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

[KyivAfter12am]

OK, if you guys insist on the whole creative = never ever before seen, I got nothing. No game would be creative by this definition, none of them are made in a cultural vacuum. And if someone would attempt it, the game would be super boring to play, because it would consist of one person's idiosyncrasies, and you wouldn't have any point of reference to latch upon.

 

[Projas]

- The Origins, not sure about it, i can't remember any actual crpg doing it before at this moment but the idea is rather simple and obvious. It just is branching except it already happens at the start of the game. If this is creativity - it is a very "light" version of it.

ToEE? Although obviously it's not nearly as extensive as in DA:O, but the idea is there I think.

 

[Freddie]

all in all not really creative to be honest.

I see now I should have started by asking a variant of The Question: what is RPG creative?

Useless, this is one of those autistic debates that always fractals out of control. In the end it always turns out absolutely nothing is really creative because everything is just a derivate of the very first electronic game ever created:

I'm not going to get deep into this because of what you said in first sentence is very true, just not the time, but anyway, I think what is lost here is understanding of what is innovation. Now innovation requires at least some bit of creativity, so it's sort of non binary and, well... you know.

How is the MP going? I'm curious especially after they cut down the studio.

 

[cvv]

How is the MP going? I'm curious especially after they cut down the studio.

After two months they've finally released a patch...which turned to be a complete surprise. Everyone expected the same retarded 5% buff of this and 2 points nerf of that. But they have completely revamped the balance of the game, with powers, combos and most guns being buffed by tens, even hundreds of percent.

I have long uninstalled the game and haven't played since but from reddit and uBSN it seems they turned things around and everyone's delighted with the current balance. It's so radical it almost sounds like them saying "fine you moaning bitches we can't be fucked anymore with this shitty game, here, have your buffs, we're leaving anyway" :D

 

[Padzi]

EA's modus operandi is going strong.
They killed off Bioware and still don't understand why their game dev studios are dying one by one.
I wonder who will they buy next. I hope CDPR was able to buy back their stocks in time.

 

[pippin]

Oh, I do believe they understand, it's just that they sell what people wants to buy and Bioware is getting stale. That's capitalism for you.

 

[Freddie]

How is the MP going? I'm curious especially after they cut down the studio.

After two months they've finally released a patch...which turned to be a complete surprise. Everyone expected the same retarded 5% buff of this and 2 points nerf of that. But they have completely revamped the balance of the game, with powers, combos and most guns being buffed by tens, even hundreds of percent.

I have long uninstalled the game and haven't played since but from reddit and uBSN it seems they turned things around and everyone's delighted with the current balance. It's so radical it almost sounds like them saying "fine you moaning bitches we can't be fucked anymore with this shitty game, here, have your buffs, we're leaving anyway" :D

Thanks, Ha! There is this thing, back in ME3 MP forums were like different planet for other BW boards that really didn't encouraged any sort of interaction with anyone, but I read quite a few posts made by MP devs and watched their youtube videos. So one of my predictions was that BW/EA may fuck up the MP because those highly paid people in positions don't really understand that MP needs to be rewarding to have playerbase to buy those whatever packs, and what is required to make it fun. It's like it was just mass of consumers and straight line from the # estimated players to estimated profits.

That Montreal didn't knew how to make good MP is very difficult to buy, like latest balance changed indicate.

But ithat's just one piece of the puzzle. Time, money... that even tie in products are shit is quite telling.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

How is the MP going? I'm curious especially after they cut down the studio.

After two months they've finally released a patch...which turned to be a complete surprise. Everyone expected the same retarded 5% buff of this and 2 points nerf of that. But they have completely revamped the balance of the game, with powers, combos and most guns being buffed by tens, even hundreds of percent.

I have long uninstalled the game and haven't played since but from reddit and uBSN it seems they turned things around and everyone's delighted with the current balance. It's so radical it almost sounds like them saying "fine you moaning bitches we can't be fucked anymore with this shitty game, here, have your buffs, we're leaving anyway" :D

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

so what do we know about their current projects? is it something like :

edmonton team 1 (DAO team)
- some early DA4 stuff + that turn based spin off they mentioned on twitter last year

edmonton team 2 (old ME team)
- project Dylan aka we want that Destiny sales

austin team
- necromancing TOR corpse

montreal team
- back to working on free multiplayer dlcs

or is it more like:
edmonton DYLAN, austin more DYLAN, montreal even more fucking DYLAN

i cant even imagine pressure they got on this project from EA

serious question. it seems like it might be for the first time that Bioware is not currently working on any crpg ( inb4 they havent released a single crgp since 2009

 

[cvv]

edmonton team 1 (DAO team)
- some early DA4 stuff + that turn based spin off they mentioned on twitter last year

What? Citation needed. Laidlaw tweeted a month ago Dragon Age 4 is not a thing.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

edmonton team 1 (DAO team)
- some early DA4 stuff + that turn based spin off they mentioned on twitter last year

What? Citation needed. Laidlaw tweeted a month ago Dragon Age 4 is not a thing.

by early DA4 i meant shit like concept arts and brainstorming on what to steal from witcher3 or what is the next big thing in gaming after open world shit fades away. also didnt they start really early work on DAI around 2010 simultaneously with DA2?

regarding the second thing

https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/...oilersdragon_age_producer_has_been_asking_if/

 

[Ismaul]

Bioware, THE most creative and visionary AAA dev of yore

No, never. Were they ever even creative at all, let alone "visionary"? They've always been a fan-fiction type of dev, "let's do what's most popular and established in our genre!" Forgotten Realms! Elves! Cutesy barbarian! Star Wars! Generic feng shui setting! etc.

NWN came with the modularity, Kotor was the first "cinematic" RPG, DAO vastly expanded on the idea of inter-party relations, ME was the first true space opera RPG. Even the shitty DA2 had a fairly adult political plotline about the mages and inquisition.

Whatever you think of Bioware or their games you can't say they operated the same way as Blizzard or any other AAA dev for that matter. If you can think of one that was more creative and innovative go on and fire away.

So their "creativity" is mostly in their tech, which is indeed worth recognition: IE engine, modularity, cinematics. But DAO added nothing that wasn't there before as far as inter-party relations (unless gaming relations with gifts - pure decline - is what you're referring to), DA2 went edgy to copy the Witcher (even DAO did so), and ME was the result of removing the Star Wars brand from their next sci-fi game. I wouldn't call that "creative".

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

so what do we know about their current projects? is it something like :

edmonton team 1 (DAO team)
- some early DA4 stuff + that turn based spin off they mentioned on twitter last year

edmonton team 2 (old ME team)
- project Dylan aka we want that Destiny sales

austin team
- necromancing TOR corpse

montreal team
- back to working on free multiplayer dlcs

or is it more like:
edmonton DYLAN, austin more DYLAN, montreal even more fucking DYLAN

i cant even imagine pressure they got on this project from EA

serious question. it seems like it might be for the first time that Bioware is not currently working on any crpg ( inb4 they havent released a single crgp since 2009

What are Bioware doing really? They have no IP as they've wrecked Mass Effect and Dragon Age is stale now W3 wrecked the genre for them. So they have this new project which is bound to suck as they have nobody capable working at their studio and the new IP has no brand name so it will tank unless it's actually good and has $60million plus of promotion. Bioware is dead, you may as well add them to the list of EA casualties at this point.

EA dosen't care about shitty studios like that, their stock just shot through the roof because of games like FIFA and NFL which they tweak every year at minimum cost and sell tens of millions of copies, even if this game took a loss (which it probably did) it was barely a scratch on EA's nose.

BTW the guys who make sports management games must be genius'. EA updates FIFA every year with a few tweaks and sells the same game back to the same customers. All the Sports Manager guys do is update the database, add a couple of flashy menu buttons a tweak to the highlights reel and they sell the same game back to the customer year on year.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Creative would be having elements that can't be found in any other game or games, and this does not applies to Bioware

True but you have to say Bioware streamlined (horrible word) the experience of many of those mechanics to make them palatable to their audience. Many peoples problems with KOTOR2 and also my problem is their are too many shades of grey.

My problem with it is Star Wars is kids morality black and white, goodies and baddies, you don't start getting philisophical on Star Wars, Star Wars is just throwaway fun not some mantra you should live your live by, no matter how much arrested developed 40 year olds think it should be. It's not real it has no relevence to the world it's just full blown 44D Tits out fantasy. EDIT With lightsabers

 

[cvv]

BTW the guys who make sports management games must be genius'. EA updates FIFA every year with a few tweaks and sells the same game back to the same customers. All the Sports Manager guys do is update the database, add a couple of flashy menu buttons a tweak to the highlights reel and they sell the same game back to the customer year on year.

Old news. Eternal problem of business - if we knew that 20 years ago we could've been as rich as EA now.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

by the power of depression and self hate, i finally tried it. i admit i did only part of the first map, but some things are just too evident: it doesn't seem a total disaster, just a very very bad game, boring, with dialogues on level between those i wrote in elementary and middle school, with a terrible graphics engine (witcher 3 works like a charm, this is the world of stuttering) and bullet sponges everywhere.
it's badly programmed, badly written and badly thought, but it could have been worse. it could have exploded in my face.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

BTW the guys who make sports management games must be genius'. EA updates FIFA every year with a few tweaks and sells the same game back to the same customers. All the Sports Manager guys do is update the database, add a couple of flashy menu buttons a tweak to the highlights reel and they sell the same game back to the customer year on year.

Old news. Eternal problem of business - if we knew that 20 years ago we could've been as rich as EA now.

Yeah but the sports manager guys aren't in EA's pocket, yet they just buy licenses and update their database year on year, with tweaked menus and a few little bells and whistles. Can you imagine Baseball manager coming out with a full in game viewable interactive baseball game, where you could watch the game and scroll stats and make bench picks. It would blow the minds of the customers and sell another million more copies, but also cost less than making Sara Ryder not look like an autist. That's what I mean about sports manager guys and sports games having a cashcow and everyone doing ten times the work for half the buck.

 

[donkeymong]

by the power of depression and self hate, i finally tried it. i admit i did only part of the first map, but some things are just too evident: it doesn't seem a total disaster, just a very very bad game, boring, with dialogues on level between those i wrote in elementary and middle school, with a terrible graphics engine (witcher 3 works like a charm, this is the world of stuttering) and bullet sponges everywhere.
it's badly programmed, badly written and badly thought, but it could have been worse. it could have exploded in my face.

The game engine is the same as the one Battlefield uses. Their programmers suck, as simple as this.

 

[Storyfag]

austin team
- necromancing TOR corpse

Can confirm that one. And, as a Master Necromancer, I can also judge their efforts as... slowly improving. After years of complete ineptness and trying (and failing) to arouse the corpses dick, they did manage to make it's hand twitch.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

stuttering every single time i turn the view, hours long loading times, krogan compenetrating his own model and a clearly retarded enemy.
not the best of the beginnings.

 

[Jick Magger]

You can argue however much you want about how creative Bioware has been in its past, but Andromeda really takes its level of blandness to an entire level. If we're still keeping up the Star Trek analogy with the series; If Mass Effect 1 was Star Trek: The Next Generation, then Andromeda is Star Trek Voyager. Sure, it jumps on the scene with a whole collection of lofty promises about how the status quo is going to be shaken up, and how we're gonna see things never before seen in the series in an entirely different setting completely removed from the original, but then you get through the intro and it's all exactly the fucking same, if not even worse.

There are precisely two new alien factions; one functions as the default good race which is incredibly similar to humanity culturally, and the other is a chaotic evil race comprised literally entirely of snarling, gun-toting evil monsters who only want to kill or assimilate, lead by a villain who might as well just be Ming the Merciless. In fact, if you take in to account the exclusion of various other races introduced in the other games, this game has actually dramatically less depictions of exotic alien lifeforms than the other games, when the base fucking setting is supposed to be about exploring the unknown. There is a third faction made up of exiled colonists, who have for basically no reason managed to become either bands of bloodthirsty scavengers or drug-dealing mercenaries with their own pirate kingdom for no other reason than there was one in Mass Effect 2 and that game was popular!

The game retreads the ancient alien civilization trope which not only had the first trilogy done to death, but has become a tired cliche of science fiction in general. I mean, there's 'different yet exactly the same', and then there's just 'exactly the fucking same'. The strange new worlds you explore are just four different variants of "desolate wasteland" with the one legitimately good and creative one also happening to be the only one where you're not forced to get everywhere using the godawful fucking Nomad, because y'know, we've fucked this gameplay mechanic up two times already, and we know you guys fucking hate it, but what if we fuck it up again for you? Do you like it now?

None of your dialogue options matter. Absolutely none. Thanks to the removal of the paragon/renegade system, you're dialogue options now are just limited to "Say the same thing, except either sarcastically, boringly, or blandly". Even the ones which supposedly "do" matter have absolutely no long-term consequences. You can make decisions that your teammates will openly tell you they consider a personal betrayal, then two scenes later they'll forgive you and pretend nothing happened. Nothing fucking matters.

It feels as though EA looked at the reception of Mass Effect 3 and its ending, and what they took from it wasn't "Don't write bullshit non-endings", but "Don't try anything creative at all", and what we got was this. Whenever the game is presented with an opportunity for creativeness, it instead decides to take the safe route, and what we get is just this bland mess.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

also the commander died, he left word to give supreme power to his kid son, who's dead/passed out, and nobody thinks of mutining to give command to a truly deserving individual.
retardation without limitation.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

systematic crash during the first quest ever, "save my husband by talking to people 5 meters apart".
total masterpiece.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i was wrong. i updated my drivers because this piece of crap kept asking me to, "maybe it's my fault". the systematic crash remained, performance worsened and i'm getting more systematic crashes everywhere.
if i had bought this i'd be veeeeeeery pissed.

 

[Nirvash]

BTW the guys who make sports management games must be genius'. EA updates FIFA every year with a few tweaks and sells the same game back to the same customers. All the Sports Manager guys do is update the database, add a couple of flashy menu buttons a tweak to the highlights reel and they sell the same game back to the customer year on year.

Old news. Eternal problem of business - if we knew that 20 years ago we could've been as rich as EA now.

Yeah but the sports manager guys aren't in EA's pocket, yet they just buy licenses and update their database year on year, with tweaked menus and a few little bells and whistles. Can you imagine Baseball manager coming out with a full in game viewable interactive baseball game, where you could watch the game and scroll stats and make bench picks. It would blow the minds of the customers and sell another million more copies, but also cost less than making Sara Ryder not look like an autist. That's what I mean about sports manager guys and sports games having a cashcow and everyone doing ten times the work for half the buck.

There are already many mangerials for all the american sports.

But all are absolute garbage due to the dumb system of usa closed leagues. (no international competition, no actual minor leagues you can rise from mean 0 progression/ambition/fun, play like a million games/season for NOTHING due to dumb playoffs, the moronic playoffs "best 4 of 7", the drafting from college etc)