[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[zealo]

For those who play the trial on pc, whats your control of choice? I never tough I'd say that, but I prefer my xbox360 controller over the kb&m this time around, how do you feel about the kb&m?

kb/m by a country mile. it had pretty solid functionality for rebinding keys plus its a shooter.

[Ilikegreenfire]

I can't think of a situation where Scrapper isn't the best option. Charge deals good damage, primes combos set up by team members, and recharges half of your shields to boot.

Of course, I've not played the game, so I'm not sure how viable it is to fight at close range at that difficulty. I'll know in 6 more days. Just have to keep myself sane until then......... *twitch*

Iirc the actual profiles dont unlock after habitat 7 so you miss the passives. I used charge a bit before i got to the story lock. Its good, but without passives it might be rough, shields and health drop fast on insanity so you really want to combo charge with something like the flamethrower to cc all the enemies around your target after you land. Im also pretty sure charge is a detonatior not a primer but it could be both.

I have to ask: since the game is somewhat similar to DAI, is there any replenishable resource that limits the amount of things you can do before having to go back? In DAI you had 8 potions, and once they were out, due to no healing, you had to go back to the base to avoid dying. Does something like this exist in MEA?

Health is recovered by either forward outposts or by supply crates in enemy or friendly encampments, they have holographic symbols floating above them. not really similar at all ime

[zealo]

I can't think of a situation where Scrapper isn't the best option. Charge deals good damage, primes combos set up by team members, and recharges half of your shields to boot.

Of course, I've not played the game, so I'm not sure how viable it is to fight at close range at that difficulty. I'll know in 6 more days. Just have to keep myself sane until then......... *twitch*

Depends on difficulty, trying to play vanguard style that early in the game seems to be suicidal on insanity with the amount of damage the enemy can deal. The game is definitely a fair bit harder than the original trilogy this time around.

[Deleted]

As someone who has done quite a bit of writing and read a few books on it... Let me just throw it right there that you have no clue what you are talking about. There are no "rules" to writing, and "objectively bad" is an oxymoron. The story is as good as it captivates the reader/watcher/listener/player. I enjoyed DAI story a lot, I thought it was the strongest in the series, so the writers achieved their goal. Everything else is just your attempt to justify your inability to accept that not everyone has the same preferences as you.

DAO story, on the other hand, is weak in my eyes, it is a pretty generic "assemble an army by doing tasks in 4 random places and kick the big bad guy in the nuts". DAO is still a stellar game, and I understand that not everybody has the same opinion on the story as me. It is just that, an opinion.

Really, the only Bioware game which, I thought, had a poor writing overall was SWTOR, but it had to sacrifice a lot of usual RPG elements for the sake of fitting in the MMO format. When you expect multiple impatient people to see every cutscene, you have to shorten them, to make the dialogue lines less intricate, so even people not caring about the story still understood what was going on.

I've already explained why I think the writing in recent bioware games has been bad (mainly DAI, DA2 and SWTOR). Maybe I should have emphasised more that it's all my opinion and shouldn't have used the word "objectively", but as far as structured story telling goes it fits.
I mean sure, you can write without rules and structure if you feel like it, doesn't mean that it's gonna turn out good tho.

But who knows, maybe I'm ignorant of the writing ways and DAI is actually a masterpiece. We'll see how andromeda turns out.

[I Push Buttons]

Wut. You can spacebar through cutscenes dude. The poor writing was a reflection of BioWares decline and them trying to shoehorn their usual format into WoW in space (which they bragged about how they were copying so much from WoW, so it's not even a slight against them), not because they didn't think MMO gamers would watch cutscenes.

Hell, they thought it would take people 3-5 months to hit level 50 in SWTOR on a single character. No, I'm not joking. They literally talked about it at GDC a few years back.

I mean it took me quite a while at launch. When did it come out? December? I remember it taking forever to level (not skipping any dialogue on any quest) and I didn't get to 50 until like the end of January. And I am a pretty big no-life, that was playing several hours every single day until I got to 50.

It could easily take a normal person, with a social life, etc., months to get to 50 back then.

[Sunseeker]

2. regarding graphics and models, what really started to bother me after a while is that for example on nexus i see all these humans and they are all the same height, weight all proportions are the same more or less. no chick with extremely slim hips or extremely wide hips, smaller tits or just huge ones, nobody is like 2.15 or 1.60, nobody is obese, etc etc. i dont mind if i cannot have a model, i dont know, an old granny with a purse that runs around and beats aliens with that purse with a catchy line "bad alien !" and that purse is upgradeable and shoots lasers pew pew and so on, but they could have thrown some variety into the game. this just looks lazy, on a lvl of some indy game developer that doesnt have the budget to deliver diversity but bioware and EA 100% had that and still im standing on nexus and im looking over a bunch of clones. or does bioware expect humanity do sort of drift into some "one species" thing, part asian, part black, part caucasian , all the same height weight hips shoulders everything and anything ? i really dont care about weird eyes or running or whatever, but a really fat chick that waddles around nexus would have been a refreshment every now and then.......

Except they never did this. The only game off the top of my head that I can think of with such variation in models is the Grand Theft Auto line. And quite frankly, it's fuckin hard. Every fat chick, every skinny chick, every busty chick, every muscle-dude, every fat dude, they all have to be independently modeled an separately animated. A base "female" and "male" skeleton in 3D animation only goes so far with adjustments. Sure, you could make minor adjustments to the base models. Slightly taller, slightly shorter, slightly wider, etc... but is anyone really going to notice? The amount of extra work required to ensure that every model in every shape works as intended is typically not worth the reward.

Also, you're complaining about something they NEVER DID. There was ONE male human model and ONE female model for every friggen Mass Effect game, only unique companion characters (Miranda, Samara, etc...) got unique models. In fact you're complaining about something very few games ever do. Unique characters sometimes get unique models, this is common among games. But for the most part there is one human male body and one female human body that every single NPC uses.

[NoiseTank13]

I mean it took me quite a while at launch. When did it come out? December? I remember it taking forever to level (not skipping any dialogue on any quest) and I didn't get to 50 until like the end of January. And I am a pretty big no-life, that was playing several hours every single day until I got to 50.

It could easily take a normal person, with a social life, etc., months to get to 50 back then.

There were plenty of people with a social life and are "normal" that hit 50 in about a weeks time. Leveling in an MMO isn't complicated, and reading for some people isn't complicated either.

[Sorshen]

Cora doesn't seem very... likable :/

[I Push Buttons]

There were plenty of people with a social life and are "normal" that hit 50 in about a weeks time. Leveling in an MMO isn't complicated, and reading for some people isn't complicated either.

Who said anything about it being complicated?

[MonsieuRoberts]

Some (potentially) good news for us saveoholics. How things like this aren't covered during development is beyond my imagining...do these guys even play games to know that people like to save, or do they simply marathon every game they play start to finish?

[Deleted]

Except they never did this. The only game off the top of my head that I can think of with such variation in models is the Grand Theft Auto line. And quite frankly, it's fuckin hard. Every fat chick, every skinny chick, every busty chick, every muscle-dude, every fat dude, they all have to be independently modeled an separately animated. A base "female" and "male" skeleton in 3D animation only goes so far with adjustments. Sure, you could make minor adjustments to the base models. Slightly taller, slightly shorter, slightly wider, etc... but is anyone really going to notice? The amount of extra work required to ensure that every model in every shape works as intended is typically not worth the reward.



Also, you're complaining about something they NEVER DID. There was ONE male human model and ONE female model for every friggen Mass Effect game, only unique companion characters (Miranda, Samara, etc...) got unique models. In fact you're complaining about something very few games ever do. Unique characters sometimes get unique models, this is common among games. But for the most part there is one human male body and one female human body that every single NPC uses.

i get it i get it but this is not an excuse, i mean what you are saying - its extra effort on the company side, and yeah it is. what youre also saying is - nobody will notice but hey look at me, i noticed......like i said im not in for some barbie shit, face this face that, makeup, scars, haircut, dont care for any of it, i even leave the helmet on in convos (who gives a shit about how anyones head look like ?) but in the game, the variety of models that we encounter talks volumes, also narratively. think about selection for the mission, did they take only the healthiest (and healthy is simply.....yeah....that) of all or did they pickup a midget, a dude in wheelchairs, a blind person, a retarded person, whatever. the escape for bioware in this is that they have aliens, so they provide diversity, but since this is 4th game, and the new alien models are also - same size, same looks, copy paste, a bit different maekup here a bit different haircut overthere but it just looks lazy. better they put some resources in that then in cinematic planet transition, even though i dont mind it its kinda cool but i could live without it no probs.

[Deleted]

He couldn't have said it better, perfect game for a braindead generation. Good thing that Witcher 3 set the bar so fucking high that it'll take another decade (if not longer) to top that.

[Lahis]

I can't think of a situation where Scrapper isn't the best option. Charge deals good damage, primes combos set up by team members, and recharges half of your shields to boot.

Of course, I've not played the game, so I'm not sure how viable it is to fight at close range at that difficulty. I'll know in 6 more days. Just have to keep myself sane until then......... *twitch*

I actually fucked up at the start and forgot to pick a class, so I went into first mission as Soldier. Atleast on Insanity I'm happy I didn't start out with Vanguard, because charging into the Kett on Insanity with only pistol in hand no skills to really start hitting them after the Charge would have been certain suicide.

[Edge-]

Some (potentially) good news for us saveoholics. How things like this aren't covered during development is beyond my imagining...do these guys even play games to know that people like to save, or do they simply marathon every game they play start to finish?

On the bright side, by the time I get around to picking this game up all these nonsense issues should hopefully be sorted with post-launch patching.

Though given the number of issues with shit like this going into the games launch (none of which should be fucking issues to begin with), I can't say I'm terribly optimistic : /

[zealo]

So apparently EA is moving up the full review embargo to in about 12 hours for reviews and full game streaming instead of on monday.
https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/stat...38844282208258
https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/stat...68576444960769

Seems like they've noticed this controversy isn't doing their games any favour.

[NoiseTank13]

good lord if theres one person i hate more than pewdiepie its azmonfuckface

[Edge-]

So apparently EA is moving up the full review embargo to in about 12 hours for reviews and full game streaming instead of on monday.
https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/stat...38844282208258
https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/stat...68576444960769

Seems like they've noticed this controversy isn't doing their games any favour.

Interesting, that's got to be a nightmare for the poor coms folks that have to deal with messaging that to everyone -_-

[May90]

I mean, if it bothers you that much, drop group before cutscenes. But this was not something done intentionally on the part of BioWare to counteract such an event, they've literally never talked about keeping the cutscenes short for any reason remotely related to this, or at all. At least not that I've read anywhere. And considering how long a lot of them already are, it's pretty clear that they weren't looking to keep the short for any reason.

And considering how much they shit the bed at launch, they weren't really too in-touch with what MMO players tend to like/want, hence why the game saw such a dramatic player loss and had to go F2P within a year.

I get the point you're trying to make, but there's literally zero evidence that BioWare even considered it during SWTOR development, at least as far as I've seen. And given a lot of their other comments, I would honestly be more surprised if they'd considered it at all.

Though I'll leave it at that for now before we go too off-topic. Happy to continue this via PM's if you'd like : )

I don't think it would be of much use, we apparently disagree here strongly and neither of us would change our opinion.

The way I see it, when making SWTOR, they were looking at what would work well in the game. I don't think they consciously decided, "Let's dumb down and shorten all the dialogue". The idea of making short and simple cutscenes came naturally at the early stages of development, as something that the game needs to have to have a large chance to succeed. It is just that - and I still think so - multiplayer isn't Bioware's forte. I enjoyed ME3 multiplayer, but ultimately it wasn't something I play Bioware games for. I think they should stick to making single player story-based games, they are awesome at it. For multiplayer, they need to seriously rethink their design; attempts to merge KotoR-like roleplaying opportunities with WoW-like open world grind is like trying to mix a chocolate cake with a chicken soup: it just doesn't work; at best, the final product will end up crippled in both aspects, and at worst, it won't be very edible/playable.

Health is recovered by either forward outposts or by supply crates in enemy or friendly encampments, they have holographic symbols floating above them. not really similar at all ime

I see, thanks! Sounds somewhat similar to DAI still to me, but we will see.

I've already explained why I think the writing in recent bioware games has been bad (mainly DAI, DA2 and SWTOR). Maybe I should have emphasised more that it's all my opinion and shouldn't have used the word "objectively", but as far as structured story telling goes it fits.
I mean sure, you can write without rules and structure if you feel like it, doesn't mean that it's gonna turn out good tho.

But who knows, maybe I'm ignorant of the writing ways and DAI is actually a masterpiece. We'll see how andromeda turns out.

There is no some supreme judge that decides what is good and what is not. An entity can be to one person's taste, but cause another one to vomit. Ultimately, every writer has a certain audience in mind; as long as the writing is taken positively by that audience, we can say that the writer's goal has been achieved.

Structure, "rules", these all depend on the writer, on the story itself, on the intent. Some people can write academically and make awesome books as a result, others prefer a more chaotic and spontaneous style, if it works for them.

You can say that you think writing is poor in recent Bioware games, I can understand that, different people - different opinions. But saying that the writing is bad just because it isn't structured the way you like, that's just being petty.

[Derah]

I have to ask: since the game is somewhat similar to DAI, is there any replenishable resource that limits the amount of things you can do before having to go back? In DAI you had 8 potions, and once they were out, due to no healing, you had to go back to the base to avoid dying. Does something like this exist in MEA?

From what I've seen in gameplay videos, yep.

Health doesn't regenerate anymore (Well, the first 25% of your health bar does, the rest doesn't) and you don't carry medigel with you anymore. There's only 3 ways to replenish health: Leveling up, entering a camp/forward outpost, or using a medigel dispenser, which you find peppered around here and there in missions, but those have limited charges, usually 2 charges.

The other limiting factor is ammunition eventually you WILL run out, as enemies don't seem to drop ammo anymore, the only way to replenish your ammo is to visit a forward outpost, or find ammo boxes which are also peppered here and there in missions. The ammo boxes however are not like the ones in ME3 which dispensed unlimited ammo, these have also finite uses (About 4 uses).

Lastly there's the Life Support, which limits how much time you can be exposed in certain planets (or certain zones of certain planets) depending on how upgraded is your armor and your nomad. Once life support is over, you HAVE to go to a Forward Outpost which will recharge your Life Support energy for yourself and your vehicle.

- - - Updated - - -

He couldn't have said it better, perfect game for a braindead generation. Good thing that Witcher 3 set the bar so fucking high that it'll take another decade (if not longer) to top that.

"Insulting Garbage"......

You and him sound an awful lot like victims of the dreaded Skyrim Syndrome that hit so many gamers in 2011.

Back in 2011, Skyrim was such a big hit, that for several months after it was out, every game released was immediately compared to Skyrim, and if the game wasn't as good as Skyrim, it was immediately regarded as unplayable garbage.

"Ohh what's that? Kingdoms of Amalur? Huh, sounds interesting. Tell me, is it as good as Skyrim? is it? come on, tell me, I wanna know, is it?!?!?!"

"Well, no...... not quite, but its still a pretty fun game to-"

"ITS NOT AS GOOD AS SKYRIM? THEN ITS A FUCKING GARGABE GAME, FOR FUCKING GARBAGE GAMERS. SKYRIM SET THE BAR FOR WHAT QUALITY IS, AND ANYTHING THAT FAILS TO MEET THIS BAR IS AUTOMATICALLY UNWORTHY OF BEING PLAYED."

That's how you, and the idiot in that video sound like.

[Mister Cheese]

http://i.4cdn.org/v/1489762734638.jpg

Going to go off topic again but the reason they need a day one patch is because of shit like this. EA is gladly going to fuck over their loyal customers to make their quarterly reports look good. To appease their shareholders. Every company on this list except Dice is now defunct. EA buys up a company, uses their goodwill to push out copies and appease their shareholders. Then axes said companies when their games don't sell enough. Andromeda could be a pile of garbage but as long as it sells "X" amount of copies EA won't care.

The "SJW Boogeyman" is entirely real. But It's only a symptom of a much larger problem. Manveir "Curry thunder king" Heir didn't make the voice acting shit, he didn't make the abortion that was the mass effect 3 ending, and he didn't make Andromedia's story shit(this is subjective but I have read the plot, and it's a ripoff of something else, entirely unoriginal.) All of these things are related to EA's anti consumer, cost-cutting policies, and besides that, they seem to despise the average person that plays video games. Manveir's attitude reflect's Bioware's as a company though. They have a poor outlook and don't seem to care what people who play their games think. People like this aren't worth as much as people who have actual talent. And these people are long gone from Bioware.

The jig is up. The normies have figured out that this game has tons of problems and that affects EA's bottom line. They expected 3 million copies of this game to ship at launch.

https://www.vg247.com/2017/02/01/ea-...he-first-week/

That number is getting further and further away since the gaming MSM is going nuts over how laughably bad the cutscenes are, the glitches, the story. The good isn't making up for the bad like other games. Dead Space 3 was supposed to sell 5 million copies. They did this by cutting out all of the survival horror aspects of the game, trying to appeal to a wider audience, adding microtransactions to probably make up for knowing that they weren't going to hit that number. The game only sold a pitiful 600 thousand in the first month. What happened to Visceral? They were axed right after.

I fear the same may be happening to Bioware soon. There is no way that they are going to meet sales projections for this game. They did well for Dragon Age Inquisition. Accuse me of doom and gloom but I do not see this game doing as well as its predecessors or as well as Dragon Age.



On the subject of animation, no. The original trilogy was not miles ahead of anything released during the time. The point of the picture above is that the animation has not improved at all in these games in a decade. You had titles like Metal Gear, Bioshock, the original Witcher, all of these games had much better facial animation I would argue. But Bioware would make up for this by adding movement to their faces. Having body language, looking around and trying to divert your attention to other things. Andromeda isn't trying. Having your characters staring at the camera with dead eyes stands out so much and it makes it so obvious. And it's atrocious to have this in a game in current year+2.

Those are my thoughts. Take them with a grain of salt.