You know what this game needs?

I disagree.

This game does not smell like a "phoned in effort" - there's actually a ton of work visible in this game.

This game smells to me like a "we changed all the people and tried to reuse stuff that seemed good" effort. And by "seemed good" I do not mean necessarily from the Mass Effect series.

Anyways, yes, it's totally half backed and feels unprofessional. But that is a reflection of using money to try to solve technical issues (rather than solving technical issues and using money where that works).

Anyways, it's salvagable, I think, but you are right that that would not be easy, nor simple. I just think you are wrong for your explanation of how this happened. You get new people in, no matter how talented, and have them work on some complicated stuff that other people put together and that's just going to take a really long time. But with enough money you can get people to say something different. And if it doesn't work out? Those people were paid well and can easily find another job where they can screw up something else... (and they'll probably get good references because the people they're leaving behind want them gone and might be completely happy if they mess up a competitor's business).

Ugh...

So, anyways, there might be reasons we will not get this, but I do not think "phoned in effort" takes the cake.

They should make hack normal again, without having enemies stopping the progress. It is just too hard and impossible with non-stealth characters.

What this game needs is

Bulwark I, Siphon I, Concussive I. Characters X.

And nothing more.

You can kiss co-op good bye.. because all XX characters are OP in Gold.

People will stick together in Platinum one way or other... so BW probably consider this problem solved. 

Aren't there already quite some coop skills in the game?

A combat log would be great. Way back in the day we had really great basic stats for Halo 2. That was over 10 years ago. Even a omething as simple as that would be great.

No, I mean the multitude of power evos we (probably) never use...

The whole thing reeks of a well-placed and played upper decker :/

That's what I was waiting for!

You know what this game needs?

A Claymore wielding Volus!

Jason Schreier goes over it a bit in this Kotaku article: kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428


tl;dr Frostbite is a VERY powerful game engine capable of producing extraordinary visuals as shown by Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2. However, Frostbite's very hard to work with. DICE knows it pretty well because it's been their engine for years, but even they managed to produce a shithole of a game with it (BF4). I believe Bioware said they had trouble getting Frostbite to work with Inquisition, and it happened again with Andromeda. Even though the Inquisition team had made some necessary improvements to Frostbite, not all could be used by the Andromeda team, including the animation rig.

A developer Schreier interviews puts it this way, "Frostbite is a sports car. Not even a sports car, a Formula 1. When it does something well, it does it extremely well. When it doesn’t do something, it really doesn’t do something." In fact, Frostbite doesn't come with a built-in animation rig. An animation rig has basically been "duct taped" to Frostbite to compensate.