Mass Effect Andromeda officially dead...

[Fred_vdp]

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@sblantipodi wrote:

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

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This is the only game where I have a problem with it. As I said, Battlefield 1 runs much smoother at the highest setting, and that runs on the same engine.

Tessellation is only part of it, however. Even after lowering it, all other Frostbite 3 games runs much smoother for me.

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buy a modern GPU that is able to do tessellation before complaining, Andromeda was a modern game.

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@sblantipodi

I'm not complaining, just comparing my experiences with that of someone else.

And again, Mass Effect Andromeda is the only game where this is an issue for me. As I said, the issue doesn't occur at all in any other Frostbite 3 game. Are you saying that Star Wars Battlefront (2015) and Battlefield 1 (2016) are not modern games? Is it really worth buying a new GPU for an issue in a single game?

[Fred_vdp]

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@holger1405 wrote:

@Fred_vdp

Yea, that's why I highlighted NVIDIA hardware. I am sorry that you experienced so much issues too. 

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The performance issues were quite minor after lowering tessellation samples. I don't even see a difference going from 64 to 4. My main issue with it is that they didn't include it in the game's settings and that you have to go to the AMD settings to change it.

The biggest issue for me is still the sprint bug (where releasing shift in 'hold mode' doesn't stop the character sprinting), but I see so few reports of it that I'm not sure everyone is experiencing it.

[DoctorMcBatman]

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@SycrJohnny wrote:I Agree with most of what you say... Except of the races and amount of planets thing...

I'm getting technical here, but, this just a cluster not a whole galaxy as the other ME had...
I theory, is rather difficult that you have habitable planets in a cluster, not to mention lifeforms... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life)
So I think that having 1 species and 5 planets is not that bad, we could have some more planets, but not too much...

The problem was the lore behind that race... I mean, I finished SP story twice, and the Angaran lore is really poor... I mean, we have more MW species new lore that the local one... Then there is the first contact situation... like it was the first time we encountered the Angaras... but later on we find that they were already in most of the planets that the Nexus races already know, like Kadara, Eladeen... And the Fauna was terrible, there were all the same animal species in all the planets... Like the animals could do space travel...
That is definitively poor writing... too much inconsistencies.

I would love to have more games on the ME:A series to explore the rest of Andromeda... Find new species... New planets, and maybe know the Kett origin and more (trying to avoid spoilers.)

But, sadly, EA told us that we can get that, so...

Another interesting link on extraterrestrial lifeforms https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/01/25/what-are-the-odds-that-aliens-exist (edit)

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Fair rebuttal. BUT, what about the fact that we had turians, humans, krogan, quarians, batarians, and asari in ME 1-3? So I think we're already past the point of believable habitability. Even if it was scientifically unrealistic, it made the world seem a lot more interesting.

Fair point again that it's a cluster and not the whole galaxy. My comments in that regard were mostly aimed toward the fact that ME:A originally was supposed to have a procedural (not sure if that's the right word?) universe like Star Citizen, THEN apparently they decided to do 30 planets, THEN when they couldn't get that right, so it was cut to 5. I'm sure the actual process was a lot more complicated, but the game did not feel like the sprawling space adventure it was originally meant to be.

And of those 5 planets, two were hot deserts, one was a cold desert. Not much interesting going on scenery wise. Havarl was barely a planet.

[holger1405]

@Fred_vdp

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

The performance issues were quite minor after lowering tessellation samples. I don't even see a difference going from 64 to 4. My main issue with it is that they didn't include it in the game's settings and that you have to go to the AMD settings to change it.

The biggest issue for me is still the sprint bug (where releasing shift in 'hold mode' doesn't stop the character sprinting), but I see so few reports of it that I'm not sure everyone is experiencing it.

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It's not a PC game if you don't have to tweak the driver.

But seriously, I see what you mean.

As for the "sprint bug", I am still not sure that this was not a design choice. You stop sprinting if you lift "W" for a moment. Did Bioware acknowledged it as a bug?

[EgoMania]

When the game released it had issues. It still has some of them, particularly in the area of audio and lighting.

The big improvements that were made with some of the patches prove that the game had issues on release. Now I didn't encounter too many of the bugs that other described but let's be honest, BW is notorious for such issues. I remember DA:O had memory leak issues, even though not everybody was affected. BW denied these issues existed and years later suddenly there was a patch with the fix in it. So it did exist.

I don't care what people say, when the game released the game had issues and the patches were sorely needed. Maybe some people didn't care much about the horrendous facial expressions but it is what sunk this game on release. The media had a hayday with it.

But the problem here is not that BW maybe fell flat on their face a bit with this game release, but the simple fact now that they aren't going to be supporting this game any further. They just dropped it like a bomb, cleaned up the mess a bit and left.

It's hardly a sign of commitment to the franchise and the fans thereof.

Of course Bioware's the biggest victim of their own successes in the past. Clearly they don't want fans. They want people just to buy some stuff on impulse and then be quiet. They don't want a solid fanbase and have a continuous interaction with them. I guess they're not that kind of company and it's why I also switched to spending the bare minimum on them. I think they don't understand that people can really be into things and how it affects them when you basically show them the door. I totally get that some people feel like they've been shoved aside as fans. They invested into these games financially and emotionally and then this happens.

Clearly a one way street type of relationship going on here. They never did know how to handle criticism though. It's always been an issue for some reason and it never changed. Something odd in their business culture somehow I reckon. Reality is though that unless something major changes there, we're likely looking at the end of an era when it comes to BW. They seem ready to go for some new ground and are perfectly happy to throw the fans that got them where they are under the bus.

It does all sound a bit heavy, but really, isn't that where it's at? I get that people overreacted, but isn't this BW overreacting in return? And who pays the price for that?

[k9seals]

There goes my hope of playing an Elcor or a Jelly in pvp...

[SycrJohnny]

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@DoctorMcBatman wrote:

Fair rebuttal. BUT, what about the fact that we had turians, humans, krogan, quarians, batarians, and asari in ME 1-3? So I think we're already past the point of believable habitability. Even if it was scientifically unrealistic, it made the world seem a lot more interesting.

Fair point again that it's a cluster and not the whole galaxy. My comments in that regard were mostly aimed toward the fact that ME:A originally was supposed to have a procedural (not sure if that's the right word?) universe like Star Citizen, THEN apparently they decided to do 30 planets, THEN when they couldn't get that right, so it was cut to 5. I'm sure the actual process was a lot more complicated, but the game did not feel like the sprawling space adventure it was originally meant to be.

And of those 5 planets, two were hot deserts, one was a cold desert. Not much interesting going on scenery wise. Havarl was barely a planet.

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Again, ME 1-3 was a whole galaxy... a galaxy is made of thousands of clusters, and those have hundreds or thousand of stars with more planets...

In that probability, yes, ME 1-3 had a lot more probability of having multiple life forms that ME:A had with only one cluster.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#Contents)

Now, there is no information of a "Heleus cluster" in the Andromeda Galaxy, and we know that Andromeda is way bigger that the Milky Way... But we can generally assume that a cluster is smaller than a whole galaxy.

Remember that in ME, the only way to travel between clusters was using the Mass Effect Relays, which created way faster travel paths that warp speed could (this is all in the ME Lore).

Now, to get facts Straight... ME 1-3 had a lot more species than that... you are forgetting Elcors, Hanar, Drell, Rachni, Volus, Yahg, Batarians, Vorcha and Raloi, for mentioning the "present races"... This does not surprise me considering the size of the world of ME...

Regarding the planets...

Spoiler

Originally, there were 7 worlds advertised. Of those planets 1 was destroyed by the scourge and ends up being something like and asteroid field, which you explore as part of the main history ark (h047c). Other planet was habitat 7, wich you partially explore as the game prologue, and kills your father, ending with the inhospitable status. With that we left with 5 habitable planets, which you explore.
Later there are other planets that you partially expore, like Aya, the volcanic world of peebee loyalty mission (don't remember the name), Meridian (which the final mission artificial planet).

 I think that Havarl could be bigger, a lot bigger, as well as Aya could have something else to explore, like noveria had in ME1.

The Nexus was really poor IMHO... They could be a lot more imaginative on the Areas, some more substation places... there were 3 regions, and 2 more that where from the Hyperion...

Spoiler

When you recover the Salarian and Asari Arks there were a possibility of adding new further areas to the nexus, but they didn't take that chance.

I mean... there is a lot of missed opportunities to expand the game if you want to be thorough, but I think that the game itself has enough to explore anyway... But the history cohession between the places and the stories within... that is what should have been polished for me... If the narrative was good, I think that the amount of worlds would be really enough.

[Fred_vdp]

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@holger1405 wrote:

As for the "sprint bug", I am still not sure that this was not a design choice. You stop sprinting if you lift "W" for a moment. Did Bioware acknowledged it as a bug?

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I mentioned it to the lead designer on twitter and he said something along the lines of "crap, we'll look into it" (paraphrasing). I mentioned it again several patches later and he had completely forgotten about it.

Both sprint modes do indeed assume W is not pressed, but that's even weirder in 'toggle mode'. The character keeps sprinting until you first release W, then press shift again. Both sprint modes are so unintuitive and unprecedented that I think it's more likely to be a bug than just a bad design choice.

[holger1405]

@Fred_vdp

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

I mentioned it to the lead designer on twitter and he said something along the lines of "crap, we'll look into it" (paraphrasing). I mentioned it again several patches later and he had completely forgotten about it.

Both sprint modes do indeed assume W is not pressed, but that's even weirder in 'toggle mode'. The character keeps sprinting until you first release W, then press shift again. Both sprint modes are so unintuitive and unprecedented that I think it's more likely to be a bug than just a bad design choice.

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You're probably right then. I never used the "toggle mode" so I didn't noticed this behaviour.

[ivrognard]

And that is why i prefer the longer development cycles for videogames. I would rather see a game released with a few, minor bugs, at a later date, than a really buggy product that is launched on time. 

Sure, they tried to patch most of the bugs, but in the end Bioware Montreal went under and MEA was left with a few nasty bugs (not gamebreaking, but still annoying). I hope that EA will reconsider and let the franchise continue its life. And that they will do better next time. The fetch quests and kill quests aside, it wasn't such a bad game as a lot of people told me and definitely is quite playable after all the patches. But again, i tend to be more forgiving than many when it comes to devs working under a big company, as i know that they don't have the power of decision.