Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

[DemonKing]

It is madness to encourage developers to prefer famous people for voice actors. A giant waste of budget. It's not that famous people are necessarily bad, but there has always been a core of superb voice actors who cost a fraction and do at least as well if not better. I am sad that I'm old enough to remember Skyrim being mocked for Patrick Stewart, only to now see ME:A being mocked for not having celeb voices.

I'm not mocking it for that - although the general consensus is that the voice acting has gone downhill. I actually find casting well known voices can be distracting. Michael Hogan sounds the same in everything he's in for instance (Battlestar Galactica, FO:NV, ME3) but then so does voice actor Steve Blum who's in just about every game ever.

I was just pointing out that at least the celebrity casting in the older ME games seemed vaguely strategic. Casting a GoT actress better known for her flimsy outfits than her vocal talents is not likely going to appeal to hardcore scifi fans like casting ex BSG or Star Trek actors would.

 

[gaussgunner]

Anyway just to follow up on this, I've signed up with Forbes and tried to comment on the article, as I'm sure many others have, it redirects my comments to another article and when I manually change it back it won't allow my comment and say please reload page. Now I posted my comment on the other article unaware at first, then apologised then stated on that article that the site was redirecting comments and not allowing them. All those comments were deleted.

Forbes is shit. Didn't they put up a paywall a few years ago? Who even bothers with that shit? Oh, I guess they finally gave up.

Wow, that article is truly retarded, using C&C as an excuse for crappy facial expressions outside of dialogue. No wonder comments are disabled.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Got to ask why do Hoaxmetal and Dexter think they are such city slicker broker hotshots they rate any one else who posts Biowares failing figures as retarded. Fair enough rate the posts that way, rate one or two, but if you constantly do that at least have the decency and self respect to post why you think they're wrong. Or are you too cowardly and lazy to post a rebuttal and be held accountable for it?

EDIT

Now they are rating my other posts retrded, I don't really care, I'd just like to understand their logic.

And still they sit on the sidelines and never put their neck on the line ..Cowards.

k

I kind of half apologise to you, as at least you post on the thread. And I shouldn't have really included you in the same breath as dexter, though you still haven't addressed the posts where I believe MEA will not make it's money back.

I just find these couch mathematician conclusions p. worthless since they're built upon hundreds of unknowns and speculation. There aren't any proper stats about units sold out yet and ME seems like strong enough franchise to support at least one shitty (relatively) release, financially. Also shooting "retarded" ratings left and right give me a hard-on

Fair point, but I'm immersing myself in my own kill Bioware fan fic. To be honest it's better and more believable than anything they've ever produced. And it has a real life reward...Salty Biodrone tears.

 

[Latelistener]

Salty Biodrone tears.

 

[RangerBoo]

Wait! Aren't the Asari a all female species that has a matriarchal society? So this makes no fucking sense! Nice retcon for the sake of social justice Bioderp!
:incloosive:

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It makes sense for the Asari since they can actually mate and bear offspring with anything, male female or jellyfish...I'm not sure how the matriarchal society thing is supposed to work with an amazon race anyway.

Either way, I
bet this will backfire and trigger someone, like Stephan.

 

[J1M]

Quick scores update. It's picking up favour with users (+0.4), and losing some with critics (-2%).

Interesting how the meta score and user score ranges imply that reviewers are 10x more important than users.

 

[Father Foreskin]

Mission log 24/3/2017

I had continued my exploration of Mass Effect Andromeda mostly with caution, attempting to minimize exposure to hazardous elements such as dialogue. Later in the evening my team informed that they had found a live specimen, a digital copy on some persons Playstation. We went to examine this, taking turns to play the game while others ingested necessary chemicals to alleviate the games debilitating effects.

Unfortunately it wasnt enough. As i woke up, i was sweating and my head was aching. At the store i felt weird tingling in my genital area while watching a fat skank with pink buzzcut eat a pretzel. I keep telling myself it will go away, but deep down i know this is the Bioware disease at its early stages. I need to stop my research at least momentarily or this expedition is lost.

Father Foreskin, Nexus Station

 

[Zeroradiance]

Unfortunately reason, lore and logic goes out the window when a studio focuses on injecting a narrative for the minority instead of appealing to the loyal audience that has proven to spill out the dosh for a meaningful experience.

This all started with Dragon Age Inquisition "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzu50Qy2EUQ"

However with both Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins story and RPG character driven elements was its strong points with the combat system more clunky and rough around the edges.

Over each iteration it changed, less interaction on a character level and its favored RPG elements for the sake for more action shooter elements.

We now reach Andromeda which comes across as a cheesy over the shoulder shooter space opera with animations that defy natural emotion and belong in a Pixar movie or Toy Story.

Its sad to see an IP fall this low in quality however not suprising.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Jonathan Cooper seems to like to talk a lot ...

There's a lot of vids on this playlist from the talk in the article.

CDPR had a fairly advanced system. If only they had made it available to modders.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Update on the Forbes article...

...Paul Tassii says the article is open for comment and he doesn't see a problem with the articlle:D

Anyway i tried to post again and again with no luck, so just ended up posting on the story below, the comment went through straight away. Basically now Forbes is a paid up EA marketing pamphlet. I gave them room but with the high reviews and positive press they gave the game. Not to mention the twisted goolgle searches (on last friday morning here I typed in Mass Effect Andromeda on google and all I got was articles ripping the animations to shreds, an hour later they all popped out of existance and were replaced by buying options and two glowing Forbes articles on the first page. Forbes is a brothel and Tassi and Kain are whores.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Jonathan Cooper seems to like to talk a lot ...

There's a lot of vids on this playlist from the talk in the article.

CDPR had a fairly advanced system. If only they had made it available to modders.

 

[Nihiliste]

Why doesn't this company just die already

 

[Leechmonger]

Why doesn't this company just die already

Hey, they're trying their hardest to.

 

[raesha]

Why doesn't this company just die already

Putting games like this out, they're trying to.

 

[xcessive303]

Interesting video explaining probably why its shit

 

[GreyWardens Rock]

Whoever did the lighting for the final game should never work again. TV-quality amateur hour.

"In-game footage"

 

[Dexter]

Got to ask why do Hoaxmetal and Dexter think they are such city slicker broker hotshots they rate any one else who posts Biowares failing figures as retarded. Fair enough rate the posts that way, rate one or two, but if you constantly do that at least have the decency and self respect to post why you think they're wrong. Or are you too cowardly and lazy to post a rebuttal and be held accountable for it?

EDIT

Now they are rating my other posts retrded, I don't really care, I'd just like to understand their logic.

And still they sit on the sidelines and never put their neck on the line ..Cowards.

I didn't intend to write a two page explanation over rating some posts "retarded" on a RPG forum, but since it preoccupies you so much and you asked so nicely.

This is the first post I rated retarded, because it was well... stupid/retarded, Leman was almost entirely right in his analysis (aside from the bit about "EA being too big to fail and any possible change having to happen from within the company", there were much bigger companies that believed this) and you have a very poor understanding of the stock market.

Instead you went ahead and did various meaningless pictures about how he doesn't understand the situation and what "happened", including scribbling on them with red for "explanations" that don't make any sense:

Meanwhile, EA's stock price's just 3 dollars shy of its all-time high from last week (March 15). If someone was hoping that one game flopping, even as spectacularly as Andromeda, can bury EA, then it's time to face the reality. They are too big to fail, and any possible change would have to happen from within the company (as in the boss finally asking themselves when was the last time they made a game that wasn't trash, getting butthurt over the answer and replacing whole BioWare with actual professionals).

I first thought that it was a good buy to wait till it dropped to 87-88 which it did a couple of days ago, but now I think that after the first weeks results it'll probably drop into 85-86 or more before bouncing back for a day at least.
I don't think anyone believed that Bioware's failure could harm EA on it's own they release, they are a multi billion dollar company with, about four huge sport releases every year, not to mention they have big franchises like Starwars now. Basically Bioware is one of their smaller divisions, so even if this game loses money it's not going to hurt EA that much, they'll just kill Bioware, which is all I could hope for.
Saying that many people think the EA stock is overvalued and it is due to lose quite a lot, so this poor release could be the start of that decline.

And your chart isn't very representative of what's currently happening now...

Anyway like I say it's probably best to wait for the first weeks figures to see what effect this game has had, but you can already see that the memes stopped the stock rise in it's tracks.

Again as I said these game is pretty much a nothingburger for EA, but it could be the catalyst to make people re-evaluate the stock price of EA and send it back down, if that happens then the share holders might just see this game as cause and effect, call for heads at EA and EA will get will of Bioware.

It's not exactly killing the dragon but it is slaying their trans-dragon bastard stepchild...

Anyway the shares have currently lost three dollars since we started making memes on wednesday. They have 308,265,000 shares on the market so currently we've cost the company roughly $930hundred million dollars on their new release of a popular franchise game.

EDIT
Just looking at EA's revenue on that chart and you can see what a tiny drop in the ocean even ME3 was to them with a 200million gross after the first six months. As you can see their 2016 revenue was 4.4 billion dollars, which was the most likely reason for their huge surge this year. So for such a shitty insignificant game as this to stop their stocks rise dead in it's tracks and wipe over 3% off their price in less than a week is a pretty big win.

In your second post I rated retarded you double down and fill an image with red:

Meanwhile, EA's stock price's just 3 dollars shy of its all-time high from last week (March 15). If someone was hoping that one game flopping, even as spectacularly as Andromeda, can bury EA, then it's time to face the reality. They are too big to fail, and any possible change would have to happen from within the company (as in the boss finally asking themselves when was the last time they made a game that wasn't trash, getting butthurt over the answer and replacing whole BioWare with actual professionals).

Well that shows that they were a lot better off in 2005 relatively speaking and that any fall will be more dependent on wider market forces as it was in 2008 and that games' success or failure has little correlation to stock price. Battlefield 1 released October 21st with shares at 82.87 and by November 1 they were down to 77.84 despite BF1 being a great success. Looking for the future of EA and its relation to its brands by only using stock market price and not taking into account other factors is a fools errand.

On the other hand, take a look at the start of the 2000's when all the Westwood's, Jane's, Origins, Bullfrog's etc were closed down. Share price skyrocketed! So if anything is to be learned is that closing down 'underperforming' studios is the way to go and getting rid of Bioware seems like an idea that set a happy precedent for EA many a time.

I've already admitted that this game release should have no effect on the price as it's just such a small title in their stable they can easily take a hit on it. But if you look at the stock price after the animation memes hit the shares take a nosedive and closed on 88.41 today, that's over a billion dollar loss. since last thursday. And the decline is directly in relation to the memes. The worst news the company had before hand was a large invester selling $ 450'000 worth of shares a $90 on March 13th and the stock went up after, so it was on the rise still, then the memes hit.

Basically this shitshow should have little or no effect on EA, because in relative terms the loss is nothing, they have a swimming pool of money, but this game is like pissing in that swimming pool, it won't effect anyone if they don't know about it, but if you point it out everyone will bail.

Anyway here's an illustration, if you want to see EA suffer and Bioware dead, please share it where you can because the market is about confidence, if people think the stock is going to tank it will tank...

The even sadder thing is that you (apparently?) actually seem to believe that the "Maymays" "stopped the stock rise in it's tracks" or that they would before some actual sales numbers or quarterly reports/guidances are out.

Anyway, let's look how that has been going:

Indeed.

Then you started becoming obsessive about BioWare's staffing costs leading you to write two treatises regarding it based on your "guesses":

I also have my doubt's about that $40million development cost, it seems the average salary for a Bioware designer/animator/artist/whatever is about $60'000 us dollars.

Now Bioware claims it took hundreds of people 5 years to develop the game.

60'000 x 100 x 5 = 30million.

Now you can dispute that figure by saying they all weren't working on it at the same time, which is fair, or they also had some, judging by the quality of the work, interns working on it, which is also fair. But then again they also had people working overtime during the crunch period and I just looked at an article that said Ubisoft had 90 people working on Watch Dogs at one time, from just one division, which represented only a third of their current staff on the project. So there could have been 200-300 hundred people working on the ME3 during some periods. Also I haven't factored in company benifits and pension payments. Also the largest salaries to the CEO and large one off payments to voice actors, composers and others.

The staffing costs alone may have exceeded $40million, before all the other development costs, licenses, office costs, Making a Transexual Bathroom in the office, Paying skippy the Janitor, Clevland the security guard and Janice the dinner lady.

By way of comparison Watch Dogs took the same amount of time to develop and was also made in Canada and cost $68millionUS...Now you could say here Andromeda was developed on the cheap to that and I'd agree, it certainly looks that way. But it appears EA didn't think that, because their preditions to the games success are inline with the sales of Watch Dogs so I'm assuming they thought they were getting a similar product for roughly the same investment.

Another comparison is CD Project in Potatoland Witcher 3 cost $46million to make, took a year and a half less in time to make and they were paying out in potatoes, here's a conversion of a yearly salary into USD...

Artist $15'000

CDPR Enviromental artist $18'000 (Bioware salary $65'000)

CDPR Senior Engineer/Programmer $45'000 (Bioware basic software engineer salary $80'000)

So CDPR were paying out much less than half of Bioware in Salaries across the board, their operating costs were much less, they would have been matched in government subsidies and breaks by Potato government as much as the Candian government helped out Bioware, it took them a year less to make the game and they don't need to pay out for a dental plan as Poles have no teeth, nor for maternity leave as Poles know better than to employ irrational women as anything other than cleaner, cook or office prostitute.

And EA/ Bioware expect us to believe that their game cost $40million and Witcher 3 $46million, even though it took them much longer to make and they were paying at least double the salaries?

Just to make a quicker point here than this. I've just looked at CDProject team for the Witcher 3 now it says over the course of the development there were 1500 people who had some involvement in making the game but the dev team themself had a core team of 240 people.

Now here I'm going to be really generous to Bioware...

Let's say CDProject had all those 240 people on average working on the game on salaries all the time. And Bioware only had 100 people on average working on this game all the time, their staff costs would come out nearly the same based on the pay difference in both countries.

Now there are other factors to add in such as the high pay rates of the CEO's in Canada compared to Poland and the fact CD project dosen't have a parent company to make money for. But the main one is it took them a year and a half less to make the game. So if Bioware spent $30million on 100 staff over five years CD project spent $21 million on 240 staff over 3 and a half years.

So CD Projects staffing costs in the best case for Bioware are about $10million lower with 140% more staff. They developed their own engine, they also had less overheads because of the cheaper costs of operating in Poland and less mouthhs to feed at the top because they have no parent company. So how can we be expected to believe that Mass Effect Andomeda cost $40 million to make and the W3 $46million?

Culminating with the final post I rated retarded in which you decided that "$40 million sound laughable" and in your "considered opinion" ME:A cost "$70 million on developing the game alone" (making it $30 million shy of GTA V's development cost) and "reasonably EA spent $30 million on marketing" (even though the cost of marketing is usually higher than the development budget on AAA titles) concluding "that's $100 million, they would need to sell at least 3 million copies to do that" based on figments of your imagination, since there are no numbers out afaik and even the previously estimated $40 million and 3 million sales are based on Mass Effect 3 and EAs apparent hopes for the first week of Andromeda sales: https://www.vg247.com/2017/02/01/ea...ell-around-3-million-units-in-the-first-week/

As I've autisticly tried to explain earlier in the thread even if Witcher 3 had all 240 people on it's core staff working on the game and Bioware only had 100, this game would be more expensive in staff costs due to Potato wages and longer development time, then you have the other costs which will be far cheaper in Poland, plus they are an independent studio.

So the idea that Wither 3 cost $46million to make and this mismanaged shitshow $40million is frankly laughable....

...Why does this matter? Because Bioware spent in my considered opinion $70million on developing the game alone and reasonably EA spent $30million on marketing. that's $100million, they would need to sell at least 3million copies to do that. Before I thought that they would need to sell 2million to break even, but now looking at their supposed costs I think it is an unbelevable underestimate, so I say 3 million at least now. Saying that I doubt it will sell 3 million based on the quality of the game and the reviews.

...Why does that matter? It matters because Nu-Bioware is dead and we can harvest Neofag Biodrone tears

Somewhere in-between you got obsessed with Forbes' comment system asking people to contact two of their contributors personally on Twitter of which you've also complained about on 8chan presumably causing you some considerate buttdevastation since it didn't happen only once but several other times:

Anyway just to follow up on this, I've signed up with Forbes and tried to comment on the article, as I'm sure many others have, it redirects my comments to another article and when I manually change it back it won't allow my comment and say please reload page. Now I posted my comment on the other article unaware at first, then apologised then stated on that article that the site was redirecting comments and not allowing them. All those comments were deleted.

Now does anyone know Erik Kain or Paul Tassi on twitter and can you ask them to explain why their publication is publishing insulting clickbait with a percieved right to reply which in practice dosen't exist. Here's my comment if anyone thinks I was being a cunt, I wasn't I was being harsh but fair...

OK just signed up again (because I forgot my old password) to post this....

Both Forbes and Kevin should be ashamed of this article. What it boils down to is saying the customer is wrong because they don't understand why a product is bad and how much work went into it.

Kevin I don't give a damn and nor should you about how much work goes into something if the end result is shameful or not fit for purpose.

Nor do I need to know how to make everything I use before I am allowed to criticise it. I don't need to do that when I order dinner, fly in a plane, drive a car etc. If a product is a joke to the ultimate consumer it is a joke period.

Imagine both readers and Forbes and Kevin if you had written the same sort of article about Samsung phones self immolating....
...Oh yes they're bad but the customers don't understand how much work went into them and besides they don't understand how to manufacture a phone.

This is shameful and the worst argument and article I have ever read (and I read the Guardian, so have read some really bad ones)

Update on the Forbes article...

...Paul Tassii says the article is open for comment and he doesn't see a problem with the articlle:D

Anyway i tried to post again and again with no luck, so just ended up posting on the story below, the comment went through straight away. Basically now Forbes is a paid up EA marketing pamphlet. I gave them room but with the high reviews and positive press they gave the game. Not to mention the twisted goolgle searches (on last friday morning here I typed in Mass Effect Andromeda on google and all I got was articles ripping the animations to shreds, an hour later they all popped out of existance and were replaced by buying options and two glowing Forbes articles on the first page. Forbes is a brothel and Tassi and Kain are whores.

Also, do I detect a tinge of the 'tism in your posts and your pre-occupation with Forbes' retarded comment system (which makes a comment appear on the next article if you scroll too much) and articles on which you apparently spent a long time yesterday, including contacting some of their contributors, as if they were responsible for it, could do anything about it and would particularly care about your lengthy ordeal?

You're posting some funny stuff every now and then, but you gotta lay off the 'tism or the drugs making you obsessive about nullities and giving you unwarranted self-importance.

I left you something below

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Oh, yeah, salaciousbcrumb also posted some stupid shit about stocks. I mean, even with my limited knowledge it's p. evident that most people just see a line going down and it's enough to have some "hurr the ship's going down sell sell" argument. God forbid you'd at least take a miniscule amount of brainpower and add the percentage (quest marked in bright red or green) in your equation. But defending retarded arguments against MEA equals to liking MEA so w/e

 

[Durandal]

 

[Jools]

*tips kippah* M'RAbbi.

 

[donkeymong]

Well , one of the meanings of Shalom is also prosperity, according to Wikipedia.

 

[Jarmaro]

Holy shiet, I was actually right about the plot and Keet. It's that predictible

Spoiler

Yes, they change other races into Keet

 

[Jozoz]

If the story really is as shitty as people are saying then I really hope that the criticism will be story-related and not the stupid superficial animation mistakes that hardly anyone cares about.

A shit story is a lot worse than shit animations. It seems like the animations are making them get off the hook a bit.

 

[Jarmaro]

If the story really is as shitty as people are saying then I really hope that the criticism will be story-related and not the stupid superficial animation mistakes that hardly anyone cares about.

People are slowly coming to an agreement that animations are game's least problem. Such view is getting more and more fashion, so it's going to be standrard in 1-2 months.