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

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Oh look the Faux Edgelords who completely trashed ToN give this piece of shit a respectable 7/10, how surprising...

Read the actual review, idiot. It looks like they are using scores to stave of publisher criticism.

Oh then everything's great I guess, truly the heroes the Codex deserves...

 

[Des]

GiantBomb review:

https://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/mass-effect-andromeda-review/1900-762/

Score: 2/5

The reviewer shared another great example of the new surrealist approach to storytelling used in MEA:

 

[Deleted member 7219]

GiantBomb review:

https://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/mass-effect-andromeda-review/1900-762/

Score: 2/5

The reviewer shared another great example of the new surrealist approach to storytelling used in MEA:

2/5 sounds generous though.

 

[cvv]

Guise trust me, things like that are BY FAR the most interesting moments you'll experience in this dreary, plastic game.

Hmm, maybe Bioware put it there on purpose, to break the tedium.

 

[Hellion]

Borderline experimental.

 

[Hirato]

I hate it how Crowbcat likes to play it safe. His video is like a medley of stuff we already know.

I hadn't seen half of those, so I'm fine with it. Don't know Crowbcat tho, so maybe he could have done better.

Some people like him, but imo he always goes for points that are somewhat "safe" or easy to avoid conflict when it comes to drama. He would make videos to say Minecraft kids are autistic, Ubisoft releases broken games, launch days for consoles are crap, etc. Stuff that you might already know if you've been aware of the happenings during the last years. He's not telling you that Bioware was always shit, or that there's a need to actively boycott major gaming companies who release shitty products. And as far as we know he's an independent youtuber, so he doesn't need to protect anyone, and yet he still goes for easy targets with easy points of view.

I don't know if he used to be different, but he basically just makes compilation videos of bugs and things found by other people.

GiantBomb review:

https://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/mass-effect-andromeda-review/1900-762/

Score: 2/5

The reviewer shared another great example of the new surrealist approach to storytelling used in MEA:

What were these guys doing? were they playing it off of a network drive? was a torrent client using 99.9% of the disk IO? was their recording tool completely thrashing the disk to save the video?
These animation files aren't big (I can't imagine this scene is more than a few MB worth of instructions), and the audio is generally streamed off disk (ie, small chunks are decrompressed on the fly), by the looks of it, IO is extremely limited in their environment, and as an interesting quirk of the engine, it seems keen to play the scene when the audio file is loaded, but the animations haven't yet loaded - this is is probably why RK47 and others are seeing so much random head-snapping in dialogue.

I have experienced issues like this myself before, for example when my PS2's laser became misaligned, and it had to reread the disc over and over until it got the right data, the cutscenes played out EXACTLY like this because of that.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

You know, guys, I just remembered there was this game two years ago called Fallout 4. So I looked up some of the footage - char creation, dialogues, characters, VA etc - and sure enough, for all the comedy it brought us then, it's light years better less shitty than MEA in those departments.
Let that sink in for a moment: a recent Bethesda hiking sim for the mentally-handicapped outclassed a newer Bioware game. In dialogues and character modeling.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

GiantBomb review:

https://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/mass-effect-andromeda-review/1900-762/

Score: 2/5

The reviewer shared another great example of the new surrealist approach to storytelling used in MEA:

What a mess. At least one reviewer has the balls to point out this emperor's poorly animated nudity with a suitably low score.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

What were these guys doing? were they playing it off of a network drive?

The game is out on console systems and PC. There are so many possibilities for what is going wrong - from driver issues, to hardware, to windows issues, specific console issues etc. edit: I see that this was a PS4 review

But the point is that these are hardly isolated cases and similar videos are all over the internet.

A lot of hack YouTubers will screw with a game's files to deliberately cause ridiculous scenes for views, but given that this is a well-known review site and this all started with normal users pointing out glitches and wonky animations, I don't think that's the case here. It would seem someone screwed up pretty bad on this one.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Been playing this for some time now.
I broke down and got it even though EA tried everything in their power to stop me, take that EA!




No, wai-




Anyway, I reallly want to know what difficulty the folks/reviewers who say that the shooting is better/combat feels better than ME3 are playing on.
I started on medium and wow, the standard guns take a full mag to kill the basic grunt enemy unless you headshot a lot, then it's "only" half a mag...
Semi-auto guns like the mattok got gimped to hell... Their fire rate is reduced to the point that they won't fire as fast as you can click anymore (same for pistols that used to do that in ME3)... And damage feels low too, not quite twice that of the standard auto popgun.
Awful... Powers don't do nearly enough to make up for it either, but Adepts (with "lance") and of course vanguard are just way better than soldier chars anyway.
Shotguns are mostly 3m guns. There are exceptions, but their accuracy is so low that any slug thrower will miss mostly until you get your +accuracy mods and skills up a lot.

Most snipers and shotties take too many rounds to kill enemies (sometimes even with headshots at least against the armored/shielded... Or armored AND shielded foes... Great).

This game is all about max single shot damage unless you play on casual or narrative difficulty... Which remove all these problems except for the stupidly low ROF of semi-auto weapons.

Multiplayer throws you some really nice curve-balls on top of that by nerfing either your shields/health or guns or whatnot depending on the mission it seems? I dunno exactly how that works, but sometimes you do like no damage haha.

Everybody plays either asari adept (lance can do some nice damage) or vanguard.
I think with the big enemies in multiplayer, the game wants you to buy and use the "cobra rpg".
Early on in the game, those extra items did not work for me at all... Now that seems to have been fixed or something. Not sure about single player stuff yet, I used a life-support backup thing several times and it did nothing or wouldn't even activate at all. Brilliant.


Furthermore, shooting just feels less snappy than in ME3, the feel is different and I'm not really a fan.
The perspective does not help. This should have been a first person game probably. Third person here is handled poorly... An open world (ish) game with huge open areas and enemies can come from all sides... Perspective is basically "zoomed in gears of war".
Set the FOV to max and you feel like looking at a fisheye lense during exploration. It zooms in a lot when you ready your gun, and massively if you aim. Because the camera pivots around your character's position and the sensitivity feels different due to the various zoom levels, following targets can be kind of weird even though there is no acceleration (or at least you can turn that shit off, thank god).
Also, I don't think I ever got this annoyed at the over-the-shoulder camera in the older titles... If you stick to cover (which your char does automatically, uh, thanks...) next to a doorway or so you may have to switch which shoulder the camera is at (it's actually well to the side of your shoulder, which makes enemies that are right in front of your character appear off-center of the cam, totally weird sometimes because your guy may miss a punch or shot that should hit). Sometimes you go long stretches without the camera bothering you, but then some close-in fighting in buildings happens and it's like, fuck this shit, switchswitchswitch!. You may be exposed to the enemy and out of cover but your camera is looking at a wall...

Also had to laugh at burst-fire snipers. You get maybe one shot in at long range out of 3. What's the point? Maybe with maxed stability or something can you make them work, but why not just take the 1000dmg one instead...
Crafting bonuses are mostly small and pointless, with some exceptions. Items you find are all generic.


Due to the fucked up guns/damage there is really no reason to play at higher than casual setting until maybe mid-late game where you get enough bonuses to somewhat make up for it. (or if you play shotgun vanguard with a 1000dmg shotty or something).
There is basiclly no reward for it anyway other than achievements (as if those were rewards hahaha).
The encounter design is laughable and inappropriate just like the combat in general.

If you play on a low difficulty, guns feels much more satisfying to use, but the combat becomes trivial. Enemy vision range is gimped like in MGS5, so there is no point to enemy outposts because they don't really project power or control places or anything. They don't work with other outposts either. It's all just isolated copy-pasted crap. Combat is either trivial or pure, tedious bullet-sponge mania. The way enemies and their ai are designed, the way guns work etcetc, it all just doesn't jive well. You also mostly lack a way to engage full enemy squads well... There is no real machine-gun equivalent or real HE (aside from the rpg thing that is for the tough enemies and is a one-use item) aside from a grenade gun which is pretty ok against grunts but on high difficulties requires a mag dump to kill just one...
Combat is just not properly designed... It's for the no-skill sjw types of today, but actually more annoying than the combat in many other open-world shooters like far cry 3/4 (which has similar issues with being trivial, but mostly because you get HE weapons and nuke everything in 2 seconds).
Combat design today is so often incredibly poor in AAA games it's just fucking sad.

Oh yeah, all those generic outposts, remnant places etc give you... 1-2 containers with generic loot, often just one item that is sell-only stuff.
Wow.

Your weapons have limited range, snipers included... So limited that sniping enemies from truly long range (even though you can see them fine, so I guess just 200m distance or whatever even with the low-powered scopes) is not a thing. Still, even at the edge of your limited range, enemies are basically helpless. Often they don't even react. They also glitch and spawn in hanging in the air and stuff, or fall from the sky upon spawning and you're looking right at that.
MGS5 at least had mortar teams etc engage you semi-realistically (even though only at fairly short ranges). It also had much better mechanics in general. Sadly still shitty open-world copy-pasta design where nothing you did mattered in a lasting fashion, but whatever.

The big "architect" enemies are also comically easy to fight, but apparently people all over the web are crying about how hard they are (?????? You just stand in cover, dodge the big blast if you need to, shoot the legs when it tells you with a high dmg sniper, then shoot the face... Shoot some drones... Repeat after relocating... There is no challenge here!).




Optimization is just plain unbelievably bad, I get 70-100+ fps on high settings on an old i5 4460 + gtx970 and 8 gigs of ram... But the game will randomly stutter (despite high fps) or even go low fps (just having 40-50 fps should still be perfectly playable, but it tends to lag and hang and whatnot anywy... I remember playing Clive Barker's undying at like 20-30 fps tops back in the day on a shitty machine and it felt smooth like butter lol... Nice job, modern developers). Keep in mind that this is not really an amazing looking game, it's the same old stuff you've seen from frostbite games (worse in many respects, better in some maybe) and many others. We've had these sorts of graphics for years and years now, with only a feature added here or there. Console stagnation is still a thing I guess.
When you get into the game, it seems to load assets (even though you just went through a loading screen...) and for a bit your performance will be shit (maybe a SSD would help though).
Frame drops also happen during moments where it makes no obvious sense. I can drive across the terrain at 90FPS steady with no issues, but then back across the same terrain and it'll drop and stutter all of a sudden.
There is no obvious physics stuff going on or any high particle count or anything, but fps drop suddenly... Other times there is lots going on but no fps drops.

Design wise: This is a bioware "rpg" (tm). Normally mass effects were corridor shooters (even if there is no visible corridor it still basically is one most of the time) with dialogue and shit. So they made this one open world(ish) and that just kind of serves no real purpose.
Almost all of the side-quest stuff is straight up check-the-box, cross-off-the-list copy pasta garbage. All you do is select he questmarker you want and drive there, get out to shoot (cuz you don't have a turret on the vehicle... At least I haven't found one yet? Keep in mind you are up against an enemy army... You'd think your guys would at least mount a machine gun or something), get back in because life-support and everything is far apart...
You have tons of cutscenes that are just loadingscreens probably, the galaxymap is especially bad... Really fucking bad. So much wasted time for every fucking action. You have to literally fly everywhere (i.e., watch really poorly made anims of your ship flying... The pilot must be retarded and physics certainly don't apply in any way).
Your ship will practically crash into a planet and then suddenly pull back weirdly fast into a more zoomed-out view of said planet. Wat. Every time too. Just stop in that final view from the start FFS! Or just let me do everything from the system view rather than having to fly to every little thing myself.

So regarding this being a bioware RPG (tm): All of the space stuff etc is just set dressing. It doesn't matter. The colonization stuff? Just total bs. Mostly binary choices (often with no way to even make an informed guess as to what will happen beyond: It doesn't matter), select whatever.
Most choices have negative consequences (that are also meaningless in reality) in some way to make an inexperienced player feel conflicted (you got a military outpost! Oh no, how will we feed ourselves? Scientists got moved back down the thawing-queue, you monster! We demand you untaw our families now, even though we have no food!).
It's the same reason as to why in any ME you never get to really:
1) Control your spaceship in battle
2) Get to know how ships stack up to each other (even though you are the captain of one! Your char has like no fucking clue about anything like how space battles work etc... Just like the bioware people probably... It's all hollywood style "explosions because I want them now" design)
3) See your own soldiers perform well in cutscenes (see ME3, alliance marines etc with kinetic barriers that do nothing etc)
4) Get to do any real commanding or really building your forces or real diplomacy with aliens or anything... Anything deep (mechanically) and impactful
5) Do stuff you would a specter to actually do... Instead you just do peoples' chores... Have no access to proper intelligence, allied forces nothing. Tell your shipboard marines to help you in a mission? Naw.

ME:A could have changed this, but of course that didn't happen. It would have made lots of sense to ditch all the bullshit sidequests etc and all the silly running around and actually let you play parts of this like a 4X or strategy game of some sort, building your colonies etc.
But it's all just bs set-dressing. They could also have you be the first team going in, any have follow-up teams collect all resources and containers and shit like you'd expect a real organization to do it. So that way you'd still get something for taking areas and eliminating threats/talking to aliens but you would no longer have to tediously scan/pick up everything yourself with your tiny inventory... Which is all totally inappropriate for the chosen setting, scope, and the role of your character and team anyway.


The side-quests also have some weird shit such as you have to scan minerals. Ok. Problem is you have to run all over the maps to scan this one specific bit of mineral... Which you've scanned and collected a million times before already... But your AI even tells you it detects a mineral not in it's database... And most of them are just bog-standard stuff you can find on planet earth lol (and you've collected them before in the game too).

There's a billion quests at any given time and 99% of them are trash.


Multiplayer is also more exploitative... You get less money for missions than in ME3 inspite of the gimped guns and powers.
The UI is also terrible and doesn't even always work right.

This is the kind of game you sink massive hours into but the actual entertaining stuff is stretched super thin /rare. Like so many modern games it's all about wasting your damn time with copy-pasta trash and traveltime and animations and loading screens and area transitions and only some fast-travel... Instead of solid core-gameplay, design and the other meat-of-the-game type stuff.

And wow what a resource hog... Sometimes closing the game tags like 5-10 minutes for no reason, other times it doesn't. Alt-tabbing can take ages, this thing swallows all the ram it can with nothing to really show for it. It's a console port basically, and a bad one.
BF4, Witcher 3 etc never gave my hardware trouble at all, and if you remember, I mostly get 70-90 or even 100+ fps in this game, it's just the random drops, stutters, and slowness of the program/resource hogging that's the issue there.
It also sometimes gets stuck in a loading screen... That shouldn't even be there. Usually when a cutscene of you landing somewhere will randomly glitch out at the end. Infinite loading screen all of a sudden. Now close the application and wait 5-10 mins until your pc can dump all that trash data I guess.

The long view distance also does nothing due to lack of real sniping distance weapons and scopes (and limited projectile/shot range... Plus enemies couldn't counter it anyway). The distance is often obscured or hazy in some way to boot and the maps are mostly designed in a way that has few real landmarks, it's typical "follow quest compass" design that you get in every AAA game now... No reason to design memorably worlds/maps anymore. Just drive while staring at your gps... The game has so many things that just don't add anything to the experience... Wasted effort that could have gone to more important things.

The driving is whatever. No real reason to be there except to help you traverse the huge maps. Which serve no real purpose in the first place. Great.


There's a whole bunch more shit I wanted to say but forgot, so whatever. Game is not really worth it, but what else we gonna talk about in an ME:A thread.




TLDR: Bad design all around. Touches every aspect of the game.

 

[Volourn]

I am often accused of being the so called resident 'BIo fanboy' yet even I haven't bought this game yet. LMAO Shit game by a fake company.

 

[cvv]

I played on Hardcore and as I said, guns are gimped to all fuck. The only viable things are Black Widow/Isharay/Dhan, all close to or over 1000 dmg. Or melee.

Someone on the BSN forum compared damage numbers of ME3 and MEA and MEA guns generally do 40 - 70% less damage than ME3. It's mostly the same guns mind you. And enemies in MEA have slightly higher HP pools. No idea why Bioware nerfed guns so much, not even the standard greedy, cash-grabbing reasons make sense here coz expensive ultra-rare guns are just as bad. It's actually the exact opposite what you want to do from a profit perspective - you don't want people to lose all motivation to grind, knowing higher-level guns have no fucking advantage over the crap they're using now.

It's prolly another proof nobody at BW Montreal, except the sound and environment designers, had the foggiest idea what they're doing.

 

[RK47]

Wow. Ezeekiel bought it. Holy shit.
Are you okay?

 

[Ezeekiel]

Wow. Ezeekiel bought it. Holy shit.
Are you okay?

I wonder if I can get a refund if I tell steam support that I only really played for less than 2 hours, the other hours were all loading screens and shit?
Oh right, it's not on steam but fucking origin. There is no hope in this wretched world.


Anyway, you know my suffering, fellow sufferer. At least there is lots of (unintentional) comic relief in this gem of a game, right?

Bioware perpetuates rape culture of gamers I say!

 

[Ezeekiel]

I played on Hardcore and as I said, guns are gimped to all fuck. The only viable things are Black Widow/Isharay/Dhan, all close to or over 1000 dmg. Or melee.

Someone on the BSN forum compared damage numbers of ME3 and MEA and MEA guns generally do 40 - 70% less damage than ME3. It's mostly the same guns mind you. And enemies in MEA have slightly higher HP pools. No idea why Bioware nerfed guns so much, not even the standard greedy, cash-grabbing reasons make sense here coz expensive ultra-rare guns are just as bad. It's actually the exact opposite what you want to do from a profit perspective - you don't want people to lose all motivation to grind, knowing higher-level guns have no fucking advantage over the crap they're using now.

It's prolly another proof nobody at BW Montreal, except the sound and environment designers, had the foggiest idea what they're doing.

Well the sound glitches out sometimes for me and the environments belong in a different game that can make actual use of them...

Agree on the guns. Holy shit. You KNOW the devs all played on "narrative" difficulty throughout development.

 

[J1M]

Ezeekiel have you tried the Infiltrator profile? I find the red outline on enemies that it provides to be mandatory for my enjoyment. (Sniper rifle + cover-penetrating mod)

Combat becomes a game of lining up multiple enemies for bonus damage, etc. and killing people through walls is fun for a while.

cvv I find your comments about the relative power of guns vs. powers a little confusing. I'm playing it on 'hardcore' and powers seem relatively weak as fuck.

You may want to dip into crafting, your guns will probably feel more satisfying. There are passives hidden in all 3 trees that have a big impact on the game. (40% weight reduction in the tech tree, 100% shield when near death at the end of the barrier tree, the obvious ones in combat)

I looked around online a bit for crafting tips and most of them are full of bad advice. ie. People recommending the vintage heatsink mod instead of the bio-converter (which makes reload instant). The most important basic aug is kinetic coil, which improves weapon damage. Between my melee weapon and the non-special slots on my gun, I have about 8 of these giving an extra +24% weapon damage. You can buy them on the nexus. You also get mods back when you deconstruct an item.

Finally, with the right cloak and offensive tech upgrades, you will be doing +120% damage on sniper shots while cloaked. Fusion mod of adrenaline on armor will let you cloak after every kill.

If you'd rather not focus on a sniper rifle, I think you will find that the turbocharge skill is near-mandatory. It will remove those complaints you have about firing speed and weapon damage.

Another non-obvious point. The best chest armor for gunplay doesn't show up in the research list. It is unlocked in the development screen as you hit certain levels. (Rank 5 maverick chest + kett arms + kett legs + heleus helmet = +30% weapon damage)

If you aren't crafting and aren't using turbocharge, your weapons are probably doing less than half of what they could be.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Ezeekiel have you tried the Infiltrator profile? I find the red outline on enemies that it provides to be mandatory for my enjoyment. (Sniper rifle + cover-penetrating mod)

Combat becomes a game of lining up multiple enemies for bonus damage, etc.

cvv I find your comments about the relative power of guns vs. powers a little confusing. I'm playing it on 'hardcore' and powers seem relatively weak.

You may want to dip into crafting, your guns will probably feel more satisfying. There are passives hidden in all 3 trees that have a big impact on the game. (40% weight reduction in the tech tree, 100% shield when near death at the end of the barrier tree, the obvious ones in combat)

I looked around online a bit for crafting tips and most of them are full of bad advice. ie. People recommending the vintage heatsink mod instead of the bio-converter (which makes reload instant). The most important basic aug is kinetic coil, which improves weapon damage. Between my melee weapon and the non-special slots on my gun, I have about 8 of these giving an extra +24% weapon damage. You can buy them on the nexus. You also get mods back when you deconstruct an item.

Finally, with the right cloak and offensive tech upgrades, you will be doing +120% damage on sniper shots while cloaked. Fusion mod of adrenaline on armor will let you cloak after every kill.

If you'd rather not focus on a sniper rifle, I think you will find that the turbocharge skill is near-mandatory. It will remove those complaints you have about firing speed and weapon damage.

Yeah if you stack bonuses etc like crazy and get high level bonuses from your skillpoint investments (like +a few percent extra damage at low level turns into way more later without the game telling you that these things scale in some cases) playing on higher difficulties becomes more viable with guns, but damn... Why even bother? There doesn't seem to be any payoff?

I didn't want to play the game with outlines on enemies because it's already trivial and every other game nowadays does this... You get "nice" graphics and then everything is obscured by red outlines and hud blips and motion blur and lensflares etc lol
I never have trouble figuring out where the enemies are in me:a tbh, so no need anyway.

Powers can still work with enough bonuses stacked and esp. if you go for combo detonations. Sort of same as guns tbh.
It's all just kind of tedious considering what you get for all your trouble.

Hadn't considered turbo-charge for something like the mattok before tbh, good idea. Don't really want to have to activate that stuff all the time just to be able to fire in proper semi-auto mode though.

 

[J1M]

Can you share your build/approach to using powers? I was never able to get my combo damage high enough for it to feel worthwhile (Mass Effect 3 levels). Played around with a few different pure biotic builds. Having more hotkeys would probably help a lot.

My sniper build uses energy drain now, but mostly as a backup heal and a way to trigger companion priming effects. (Although I dropped turbocharge in favor of incinerate because I didn't need the additional weapon damage.)

EDIT: Although I haven't tried a build focused around that mod that gives you +20% power damage when your ammo clip is full. Seemed like 20% was not enough to close the gap I was seeing. I would like to find some additional items with "power shield cost reduction" to try a build with the powers that use shield power as mana. The baseline costs of those really force you into a sentinel profile for limited gain.

 

[J1M]

Hadn't considered turbo-charge for something like the mattok before tbh, good idea. Don't really want to have to activate that stuff all the time just to be able to fire in proper semi-auto mode though.

Seems to be designed this way. AWESOME BUTTON

 

[Martius]

I wonder if I can get a refund if I tell steam support that I only really played for less than 2 hours, the other hours were all loading screens and shit?
Oh right, it's not on steam but fucking origin. There is no hope in this wretched world.

Refund policy is bit different than steam one. There should be no problem if you ask for refund up to 24 hours after running game for first time.

 

[Ezeekiel]

I wonder if I can get a refund if I tell steam support that I only really played for less than 2 hours, the other hours were all loading screens and shit?
Oh right, it's not on steam but fucking origin. There is no hope in this wretched world.

Refund policy is bit different than steam one. There should be no problem if you ask for refund up to 24 hours after running game for first time.

Why didn't you tell me that yesterday

 

[Junmarko]

Good to see Manveer has such wondrous career prospects ahead of him. Everyone at Bioware must miss him, dearly

 

[Ezeekiel]

Can you share your build/approach to using powers? I was never able to get my combo damage high enough for it to feel worthwhile (Mass Effect 3 levels). Played around with a few different pure biotic builds. Having more hotkeys would probably help a lot.

My sniper build uses energy drain now, but mostly as a backup heal and a way to trigger companion priming effects. (Although I dropped turbocharge in favor of incinerate because I didn't need the additional weapon damage.)

EDIT: Although I haven't tried a build focused around that mod that gives you +20% power damage when your ammo clip is full. Seemed like 20% was not enough to close the gap I was seeing. I would like to find some additional items with "power shield cost reduction" to try a build with the powers that use shield power as mana. The baseline costs of those really force you into a sentinel profile for limited gain.

Yeah fuck that 3 power limit design bullshit... Even though you can swap.

I didn't do anything special tbh. Just lightest weapon you have that is still not completely useless, and scour the skill trees for any bonus you can find (and then you have to consider if that will mean less levels in your sam profile, gah) plus stack all the mods and crafting bonuses you can... This game doesn't seem to be designed for space-wizards tbh. ME3 was just better in this regard and the shooting in general imo.
I pretty much accepted that it'd be more annoying to take enemies down and after a while got back to sniper/shotgun gameplay and then finally dropped the difficulty to casual and went with the more fun guns (such as they are). Difficulty setting depends on what sort of weapons /powers you want to use I guess.
I wish you could detach the scope off some of the auto-sniper variants. More damage but similar fire rate to carbines might make them actually more viable for "assault rifle" play. Or maybe if there were holo sights...

 

[Ezeekiel]

Good to see Manveer has such wondrous career prospects ahead of him. Everyone at Bioware must miss him, dearly

I dunno, he's not the only crazy-ass sjw in the industry and others like him get hired and rehired too. Plus "his people" love him mostly, anyway. And they're in most of the big companies now.
Also, consider google's personalized search result stuff and what effect that has on what some people see about him vs. those who check out GG links and right wing sites.

 

[Junmarko]

Also, consider google's personalized search result stuff and what effect that has on what some people see about him vs. those who check out GG links and right wing sites.

There's no smear campaign against this guy. Unless someone has hacked his Twitter account for the last 4 years, he only has himself to blame. Go look for yourself.