing got explained in the end of MEA, despite Walters clearly saying MEA will be self-contained, with the plot fully completed.

Btw still following the total mess that's MEA multiplayer. With the community on the brink of revolt the devs keep stolidly mumbling on their stream they're listening to the feedback and looking into balance changes but don't wanna "overreact". A month after launch they're apparently still just collecting notes and comments while reddit and unBSN are reaching boiling point. This game delivered much entertainment after all.

Something is happening with their multiplayer? I thought they just ported over the multiplayer from ME3? Of all the things to fuck up, how could they manage to ruin that as well?

There are many posts in this thread addressing issues in ME:A MP. Basically, they gimped the guns which slows pace of combat. I guess their approach might be that early adapters are those who purchase most of those packs or whatever that open weapon upgrades so they are not going to change it / allowed to change it.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Hey, when you signed up for initiative you had a paragraph B in section 3 that you need to a perverted sick dumbfuck to go.
This was the secret plan to cleanse the Milky Way of the worst element. Don't you remember?

So it is sort of the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

 

[cvv]

Something is happening with their multiplayer? I thought they just ported over the multiplayer from ME3?

Oh they ported almost everything from ME3 with one difference - all the guns, powers, combos and consumables have been nerfed by about 50%. Last time on the stream they said they had to do this because in MEA we're so much more mobile and can escape from difficult situations easily. Therefore guns and powers must be much shittier. Unexpected plot twist - game is slow, grindy and annoying as fuck.

 

[Ezeekiel]

MP enemies in MEA have ludicrous amounts of HP vs. the damage most guns do (some guns are fine, mostly high dmg snipers).
Enemies rarely stagger under normal carbine fire (for example). Really weird. You're pumping 15 rounds into the guys head and he just keeps moving and shooting at you.
Enemies are often 100% accurate regardless of weapon in many situations... Shotgunners get you with all pellets from across the map, basic mooks take out your shield in one or two bursts from 50m away.
Headshot multipliers are shit, mostly x1.5 for standard guns... The best gun in the game had a bugged multiplier of like x3 or so.
Shotguns are wonky as hell, requiring you to be right in front of the enemy to land all pellets and even then it just doesn't always work.
Reload times for most guns are longer than they used to be, you can't reload while sprinting etc (will cancel reload in progress, too). Magazine sizes are mostly too small relative to how much fire you have to pour into an enemy to kill him.
You get like 12 active enemies at once now instead of 8, but you're more mobile due to dash and jump. Which adds nothing to a cover shooter of course... But makes the game much easier. You mostly die from getting completely overwhelmed or grabbed and sync killed by bug-teleporting mini-boss enemies.
Powers are mostly low damage unless you level up enough but even then it's really unlike me3. Melee and some snipers used to be best, have all been nerfed (other weapons/powers are mostly still worse though lol).

It's not hard per se, just boring and really not very fun unless you get the vanquisher or some such and play with the ammo/dmg bonus consumable (have to re-apply every match, I keep forgetting to do it lol).

Game is balanced like total shit.
Weapon accuracy can be really wack (or rather, accuracy degradation) unless you spec into it with some classes.
Engine switch made a mess of the game too.

Many other issues. Not very satisfying to play for the most part. Check ME co op subreddit if you want to keep up. Some folks made videos of some weapons, basically headshotting guys with the halberd (upgraded mattock that does like double damage) and not killing a basic mook in silver with even a full mag lol.

As mentioned above, the co op community is pissed for the most part. Many went back to ME3 multiplayer temporarily (!)

Many other issues too, but it's not really worth talking about it further... Next patch may decide whether people bother with it again or not. Devs don't seem to really get it. First patch they "buffed" the mattock by fixing it's fire rate bug... And then nuking it's damage by like 30 percent or 25 or so, making it worse than the predator pistol. It's all just tedious.



Oh yeah, unlocking is much slower than ME3. You often only get 1 gun per pack, or a character early on... Huge unlock roster due to all the consumables and whatnot.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Oh yeah, people tend to crash like 5-10s away from extraction a lot now. And you only get wave/map rewards once you've extracted... So yeah. Shit matchmaking too, you get paired with people on the north pole with dial up connections or something.

 

[J1M]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15324366/mass-effect-andromeda-open-world-bioware

Much nostalgia. Replaying the original trilogy now the old structure feels decidedly gamey and obsolete.

When playing DAO and ME1 I thought they're surprisingly decent games for AAA but I so wished Bioware expands the world. The fact DAI and MEA is dogshit is not the reason to go back in time. They just have to get their shit together and start making open worlds that are not completely robotic and retarded. It's not like it's impossible to make a good open world game now is it?

By definition open world games are full of meaningless travel and the interesting-content-ratio is lower because there is more space to fill. They are a fad in the same way platformers were on the SNES.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis white men don't exist

Imagine you woke up to discover that the first pilot and others that were flying the ship went mental and started fucking about with the SID program and actually gave sentinence to the deep chilled Turkey you were keeping for a thanksgiving feast, which has now being studying for the last five hundred plus years and is the smartest organic life in the galaxy and you have to take orders from it.

 

[pippin]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis white men don't exist

Imagine you woke up to discover that the first pilot and others that were flying the ship went mental and started fucking about with the SID program and actually gave sentinence to the deep chilled Turkey you were keeping for a thanksgiving feast, which has now being studying for the last five hundred plus years and is the smartest organic life in the galaxy and you have to take orders from it.

Mass Effect Erdogan?

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15324366/mass-effect-andromeda-open-world-bioware

Much nostalgia. Replaying the original trilogy now the old structure feels decidedly gamey and obsolete.

When playing DAO and ME1 I thought they're surprisingly decent games for AAA but I so wished Bioware expands the world. The fact DAI and MEA is dogshit is not the reason to go back in time. They just have to get their shit together and start making open worlds that are not completely robotic and retarded. It's not like it's impossible to make a good open world game now is it?

By definition open world games are full of meaningless travel and the interesting-content-ratio is lower because there is more space to fill. They are a fad in the same way platformers were on the SNES.

If you look at the other article just posted and the Witcher 3 you will note that not all open worlds are filled with useless shit. Sure W3 has lots of useless shit to do, but it basically might get you some shitty armor, a rune, a garbage sword, a jewel and 3 experience points. You can do this stuff if you want but the game dosen't punish you for ignoring it. The only reason in most cases you have to take on a guarded treasure quest is to test your mettle, because the rewards are shit. Given that W3 has so many great sidequests you wouldn't believe and if you did nothing but play the main game and sidequests you would spend 100's of hours on it, without bothering with the monster nests, guarded tresure and other filler shit.

I honestly can't believe how good that game is apart from the obvious flaws it has. I can actually run around Novigrad and look at the cobbles and tell the district I'm in, or look at the gutters which are either clean or damaged depending on the districtand I can go into houses in villages in Velen and see Slavic decoration on the walls or pagan shrines. The detail is amazing and makes you respect CDPR for having the integrity and self respect to put such care into small details most people will miss.

I think that's the difference here W3 is rich and uses sidequests as part of the world MEA is sparse but filled with junk quests equivelant to W3 destroy monster nests and bandit camp missions as part of the plot. When it all comes down W3 sidequests or Witcher contracts are actually Geralts real purpose and bread and butter, though you don't have to do your job if you don't want. in Mass effect Andromeda you're a pathfinder with fetch quests, which you aught to be able to ignore to combat your enemy, but no you are constantly reminded on a percentage scale how well you have done.

Consider that for a second what would Bioware rate your Velen productivity percentage as if you save the botchling for the Bloody Baron or call him a cuck, you can obviously see how stupid that seems and so how childish Biowares writing and game design is, in a supposed story driven game.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis white men don't exist

Imagine you woke up to discover that the first pilot and others that were flying the ship went mental and started fucking about with the SID program and actually gave sentinence to the deep chilled Turkey you were keeping for a thanksgiving feast, which has now being studying for the last five hundred plus years and is the smartest organic life in the galaxy and you have to take orders from it.

Mass Effect Erdogan?

Why because he's from Turkey or looks like a Turkey either way you are right and it's gold

 

[Vorark]

Omega DLC was an indication that Andromeda will be an utter piece of shit.
Bioware Montreal can't produce a good game weather it is open world or corridor shooter to save their lives/

Don't forget about Arrival (ME2 DLC) which was made by the same studio. It felt very different to ME2 and even had waves of enemies at the end.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Don't forget about Arrival (ME2 DLC) which was made by the same studio. It felt very different to ME2 and even had waves of enemies at the end.

Ugh that was a stupid DLC. They could actually have done something interesting with that to bridge ME2 to ME3, the player for example being unable to destroy the Mass Relay in time and the reapers arriving in force.
The end part would have been about the player trying to escape the system in time in order to warn all the Citadel races. Perhaps there being this little mini game in which you have to fly the shuttle and avoid being caught by the Reapers until the Normandy picks you up. (Mass Effect 3 showed that even during a Reaper invasion ships could escape)

Instead it was just like the rest of those loyalty missions and it did not have any impact on the series at all.
Okay Shepard starts out in prison in Mass Effect 3 because of what happened in Arrival, how long did that last before the player was back in the saddle so to speak?

Probably the only ME DLC worth spending time on (if you like Mass Effect) is Lair of the Shadow Broker, the rest of them are worthless.

 

[PirateScum]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldy go where no-one has gone before.

You do this to escape from two races, one that wants to collect your species turn you into abominations and use your genes against you, the other a race of ancient murder-bots.

Only to find in Andromeda a race that wants to collect you, turn you into abominations and use your genes against you. Oh, and there are also ancient murder-bots all around.

Such variety, such novelty, such originality.

So, basically they never made it to the new galaxy. The whole crew died some time during those 600 years.
That's why everything looks and feels so familiar in the new galaxy and you face the same problems. The protag doesn't know any better.
You experience his or her own little purgatory. Tired faces, repetetive tasks, every other human you encounter is an ugly homosexual feminist who wants to bang you in the ass.

It all makes perfect sense now.
ME:A is a masterpiece 11/10!

 

[Reinhardt]

Mass Effect: Numanuma?

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Ghost Recon: Wildlands bests Zelda in US sales for March
Mass Effect Andromeda sales are the second-best in the series.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-20-ghost-recon-wildlands-bests-zelda-in-us-sales-for-march

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came in second, even though it shifted 1.3m units in its launch month,

So Mass effect Andromeda has sold less than Zelda which sold 1.3million in a month. EA were predicting it would sell 3million in week one and 6-9million over it's life span. These figures are US sales alone but if you look at this and the UK charts and the massive drop off in it's sales there after week one. Mass Effect Andromeda will have been damn lucky to have even sold even 2 million copies so far with heavy discounting and it'll be lucky to sell 3 million even with sales over it's life.

ME2 may have sold less in it's first month but it sold strong and was still shifting 20k-30k copies a week two years later. Andromeda would be lucky to get those numbers next week:D

 

[pippin]

Once again, we have to read the keywords... is "shifted" the same as "sold"? Bethesda claimed they have shipped a number of FO4 copies and everyone thought that meant copies sold, but it actually means they sent that ammount of copies to stores, not that people actually bought them. As I said before, you will never get clear and honest numbers from videogame companies.

 

[cvv]

Do we know what is the usual ratio between shipped-sold? If so it'd be easy to estimate actual sales.

Either way the only thing that matters is sequels. Whatever DAI sales were we KNOW they weren't good enough bc Bioware is not working on DA4. Same will be true for MEA. Simple.

 

[Tytus]

Do we know what is the usual ratio between shipped-sold? If so it'd be easy to estimate actual sales.

Either way the only thing that matters is sequels. Whatever DAI sales were we KNOW they weren't good enough bc Bioware is not working on DA4. Same will be true for MEA. Simple.

Which info you pulled out of your ass.

Because the voice actor for Elf Inquisitor in DAI already posted that she is recording lines for a new Elf role.

http://i.imgur.com/MNI9uF5.png

So they are either making DA4 or some other DA spin-off. They are still trying to milk this franchise.

 

[Kem0sabe]

They are not learning animals, so it's going to be Another open world shit rpg from them...

 

[Freddie]

Many other issues. Not very satisfying to play for the most part. Check ME co op subreddit if you want to keep up. Some folks made videos of some weapons, basically headshotting guys with the halberd (upgraded mattock that does like double damage) and not killing a basic mook in silver with even a full mag lol.

As mentioned above, the co op community is pissed for the most part. Many went back to ME3 multiplayer temporarily (!)

Many other issues too, but it's not really worth talking about it further... Next patch may decide whether people bother with it again or not. Devs don't seem to really get it. First patch they "buffed" the mattock by fixing it's fire rate bug... And then nuking it's damage by like 30 percent or 25 or so, making it worse than the predator pistol. It's all just tedious.

Oh yeah, unlocking is much slower than ME3. You often only get 1 gun per pack, or a character early on... Huge unlock roster due to all the consumables and whatnot.

This was sort of worst scenario prediction I made, but never, ever I thought it would be likely that they would really be that stupid to go this route. MP and community around it was which saved ME3, and ME brand reputation in general, and now they are killing it.

How completely they fucked this up is somewhere way beyond recognition. Single player I could understand, but MP too, just unbelievable.

 

[cvv]

Do we know what is the usual ratio between shipped-sold? If so it'd be easy to estimate actual sales.

Either way the only thing that matters is sequels. Whatever DAI sales were we KNOW they weren't good enough bc Bioware is not working on DA4. Same will be true for MEA. Simple.

Which info you pulled out of your ass.

Because the voice actor for Elf Inquisitor in DAI already posted that she is recording lines for a new Elf role.

Then you should reach deep into my anus and fumble around since apparently it contains info more reliable than you can find. It takes a minute of googling to find out her VO job has nothing to do with Bioware and Laidlaw tweeted explicitly DA4 "is not a thing".

 

[Freddie]

Don't forget about Arrival (ME2 DLC) which was made by the same studio. It felt very different to ME2 and even had waves of enemies at the end.

Ugh that was a stupid DLC. They could actually have done something interesting with that to bridge ME2 to ME3, the player for example being unable to destroy the Mass Relay in time and the reapers arriving in force.
The end part would have been about the player trying to escape the system in time in order to warn all the Citadel races. Perhaps there being this little mini game in which you have to fly the shuttle and avoid being caught by the Reapers until the Normandy picks you up. (Mass Effect 3 showed that even during a Reaper invasion ships could escape)

Instead it was just like the rest of those loyalty missions and it did not have any impact on the series at all.
Okay Shepard starts out in prison in Mass Effect 3 because of what happened in Arrival, how long did that last before the player was back in the saddle so to speak?

Probably the only ME DLC worth spending time on (if you like Mass Effect) is Lair of the Shadow Broker, the rest of them are worthless.

Arrival was obviously sort of beta test for MP for ME3 (per EA's policy and announcement to stock holders that every EA game must have MP after 20XX). And again, what's Montreal studio to do? Again, the same as with Omega in ME3, it's messed up, who the hell thought that bridge part should be part DLC? Again, writer responsible for main story arch is who to blame here.