What makes Mass Effect so different? (And my opinion on the state of the community)

OP, I agree with your two first paragraphs

I hope you are aware that your question in the third one, will initiate a fight in 5 ... 4 .... 3 ..... 2 .... 1 ...

Idk, I thought DA2 is the best in DA series, and I liked Andromeda.

I was away for a few crucial years that launched BioWare to stardom and suddenly got it legions of fans that frigging went to courts over the game's ending and whatnot. I am still getting used to it but I think it's batshit crazy.

For me, it's all business as usual. Bio makes games, I play their games, I like them. I try something by someone else, and I don't like it that much.

I guess other peeps like other games more, and they want more of those other games in Bio's. I ignore posters I don't like, and mostly keep ME subforum folded now that there is no more news expected. There is really no point reading it any longer. I doubt there will be anything worth reading posted on it.

This is just my experience, but...

DA2 it is largely understood that it was done too fast and with not enough resources.  Basically, EA wanted to cash in on DAO's success NOWNOWNOW and a great followup was pretty much impossible under those conditions (full discloure, I don't hate DA2, though I acknowledge it has some pretty glaring flaws)

Now, this was not directly admitted by the team, but I do recall that member of said team, including Daivid Gaider, ended up coming to the forum and asking fans what they did and did not like about DA2.  Basically they asked "what went wrong?" The discussions were surprisingly civil.  The DLCs that followed, particularly Legacy, seemed to reflect what people said could have improved the base game.

Finally, DA2 came off the high of DAO, a wildly successful game.  There was still some goodwill for the brand.

MEA:

MEA had five years and tens of millions of dollars sunk into it.  And it certainly didn't end up looking it.

There is also little communication with the Mass Effect team.  Hell, the official forums were CLOSED and deleted months before MEA was released.  Almost like they anticipated backlash.  So yeah, not much goodwill cultivated from that.

MEA also followed up the ME3 backlash.  I predicted years ago that initial reactions to MEA would be suspicion and hostility due to that, and I was proven right.  This was to be the big comeback, the IP's redemption after such a spectacular fall.  instead we got, well, not a bad game exactly, but a pretty mediocre one.  As I've said I don' t think it would have gotten this much hate if it wasn't a "Mass Effect" game.

The reason why No Man's Sky continues to get updated because Hello Games and Sean Murray in particular basically couldn't make another game without hate immediately being dumped on it after all the broken promises of NMS. If they don't fix NMS they're basically done as game developers and even if they do fix everything and then make a new game they're going to have to put up with a a lot of hate simply because of NMS(it would be far worse if they just abandoned the game though).

It's not that EA/BioWare can't update ME:A, it's that they don't want to because EA probably doesn't think it will be worth their time and it's not like this is going to be the final thing that breaks their reputation so badly people stop buying their games.

Not sure what happened with DA2. Could be a number of reasons that only people behind the scenes would know about.

Here's what made MEA different in my eyes:

- The game launched in a semi-broken state (and is still littered with bugs and glitches). It's not unusual for games to be buggy at release for a couple of years now, but Andromeda's state was beyond normal bugs and glitches. Sad part is, I was following MEA's QA guy on Twitter in the lead-up to launch, and he was going nuts trying quash bugs. Or at least, he tweeted like he was. Who knows anything anymore. Upshot was, people told other people the game was a broken mess and not to bother buying it.

- There was a perceived SJW overload. DA2 and ME3 suffered a bit from this as well (was SJW even a thing back then? Similar issues / outrages, it feels the same). This is a sensitive topic, so I'm going to pick my words carefully. Note that I said "perceived." Many saw Alec Ryder's "we're dreamers" speech as advocating a progressive agenda ("dreamer" is a term in America used to refer to an underage illegal immigrant). Given that the parallel was the Initiative was arriving in Andromeda uninvited, coupled with the entire "we're the aliens" line featured in one of the trailers (or more, I don't recall), and some people saw MEA as the work of a progressive game developer attempting to re-adjust the minds of its userbase. The "we're dreamers" speech happens within the first hour or two, so anyone who played the trial would see it. Then there were rumors of "feminist" character design adjustments (most involving asari and Sara Ryder), changing the krogan social hierarchy (female krogan did not mix freely with males in the OT), the open and obvious trans character, and of course the famous "asari pronouns" exchange that was slipped in as ambient dialogue, and plenty of people felt lectured and belittled. (I said "felt" belittled and lectured, not that they actually were.) Which lead to a tendency to nit-pick at Andromeda's faults, both major and minor. Certain statements from then / previous BioWare employee(s) added fuel to the fire. All of which hurt actual and digital word-of-mouth, which is still one of the main resources people use for buying video games. The upshot was, people told other people Andromeda was a festival of progressive ideology. 

- Even then, none of this would have mattered that much if the was fun to play. Gunplay and jump-jet-play aside, gamers were promised "Witcher 3-style side-quests" and that, despite sharing source code, Andromeda was not "DAI in space." Both turned out not true. Upshot: on top of the previous perceived issues, some people had flash-backs to the promises BioWare made prior to the ME3 ending debacle, and immediately savaged the game with a "here we go again" vibe. 

- Then BioWare says there will be no DLC. MEA clearly wasn't the success BioWare was hoping for, so they jumped ship and cut their losses. (At least Hello Games stuck with NMS and are trying to make it better - props to them.) The "here we go again" crowd felt validated in their skepticism, people who spent extra for the Deluxe edition thinking there would be DLC felt cheated, and those who saw the game as an SJW-fest were thrilled to see the game fail. And the "here we go again" crowd were able to say, "I told you so."

On top of all of that are subjective issues with production value - such as music, voice-acting, writing and the like. A lot of people - despite all the one-shot 10-star and 0-star reviews on Metacritic and similar outlets - gave Andromeda a 5 or 6. That's an average game whose content isn't enough to over-come the rantings of ideologues (who were offended) and consumers (who felt ripped off by a broken game / cheated by no DLC for the Deluxe edition). Those who enjoyed MEA anyway saw themselves as the "true fans;" those who criticized MEA saw themselves as "discerning fans." And it's been war ever since. 

   This is the summarized version of it. When they closed the forums the first thing I thought was that they didn't have confidence on their new game.

It’s simple - Bioware preaches diversity and tries to make the most inclusive game possible. The result being, they attract the most diverse fan base there is for a game, and fail at pleasing large sections of the fanbase that feel they are being ignored or overridden by the interests of other sections.

In short, diversity has fucked them over.

^ Actually, I can't disagree.

At some point, you need to commit to a point of view.

Cyonan, how do you think ME3 and MEA compare, data-wise? Was it easier to datamine?

I'm confused about what you're asking, OP. Are you asking why the ME fanbase is divided, or asking why ME got canned...or their dlc, or whatever?

Uh, we're divided because some people like MEA and some people don't. Same with the ME3 endings. Some love the open world and some see BW's efforts at it as wanting. I mean, it is what it is.

I think it also has to with the way BW makes very different games from one to the other. ME2 was different in structure than ME1. ME3 more along the lines of ME2. Then here comes MEA and it's completely different again. DA games...DAO to 2 to 3 are just all completely different. So you have different types of customers that are attracted by different approaches.

Other series games I see don't vary quite so wildly as BW. They shine it up introduce some fresh concepts, but they try to keep the core structure intact. Now I know some of the Fallout fans are not pleased with the new direction Bethesda has taken, yet it's already attracted a bunch of new players that do like it. So, now they're gonna have a schism. (idk why they dropped the karma system I've heard about. sounds cool. they should bring that back.)

As far as why MEA didn't get dlc like other games that have been shat on, well, EA and BW are already working on two different space sci-fi games that I recall. The Star Wars stuff and Anthem. EA's attn, hope and resources lay elsewhere now, and I suspect that's been the case for awhile. I think MEA had to do astounding numbers for EA to keep with it.

This is what I suspect at any rate.

It's a reaction that's result of years worth of build up and coping out without trying to improve on it's issues is a huge mistake.