Mass Effect Andromeda

[ShadySands]

I'm still mad about M to open the map and ESC twice to get back to the game

 

If I open the map or journal or whatever else I'm likely going to want to go back to the game and not the menu when I close it

[213374U]

The playtesters of this game need to be punished by a mandatory 100 gameplay hours of Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Why would you punish me and thousands of other innocent players?

 

In other news, I encountered this: https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/61itql/no_spoilers_huge_combatencounter_xp_bug_you_might/

 

In short, if you are not gaining combat XP, your game is broken with no fix. Good times.

[Bartimaeus]

The playtesters of this game need to be punished by a mandatory 100 gameplay hours of Ruins of Myth Drannor. The ones who designed the UI and the controls get 200.

 

Not likely to be playtesters/QA's fault. Given that the project was apparently behind on schedule, it's quite possibly they never really fully got to that stage...or if they did, they didn't have the time on their current schedule to heed them.

[the_dog_days]

For all BioWare apologists out there, there's a rumor going around that EA gave BioWare permission push back the release, but BW declined. These rumors gain traction when you see all the stories back in November talking about EA considering pushing back the release.

[Fenixp]

For all BioWare apologists out there, there's a rumor going around that EA gave BioWare permission push back the release, but BW declined. These rumors gain traction when you see all the stories back in November talking about EA considering pushing back the release.

Rumors backed up by other, older rumors? I'm sure evil Bioware apologists are trembling now under the weight of ... Well, stories on the internet. At this rate, they'll be too scared to leave their volcano villain lairs.

 

Edit: Incidentally, I'm still rather impressed by these being developed in-house, in CDP: R's own engine:

 

It'd still come down to budget and experience I suppose

Edited April 6, 2017 by Fenixp

[Bartimaeus]

For all BioWare apologists out there, there's a rumor going around that EA gave BioWare permission push back the release, but BW declined. These rumors gain traction when you see all the stories back in November talking about EA considering pushing back the release.

 

Hey, it's just what I've heard. Heh, I'm certainly no BioWare apologist...I've rather expressly disliked them since Dragon Age: Origins...and most people actually liked that game!

[majestic]

 

The playtesters of this game need to be punished by a mandatory 100 gameplay hours of Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Why would you punish me and thousands of other innocent players?

 

In other news, I encountered this: https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/61itql/no_spoilers_huge_combatencounter_xp_bug_you_might/

 

In short, if you are not gaining combat XP, your game is broken with no fix. Good times.

 

 

What? Nah. I'm not talking about actual players testing the game in a beta but EA/Bio's internal QA.

 

 

The playtesters of this game need to be punished by a mandatory 100 gameplay hours of Ruins of Myth Drannor. The ones who designed the UI and the controls get 200.

 

Not likely to be playtesters/QA's fault. Given that the project was apparently behind on schedule, it's quite possibly they never really fully got to that stage...or if they did, they didn't have the time on their current schedule to heed them.

 

 

Yeah, maybe. They devs probably slapped the menues together with the idea of revising them later, but that later probably never came. Actually that's fairly common in software development in general. I've seen a lot of hacks and quick'n'dirty solutions become permanent over the years, and on projects with less strict deadlines and way less complexity than a game of this size.

[Zoraptor]

You can only playtest what is put in front of you anyway. For all anyone knows the playtesters were all over the problems and produced a beautifully formatted and indexed triplicate hard copy and database bug report collection that already listed every problem so far detected. If their suggestions/ observations were either ignored or not able to be acted on then they might as well have not existed.

 

It's difficult to believe that someone didn't catch the problem with animations for example. It's far more likely that they were not a high enough priority or there was not enough time to fix them then that testers thought they were fine.

 

Have to say though, I'm vaguely looking forward to playing Andromeda at some point, despite its problems.

[213374U]

What? Nah. I'm not talking about actual players testing the game in a beta but EA/Bio's internal QA.

I was being facetious. What with the game being released basically in a beta state and all... 

 

 

 

For all anyone knows the playtesters were all over the problems and produced a beautifully formatted and indexed triplicate hard copy and database bug report collection that already listed every problem so far detected. If their suggestions/ observations were either ignored or not able to be acted on then they might as well have not existed.

 

It's difficult to believe that someone didn't catch the problem with animations for example. It's far more likely that they were not a high enough priority or there was not enough time to fix them then that testers thought they were fine.

I get the feeling that this is likely what happened. The chosen release date is pretty damning, as is the cancellation of the MP beta. I'd be willing to put money down that the biggest fixes in today's patch are for issues known before the game was released. Probably not ready to be rolled into the "day one" patch, but in the works already.

 

Beyond perplexing design choices, this has managerial snafu written all over it.

[Valmy]

Have to say though, I'm vaguely looking forward to playing Andromeda at some point, despite its problems.

 

I am comforted by the fact that by the time I get around to it, it will likely be fixed for the most part.

[Valmy]

Beyond perplexing design choices, this has managerial snafu written all over it.

 

Bioware is being led by morons from other EA divisions now who are not even RPG people. So there is that.

[213374U]

 

Have to say though, I'm vaguely looking forward to playing Andromeda at some point, despite its problems.

 

I am comforted by the fact that by the time I get around to it, it will likely be fixed for the most part.

 

Probably, yeah. In a year or two when support has ended (going by how it was with ME3), it should be a pretty decent game.

 

Anyway, this happened. Apparently someone, somewhere, was hurt by a conversation. With a fictional character. In a space opera. And BioWare can't have that, so they rushed to apologize and make all necessary changes.

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/bioware/status/849671752192077828

 

 

I also was hurt (literally) after banging my head on my desk after the third consecutive crash. Where's my apology, BioWare?

Edited April 6, 2017 by 213374U

[Valmy]

Heh remember when Obsidian came under attack for something one of the backers wrote in some obscure corner of Pillars of Eternity? Gaming is a pretty toxic environment right now.

[Gfted1]

How was Hainly "not included in a caring or thoughtful way" prior to the changes? From the gist of the tweet, Hainly was giving an info dump too fast or something?

[Fenixp]

*sigh*

 

When will people finally realize that there's a fairly important distinction between oppressing a minority and pandering to a minority?

[majestic]

How was Hainly "not included in a caring or thoughtful way" prior to the changes? From the gist of the tweet, Hainly was giving an info dump too fast or something?

 

You could ask Hainly why she joined the initiative and she basically told you she wanted a fresh start as Hainly and to stop being Stephan. Then she said her name is made up from the first letters of her favorite cities.

 

It's very similar to that infamous dialogue in Siege of Dragonspear and I was pretty bewildered that there hasn't been some anti-SJW alt-moron neckbeard diatribe about that dialogue yet, and now I read that it essentially received the exact opposite of a reaction, what with the LGBT community being pissed off at it.

 

The saying used to go that it is impossible to please everyone. These days it seems as if it is impossible to please anyone. Oh boy.

 

The thing is, in this game you can ask then thousand different minor NPCs why they joined up with the Andromeda Initiative and they ALL info-dump you at that very moment. Mostly because you'll probably never ever talk to them again unless they get a quest later. By the way, most of them signed up for the adventure or to leave an old unhappy life behind. Some with more and some with less legal backgrounds.

[Valmy]

 

 

The saying used to go that it is impossible to please everyone. These days it seems as if it is impossible to please anyone. Oh boy.

 

 

Yeah it is very difficult. Both sides live in echo chambers where the most radical voices tend to dominate the others.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Valmy

[the_dog_days]

Anyway, this happened. Apparently someone, somewhere, was hurt by a conversation. With a fictional character. In a space opera. And BioWare can't have that, so they rushed to apologize and make all necessary changes.

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/bioware/status/849671752192077828

 

 

I also was hurt (literally) after banging my head on my desk after the third consecutive crash. Where's my apology, BioWare?

Go look at this conversion. What caught my attention was her description of her prior occupation.

[213374U]

 

How was Hainly "not included in a caring or thoughtful way" prior to the changes? From the gist of the tweet, Hainly was giving an info dump too fast or something?

 

You could ask Hainly why she joined the initiative and she basically told you she wanted a fresh start as Hainly and to stop being Stephan. Then she said her name is made up from the first letters of her favorite cities.

 

It's very similar to that infamous dialogue in Siege of Dragonspear and I was pretty bewildered that there hasn't been some anti-SJW alt-moron neckbeard diatribe about that dialogue yet, and now I read that it essentially received the exact opposite of a reaction, what with the LGBT community being pissed off at it.

 

The saying used to go that it is impossible to please everyone. These days it seems as if it is impossible to please anyone. Oh boy.

 

The thing is, in this game you can ask then thousand different minor NPCs why they joined up with the Andromeda Initiative and they ALL info-dump you at that very moment. Mostly because you'll probably never ever talk to them again unless they get a quest later. By the way, most of them signed up for the adventure or to leave an old unhappy life behind. Some with more and some with less legal backgrounds.

 

Yeah, pretty much. It barely registered when I spoke to that NPC. It wasn't even any more info dump-y than any other minor character's two sentence life story. I was like "sure, whatever dude(tte), got anything you need fetched?". But this is hurtful apparently, and someone was #triggered because "dead names" are a thing.

 

Yay nontroversy. Do they do it on purpose? I mean, I did bump this ****ing thread, after all.

Edited April 6, 2017 by 213374U

[aluminiumtrioxid]

*sigh*

 

When will people finally realize that there's a fairly important distinction between oppressing a minority and pandering to a minority?

 

 

I swear to god I'm not seeing how it's "pandering" to recognize that the way they wrote a character is bad and needs addressing.

 

If only they could do something similar with the ****ing travesty of a conversation with Addison featuring such gems of literary prowess as "my face is tired from dealing with everything".

[Fenixp]

I swear to god I'm not seeing how it's "pandering" to recognize that the way they wrote a character is bad and needs addressing.

Did you read the statement?

 

My reaction would be quite different if they actually revisited all dialogues in the game and rewrote them to be ... Well, good. Not what they did tho. Not what they did at all.

[Valmy]

I don't really care about pandering, just don't suck when you do it. If done right I will barely notice but the target audience will be squeeing with delight. It seems like they dropped the ball on the latter goal here.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

I swear to god I'm not seeing how it's "pandering" to recognize that the way they wrote a character is bad and needs addressing.

 

Did you read the statement?

 

 

I did. It says "...we apologize to anyone who (...) was hurt by this conversation. This was never our intent...". Which, y'know, fair enough - most people don't write video games with the intent to hurt others, so this is probably a statement of fact? It says nothing about the validity of those feelings, just that it wasn't their intent to cause them.

[213374U]

I swear to god I'm not seeing how it's "pandering" to recognize that the way they wrote a character is bad and needs addressing.

 

If only they could do something similar with the ****ing travesty of a conversation with Addison featuring such gems of literary prowess as "my face is tired from dealing with everything".

 

It's pandering because:

 

1) the character itself is part of BioWare's "design by numbers" approach, in this case, to check the inclusivity box

2) of all the dumb **** they have written into the game, this is the one thing that merits a rewrite, as you pointed out

3) the game is currently a technical dumpster fire, but the only apology is directed at people who may have been "hurt" by ~words~

4) "artistic integrity"

 

It's tokenism exactly in the same way the Mizhena character in SoD was. Instead of being a vendor, this one is involved in a Radiant fetch quest. Why didn't they go balls deep and make a member of the crew trans, if it's such a big deal to them?

[Malcador]

 

And apparently they broke the Denuvo on this.

Boy, that should be fun to play unpatched.

Well maybe they'll crack the patches!

 

I hear the new patch is a win.