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[Mass Effect: Andromeda] Ryders of the Lost Ark(s). Still taggin' spoilers too.

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Posts

  • JOE_1967JOE_1967 Registered User regular
    Something else I'd like to see in a future patch: (No, I don't expect them to do this; I'm just sayin' ...) When the Tempest is planetside, let me board it without it actually leaving the planet until I go to the galaxy map or something -- kind of irritating when I'm in the middle of something, I need to talk to someone on my space-telephone, and when I run into the ship to dial them up, it immediately launches me up into orbit.

  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    JOE_1967 wrote: »
    Something else I'd like to see in a future patch: (No, I don't expect them to do this; I'm just sayin' ...) When the Tempest is planetside, let me board it without it actually leaving the planet until I go to the galaxy map or something -- kind of irritating when I'm in the middle of something, I need to talk to someone on my space-telephone, and when I run into the ship to dial them up, it immediately launches me up into orbit.

    I suspect this wouldn't be a thing any time soon, if ever. What I think they did is made the whole interior "zone" of the Tempest part of the whole outer space portion of the game, so when you board the Tempest it has to load all of that.

  • StrikorStrikor Calibrations? Calibrations! Registered User regular
    Maybe, though when you first get it
    you have that great Nexus backdrop that never gets used again. Though, maybe the cutscene before that acted as a hidden loading screen.

  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Cambiata wrote: »
    I just did the ending mission for the second time, and noticed another thing I'd like to praise about this game: during any of the parts of a major story mission where you are in the midst of a fight, the story/dialog/characterization doesn't just pause the way it mostly does in the other parts of the franchise. For example, remember the long Mako run in Ilos? There's sparse dialog as you're driving along, but mostly it's just silence in between cutscenes. Mass Effect in general is filled with combat that's like that, with a few notable insert lines (like Garrus' cracks about fighting through a hospital in ME2), but even with those inserts the main missions are mostly silence until you reach a story point, like an actor hitting his mark. In contrast, MEA has these scenes where you're speeding along trying to get to the objective, or fighting a group only to run into the next group to fight, and all along the kind of scenes that normally would be filled with characters' stock phrases, you actually get story dialog. People comm in to say things, Ryder or one of the squaddies noticing something and pointing it out. I absolutely love this. The only downside is that if you move too fast you miss dialog, but honestly slowing down a little to catch all the dialog is a small price to pay.

    Endgame spoilers
    The scene where you're driving the Nomad through Meridian trying to catch the Archon is made so much more tense and amazing with this dialog.
    In fact the entire endgame is like this, different groups jumping into a firefight with you and getting to hear their dialog, SAM trying to hurry you along before Scott dies. The "everyone pulls together and we get to both see and hear their contribution" feels a lot like what I originally had hoped the ME3 ending would have been like. It's not as meaningful here as it would have been in that game (since you've spent three games with those characters at the end of that trilogy, while I've only really just met these characters and other than my squad I don't have a lot of personal feelings towards them), but it's still touching and brings the universe and characters alive

    It was presented pretty nicely, except....
    AFAIK, it's impossible to die until you get to the point where you need to go on foot, and there's no other penalty (Scott's fate) for being too slow, which kills the tension for me. It's like when Ryder was captured by the Archon and had to have SAM kill them in order to escape the field. Kind of a cool idea, but it's robbed of any real drama because there's no chance of Ryder actually dying. I'd much rather 'our' Ryder die, which leads us to take over the other Ryder. That would've been a far more interesting beat than "Herp, I keep dying <insert pithy comment here>."

    So, for me, while the chase scene is presented far better than the ME1 counterpart, the ME1 version was far more memorable because I could die (and I did the first time, because I was too slow).

    ---
    dporowski wrote: »
    I swear to god, we played two entirely different games.

    I think I'm just less accepting/impressed with common modern gaming tropes/standards/whatever than some people. Andromeda strikes me as a painfully safe game. Any events that could've produced memorable moments were handled in the most vanilla, predictable ways possible. There's no way to lose companions. That's a feature that's been a standard in BioWare games for as long as I can remember. There's no way to have a bad ending. Even ME3 had that. Keep in mind: I'm not trying to go out of my way to fail the story, it's just that failure should be an option. It adds weight to decisions, which is the heart of these games.

    I mean, in Andromeda, I should've at least been able to:
    Kick Liam off my ship for the bullshit he pulled with the events leading up to his loyalty mission.
    Loose Drack based on my handling of the Krogan situation. He's pissed I didn't save his scouts, but it's forgotten - literally - in about 5 minutes.

    That these aren't options make the game feel far more linear than any of the previous titles. At least there loyalty missions actually meant something. At least there, my choices had some weight. And this weightless, useless, pointless feeling permeates the game.

    Colonies? Who cares? Once you plop them down, they're essentially done. Especially if you have viability up to 100%. There's literally no good reason to stay on any planet once that happens. Even worse, all that time and effort to flip the switch on those planets results in hardly any payoff at the end.
    The "the gang's all here!" chase sequence would've been a lot more entertaining if we spent more than 5 minutes with any of them... and if it wasn't so heavily scripted. I mean, Bradley, Sloane (I went with her instead of Reyes), and Efra are the only ones I can even name out of that entire sequence, and all they do is name drop themselves.

    Same with Ryder-1. Cool, you're naming the planet that murdered my father after him... okay....

    None of the moments that are supposed to be an emotional payoff feel earned to me. There's a ton of disconnected busy work and a lot of railroading into certain character relationship positions (more than in the previous games, IMO), so the moments that are supposed to be poignant (like Liam's soccer game, or movie night) just feel incredibly hollow to me.

    And that's on top of a game cycle (drive -> fight -> scan) that is just painfully tedious to me, for a multitude of reasons.

    So, if you like the game, cool. You're far more tolerant of what I consider to be some mix of boring/tedious/bad than I am.

  • envoy1envoy1 the old continentRegistered User regular
    Yes!! this patch was much needed. Played just one match as a human adept but boy was it much better than before. Combos did stuff, and my pistol actually killed mooks. Really wish it was like this from launch. Now I actually look forward to multiplayer.

  • dporowskidporowski Registered User regular
    ME:A is light, slightly comedic, adventure SF. Think Star Trek, 5th Element, etc. It is fundamentally inappropriate to the tone of a piece like that to go around ganking your bridge crew to "add tension". If Sulu goes down to the planet, Sulu is probably coming back, and this is not a flaw.

    Something darker, such as BSG, SG:U, maybe DS9, they kill off main characters/supporting cast when they get bored. It's a tonal element that IS appropriate to the piece. ME1-3 were far closer to this style than Andromeda is, apart from the Citadel DLC.

    Making Andromeda darker/more serious by adding those elements isn't "better" any more than cats are better than dogs.

  • Blackbird SR-71CBlackbird SR-71C Registered User regular
    Can't figure out the Human Engineer in multiplayer. Anyone have any tips how to spec/play?

    steam_sig.png
    Steam ID: 76561198021298113
    Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird

  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    45 days after launch the game is basically fixed for the most part in both SP and MP.

    Truly not trying to be snarky with that generalization but is there any other big launch game that had that same length for patching?

  • MassenaMassena Registered User regular
    TexiKen wrote: »
    45 days after launch the game is basically fixed for the most part in both SP and MP.

    Truly not trying to be snarky with that generalization but is there any other big launch game that had that same length for patching?

    Well, to be fair, at least they patched it up some. With a lukewarm reception and no sequel actively in the works, it would not be unheard of for them to just stop supporting it (unless they view DLC as a critical component for the bottom line rather than a bonus).

    It wouldn't be the first time a major studio basically said "we're moving on from this" and left folks hanging. At least they're working on the technical components.

  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    I've seen some distressing news on a couple different sites now. Claims that Bioware Montreal has cut the MEA team and gone into "Support Mode" and moved a lot of their key talent to other projects, such as Battlefront II, and the as-of-yet unannounced new IP project from Bioware.

    There isn't a lot of info to be had, but it sounds as though they're basically just going to pump out occasional multiplayer patches with a skeleton crew and they're putting the entire Mass Effect franchise on ice for now.

    Sources:

    http://www.pcgamer.com/report-mass-effect-on-hiatus-bioware-montreal-transitioning-to-a-support-studio/
    https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/10/15616726/bioware-montreal-restructuring-mass-effect-on-hold
    http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285

    Lucascraft on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Can't figure out the Human Engineer in multiplayer. Anyone have any tips how to spec/play?

    You're a combo and support class. The turret is probably deadweight on you. Your goal is essentially to freeze things, then blow them up with overload. Your primary defensive mechanism is "TECH SABOTAGE"

    You're going to want to run

    6 --- All the Evo's here are good. Maybe --D is bad? Not sure about how fast the area created primes. --U makes massive explosions
    1: This is a tank ability
    6 DUD: This is the only reasonable evolution
    6 --U : Most Evo's have some value here. Probably D-U is easiest but it can be legit hard to blow up your own cryo explosions in a good team. U is valuable because it will increase all your damage and the damage of your explosions and the damage of allied explosions.
    6 -UD: Tactical revive seems nice...? Maybe? But bonus shields is always good. --D is necessary to make you not die. It gives a big debuff on all enemies. A fully charged overload will now stun 5 enemies and also give them a 30% debuff (

    Your primary setup is

    Charge Overload -> Cryo Beam -> Overload/Charge overload.

    Charged Overload will stun 5 enemies, apply a 30% damage debuff for 8 seconds, and a 35% elemental damage increase for 5. You then prime with Cyro beam and either allies blow them up. Or you hit an overload on a frozen enemy at the end.

    You're extremely squishy. So you've really got to be around folks that can use the utility you bring to the table.

    Alternate Build might be

    1
    6 DU-: last Evo is preference for where you want to prime folks. Flame is probably better since you can always prime at a distance with your gun. Stay close and use this to tank
    6 DUD: Again, we're concerned mainly about the AoE stun
    6 DUU: Duration on overload stun might be nice but damage is better CC and we're largely going to want to be detonating
    6 DUD

    In this config you're a stun tank. You set your turret in a place where it will draw melee aggro effectively (ideally that doesn't have long sight lines) and then stun everything you can while generating explosions via overload and ammo while being close enough to the turret to retain its regen buff.

    Not sure on the effectiveness of either really but that is how you're going to have to do it

    wbBv3fj.png
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Yea so the Ghost is insane.

    Weapon (Damage/Rof/Clip/Aim/Weight) [BOLD]indicates higher
    Revenant 1 (35/620/60/40/40)
    Ghost 1 (42/600/75/52/20)

    The Revenant has 3.3% better RoF in exchange for 20% more damage, 50% more DPC, better aim, and half the weight.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • PellaeonPellaeon Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Can't figure out the Human Engineer in multiplayer. Anyone have any tips how to spec/play?

    You're a combo and support class. The turret is probably deadweight on you. Your goal is essentially to freeze things, then blow them up with overload. Your primary defensive mechanism is "TECH SABOTAGE"

    You're going to want to run

    6 --- All the Evo's here are good. Maybe --D is bad? Not sure about how fast the area created primes. --U makes massive explosions
    1: This is a tank ability
    6 DUD: This is the only reasonable evolution
    6 --U : Most Evo's have some value here. Probably D-U is easiest but it can be legit hard to blow up your own cryo explosions in a good team. U is valuable because it will increase all your damage and the damage of your explosions and the damage of allied explosions.
    6 -UD: Tactical revive seems nice...? Maybe? But bonus shields is always good. --D is necessary to make you not die. It gives a big debuff on all enemies. A fully charged overload will now stun 5 enemies and also give them a 30% debuff (

    Your primary setup is

    Charge Overload -> Cryo Beam -> Overload/Charge overload.

    Charged Overload will stun 5 enemies, apply a 30% damage debuff for 8 seconds, and a 35% elemental damage increase for 5. You then prime with Cyro beam and either allies blow them up. Or you hit an overload on a frozen enemy at the end.

    You're extremely squishy. So you've really got to be around folks that can use the utility you bring to the table.

    Alternate Build might be

    1
    6 DU-: last Evo is preference for where you want to prime folks. Flame is probably better since you can always prime at a distance with your gun. Stay close and use this to tank
    6 DUD: Again, we're concerned mainly about the AoE stun
    6 DUU: Duration on overload stun might be nice but damage is better CC and we're largely going to want to be detonating
    6 DUD

    In this config you're a stun tank. You set your turret in a place where it will draw melee aggro effectively (ideally that doesn't have long sight lines) and then stun everything you can while generating explosions via overload and ammo while being close enough to the turret to retain its regen buff.

    Not sure on the effectiveness of either really but that is how you're going to have to do it

    I have 3 ranks in assault turret and really should respec it for the last level of whatever the final passive is. Other than a wave 3/6 upload where you could throw it at a choke point to keep things from interrupting your connection it's just too static, when you need to be able and willing to relocate at a moments notice.

    It has some use as a distraction on bronze/silver, but on gold for the most part I just toss it out to stall something for a second or two as I run away, doesn't really last long enough to merit investment. Only exception might be firebase magma, there's that room in the back right corner from the entry point, I can plop the turret on the ramp, hide behind the cover and so long as the rest of the team handles everything in the main area to keep anything from sneaking from behind I can mostly solo that side via cc, combos and a decent while the turret adds some dps.

    If it followed you around like the ME3 combat drone that would be one thing, but go with cryo/overload instead and skip the turret upgrades imo.

  • Blackbird SR-71CBlackbird SR-71C Registered User regular
    The Turret is actually the only useful thing I had going on the Human Engineer post patch, haha!

    I might give chain overload a shot... not sure I won't miss the ability to strip shields off mooks though!

    steam_sig.png
    Steam ID: 76561198021298113
    Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Personally I don't think max fitness is that important on a Human Engy.

    And most of the unique fitness upgrades buff tech constructs which is pointless if you aren't gonna put points into turret to begin with.

    Krogan, sure as she has access to rage, but human. Eh.

    Dragkonias on
  • Fleur de AlysFleur de Alys Biohacker Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    So I'm right at the "are you sure you want to do this mission" prompt, meaning I'm one stage away from the end of Andromeda SP. I've done every other quest apart from some random tasks, most of which don't have map points and thus aren't going to get done.

    I really only have three complaints with the single-player game:

    1. Bugs / technical issues. But I knew what I was getting into playing a 2017 game at launch.

    2. The interface. It's so goddamn rare for any RPG studio to get this right, and I can't understand why. It's so important for these kinds of games.

    3. Level scaling. This has bothered me in pretty much every single Bioware and Bethesda RPG, and I don't get why this is so ubiquitous and accepted. The below is spoilered for being a general rant (not actually a game spoiler). Note that this has bothered me in all the other ME games too, so it's not specific to Andromeda.
    Levels have a purpose in games. There is a thing they do. Multiple things, actually.

    First, they let you trace the arc of a character's development in terms of capabilities. You go from a green novice to an experienced veteran, and what you can pull off increases along with that. When implementing this, players need to feel like they're getting more and more powerful as they gain levels and acquire new gear.

    Second, they let you gate content. Want to take on this supremely awe-inspiring foe or traverse this extraordinarily dangerous habitat? You'll need to have your character's development up to par to pull that off. These gates can be hard (death is assured if your level is too low) or soft (difficulty rises, but it's not insurmountable).

    Both of these are crucial, and all these level-scaled open worlds of the past decade have completely whiffed on both of them. I'll talk about Andromeda specifically here, but you could substitute Skyrim or Dragon Age or whatever you want in here and it's basically the same.

    Since every enemy in Andromeda scales with your level, you never feel like you're getting stronger. Kett Chosen are (roughly) just as difficult at level 65 as they are at level 5. You haven't "graduated" to fighting stronger foes or even just bigger groups of foes. Or, well, you do, but that's only because the game tries to challenge you more as your skill increases. The individual enemies used are still the same, just with algorithmically-increased stats, and we don't even get the name and pallete-swap treatment JRPGs offer.

    While Ryder's options do open up as your level climbs, it's never enough to really communicate that sense of powering up. You're growing horizontally rather than vertically, and that's only after like level 40 or whatever when you finish your passive and main skill trees. The same goes for your gear, too; instead of getting lots of neat new toys, you're just getting higher numbers attached to the end of old weaponry for some reason. And if you don't manage to upgrade your gear (somehow), the game will get harder because you've leveled up and automatically powered up all your enemies.

    Which leads to the next issue with this system: the difficulty curve becomes wholly unstable. Balance is a nightmare, borderline impossible, and it's because it's impossible to correct for player decisions. At various points in the game you might unlock some skill combos that suddenly become really devastating for your level, letting you obliterate everything with ease until you gain a few more levels and enemies catch up with you. Or if you make less effective decisions with your level-ups and miss crucial gear pick-ups, you'll find yourself becoming relatively weaker every time you gain levels.

    As a result, I never feel excited when I get the Level Up ding. I actually feel a little bit of dread, because now I have to hope my power-up decisions roughly equate to the numbers all the enemies are magically getting added to them.

    With respect to the second item, I get that these open-world games don't want to gate content. Letting players go anywhere whenever is the whole schtick. I think that's bad for these games, personally. Andromeda's five planets could each have varying expected levels with different minimums (stuff around where you first get there) and maximums (final quests to secure a colony and the extras that unlock after). Want to give players a bit more choice? Well, there could be two sets of "paired" planets that have the same level ranges, so you can tackle them in either order or go back and forth between them (with Eos remaining as the unpaired planet that you tackle first). Some overlap in the level ranges (Eos high-end content being a bit harder than the initial content in the next two planets) cement this. Bam, player choice and level matters. Enemies no longer scale with you, so instead you choose the challenges you can take on at your current level of play.

    If hard limits sound unappealing to you, this can always be implemented with soft limits. Consider something like Dark Souls; while there's expected levels for those games (and yes, they're linear, but pretend they're not), you can complete any of those games while remaining at very low levels. It just gets harder. This is a perfect solution for action-RPGs like Andromeda. It's more dangerous if you go to the high-level areas too early, but you can do it, and if you're enough of a badass then you'll win.

    This is important because it reinforces the whole mantra of these kinds of games: your choices matter. If the open world lets me go wherever I want whenever I want, and the enemies get politely tailored to my level, then it doesn't matter where I go. I can go anywhere, but why do I care where I go if it's almost literally the same thing everywhere?

    Apart from that, I do see the occasional missed opportunity - I'd have wanted another alien race or two, and I wish the planets felt a lot more alien. Also I hate the coloring book galaxy views; I understand why almost every space game does this, but please give me an option to turn off all the excessive and artificial colored dust clouds and other nonsense. Space should feel vast and dark, and every time I see rainbow clouds everywhere I just feel taken out of space. The jungle planet is also too cramped, resulting in essentially an endless series of encounters as you traverse it.

    These complaints are either lesser than those I had for the previous games, or they're exactly the same as the previous games. Overall this remains by a wide margin my favorite Mass Effect. This is largely because it gets the moment-to-moment gameplay the most "right" of anything in the series, and that feature is drastically underrated in games nowadays. Combat is more fun, driving the Nomad is more fun, mining materials is more fun, selecting dialogue options is much more fun (paragon-renegade style systems need to die in fires forevermore), flying your ship around is... well, at least it's not anti-fun like in earlier titles, so that's an improvement. Side quests are almost universally the most well-written in the series (with the huge caveat that well-written side quests is not something ever associated with Mass Effect), and in particular they feel like they matter, narratively-speaking, with what's going on in the world and on the planets.

    Enemy factions are on par with the rest of the series, which is shorthand for "still bad." The outlaws are as facepalm-inducing as Cerberus and, like that organization, also show up far too often in far too large of numbers. The Kett are as boring as the Collectors, with the Archon being as empty as Harbinger. The Remnant are slightly more interesting than the Geth since the latter is a story told far too many times already. They're also a lot more fun to fight with their greater variety of techniques and counter-measures, so that's a plus.

    So yeah, I'm still pretty clueless why this game's reception is below the previous titles. It's so obviously superior to them in nearly every way, bugs and numeric quibbles from releasing a bit too early aside.


    (also, everything's dying real quick-like in MP now, so fast I'm having trouble keeping my score up because everyone's stealing all my kills; I think it's time to retire Bronze for all but the lowest-level characters)

    Fleur de Alys on
    Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
  • PellaeonPellaeon Registered User regular
    Honestly as an engineer I try not to deal with shielded enemies if possible, unshielded/armor only are your bread and butter, as they get the full freeze from the cryo beam. If there's a group of mobs focus on controlling/taking out the weaker ones first while your teammate handle the shielded and heavier stuff. If you end up alone one on one with a sharpshooter, sure, overload to stun shots until shields are gone, cryo beam. But if there's multiple best bet is to retreat until only one has an angle on you.

    As goum says you're mostly support, so you're not gonna take a ton down solo out side of combos or if you have some fancy guns. It's better post patch, can takedown and adhi or raider with a combo or sometimes just cryo beam alone, but when you get an assassination objective you're either handling the trash while your teammates kill the targets or your spending an rpg if you want the kill.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    A lot of what I'm hearing sounds like EA planned this in a head, so I'm not super worried about Mass Effects future. Sounds like BW is just busy with a new IP and DA4.

  • dporowskidporowski Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Actually, a slightly better analogy, brought to you by some YouTube diving.

    ME:A is Guardians of the Galaxy. Rocket and Groot are just not fucking going to die in that. Just not, it's how the (sub)genre works.

    ME1-3 is (closer to) Logan. Completely different tone and level of seriousness. If you told me EVERYONE died at the end of that, I'd just sort of nod and say "Yep, checks out." (Note: I haven't seen it, it's not my thing, so I have no idea if that actually happens or not.)

    Movies and older forms of the genres have had many many years for us/the audience to get used to these splits and conventions. Of course GotG doesn't work like Logan, Batman goes differently than Deadpool, etc. Gaming is starting to develop this sort of differentiation properly, which is good and needs support, else we're doomed to more years of grimdark grimbrownland of the chest-high walls everywhere with interchangeable Beef McLargehuge protagonists. We as consumers also need to be able to say to ourselves "well no, this game doesn't play by the same rules as that other one" and have different expectations from plot/setting/characters. If I play the video game equivalent of Logan, and proceed to get pissed that it was all sad and depressing, it's not THEIR fault I went in with the wrong expectations. (Sort of like taking your kids to see something "because it's animated" and not checking what kind of animation it was...)


    That said, as a note, I regard it as sacrosanct that these things are communicated properly so you know what you're getting going in. Shit like "Sucker Punch", or games like Spec Ops that attempt to trick you the player going in are committing a huge sin. You never ever fool the audience/player in a way they don't agree to.

    dporowski on
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Really, I'm not jumping to any conclusions either way.

    I remember always thinking Mac Walters wishy-washy response to whether or not this was a start of a new trilogy meant they were testing the waters to some degree. That and the game being pushed off to be developed by another branch.

    So I'm sure that critically it probably wasn't received as well as they wanted but I'm not sure if its doom and gloom time just yet.

  • PellaeonPellaeon Registered User regular
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Personally I don't think max fitness is that important on a Human Engy.

    And most of the unique fitness upgrades buff tech constructs which is pointless if you aren't gonna put points into turret to begin with.

    Krogan, sure as she has access to rage, but human. Eh.

    Possibly, I'll admit to not having really experimented too much with the effectiveness of the turret, it just doesn't jive too well with my playstyle.

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    The cooldown change actually makes relocating the turret a lot easier. Especially if you take the evolution.

  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    The Sauce wrote: »
    So I'm right at the "are you sure you want to do this mission" prompt, meaning I'm one stage away from the end of Andromeda SP. I've done every other quest apart from some random tasks, most of which don't have map points and thus aren't going to get done.

    I really only have three complaints with the single-player game:

    1. Bugs / technical issues. But I knew what I was getting into playing a 2017 game at launch.

    2. The interface. It's so goddamn rare for any RPG studio to get this right, and I can't understand why. It's so important for these kinds of games.

    3. Level scaling. This has bothered me in pretty much every single Bioware and Bethesda RPG, and I don't get why this is so ubiquitous and accepted. The below is spoilered for being a general rant (not actually a game spoiler). Note that this has bothered me in all the other ME games too, so it's not specific to Andromeda.
    Levels have a purpose in games. There is a thing they do. Multiple things, actually.

    First, they let you trace the arc of a character's development in terms of capabilities. You go from a green novice to an experienced veteran, and what you can pull off increases along with that. When implementing this, players need to feel like they're getting more and more powerful as they gain levels and acquire new gear.

    Second, they let you gate content. Want to take on this supremely awe-inspiring foe or traverse this extraordinarily dangerous habitat? You'll need to have your character's development up to par to pull that off. These gates can be hard (death is assured if your level is too low) or soft (difficulty rises, but it's not insurmountable).

    Both of these are crucial, and all these level-scaled open worlds of the past decade have completely whiffed on both of them. I'll talk about Andromeda specifically here, but you could substitute Skyrim or Dragon Age or whatever you want in here and it's basically the same.

    Since every enemy in Andromeda scales with your level, you never feel like you're getting stronger. Kett Chosen are (roughly) just as difficult at level 65 as they are at level 5. You haven't "graduated" to fighting stronger foes or even just bigger groups of foes. Or, well, you do, but that's only because the game tries to challenge you more as your skill increases. The individual enemies used are still the same, just with algorithmically-increased stats, and we don't even get the name and pallete-swap treatment JRPGs offer.

    While Ryder's options do open up as your level climbs, it's never enough to really communicate that sense of powering up. You're growing horizontally rather than vertically, and that's only after like level 40 or whatever when you finish your passive and main skill trees. The same goes for your gear, too; instead of getting lots of neat new toys, you're just getting higher numbers attached to the end of old weaponry for some reason. And if you don't manage to upgrade your gear (somehow), the game will get harder because you've leveled up and automatically powered up all your enemies.

    Which leads to the next issue with this system: the difficulty curve becomes wholly unstable. Balance is a nightmare, borderline impossible, and it's because it's impossible to correct for player decisions. At various points in the game you might unlock some skill combos that suddenly become really devastating for your level, letting you obliterate everything with ease until you gain a few more levels and enemies catch up with you. Or if you make less effective decisions with your level-ups and miss crucial gear pick-ups, you'll find yourself becoming relatively weaker every time you gain levels.

    As a result, I never feel excited when I get the Level Up ding. I actually feel a little bit of dread, because now I have to hope my power-up decisions roughly equate to the numbers all the enemies are magically getting added to them.

    With respect to the second item, I get that these open-world games don't want to gate content. Letting players go anywhere whenever is the whole schtick. I think that's bad for these games, personally. Andromeda's five planets could each have varying expected levels with different minimums (stuff around where you first get there) and maximums (final quests to secure a colony and the extras that unlock after). Want to give players a bit more choice? Well, there could be two sets of "paired" planets that have the same level ranges, so you can tackle them in either order or go back and forth between them (with Eos remaining as the unpaired planet that you tackle first). Some overlap in the level ranges (Eos high-end content being a bit harder than the initial content in the next two planets) cement this. Bam, player choice and level matters. Enemies no longer scale with you, so instead you choose the challenges you can take on at your current level of play.

    If hard limits sound unappealing to you, this can always be implemented with soft limits. Consider something like Dark Souls; while there's expected levels for those games (and yes, they're linear, but pretend they're not), you can complete any of those games while remaining at very low levels. It just gets harder. This is a perfect solution for action-RPGs like Andromeda. It's more dangerous if you go to the high-level areas too early, but you can do it, and if you're enough of a badass then you'll win.

    This is important because it reinforces the whole mantra of these kinds of games: your choices matter. If the open world lets me go wherever I want whenever I want, and the enemies get politely tailored to my level, then it doesn't matter where I go. I can go anywhere, but why do I care where I go if it's almost literally the same thing everywhere?

    Apart from that, I do see the occasional missed opportunity - I'd have wanted another alien race or two, and I wish the planets felt a lot more alien. Also I hate the coloring book galaxy views; I understand why almost every space game does this, but please give me an option to turn off all the excessive and artificial colored dust clouds and other nonsense. Space should feel vast and dark, and every time I see rainbow clouds everywhere I just feel taken out of space. The jungle planet is also too cramped, resulting in essentially an endless series of encounters as you traverse it.

    These complaints are either lesser than those I had for the previous games, or they're exactly the same as the previous games. Overall this remains by a wide margin my favorite Mass Effect. This is largely because it gets the moment-to-moment gameplay the most "right" of anything in the series, and that feature is drastically underrated in games nowadays. Combat is more fun, driving the Nomad is more fun, mining materials is more fun, selecting dialogue options is much more fun (paragon-renegade style systems need to die in fires forevermore), flying your ship around is... well, at least it's not anti-fun like in earlier titles, so that's an improvement. Side quests are almost universally the most well-written in the series (with the huge caveat that well-written side quests is not something ever associated with Mass Effect), and in particular they feel like they matter, narratively-speaking, with what's going on in the world and on the planets.

    Enemy factions are on par with the rest of the series, which is shorthand for "still bad." The outlaws are as facepalm-inducing as Cerberus and, like that organization, also show up far too often in far too large of numbers. The Kett are as boring as the Collectors, with the Archon being as empty as Harbinger. The Remnant are slightly more interesting than the Geth since the latter is a story told far too many times already. They're also a lot more fun to fight with their greater variety of techniques and counter-measures, so that's a plus.

    So yeah, I'm still pretty clueless why this game's reception is below the previous titles. It's so obviously superior to them in nearly every way, bugs and numeric quibbles from releasing a bit too early aside.


    (also, everything's dying real quick-like in MP now, so fast I'm having trouble keeping my score up because everyone's stealing all my kills; I think it's time to retire Bronze for all but the lowest-level characters)

    I would really really like to see better player-power progression in RPGs. It's pretty bad that it's gotten so rare.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Personally I don't think max fitness is that important on a Human Engy.

    And most of the unique fitness upgrades buff tech constructs which is pointless if you aren't gonna put points into turret to begin with.

    Krogan, sure as she has access to rage, but human. Eh.

    It is and it isn't. The issue is less that you really want any specific buffs but that you don't want to die if anything looks at you funny. Without fitness you will probably be unable to dodge to cover at higher difficulties. Since using the cryo beam exposes you you will almost certainly die if you attempt to ever use it.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • TerribleMisathropeTerribleMisathrope 23rd Degree Intiate At The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    I've seen some distressing news on a couple different sites now. Claims that Bioware Montreal has cut the MEA team and gone into "Support Mode" and moved a lot of their key talent to other projects, such as Battlefront II, and the as-of-yet unannounced new IP project from Bioware.

    There isn't a lot of info to be had, but it sounds as though they're basically just going to pump out occasional multiplayer patches with a skeleton crew and they're putting the entire Mass Effect franchise on ice for now.

    Sources:

    http://www.pcgamer.com/report-mass-effect-on-hiatus-bioware-montreal-transitioning-to-a-support-studio/
    https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/10/15616726/bioware-montreal-restructuring-mass-effect-on-hold
    http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285
    Reading those carefully, I find that Kotaku is the only primary source of the story, and from anonymous sources that have not been independently verified by anyone at this point.

    That said, the general consensus is that this story is probably not far off the mark, but not really anything unexpected or newsworthy; just click-bait hyperbole imo, tryin' to get reads off someone else's failings. EA, pretty much already told everyone this was happening and this is in line with what they normally do around this time after release anyway.
    The Sauce wrote: »
    ...So yeah, I'm still pretty clueless why this game's reception is below the previous titles. It's so obviously superior to them in nearly every way, bugs and numeric quibbles from releasing a bit too early aside.


    (also, everything's dying real quick-like in MP now, so fast I'm having trouble keeping my score up because everyone's stealing all my kills; I think it's time to retire Bronze for all but the lowest-level characters)
    Me too. ME3 was more fucked initially IMO and there was the class-action lawsuit over SP ... so ME:A is looking FANTASTIC by comparison.

    ME3's second week sales dropped the highest of any AAA interactive media in GAME and Gamestop history until Colonial Marines was a thing, so ME3 was not the shining amazingness everyone keeps re-imagining that it was (I still love the game btw, but holding ME:A up as worse than ME3 is outrageous and hilarious).

    TerribleMisathrope on
    Mostly Broken

    try this
  • htmhtm Registered User regular
    The Sauce wrote: »
    3. Level scaling. This has bothered me in pretty much every single Bioware and Bethesda RPG, and I don't get why this is so ubiquitous and accepted. The below is spoilered for being a general rant (not actually a game spoiler). Note that this has bothered me in all the other ME games too, so it's not specific to Andromeda.

    DA:I didn't have level scaling and I thought it was worse for the lack of it. It took the challenge out of revisiting zones you skipped or didn't finish. In games where much of the content is optional/revisitable, lack of level scaling eliminates any possible gameplay challenge when you go back to the places you've already been. Without scaling, you'd be one-shotting Kett on Eos with your Predator III once you hit 40.

    I agree with you that ME:A's "horizontal" progression makes dinging new levels pretty meh, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you can only access three active abilities. Progression is about 30 levels of interesting choices and then... it becomes all about the passives, which is, as you say, kind of boring. If you could use four or five active abilities, leveling and the skill system would be a lot more interesting.

    I don't think I agree with you about being constantly presented with more challenging enemies as you progress in levels. Why would the Kett deploy super-mooks on one planet and not the other? It would seem really artificial if there were a whole bunch of Kett a few planets away who could have rofl-stomped Ryder when she was level 9 if only they could have been bothered to make the trip to Eos. And even with scaling, enemies do die faster as Ryder horizontally progresses. Skill gains noticeably improve Ryder's killing power without making her too powerful. Mooks die a bit more quickly when Ryder sets them on fire before shooting them to death vs. just shooting them to death, which is as it should be. Mooks shouldn't ever die in one shot, though, which is what happens to them in DA:I if you go back to the Hinterlands after reaching a high level.

    All that being said, I think the larger point is that no BW game has ever gotten player power progression right. Like... not ever. I can't think of any BW title going back all the way to their 2D days in which by the late middle game (at the latest), the player character wasn't a near invincible engine of slaughter. So they're either incompetent at designing progression power curves or else they design their games that way on purpose.

  • TerribleMisathropeTerribleMisathrope 23rd Degree Intiate At The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered User regular
    edited May 2017
    htm wrote: »
    The Sauce wrote: »
    3. Level scaling. This has bothered me in pretty much every single Bioware and Bethesda RPG, and I don't get why this is so ubiquitous and accepted. The below is spoilered for being a general rant (not actually a game spoiler). Note that this has bothered me in all the other ME games too, so it's not specific to Andromeda.

    DA:I didn't have level scaling and I thought it was worse for the lack of it. It took the challenge out of revisiting zones you skipped or didn't finish. In games where much of the content is optional/revisitable, lack of level scaling eliminates any possible gameplay challenge when you go back to the places you've already been. Without scaling, you'd be one-shotting Kett on Eos with your Predator III once you hit 40.

    I agree with you that ME:A's "horizontal" progression makes dinging new levels pretty meh, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you can only access three active abilities. Progression is about 30 levels of interesting choices and then... it becomes all about the passives, which is, as you say, kind of boring. If you could use four or five active abilities, leveling and the skill system would be a lot more interesting.

    I don't think I agree with you about being constantly presented with more challenging enemies as you progress in levels. Why would the Kett deploy super-mooks on one planet and not the other? It would seem really artificial if there were a whole bunch of Kett a few planets away who could have rofl-stomped Ryder when she was level 9 if only they could have been bothered to make the trip to Eos. And even with scaling, enemies do die faster as Ryder horizontally progresses. Skill gains noticeably improve Ryder's killing power without making her too powerful. Mooks die a bit more quickly when Ryder sets them on fire before shooting them to death vs. just shooting them to death, which is as it should be. Mooks shouldn't ever die in one shot, though, which is what happens to them in DA:I if you go back to the Hinterlands after reaching a high level.

    All that being said, I think the larger point is that no BW game has ever gotten player power progression right. Like... not ever. I can't think of any BW title going back all the way to their 2D days in which by the late middle game (at the latest), the player character wasn't a near invincible engine of slaughter. So they're either incompetent at designing progression power curves or else they design their games that way on purpose.
    It's definitely, definitely on purpose and would seem to come DIRECTLY from their early history with modelling D&D tabletop rules systems for Baldur's Gate, etc. which have the exact same progression problems in that era and to the present and which they continue to pretty much model their RPG components after.

    The fact is that most players want and expect to be power-gaming & OP after a certain amount of serious XP grind. RPG games where this is not the case have pretty much died off even in the tabletop space, imo, as all tabletop RPGs seem to be very obviously catering to power-gamers as a strategy to sell.

    TerribleMisathrope on
    Mostly Broken

    try this
  • dporowskidporowski Registered User regular
    I work for a living. I want my few hours of hilarious "god of all I survey" vaporising mooks into biotic pulp, dammit. I'm going to have "effort" and "work" in the morning/on Monday, right now I want explosions.

  • SorceSorce Not ThereRegistered User regular
    Running around in Narrative allows me to walk up to a mook and one-shot them in the face with a Talon and they explode. It's a nice change of pace after beating the game on Insanity.

    sig.gif
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Personally I don't think max fitness is that important on a Human Engy.

    And most of the unique fitness upgrades buff tech constructs which is pointless if you aren't gonna put points into turret to begin with.

    Krogan, sure as she has access to rage, but human. Eh.

    It is and it isn't. The issue is less that you really want any specific buffs but that you don't want to die if anything looks at you funny. Without fitness you will probably be unable to dodge to cover at higher difficulties. Since using the cryo beam exposes you you will almost certainly die if you attempt to ever use it.

    Well. I'm kind of used to that from ME3. There fitness only really mattered for a few classes on Gold and survivability was more about abusing the shield gate.

    Also I believe you can still get cover bonuses while using cyro beam as long as you walk against cover while doing it and I believe that grants a natural DR bonus.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Personally I don't think max fitness is that important on a Human Engy.

    And most of the unique fitness upgrades buff tech constructs which is pointless if you aren't gonna put points into turret to begin with.

    Krogan, sure as she has access to rage, but human. Eh.

    It is and it isn't. The issue is less that you really want any specific buffs but that you don't want to die if anything looks at you funny. Without fitness you will probably be unable to dodge to cover at higher difficulties. Since using the cryo beam exposes you you will almost certainly die if you attempt to ever use it.

    Well. I'm kind of used to that from ME3. There fitness only really mattered for a few classes on Gold and survivability was more about abusing the shield gate.

    Also I believe you can still get cover bonuses while using cyro beam as long as you walk against cover while doing it and I believe that grants a natural DR bonus.

    You get some cover which prevents things from hitting you. Cover DR you only get if you've got it from fitness.

    The shield gate effect is .1 seconds on gold and the standard regen time is like 2 seconds. Almost all attacks from enemies have delays under .5 seconds (which is the timing on effects which grant shield regen). The shield gate effect will not save you if you're behind cover and "shooting" like using the cryo beam.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    But even then. Human Engy only gets health shield bonuses on rank 2 and 5.

    And the rank 5 bonus is only +20/+20 which imo isn't a significant for the investment it requires.

    So I'd only invest up to rank 3 personally.

    That said I guess tech sabotage its useful for tanking with the 35% damage debuff but honestly eh.

    That said I generally favor aggression over defense as I figure the best way to avoid damage is just to kill stuff as quickly as possible.

    Dragkonias on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    What aggression? You've got cryo beam, a turret, and overload. Your only aggression is combo's and support. You need to be alive in order to do that

    wbBv3fj.png
  • SoundsPlushSoundsPlush yup, back. Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    ME3's second week sales dropped the highest of any AAA interactive media in GAME and Gamestop history until Colonial Marines was a thing, so ME3 was not the shining amazingness everyone keeps re-imagining that it was (I still love the game btw, but holding ME:A up as worse than ME3 is outrageous and hilarious).

    Uh, ME3 wasn't stocked at GAME, no? Google's not helping for the sales claim—all I'm seeing is reports ME3's launch month doubled ME2's launch month sales, though videogame sales figures are notoriously dodgy anyway.

    But supposing it's accurate, it's still a pretty weird argument. ME3 had worse sales drop off at two brick and mortar stores due to the ending controversy, therefore Andromeda is a better game? What?

    SoundsPlush on
    s7Imn5J.png
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Goumindong wrote: »
    What aggression? You've got cryo beam, a turret, and overload. Your only aggression is combo's and support. You need to be alive in order to do that

    Honestly. I don't find Cryo Beam to be that dangerous to use and never needed the added survivability of fitness ranks 5 and 6.

    As Cyro beam goes, you aren't going to be using it for shielded targets, so red health targets should be getting froze and armor targets are usually slow and easy to manuver around anyway. The most annoying enemy for Human Engy is honestly Berserkers just cause they can stun you and cancel Cyro Beam.

    Like whether or not you find those extra fitness ranks worth it comes down to your confidence in your ability to stay alive. So for me...yeah, wouldn't use more than 3 ranks.

    Dragkonias on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Ending spoilers regarding missable things
    OK so i just ran through the game... literally. I did zero quests but the main quest.

    Missable Quests: 3(?)

    A) All on the nexus. Most fairly inconsequential. Not sure about the sabotage quest as i did that one. They are "talking to the reporter" "some quest that dunn gives you" and "something about the protestors". The first of which you can fail when you complete Eos (i think its EOS)

    Ending Consequences: 2

    A) If you don't rescue the Asari Dunn dies
    B) If you don't meet(?) Morda you're unable to nominate her to be the council leader.


    Funny things: Sloan Kelly Shows up at the end regardless of whether or not you do anything for her.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Trajan45Trajan45 Registered User regular
    Just finished Dawn of War 3 and came back to ME:A to find what looks like an amazing patch. I'll jump in a bit tomorrow, but any good synergies now that more of the weapons are balanced? Seemed like I could count the weapons I used pre-patch on 1 hand.

    Origin ID\ Steam ID: Warder45
  • RaynagaRaynaga Registered User regular
    So I've read all the articles, and I still don't see where NO MORE MASS EFFECT is coming from. Don't studios always shuffle staff after a major release?

    And every article is essentially rewording the single article from Kotaku, followed by a comment section full of people who seem to derive sustenance from hate. So one post from Kotaku has made 30 more articles all echoing it.

  • Fleur de AlysFleur de Alys Biohacker Registered User regular
    Just beat the final mission.
    BOY THAT SURE WAS A GOOD TIME TO GO ON A RANT ABOUT PLAYER POWER

    Right before becoming the twin at level 1 with a chump pistol

    Well played, Andromeda

    Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
  • dporowskidporowski Registered User regular
    Raynaga wrote: »
    So I've read all the articles, and I still don't see where NO MORE MASS EFFECT is coming from. Don't studios always shuffle staff after a major release?

    And every article is essentially rewording the single article from Kotaku, followed by a comment section full of people who seem to derive sustenance from hate. So one post from Kotaku has made 30 more articles all echoing it.

    Gaming today, in a single sentence.

This discussion has been closed.