ME: Andromeda Mourning Thread

From the PC Gamer website

EA's Patrick Soderlund thinks Mass Effect Andromeda criticism was a little unfair

@OldHermod

Lol, he is right, as the game is RIGHT now, it is well worth buying, and if they could have released it at this point instead of in the almost Beta stage that they did release it in, things could have been vastly better all around.  It seems that all they really needed was a few more months to get the game into a better state, and fix a large number of issues before launch.  I really would have rather had a 4 month launch delay, let it come out July or so, and have what we have now as the starting point to fixing bugs and issues.  It seems someone somewhere had their head planted up someplace that made this impossible and thus basically sentenced the game to an early unwarranted grave. 

Of course some of this is on youtubers and "review" sites harping on stuff making it seem WAY worse than it was, but it was also on EA for being foolish in how they handled the release and press around the game.  I personally had minimal issues with the game, and was able to play it for hundreds of hours of enjoyment, making it well worth the money....but it stinks how everything went down, mainly because they didn't bother to finish the game before release....

Whether or not Mass Effect will be back is not the thing that has been eating away at me since reading 'the news' about ME:A.. it is how quickly and easily they chose to pretty much walk away from it and at the same time.. ram all the whizzbang stuff about 'Anthem' down our necks at the same time.   One of the things i really notice about the early anthem video was that there is a large creature in it that looks almost identical to the 'fiend'.

I am in a sense grieving in a strange way, but not because of loss.. its different, i feel really let down by the whole drop it and F* it approach that i've seen happen now, and 5 months after release, i felt it had so much more potential.

When i put my faith into a product, i don't expect to see it assassinated by its own creator, there is too many good people really into mass effect to have had this happen and its really affected the way i now perceive the parent publisher too.

So its not the death of something that i grieve for, i think i just witnessed a murder.

  Well the game is what, $35.00 US now. So having to beat it out of window mode and rebooting it to get sound to work three times a day. As of RIGHT now, OK.

 For me the faces were not a big deal. That did not make the game unplayable. It's the crashing to desktop, window mode, sound loss, save data......made it unplayable. Players that paid full price on release and got ths, heck yea players were mad. And players told there friends not to buy it. Money lost....

  Your right pushing the game back a few months is all that was needed. I thought the story was good. Lot of stuff hanging for DLC's that could have made money too. Grrr where is the ark....

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@OldHermod wrote:

From the PC Gamer website

EA's Patrick Soderlund thinks Mass Effect Andromeda criticism was a little unfair

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I think the review scores are fair, but their content focused on the wrong aspects of the game. The facial animations became a meme before the game was out and were low hanging fruit for critics and other content creators. As a result the game's major flaws often got overlooked. I hope BioWare has learned the following lessons:

• Players still don't like fetch quests.
• Open world only works when the combat system is designed for it. The linear corridor missions were much more fun because they suit the combat system better. Same goes for Dragon Age.
• BioWare hasn't had good menu design for mouse and keyboard since Dragon Age II. Mass Effect Andromeda is by far the worst one. Press V to inspect your multiplayer squad? That's an odd hotkey. You just clicked something? Now suddenly V means 'kick player'. The inconsistency is very jarring. Also, the mouse wheel should scroll the view, not change your selection. Also, why does it take so long to load and unload things in the menu? Why is my entire squad the inventory menu for several seconds until the game finally figures out which characters to unload? The game is installed on an SSD, this shouldn't take this long.
• Speaking of SSDs, not everyone is playing on the PS4 or Xbox One and therefore doesn't have the game installed on a slow 5400 RPM hard drive. A fixed length for cinematics that mask loading screens is a horrible idea. Just start the level when it has finished loading. Dragon Age Inquisition had a great loading screen.

I mourned the Mass Effect Franchise when I played Andromeda.  The Apple in this case, fell far from the tree, a little unripe and misshapen.

I enjoyed playing Andromeda, and I don't regret the money I spent on it. I'm mainly a single-player person though, so the lack of DLC is disappointing.

I had hoped to revisit the cluster or galaxy and see how the story pans out. 

Constructive criticism for the future?

You/Bioware can and have made some excellent games.

Excellent games set a higher bar for expectation - so it's *worth* doing enough Quality testing to be adequately happy with it.

Plan your modular and sidequesting stuff so that *non-core* stuff can be released as DLC later, if it's not good to go at launch.

If core stuff is not fit for go - then, better to delay another month or so. Late reviews are more palatable than hate reviews.

I hope to see great games from you in future.

Disappointment isn't a strong enough word to describe how I feel about this. Neither is the word cheated strong enough. To add insult to injury, they pull a #45 and say "the criticism wasn't warranted". 

No. Stop treating Pre-Ordering as a way to both pump sales and save money on a QA team. Then penalize players because the product wasn't as advertised, buggy, and no where near its predecessor on what's now an old-gen system. 

No DLC is beyond disappointing for a series that we all love. 

i feel like i've said this a lot recently... but i'm saying it again. i also think on release ME:A was an ok game (not good, nor bad... simply ok)

and i feel for the most part that those very-poor reviews were more than a tad unfair, though you do have to realize that from an outfit like bioware... just ok, is basically bad.

like going to a fancy restaurant and ordering something... er, fancy (yes, i really have no idea what actually goes on in those places), and you get a cheese burger, and it's even a good burger, but not what you ordered, it's not really anywhere near the same caliber as what you did order, and hell, you didn't even think they served burgers at places like this.

if bioware had just put a bit more effort in andromeda, well... mass effect might not be dead at this point. but, make no mistake, everything considered... they really needed to knock this one out of the park this time, and it feels like they didn't even really try, and to top it off, i feel like blaming anthem for all of this. like ea dropped ME for it... well, i've already been mourning bioware for years by now (as it hasn't been the same company since ea took it over), might as well add andromeda to the list of casualties too.

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@OldHermod wrote:

From the PC Gamer website

EA's Patrick Soderlund thinks Mass Effect Andromeda criticism was a little unfair

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He's right. Some of the criticism was fair some of it was not. How social media took off with the facial expressions certainly was out of control.

But here's the thing. Leaving the game for what it is and moving on without supporting it any further...now that's more than a little unfair.