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exquisite tea posted:EA ended up being a real deal with the devil for Bioware since it's what enabled ME2 to become such a huge AAA hit but also what led to everything after. I don't think you can put Andromeda all on EA's head though, it was a mismanaged project through and through. "EA" had influence even in Bioware's golden age since their owner at the time is one of EA's VPs now. Most of the gently caress ups are Bioware's, likely due to them trying to run things like they did 20 years ago but with much larger projects.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:05
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monster on a stick posted:Remember what happened after ME3? People wanted exploration/where's my Mako, they also praised Montreal since they did the multiplayer part of the game (and I think people are still playing MP.) This is interesting. I didn't realize montreal did the multiplayer, I'd appreciate a source so I could read up on that. But also, how do you separate multiplayer from the basic combat mechanics used in both mp and sp? Still, hearing that the studio that made the mp got told to make the whole thing puts things in a new light, and I say that as someone who loved the mp in 3 and remembers the rest of the game kind of a dissapointing blur, with at least one big exception in the resolution of the krogan arc.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:12
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monster on a stick posted:Montreal didn't work on compelling characters and storylines (unless you think Omega was a top-notch story DLC) so we didn't get that. In retrospect the fact that Omega ends with Aria back on her couch in Purgatory "because it's easier to run things from there" was probably a bad sign.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:22
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Android Blues posted:The thing is that money-wise, they sort of do, because every year of game development costs hugely and at some point you're either like, "we have to push this out the door and hope it sells despite its obvious flaws", or you reconcile yourself to losing money on the game in the hope that the team that's already been botching it for five years can turn this into something good if you just give them six. i think i'll agree to disagree here since we won't be able to argue our way to any kind of firm conclusion anyway, i'll just restate that weighed against 'hoping it sells despite its obvious flaws' is 'produce the thing until you're personally satisfied and then hope that sells' because it's already a given that we're in a bad situation where we've lost money to mismanagement, the deciding factor will depend on if we expect a net return on any further effort since we know flaws hurt sales to an extent (which there is more leeway for judgement on yeah) at least through strictly financial arguments, a company might want to include loss of reputation and prestige in its calculus along with the future prospects of a reliable franchise - but considering how much of the real development apparently took place in a productive 18 months, i'd wager another 12 would've been sensible imho given how bad a flop andromeda was with its flaws and seeing that a large number of those problem areas were already flagged as troublemakers, if we believe the kotaku story anyway, so the remaining issues were known and would've given direction to further efforts - as bad as this dev cycle was i personally doubt bioware would have treated a hypothetical extension as anything but an opportunity to address all flagged issues while engaging with the regression they were facing Android Blues posted:I don't think the animations are the problem like, at all, they're just what the internet latched onto. The real issues are the lacking story, the lack of even slightly meaningful dialogue choices or interactions, the underpopulated exploration zones filled with busywork sub-MMO fetch quests, and how the gameplay flow just generally hasn't been polished. This all becomes more evident as you sink more time into the game: it's big, but a lot emptier than it should be. while apparently story/dialogue/characters came into being really late in the process this time around without room for redrafts and so faced a similar 18 month crunch, and it is hard to say if those sorts of issues could also have been addressed in a hypothetical extension, but at least from a marketing standpoint addressing the animations and the like would have been a boon because it takes someone whose played the game to notice the lackluster story arcs, but anyone else can laugh at a gif of a janky kett manpile in the sky
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Jun 13, 2017 17:25
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If Montreal went all-in on a multiplayer only Mass Effect it would have been a better use of their skills and resources. They couldn't even get that right.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:25
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Jack B Nimble posted:This is interesting. I didn't realize montreal did the multiplayer, I'd appreciate a source so I could read up on that. But also, how do you separate multiplayer from the basic combat mechanics used in both mp and sp? Here's a source: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/11/12/an-update-from-bioware-montreal/ posted:Because BioWare has always believed that the company culture is one of the key ingredients of the games we make, we took two important steps with the team. First, we deliberately seeded the new studio with many transfers from Edmonton. Second, we chose to grow the team relatively slowly, allowing new people to join the team and integrate into its culture in due time. Even with that approach, though, the Montreal studio has made significant contributions to the Mass Effect franchise. We started by building about half the cinematics for ME2, then most of its N7 missions, and finally we played an important role in the development of much of its post-release content. Then on ME3, we took charge of the multiplayer portion as well as making significant contributions to the single-player campaign. Most recently, we built a large piece of DLC that will be released on November 27 and that you know under the name of Omega. With each new portion of work, we took on deeper and broader responsibilities, but we always worked in conjunction with Casey, the Mass Effect leads, and the developers in Edmonton. I didn't realize they did so many cinematics or N7 missions for ME2. Though - were any of the N7 missions very good in the second game? Maybe the malfunctioning mech missions? Pattonesque posted:In retrospect the fact that Omega ends with Aria back on her couch in Purgatory "because it's easier to run things from there" was probably a bad sign. To be fair they had three choices: * Aria gone from the Citadel and the game, which could cause problems with the Citadel missions she gave you to recruit mercenaries as war assets, as I'm pretty sure Aria always contacted you during/after each of those missions. Also they'd have to figure out a way to give out the quests in case you said "let's take back Omega!  " before asking about those missions, and I remember hearing that ME2 had some problems if you took Liara up on LotSB before getting the story on Thane/Samara.* Aria moved to Omega and them setting it up as some kind of hub, with side missions and everything. This wasn't going to happen because that would be very expensive. I guess they could just have you land and have Aria just sitting there on her couch, more like the "hub" you got with Lair of the Shadow Broker, but that would have been lame and honestly who would go back and see Aria? * Aria remains on the Citadel for reasons. The last is handwavy but it's fine. monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 17:29
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A Buff Gay Dude posted:Mass Effect is really bad now, the name "Mass Effect" stands for lovely games lmao There hasn't been a "good" Mass Effect game since 2010.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:36
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Durzel posted:It's hard to imagine how a company could gently caress up Mass Effect so much, I mean it's not as if it's a new property - they had a proven blueprint laid out for them. Instead for reasons unknown they seemed to just want to chuck that out of the window to chase some nebulous procedural exploration pipe dream. This is up there with 3D Realms pissing away money for years pretending to make Duke Nukem Forever. "How could a company gently caress up a mass effect this bad?" I asked about the company that released Mass Effect 3.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:37
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A Buff Gay Dude posted:"How could a company gently caress up a mass effect this bad?" I asked about the company that released Mass Effect 3. Electronic Arts
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Jun 13, 2017 17:38
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Chill Nazi Frog posted:There hasn't been a "good" Mass Effect game since 2010. I agree with you my friend
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Jun 13, 2017 17:38
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Iron Crowned posted:Electronic Arts I think you missed the point of my post so I'll lay it out for ya: Mass Effect 3 was loving garbage and Andromeda being bad was absolutely no surprise.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:39
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monster on a stick posted:
ehh, they coulda done what they did in LoTSB and include some fluffy reasons for going back. extra merchants, more dialogue, some journals, maybe an extra big conversation with Aria I dunno it just seemed kinda lame to TAKE BACK OMEGA and then have Aria ignore Omega
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Jun 13, 2017 17:39
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A Buff Gay Dude posted:I think you missed the point of my post so I'll lay it out for ya: Mass Effect 3 was loving garbage and Andromeda being bad was absolutely no surprise. Some people might not understand that Electronic Arts
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Jun 13, 2017 17:42
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Pattonesque posted:ehh, they coulda done what they did in LoTSB and include some fluffy reasons for going back. extra merchants, more dialogue, some journals, maybe an extra big conversation with Aria LotSB didn't have most of that. The only thing the Shadow Broker ship had was Liara (who only had a conversation immediately after you beat the Shadow Broker, after that it was "hello Shepard"), Feron (who had a few lines and that's if you knew where to find him), some stuff that made sense for the Shadow Broker to have (intel/videos, lists of planets you could mine if you really needed platinum by this point in the game), and a research station/weapon locker which you had on your ship anyway. Oh and that thing that let you place bets. It was so far out of the way, I almost never visited the station post-LotSB even if I did LotSB right after Horizon to maximize my level before the Collector Ship. I'm guessing that Bioware had enough telemetry to know that if nobody was visiting Liara, they sure weren't going to visit Aria. Maybe if they built it out as an actual hub, but that would have taken significant time to do - the only Mass Effect DLC that included anything like a hub was Citadel, which was the ME's team "goodbye fans" DLC and the Strip was a huge part of the DLC, rather than "here's a way you can visit Morlan's Famous Shop  " You know, I'm curious how many people visited the shops. I just stopped by each shop once and then bought everything from the ship since it was easier even if it cost a little more.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:57
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Furism posted:Oh I believe you when you say there are bigger problems, but I do think the animation team was led by the Ministry of Silly Walks and it's goofy and breaks ~~my immersion~~ way to much. That Kotaku article said the animation team was chronically understaffed, so Bioware basically got what they paid for.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:57
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just gotta say that reading on the experiences and problems of the andromeda dev team really sucks a lot of th3 fun out of laughing at andromeda. it's depressing, really, and more of a cautionary tale than a hilarious train wreck. which is why no man's sky will never stop being funny.
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Jun 13, 2017 19:45
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Mass Effect should have stayed an xbox/PC Microsoft Games exclusive.
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Jun 13, 2017 19:54
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The hype surrounding NMS probably contributed to Andromeda's insistence on procedural gameplay long past the point at which it should have been axed, so in one sense it's the gift that keeps on giving.
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Jun 13, 2017 19:56
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Fututor Magnus posted:just gotta say that reading on the experiences and problems of the andromeda dev team really sucks a lot of th3 fun out of laughing at andromeda. it's depressing, really, and more of a cautionary tale than a hilarious train wreck. nah it's still pretty funny imho, like it sucks for the low level programmers or whatever who had to slog through but it's kind of amusing to look at a dev cycle of nonstop bad decisions 
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Jun 13, 2017 20:02
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Fututor Magnus posted:just gotta say that reading on the experiences and problems of the andromeda dev team really sucks a lot of th3 fun out of laughing at andromeda. it's depressing, really, and more of a cautionary tale than a hilarious train wreck. I would share more sympathy if they hadn't sold me their lovely game.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:05
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monster on a stick posted:I didn't realize they did so many cinematics or N7 missions for ME2. Though - were any of the N7 missions very good in the second game? Maybe the malfunctioning mech missions? Not really. The best ones were the malfunctioning mechs/rogue VI missions, but most of the N7 missions were just boring shooting galleries.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:06
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I think the janky animations impacted the game's critical reception more than people give it credit for. It's a very early impression that gives off the vibe that this is some lower-shelf game. Pretty graphics can hypnotise a lot of reviewers - couple that with the brand's name and frontloading with content in such a long title and Bioware would have probably gotten away with their predicted metascore. Those animations, models and other missteps made people go "wait a minute" right from the beginning.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:07
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Palpek posted:I think the janky animations impacted the game's critical reception more than people give it credit for. It's a very early impression that gives off the vibe that this is some lower-shelf game. Pretty graphics can hypnotise a lot of reviewers - couple that with the brand's name and frontloading with content in such a long title and Bioware would have probably gotten away with their predicted metascore. Those animations, models and other missteps made people go "wait a minute" right from the beginning. I mean they released major gameplay videos with PeeBee holding her gun backwards. Yeah it's just a tiny shot but it's gonna cause people to wonder, if they missed that, what else did they miss? As it turns out the answer was "well, everything"
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Jun 13, 2017 20:10
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Arcsquad12 posted:Not really. The best ones were the malfunctioning mechs/rogue VI missions, but most of the N7 missions were just boring shooting galleries. I'm guessing they did the "N7 missions" in ME3 as well - the ones that took place on multiplayer maps, which made sense since they made the maps. Those missions were just shooting galleries but they were at least decent fun and came with Hackett briefings. Not saying they were good compared to ME's N7 missions which tended to have an actual story and/or voice acting ("CORPORAL TOOMBS  ") but it was an improvement over the boring filler in ME2. Remember the one where you have to keep putting a battery in one of those giant mecs every ten feet?In retrospect Montreal should have given them Anthem since it looks like a multiplayer type game with not much of a story, and since everyone is inside a mech suit they wouldn't have needed facial animations. 
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Jun 13, 2017 20:58
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monster on a stick posted:I'm guessing they did the "N7 missions" in ME3 as well - the ones that took place on multiplayer maps, which made sense since they made the maps. Those missions were just shooting galleries but they were at least decent fun and came with Hackett briefings. Not saying they were good compared to ME's N7 missions which tended to have an actual story and/or voice acting ("CORPORAL TOOMBS I never even did the N7 missions in 2 because they had zero impact on the story and do nothing to carry over to 3. Those missions in 3 were at least fun and gave war assets.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:06
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Cythereal posted:I never even did the N7 missions in 2 because they had zero impact on the story and do nothing to carry over to 3. Those missions in 3 were at least fun and gave war assets. Excuse me but some of them gave upgrades for Mordin to research. I always did the Hammerhead missions early because one of them (the one on the volcano planet?) gave you a medigel upgrade which was really helpful early in the game on harder difficulties. But yeah they were mostly  and it was more fun to use the save editor to give yourself the upgrades.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:10
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Drifter posted:I would share more sympathy if they hadn't sold me their lovely game. i have much sympathy for the devs and for the stress and bullshit they endured all those years. i have no sympathy for corporate bioware and ea. think about who was most fine and happy with shipping this lovely game; it wasn't the actual people making the game, it seems, for the most part.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:53
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Not to mention that, Asari aside, the other races all actually look like they evolved in their homeworld's environment rather than just being random alien species. The Angarans are a random mishmash of traits for generic alien features. This is fitting considering they are a constructed or created species
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Jun 14, 2017 04:49
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Drifter posted:I would share more sympathy if they hadn't sold me their lovely game. Did you, Drifter, of all people, actually buy this game? I am the OP of this thread and I didn't do that!
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Jun 14, 2017 06:58
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marshmallow creep posted:Did you, Drifter, of all people, actually buy this game? I am the OP of this thread and I didn't do that! It was at a significantly reduced amount. Still super pissed.  It was a bad game.
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Jun 14, 2017 07:35
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I paid money for this. Pre ordered and absolutely got my entertainment out of it, no regrets. But I would never in a heartbeat recommend anyone every play this flawed product and I'm glad the franchise has been put to sleep like the sick mangy dog it is. I've had my video game fast food meal and enjoyed it while I ate it. Now I'm looking at the empty tray and feeling sick at the sensation of all that Bioware grease in my stomach. Would I like to order another KFC Sloppy Pizza Burger King Bioware happy meal? No, no I would not.
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Jun 14, 2017 08:50
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Pattonesque posted:In retrospect the fact that Omega ends with Aria back on her couch in Purgatory "because it's easier to run things from there" was probably a bad sign. To be fair, that's more about not breaking other quest triggers than lazy storytelling.
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Jun 14, 2017 10:22
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I'm playing a proper good RPG again. Tyranny. Wow is all I'm going to say. I've already played through it (when it first released) but playing it after Andromeda is pretty 
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Jun 14, 2017 11:18
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DancingShade posted:I'm playing a proper good RPG again. Tyranny. I thought Tyranny was pretty good, but I have zero desire to play through a second time. Wasn't a big fan of the characters, either, although they were way better written than Andromeda.
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Jun 14, 2017 11:33
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DancingShade posted:I'm playing a proper good RPG again. Tyranny. Since everything is cooldown-based in Tyranny you must feel right at home after ME.
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Jun 14, 2017 12:10
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firstly, can someone repost the EA shooting their purchased companies in a murder pit image again secondly Son of Thunderbeast posted:What's wrong with scat videos? i only know this song from watching people in WoW murder mourners, it was very funny
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Jun 14, 2017 12:10
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DancingShade posted:I'm playing a proper good RPG again. Tyranny. Yeah, I'm downloading the update on my slow-rear end Internet, can't wait to finally play a faithful footsoldier of the Overlord
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Jun 14, 2017 12:41
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, I'm downloading the update on my slow-rear end Internet, can't wait to finally play a faithful footsoldier of the Overlord that's only available when the expansions released fam
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Jun 14, 2017 12:49
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Evidently they completely changed the Tempest reveal cutscene with the latest patch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJbTixZso8s Just more evidence in the "this game wasn't finished on release" bucket.
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Jun 14, 2017 15:07
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Pattonesque posted:Evidently they completely changed the Tempest reveal cutscene with the latest patch: I'm going to miss Ryder's autistic expression of "that's a nice space steam locomotive" as it pulls into the space train station. *thinks* You know, if I ever play Andromeda again.
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Jun 14, 2017 15:20
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