What if ME:A was called ANDROMEDA: A MASS EFFECT STORY? Would that have helped expectations?

Rogue One as a title works because it's set apart from an ongoing saga, but there is no ongoing saga in the Milky Way. But really, it doesn't matter. The universe is the same, even if the setting isn't. The only people who would really have their perceptions changed simply because of the arrangement of the words in the title might be a tad daft.

It wouldn't change the fact that the mouse cursor snaps to the center of the screen in nearly every cutscene and breaks immersion and I have to ctrl-alt-del and reload a save several times before I get a cutscene that doesn't have that f****ing cursor in the middle. And this will _never_ be fixed because they pulled support already. So, no.

I suppose not freaking out over the cursor doesn't work for you.

Have you tried not running other programs in the background?

I don't see how that would have changed anything. Do you really think that people are that superficial that the homed in on the brand and wouldn't have called a mediocre game mediocre if only it had a different label slapped on it's cover? Still the same game going for 60 at release. If they'd charged 35 right from the get go, that might have changed expectations. Might ...

I didn't understand that kind of reasoning with DA2 and it doesn't get any more credit by repetition.

Doubtful. As much as I love this game it wouldn't have changed the arguments of the detractors.

It would not have been Mass Effect



If it was not past of the Mass Effect series, it would not have changed the quality, no.

But if it was the first of a new series, then yeah, the expectations would have been lower. There would not have been as many expectations. People probably would have been less p*ssed at the lack of SP support. For the simple reason that there would not have been as much invested into the game.

Sure, but put it this way.  Are you more likely to be outraged if:

The restaurant you are at, whom you have had porterhouse steaks before, changes their recipe so it's now crappy.
Or
You go to that same restaurant, and try something new on the menu, and it turns out to be crappy?

A better question would be if Bioware hadn't made this game.

People come to expect certain things from Bioware games. Bioware has never really been great a level design, people play the games for story, characters, role-playing. Some people liked these things in ME:A, and some people didn't. This could have been a new IP, but i doubt people who didn't like Ryder, the crew, or the story would liked them under a different name. So if a Bioware game doesn't have those things, you're definitely not playing it for the open world, setting, or things like that.

It's like Bethesda, people expect an immersive, interactive world, with the ability to just be part of it and mod it. So if the next elder scrolls game lacked in this department, and say they didn't release a creation kit or modding tools there would be outrage on the level you saw for ME:A, probably worse. Because if their games don't have that, you're not playing them for the story. People expect different things from different studios.

But we need to stop this whole, it's the players fault stuff. They gave the game to a inexperienced team, poorly managed its production and ultimately released a unfinished product, that's the long and short of it.

Yeah, what if. Chances are I wouldn't have bought it. At least not for a 60.

You see, if you expect people to pay top notch, you better deliver. Company or brand are entirely secondary in this calculation.

This would be a rewrite from the ground up in an entirely new universe with totally new everything, not a mere title change. 

Is the cash actually the right way to look at this? The difference between $60 or, say, $40 is pretty trivial. Games are so cheap relative to any other entertainment option except television that it's not really worthwhile to think too much about such things, even before we get into dollars per gameplay hour and so forth.

DA2 looks good to me because the limiting factor for me isn't the cash to buy the games, it's how many releases exist which I actually want to buy. I liked DA2 and DAI both pretty much, and so I'd be better off if Bio made more DA2-scale products rather than fewer DAI-scale products. YMMV, of course.

Of course, I'd be even better off with more DA2s that also cost $40 rather than $60, but that price point would likely cause an adverse-signalling problem and make sales worse, not better.

Actually, the whole idea of marketing it as a 'mass effect story' *might* have worked, if they'd also kept the game smaller, not hinge the future of ME on it? If they'd marketed this product as a fun light hearted smaller one off space adventure, and then released it on N7 day to celebrate Mass Effect, maybe people would have taken to it. If it had been marketed as a small one off celebration experience and not a full ME title?


Once Bioware released they'd waisted 3 years (not saying it was intentional btw), they could have focused on just salvaging the best parts of what they had - rather than rush and try to create a full game.
Keep the scope much smaller for this 'celebration experience' of course, maybe just focus on one planet and fill it with content. I'd also give it a different story, one smaller in scope as well and more fitting to the tone, maybe just about the discovery of a new Milky Way species (they could have still used the Angara, they wouldn't look out of place).

This could have salvaged some of the money/ resources lost and maybe even rebuilt some trust lost after me3 (and not eroded it even more), while Bioware worked on the next full release title?

Not that any of this would ever have happened... I can't see something like this bringing in as much money as me:a probably did. AND of course this would not have been able to be coupled to a mp, so that would have meant an even smaller profit.