Re: Mass Effect Andromeda officially dead...

@Ghostryderflyby

The initial reviews of professional gaming sides and magazines were not bad at all. Not enthusiastic, but not bad either. I think they pretty much got it right, a good game, but not a great one. 

A lot of the hysterical criticism at Andromeda was fuelled by people who had no interest in the game, but rather wanted to push their own agenda, (Anti SJW people and others.)  and the imho completely exaggerated "facial animation" debate. 

Also, with all due respect, you can't know if my experience with the game was atypical. There are simply no numbers available to back your claim (that the majority of people did encounter major problems) up. 

And no, "many post on the internet" are not proof, this game did run or runs on literally millions of machines.

On a side-note, there were enough early driver problems in regards to your 1080ti.

Furthermore, I highly doupt that EA (Or games from studios owned by EA) are in any way more "buggy" then games from other studios. It is in the nature of things that a lot of Bugs are only encountered after release.

No company in the world, not even the mighty Microsoft with the Windows Insider Program can prevent bugs. There are several hundred millions different hard and software configurations out there, no gaming company in the world can test their games at a big enough number of systems to prevent bugs, not even remotely.      

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@holger1405 wrote:

@Ghostryderflyby

The initial reviews of professional gaming sides and magazines were not bad at all. Not enthusiastic, but not bad either. I think they pretty much got it right, a good game, but not a great one. 

A lot of the hysterical criticism at Andromeda was fuelled by people who had no interest in the game, but rather wanted to push their own agenda, (Anti SJW people and others.)  and the imho completely exaggerated "facial animation" debate. 

Also, with all due respect, you can't know if my experience with the game was atypical. There are simply no numbers available to back your claim (that the majority of people did encounter major problems) up. 

And no, "many post on the internet" are not proof, this game did run or runs on literally millions of machines.

On a side-note, there were enough early driver problems in regards to your 1080ti.

Furthermore, I highly doupt that EA (Or games from studios owned by EA) are in any way more "buggy" then games from other studios. It is in the nature of things that a lot of Bugs are only encountered after release.

No company in the world, not even the mighty Microsoft with the Windows Insider Program can prevent bugs. There are several hundred millions different hard and software configurations out there, no gaming company in the world can test their games at a big enough number of systems to prevent bugs, not even remotely.      

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If you think your experience was the norm and others were just being complainers, I suggest you check out the following links. I personally experienced many of the issues in the videos myself. Even after the patches, there are still issues with Sam or squad mates repeating pre-quest statements for completed quests when passing back through a quest area, or having 2 of the same squad mate aboard the Tempest, one which you can talk to in one location, and another somewhere else on board that you can't. 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mass+effect+andromeda+bugs+glitches

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/80-hours-in-list-of-bugs-glitches-and-continuity-errors/td-p/5972388/highlight/false/page/2

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/bd-p/mass-effect-andromeda-bug-reports-en

Again, just because you lucked out with a "bug free" experience, doesn't make that the norm. I have been a PC gamer for 20 years, and have played hundreds of titles, and MEA was by far the most buggy and unpolished AAA game I have ever purchased. And again, if EA had given it the time it needed for the polish to fix those issues before release, the game would have gotten a MUCH better reception. EA blaming the poor reception on their customers, instead of their poor decision to release an unfinished product, proves their disconnect with their customers.

And again I LOVE the ME series, and would love to have raved over the game. I did give it a 7 in my early review with the bugs, and said if they'd have polished the game and fixed the issues before release, it probably would have garnered a 9. Now instead of acknowledging their screw up, EA is throwing a temper tantrum and punishing their customers/fans by killing the game and possibly franchise. A smart, non vindictive response would have been to fix all of the bugs, do the DLC, and re-release the game with the DLC included. It would have garnered far better reviews and sold more copies, and made their fans happy. Now they've just killed the game, crushed the fans, and left the franchise hanging in limbo. 

You can defend that course of action if you want, but as a fan of the series who wants more ME and MEA, I have to ask, why would you?

I'm another of the ones with enough luck to experience almost no issues... And I have AMD GPU and CPU

@Fred_vdpThe unskippable loading screens was a design decision, I don't think that is one of the things that qualifies the game as "unfinished"

Anyway, I know that there were a lot issues that made the game worth to delay a little bit, I think that would be wise to do.
The people complaining is something common on the internet, I mean there are whiners everywhere... that just happens and you can't avoid it. I think that the game was a good game, not as great or addictive that the previous mass effect games, but good.

When I bought the collector edition, although not advertised, I hoped for some future dlc included, at least that used to be how bioware sell the collector editions for ME2 and 3 (those were day 1 DLC, but still).

I think the point here is how EA is handling the situation right now, not how the game was launched. A company with such a revenue, is able to keep and improve on a bad launch, and I don't think that the numbers didn't add up with the amount of pre orders and launch sales (I'm guessing here). Anyway, they decided to kill the game, no support, no fixing, nothing new to re-engage the fanbase.

And if you check all the noise that this news as well as all the reviews and the number of people still playing, I think that they could still revert the situation. But this... this feels like a "so long loosers."

@Colonel_Hedgeh...

For the record, I never said people who experienced bugs "were just being complainers".  
In the contrary, I acknowledged that there are bugs and I explained why we will never see a bug free game.
So, it would be nice if you wouldn't try to twist the meaning of my words.

An it is true that me don't experiencing major bugs is not a indicator that this is true for the majority of players, but as said, that is also true the other way around. Fact is that this games runs just fine on countless machines.

If it is true that MEA was "the most buggy and unpolished AAA game I have ever purchased" for you than you're lucky enough to not have played some other games.

Furthermore, I never saw EA or Bioware "blaming the poor reception on their customers", maybe you can provide me with a link?
Still, the costumers are also responsible for the way communication is happening between developers and Gamers.

As an old PC gamer too, playing on the PC for more than 32 years. In the last decade I see an increasing habit inside the gaming community to exaggerate criticism in a way that is just ridicules.
Don't get me wrong, I don't say we can't criticize developers, we can an we should, but they way it is done recently, with a shitstorm about anything even if it is a completely minor issue, is not helping.
It creates a environment were good, constructive criticism are buried beneath hate-post.  

I agree that it would have been better to continue support for MEA and release DLCs for the game, but there is not only one side to blame for the state of affairs we in right now.

Companies don't do "a temper tantrum", they make decisions on their internal numbers regarding the game. (Not only sales and revenue, but also available personal and new upcoming projects etcetera.) All we know so far is that there is no future content for MEA, that doesn't mean that the whole franchise is dead.
Even after all this criticism MEA sold not bad.

We will see if the ME franchise has a future once the smoke is settled and the dust cleared. (Or in other words, after Anthem is released.  😉  )

@Fred_vdp

Yea, that's why I highlighted NVIDIA hardware. I am sorry that you experienced so much issues too. 

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@holger1405 wrote:

@Fred_vdp

Yea, that's why I highlighted NVIDIA hardware. I am sorry that you experienced so much issues too. 

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The performance issues were quite minor after lowering tessellation samples. I don't even see a difference going from 64 to 4. My main issue with it is that they didn't include it in the game's settings and that you have to go to the AMD settings to change it.

The biggest issue for me is still the sprint bug (where releasing shift in 'hold mode' doesn't stop the character sprinting), but I see so few reports of it that I'm not sure everyone is experiencing it.

@Fred_vdp

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

The performance issues were quite minor after lowering tessellation samples. I don't even see a difference going from 64 to 4. My main issue with it is that they didn't include it in the game's settings and that you have to go to the AMD settings to change it.

The biggest issue for me is still the sprint bug (where releasing shift in 'hold mode' doesn't stop the character sprinting), but I see so few reports of it that I'm not sure everyone is experiencing it.

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It's not a PC game if you don't have to tweak the driver. 😉

But seriously, I see what you mean.

As for the "sprint bug", I am still not sure that this was not a design choice. You stop sprinting if you lift "W" for a moment. Did Bioware acknowledged it as a bug?

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@holger1405 wrote:

As for the "sprint bug", I am still not sure that this was not a design choice. You stop sprinting if you lift "W" for a moment. Did Bioware acknowledged it as a bug?

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I mentioned it to the lead designer on twitter and he said something along the lines of "crap, we'll look into it" (paraphrasing). I mentioned it again several patches later and he had completely forgotten about it.

Both sprint modes do indeed assume W is not pressed, but that's even weirder in 'toggle mode'. The character keeps sprinting until you first release W, then press shift again. Both sprint modes are so unintuitive and unprecedented that I think it's more likely to be a bug than just a bad design choice.

@Fred_vdp

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

I mentioned it to the lead designer on twitter and he said something along the lines of "crap, we'll look into it" (paraphrasing). I mentioned it again several patches later and he had completely forgotten about it.

Both sprint modes do indeed assume W is not pressed, but that's even weirder in 'toggle mode'. The character keeps sprinting until you first release W, then press shift again. Both sprint modes are so unintuitive and unprecedented that I think it's more likely to be a bug than just a bad design choice.

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You're probably right then. I never used the "toggle mode" so I didn't noticed this behaviour.

And that is why i prefer the longer development cycles for videogames. I would rather see a game released with a few, minor bugs, at a later date, than a really buggy product that is launched on time. 

Sure, they tried to patch most of the bugs, but in the end Bioware Montreal went under and MEA was left with a few nasty bugs (not gamebreaking, but still annoying). I hope that EA will reconsider and let the franchise continue its life. And that they will do better next time. The fetch quests and kill quests aside, it wasn't such a bad game as a lot of people told me and definitely is quite playable after all the patches. But again, i tend to be more forgiving than many when it comes to devs working under a big company, as i know that they don't have the power of decision.