Should the next Mass Effect be aimed at mainstream and casual audiences?

I agree.

It's a Sci-Fi RPG. It should be aimed at Sci-Fi RPG Gamers.

That's like asking if Battlefield or FIFA should be aimed at me. (They shouldn't).

There's no point trying to capture all audiences with a game.

Its a formatting error on the page itself, the only way I have found to fix it is to delete your post and start over.

While I agree a bit of a shotgun approach is needed on some things that can enhance the game, I don't think that completely overhauling or adding major new elements is the way to go either. One of the things I see a lot is people wanting something like a space fighter element added. The problem with adding things like that is that is a massive undertaking and BioWare has no experience as a developer making it. On the other hand spending more time in space is something BioWare has been adding a little at a time over a few games for there was the space walk during Lair of the Shadow Broker and with Andromeda on the Asari Ark. So if there were more times added to do space walks or there were more times where it was part of the game it would not be such a jarring aspect.

@upagain

The letters thing happens to me too but only on firefox and only after a recent patch. I haven't found a fix for it so I'm just using chrome for now. 

Thanks for your reply, you have some interesting points here.

I agree with what you say but while I'm all for attracting new gamers, Sci-Fi, like sport, is more niche than most genres and the more you try to appeal to lots of people the more you have to water it down. Some genres and games can appeal to lots of people, but in my experience people who don't like Sci-Fi won't be swayed by Sci-Fi-lite (which will disappoint the Sci-Fi fans) and if you do like Sci-Fi then things like Mass Effect are already on your radar because in niche genres fans actively seek out more things. 

There's a desperation to be the biggest, boldest, top selling game that drives things into the ground and makes things bland. I think if you make a game, know what it is and who it's for it can be epic. 

It's like Aliens:Colonial Marines compared with Alien: Isolation, ACM tanked because it was a terrible game partly because nobody cares about that kind of side story in the Alien universe and partly because guns Vs Xenomorph isn't what the films are rembered or enjoyed for. It was made by the wrong people, for the wrong audience. AI took what is good in the films and translated it into game form, targeted it at people who already want that game and made something epic. 

The more people that play the next ME game the better, but I don't want the cost of that to be either a dumbing down or (shudder) an online multiplayer mess.

your avatar gives away a lot though.

In theory they could outsource the space fighter mini-game , or whatever, to some other company which did have the relevant expertise. IIRC something like that was done for the Nomad in ME:A.

The problem is that unless we're talking about something very small nobody's likely to have the slack capacity around when you need it.

I should clarify: I think the developers genuinely _thought_ it would cater to casual mainstream players and attract new fans because of that, but they simply thought wrong (and poor execution didn't help of course). 

I often think back to that time when ME2 was about to be released. The developers revealed how they'd gone through forum posts and analysed them and used surveys to find out what are the most important things to people. So they changed the combat system and it was a big step in the right direction. They focused on the characters and gave more alien romance options because they realised how perverted a lot of people are. Definitely the right choice. Although introducing the planet scanning was a weird choice, and the fact they continue to make similar mistakes (long travel times in Andromeda) is puzzling. But I wonder if they did that sort of analysis when they were making ME:A and whether that could have made a difference. To me, it sounded like they thought they knew what the core fanbase wants and didn't really have much basis for that except a hunch.  

Well of course the gameplay would be dated by now. Nearly every RPG from back then has dated gameplay now.  And cheesy dialogue? have you seen modern day Bioware games? Terrible voice acting? I also don't think the voice acting is any better now than it was then. How far back are we going exactly? BG? KotR? ME1?

many of your complaints are just symptoms of the era in which they were made. The fact is that Bioware put a lot more effort in to the writing then than they do now and in an RPG that's pretty important. Obviously the gameplay is important in a game and the combat, controls, etc. were all serviceable in those games. Obviously the gameplay would be very different if they were made now. that's like complaining about the gampley in Mario for the NES compared to Mario Odessey.


DAO for instance is what I would consider a FAR better game than DAI or especially DA2 because the plot, storytelling and characters were all much better even if the combat wasnt as good.  


My question is: Why can't you have both? I honestly do not see why you could not have a game with the writing of DAO, but with updated gameplay. Oh wait Witcher 3 already proved that you can. Apparently Bioware is just incompetent.

Here's an idea. Make a game with a focused narrative (with logical progression) and fascinating characters, excellent and varied combat and enemy design, and a world filled with interesting content. Then labels like casual and mainstream don't really matter. Instead we're mostly getting bigger and bigger game worlds with less and less meaningful content so the marketing folks can say 2x, 4x, 8x bigger than the last and characters written to offend and alienate the fewest which usually makes for the most boring.

Yeah it's a damned if you do amn ddamned if you don't. Whilst I'm not interested in Anthem myself I don't begrudge them rtying something nwe from time to time so long as it doesn't stop them from remembering how they go tto where they are and that's through deliverin ggood single player RPG's with great stories and characters and I hope they continue to produce them.