Fanbase Phenomenon: The Latest ME is Always the Worst

ME1 is garbage from a gameplay, mechanics, and controls department. ME2 was significantly better, albeit still clunky.
If you can't see that, then the only logical conclusion that I can come to is that you are a casual player. Nothing wrong with that, but calling the improvements made to the ME franchise after ME1 "more dumbed-down, streamlined Battlefield clones" is ignorant... at best.

From all my years of lurking and posting on the various iterations of the BioWare forums and other boards that have hosted Mass Effect discussion topics, I have come to the conclusion that this fanbase has the mindset of "everything new sucks" and that it is never happy with anything nor will it ever be.

After every new installment of the ME franchise, the general consensus of the "fans" is that the latest game is the worst. When a new game comes out, said game that was previously the worst is now pretty much universally loved or, at the very least, the majority opinion is quite positive.

I have witnessed this phenomenon when ME2, 3, and Andromeda released and in retrospect discussions (ME:A is TBA in this regard as not enough time has passed).

Upon ME2's release, all I heard where gripes and complaints and how EA had "ruined" Mass Effect.
Upon ME3's release, we had the REEEEEEEEEEEtatsrophy over the ending and all of the cringey shit that went along with that outrage and again, EA had "ruined" Mass Effect.
Now ME:A is out and I again hear the usual "OMG ITZ TEH WURST GUISE!!!!1" and more "EA has ruined Mass Effect."

The first game is the only one that seems to have received universal praise and continues to, despite the fact that it is a nightmare to actually play and fails at being the slightest bit fun.

It leads me to come to the conclusion that the fanbase is extremely change resistant and take the "everything new sucks" attitude to heart.

Is that all RPG gamers, incredibly nitpicky and never satisfied? Or is this just unique to the BW "fan" base? Or do I just not "get it" due to me being primarily a competitive online sorta gamer?

Really, I'm baffled at the attitude. It makes the phrase "Mass Effect fan" seem like an oxymoron and frankly, I'm a little put off.

Based on all the games I've played this year - Final Fantasy XV, Prey, Resident Evil VII, Shadow of War, Horizon Zero Dawn - the only one that I've played and enjoyed more than Mass Effect Andromeda is Horizon Zero Dawn. All the others had their pluses but they weren't as fun.

Despite this, I recognize its flaws and could understand why someone may not enjoy it as much. They really should have focused on making the best 50 hr experience possible -similar to original trilogy in that regard - instead of trying to create this 100+ hr "open world" sandbox. By trying to stretch mission across different systems (like "Contagion" or "Life on the Frontier"), it feels artificially swollen with "things to do". If they really focused the 18 months development time on the characters, their respective companion missions, and the main plot it would have had a tighter feel to the narrative. Also, I wouldn't have killed off Alec right away but would have let him survive until about 75% into the game so that his inevitable loss would have had more weight. Lots of character and story beats they missed that, if landed, would have improved the story. But, I could say that for all three games as well. When I play ME:A now, I just avoid most side-missions and tasks I feel unnecessary and edit the experience however I want which, coincidentally, ends up being around 45 hrs.

Like I said earlier, I plan to do a whole "Mass Effect" series playthrough starting Nov 7th so I won't have time for "AC: Origins" or "Wolfenstein II" meaning, as the year comes to a close, I didn't experience many games better than ME:A

MEA is not a terrible game.

It's just terribly mediocre.

Isn't ME3 superior to ME2 in this aspect, even by your own standards?

ME1 is garbage from a gameplay, mechanics, and controls department. ME2 was significantly better, albeit still clunky.
If you can't see that, then the only logical conclusion that I can come to is that you are a casual player. Nothing wrong with that, but calling the improvements made to the ME franchise after ME1 "more dumbed-down, streamlined Battlefield clones" is ignorant... at best.


I'm not saying ME:A is the best ME game, ME2 and ME3 trump it by a decent margin, and the barely functional state it came out in is absolutely inexcusable, but all of the REEEEEEEEEEE'ing about how ME:A is "teh wurst gaem evar!!!!!!!!1" is just trite overreactions by the loud and whiny.

Your first quote makes zero sense to me so you'll have to elaborate.

Out of all the PC games I played in 2017, ME:A held my attention the longest. Terribly mediocre? Not in my eye.

Sure. The problem is supposed to be not enough skill choices and differentiation between characters, right? Well, comparing ME2 to ME3, ME3 not only has more skills per character, but more separate evolutions of those skills, since they have branches at levels 4, 5, and 6, as opposed to ME2's single evolution at max rank. Same thing for ME:A.

"Buddy" lol.

In ME1, all anyone ever did is put Spectre X weapons and Colossus X (or equivalent) armor on Shep and co and call it good. Players would max out useful actives and passives. (Not to mention how putting points into stats did absolutely nothing until a milestone was achieved.) All this would lead to was a laughably OP loadout and squad that could roflstomp through Insanity like Shroud roflstomps through PuGs.

Subsequent ME games balanced the sheer bullshit factor out enough so that the player would still feel powerful whilst retaining a certain level of difficulty. That's not "dumbing down," that's balancing. Sure, you could unlock and max every skill tree in ME3 and ME:A on a serious completion run, but even maxed out you still weren't the banhammer himself, unlike ME1's maxed stats/gear God complex.

Hell, you could easily outright break ME1's overheat mechanic halfway through a virgin playthrough.

BioWare has learned how to balance their games, not dumb them down.

I should have elaborated more when I chose skills in that list. 

It falls inline with the problems I have for ME3 and ME:A as a whole. There's no real variation unless you arbitrarily restrict yourself from maxing them out. A lot of this falls on me being a completionist and by the end (or towards the middle-end) having enough points to unlock everything which ruins the replay value for me. 

In ME2 I would replay each class multiple times which could change the style of game play greatly. By the end of ME3 I had everything unlocked but the last 2 parts of 1 skill.

And you can't break ME:A on insanity?

Your kidding me right? I can literally kill anything in ME:A in seconds with 2 powers i.e. Turbocharge and Tactical Cloak with everything else in Combat for the passives. That's some real balance there...