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 warboss wrote:

 Nerak wrote:

One nerd rage thing: bring back the non humanoid aliens! The Elkor and Volus and such all helped with the sci-fi theme of the first game, why in the world would you cut those out!?

Agreed. While the comfort and familiarity of Star Trek style standard bipedal humanoids with bumpy foreheads is welcome in mass effect, I did also appreciate more "alien" intelligent races like the Rachni and Hanar alongside them in ME1. The fact that they went to a completely new galaxy and only found two races is a bit underwhelming (although they can theoretically hand wave it off as being limited to the Heleus cluster specifically).

TBH I am surprised no Volus are in ME:A considering they have all the money and are the species that would make the investments in such an endeavor.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Umm, I've clocked at least ten hours on the game and done two of the worlds; Eos and Voeld. Its nowhere near as bad as people are making out. Those clips are very selective in terms of the animations and segments of the game. None of these are major enough to detract from a good game. Its certainly better and more engaging than DA:Inq which I put down after a few failed playthroughs after I got bored.

Fundamentally the game isn't like ME2 or ME3 in that it was mostly a series of corridor based linear shooter environments. They really wanted to push the premise of having these big open worlds and about you settling Andromeda in the face of adversity. It isn't about gathering a fire team or fighting a war like those games.

But yeah, the bad is being really blown out of proportion.

I don't see how it is being blown out of proportion, when the criticisms are very valid, and quite widespread. This isn't isolated to just a few reviews, Metacritic has an average user score of 4.5. While there is certainly some bandwagoning, saying that it is being blown out of proportion is disingenuous when the response is this large with clear evidence to support the negative viewpoint. The fact that you can find it up to 20% off at release is a troubling sign.

This is a next generation game, and the animations are looking worse than games that came out years ago. It is very buggy, and even the storytellng and dialogue is getting hammered. How is that acceptable for a 60 dollar game? It's not. The only consistently good thing you hear about the game, is that the combat is the best in the series.

I don't see any reason to purchase it at this point. It will be a bargain bin title in 6 months with a price to reflect that.

Because its simply a massive game compared to the previous installments. The amount of dialogue, the size and variety of the environments is vastly greater than what you saw in ME2 & 3 which still used copy paste assets thrown together, some of which looked horrible, but had a much smaller play area. Plus it really depends which dialogue you're referring to, some of it is quite cringe worthy and poorly delivered in the original trilogy. Also the animations have never been stellar. Often Shephard would have this constant vacant expression on his face and be granite like as he assured us that this really was his favorite store on the Citadel.

The reason next gen games like, I dunno, Halo Wars 2's cutscenes have very good facial animations is because they use motion capture on a very small number of scenes. They don't have to do thousands of interactions. My suspicion is that they actually tried to increase the amount of emotion in the characters faces and it encountered some hiccups along the way. You just never noticed it in previous titles because there barely was any expressions on the characters faces. But its very unfair to compare motion capture to animation, even if we're increasingly used to this.

If your animations need to be compared to the previous ones and are lacking, then that means something really failed along the way.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Nerak wrote:

One nerd rage thing: bring back the non humanoid aliens! The Elkor and Volus and such all helped with the sci-fi theme of the first game, why in the world would you cut those out!?

Agreed. While the comfort and familiarity of Star Trek style standard bipedal humanoids with bumpy foreheads is welcome in mass effect, I did also appreciate more "alien" intelligent races like the Rachni and Hanar alongside them in ME1. The fact that they went to a completely new galaxy and only found two races is a bit underwhelming (although they can theoretically hand wave it off as being limited to the Heleus cluster specifically).

TBH I am surprised no Volus are in ME:A considering they have all the money and are the species that would make the investments in such an endeavor.

Talk to Taan. You actually have a dialogue bit asking about the Quarian Ark, which was shared with Drell and Hanar alongside of Volus and Elcor as well.
It had trouble with the environmental systems(not surprising since Drell, Hanar, Quarians, and Volus have specialized environmental needs) and was leaving later.

That's all that can be said without spoilers.

 Sasori wrote:


I don't see how it is being blown out of proportion, when the criticisms are very valid, and quite widespread. This isn't isolated to just a few reviews,

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

Eumerin wrote:

 Sasori wrote:


I don't see how it is being blown out of proportion, when the criticisms are very valid, and quite widespread. This isn't isolated to just a few reviews,

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

There are people who can have fun playing Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, and I am glad that people can enjoy the games they purchased.

Am i the only one who hopes EA (as its EA...) Does a "Reverse Dead Space 3"?

Because in Dead Space 3, you could get the N7 suit if you had a ME3 Save file

So you could get Isaac Clarke's Engineering suit in ME:A... (Even if EA (As its EA and they LOVE their DLC...) made it a Micro DLC i would buy that INSTANTLY

Im Currently running around in full Maverick Sharpshooter with the Helmetless option on. Probably the best looking armour if Custom Colours are put on it

Also you can "Consume" the Andromeda Galaxies version of Weed, and it is VERY Trippy

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 Sasori wrote:


I don't see how it is being blown out of proportion, when the criticisms are very valid, and quite widespread. This isn't isolated to just a few reviews,

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

There are people who can have fun playing Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, and I am glad that people can enjoy the games they purchased.

Difference is that nobody has a thread for "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing" that is getting barraged by people trying to shut down others' enjoyment of that game with justifications cribbed from YouTube videos and metacritic commentary.

As mentioned, the game has some issues. Up until yesterday, there was a 1:3 chance that when I was collecting Strike Team Rewards my game wouldn't properly register input to clear the reward screen off.

There's a bug relating to the "Vintage Heat Sink" and Shotguns when you craft them where it basically causes the weapon to screw up the ammo counts for your other weapons--since the VHS doesn't require ammo but instead has an "Overheat" mechanic, if it gets fully overheated and you go to swap to another weapon after using a specific power(Overdrive IIRC--Combat power that increases your magazine size and ROF) it resets all of your other weapons to having 1 ammo. They've informed people to not do that specific combo for the time being, or if you're going to do it? Install VHS on your other weapons as well.

Eumerin wrote:

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

The flip side of that is that people who are really bothered by the issues have posted they're not buying the game and are automatically excluded from your chosen sample. Make of that (selection bias) what you will.

I got to work from home the last 2 days, that meant I got to play ME:A all day and just answer an occasional email when I felt like it.

I have over 40 hours into the game so far, I have 4 outposts, got 100% viability for the whole initiative, cleared all of the quests from Eos and the snow planet and the one with the slums, too many planets to remember the names. I decided I want to leave no stone unturned and do all of the quests on the map when I get to a new planet. After all of that, I've still barely don't much of the main quest line, there's SO much side stuff to do. So right now I'm working on finishing up the Krogan planet.

I've been doing some crafting, I really love the remnant beam assault rifle and sniper rifle, but they both work pretty much the same and feels like crafting both was a waste. I love how they don't require ammo, there's been some longer missions where ammo was running out, with these guns I never have to worry and the recharge time isn't much longer than reloading a normal gun.

Sounds like you're well on your way to a complete playthrough. I agree on liking the non-ammo guns. I preferred the ME1 style overheat system personally and my favorite guns in ME3 (both single and multiplayer) were the ones that borrowed that mechanic as well (so the Prothean assault rifle and later M-7 Lancer).

 warboss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

The flip side of that is that people who are really bothered by the issues have posted they're not buying the game and are automatically excluded from your chosen sample. Make of that (selection bias) what you will.

Circular logic.

People who are saying "I won't buy this game because >insert reason X/Y/Z of having seen something on a video or even the idea that somehow the game having discounted prices is a sign of poor quality<", then arguing against people who actually have the game and are playing it and saying "These problems are overblown".

Why even bother responding to them, though? They decided they don't want to play the game, good for them, they saved some money. I mean I think it's a little odd that they feel the need to pop up in here to advertise that to everyone - I certainly don't go to the park to tell all the people playing chess there that I'm not a fan - but hey, it's their free time so who am I to judge.

I'm about 30 hours in now (I play slowly) and am still having a pretty good time. I have seen a few small animation glitches but nothing really serious, other than what I posted previously in this thread. I haven't yet found any bugs in terms of gameplay but my friend finished it and found a few bugged quests so I assume I just haven't gotten there yet.

 warboss wrote:
Sounds like you're well on your way to a complete playthrough. I agree on liking the non-ammo guns. I preferred the ME1 style overheat system personally and my favorite guns in ME3 (both single and multiplayer) were the ones that borrowed that mechanic as well (so the Prothean assault rifle and later M-7 Lancer).

I agree, and to be honest, story-wise, if you have a system where you don't need any ammunition anymore I find it dubious that you would ever go back to using magazines for ammo.

So I just read that Bioware is acknowledging all of the criticisms and will have some kind of announcement on Tuesday April 4th. Wonder what that will be? A bunch of freebie multiplayer items or a DLC for our trouble?

Still doesn't bother me much, but I'll gladly take something free if they're offering

Add a face changer thing to the medbay?

 Necros wrote:
So I just read that Bioware is acknowledging all of the criticisms and will have some kind of announcement on Tuesday April 4th. Wonder what that will be? A bunch of freebie multiplayer items or a DLC for our trouble?

They talked about it during the MP stream. It's to do with an upcoming update and to discuss balancing for MP and stuff like that.


BTW people...
MAKE SURE YOU DO THE WEEKEND MISSIONS! They're keying them to where the "average" player will be in campaign, and will have spoilers...but also will be bringing in new enemies, weapons, etc for MP and possibly SP!

You can participate by either playing them yourselves OR sending a Strike Team to do them.

Just finished it (main story at least, plus all the loyalty missions and 100% on all outposts). Great finale, very much the kind of epic that ME does so well. It's easily on par with the fight though the Citadel in ME1, the Suicide Mission in ME2 and the battle for London in ME3. A fantastic sense of scale to it and it wraps this game's story up nicely while still leaving plenty tantalisingly open for the next game.

Anyone else who's finished it catch the sneaky little Dragon Age reference slipped in towards the end?

 warboss wrote:
I agree on liking the non-ammo guns. I preferred the ME1 style overheat system personally and my favorite guns in ME3 (both single and multiplayer) were the ones that borrowed that mechanic as well (so the Prothean assault rifle and later M-7 Lancer).

Oh, yes. Once I got the Remnant guns researched, I never looked back. I tried to bust out the Sidewinder pistol a few times for coolness factor, but I rarely do that anymore. I always thought the switch to the thermal clip system in ME2 was a bad move, as it took away one of the more unique aspects of the the Mass Effect series in both gameplay and technology.

The PAW beam rifle is definitely fun, not having to worry about ammo is a big relief against the tankier enemy types like Remnant Destroyers or late-game Fiends.

Another fun one is the Raeger carbine shotgun. Designed by thw Quarians as a Geth killer, even the lower level variants just shred Remnants. A tad situational, the Katana or Piranha arw better general purpose shotties but if you know you're up against Remnant the Raeger is exceptionally good. Also, it's a lightning gun, so you get a lot of points for style!

I looked at the Remnant sniper rifles. But the two on offer didn't seem to go for the "big damage hits" aspect that I was looking for in a sniper rifle. So I've ignored them.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

Thing is, though, if you look at the comments within this thread from people who are playing it, everyone likes it. Yes, there are problems. I've griped about a few myself. But everyone in this thread who is actually playing the game (as opposed to just reading what others have to say about it) is having a lot of fun.

Make of that what you will.

The flip side of that is that people who are really bothered by the issues have posted they're not buying the game and are automatically excluded from your chosen sample. Make of that (selection bias) what you will.

And missing my point.

The critics make these problems out to be game-crippling. And for some players, they will be because people are people. Everyone's at least a little different from everyone else.

There are quite a few people here who own the game. Given how game-crippling these problems are supposed to be (according to the critics), you would expect to see at least a few posts here from people who played the game (either because they purchased it, or they played the free preview) and then decided that they weren't interested in playing further because things like the facial animations just took them too far out of the game. It's possible that I've forgotten a bunch of posts along those lines in this thread. But I don't recall any off the top of my head.


In short, the critics hate it, but the players seem to love it.

Is there some self-selection going on? Sure. Players who get the game are the type who are pre-disposed to like games of this genre. So they'll be inclined toward it from the start. But even with that pre-disposition, there should still be *some* dissent.

Again - it's not as if you had to purchase the game to see these game-crippling bugs for yourself. Anyone with an Xbox One or PC had the opportunity to try the game out before buying it.

 Ouze wrote:
Why even bother responding to them, though? They decided they don't want to play the game, good for them, they saved some money. I mean I think it's a little odd that they feel the need to pop up in here to advertise that to everyone - I certainly don't go to the park to tell all the people playing chess there that I'm not a fan - but hey, it's their free time so who am I to judge.

I'm about 30 hours in now (I play slowly) and am still having a pretty good time. I have seen a few small animation glitches but nothing really serious, other than what I posted previously in this thread. I haven't yet found any bugs in terms of gameplay but my friend finished it and found a few bugged quests so I assume I just haven't gotten there yet.

 warboss wrote:
Sounds like you're well on your way to a complete playthrough. I agree on liking the non-ammo guns. I preferred the ME1 style overheat system personally and my favorite guns in ME3 (both single and multiplayer) were the ones that borrowed that mechanic as well (so the Prothean assault rifle and later M-7 Lancer).

I agree, and to be honest, story-wise, if you have a system where you don't need any ammunition anymore I find it dubious that you would ever go back to using magazines for ammo.

This thread is a discussion about the game, which includes the positive and negative aspects of it. Why should I not post my feelings about, it, and my reasoning on why I will wait until the price drops, and how I feel the game is unacceptable in it's current state? I wanted to love this game, as I love the ME universe, but I don't feel I should reward developers who produce sub-par work on release, to cash in on a beloved franchise. There is already a serious problem in the industry with pre-orders, and I have simply expressed my opinion as it relates to this title.

If you want just a positive circlejerk "discussion" then you should make that clear, however that defeats the purpose of an open forum.

I will bow out at this point though, so I do not impede anything further.

 Sasori wrote:


If you want just a positive circlejerk "discussion" then you should make that clear, however that defeats the purpose of an open forum.

I will bow out at this point though, so I do not impede anything further.

Hardly a "circlejerk". If you look back, you'll notice plenty of criticisms of elements of the game.

However, the same people here who are criticizing elements of it still think that the game is lots of fun.

Yes, we know that the reviewers are complaining about the game. It isn't as if people haven't posted video reviews over and over and over in this thread complaining about the animations. It's getting rather tedious, actually. And yet, every single person posting here who has played the game enjoys it a lot. Why is noting that fact considered "circlejerking"? Why do people who have *NOT* played the game focus pretty much exclusively on the video reviews instead of listening to the people here who are playing the game?

I think it comes down to two things. One is that there are people (not necessarily in this thread, but online in general) who are stil mad over the ending of ME3 and so will take any opportunity to dredge that and their general ill will towards Bioware up again.

The other is that a lot of the 'problems' are stuff you notice far more when you see them on youtube, out of context, rather than while playing simply as you're looking for different things. Dodgy animations are much easier to pick apart when you can see the same thing over and over, slowed down to half speed or zoomed in rather than when you see it once and then the game moves on and you're straight back to the good parts (basically everything else).

At the end of the day though, it's like film reviews; anyone telling me it's somehow objectively bad based not on playing/seeing it but rather on what Some Bloke On The Internet said won't get the time of day from me. If you try it and then don't like it, absolutely fair enough, but I tend to just ignore anyone trying to tell me a game I've thoroughly enjoyed for 50-odd hours is crap just because they read/saw that somewhere online so it must be true.

well, I'm about 73 hours in now, "done" 4 planets (I'm sure some more stuff will pop up on them though)...and I suddenly have a shedload more quests/sidequests, and like 9 more systems to check out...good lord!

still having an absolute blast...the general story, and a lot of the smaller mission stories I've found, and all the characters are really good imo ...I'm still playing combat as a vanguard...charge and lance powers, my faithful omniblade, a talon pistol (fires slow, not much ammo, but hits like a truck), and I forget what it's called, but it's some kind of kett shotgun that does a ton of damage, again, not much ammo, but so much damage...and I basically only use guns on big, tough enemies...I just melee 2-hit all the goons

I've never been a "mass effect fanboy", I didn't really get into the first one, I didn't even play the third one, but I did complete the second one and loved it...I gave this game a try on a whim, and was quite sceptical going in, but it won me over very quickly, and it's close to, if not the best game I've played in bloody years, imo

so, you guys that are basically saying it's crap, while having not even played it...well, you have fun with that...I'm going back to enjoying the game now

About 40 hours in, 2 planets at 100% viable, and hoping to get some MP done over the weekend.

Have a real problem updating my graphics drivers since going Win10 and still using Firefox, so I get a warning about stability issues and graphics problems every time I start up.

Even so, the only graphical glitch I have seen so far was when talking to a (female) Salarian on the Nexus. She just kept swinging her hand through her outer thigh armour.

Sorry if I DON'T find that a game breaking experience. It was certainly annoying, but a large part of that being the movement itself as I kept having my eye drawn to the movement and I would have preferred to have been concentrating on the character's peripheral vision.

I liked the heat overload mechanic of ME, but considered the heat sink mechanic of ME2 to be a logical step up. Not particularly an improvement, but something different that seemed logical within the story.

One of the most fun things in the game so far has been returning to a (much better designed) MAKO. Even in it's base state it is a serious leap from the original and the shuttles you couldn't actually control from 2 and 3. And once you upgrade the thrusters, boost, and both 4WD and 6WD options, it's even better.

Drifting round the rivers on the ice covered world, using the rear of the vehicle to bat Kett out the way, or simply running over them, is hours of fun in it's own right. If only there was a mode, or even just a mission, where you and the friendlies had to race along that sort of terrain, chased by Kett, and trying to find ways to slow down or distract the Kett along the way, looking for short-cuts. Man, I'd make sure I made a permanent copy of the save just before that so I could replay it time and time again.

 Sasori wrote:
This thread is a discussion about the game, which includes the positive and negative aspects of it. Why should I not post my feelings about, it, and my reasoning on why I will wait until the price drops, and how I feel the game is unacceptable in it's current state? I wanted to love this game, as I love the ME universe, but I don't feel I should reward developers who produce sub-par work on release, to cash in on a beloved franchise. There is already a serious problem in the industry with pre-orders, and I have simply expressed my opinion as it relates to this title.

If you want just a positive circlejerk "discussion" then you should make that clear, however that defeats the purpose of an open forum.

I will bow out at this point though, so I do not impede anything further.

You're making a strawman, in that I didn't suggest we should only have a positive circlejerk. In fact, I myself posted some complaints in this very thread and presumably will have more as I keep going on. I certainly am not enjoying the game enough to engage in tribalistic red-team, blue-team type of behavior.

What I was getting at, maybe badly, was that when someone comes in, says this game looks like a POS and drops a youtube video they found with some animation glitching - why engage them? It's not that they don't have the right to their opinion or they shouldn't express it, so much as I don't see the point in arguing with them once they've expressed said opinion. They made up their mind. It just seems fruitless.

Yeah I prefer a sniper rifle to hit really hard, I want to kill stuff with it with 1 headshot.. right now I'm using a Black Widdow for my sniper rifle and I'm specced for the damage bonuses from stealth and stuff. But most of the time I use my PAW beam rifle.

Right now I'm level 47 and most fights are pretty easy, I guess enemy toughness doesn't scale as you level? I'm still gonna finish all of my current side missions before I do any more of the main story, i'm sure lots of new missions will pop up too. I'm almost done with the Krogan world and I just have to do the moon/asteroid one, but it doesn't seem like there's many quests there.. or not yet anyway.

 Necros wrote:

Right now I'm level 47 and most fights are pretty easy, I guess enemy toughness doesn't scale as you level?

That's more of a Bethesda thing iirc. I can't recall enemies ever scaling in a mass effect game. They'll introduce new ones, add numbers to existing ones, or limit you some way (no squadmates, extra environmental effects,etc) depending on the place of the mission in the main story arc but not buff a basic enemy just because you leveled up. I think they assume some average level at each story point and balance it for the expected level at the chosen difficulty. If you level faster because you do every side quest before advancing the main plot, it's made the game much easier in the past (especially with biotic classes).

 Necros wrote:
Yeah I prefer a sniper rifle to hit really hard, I want to kill stuff with it with 1 headshot.. right now I'm using a Black Widdow for my sniper rifle and I'm specced for the damage bonuses from stealth and stuff. But most of the time I use my PAW beam rifle.

I used to be a huge fan of the Widow/Black Widow in ME3...until I used the N7 Valiant.

It hits as hard as the others, has a higher ROF, more stability, and a lot of other bits and bobs that make it exceedingly useful.

The only thing it doesn't have is high penetration, which Widow/Black Widow natively come with.

I think I leveled up too much. I'm 49 now, and now my viability meter won't go up anymore. I still get awarded viability for quests, I get the little popup window saying so.. but the progress bar on it is full and never changes.. there's still a few cryo pods that I haven't unlocked yet.. like 6 or 7 of them.. so is that a bug or did I just not advance the main story enough? I'm about to do the quest where you go to Merdian now, I just finished the salarian ark quest.

I dunno. I'm starting to experience bugs myself now and I'm not even close to where you are. I'm on the Eos "Making an Impression" quest and the finale section of that is really massively bugged. As in, "uncompletable" bugged.