[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Endus]

You know, while I completely agree that making parts of the cast queer for no other reason than to hit the PC gay quota is dumb and artificial

See, I just straight-up don't understand this viewpoint.

Why is making them gay "dumb and artificial", but making them straight isn't? *By various measures, 5-10% of the population are LGBT. *In a cast-centric game like the ME or DA games, not having gay characters is what would be odd.

None of those characters were including to pander. *It's not like Sera or Dorian were just there to "be gay and stuff", in DA:I. *If you didn't pursue a romance or push them in their conversation options, you might never even notice. *Dorian's being Tevinter is WAY more relevant to the story, and Sera's Red Jenny friends are her reason for being part of the gang.

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By what metric was the game bad, a failure, etc., other than your apparently very flawed opinion?

From what I know, it basically boils down to stuff like "unlocking areas with points is weird and artificial", "level-restrictions are MMO garbage", and so forth. *Basically, people are angry that the game wasn't what they thought it should be, based on a metric that exists only in their own heads.

[King Shark]

How so?

DA:I was an overwhelming success?

EA said it had the best launch of any Bioware title ever, the NPD said it had 5 million retail sales, a Bioware rep added to that saying a significant portion of the game's sales were digital and thus not even tracked by the NPD. Then on top of that it received solid reviews and multiple game of the year awards (including GotY at the 2014 Game Awards).

By what metric was the game bad, a failure, etc., other than your apparently very flawed opinion?

It appears that you put words in that poster's mouth. Saying that DA:I was the only good game of the series is indeed quite contrary to popular belief, as DA:O received just as much acclaim as DA:I.

[Deleted]

DA3 was a huge failure. Because it won some fucking PR-Award doesn't fucking make it any good. Even Fallout 4 won a weird Award over Witcher 3 LOLZ

[I Push Buttons]

It appears that you put words in that poster's mouth. Saying that DA:I was the only good game of the series is indeed quite contrary to popular belief, as DA:O received just as much acclaim as DA:I.

Well he also claimed a few posts before the one in question that DAI was a "hot steaming pile of crap".

[King Shark]

Well he also claimed a few posts before the one in question that DAI was a "hot steaming pile of crap".

That was him that wrote that shit... God I need to start actually paying attention to names and avatars. Carry on, good sir; you are 100% in the right. I guess my comment should be more directed towards the claim that DA:I was the only good game in the series.

[rhorle]

Why is making them gay "dumb and artificial", but making them straight isn't?

It is just as dumb. But rarely does does a token straight character need to be inserted into a game. Bioware is doing it less now a days because of the backlash but say during Origins they made characters able to be romanced by either gender just because they could. They didn't include a back story for why they were. Some times it didn't even really fit the other parts of that characters back story.

You seem to be misunderstanding the point for your usually PC crap. No one is saying that it is odd to have gay characters in ME (well a few posters might but not the one you are quoting). It is odd to make a character non-straight just to make them non-straight. To not give them any supporting story or lore to back it up. Of course none of the characters you bring up were to pander because Bioware did it the right way.

[Deleted]

"Dragon Age: Inquisition is the most successful launch in BioWare history based on units sold.", I guess it all boils down to what you consider a failure I guess.

AC3 sold a massive amount, too. That still not make it a good Game. Units Sold = € Spend on Marketing.

Lots of bad Games sell lots of copies, because most people are retards and Preorder.

[Endus]

It is just as dumb. But rarely does does a token straight character need to be inserted into a game. Bioware is doing it less now a days because of the backlash but say during Origins they made characters able to be romanced by either gender just because they could. They didn't include a back story for why they were. Some times it didn't even really fit the other parts of that characters back story.

You seem to be misunderstanding the point for your usually PC crap. No one is saying that it is odd to have gay characters in ME (well a few posters might but not the one you are quoting). It is odd to make a character non-straight just to make them non-straight. To not give them any supporting story or lore to back it up. Of course none of the characters you bring up were to pander because Bioware did it the right way.

What characters, exactly, do you think that was the case for? Every example I can think of off the top of my head outside of DA2 (where they oversimplified by making all romances bisexual) was fully justified in the character's background. *Hell, even in DA2, they justify it, it's just silly that they're ALL bi.

[rhorle]

What characters, exactly, do you think that was the case for? Every example I can think of off the top of my head outside of DA2 (where they oversimplified by making all romances bisexual) was fully justified in the character's background. *Hell, even in DA2, they justify it, it's just silly that they're ALL bi.

"it's just silly that they're ALL bi." is what I and others are talking about. That is including it just to include it. But its funny how you think it is justified and silly at the same time and yet disagree that we have a point. Because that is what we are saying its silly or doesn't make sense. Not all characters in DA2 were justified as being BI. There is no reason for them to all be bi, but there is no real reason from them not to be bi. It is included just to be included and even you think they are silly for making them all bi. That is what I and others are talking about, that it is silly to just include it for the sake of having it.

[Elim Garak]

It makes perfect sense to make all romanceable characters BI, from the game design point of view. Because you never know whom players might want to romance, considering they can choose the sex of their character and it's best to not create artificial restrictions by making a romanceable character strictly straight or strictly gay. It's a game - it should be flexible.

So I would not dig too deep here and look for a malicious intent of forcing BI characters on players. It's highly likely there's none and it's just a good design decision.

[tehealadin]

It makes perfect sense to make all romanceable characters BI, from the game design point of view. Because you never know whom players might want to romance, considering they can choose the sex of their character and it's best to not create artificial restrictions by making a romanceable character strictly straight or strictly gay. It's a game - it should be flexible.

So I would not dig too deep here and look for a malicious intent of forcing BI characters on players. It's highly likely there's none and it's just a good design decision.

And I think that when you consider that most romantic scenes are optional, with the player only really having to deal with romance options when an certain characters indicate their interest (a literal handful of times in the game), people are making way too big a deal out of this. If it was every other cut scene, and characters were constantly going on about how they are gay/bi, then maybe I could see the justification in this criticism, but I think with that you got, and what was mandatory, this is a bit of an overreaction.

[Endus]

"it's just silly that they're ALL bi." is what I and others are talking about. That is including it just to include it. But its funny how you think it is justified and silly at the same time and yet disagree that we have a point. Because that is what we are saying its silly or doesn't make sense. Not all characters in DA2 were justified as being BI. There is no reason for them to all be bi, but there is no real reason from them not to be bi. It is included just to be included and even you think they are silly for making them all bi. That is what I and others are talking about, that it is silly to just include it for the sake of having it.

And my point is that's a complaint you can make against one game, Dragon Age 2. *No game in the Mass Effect series suffers the same issue, nor do Dragon Age: Origins nor Dragon Age: Inquisition. *So acting like there's some pandemic of this is ridiculous; they tried it once, it didn't work, they haven't gone back.

It makes perfect sense to make all romanceable characters BI, from the game design point of view. Because you never know whom players might want to romance, considering they can choose the sex of their character and it's best to not create artificial restrictions by making a romanceable character strictly straight or strictly gay. It's a game - it should be flexible.

So I would not dig too deep here and look for a malicious intent of forcing BI characters on players. It's highly likely there's none and it's just a good design decision.

The issue is that you're either having your protagonist be so amazing that they "turn" a previously-by-backstory character gay, or straight, because of the mystifying power of the protagonist's genitals (which is ridiculous and offensive both to the protagonist and the NPC and what both represent), or you're artificially only including bisexuals as romantic options, which unless you've made bisexuality a core part of the setting (which is something that's been explored in various sci-fi novels, I'm not shitting on the idea itself) is just not believable.

Tokenism is having a gay or black character just to be there and say "Hi, I'm gay/black, we're included!" *If that same gay or black (or whatever) character has that background fleshed out and developed as a character, it's no longer tokenism, and shouldn't be dismissed as such. *Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition is a really good example; the character would have worked just fine as a hetero guy, but his sexual orientation provided some extra elements to his position in the Inquisition and why he's not in Tevinter. *It's a core part of the character, and isn't included just to have "a gay guy" in the cast.

[Elim Garak]

The issue is that you're either having your protagonist be so amazing that they "turn" a previously-by-backstory character gay, or straight, because of the mystifying power of the protagonist's genitals (which is ridiculous and offensive both to the protagonist and the NPC and what both represent)

That's a made up issue. When I play a game and choose to romance a character - it either responds in kind or turns me down. Being turned down in a video game is asinine unless it's a flirt tactic. If a character responds in kind - it's not because of my powers of turning people into any sexuality - I assume that they just swing my way. That's it. no powers involved other than the power of good game design.

If in another walkthrough I choose different sex and try to romance the same character - it's a brand new game. Any experiences from the previous walkthrough are null and void.

I take a note on good design though. Not shitting on my experience by limiting my romance options based on which sex I choose for my character - deserves a medal.

In fact the best game with romances will be the one that will have ALL the token characters (white male/female, black male/female, Asian male/female, Latino male/female, whatever male/female) in the pool of romanceable characters and make them all be BI. And of course allow player to create any kind of character for themselves.

[I Push Buttons]

For everyone complaining about thermal clips:

Hey folks,

There's a little tidbit of info I wanted to share that twitter didn't seem like the right medium for, so I thought I'd give it to y'all here.

By default, most guns in the game (the Milky Way ones, at least) work via disposable thermal clips, like in ME2 and 3. This is the "default user experience" for most guns in MEA.

However! Since we know some of you prefer the old-school approach, we have something called the Vintage Heat Sink. This is a piece of ME1-era tech that you can use when crafting a weapon to make it work more like the guns in ME1 did, with endless ammo but an overheat mechanic, rather than using disposable thermal clips as "ammo." So if you want your Avenger or Carnifex (or whatever) to behave ME1-style, that's entirely possible.

Link.

[Elim Garak]

That's a very strange decision. Because in ME1 you couldn't run out of ammo and in ME 2 and 3 you run out of ammo pretty fast and have to pick up some. Having both systems in the game means the ME1 will be superior in terms of efficiency - unlimited ammo.

[rhorle]

I take a note on good design though. Not shitting on my experience by limiting my romance options based on which sex I choose for my character - deserves a medal.

Which leads to shallow or poor character design. Because the character can't reflect its sexuality in conversations, or their story. Having every option open to everyone any time does not equal good game design. According to you a character that has been designed to be gay, has a history of being gay in the game lore would be great game design to suddenly have them not be gay just because the player character is not gay but wants to romance them.

It comes down to omg sex in video game vs wanting characters with depth to them. Neither is necessarily poor game design but creating characters that have depth even when it comes to romance is hardly shitting on the experience of the player

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That's a very strange decision. Because in ME1 you couldn't run out of ammo and in ME 2 and 3 you run out of ammo pretty fast and have to pick up some. Having both systems in the game means the ME1 will be superior in terms of efficiency - unlimited ammo.

Not really. It all depends on reload speed, thermal clip availability, and recharge time. Even in Mass Effect 3 there were recharge based weapons that were not automatically the most efficient. It will depend on a lot of factors. If you are talking about strictly RP efficiency then even that is a maybe. How long does a thermal clip take to reload vs a heat sink cool down?

[I Push Buttons]

That's a very strange decision. Because in ME1 you couldn't run out of ammo and in ME 2 and 3 you run out of ammo pretty fast and have to pick up some. Having both systems in the game means the ME1 will be superior in terms of efficiency - unlimited ammo.

I mean... Ammo was never really an issue in ME2/3 outside of early levels of insanity when everything took a clip or two to die. After a couple skill/weapon/ammo upgrades it became meaningless outside of needing to run two or three feet out of your way to walk over the flashing red cylinders that littered the ground after any fight.

Plus I am sure they have at least marginally "balanced" it. You may have infinite ammo, but that isn't really an advantage if it takes you four times as long to shoot the same number of bullets because you have to wait for your heat to dissipate... Unless every fight taking longer doesn't bother you, that is.

[Elim Garak]

Which leads to shallow or poor character design. Because the character can't reflect its sexuality in conversations, or their story.

They don't need to. People don't reflect their sexuality in real life conversations, normally. In fact when I see that in the game - it feels forced on me.
Character design doesn't depend on that.

It comes down to omg sex in video game vs wanting characters with depth to them. Neither is necessarily poor game design but creating characters that have depth even when it comes to romance is hardly shitting on the experience of the player

Sexuality is not deep. You seem to be confused. Sexuality is the most shallow thing about any character. Unless said character is a 60 y/o master hooker.
Sexuality only answers one question - can you romance that character or not. Once that's cleared up - it's irrelevant. The depth begins.

outside of needing to run two or three feet out of your way to walk over the flashing red cylinders that littered the ground after any fight.

That's what I was talking about. The need to go out of your cover and pick some. While with ME1 weapon you just sit tight and use abilities.

Plus I am sure they have at least marginally "balanced" it. You may have infinite ammo, but that isn't really an advantage if it takes you four times as long to shoot the same number of bullets because you have to wait for your heat to dissipate... Unless every fight taking longer doesn't bother you, that is.

Not really. It all depends on reload speed, thermal clip availability, and recharge time. Even in Mass Effect 3 there were recharge based weapons that were not automatically the most efficient. It will depend on a lot of factors. If you are talking about strictly RP efficiency then even that is a maybe. How long does a thermal clip take to reload vs a heat sink cool down?

No no no, it will be the same set of weapon you only change a mod in them that make them have unlimited ammo. That's it, they cannot make those weapons shitty. Like they did with the few in ME3. ME3 had just a few unique weapons with such mechanic. MEA will have ALL weapons with it as an option.

[I Push Buttons]

No no no, it will be the same set of weapon you only change a mod in them that make them have unlimited ammo. That's it, they cannot make those weapons shitty. Like they did with the few in ME3. ME3 had just a few unique weapons with such mechanic. MEA will have ALL weapons with it as an option.

My assumption was that it would take longer to cooldown than to eject the thermal clips, that was the whole lore explanation for why the thermal clips even came to be.

So if you have Assault Rifle X and it takes 3 seconds to fire 30 times...

Say for example it takes 2 seconds to cooldown with the ME1 heatsink and .5 seconds to eject a thermal clip... It would take you 13 seconds to fire 90 shots with the ME1 system and 10 seconds to fire 90 shots with the ME2/3 system, ie ~30% more DPS.

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They also mentioned it being a crafting component that enabled that. So even if they are identical in performance, it may very well prevent you from using another component that would have benefited in some other way.

[Endus]

They don't need to. People don't reflect their sexuality in real life conversations, normally. In fact when I see that in the game - it feels forced on me.
Character design doesn't depend on that.

Have you ever mentioned your significant other to anyone, ever? Ever talked about how a date went with friends? That's discussing your sexuality in real life conversations.

That's what I was talking about. The need to go out of your cover and pick some. While with ME1 weapon you just sit tight and use abilities.

Depending on the character type, they'll be good or bad. If you're a Soldier, they're probably terrible, because that "overheat" time is time you're not doing stuff. Snipers, if you're playing well, naturally conserve enough ammo they don't NEED to hunt for more, so it's unnecessary. I usually play my main runs as a Vanguard, and having to wait for my shotty to stop overheating would kill the entire character build, which relies wholly on non-stop Charging and applying shotguns to faces.

For a caster who wants to play more tactically, they may be a better option, but they're not going to be a gimme. Checking the Wiki, overheating in ME1 meant your weapon wasn't usable for at least 4 seconds, at max level (more, at lower levels). I'd rather just reload and keep shooting.