Re: Mass Effect Andromeda officially dead...

Yeah, now it's official. I had hoped they'd change their minds but I guess they've decided that ME:A is dead in the water and they just will keep it afloat after stop gapping the most important issues. It's floating. It's a pretty good game but it's not going anywhere. I am ticked off at the lack of dlc because there are stil a lot of loose ends and I wonder if this story arc will actually end up getting  a sequel now. Clearly this statement means that they feel this new approach failed. Pretty sure also the merchandise of ME:A doesn't even come close to the original N7 stuff in sales.

The way this statement is written makes me believe that they see the ME:A direction as a failure on a conceptual level and whatever they may have had as ideas for sequels, may never see the light of day.

The last part of their message reads:

We appreciate all the millions of people who came with us to the Andromeda galaxy. We hope to see you again in the Mass Effect universe.

So I guess they still sold millions of copies as we knew and decided that's as good as it was going to get. Initially it read to me as if they were sort of not sure if they were every going to touch ME again after this, but after thinking about it for a bit, it seems to me that this is the closest we'll get to an apology.

I now read it as: thanks for those who bought it in spite of everything that went wrong with the game and we hope it hasn't soured you for the future.

My biggest concern here is this: BW seems to be very much into Anthem. If it is successful it may not be a good thing for ME and DA to be honest. On the one hand it may be fine because they'll bring it out and then can decide how to divide their resources for the next 10 years giving them a more solid basis for multiple IPs. In the end they have opened more studios and you don't generally do that to just support one game but then if it really becomes successful and they want to bring out content for it regularly they may end up pulling resources from all studios.

So maybe as a customer it's better for me if Anthem fails?

Don't like having to think like this though.

It just shows that EA does not give a rats * about the fan base. It's all about money! No surprises there I guess.

"Well we will not spend any cash on additional SP content, because why should we? But we still want YOU to spend some cash, so just give us more money in the commission for the comic books and novels. Great deal... from our stand point!"

I am a massive Mass Effect fan. I have turned all my friends into fans as well. For me... it's like a personal defeat. It's too bad that EA can see us players as living and breathing wallets.

so they make us sleep for 600 years.. in cryo sleep, wake us all up in an unfamiliar galaxy that looks nothing like brochures said it would look and now they want to put us all on ice again?!?!?!?

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@RamirezKRK-PL wrote:

It just shows that EA does not give a rats * about the fan base. It's all about money! No surprises there I guess.

"Well we will not spend any cash on additional SP content, because why should we? But we still want YOU to spend some cash, so just give us more money in the commission for the comic books and novels. Great deal... from our stand point!"

I am a massive Mass Effect fan. I have turned all my friends into fans as well. For me... it's like a personal defeat. It's too bad that EA can see us players as living and breathing wallets.

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My wallet has slammed shut, since $$ is the only thing they understand.

I dont care what other ME games or any other games they do. Untill Andromeda is given its proper completion in game form, not stupid comics and books - its staying zipped uo tightly, not another cent from me and I know I am not the only one done with EA.

The MEA direction was not the failure. Not taking longer to complete the game properly,  supporting it properly now with the rest of the patches it should have had months ago and not giving it dlc, those are the failures. The game itself, bar a few odd animations, was very solid with a very promising new future and mysteries to solve.

So mad they are dropping MEA.

The buggy launch and animation memes hit sales figures.

The game likely sold enough to wash its face, but not enough for the install base to justify making DLC.

I don't like it, but I understand it.

The way marketing and communications have been handled have not been great in my view.

Although it's completely unsurprising to me, I'm seriously disappointed in EA on this one specifically.

They spent a lot of development time, reeled in a lot of fans and customers in order to market the Mass Effect franchise, introducing a fresh new galaxy- spent a meager amount of development time correcting a few bugs that should have been fixed before release... then turned around and slammed the door in everyone's faces afterward with no DLC whatsoever.

Count me out for any and all future releases from EA. Been disappointed too many times now to continue as a loyal customer.

Three franchises that I've been a part of since the beginning- then had my hopes dashed...

Earth and Beyond

Dragon Age

Mass Effect

And they wonder why they have a reputation for acquiring and destroying game franchises? Doesn't take a degree in Theoretical Physics to do the math on this one.

From Wikpedia:

On December 19, 2013, EA was hit with a class action lawsuit over the bugs in the Battlefield 4 DLC. EA issued a statement regarding the various issues and bugs of the game and promised players that these issues would be fixed before the launch of the next generation consoles. This was not the case as players on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One had the same problems. The problems were so severe that they made certain parts of the game unplayable due to campaign save files being corrupted and players being unable to start or join multiplayer servers. Players expressed their outrage on the forums of Battlelog, EA Answers HQ and social news sites such as Reddit.[101] EA DICE responded by apologizing for the bugs and promising that they would halt all production of the release of new DLC packages until they fixed the various problems.

I am now afraid EA has committed gaming suicide. 

 I or us players have never received any statements regarding bugs in Andromeda. The sound bug is a major problem, seems to be Frostbite engine wide. In the Origin survey from some time back, I stated that players were unhappy with some of the bugs in ME3. That we were not inclined to buy Andromeda right away. Well, we did. Dedicated Mass Effect players. Now what......

 This fix it on the go or patch it on the go has to stop. We all understand that there will be some bugs in a new release, this was beyond that. There needs to be more pregame testing by the public. I would be willing to sign a gag order or nondisclosure order for pregame testing. I would have been willing to wait a year or longer to avoid this heartbreaking mess. I would think that EA would have learned from the past.

. With that said, the performance of the game has improved a lot from the first patch. The new maps are great. There is a lot more that can be done.

  I have loved some of the titles and franchises over the years Medal of Honor, Crysis , Dead Space and so on. I hope I can enjoy new ones in the future.

So, it finally happened as every sane person here has expected and expressed for months: EA killed its own IP, Mass Effect (Andromeda).
Thanks for spitting in the face of the customers.

How can one fail so utterly with one of the greatest IPs of recent time?

FUBAR EA

Am i dissapointed sure, but it has happened but it wont stop me from playing this game when i want or feel like doing so. Now each of us have opinions on the whole no DLC thing and the whole novel/comics thing but for me i'm fine with it i'm one of many people who like to read as well as play games and so forth. Still now with CH back in the loop let's hope year's down the line if/whenever we get another me game this does not happen but i wouldn't be hopeful that it won't really.

I am continuing to play ME:A in Multiplayer, i've been playing Golds like never before.. i still have no managed to do the hang time achievement in SP.. and despite even trying the profopts profile thing that someone posted about this, i found that i was unable to get it to work. so i must have done something wrong there.   I never did find 20 remnant puzzles in single playthrough, and despite going back to my first completion game, i'm convinced I 'may' have missed 1 or 2 in the vaults which are now permanently sealed to me.  I romanced 1 of the female crew only, so that was another achievement i've not done and my VI has not targetted ALL remnant enemy types, and i've no idea whether i'll revisit that.

The game has up to now been fun, and I posted at great length about the loss of audio bug since the end of the first week of april, very soon after the game was released.. and patch after patch came going right the way up to 1.10 and never did we see any kind of fix, work around or anything that helps us.. the gamers get over the issue of having to completely restart the game to fix it.

The news of the discontinuation of single player DLC or updates was very sad for an IP of such a large fan base and I do find it disgusting to find the plug pretty much pulled at the end of the 5th month (i think it is?).

Well, i'm disappointed in EA to say the very least.. I think they've misread the fanbase by quite a large margin if they think we are just going to go, "ahh well, ho hum" and carry on like nothing has happened.   it has.. its all there is black and white and while it was not entirely unexpected, it does give one a sense of 'grieving' for something you've come to really enjoy.

While they have said there will be some limited support to the multiplayer aspect of the product, i fear even that will be minimal in comparison to previous Mass Effect products, and it leaves you wondering if a company can do this to the game you bought THIS year.. just how far short support wise are they going to fall with Anthem?     And i hint at this again.. 'how long after Anthem goes live do you think it will be before someone posts about 'lost audio during game play at random' and then have them pretends its a new issue they've not experienced before eh?

After reading the article in Forbes, I've been expecting this outcome. I was hoping to be wrong.

It is a kick in the * to us consumers. Bioware products which up to now has been some of the best of the best in gaming. Both IP's of ME and DA have been top quality. I respected their talents and drive for perfection. Even ME:A once many of the problems were fixed has been entertaining and left me waiting for the SP DLC's. So now we know, since Bioware was bought by EA, that the drive and talents that once drove a great company has become totally ordinary and ruled by "a sucker is born every day".

I don't blame the people of Bioware so much as the corporate mindset at EA. Yes it's a business but this particular industry has to engender loyalty in their customers or the customer can go elsewhere. As these are the only 2 IP"s that I play at EA (I quit SWToR when it went boring easy mode), I guess they want me to go elsewhere. I can do that.

I have to say thats how it feels.