I'm still playing it dude but away again this weekend. Just wanna get some proper hours in on this. Working some 12 hour shifts next week overnight so I think I'll get a good 16 hours in then.

Childintime wrote:

Nice, lemme know how it goes. Doesn't seem to be a lot of us playing it, unfortunately, but maybe that's to be expected with all the games out at the moment.

It is a tough schedule at the moment, especially with the bad press. They'd of been better holding off a little IMO but the 15 or so hours I've played I've really enjoyed. Filled my team now and scanned all the planets I can. Trying to get some side missions out of the way before continuing mainlines. Wish I could've brought it with me this weekend.

This game is getting traded in today. It totally trash

legaldinho wrote:

This game is getting traded in today. It totally trash

Not even the MP?

regmcfly wrote:

legaldinho wrote:

This game is getting traded in today. It totally trash

C'est certainement une grande volte face de l'homme gonz

I rage quit yesterday and rage deleted the game. Then i flailed about looking for the cd box while shouting "this game is fucking getting sold tlfirst thing tomorrow"

35 yrs old lads

regmcfly wrote:

legaldinho wrote:

This game is getting traded in today. It totally trash

l'homme gonz

"Your man gonz" doesn't really translate like that into French. "Ce mec gonz" or summat. That said, l'homme gonz makes me sound like some kind of rare grotto dwelling old human race, or some kind of freak. "L'homme cromagnon" or "l'homme des bois" is definitely correct.

legaldinho wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

legaldinho wrote:

This game is getting traded in today. It totally trash

l'homme gonz

"Your man gonz" doesn't really translate like that into French. "Ce mec gonz" or summat. That said, l'homme gonz makes me sound like some kind of rare grotto dwelling old human race, or some kind of freak. "L'homme cromagnon" or "l'homme des bois" is definitely correct.

I like the latter

So where to start with this game? I guess I will give some quick single player impressions. The headline here is that I simply cannot be fucked to tread through it. If I could, I'm sure I would arrive to a similar view to Cinty's, which I couldn't hope to express as eloquently. But I will quickly say this: I've had the game in hand for over a week, and every time I tried to play the single player I just could not be bothered. I had played the xbox one access demo all the way up to its cut off in Eos (ie before things get interesting). I tried to tread through the opening on ps4 to catch up, and in the end I just could not. I knew I could not hope to grind through the research, the rng rewards, the menus, and the conversation with crappy animations and stupid lines... and everywhere I looked things were offputing. I can listen to a podcast and go through planet scanning, I thought. I scan an anomaly, get to a ship, a rock, a laughably drawn "eezo glimmer" thing in space (massive lols there), and the SUPER IMPRESSIVE FIRST PERSON TRAVELLING CUT SCENE takes you there and the animation glitches and skips right before the end point. Going into the "galaxy map" in the first place always involves a super quick frame or two of what I can only describe as weird screen spaz.

So I just couldn't be fucked. I knew I couldn't be fucked well in advance of release. The signs were there. But, I had a preorder at amazon with a tenner off. I think I ended up paying 32 quid for this in the end as they reduced the price further at launch. I did not want to cancel the preorder, and there is a very simple, very compelling, and utterly idiotic reason why: the reason why the single player was likely to disappoint was also the reason why there was every chance that the multiplayer would be awesome. This game is made by the studio who made Me3 multiplayer. That mp element in ME3 had also postively influenced the combat and movement mechanic in ME3 - the best thing about that game's campaign other than a few notes of the story (Tuchanka and the Geth / Rannoch quests and the story elements it brought out). But mainly this was great news for ME3 Coop, which in the end was the best thing about that game. They had a sleeper hit and people on PC are still playing it today. 

At this point it becomes necessary to describe ME3 Coop for the unititiated / those who didn't stick with it after launch.


Mass Effect 3 coop game was a horde mode which yielded XP for your chosen character, and credits which could be spent on packs which yielded RNG cards. These cards could give you new characters, more XP and customisation options for previously unlocked characters, new guns, gun mods, consumables and so on. You could buy these cards with actual money and many people did, giving this element of the game a long tail of revenue. I'm guessing hardcore fans probably spent between 50- 100 dollars on average, with outliers paying a fortune and most only spending 10 or 20 dollars. I think I bought one set of points, about a tenner, but that was it. The point is you didn't need to buy packs, it just made the grind easier. 

Why play this? The horde modes had originally three difficulty levels, bronze, silver and gold. Essentially Gold was nuts, but as players got better characters and weapons - and developped farming techniques such as playing Gold / Firebase White / Geth with certain characters like a Salarian engineer, inflitrators and boom boom space magic explosion folks - Gold was viable for many. It wasn't as fun as you were camping in one spot. The credits rolled in at certain waves - 3 and 6 - for completing objectives like hack, escort, kill VIP and fetch 4 things. That required teamwork to get loot. For anyone who hasn't played this, it was like a simpler, 25 minute loop of a destiny raid where there are clear, established cheeses/ strategies. People did it for the loot, the fun of achieving something together.

However, this game was extraordinary fun. You could play as a human sentinel, a starting character, and play through bronze easily and silver routinely with anyone else, or solo. You had a primer in warp and a detonator in throw and biotic explosions - the visuals of them, the satisfying sound, and the enormous damage they did when both the primer and detonator were max level - were a huge part of it. Tech explosions too. These were a large part of the game, but so too were other play styles, like sniping as an inflitrator who could cloak for extra damage - and was really good at revives and objectives. 

Over time, the starting classes, guns and maps were supplemented by new classes, new rare and ultra rare guns, and maps all delivered via free updates. That kept the grind and long tail going. It introduced a staggering options for play styles, character builds, and fun. Soldier, Engineer, Biotics were extraordinary fun.
If you got bored of any one character, there were tons of others to try out, involving significantly different play styles. Importantly, once you had good guns you could pretty much take any character, even at level 1, into one game of bronze, a few games of silver, and the xp you got from that would withing 1 hour or so allow you to experience that characters' abilities in a real sense. It would only take a few hours of gameplay to max out a character's abilities, at level 20. All guns went to level X. A level X Avenger did more damage than a level I avenger, and crucially weighed less - allowing you to spend cooldown points on your power's recharge time.  I put hours into this game and, until Destiny, was my best coop grinding experience. Unlike Destiny, you could do this in 30 minute or 1 hour bursts, which was great. I had a ceberus AR at level III - that took several rolls of RNG to get. Others, who played more or spent real money, had that ultra rare gun at X and while it wrecked, my Cerberus AR at level I was still way better than any other AR really - even an avenger X. This is important background. The key message was: getting an ultra rare character was fucking huge. When that card popped and you saw you got something new and good, that feeling was the shit. Because you knew when that happened, that you immediately had a new, more effective / excitingly different toy to play with.
Onwards, then, to Mass Effect Andromeda's multiplayer. I was excited by this, imagining I would go back to those days of lore, but better. I was particularly excited by two things:

1) Abilities are now on a separate cooldown. This meant greater scope for solo biotic/ tech combos, and an ability to choose more hefty weapons on power-based characters because you didn't have to worry so much about cooldowns.

2) The addition of a jump and slide mechanic suggested a more fast paced, more movement based game - less campy. 

I was right to be excited by this. But oh boy, did I not see the rest.... Essentially, very little of the core experience that made ME3 so great subsists in Andromeda's multiplayer. Much of what is wrong appears to be as a result of deliberate design choices... structural decisions that seem to be motivated by making the experience more grindy, less satisftying for the player - presumably to make them spend more cash on quicker progression. The problem is that this is so ham-fisted, I can't imagine it succeeding.

I'm only going to give headlines here. I've linked a few reddit posts if you want greater details by more hardcore me coop players.

I've played this game every day for a week. I haven't got a single character to level 20, the max. My best  "uncommon" character, the asari adept, is fun to play to an extent but remains at level 17. Even if I put a few more hours into her to get her to 20, I can't max out her powers. Why? Because unlike in ME3, getting a character to 20 isn't the end of the story. You need to pull that character out of a card TEN TIMES to get the full points to spend on her. I've pulled her out of a card just the once. Another uncommon I have up to 2. Most basic characters I have at level 3-9, but I'd need put in hours of XP into them to use them. Anyway I want to use the asari adept, and it felt bittersweet to get her card and to realise that, unlike in ME3, that was just the start of the grind and RNG story for her. A major downer compared to the high of dropping a good character in ME3... and she's only an uncommon class. There are rare classes... and ultra rare classes. God knows how long it would take to get your favourite characters to a level where you can use their abilities fully. 

They want you to spend money on cards. I'd be okay with that if the game was fun otherwise. I'd drop 20-40 quid a year on something like ME3 coop, if I had a crew of players to play with. As it happens, a me3 vet I played Destiny with has already moved back to Destiny. Curtis, to whom we praised me3 coop to the hilt, has played with me but understandably fails to see what the deal is. So what's wrong with the game, except for the grind and cynical attempts to incentivise more player spending?

Gun balance is shit. There are so many pea shooters in this game. Aside from  one sniper, the vanquisher, most weapons are shit even at X. Headshots don't register unless you are host. It's P2P so being off host can be laggy as fuck. The movement, a major plus, suffers so much from lag that it becomes frustrating as fuck. While even the most basic redbar enemies take more than a full clip to kill in silver difficulty, a couple of bursts from anyone will get your shields down. The game's signature mechanic, meanwhile, the biotic/ tech combo or burst, is pretty much useless for massive damage - except for staggering enemies. It takes three biotic explosions to kill a shielded mook on silver. They deliberately nerfed your toolset. Gold matches are now full of a few select characters using vanquisher sniper - the only powerful weapon in the game (which hasn't dropped for me and maybe won't for weeks) - and melee builds. Lobbies full of Krogan Vanguards charging and headbutting. Game looks like a fucking moshpit at times.

Add to that bugs, crashes, and stupid new objective mechanics and enemy AI that is so stupid it's actually infuriatingly hard to kill them (they are charging a player behind you because the algorithm is bugged or delayed, so they magically leap forward and you totally miss your shot/power)... and the game is occasionally so frustrating it's just not worth that grind. Not even waiting for a fix. 

Structural decisions have been made in this game to slow down player progression, positively sabotaging rewarding mechanics when obtaining characters / supposedly better guns, and what's more, they occur in a sandbox that is rotten as fuck. Buggy, badly balanced, unrewarding and unfun.

Sorry if this is a frustrated tirade, but they had success in their grasp. They only needed to tinker with a winning formula. I would have dropped money in support for ongoing support. But no way will they get any cash from me for this broken mess. Here's some reddit threads if you want to read more from people who are more dedicated fans than I ever was.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/62sxw6/a_comparison_of_the_some_mechanics_in_me3_and_mea/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/61vnzg/90_of_multiplayer_feels_pretty_much_useless/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/61mhyj/thoughts_on_ability_balance/


So anyway, I sold this game today and this post is closure. It would've been nice to have six months to a year of a better, updated ME3 mp with better movement mechanics. As it is, I feel the MP is in an even worse state than the campaign. Avarice no doubt played a part in structural design decisions made a long time ago, but the execution is also so off that it makes for a salty experience. It's very clear they envisaged to have some counterbalances to the generally less consumer-friendly design decisions... including destiny-esque opportunities to get particular guns and gear, and no doubt a better core experience with ordinary guns and characters. But the fact is, they obviously do not have the manpower, passion and dedication it takes to make a good game.

Unfinished mess:

Months ago, Game Informer ran an article that made it clear that MEA had something like Destiny's Xur/weaponsmith mechanics. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/11/25/five-major-changes-to-mass-effects-multiplayer-and-one-big-question.aspx
The money quote is this:
"If you don't want to be at the mercy of the random number generator for the cards, you're still at the mercy of what's in the store right now, but it's like, 'Oh, that's the Black Widow and I really want it!'" —Ian Frazier, lead designer on MEA
screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/G2eTvun.jpg

The apex missions are a mess. Even a silver one can involve multiple failures, and the fact is, in two weeks only a piece of armour is available. A refresh was due this week but has been delayed. So players remain at the mercy of rng packs, and the slow grind.

A stream happened recently which revealed just how clueless the games are about their game. 
They announced that there would be no rotation of item store this week. No doubt telemetry told them barely any player had realised how to take advantage of the apex strike functionality, buried as it is behind impenetrable UIs, yielding a confusing mixture of paltry rewards for single player and "mission points" (different from Andromeda points - the currency your hard cash could get you, XP for characters, and XP for Inquisition style recruited teams which also level up).
In the stream, it became clear that the Multiplayer dev hadn't even played human Vaguard, a basic character. They played a Krogan character without ever activating annihalation field, a key skill, and just headbutt meleed everything (surprise surprise, melee is one of few viable builds in the launch game, and literally the most unfun way to play it).
The devs refused to indicate when a balance patch might be on the way. When asked why most weapons suck, the dev flippantly said if your weapon sucks you need to rank it up. Never mind the grind in that - and never mind that most basic weapons cannot kill a silver red bar mook in one clip - nearly 6 seconds of continuous firing. On the day of the stream some special apex strike team missions had been on where the modifier was 100% extra biotic damage. Even then, the majority of the mp subreddit complained that biotic combos still sucked, but at least it was a bit better. The devs totally missed the fact that people were posting about the power combo apex mission because combos suck, not because they love them. "Saw a lot of people talking about the apex mission today, combos are very satisfying". It was flabbergasting.

During the stream, the devs gave away codes to unlock the Halberd assault rifle, when chat asked why it isn't part of the loot pool they insisted it is available. No one has ever said they had the gun, no vids, no pics. The consensus was it's not in the pool. The devs had no clue about that.
Anyway, the main point of the stream was to unveil a new exciting apex mission - with a mean Krogan end boss. Except they went through the entire mission and the boss didn't show up. Cue embarassed admission that there is a bug... Users report that the boss is bugged in all but 10-20% of the missions. This was their big exciting thing.
Here is the stream if you want to sit through 41 min of beating around the bush. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/132247286?t=05m59s - if you've read this far, it's worth just watching the beginning just to see the dev's face. Tell me this is someone who cares, who has any passion, for what he's making. Later on, his face when he is told by chat that he is missing out on a free passive power all along is priceless. "Oh this is just bronze, I can melee everything." - he dies a few times btw.

MY OVERALL TAKE ON THIS?

Bioware is finished. It is never ever making a penny off me. I won't buy their games new. I'll wait a good couple of months to see what's what and maybe get one on sale. Whatever the "real" Bioware is working on, I don't think it will turn out as well as anything CDPR, or even the Killzone devs ffs, are capable of producing. I think the rot has irreversably set in at this company. It's over folks.

genuinely sad, reg. hence why so much of that reads like a rant

Thanks Gonz - haven't touched the MP so I was unaware. And yes, that "weird screen spaz" is, indeed, weird.

regmcfly wrote:

Just sat in Morrisons' car park reading that. Between cinty and gonz this game has been utterly decimated. Let's see how fast the price drops go

I've been praising the game in places...it just has some big issues.

I have no doubt the campaign is magnitudes better than the MP. I just couldn't muster the effort to tread through it. I had this pencilled in for fun coop gaming and banter with reward grind, since destiny had got stale. Utter gash.

Jesus Christ this Giantbomb video really suggests this is some godawful early access shit

https://youtu.be/DmYgUhXDDio

Gonzo's so right about the MP. Structurally it's been turned into a megagrind, closer to slave labour than, say, entertainment, and in practice it's the buggiest, most broken thing I've played since launch Fallout NV. Barely completed a match without it crashing, absolute smashed arse. I'm not touching it again until it gets superpatched. They better superpatch it. As Gonzo writes, the extreme dissappointment is the worst.

I think Single player's a lot better, though! But that might be because I like sudoku and skyboxes a lot.

Sometimes it just stops loading the match. Fuck you, gamer! Restart your console! One match I couldn't move my character but I could shoot enemies. Then later I couldn't shoot but I could move. I didn't want to quit so I wandered around, sometimes invincible, sometimes a shot would hit me. I stood next to my squadmate as he bravely held on before plummeting through the floor, glitching into space

Unfortunately not.