Bioware General (Mass Effect/Dragon Age/Other)

[SciFlyBoy]

So I found that clip I made of the NPCs I found on Elaaden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmFM3FcXDNQ

[Alienmorph]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qimpywLbWCU

[Someone With Mass]

Because delays and things taking longer than a developer initially thought never happens. At all.

That announcement also happened before the studio was given a lesser role and Mass Effect was put on ice. Is it sad that they haven't delivered on time? Yes, it is, but at least I'm being realistic about the whole thing. Even when I head the announcement, I thought that two months to change a major portion of the game in high detail was a bit too optimistic.

[UNiT]

Every single video he made about Andromeda is very negative. You can tell he has an axe to grind.

[Alienmorph]

Yeah, in this case I quite agree. He even says that delays are understandable, and then just keeps going because of the lack of media coverage. Because usually all big AAA companies talk on and on about a patch's delay.

I think his overall conclusions about BW are not too far off the truth, but it's pretty laughable if the thing that made him come to realization is a delay on a patch.

Still, posted that video, just for completeness sake.

[TheodoricFriede]

Also its still 2 days before their incredibly optimistic deadline so...

[SciFlyBoy]

Finally finished the game. At least I finished the main story, I guess there are things that still pop up afterwards. I liked it, very fun.

[SciFlyBoy]

Alright, finally read through the spoiler thread. @Theo, did you romance Vetra? What did you think? You happy you got your turian?

[TheodoricFriede]

Alright, finally read through the spoiler thread. @Theo, did you romance Vetra? What did you think? You happy you got your turian?

Have you sen my avatar's lately?

OF COURSE I romanced Vetra, and yes, i was satisfied, but annoyed they didn't render her nude.

[SciFlyBoy]

Have you sen my avatar's lately?

OF COURSE I romanced Vetra, and yes, i was satisfied, but annoyed they didn't render her nude.

Saw the post about the non-nude renders. But I wanted to get to the end to see what you'd say. Was it like the Tali romance where the screen goes to black or is it a full scene, just no bare naked plates.

[TTTX]

Saw the post about the non-nude renders. But I wanted to get to the end to see what you'd say. Was it like the Tali romance where the screen goes to black or is it a full scene, just no bare naked plates.

it's like Tali's and Garrus romance it's fade to black.

[SciFlyBoy]

it's like Tali's and Garrus romance it's fade to black.

Uh, that sucks. PeeBee was bouncing around all over the place.

[Vol]

Saturday's EA's conference. I'd wager a pretty penny that's when they drop the quarian ark DLC reveal.

And Theo might win a pretty penny off me from our bet.

[Alienmorph]

I dunno... BW has its new IP, and most of the EA's conference will be spent on their sport stuff and on Battlefront2. And I'm not so sure they'll want to raise too much attention around a series they just put "on hold".

They might confirm there's still more content coming for ME:A, but it's gonna be a cliffnote to an whole bunch of other things, in the best case.

[TheodoricFriede]

By the way they made Jaal bisexual.
Im conflicted, because while i think that all the romance options should be bisexual regardless, the double standard frustrates me.

Could you even imagine the uproar if they made Suvi bisexual?

[Dragaros]

http://blog.bioware.com/2017/06/06/mass ... -08-notes/

[[ Single player

Ryder’s appearance can now be changed onboard the Tempest
Expanded the range of options available in the character creator
Jaal can now be romanced by Scott Ryder
Dialogue for Hainly Abrams was adjusted to change the flow of personal information she discusses with Ryder.
Fixed issue with Nomad upgrades Shield Crafting quest
Nexus level and cryo pod points are retroactively granted
Vendors now carry weapon mods for Level 60-71 players
Vendors now sell weapon augmentations for automatic fire, burst fire, and single-shot fire
Improved clarity of descriptions for augmentations
Plasma Charge system now works properly for shotguns
Beam Emitter augmentation now causes guns to fire a constant beam with scaling damage based on the weapon’s damage per second
[PC] Added experimental support for Dolby Vision™ technology

Multiplayer

Stealth Grid challenge now increments properly
Fiend no longer sprints when within 10 meters of target, and will decelerate to base speed
Enabled movement correction during Fiend attacks to reduce incidence of players seeing Fiends attacking in the wrong direction
Improved movement prediction for some enemies in tight spaces to reduce appearance of teleportation
Fixed issue that prevented melee attacks if the revive icon was near center screen
Fixed issue where ammo pick-up audio incorrectly played
Fixed issue where Backlash could malfunction while moving
Using Stealth and Recon Visor together no longer increases duration of invisibility for Turian Agent
Fixed issue where weight reduction modifications wouldn’t reduce weight
The Revive Pack Transmitter now displays the revive radius in the loadout screen
Equipping the Cobra RPG now interrupts reloading
Player turns to Adhi when getting synced to avoid teleportation issue
Fixed issue where enemies would occasionally enter T-pose when hit
Improved visual and audio cues for player ready status in Multiplayer lobbies
Added “Lights” option to customization options ]]

[Alienmorph]

So... the two months have expired, and they met most of the promised goals. So this is likely it in terms of big fixes for the game, I presume... ? Is it known if there's more coming, other than the usual straight up technical fixes?

As for Jaal being now bi, all I have to say is good for who wanted some more romanceable aliens, I totally understand that.

[TheodoricFriede]

Pretty sure this is it.

[Alienmorph]

That's what I'm thinking too. Stuff like the animations can only be polished so much without having to redo core portions of the game from the ground up, and they don't have the time, resources and motivation to do something that extensive. The improvement they did manage to pull through are quite significative tho, so it's not too bad all considered.

[TheodoricFriede]

And Theo might win a pretty penny off me from our bet.

We'll see.

I think it will be a draw personally.

[Vol]

Bioware makes it very difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt when the best use of their time in the last two months, vis-a-vis new content, is this.

Instead of, say, more asari faces. Or Vetra's proper sex scene.

At least they're fixing other stuff. Like that Cobra issue. It was a nightmare to pull it out in a heated fight.

[TheodoricFriede]

By the way, Bioware can literally never stand on their high horse of "We design characters to be romance options during their creation process" ever again.

Because there was literally NOTHING to indicate that Jaal might be bisexual (and in fact he even said things to the contrary), and people complained hard enough that they changed his sexual orientation.

I dont necessarily mind that they did it, but I hope people will continue to remind them about this. They literally have no excuse next time people complain.

(Of course all this could stop being a problem if they just MADE EVERYONE BI TO BEGIN WITH, but why take the path of least resistance when you can stand on your manufactured moral high-ground.)

[Someone With Mass]

Bioware makes it very difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt when the best use of their time in the last two months, vis-a-vis new content, is this.

Instead of, say, more asari faces. Or Vetra's proper sex scene.

At least they're fixing other stuff. Like that Cobra issue. It was a nightmare to pull it out in a heated fight.

I just find it so odd that the asari face thing was a problem to begin with when the first Mass Effect, a game that's soon a decade old, managed to have more facial variety.

[SciFlyBoy]

Could you even imagine the uproar if they made Suvi bisexual?

Wait, I tried to romance her as maleRyder. Is she a romance option?

[TTTX]

Wait, I tried to romance her as maleRyder. Is she a romance option?

yes, but only for female Ryder.

[SciFlyBoy]

Wait, I tried to romance her as maleRyder. Is she a romance option?

yes, but only for female Ryder.

I know my next LI route. Gil was cool, if I play a character into dudes, he'd be it.

[Dragaros]

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/com ... ss_effect/

”The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development"

"Disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda: What Happened?"

[Riptide]

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/6fu58l/mea_spoilers_the_story_behind_mass_effect/

”The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development"

"Disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda: What Happened?"

Well... that puts it all into perspective.

[TheodoricFriede]

Makes sense. Mistakes were made.

Still my favorite Bioware game. Much like Dragon Age 2, it has a certain heart that the others dont.

Hope they get a chance at making a sequel, or at least a really sweet expansion.

[SciFlyBoy]

I really enjoyed it, too. I'm thinking about how different I'm going to play my 2nd play through, different weapons to use, clean up achievements. Going to play through some other games I've got lined up to give enough time for DLC and updates to come out.

I didn't fire a single non Initiative weapon. It was overwhelming how many there were between AI, helius and remnant. And since I could craft my own weapon with my own preferences I didn't see much reason to grab some other weapon. What was your weapon of choice for the classes you used? At least in SP.

[Someone With Mass]

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/6fu58l/mea_spoilers_the_story_behind_mass_effect/

”The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development"

"Disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda: What Happened?"

"Over the past few years, one of BioWare’s biggest obstacles has also become one of EA’s favorite buzzwords: Frostbite"

I knew it. That engine is such an overrated piece of shit. Oh, it creates photo-realistic items for the game, but it sure as fuck can't do anything else that makes it stand out other than being resource and time demanding.

[TheodoricFriede]

"Over the past few years, one of BioWare’s biggest obstacles has also become one of EA’s favorite buzzwords: Frostbite"

I knew it. That engine is such an overrated piece of shit. Oh, it creates photo-realistic items for the game, but it sure as fuck can't do anything else that makes it stand out other than being resource and time demanding.

It really does seem like, frostbite, more than anything, is the issue.

Makes you wonder if they are even given a choice or not. I imagine the answer is no.

[Someone With Mass]

It really does seem like, frostbite, more than anything, is the issue.

Makes you wonder if they are even given a choice or not. I imagine the answer is no.

Considering that pretty much every other EA game is running on it too, I wouldn't be surprised if it's mandatory or at least heavily encouraged.

[Alienmorph]

To play devil's advocate for a second... BW had pretty much zero knowledge of UnEngine as well when they made ME1. And while it does show, that game still didn't have some of the issues of Andromeda. I don't doubt Frostbite gave them a major headscratch or two, but I don't think it's fairly accurate to just go "OMG, it all makes sense now, it's all Frostbite's fault!" either.

[TheodoricFriede]

Counterpoint:

Unreal was a known entity even at the time. It was quickly becoming the industry standard, and was a very versatile engine.

Frostbite has proven itself to only be effective as a first person shooter machine. Its EA proprietary, and even Dice (the creators of the engine) seems to have issues getting it to run. The article makes note of the fact that Frostbite was giving them a lot of trouble, even during the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Its a terrible engine for anything other than vehicles and combat.

Were there other contributing factors? Probably. But frostbite was likely a significant problem.

Considering they were able to make a game as good as they were in 18 months of real development, I'd put my money on a lot of issues not having existed if they didnt have to use Frostbite.

[TheodoricFriede]

The good news, however, is that now that they at least understand how to use it a little bit, and they will have realistic a timeframe again, the DLC will probably be pretty sweet.

Its pretty obvious that we were dealing with lack of time, not incompetent developers.

[Someone With Mass]

To play devil's advocate for a second... BW had pretty much zero knowledge of UnEngine as well when they made ME1. And while it does show, that game still didn't have some of the issues of Andromeda. I don't doubt Frostbite gave them a major headscratch or two, but I don't think it's fairly accurate to just go "OMG, it all makes sense now, it's all Frostbite's fault!" either.

Oh, I'm not saying that everything wrong with Andromeda on a technical level is because of Frostbite, but rather it gave more problems than it solved.

They had little knowledge and experience with the Frostbite engine, which I'd imagine would introduce the need of educating the developers on its functions. BioWare also had a ton of sounds, environments, animations, models and other assets that worked pretty well with the Unreal engine and then they had to spend parts of what was already a pretty tight schedule, as well as manpower on reinventing the wheel.

Didn't help that their management consisted of shit-flinging monkeys from the sound of it.

[Riptide]

Learning Frostbite was a setback, but not the problem. The problem was they had weak leadership with extremely lofty goals that couldn't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to stand up and say "no, we shouldn't be trying to make No Man's Sky, that doesn't work for our IP and we should acknowledge the huge red flags before moving into production." Instead they adopted the attitude of "Figure it out later."

It's the exact same attitude I saw all the time in game design school, and 100% of the time it ended in failure. Rookie mistakes.

[Alienmorph]

Counterpoint:

Unreal was a known entity even at the time. It was quickly becoming the industry standard, and was a very versatile engine.

Frostbite has proven itself to only be effective as a first person shooter machine. Its EA proprietary, and even Dice (the creators of the engine) seems to have issues getting it to run. The article makes note of the fact that Frostbite was giving them a lot of trouble, even during the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Its a terrible engine for anything other than vehicles and combat.

Were there other contributing factors? Probably. But frostbite was likely a significant problem.

Considering they were able to make a game as good as they were in 18 months of real development, I'd put my money on a lot of issues not having existed if they didnt have to use Frostbite.

There's no doubt that UnEnginge if more flexible and dev-friendly than Frostibite (not that it takes much), but again... bigger studio, bigger budget, bigger everthing, and ME:A still feels alot amateur-ish in alot of places. Tho I will grant you that it could have been much much worse, and that they improved upon the first released version to a decent degree.

All I'm saying is I'm not buying into the whole "it's all this thing's fault!" much like I'v never fully bought the fact that the only problem with ME3 was the ending.

[TheodoricFriede]

"no, we shouldn't be trying to make No Man's Sky, that doesn't work for our IP and we should acknowledge the huge red flags before moving into production."

You do realize they came up with that idea before No Mans Sky, right? They make a point of addressing that in the article as well.

[Riptide]

"no, we shouldn't be trying to make No Man's Sky, that doesn't work for our IP and we should acknowledge the huge red flags before moving into production."

You do realize they came up with that idea before No Mans Sky, right? They make a point of addressing that in the article as well.

It doesn't matter, that's beside the point. I couldn't care less who they were trying to copy and who they weren't.

My point it, it was a bad idea in general to do procedurally generated worlds in a game that relies heavily on narrative, and to not reconcile the fact, which the article points out they never did. "Hey, guys, we have no idea how we're going to fit the narrative together with a randomized galaxy, and we should probably have that worked out in our design doc before we get started, or with a proof of concept or something, but lets commit anyway and hope it sorts itself out!"

You do game design, you know better than most how terrible of an idea that is. That's what I was really getting at. The problem wasn't the engine they were using nearly so much as it was the fact they couldn't pick a direction and stick with it. Which is the mistake that kills any project faster than anything else.

[Alienmorph]

The whole Open World + Crafting combo is annoyingly overrated and overused in general. ME:A is actually far from being the worst offender, but I'll take more corridoor shootouts over big empty but oh so pwetty landscapes every day, if that in return gives me better storytelling and character moments.

[Riptide]

storytelling and character moments.

This is why people buy Bioware games. I hope they remember that going forward.

[Someone With Mass]

The whole Open World + Crafting combo is annoyingly overrated and overused in general. ME:A is actually far from being the worst offender, but I'll take more corridoor shootouts over big empty but oh so pwetty landscapes every day, if that in return gives me better storytelling and character moments.

I think Far Cry and Assassin's Creed fills that niche more than enough. The one game that made me realize that the sandbox trend was awful for story-driven games was Metal Gear Solid 5. Mostly because there were such huge gaps between story moments that I'd often forget what was going on.

Not to mention that it kills any sense of urgency when you can just put the story aside no matter what it's about to do in order to tackle some simple side missions or go exploring for several hours. Fallout 4 taught me that one.

My son's been kidnapped? I'll get right on it! Right after I've built a house and grown some vegetables on this plot of land I discovered.

[Vol]

https://twitter.com/DiscoBabaloo/status ... 7908002816

Well I suppose that's that. Maybe they're having the art team work on _other_ faces.

[TheodoricFriede]

https://twitter.com/DiscoBabaloo/status/872879617908002816

Well I suppose that's that. Maybe they're having the art team work on _other_ faces.

Seriously, who cares?

I care about a lot of things, but I didnt even notice that the asari all looked alike until it was pointed out to me.

Its the asari. Frankly im happy LESS attention was given to them.

[Alienmorph]

Well I suppose that's that. Maybe they're having the art team work on _other_ faces.

Don't hold your breath.

[Raga]

https://twitter.com/DiscoBabaloo/status/872879617908002816

Well I suppose that's that. Maybe they're having the art team work on _other_ faces.

Seriously, who cares?

I care about a lot of things, but I didnt even notice that the asari all looked alike until it was pointed out to me.

Its the asari. Frankly im happy LESS attention was given to them.

Yea, same. If someone provided me with a magical "remove all asari from Mass Effect" button, I would push it without a moment's hesitation.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFiC0xHCgZ8

[Raga]

Not to mention that it kills any sense of urgency when you can just put the story aside no matter what it's about to do in order to tackle some simple side missions or go exploring for several hours. Fallout 4 taught me that one.

I think the logic here is that Bethesda's are kinda *the* "do whatever the hell you want in a big map" games and they know that. I think their logic would be "if you want the narrative to have urgency, then focus on the narrative. Everything levels with you so you don't have to grind and you can play after credits so all those side missions will still be there. If you want to piddlefart around then do so." And I don't really want them to put me on rails just to have narrative urgency. Narrative is nice and all, but unlike with Bioware that's really not the major reason I'm playing Bethesda games.