EA Boss Says Mass Effect: Andromeda Got Too Much Criticism, Franchise Could Return

Hear hear! ME2 and 3 have all super heavy armor and some opiates taken in fight situations. (No I do not hate them though, they are what they are)

Precisely. Andromeda failed for me because I loved the OT and expected the same quality, not because I was looking for payback.

Bioware's message tells us that DLC was vetoed in development, not afterwards, and with the Quarian Ark book started before the game was released, the reception to the game is irrelevant.

If it had a fantastic score and was critically acclaimed, maybe they'd have had a rethink. But there isn't a game out there that doesn't have some seriously harsh and often unjustified criticisms, that's a sad reality of the internet. Some people were trolling, other were just too emotional, but the game wasn't in a fit state for release and the things that came up time and again were all justified. If they wanted to continue support and DLC they would, regardless of how "deserved" the criticism was.

I think it's a good game with a lot of wasted potential.

With hindsight, if they were truly proud of Mass Effect Andromeda and 100% committed to it, they would have delayed release early in development by a year or two to make it the best it could be.

I apologize.  That post obviously came across far more abrasive than I intended.  I'm not looking to lecture you, but I was looking to question your claims.  None of this is intended to be any sort of personal attack.

Yes, it's an arbitrary definition by definition.  Neither you, nor myself are authorities on gaming, so any definition we create is going to be arbitrary by its very nature.  And yes, "a small percentage of players."  The people on reddit and this forum are a minority in terms of the total number of people who played Andromeda.  If you were to count the total number of users on this forum and the subscribers of the various Bioware-related subreddits, the math would confirm that.  There's only around 9,000 people on this forum, but not all of them have played Andromeda or are even active, so those numbers may be lower than estimated.  As for "occasional," were these bugs happening 100% of the time you spent playing?  Were all of them happening at the same time?  If not, occasional is again the correct word to use.  Even if it happened reliably 10% or 50% of the time, that is still occasional.  I never said they were rare.

First of all, don't let my description of bugs dissuade you from ever trying the Witcher 3.  It is honestly a wonderful game and there's a reason why so many people bring it up when talking about how RPG's should be made.  Second, no game is perfect.  I can't think of a single open-world game of a similar scale to Mass Effect Andromeda or the Witcher 3 that didn't have its fair share of bugs, especially at launch.  Skyrim has seemingly gotten re-released every year since 2012 and it still has bugs!  Now, it's true that I was livid when my gamesave got deleted, but I know that my experience was not representative of the whole.  Everywhere I looked, people were saying it was a good game and I wanted to see what everyone was talking about, so I kept going.  Patches fixed most of the issues and I now consider it one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

Hmmm

"got criticised a little bit more than it deserved"

True.

Sadly, when a team scores an 'own goal', they can't legislate how loudly the audience 'boo's'.

Learning:

Release a less buggy game next time.

Corporate: Not relevant to today's audience
English: Didn't make enough money

When he says it's worth buying as it is now, and the criticism as it is stands is unfounded well that's just a tad disingenuous isn't it Mr. S? Go on, why do you think that might be?

It's ok

I had bugs at each session but not all in the same time (hopefully ! I would have thrown the game by my window). Honestly, after hours, those things got on my nerves, the more I played, the more I was upset... finishing it was (sadly) a relief.
After MEA I played Horizon Zero Dawn, it was so wonderful that I nearly cried XD The only (funny) bug I saw was Aloy's feet fusing with the ground 2 or 3 times, that's all.

The bugs were not my only trouble, actually @radium made a point with his post, I also was waiting for a lot more. The 100 explorable planets, the terrible choices they promised us, the fact that we were supposed to be the invadors (with all that entails) etc... I don't know I had so many high expectations for this game, considering how much I loved the MET and how BW can be creative. And finally, no crucial choices, 7 planets, only 2 intelligent alien races and everything in Andromeda look so much like what you can find in the Milky way. The game really deceived me and on top of that, those damn glitches ! MEA is not a bad game, but it isn't a masterpiece either. I'm really happy to see that many players really enjoyed it, I'm just sad I didn't as much as I wanted. So at least, avoiding the glitches from the start would have been really nice (who knows, maybe my deception would have been smaller). And anyways, for well-known studios with tone of ressources working on AAA games, big bugs shouldn't exist at the realease.

I don't know if I will ever play the witcher 3, I read many good things about it, so maybe in the future. Same goes for Skyrim, you see I actually bought the last version on PS4 even if I know there's still plenty of bugs. I mean, I like to play by myself and forge my own opinion  :smiles:

This is a good point about critics, as movies throughout history have often made tons of money even when critically panned or at best they received mixed reviews. The people who champion the word of "professional" game critics in the case of ME:A are often, in my view, the ones who wanted it to fail for a variety of reasons.

Unlike games negative movie reviews only seem to affect unknown IP not existing franchises. Big blockbuster franchise rarely reach above 6 on IMDB and that doesn't effect sales at all because people aren't expecting critically acclaimed masterpieces, just passible mindless fun. The difference with video games is that mediocre is acceptable for movie prices not full AAA retail price: the reality is a score of 7/10 is average for $60+ not 5.

I know I did. Even before it was fully patched I could see a little diamond through the bugs.

Persona 5 = played it after HZD and just LOVED IT 100% agreed, omg this masterpiece! Need to play my second playthrough soon.

thanks for the discussion, always nice to exchange different point of view

PS: I will certainly replay MEA in the future, with all the patches and a totally new character since they added stuff in the CC... I'm wondering if it will change a bit my opinion about the game now that many things are fixed, wait and see...