ME:3 & ME:A Multiplayer Join/Invite Friends Not Working in EA app
*PLEASE HELP MASS EFFECT MULTIPLAYER COMMUNITY* Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer and Mass Effect Andromeda Multiplayer no longer have functional invite/join feature via EA app (and I hear other platforms...
FIX RELEASED - Post Marked as Solution for Visibility
Hey hey everyone,
Our sincere apologies for not really updating this thread, but that's because we unfortunately didn't really have anything to share... until now.
We have received reports from our teams that the issue now has been 100% resolved and also people with post-2018 and pre-2018 accounts should now be able to create and join lobbies again, which should count for both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Mass Effect 3.
Our request for you: Could you please give it another try and let us know how it goes?
I understand the reasoning, which is why I fullfilled that request already even before asked, in this message , not to mention that we have beeing doing that for the last five years via cases with EA Advisors, and even at increased rate during the summer of 2023. I also suggested that the team engages into the game directly and personally and see the issue from the first hand themselves, because players providing data for last five years did not accomplish anything, so I do not know why would that post not be helpful to @EA_Leeuw and the team. Having the server/game team directly involved into the issue by attempting to play the game and looking at their account logs is how they will most certainly have the best source and information. I am not best with words and text cannot accuartly paint the tone of my message, but I did not mean that there should be no player reports, I think we are way past them at this point, and they alone are not enough, as history proves it for the last half decade. Not addressing the problem head on directly from personal experience and interactions by and between the employees attempting to fix it is probably why this was never fixed. Else why would this persist since 2018 and get worse in summer 2023 despite players sending the reports all these years? I truly wish to help in any way I can, else I would not create this post and invite players to contribute and communicate, and this was not an easy task, most do not wanna even hear after being neglected for so long. But at some point we gotta try new stuff to fix this, repeating same things over and over into infinity will keep us in place as it did thus far.
In the good faith and the most fresh efforts I will yet again redo the same new attempts, attaching the screenshots into the message, as well as links to the bug report videos that show time and date in UTC+2 timezone (11:07 PM to 11:30 PM on 7.Oct.2023.) I used my own account Ody-N7S
Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer (Steam + EA App) with @RedLightningN7S Like explained in my previous messages, I am unable to get to the point of unable to join friend's game. EA app thinks that I need to get the game and it does not even show invitation inside the overlay, but outside of it. Note that I did have the error message "Unable to join friend's game" screen in the past, it is something I cannot replicate in the fresh report and I do not know why is it like this now. Video shows that EA has the game already installed.
Mass Effect Andromeda Multiplayer (Steam + EA App) with @S3nt1nel-N7S Unable to join friends private lobby despite sucessful accepting invitation via EA app.
I too am unsure as to the efficacy of the personal reports, but I did test yesterday (Saturday 10/7, around 7am EDT):
DoctorDAM invite to DAMReapers
DoctorDAM invite to NSquat
DAMReapers invite to NSquat
and all the inverses of those (so 6 total).
DoctorDAM is a pre-2018 account where invites (and everything else) used to work.
DAMReapers and NSquat are post-2018 account which always had the invite problem (and host of other problems I documented with my alt here)
Didn't matter if public or private game, all had the same behavior documented by @Ody-N7S with the "unable to connect to friend's game" at the last step.
If this is, as we believe, universal. I am of the same thinking as Ody. Whoever at BW/EA is looking into this has only to play the game with someone else and they will see it and have full access to the info. Rather than looking at a bunch of randos, all which will have the same behavior.
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).
@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...
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.
@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...
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.
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.
@Ody-N7S Picture is worth a 1,000 words so here are some pictures:
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.
About Mass Effect Franchise Discussion
The fate of the galaxy lies in your hands. Join the Mass Effect community forums and tell us how you'll fight for it.19,173 PostsLatest Activity: 14 hours ago
