Don't compare ME:A with Witcher 3

A Dev chooses, a slave makes deadlines.

the devs themselves wished to make comparisons

I know blaming EA is the popular thing to do, and they certainly deserve a lot of it, but BioWare isn't exactly entirely free of being at fault here.

They had 5 years to make this game and they do actually have plenty of say on the game. EA may be able to decide not to delay it, but it's not like they have a guy sitting there telling every BioWare employee precisely what needs to go into the game.

Even then my understanding is that BioWare goes to EA and says "We need this much money and this much time to make this game" and EA either green lights it or says no at which point they either scrap the project or negotiate. BioWare knew full well what budget and timeframe they had to work with going in, and they attempted to make something on this scale with it.

Honestly, it sounds like the game just had a troubled development cycle more so than anything else.

Although at the end of the day ME:A is a AAA RPG, and if you're going to enter that ring then the current standard is The Witcher 3. All things in that get compared to it. It doesn't really matter what your budget, publisher, or development troubles were.

There was a time when BioWare was the standard, and AAA RPGs got compared to their games. That's just how things are.

The key problems of Andromeda have nothing to do with its 5 years development time.

This!



After too long, it just kinda crumbles...

One company actually focuses on player needs and actual game like story, graphics, extra content and other company focuses on... nothing. Yeah literally nothing.

Sorry but copy paste animations, lots of bugs, lack of content, no story, micro transactions doesn't make a game. Sorry EA but you failed like always.

You know, CDPR actually released 16 DLCs for free and 2 paid DLCs with a lot of content? I mean A LOT of content. Not just one or two hour but actually 20-25 hours of gametime content with actual story.

Also about money. I don't know how much people gain around these days but 40 million USD for 5 years of development is a lot. Some people said Andromeda's engine changed to Frostbyte and they had to do everything from zero but remember that, they had a professional team to help them. It is not like no one knows in Bioware about this new graphic engine. EA can easily assign people who is experienced on Frostbyte to Andromeda project.

Problem is EA and their divisions don't care about players. They only care about profits. People bought ME:Andromeda because everyone loved Mass Effect series. Now it is very clear they screwed up and still there is not enough communication between officials and gamers.

I spend around 160ish hours for this game in one playthrough, because I wanted it to end with full completion but it is not possible thanks to bugs and non existent quest markers. I am now just logging in to do Strike Missions and then log out. I have no idea what they are either. They are timed missions but still no rewards. Silver box credits are like 70-80 credits, but anyways.

In 5 years and with 40 million dollars they should have made much more better game, but this game is sadly no where closer to original trilogy.

Also I am still playing Witcher 3 and enjoying it, but I have no intention to play ME:Andromeda again. Ryder and his/her copy paste companions, NPCs can do whatever they want. Shame on me that I actually paid 60 USD for it.

Well, i must say that i'm very sad that bioware didn't seem to put the same effort in andromeda as they did with inquisition
Maybe the true problem may be the team who developer.
I loved Andromeda, i really loved the game, but it feels like it could be much better.

It being a business alone is reason enough to make the best game possible, because the better the quality, more people will buy ir, unless you are a fanboy

Development on MEA is said to have begun directly after ME3 finished, with half the team working on ME3 DLC and the other half on Andromeda.

The problem is that extending production more would have rapidly increased the costs of development

Please go read up on Duke Nukem Forever. You might change your mind on there being no point where it's publish or perish.

You get more time the longer you hold off on announcing it. But once you announce it, you put a clock on when people will care enough about the game to get the costs back out of it.

Without knowing how many times EA gave Bioware a deadline extension it's impossible to say who has the most blame for the faults not being gone at launch. It's probably a mixture. Bioware for not utilizing time well (took too long to realize the No Man's Sky route wasn't going to pan out) and EA for not giving enough time on the deadline extensions (underestimating how long it would take to fix bugs, didn't factor in the employees leaving, etc).

I blame EA for giving this project to a green inexperience studio and ask them to use an engine that they clearly do not know how to use.

I blame Bioware for not knowing how technically inferior and limited their team is and went for such ambitious scope.

I firmly believe that if Bioware is only responsible for the writing and game design and DICE was actually handling all technicalities, this game would have turned out a few thousand times better in terms of overall quality.

[p/s]
What we should be comparing are the business practices of EA/Bioware versus CDP/CDPR. 1-2hours long DLC or full expansion story DLC? Automatic upgrade from launch edition to GOTY edition etc.