http://blog.bioware.com/2017/05/09/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-1-06-notes/
There you go people.
@PandaTar wrote:
Yes, Ubisoft, when it was regarding the development of Heroes of Might and Magic 7 by Limbic. At the beginning, there was a blog of sorts, updated regularly, mostly with artwork and visual candy (even by then, I started feeling misgivings). They would make polls to choose which faction to include in the game; almost everything was half done, actually, and the matching of those polls were ... suspicious to say the least, but ok, we pretended we believed it was genuine.
This situation kept going on until one month prior launching. By then, they wouldn't have explained a single thing about mechanics, which was what I really wanted to know, and a good amount of people too. Graphics, for a strategy game, may have its importance, but mechanics are the brunt of it. And then, they released information on mechanics ... well, disappointment is the short and polite word for the complex array of things that crashed over people. That strategy of releasing information about something important just when it is completely impossible to change anything substantially or do anything about that, ever heard of that strategy? Yeah, that.
Then the game was released, under a rain of complaints and rage, some toxic, ok, but many others very similar to those seen here, people proposing new ideas, turn around, fixes, things that were clearly the better option. I think it was around 1 or 2 months after the release, they blocked the blog for comments. You would only see updates and rage to yourself. The main boards at Ubisoft were now the only communication channel, and silence started to set in. The usual copy/pasted answer from forum admns whenever someone was unpolite or generic answers regarding the next patch. The game was completely super buggy, game crashing issues, awful optimization (people started playing the game, then they would realized 32GB of their memory were being drained by it, out of the blue), some visual glitches, awfully terrible dumb AI, multiplayer with sync problems, impossible to play during the first 3-4 months, you get the picture. It was simply impossible to presume or accept excuses such as that they tested the game and thought it was in a condition to be released. I understand this sort of decision, these that brought MEA in its state to us, as a complete lack of respect. Toxicity is just but a reflected effect from some sources.
The silence was more prominent now. We could just conclude that it was the possible end of the Might and Magic franchise by then, at least for that line of games such as Heroes.
Exactly 1 year after launching, Limbic announced that they stopped working on the game (noticing that many people still reported game breaking issues and many other known issues were still unchecked ...), after long pauses and silences and lack of feedback from their part. Well, MEA is just going that way right now and I can't understand for this life of mine, who is the dim-witted responsible for it.
Dang that sounds like a giant cluster. And I notice Ubisoft is on the heels of being bought out by a larger company so that doesn't bode well for its future. I can see the parallels to ME:A's situation at the moment and before the release when there was silence up until the beginning of the year when we got slammed by behind the scenes tidbits via IGN.
I also just found out going through old emails that the Outland MMO went the same way and the devs just dropped it without a word, leaving people hanging as to the status of the bugged game. I really hope this isn't the MO of the current game industry.
Noone will shed a tear when Vivendi finishes the hostile takeover later this year. The global audience had enough of Ubisoft's mediocrity and repetitiveness. PC audience specifically had enough of deliberate locking of visual options (Watch Dogs) because the game would look more spectacular than on consoles, enough of unoptimized code (microstutters in AC4 unless you overclock CPU as it hammers one core) and enough of insults (Ubi CEO stating that 99% of PC gamers are pirates, so if AC2 was bought by a million people it basically means a billion of people on earth are thieves).
EA is not Ubisoft. Sure, due to dunno who's decision to insist on always online rubbish in latest SimCity, eventually the whole studio got shut down - instead of sacking the one person who decided on the always online thing and making a proper game. Sure, EA made the worst game of a decade if not century - pay2win Dungeon Keeper phonegame.
But cmon everyone. With all fails and steps back you have to admit that ME4 is a good game. Yeah, it has it's bugs, but that's expected from a game with 100 hours of content.
Instead of wishing some disaster, answer on this - would you like the game more if Ubisoft bought Bioware?
@JoxerTM22 wrote:
Noone will shed a tear when Vivendi finishes the hostile takeover later this year. The global audience had enough of Ubisoft's mediocrity and repetitiveness. PC audience specifically had enough of deliberate locking of visual options (Watch Dogs) because the game would look more spectacular than on consoles, enough of unoptimized code (microstutters in AC4 unless you overclock CPU as it hammers one core) and enough of insults (Ubi CEO stating that 99% of PC gamers are pirates, so if AC2 was bought by a million people it basically means a billion of people on earth are thieves).
EA is not Ubisoft. Sure, due to dunno who's decision to insist on always online rubbish in latest SimCity, eventually the whole studio got shut down - instead of sacking the one person who decided on the always online thing and making a proper game. Sure, EA made the worst game of a decade if not century - pay2win Dungeon Keeper phonegame.
But cmon everyone. With all fails and steps back you have to admit that ME4 is a good game. Yeah, it has it's bugs, but that's expected from a game with 100 hours of content.
Instead of wishing some disaster, answer on this - would you like the game more if Ubisoft bought Bioware?
Heck yeah it's a good game and it has even greater potential to be epic with bug fixes and possible story expansions. I was one of the few who didn't have very many glitches prepatch but post patch it's glitch central for me. Still, my first impression was awesome. I still have some reservations but only because I love this game and series and want to see them pull out a Hail Mary and surprise us all with some awesome fixes and great DLC and cosmetic goodies as a good faith move. I've never had a good experience when a larger company buys a smaller one, not in my hobbies or my line of work, but I want this franchise to succeed more than I want it to fail. I'm just nervous that this current track they are on is eerily similar to ones that didn't turn out favorable for us players in the long run. I would so love to be wrong, though.
@JoxerTM22 wrote:
But cmon everyone. With all fails and steps back you have to admit that ME4 is a good game. Yeah, it has it's bugs, but that's expected from a game with 100 hours of content.
Instead of wishing some disaster, answer on this - would you like the game more if Ubisoft bought Bioware?
I'm not sure if anyone wants it to be a disaster. People are only reflecting the product they were given based on their expectations. I had my share of fun, spent what, 130-140 hours in it, because I persevered. On my third playthrough, because my second was corrupted by the new patch messing up with my save game, I stopped abruptly, out of juice of what really do or any meaning for playing, if all the things that would really appease me felt lacking.
Regarding whether Ubisoft had bought Bioware or not, can't say. I remember that Sim City feedback, when I was pondering to buy it, only online, small maps. Gosh, I remember in Facebook, every single Sim City post was crowded by BIGGER MAPS comments, whatever the post was about. Hundreds, thousands of comments like that.
So you take ME franchise, you have a base of where to go, right? You knew, beforehand, why fans loved the franchise. A good story telling. When you created MEA that's not on par with it, the rest is telling. You are trying to sell a game of a very known and loved franchise, but completely change the game in many aspects people loved to something else ... you are indeed about to dive on dangerous waters.
I have fool's hope for ME franchise. I'm sure MEA will cover some more bugs, but immediately speaking, I'm not expecting nothing more than a marginally half-service at this point. Expectations, in my case, are not my wishes. I do hope I am wrong!
