Re: ME:3 & ME:A Multiplayer Join/Invite Friends Not Working in EA app

Everyone having this problem can you answer a couple of questions?

1. Do you still use Origin or EA App?

2. Did you buy the game on Steam or not?

3. If you use Origin, and you bought the game on Steam, do you see two (or more) copies of Mass Effect 3 in it?

I am asking this because in EA App I see only one Mass Effect 3 in my library (as it should be), but in Origin I see 2 game copies.

I own the original Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe Edition purchased on Steam with a Steam logo overlay, and now I also have a Mass Effect 3 (2012 Edition) with EA logo overlay in the library.

Both are showing the same playtime, but EA one shows as not installed.

If those games have different IDs and if I have duplicate online entitlements then that might explain why matchmaking is failing. A friend of mine tried joining my game (I sent an invite) and he got a message that he needs to install the game in order to join despite me and him both having the same Steam version.

I am curious if anyone else has the same situation in their game library?

i'm not sure if you're wondering if Steam is part of this issue?

i have a pre-2018, purchased on disc, only registered through Origin (now EA) copy of ME3. my account had NEVER had an issue with invites pre-EA app. i migrated to EA app EARLY, but then rejoined Origin (still during Beta) because the EA app was fairly bad wrt lobby stability. by the time EA Support forced migration to the EA App it seemed like it had gotten *better* (slightly). but then, several months ago, inviting people (and joining via invite) simply stopped working for me, with whoever was trying to join getting the error: "Unable to Connect to Friend's Game."

if i can FIND another person in my situation (pre-2018 acct, not purchased through Steam) to test, i will... but i've tried to invite and accept invites with/from SO MANY people now, i know darn well it's a global issue.

@DoctorDAM Yes I read your 2020 public forum report, exactly. I had a BioWare emplyee contact at the servers who was able to fix N7 HQ progression globaly in few minutes as soon he was told (along with Retaliation glitch per account). Nobody was able to fix that after 2 years prior making the world wide reports on the post 2018 EA account via forums nor via opening cases with EA Advisors, as the reprots never reached the server team, he was completly unaware this was a mass world wide problem for every post 2018 account, it is only that his direct involvement with players, playing the game, with us, how he found out. He also said that he alone cannot fix the leaderboards and joining, as that requires game team to patch the game, which was disbanded long ago when support for the game ended. He quit BioWare and I am no longer able to notify any employee directly. We have to do it via opening cases with EA Advisors and via public forums, which is the right thing to do providing it has effect, but as we know from the hard five years pointless attempts to communicate, I fear that like before, repeating the same procedure is ineffective. If we could talk to people working on the fix, we would make significant progress, maybe even resolve this within a day. We know that the private servers have fixed joining problem by patching the game's .exe file.

However, during this summer, the game versions have been unifed... Standard editions for both games became their better Deluxe versions, aka someone updated both Mass Effect games to have (almost) all DLCs, and standard editions (aka delxue editions) did not exist anymore, maybe in name but not in the content. You could not for example buy DLC bundle for Mass Effect 3 anymore, they were given to you for free even if you had the standard edition and new buyers could only buy deluxe edition at the price of standard edition.

Around those months is when suspcious activity started with both games, and before that enforcment of EA app that was (and still is) incomplete product that does not have basic functionalities (search box for friendlist, invitations independed of overlay, and desyncing with steam, steam still asks for Origin to verify game ownership, etc).

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@STG_Mordin wrote:

Everyone having this problem can you answer a couple of questions?

1. Do you still use Origin or EA App?

2. Did you buy the game on Steam or not?

3. If you use Origin, and you bought the game on Steam, do you see two (or more) copies of Mass Effect 3 in it?

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1. All three I listed above are now using EA App.

2. None are from Steam

3. N/A

This isn't a Steam-only issue.

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@Ody-N7S wrote:

@DoctorDAM Yes I read your 2020 public forum report, exactly. I had a BioWare emplyee contact at the servers who was able to fix N7 HQ progression globaly in few minutes as soon he was told (along with Retaliation glitch per account). Nobody was able to fix that after 2 years prior making the world wide reports on the post 2018 EA account via forums nor via opening cases with EA Advisors, as the reprots never reached the server team...

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Then I have you (and the unnamed BW employee) to thank for that!  Really HUGE THANKS!!

And yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head on the ineffectiveness and resulting frustration with EA support.

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@DoctorDAM wrote:

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@Ody-N7S wrote:

@DoctorDAM Yes I read your 2020 public forum report, exactly. I had a BioWare emplyee contact at the servers who was able to fix N7 HQ progression globaly in few minutes as soon he was told (along with Retaliation glitch per account). Nobody was able to fix that after 2 years prior making the world wide reports on the post 2018 EA account via forums nor via opening cases with EA Advisors, as the reprots never reached the server team...

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Then I have you (and the unnamed BW employee) to thank for that!  Really HUGE THANKS!!

And yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head on the ineffectiveness and resulting frustration with EA support.

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It was joined efforts. Amazing isn't it? What we can accomplish together, if we could only talk to each other in a discord voice call. Communication is the key.

@Ody-N7S Picture is worth a 1,000 words so here are some pictures:

Here my friend mdqp is running absolutely the same Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe Edition like I am (Steam purchase), but when I sent him an invite from friends list he couldn't join because he got the "You need to install the game to play it" message. I am using Origin, he is using EA App. For me the problems with hosting started sometime in July when I got a misterious copy of the game in the library:

Screenshot was taken at the same time, and as you can see from the person icon overlay my Origin thinks he is playing a different game than I do.

I have tried installing this Mass Effect 3 (2012 Edition) using Origin and what it installed was a 10 GB game instead of 20 GB (DLC folder was empty). When I tried to run that copy from the desktop shortcut I asked it to create during install it ran the Steam version instead.

There's some serious {removed] with accounts, game versions, and entitlements which seems to have started when they introduced that new standard edition with DLC on Origin because the old standard edition on Steam did not have DLC included -- you had to buy it separately.

I asked one of the EA Advisors today to remove the EA version from my account and they said they did it, but as you can see it is still there so they outright lie to customers just to close the issue as soon as possible to satisfy some stupid performance review metric. EA Help on Twitter DMs are now answered by a bot so good luck finding an actual live sentient and intelligent person to fix the problem (whatever the problem might be).

IMO, the only realistic option is to reach someone from server team or game team if there's anyone left.

Other than that, we can either open new account and buy the game again hoping the new copy and fresh account will fix it, or just give up, stop playing, and not give a dime to EA ever again.

(cm edit removed language)

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@STG_Mordin wrote:

@Ody-N7S Picture is worth a 1,000 words so here are some pictures:

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I own both, EA and Steam version of ME3 (and DAI) the games. Origin app used to show me both options. EA app shows only Steam option.

I am wondering  do you think EA might be updating there site to this AI thing i see most place's have done this..