BioWare ends single-player support for Mass Effect: Andromeda

[midian182]

If you happen to be in the minority of people who love Mass Effect: Andromeda’s single player campaign, here’s some bad news: BioWare is dropping support for this element of the game. That means no more updates or single-player DLC for those who like to go it alone.

In a statement put out by the studio, BioWare says the last update - 1.10 - was Andromeda’s last. “"There are no planned future patches for single-player or in-game story content," writes the team. The news seems to confirm a rumor from Kotaku in June that claimed there would be no solo campaign DLC, likely due to the game’s decidedly average reception from players and critics alike.

There is, however, good news if you enjoy the multiplayer side of Andromeda, which will continue to receive support and new content.

"The game was designed to further expand on the Pathfinder's journey through this new galaxy with story-based APEX multiplayer missions," the developer stated. "In the coming weeks, our multiplayer team will provide details of their ongoing support and upcoming content, including new multiplayer missions, character kits, and what's in store for N7 Day (7th November)." The game's multiplayer section will continue to tell stories set in the Andromeda universe, as will the upcoming comics and novels.

Following months of pre-release hype, a multitude of launch bugs – including terrible lip/facial animations - contributed to Andromeda’s poor reception. And while BioWare issued a series of patches that fixed most of these problems, many found the game itself to be lacking, especially when compared to the iconic trilogy that preceded it. EA put the series on hiatus, and the game’s developer, BioWare Montreal, has reportedly been turned into a support studio.

Last month, BioWare tried to lure in new players by offering a 10-hour free trial of Andromeda, and recently slashed the game’s price by half. But it seems releasing any single-player content just isn’t worth it.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/70651-bioware-ends-single-player-support-mass-effect-andromeda.html

 

[davislane1]

The news seems to confirm a rumor from Kotaku in June that claimed there would be no solo campaign DLC, likely due to the game’s decidedly average reception from players and critics alike.

Decidedly average? The game was universally trashed by all but the most devout Bioware fanboys.

 

[BSim500]

"releasing any single-player content just isn’t worth it."

Reason #136 why I stopped buying modern Bioware EA games.

"Following months of pre-release hype, a multitude of launch bugs..."

^ And there are reasons #137 and #138...

 

[Kevin82485]

The news seems to confirm a rumor from Kotaku in June that claimed there would be no solo campaign DLC, likely due to the game’s decidedly average reception from players and critics alike.

Decidedly average? The game was universally trashed by all but the most devout Bioware fanboys.

Well, that certainly is hyperbole...Universally trashed would be a game like Postal III. On Metacritic ME:A averaged a 71 which is in the mixed to average range. There are certainly elements of the game which I really do not like, such as the busy-bee errand running (which doesn't have to be completed to play or complete the game), and the janky animations (which have been mostly cleaned up), but if you step out of the echo chamber of people making fun of the facial animations and take an honest look at the game, it really is not that bad. The storyline is actually quite interesting. It is definitely a disappoint compared to the original trilogy and with all the hype it had, but it is certainly not an abomination.

I would rate it somewhere in the 75 range with the single player patches.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

What else could we expect? You cant stuff micro-transactions into single-player easily.

 

[davislane1]

Well, that certainly is hyperbole...Universally trashed would be a game like Postal III. On Metacritic ME:A averaged a 71 which is in the mixed to average range. There are certainly elements of the game which I really do not like, such as the busy-bee errand running (which doesn't have to be completed to play or complete the game), and the janky animations (which have been mostly cleaned up), but if you step out of the echo chamber of people making fun of the facial animations and take an honest look at the game, it really is not that bad. The storyline is actually quite interesting. It is definitely a disappoint compared to the original trilogy and with all the hype it had, but it is certainly not an abomination.

I would rate it somewhere in the 75 range with the single player patches.

If you recall, that 71 was after numerous patches. During the first month it was significantly lower.

Edit: Also, the Metacritic critic score is useless. The user score, which functions on a ten scale, still sits below 5, months after major "fixes."

As for the game itself... I have taken an honest look at the game over 50+ hours of playing it (for review purposes, before anyone asks again). It's terrible and indicative of a poorly managed and inadequately skilled development team. And no, none of the narratives (primary or secondary) come close to making up for this.

Facial animations and unattractive faces aside, it does look very good though. Their graphics crew did an excellent job.

 

[Puiu]

Well, that certainly is hyperbole...Universally trashed would be a game like Postal III. On Metacritic ME:A averaged a 71 which is in the mixed to average range. There are certainly elements of the game which I really do not like, such as the busy-bee errand running (which doesn't have to be completed to play or complete the game), and the janky animations (which have been mostly cleaned up), but if you step out of the echo chamber of people making fun of the facial animations and take an honest look at the game, it really is not that bad. The storyline is actually quite interesting. It is definitely a disappoint compared to the original trilogy and with all the hype it had, but it is certainly not an abomination.

I would rate it somewhere in the 75 range with the single player patches.

If you recall, that 71 was after numerous patches. During the first month it was significantly lower.

Edit: Also, the Metacritic critic score is useless. The user score, which functions on a ten scale, still sits below 5, months after major "fixes."

As for the game itself... I have taken an honest look at the game over 50+ hours of playing it (for review purposes, before anyone asks again). It's terrible and indicative of a poorly managed and inadequately skilled development team. And no, none of the narratives (primary or secondary) come close to making up for this.

Facial animations and unattractive faces aside, it does look very good though. Their graphics crew did an excellent job.

It was an Frostbite game. Not looking good would have been incredibly hard to do if they have half decent artists.

I guess I'll play some NMS since the devs actually did something to turn things around.

 

[Kevin82485]

If you recall, that 71 was after numerous patches. During the first month it was significantly lower.

Edit: Also, the Metacritic critic score is useless. The user score, which functions on a ten scale, still sits below 5, months after major "fixes."

As for the game itself... I have taken an honest look at the game over 50+ hours of playing it (for review purposes, before anyone asks again). It's terrible and indicative of a poorly managed and inadequately skilled development team. And no, none of the narratives (primary or secondary) come close to making up for this.

Facial animations and unattractive faces aside, it does look very good though. Their graphics crew did an excellent job.

I guess I don't recall this, but 71 was after numerous patches? I mean I'm only looking at the PS4 version of the ME:A on Metacritic which has the lowest rating and most critic reviews of the 3 platforms. Only 7 of the 60 PS4 critic reviews posted on Metacritic were published after the first patch was released on April 6th. 4 were mixed and 3 were barely positive.

Obviously this is opinionated, but the user score is even more unreliable and introduces even more bias. I mean I can understand 4, 5, and 9s, because there are certainly SOME redeeming qualities of this game, and we know it definitely has some flaws, but there is page after page of 0, 1, 2, and perfect 10 scores...really? Nothing is that overwhelmingly bad and good at the same time which means there is an exorbitant amount of bias from irrational fanboys either blinded by their love of the series or jaded by the hype that the game didn't meet or it is a bunch of trolls that saw the initial facial animation videos and rated it a 0 even though they never played it.

This just makes critic reviews more trustworthy. There is some amount of trust that the reader has with the professional reviewer at XYZ publication who has been reviewing games for years and years and whose reviews you have read before and tend to agree with that they actually played it for an extended amount of time and are objectively reviewing it. Certainly there are occasions when a reviewer lets innate bias influence them or they cut corners to get a review article out, but for the most part that is not the case. There is no inherent trust that I have with Johnny Gamer who has no body of work to base my opinion of him on that he has actually played the game he is reviewing and is doing so with rational thought. That said, I think the game is actually decent. Despite the close-up character modeling and animation, the graphics are quite good. I happen to think the combat and flexible abilities system is good and unique. The story has it's ups and downs, but is mostly up. The sound design is what I would expect from a Mass Effect game. Overall, I think it is a decent game, but 0, 1, 2, and 10's seem irrational to me. I don't think the game is that bad or that good, and based on what I'm seeing on Metacritic, the game is definitely not "universally trashed". If you think the game sucks, then I totally respect that and would understand, but saying it's universally trashed is too much.

 

[davislane1]

Obviously this is opinionated, but the user score is even more unreliable and introduces even more bias. I mean I can understand 4, 5, and 9s, because there are certainly SOME redeeming qualities of this game, and we know it definitely has some flaws, but there is page after page of 0, 1, 2, and perfect 10 scores...really? Nothing is that overwhelmingly bad and good at the same time which means there is an exorbitant amount of bias from irrational fanboys either blinded by their love of the series or jaded by the hype that the game didn't meet or it is a bunch of trolls that saw the initial facial animation videos and rated it a 0 even though they never played it.

This just makes critic reviews more trustworthy. There is some amount of trust that the reader has with the professional reviewer at XYZ publication who has been reviewing games for years and years and whose reviews you have read before and tend to agree with that they actually played it for an extended amount of time and are objectively reviewing it. Certainly there are occasions when a reviewer lets innate bias influence them or they cut corners to get a review article out, but for the most part that is not the case.

We're going to have to agree to disagree here.

In my world, user scores are a magnitude of order more valid than anything coming from media "critics." This is followed by YouTubers. Which is followed by people I know who don't play games. Which is followed a long way off by "critics."

If you can filter out the noise (fanboys and haters), which is easy to do, it's pretty simple to determine the real world quality of a game. ME:A's reputation always precedes it. It's not an average game. It's a bad one.

 

[oranuro]

The $60 I spent on this turd should have been donated to charity or on a nice bottle of rum. I guess I'm salty because even though the game was bad, the story and characters have so much to offer. Not a ton of rich RPG's in a scientific space setting.

 

[deemon]

I never bought it. And in the light of those news, I never will

 

[trgz]

Downloading the 10 hour freebie quickly confirmed the poor reception and a whole games worth of DLC wouldn't save it in my eyes.

 

[Mister_K]

Mass Effect and Bioware in general are gone, a company in the dust that will NEVER regain its reputation again. Goodbye, you will be missed.

 

[DDG4005]

Casey Hudson was hired rehired by EA so maybe we'll se a remastered version of the trilogy.

 

[ypsylon]

OK, trash me all you want. Don't really care. MEA is a decent SP game overall.

At first Andromeda was real pain to stomach. As a ME junkie I was in despair. With progression up to 1.10 MEA actually got much better. Its not bad game, its not great game, its OK. About 90% problems in SP which were reported I've never encountered. I bet that tons of bad hype was from trolls which never really played the game anyway so who cares. No Quarian Ark DLC is a serious downer as fans were really waiting for it.

As for multi. If anything I would judge that MEA multi player is so repetitive and boring after unlocking 98% of stuff (no pay-2-win, just hard grind on my part). Sure there are good ideas in it (jetpack, not being glued to the cover, evading is just one button instead gymnastics with keys or pad), but it can't compete with older ME3 multiplayer in terms of atmosphere. Obliterating bad guys in ME3 is much more fulfilling, exciting and closer to my heart than uninteresting encounters with overpowered Kett, annoying Remnant or retarded Outlaws (actually its best balanced faction, but only that).

I will not even start complaining about teleporting Fiends, Ascendants, ignoring all obstacles Observers or *****ic Adhi who is probably the only animal in the Universe who can bite and catch trough solid wall like nothing is there. And devs fixed that... and fixed and then fixed some more and it still is efing infuriating because nothing changed.

What I would love to see is remaster of original Trilogy, but not on this Frostbite engine. Its terrible.