Forum Discussion

Anonymous

8 years ago

Feel Like Giving Up

I've been a gamer since around 1982 and Mass Effect has been one of my all time favorite game franchises. I've been trying to like ME:Andromeda, but it's just killing me and I'm about ready to give up.

In ME1 through ME3 I found the story, the game, the conversations and the entire ME world to be absolutely brilliant and I've never wanted to leave it. I've played each of these games through countless times. The characters and companions I've adventured with feel like my best friends. I love chatting with other gamers reminiscing about Garrus stories or hanging out at Omega or helping Zaeed get his revenge or feeling truly sympathetic and crushed by re-living Jack's story again.. etc etc. But with ME:A I find myself so utterly bored in the single player campaign that I switched to multiplayer for the first time.

At first I was impressed, Multiplayer, is great, I love it! I started to feel like ok maybe there's hope for this game. They're not going to re-write the single player game and re-make it into something that even remotely feels like it was written by the same people as the first three, but ok, I can enjoy multiplayer at least. But as I started playing I found out that there's all kinds of bugs that, months after release, it seems like they have zero intention of fixing. My sound goes out regularly during matches, or someone on my team loses sound so we all have to wait for a reboot. I can't play in full-screen mode, it's a known issue that's been persisting for months, just like the sound dropping issue. And now my frame rates have dropped to unplayable levels after the latest patch update.. <sigh> are they TRYING to break the game? Is there one or more developers on the team secretly sabotaging the project?? ME:A ran better for me at release than it does now! I bought a brand new $400 video card JUST for this game. And now it doesn't even matter because the latest patch is unplayable in multiplayer.

Ok so I switched back to single player for a while hoping maybe somehow they'll decide to care and will fix some of the multiplayer issues. But now I've got a quest log full of quests that have no clues, no next steps, nowhere to go next. I need a pot of coffee before playing to stay awake and get through the dialogue scenes which are completely un-interesting and beyond boring. The story has so many holes. And I've completely given up on any romance plot in the game as a male. I can romance pretty much anything male-on-male in the game, even inanimate objects. Yay choices! But heaven forbid I even THINK about trying to find a female love interest. Apparently being heterosexual is politically un-correct at Bioware these days. I guess at least seeing Liam constantly stripping down gratuitously and going shirtless is helping me feel motivated to go to the gym more.

I don't even know what else to say. I don't have a question, a suggestion, a request here.. I'm just.. speechless. I can't believe they threw the Mass Effect franchise in the trash. I'm beyond disappointed and I just wanted to say it out loud. This really sucks. Really, REALLY sucks. And you know what? I bet the people who wrote ME1 through ME3 are probably many times more upset than I am.. they created something incredible and I'm sure they wanted to see where it goes. And now we've got.. this. Such a loss.

15 Replies

EgoMania
Seasoned Ace
8 years ago
One issue that I recognise is the quest issue. I find the quest log very unwieldy and you lose oversight quite easily. The way to find out what to do with a quest is to double click it in the log so it becomes tracked and the tracker will show you where to go. By itself that's ok but because you can only track one quest at a time, it's rather tedious. Also because the quest log is based on where you got the quest you may have to figure on which planet you need to be to continue a quest. It's far from ideal.
I and others have already advocated being able to track multiple quests and recategorize the quest log in a more useful manner. Not sure what BW will do.
Anonymous
8 years ago
I had issues in the first few hours of play where I had no real idea of mission locations or directions.
Then I found out the Q key and the context sensitive option for the mission tracker. If you disable "context sensitive", you get a permanent compass hud with mission location markers. If you press Q key while on walkabout, the locations are highlighted on the scenery with a range marker.
EgoMania
Seasoned Ace
8 years ago
@lexandro_Albion wrote:
I had issues in the first few hours of play where I had no real idea of mission locations or directions.
Then I found out the Q key and the context sensitive option for the mission tracker. If you disable "context sensitive", you get a permanent compass hud with mission location markers. If you press Q key while on walkabout, the locations are highlighted on the scenery with a range marker.
Hmm, interesting, does it also show locations then for quests that are not tracked?
jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
8 years ago
Since the point of these minor tasks is to encourage exploring it makes sense that you can't track the individual locations.
What I would like to see is some hints at where you should explore to find the next item.
EgoMania
Seasoned Ace
8 years ago
@jpkarlsen wrote:
Since the point of these minor tasks is to encourage exploring it makes sense that you can't track the individual locations.
What I would like to see is some hints at where you should explore to find the next item.
I don't agree with that reasoning. Being able to track multiple quests wouldn't stop me from exploring. In fact because I cannot track them I never did the side quests unless I literally fell on top of them. By being able to track them I would be exploring more.
So if that's what they intended, it's having the opposite effect for me. Particularly because I can enjoy exploring but I do not enjoy run up and down the same map one quest at a time realising that each time I track a new quest I have to go back to a place I was before.
I mean I just got to Voeld on a new playthrough and I know there are like 3 people in the starting base I need to talk to for various quests. I need to actually track the quest to see who they are to be able to talk to them. That's total *.
Exploring is fine but having go up and down the map 3 times going back to locations I have already been in is not encouraging exploring.
jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
8 years ago
What does my comment on the minor tasks not being trackable have to do with being able to track multiple quests?
Anonymous
8 years ago
You can track multiple quests, the markers on the hud still appear. They are just not highlighted as your "current" objective, and appear as white markers on the compass. They do not show up with the Q key, only the current mission you have selected shows this way. But yeah it made a huge difference in gameplay for me. Instead of me going in circles and getting lost, I was able to explore and actually find new stuff to do.
jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
8 years ago
What I do when looking at the map is that if I see another quest on the road to my current active quest I place a waypoint just before it so I can do it on the way.
arthurh3535
8 years ago
@EgoMania wrote:
One issue that I recognise is the quest issue. I find the quest log very unwieldy and you lose oversight quite easily. The way to find out what to do with a quest is to double click it in the log so it becomes tracked and the tracker will show you where to go. By itself that's ok but because you can only track one quest at a time, it's rather tedious. Also because the quest log is based on where you got the quest you may have to figure on which planet you need to be to continue a quest. It's far from ideal.
I and others have already advocated being able to track multiple quests and recategorize the quest log in a more useful manner. Not sure what BW will do.
Some of the random generator location quests will not work if you select them, as they require you to wander around on the correct planet near the Kett or Remnant spawn points to get the clues. Those should get a quick pass through to at least have the planet location listed in the quest.
Anonymous
8 years ago
Those side missions are locked to a particular structure type. Its actually pretty simple once you "get" it. All you need to do is scout the general area for similar building types.