Forum Discussion
5 Replies
Not all players agree with design choices suggested by OP, I would like clarify this:
1. Fix the scanner, and read many complain about map not clear enough, compass hard to follow, more follow the target streamlining requests.
NO, there's a huge effort in the game (and DAI) to stop the lame exploration quality of RPG including TW3 and SKRM, and there's no need of some lame rush follow the compass system. Approximate maps is the way to go and in my opinion DAI does it better than MEA. Imprecise compass and radar system is just better design for a game where exploration get a lot of design love.
2. Manual crouching/better cover system
Pointless detail, current system is good enough no need streamline it.
3. Overhaul the UI/inventory
Yeah the UI isn't good, it's usable, this will obviously involve a lot of money to redo everything, I'd say it's not worth. It would be better to improve it, but for me it's a very secondary element., the combat UI and exploration UI and dialog UI are fine and that's the most important.
4. Beef up the character creator
Gee superficiality request, good budget choice to have spend the money in better exploration. Watch less your hairs and focus more on stuff that really matter. :-P
5. Some music wouldn't hurt
So I cut off? I don't care.
6. Add alien monster variety : It's downright insulting that we run across the same exact alien species from planet to planet with just a different color scheme and species name. They're exactly the same on each planet! How is this okay???
Well, some smart reuse of models isn't bad. If there's an abuse, I agree it should be low down a little.
7&8: I don't know.
9. Add a power-wheel
On PC I don't need some console stuff. No opinion for playing with a gamepad.
10. Give us actual control over squads
Well I would also prefer a real time with pause system allowing control party, but request this change is request a different game, live with it or play something else.
SO WHAT? nothing about the no save and checkpoints *? i can't believe you have so many complains but not on this. I'll repeat the arguing, checkpoints is for an intense action game, not a RPG with a lot of exploration. Replay an exploration part because of a combat surprised you is just an awful gameplay design.
I guess giving in my two cents doesn't hurt. Overall I'd argue a lot of your sentiments and I'm up for some (more or less) gentlemanly discussion. ;-)
EDIT: I've apparently overread, that "you" are not the contributor. So... when I wrote "you", I mean the guy who originally created that list. :P
1. Scanner
I personally don't find this to be an "awful" issue, I would even daresay it's quite immersive. It's roughly the same sauce like in Creed or Witcher, you know, where you also are slowed and have to turn around to see what's there. At least I don't get how those systems are any faster than ME:A's.
The only real tedious thing I've encountered so far was clearing a mine field on Voeld, but that was a unique occasion I think. And I do remember similar from The Witcher. Most of the time you know what you're looking for and the scanner also notifies when something is in the vicinity, so if that's not the case you don't need to bother toggling it the whole time.
My only request would be to increase the distance in which objects are highlighted.
2. Cover
I'm actually very satisfied with the cover system and especially the fact that you have to pay no attention how to do it really. You run/evade into it => Ryder crouches, easy as hell. Adding a cover toggle and manual crouching, that would make it a mess. Given my personal Mass Effect experiences this is by far the snappiest and most intuitive cover of the series. Don't know how your perception can be that contrary.
The hightened tendency of enemies flanking or throwing grenades makes cover less reliable anyways. That's where jumps and evades come into play...
As for crouching without cover, I wouldn't want it, because I guess it would just artificially slow down that juicy action. The jetpack is a godsend combat-wise and doubles the fun. ^^
3. Interface
The interface is very PC-ish and I don't know anyone who sees folder structures as a bad thing when having a cursor. It's way better than e.g. the skill interface from Skyrim, where you have to slide though like a console peasant *wink*. Just a wild guess: Are you playing with a controller? I don't know if the interface is different on consoles, but that would certainly be an understandable problem.
With a cursor the interface is fine I think. It takes a bit to get into it, but in the end of the day there's such a giant load of items and quests, that I'm quite happy to have it sorted that way. Maybe it could be improved by making the folders into extendable lists, like in Witcher 3.
My only issue with the system is the"additional tasks" tab, most of which could've been integrated into "Helius assignments" depending on where the quest takes place.
I'd also vote yes for multiple quest objectives and unlimited inventory tho. You have a goddamn space ship, why doesn't it carry your inventory?
4. Character creator
meh. I just don't do it, because them faces are traditionally doomed to look bad against the 3D mapped ones. Male Shep or Ryder are fine, never ever played as a female. Don't care much, next point ...
5. Music
Yeah, it's noticeable how unnoticeable the soundtrack is. ^^ I'm wondering, too, why they didn't reuse the stuff from ME 1. However I don't see, how they should be interested in "fixing" this, if it means composing stuff, paying and rehearsing an orchestra... At the moment, they really have more important things to focus on!
After my 5th or so playthrough of the original trilogy, I created my own playlist to run with it anyways. Makes even sense lore-wise. In ME2 you can find out, that Garrus loves to listen to human rock music via his helmet headphones. Why shouldn't I do the same?
6. Alien variety
In essence you're right, but on the other hand this is common open world practice. It just depends how well it's hidden. Even in The Witcher 3, most encounters were just different meshes wrapped around the same animated skeletons, as in Skyrim. Unfortunately, in ME:A it's especially hard to hide, because you're supposed to visit entirely different planets and immediately expect an according diversity.
Given what we know of evolution and physics, most science fiction is absolute nonsense anyways. Begins with faster than light travel, quantum entanglement communication and goes more absurd with questions like: Why is everyone tetrapodal? Why do they all communicate via sound? Why do they all breathe air and need water? ... Some of these subjects get tackled then and now, but after all we're speaking about a video game that wants to transport a story and challenges us in a way we naked monkeys are entertained by, nothing more, nothing less. And it doesn't help, that the creators of said entertainment are monkeys themselves ...
The evolution of life on real-life Earth is bound to sooo many complex variables, that over the course of billions of years, convergent and divergent evolution led to an inconceivable variety of species, most of which appear even alien to us on our own planet. By that I just want to show another extreme perspective. Reality makes every video game look like sh*t and five years of development time are by no means enough to try to resemble that kind of creation, because our imagination, creativity and intentions are greatly limited by how our brains are adapted, even more so when the main motivations are easy entertainment and money.
Most consumers have not a single flying clue that open world is in fact the master class of game design. There's never been art as complex as this, but yet this process and those who contribute to it aren't apprectiated enough. Just imagine a game that's been in steady development for more than 10 years... It wouldn't even work because you'd need to update the engine for every new console generation, in addition to concept and world building.
You can share your opinion, but whether people do or do not buy ME:A solely depends on their personal interest and experience. What objectively is garbage and what's not is for no one to decide, even if your perception is entirely contrary to another. We tend to deem ourselves, our opinions and our money important, while they're just abstractions of our mind to fullfill whatever social or biological purpose there is. It's just kinda pitiful to rely on someone like Bioware to gain satisfaction and blame them if they don't meet our petty expectations, as if devs are some kind of demi-gods that enable our well-being. At least that's what I see in all those "5 years + 40 million $" glitch compilations.
Or in other words: I see no relevance in complaining about such works of art and specifically how they make money with it. It doesn't harm my highly privileged living condition whatsoever. Instead I'm grateful that among all the good and bad of humanity there's something as fun as Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Gosh, I got carried away big time :P This was more of a general statement, not necessarily criticizing your words. But when I see that lacking alien variety, I just say to myself "meh" and move on. ^^
7. Melee vs ranged
Again not on the same side. Especially on insanity not everything is viable. If enemies tend to feel spongy, you should optimize your build, like stacking damage bonuses.
I'm playing Engineer/Infiltrator atm and was somehow afraid at first, because without much points in skills it was quite rough of a start. Never died so much in a Mass Effect ... But after some levelups and respecs I got the hang of it and can now combo + 3-shot most shielded encounters, which feels awesome in combination with the jump jet mobility.
Haven't messed much around with melee weapons though. I just kept my remnant gauntlet for combo priming. However as the heaviest weapons easily surpass a thousand damage per shot I don't see how melee can be that much more powerful.
8. Planet scanning
You tend to use extreme vocab, don't you? ^^ "Bad, tedious, poorly designed" - whoa! :D
Not saying I'd praise the scanning, but the overall idea of flying in 1st person through the systems is great in my opinion, if only it would stop immediately centered on the planet instead of doing that wonky turn beforehand. Then right click - slide - left click - read, once or twice per system. Makes up like 1% of playtime. Calling that bad and tedious makes me asking, what you're actually used to? I'd guess you played ME2, so your statement would be either exaggerated or entirely contradictory.
Also, calling that poorly designed is like calling our solar system poorly designed. This is an artificial resemblance of space goddammit, with all those gas clouds, asteroids, accretion disks, black holes and whatnot. Even after my 60 hours of playtime I'm still in strange awe by its psychedelic beauty ... Sorry in advance, but "poorly done" my *.
9. Power wheel
The second thing on my list of never used stuff. Since the beginning of the series I tried to reduce tactical interruptions to a minimum, because it harms immersion. For me the fight loses a lot of its action-packed pace, when there's less potential for error and less need to react fast. I'd daresay they removed it for good.
10. Squad control
I'd have appreciated, too, if they kept it, but it's no big deal after all. Makes them mates feel a bit more autonomous instead of like your tool. You can still pull off some sick combos, but have no control over it, which adds a certain element of surprise. Again, just showing the other side of the coin.
Well... you didn't mention the first thing that came to my mind requiring a fix: the save system. Either make manual saves a lot more accessible or add more checkpoints to certain encounters. That could actually be easy to implement and would get rid of the keyboard-smashing potential of Insanity mode. ^^
As for the summary, you just can't expect to get inspired by anything as if it was supposedly made to inspire. This process actually works quite the opposite way, if you ask me. It plays a key role in the conceptual process of creating something and is often utterly unrelated to the actual subject you're working on. Consuming a video game has barely anything to do with inspiration. It is a very subtle emotion that originates from your unconscious self, which is hardly that controllable or predefined. You memorized your experience with the game. If it was good or bad is irrelevant, you can get inspired by basically everything, even the most trivial of things. Being easily affected by it can't be a bad thing, but it is a personal state and not really one of the objective world. But I'm overanalyzing again ... :D
Maybe it was just imprecise wording on your account or there's some German-English language barrier or idiomatic semantics twisting my head. :P
Point is, the common Bioware game designer certainly was somehow inspired during his work and how he himself perceives his creation might be fundamentaly different from what we experience. That is the mental gap between producer and consumer. We have no clue what was going on in the dev's heads and given those 200 employees it is even harder to understand their personal intentions as every one of their individual contributions drown in a confusingly complicated process of merging all into this gigantic entertainment product, with all the lousy accountants, investors and adverts involved.
A dev just doesn't sit there five years or more on end and thinks to himself "well, let's make some * animations". The way I see it, there was something horribly wrong with coordination and time management and I'd guess most designers are kind of ashamed themselves and also secretly search for some kind of bogeyman.
It's a matter of marketing pressure versus artistic vision. And as long as the marketing side and consumers are both out for their cash and there are those insufficient development cycles driven by an irrational sort of anticipation (called hype), blunt advertisement and medial movements I'd refer to as "free propaganda", you won't see any more detail, especially in the open world sector. By that, I'm also speaking about Skyrim and The Witcher 3, both with more or less obvious flaws thanks to lack of time.
In an ideal world, studios were smaller and would have a decade to develop, consoles wouldn't evolve that fast and consumers cared less about technically fancy visuals (instead of real art design) and were ready to spend like 200 bucks for it... You know, you pay like 70 cents per hour of playing ME:A in just one playthrough. No blockbuster entertainment ever was that laughably cheap.
If by "sameness" you mean repetitiveness, then: Welcome to open world gaming. ^^ Why that is, I just elaborated.
Nevertheless I barely like to play anything else. The original ME trilogy actually is an exception, but only thanks to its gameplay and vibes. This is a highly subjective preference, but for playing games that act like they're movies, there are ... well, movies. A good story is nice and all, but it doesn't matter to me, if the game doesn't motivate me to replay it over and over through distinct choices of strategy. That's the sole reason, why I couldn't get my hands again on The Witcher 3 after 1st playthrough. It is fantasticly scripted and designed without a question, but the skills, crafting and overall balance suck for me. Even mods couldn't fix that.
.... other than TES, for me the unrivaled open world super duper master franchise replay wonder. Nothing else exaggerates "gameplay and atmosphere over story and characters" like it. It goes so far, that by knowledge of the background lore the game itself expands way beyond the world and character design, to the point it represents sandbox roleplaying paradise. Yes, I'm a groupie ... but * it. I surely don't just mindlessly buy games, of which I know in advance I wouldn't like them. I gather information from various reviews and look into let's plays and that's what brought me to Andromeda, too.
It is a rough restart to begin with, but an overall promising one and a great and challenging game to me. People seem to forget, how sloppy Mass Effect 1 started off. I'll certainly pump in as much energy and time to replay this like the original trilogy. And maybe this time the controversial discussion kicks EA's and Bioware's butts hard enough to actually release a polished Mass Effect: Andromeda 2. Well, well ...
DID NOT READ meme incoming XD
I edited the OP to be a link to the source.
Maybe I'm alone here.. but I really miss the power wheel. Mostly for the ability to direct specific attacks from my squad mates.
If you don't want to use it, then.. don't use it.. but nothing is currently assigned to holding RB button (Xbox Gladiator configuration).
I don't see why the power wheel feature was removed our couldn't be added back in.
Would love to see the weapon wheel moved back to holding the LB button too.
@Abslechta I kind of missed that too. Right now I'm just using my teammates as baits, while I just snipe the enemies out. Would have loved to have God mode Garrus back.
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