BioWare says it's working to improve Mass Effect: Andromeda, will release more details...

[midian182]

As the next installment of one of the most loved video game series of all time, Mass Effect: Andromeda topped many “most anticipated” lists in the run up to its release. But the game has managed to disappoint a large number of its players, mostly due to its poor animation, glitches, and some uninspiring gameplay elements.

The facial models and animations, especially the characters’ eyes, have come in for some particularly harsh, albeit deserved, criticism. The bugs and spooky faces have led to a number of YouTube compilation videos, like the one below.

Now, BioWare has acknowledged that it’s received plenty feedback, which it says is both positive and critical, and plans to “improve and build” on the game.

In a recent tweet, the Dragon Age developer said: “Our team is listening, working around the clock to gather information and plan out solutions to improve and build on Mass Effect: Andromeda. Thanks for your continued support and for joining us on this journey."

A message from the @masseffect Andromeda team: pic.twitter.com/PRyeZFBzmT

— BioWare (@bioware) March 30, 2017

BioWare added that it would share more of its immediate plans on Tuesday, April 4. It’ll be interesting to find out exactly what additions it plans to introduce, and how much of the game it’s willing to alter.

The PC version of Mass Effect: Andromeda currently has a Metacritic score of 76; the same as the Xbox One version but higher the PlayStation 4’s 73. As is always the case, the user ratings aren’t as generous as the critics, averaging just 4.6. Whether BioWare’s patches move Andromeda closer to the game everyone was expecting remains to be seen.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68729-bioware-working-improve-mass-effect-andromeda-release-more.html

 

[yRaz]

Well don't release an unfinished game in the first place. I get it that people miss deadlines, but you can't stick customers with a broken game like this. Lots of games have day one bugs, but the leave of incompetence we are seeing out of the people who developed andromeda is just astounding

 

[davislane1]

Bioware is done. This much was clear when they implemented "stand and hold X" combat into Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Ulgy character models, poorly written, poorly animated, poorly acted, and poorly designed. That's Andromeda, and they can't fix that with a patch.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Well don't release an unfinished game in the first place. I get it that people miss deadlines, but you can't stick customers with a broken game like this. Lots of games have day one bugs, but the leave of incompetence we are seeing out of the people who developed andromeda is just astounding

Sure you can. Customer lap up these broken games in droves, and defend buying them, and micro transactions and DLC and pre orders, as if they were buying from some tiny startup.

As long as gamers continue buying this junk and beg for more, publishers and developers will keep making it.

 

[psycros]

Well don't release an unfinished game in the first place. I get it that people miss deadlines, but you can't stick customers with a broken game like this. Lots of games have day one bugs, but the leave of incompetence we are seeing out of the people who developed andromeda is just astounding

Sure you can. Customer lap up these broken games in droves, and defend buying them, and micro transactions and DLC and pre orders, as if they were buying from some tiny startup.

As long as gamers continue buying this junk and beg for more, publishers and developers will keep making it.

I wish you were wrong.

 

[Black Slasher]

First of all, sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

To me, it seems that the major part of the people that are bashing this game did not play it. I'm almost 40h inside the game, and the game is realy good. Problem is, the worst part of the game are the 10 first hours, the same available at EA Access. Bad launch strategy if you ask me, since the game really improves after that.

Most of Bioware games starts really slow, but ME:Andromeda is the slowest of them all. The game have some crappy dialogue? Yeap, and so do life. But there is tons of conversation in this game, really tons, and some are really nice!

Andromeda ressembles Mass Efffect 1 in a lot of stuff, some things worse but one thing that it does really better is to explain the world through dialogue and interaction instead of the codex. As a old pal of the Mass Effect universe, I didn't read the codex at first, but reading it way latter at the game, I get impressed that much of the information present on it was told me by a conversation with a random NPC or chat with a team member.

At first, the game tries too hard to mimic the feelings of the world and the relation with other main characters, a feeling that was organicaly build over three games, and fail at that.
At the end, Bioware is a victim of his own good past job.

This game deservers a 8, maybe 8,5 after some bugs fixed. To me, a 8 game is a good game. I feel excited that in a near future we will have another histories in the world of ME:Andromeda, and if we get at least 80% of the experience that I had on Mass Effect Original Trilogy, I will be damn satisfied.

 

[MonkeyBoyX8000]

The animations in cut scenes don't really bother me. I found a few at the beginning pretty funny. I'm about 25 hours in and It's just a boring game to me. The epic battles are few and far between, my crew is boring and uninspired. My decisions haven't yet fully revealed themselves but there seems like less choice compared to previous ME games. Battle mechanics are fine but repetitive and I sometimes get weird loading lag-pauses while I'm on a planet. Some issues with landscape scaling and pop-in vegetation. Andromoda is worth a playthrough, but unlike Horizon Zero Dawn I have been able to put the game down and do other stuff

 

[davislane1]

First of all, sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

To me, it seems that the major part of the people that are bashing this game did not play it. I'm almost 40h inside the game, and the game is realy good. Problem is, the worst part of the game are the 10 first hours, the same available at EA Access. Bad launch strategy if you ask me, since the game really improves after that.

Most of Bioware games starts really slow, but ME:Andromeda is the slowest of them all. The game have some crappy dialogue? Yeap, and so do life. But there is tons of conversation in this game, really tons, and some are really nice!

Andromeda ressembles Mass Efffect 1 in a lot of stuff, some things worse but one thing that it does really better is to explain the world through dialogue and interaction instead of the codex. As a old pal of the Mass Effect universe, I didn't read the codex at first, but reading it way latter at the game, I get impressed that much of the information present on it was told me by a conversation with a random NPC or chat with a team member.

At first, the game tries too hard to mimic the feelings of the world and the relation with other main characters, a feeling that was organicaly build over three games, and fail at that.
At the end, Bioware is a victim of his own good past job.

This game deservers a 8, maybe 8,5 after some bugs fixed. To me, a 8 game is a good game. I feel excited that in a near future we will have another histories in the world of ME:Andromeda, and if we get at least 80% of the experience that I had on Mass Effect Original Trilogy, I will be damn satisfied.

A wild fanboy has appeared.

 

[Black Slasher]

A wild fanboy has appeared.

Sure, forgot that this is The Internetz, where all games rated bellow 9 are crap, and everyone that likes one of those games rated bellow that are fanboys.

 

[Panda218]

First of all, sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

To me, it seems that the major part of the people that are bashing this game did not play it. I'm almost 40h inside the game, and the game is realy good. Problem is, the worst part of the game are the 10 first hours, the same available at EA Access. Bad launch strategy if you ask me, since the game really improves after that.

Most of Bioware games starts really slow, but ME:Andromeda is the slowest of them all. The game have some crappy dialogue? Yeap, and so do life. But there is tons of conversation in this game, really tons, and some are really nice!

Andromeda ressembles Mass Efffect 1 in a lot of stuff, some things worse but one thing that it does really better is to explain the world through dialogue and interaction instead of the codex. As a old pal of the Mass Effect universe, I didn't read the codex at first, but reading it way latter at the game, I get impressed that much of the information present on it was told me by a conversation with a random NPC or chat with a team member.

At first, the game tries too hard to mimic the feelings of the world and the relation with other main characters, a feeling that was organicaly build over three games, and fail at that.
At the end, Bioware is a victim of his own good past job.

This game deservers a 8, maybe 8,5 after some bugs fixed. To me, a 8 game is a good game. I feel excited that in a near future we will have another histories in the world of ME:Andromeda, and if we get at least 80% of the experience that I had on Mass Effect Original Trilogy, I will be damn satisfied.

I'm about 32 hours into the game and can agree with you regarding its better than everyone is making it out to be... There are a few issues I have with the game that I'll list below, but honestly I'm really enjoying myself and won't let a few animations or dialogue options ruin it for me.

- Universe exploration takes too long due to the unskippable videos between systems and planets... Most of the time the planets don't have anything to scan or interact with...
- They allow you to make all these crazy builds, but limit you to 3 abilities at a time and switching favorite profiles in combat causes all the abilities to go on cool down for 10 seconds. I would much prefer a smooth transition like the original Fable had for abilities (ITS 2017 FFS).
- Resource gathering has been gimped and feels like a major grind since you're required to drive around the planet instead of scanning from space...
- Cringe worthy dialogue gladly they allow you to skip the BS if you want.
- 32 hours in and I've yet to have Sex WTF bioware

 

[Solitaire888]

Just finished making Eos 100% viable and cleared out the Kett. The missions generally feel different, but some are easily just 'go there get this' or 'scan this'. I had an... unexpected massive boss fight later on. There are some dialog that hints things are more than what they seem at first glance with the remnant.
The different areas have been varied, which has been nice. The combat is about the same as ME2. You can swap out classes on the fly (plot thing). The more powerful gear is locked behind research points instead of N7 designation like in past games.
As to the facial animations, it honestly looks like they slipped up on a decimal point when coding how far everything is supposed to move as it's all a bit too emotive.
Haven't had freezing issues in game or landscape scaling issues, as MonkeyBoy has reported. The crew is currently kinda bland, but to be fair, I thought the same with the first Mass Effect. It's still early on, perhaps there's some interesting stuff yet to be uncovered. Planet scanning is annoying due to the animations traveling between planets and star systems (this is probably my biggest issue because it seems more like a time-wasting fluff piece because of how slow it is).
I'd probably give it a 7.5, an 8 or 8.5 if/when they fix the facial animation and they trim down that space flight animation.

 

[davislane1]

Sure, forgot that this is The Internetz, where all games rated bellow 9 are crap, and everyone that likes one of those games rated bellow that are fanboys.

You're half right. Everyone who likes a game rated below the threshold is, by default, a fanboy. The threshold, however, is a metacritic user score of 6. Andromeda is about 1.4 points short of that mark.

 

[Tanstar]

Sure, forgot that this is The Internetz, where all games rated bellow 9 are crap, and everyone that likes one of those games rated bellow that are fanboys.

You're half right. Everyone who likes a game rated below the threshold is, by default, a fanboy. The threshold, however, is a metacritic user score of 6. Andromeda is about 1.4 points short of that mark.

I haven't played the game yet (I like to wait until the games cost $5 and all bugs are corrected), but I'd go with the Steam ratings over metacritic to gauge how a game is considered.

 

[Black Slasher]

[QUOTE="davislane1You're half right. Everyone who likes a game rated below the threshold is, by default, a fanboy. The threshold, however, is a metacritic user score of 6. Andromeda is about 1.4 points short of that mark.[/QUOTE]

Users are not obligated to play the game to rate it, turning it easy to Metabomb. Preffer to ignore user score and focus on the media reviews (and oh boy, I have read a lot of them before commit with the buy), since I don't think they are evil, all sold and corrupted to publishers like a truGaimah or a gammergate pyscho.

 

[davislane1]

Users are not obligated to play the game to rate it, turning it easy to Metabomb. Preffer to ignore user score and focus on the media reviews (and oh boy, I have read a lot of them before commit with the buy), since I don't think they are evil, all sold and corrupted to publishers like a truGaimah or a gammergate pyscho.

Media reviews are objectively garbage. Haven't been a reliable indicator of game quality since the 90s.

For crying out loud:

 

[CaptainTom]

Well don't release an unfinished game in the first place. I get it that people miss deadlines, but you can't stick customers with a broken game like this. Lots of games have day one bugs, but the leave of incompetence we are seeing out of the people who developed andromeda is just astounding

It's not just unfinished - the entire premise of the game is fundamentally flawed and lazy.

The only way to fix it is a NEW reboot lol

 

[Skjorn]

The CrowbCat video is my favorite.

 

[Kenrick]

First of all, sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

To me, it seems that the major part of the people that are bashing this game did not play it. I'm almost 40h inside the game, and the game is realy good. Problem is, the worst part of the game are the 10 first hours, the same available at EA Access. Bad launch strategy if you ask me, since the game really improves after that.

Most of Bioware games starts really slow, but ME:Andromeda is the slowest of them all. The game have some crappy dialogue? Yeap, and so do life. But there is tons of conversation in this game, really tons, and some are really nice!

Andromeda ressembles Mass Efffect 1 in a lot of stuff, some things worse but one thing that it does really better is to explain the world through dialogue and interaction instead of the codex. As a old pal of the Mass Effect universe, I didn't read the codex at first, but reading it way latter at the game, I get impressed that much of the information present on it was told me by a conversation with a random NPC or chat with a team member.

At first, the game tries too hard to mimic the feelings of the world and the relation with other main characters, a feeling that was organicaly build over three games, and fail at that.
At the end, Bioware is a victim of his own good past job.

This game deservers a 8, maybe 8,5 after some bugs fixed. To me, a 8 game is a good game. I feel excited that in a near future we will have another histories in the world of ME:Andromeda, and if we get at least 80% of the experience that I had on Mass Effect Original Trilogy, I will be damn satisfied.

It must be hard for a lead animator to do PR in forums. Please just fix the creepy faces and body motions. It is 2017 already!

 

[EEatGDL]

I finished the game after 51 hours (82% completion) and after much thought I give it a 7/10. I first thought of a 7.5, but considering how short it felt, how it abruptly ended after getting to the interesting parts, and that the last mission recycled a game mechanic not worth of an ending. Yes, I had laughs, good times, and a surprising character development of people not in your squad (the pilots and ship engineer); but it felt short in the end, not even enough time to craft the armor I wanted to use (I left the development of the full armor at lvl 5), just started getting lvl 7 collectables [max level is 10], so I thought I still had at least 20 more hours of story, but no, that was it. Some characters are horribly animated, like Sara Ryder and various humans; others well done, like Peebee and Cora --Scott is not as badly animated as Sara. The mythos isn't even that complex. I expected more story, better AI enemies, more variety.

 

[jonny888]

I've been playing the game for ~33 hours now. I like it. It isn't the best game I've ever played, but it's one of the few games in recent history that keeps me coming back to play more and continue my way through it. The animations aren't amazing, but on the whole they perfectly fine, and have only had a couple of instances of animation weirdness.

I haven't had any issues with game crashes, and aside from 1 bug where a quest way-point wasn't quite where it's supposed to be have had a smooth time.

You can definitely tell it takes a lot of design ideas from Dragon Age: Inquisition in terms of quest flow, which will be good or bad depending on your tastes. Some side quests have felt a little flat and stale, but some have been really long and gone to some pretty cool places, and they always like to give you a reason to go back and re-visit areas you've been to before to see what's changed or continue on previously 'locked' areas. I agree with Panda218 though about the annoyance of not being able skip the space journey transitions, since it really does take up a lot of time.

Ignoring some animations, I think visually the game looks really good on PC with the settings turned up. I can't vouch for how it looks on console but a friend on mine bought it on PS4 and turned on HDR and said it was the first game he's ever played which has made him use the Playstation screenshot capture. So I'm guessing it looks good on there too.

Still got plenty of main story left to go so can't really say if it turns out great or not, but it's kept me interested. It's so far been a less "epic" style of story than the one from the previous games (not so much 'save the galaxy from total annihilation from a great threat' as it is 'save the colonists and help your society grow in a new sector of space'), but then I wouldn't want it to feel like a total rehash either.

Not really sure why it's getting such a bashing other than the fact it's an EA/Bioware title and that it had quite a big name to live up to. It's generally a pretty good game with a lot of content, and no flaws that have been big enough to make me stop playing it.

 

[dorsai]

The controversy surrounding the lead designer for this game was enough for me to say no thanks. I bought the first three and enjoyed them, but if BioWare chooses to employ people like the lead designer I can and will choose to spend my money elsewhere...

 

[NahNood]

I finished the game after 51 hours (82% completion)

Wow, you like to blaze through games, huh? Not counting some multiplayer of course, I'm over 85 hours and just hit the 4th planet. lol

 

[EEatGDL]

Wow, you like to blaze through games, huh? Not counting some multiplayer of course, I'm over 85 hours and just hit the 4th planet. lol

I used fast travel and boarding the nomad + T takes you directly to the Tempest, so I reduced a lot of transition times. The 51 hours are reported in the save file, so with multiplayer is slightly more. I still did all but Liam's squad loyalty missions and got viability on all 5 habitats (even if they mention 7) to 100% and plenty of side quests. I was truly expecting a longer story, the final mission doesn't seem that final, it just happens without hint. Even through the last level I kept thinking "I know this seems like the end, but it can't be, there must be more". It was kind of anti-climatic, not even a boss fight. In ME 2 and ME 3 you can clearly tell when you're going to the last mission, so wrap things up if you have pending tasks before it; but here you simply end in the last mission without knowing it.

 

[koblongata]

Reminds me of Slappy in Goosebumps...

 

[syraphx]

Sure, forgot that this is The Internetz, where all games rated bellow 9 are crap, and everyone that likes one of those games rated bellow that are fanboys.

You're half right. Everyone who likes a game rated below the threshold is, by default, a fanboy. The threshold, however, is a metacritic user score of 6. Andromeda is about 1.4 points short of that mark.

I haven't played the game yet (I like to wait until the games cost $5 and all bugs are corrected), but I'd go with the Steam ratings over metacritic to gauge how a game is considered.

Andromeda is not on Steam tho...