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Post by Ascend on Aug 3, 2019 13:05:09 GMT
I wouldn't mind ME:A2 honestly. But they do need to make some changes. And I doubt I would get it on day 1, unless the reviews are through the roof.
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Post by NotN7 on Aug 3, 2019 19:33:02 GMT
I wouldn't mind ME:A2 honestly. But they do need to make some changes. And I doubt I would get it on day 1, unless the reviews are through the roof. I Agree, I don't love MEA but I do enjoy playing it,
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Post by ahglock on Aug 3, 2019 20:00:22 GMT
I wouldn't mind ME:A2 honestly. But they do need to make some changes. And I doubt I would get it on day 1, unless the reviews are through the roof. For me the changes would have to be massive. The milky way had a awesome setting. Potentially MEA could be in other clusters, but holy crap was the cluster you land in boring as hell.
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Post by alanc9 on Aug 3, 2019 22:45:42 GMT
Boring because it was kind of small? Two populated world's and some outposts, not much history? (Can't discuss fixes until we define the problem.)
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Post by ahglock on Aug 3, 2019 23:48:24 GMT
Boring because it was kind of small? Two populated world's and some outposts, not much history? (Can't discuss fixes until we define the problem.) Pretty much that.
It was a bunch of empty planets, a few small towns, only one new race you could interact with and all the ones you brought had no society or developed places to interact with.
We need omegas, and iliums, we need multiple developed societies to interact with. MEA was basically empty. I'd be fine with like a 100 year time jump, drop a story of rapid breeding through genetic engineering to get populations up, and have multiple colonized planets with large cities. Its not like the crew interested me in any way.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2019 0:19:47 GMT
Boring because it was kind of small? Two populated world's and some outposts, not much history? (Can't discuss fixes until we define the problem.) Pretty much that.
It was a bunch of empty planets, a few small towns, only one new race you could interact with and all the ones you brought had no society or developed places to interact with.
We need omegas, and iliums, we need multiple developed societies to interact with. MEA was basically empty. I'd be fine with like a 100 year time jump, drop a story of rapid breeding through genetic engineering to get populations up, and have multiple colonized planets with large cities. Its not like the crew interested me in any way.
What your asking for, however, did not appear in the Trilogy until ME2. ME1 consisted of a few single-mission main planets and a bunch of barren-rock side planets... dotted across a circular map that, we were merely told, represented an entire galaxy. ME:A did have a large city - Aya, of which we only really got to explore the spaceport area (similar to the amount of Illium we actually got to see). It was certainly more bustling that what we got to see of Feros or Noveria in ME1. Heck, even Kadara Port was bigger than either Zhu's Hope or the port area of Noveria.
I see no reason not to expect that an ME:A2 couldn't have more developed cities and large populations of varied species in the next one or two clusters (depending on how far out Ryder explores and by what means they travel). Meridian itself is really a massive space ship disguised as a planet. We were shown that it's capable of being set on a long-distance course through space... and we have no idea how fast it actually can travel or how powerful it becomes if reconnected to Khi T'asira. On Khi T'asira, you have an unknown number of prototype lifeforms preserved in a form of cryostasis... and Ryder certainly did not explore the entire city we were shown from the exterior when Ryder brought Khi T'asira's defenses online. Then, of course, they could also, at the same time , jump the timeline forward to a point in time when the populations of the MW species have grown. By then, it could be a largely Krogan population and perhaps the other species are all living under Krogan control (since people insist on quantifying their abilities to procreate quickly into the millions in no time at all).
The crew of the Normandy also almost completely changed between ME1 and ME2. What's so improbable about Bioware doing much the same thing between ME:A and ME:A2?
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Post by ahglock on Aug 4, 2019 5:12:44 GMT
The difference was ME1 established that those types of things were part of the setting. Whether we went to a giant city or not in ME1 we knew the setting was packed with them. So the hopes were if the technology got us there we would have them. The tech was there and they didn't make them part of MEA or part of the setting we just never got a chance to visit. Maybe a nearby cluster that for some reason no one has visited or talks about has stuff, but they did there best to shrink it down to that one really lame cluster.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2019 12:34:17 GMT
The difference was ME1 established that those types of things were part of the setting. Whether we went to a giant city or not in ME1 we knew the setting was packed with them. So the hopes were if the technology got us there we would have them. The tech was there and they didn't make them part of MEA or part of the setting we just never got a chance to visit. Maybe a nearby cluster that for some reason no one has visited or talks about has stuff, but they did there best to shrink it down to that one really lame cluster. ME:A clearly makes references to other Angaran cities existing on Voeld. We haven't yet seen Estraaja (the capital). The governor tells us that the entire planet of Aya is literally filled to overflowing with Angara, so is it such a stretch to imagine a city with many residential areas and other areas of commerce existing on that planet. How many million Angara did you actually in game? AFAIK, their total population is not given to us, but we do know they have large families and live in generally crowded conditions.
Other than a few population numbers of planets shown in the codex, some with populations of entire side-mission planets being listed as only 100 or so and a few home planets (that we never get to set foot on being listed in the billions), where precisely did you get the idea the ME1 MW galaxy was "packed" with large cities and the Andromeda galaxy doesn't have any large cities? The population of the entire planet of Feros is listed as 300 people. We are told by Ahern outright that we'll have the entire planet of Intai'sei practically to ourselves, yet the Wiki officially lists its population as 150,000.
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Post by ahglock on Aug 4, 2019 17:46:32 GMT
Show not tell. Everything they showed, shows what they consider a city Milky Wayers would consider a village. ME1 with the citadel showed a massive city, Aya shows a village retreat despite being big enough tons of their population of Angara gets a turn to visit semi routinely for weeks on end. All they needed one was damn backdrop of actual city and the place would look populated. Fly into voeld does it look like a populated planet? The entire population lives in a few urban areas and small settlements. A generous take of what is shown is the angaras have 1/10th of humanities population, the newest race to the MWs galactic fun zone.
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Post by alanc9 on Aug 4, 2019 18:41:12 GMT
Part of this is that the OW implementation makes the planets look small. (Not a fan of single-biome worlds in the first place.)
Aya wasn't supposed to come across as a cityscape in the first place, but as more of a pastoral retreat. (I thought the landscape ended up looking weird, come to think of it.) Single-biome again; if it had been a cityscape people might have perceived Aya as being all city.
Would a bigger Nexus have helped, or is the problem more with the outside?
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Post by ahglock on Aug 4, 2019 19:15:26 GMT
For me, more everything outside of the nexus. The nexus had some good backdrops where you could see where it would grow when fully operational. Like Aya could work but for example the docks area when you look out from there show a bunch of buildings in the backdrop, when flying into Voeld, AYA, havarl pass a city, give population numbers on havarl and voeld, heck put an asterisk and explain its a estimate based on initial scans.
The small numbers get reinforced by things like attacking the enemy bases and them being tiny and these are the things holding planets and overwhelming the Angara. Heck the Kett fleet isn't the type of thing that should be threatening planets with actual populations.
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Post by Phantom on Aug 4, 2019 19:21:50 GMT
I would love a volus infiltrator as a Player Character. A vorcha Soldier would be funny.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2019 19:40:03 GMT
Show not tell. Everything they showed, shows what they consider a city Milky Wayers would consider a village. ME1 with the citadel showed a massive city, Aya shows a village retreat despite being big enough tons of their population of Angara gets a turn to visit semi routinely for weeks on end. All they needed one was damn backdrop of actual city and the place would look populated. Fly into voeld does it look like a populated planet? The entire population lives in a few urban areas and small settlements. A generous take of what is shown is the angaras have 1/10th of humanities population, the newest race to the MWs galactic fun zone. So you missed seeing the cityscape on Khi Tasira as the defenses are bringing the ships down? As we approach Aya, we're shown that structures have been built on every conceivable bit of flat land. Sure, there is lush vegetation on the planet, but where do you see large sections of just vegetation on Aya?
What we're shown of the city on the Citadel amounts to a bunch of lights, supplemented by a comment from Ashley and Kaidan. We also see structures on the horizon when we're atop Mithrava on Havaarl. Apart from the Citadel, what large cities were we shown in ME1? I don't recall a single one. If all it would have taken was a few backdrops and few population numbers shown in a planet pop-up when approaching it, then it seems to me your complaint is not well substantiated. You have no idea to even begin estimating the Angaran population because we simply were not given that sort of information. What we were allowed to actively engage with in ME:A was more populous than anything we interacted with in ME1. ME2 added the areas you first cited as being "cities" and we are not yet at ME:A2.
So again, what makes you assume at this point with so little information on the matter having been given to us so far that the Andromeda galaxy as a whole doesn't contain numerous populous species and isn't full of numerous cities?
In addition, we are told at the start of the game that the Initiative scanned 1,000s of potentially viable planets in Andromeda and settled on the Heleus Cluster because those chosen few planets appeared, at that time (when the vaults were working properly) to be the best candidates. From that statement alone, I would assume the opposite... that there are many M-class planets, thriving with life, in the Andromeda galaxy. The Initiative chose the wrong cluster because the situation over the 600 years they have been in status changed. That is, the vaults ceased to function.
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Post by ahglock on Aug 4, 2019 20:52:41 GMT
Khi Tasira, it and the first vault are impressive but kind of irrelevant to the discussion of civilization in this area since they are empty of them. Aya on the approach shows molten land, then some grass, then the small enclave, no cities are seen anywhere.
In ME1 you are explicitly sent to small enclaves while the codex lets you know things like earth has over 10 billion people, the citadel is massive and shows large visuals from multiple vantages. So you knew the setting was massive, multiple races with 10+ billion citizens, multiple home worlds and colonies established thousands of years ago etc. MEA all we get are scattered small colonies, and a fairly small force of Kett that seem to have the entire Angaran people pushed to the limits.
We know other clusters have civilization, but no one travels to them or from them even though they have the tech to do so. Why should I have hopes that suddenly a vast galactic empire is going to appear, other than maybe the hostile Kett one.
Every image they set up, showed it to be a small borderline empty setting. Can they change that in MEA2, sure but that would be a freaking big change of direction which is what I was asking for from the get go.
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Post by alanc9 on Aug 4, 2019 21:51:18 GMT
Sounds like "show, don't tell" was the problem, not the solution. Most of the civilized places in ME1 were offstage.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2019 22:55:04 GMT
Khi Tasira, it and the first vault are impressive but kind of irrelevant to the discussion of civilization in this area since they are empty of them. Aya on the approach shows molten land, then some grass, then the small enclave, no cities are seen anywhere. In ME1 you are explicitly sent to small enclaves while the codex lets you know things like earth has over 10 billion people, the citadel is massive and shows large visuals from multiple vantages. So you knew the setting was massive, multiple races with 10+ billion citizens, multiple home worlds and colonies established thousands of years ago etc. MEA all we get are scattered small colonies, and a fairly small force of Kett that seem to have the entire Angaran people pushed to the limits. We know other clusters have civilization, but no one travels to them or from them even though they have the tech to do so. Why should I have hopes that suddenly a vast galactic empire is going to appear, other than maybe the hostile Kett one. Every image they set up, showed it to be a small borderline empty setting. Can they change that in MEA2, sure but that would be a freaking big change of direction which is what I was asking for from the get go. Khi Tasira hints at a civilization that left and intends to return to finish their work of building up the Heleus cluster. Again, what makes you just assume that an entire galaxy is sparsely populated? The Milky Way clearly contains only a few planets stated to have 10+ billion people... and then clearly (because the numbers are given), there many more sparsely populated planets. Those planets are dotted throughout the entire galaxy, so what makes you think that if those parts of the galaxy contained huge advanced civilizations the Asari, Salarians, or Turians would not have already encountered them? Why wouldn't the Reapers have harvested them along with the ones we were shown? Furthermore, those 10+ billion planets were effectively destroyed by the Reapers... which was always their purpose for being in the story... fodder for the harvest. What do you really believe is left to discover on Thessia or on Palevan? (and neither Thessia nor Palevan actually appeared in the Trilogy until ME3 nor did Sur'Kesh). Tuchanka appeared in ME2 at 2.1 billion. Illium has a stated population just over 80,000 on an entire planet more than twice the size of earth.
Why didn't ME:A open with huge civilizations being shown to us? ME1 did NOT open with huge civilizations being shown to us. They were just numbers and even the population of Noveria at 361,400 is not that impressive when you consider the size of that planet is nearly twice that of earth. In ME:A, we've only explored a single cluster.
At the end of ME:A, we may have now acquired the tech to travel great distances quickly... that is, we don't yet know how fast Meridian can travel. We do, however, know that it can travel.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Aug 5, 2019 10:53:26 GMT
What have you even asked of us, and why have you asked it? I've asked for your collaboration in coming up with a viable ME title. I read your proposal, FWIW. It struck me as being a deeply confused mixture of fanboyism and contempt for fans Contempt for fans? Was it my poor attempt at humour? As for fanboyism, sure. We are all fanboys here in one way or another. Ryder fanboys, femShep fanboys, Tali fanboys, Bioware fanboys etc. But since it obviously was never going to go anywhere, I didn't bother to critique it. So be it.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Aug 5, 2019 10:54:18 GMT
Maybe that's because it's just not as great an idea as you want to force people here into believe it is... just saying. Then we make a better one.
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Post by alanc9 on Aug 5, 2019 15:52:52 GMT
*shrugs* Why not? It's pretty much the thread topic.
Probably need to set up design axioms before proceeding. Here are a few to consider.
1: Budget: My impression is that the DA2 experiment is seen as a failure which EA will never repeat with an AAA IP. ME games have to be big.
2: Setting: MW or Andromeda? I.e., is Andromeda now too toxic?
3: MP/GaaS: What level of this is required for a AAA TPS/RPG under EA's current policies? What ME3, ME:A and DA:I did, or something more? (I'm presuming that genre shifts are out-of-scope; if EA wants to do that, we're not showing up anyway.)
Note that these are all factual issues which we don't actually have the data to answer with any high degree of confidence, so gut feelings are inevitably going to come into play.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2019 16:14:51 GMT
*shrugs* Why not? It's pretty much the thread topic. Probably need to set up design axioms before proceeding. Here are a few to consider. 1: Budget: My impression is that the DA2 experiment is seen as a failure which EA will never repeat with an AAA IP. ME games have to be big. 2: Setting: MW or Andromeda? I.e., is Andromeda now too toxic? 3: MP/GaaS: What level of this is required for a AAA TPS/RPG under EA's current policies? What ME3, ME:A and DA:I did, or something more? Note that these are all factual issues which we don't actually have the data to answer with any high degree of confidence, so gut feelings are inevitably going to come into play. 1) Budget - I'd rather see money spent on programming more natural movements during conversations into the game than giving us ever larger maps and more and more side quests that, by definition, are not integral to the story. Overall, the side and scope of ME3 was perfect for me. It lacked in the "natural movements" department during conversations that were not completely autodialogued. ME1 was better and combined some semblance of the two. Games from some other studios have done much better (TW3 comes to mind).
2) Setting: My preference remains as Andromeda. I don't believe it is, of itself, too toxic. Setting the ending and canon issue completely aside - If they go forward inside the Milky Way, then how do they explain Feros, say, going from300 people on the planet to fully populated cities in a few short years while also having been decimiated by the Reapers? How do they explain the Reaper missing in their attempts to harvest other advanced civilizations in the galaxy? Staying in the MW means constantly having to deal with retcons to explain anything that deviates from or even extends from anything the OT did or presented about the galaxy. In Andromeda, new clusters can incorporate anything as far as populations of different and entirely new species, unusual tech, even stretch the limits of physic if they want... as well as getting away from the single-biome planet presentation if they desire. If a huge war is what players want, well we could find ourselves involved in one in the very next cluster. Bioware can literally go anywhere with the story as long as they stay in Andromeda. If people want Shepard back (and I don't believe everyone does), but they could put his/her corpse on ice, pack it on another ark and get it there in 600 years to be revived yet again. Stranger things already happened in the OT.
3) I can't really comment here. It seem ME3's multiplayer is beloved by many and there really only was an issue with how they incorporated the EMS requirement to it. Despite whatever issues players who were actually playing in Andromeda's multiplayer had, I thought the "strike teams" terminal was a perfectly good addition to the single-player game. Being offline and not accessing it didn't diminish the SP, offline experience and players who could access it regularly gained minerals and cash and a few more shots at getting the rare weapons for very little effort.
As far as telling Bioware what story specifics to write about... count me out. It's their story to tell.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Aug 5, 2019 16:32:12 GMT
1: Budget: My impression is that the DA2 experiment is seen as a failure which EA will never repeat with an AAA IP. ME games have to be big. Define "big". I wouldn't call DA2 as small, either. I'd call it cheap. Ultra cheap. Some of the things I've proposed are actually quite big; implementation of mini-games, multiple hub worlds, armor system re-implementation, even racing/driving. Some of which can directly address your point 3; GaaS. 2: Setting: MW or Andromeda? I.e., is Andromeda now too toxic? I don't think Andromeda is unsalvagable, but there are other problems that Bioware is facing that they need to fix first. One of which being customer satisfaction. Bioware, at this point, is going to have to kiss some customer ass. Let's not pretend that the Anthem userbase is content with the fact that the only meaningful new content they've had in 6 months now has been a single dungeon that was released 4 months ago, with continued stability issues and various game modes being unplayable. You're going to have to give your customers something they will absolutely go crazy over. Is it little blue babies? Then you're going to have to do that. 3: MP/GaaS: What level of this is required for a AAA TPS/RPG under EA's current policies? What ME3, ME:A and DA:I did, or something more? (I'm presuming that genre shifts are out-of-scope; if EA wants to do that, we're not showing up anyway.) I think it is very evident that EA wants to tie in the online portion of the game to the main campaign. Which is why DA4 was scrapped and rebooted to work as a live service. ME, as a shooter, has the luxury to accommodate that, much like Gears of War's campaign modes could be played online as co-op, or like Wolfenstein: Youngblood does. At which point, the problem becomes character interactions, i.e. if we play a Shepard/Garrus co-op campaign, do the various characters we interact with have variations in their dialogue depending on who I am currently playing as? Like is my dialogue with Hackett different when I interact with him as Garrus? Or does he adopt a neutral stance, without directly referencing my player character? Does that impact the RP capabilities of the title? On the other hand, while we could, in theory, go the usual route of separate SP/MP components, would EA necessarily green light that? Or do we end up with a rebooted ME as GaaS as well? Taking into consideration that, while Andromeda favoured similar unit sales as ME3, but wasn't as successful a MP component as ME3. Note that these are all factual issues which we don't actually have the data to answer with any high degree of confidence, so gut feelings are inevitably going to come into play. True, but we are all people, some of us have worked in retail or service or customer care/support and do have a grasp of customer satisfaction. Also, we've been playing games for the better part of our lives, most of us at least and consumed other story telling medium so as to have a grasp on what works, what doesn't and what would appeal to the greater public. For example if 343i Studios can garner excitement for Halo with the return of the Chief, what would work for ME?
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Post by AnDromedary on Aug 5, 2019 16:38:35 GMT
1) Budget - I'd rather see money spent on programming more natural movements during conversations into the game than giving us ever larger maps and more and more side quests that, by definition, are not integral to the story. Overall, the side and scope of ME3 was perfect for me. It lacked in the "natural movements" department during conversations that were not completely autodialogued. ME1 was better and combined some semblance of the two. Games from some other studios have done much better (TW3 comes to mind).
2) Setting: My preference remains as Andromeda. I don't believe it is, of itself, too toxic. Setting the ending and canon issue completely aside - If they go forward inside the Milky Way, then how do they explain Feros, say, going from300 people on the planet to fully populated cities in a few short years while also having been decimiated by the Reapers? How do they explain the Reaper missing in their attempts to harvest other advanced civilizations in the galaxy? Staying in the MW means constantly having to deal with retcons to explain anything that deviates from or even extends from anything the OT did or presented about the galaxy. In Andromeda, new clusters can incorporate anything as far as populations of different and entirely new species, unusual tech, even stretch the limits of physic if they want... as well as getting away from the single-biome planet presentation if they desire. If a huge war is what players want, well we could find ourselves involved in one in the very next cluster. Bioware can literally go anywhere with the story as long as they stay in Andromeda. If people want Shepard back (and I don't believe everyone does), but they could put his/her corpse on ice, pack it on another ark and get it there in 600 years to be revived yet again. Stranger things already happened in the OT.
3) I can't really comment here. It seem ME3's multiplayer is beloved by many and there really only was an issue with how they incorporated the EMS requirement to it. Despite whatever issues players who were actually playing in Andromeda's multiplayer had, I thought the "strike teams" terminal was a perfect good addition to the single-player game. Being offline and not accessing it didn't diminish the SP, offline experience and players who could access it regularly gained minerals and cash and a few more shots at getting the rare weapons for very little effort.
As far as telling Bioware what story specifics to write about... count me out. It's their story to tell.
1) Agreed. I think they just need to go full mocap. Expensive, yes, but it is the gold standard these days and if your game is about how people interact with each other, that's what you want to go for.. Definitely agreed that we don't need ever bigger maps. I'd rather go for more diversity. Give us smaller environments than Andromeda had but more different ones on more different planets. (Think ME2)
2)We had this discussion often enough. I am also in favor of Andromeda over mW. I could work with both though.
One question: What do you mean by that: Why do you assume that Feros would have fully populated cities in a future MW game?
But anyway,
3) Yea well, as long as they keep the MP separate from the SP, I don't mind. I'm sure whatever the enxt ME will be, it will ahve MP in some shape or another. I just hope they don't go full GaaS with ME or do something stupid like lot's of coop missions in the SP game (like they did in e.g. Assassin's Creed Unity and which completely ruins immersion in that game). Otherwise, i don't care.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Aug 5, 2019 17:00:43 GMT
more and more side quests that, by definition, are not integral to the story But those can offer some, smaller scale, but interestingly concluding scenarios. I'm not talking fetch quests, nor the Skyrim approach that has you wander the world over three times to finish, but rather the tried and true approach as were done in the old BG games, KotoR etc. Smaller scale incursions in certain hub worlds could also take place, between perhaps neighbouring factions having local disputes etc. My preference remains as Andromeda. I don't believe it is, of itself, too toxic. I agree, but I believe the timing is off for an Andromeda sequel. We're going to need a hook and, as I've said, the Mass Effect and Bioware names by themselves are, unfortunately, tarnished enough right now that, without a hook, it's not going to work. And Andromeda, for reasons I've already explained, isn't it. how do they explain Feros, say, going from300 people on the planet to fully populated cities in a few short years while also having been decimiated by the Reapers? How do they explain the Reaper missing in their attempts to harvest other advanced civilizations in the galaxy? Staying in the MW means constantly having to deal with retcons to explain anything that deviates from or even extends from anything the OT did or presented about the galaxy As it had been explained to me, back in the BSN days by ... let's say mr. Schumacher again, when I argued that the ending to ME3 literally sinks the entire galaxy into an age of suffering, "everything is fine". That seems to be Bioware's official stance to the post war condition of the MW, "everything is fine". So apparently, nothing is as bad as we thought. In Andromeda, new clusters can incorporate anything as far as populations of different and entirely new species, unusual tech, even stretch the limits of physic if they want True, but a further trip into the unknown with the promise that we might like what we find is, again, not a hook. Unless Bioware comes up with such a unique premise, that also doesn't violate the basic premise of Mass effect, i.e. adheres to the setting and concept, which I have to admit, in spite of my very talkative nature, this does leave me without so much as a single word. If a huge war is what players want, well we could find ourselves involved in one in the very next cluster I'd just like to point, yet again, that the best received ME did not involve a large scale open conflict, just a very interesting final concept, that Bioware has sworn off from ever repeating, of course, but that doesn't mean a huge war is the only option.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2019 17:13:34 GMT
1) Budget - I'd rather see money spent on programming more natural movements during conversations into the game than giving us ever larger maps and more and more side quests that, by definition, are not integral to the story. Overall, the side and scope of ME3 was perfect for me. It lacked in the "natural movements" department during conversations that were not completely autodialogued. ME1 was better and combined some semblance of the two. Games from some other studios have done much better (TW3 comes to mind).
2) Setting: My preference remains as Andromeda. I don't believe it is, of itself, too toxic. Setting the ending and canon issue completely aside - If they go forward inside the Milky Way, then how do they explain Feros, say, going from300 people on the planet to fully populated cities in a few short years while also having been decimiated by the Reapers? How do they explain the Reaper missing in their attempts to harvest other advanced civilizations in the galaxy? Staying in the MW means constantly having to deal with retcons to explain anything that deviates from or even extends from anything the OT did or presented about the galaxy. In Andromeda, new clusters can incorporate anything as far as populations of different and entirely new species, unusual tech, even stretch the limits of physic if they want... as well as getting away from the single-biome planet presentation if they desire. If a huge war is what players want, well we could find ourselves involved in one in the very next cluster. Bioware can literally go anywhere with the story as long as they stay in Andromeda. If people want Shepard back (and I don't believe everyone does), but they could put his/her corpse on ice, pack it on another ark and get it there in 600 years to be revived yet again. Stranger things already happened in the OT.
3) I can't really comment here. It seem ME3's multiplayer is beloved by many and there really only was an issue with how they incorporated the EMS requirement to it. Despite whatever issues players who were actually playing in Andromeda's multiplayer had, I thought the "strike teams" terminal was a perfect good addition to the single-player game. Being offline and not accessing it didn't diminish the SP, offline experience and players who could access it regularly gained minerals and cash and a few more shots at getting the rare weapons for very little effort.
As far as telling Bioware what story specifics to write about... count me out. It's their story to tell.
1) Agreed. I think they just need to go full mocap. Expensive, yes, but it is the gold standard these days and if your game is about how people interact with each other, that's what you want to go for.. Definitely agreed that we don't need ever bigger maps. I'd rather go for more diversity. Give us smaller environments than Andromeda had but more different ones on more different planets. (Think ME2)
2)We had this discussion often enough. I am also in favor of Andromeda over mW. I could work with both though.
One question: What do you mean by that: Why do you assume that Feros would have fully populated cities in a future MW game?
But anyway,
3) Yea well, as long as they keep the MP separate from the SP, I don't mind. I'm sure whatever the enxt ME will be, it will ahve MP in some shape or another. I just hope they don't go full GaaS with ME or do something stupid like lot's of coop missions in the SP game (like they did in e.g. Assassin's Creed Unity and which completely ruins immersion in that game). Otherwise, i don't care.
What I'm saying is that most places we visited in the Milky Way were sparsely populated, especially when you consider the radii given for those planets... many of whch were more than 2X the size of earth with a stated population in the pop-ups being miniscule in comparison to earth. The two space stations (i.e. the Citadel and Omega) and populations in the millions but other orbital stations had stated small populations as well. Other planets in those visited clusters were described as being uninhabitable. In addition, the home planets with populations in the neighborhood of 10 billion were decimated during the Reaper War and, we are told, their major cities destroyed. We did visit clusters in all quadrants of the Milky Way, so there is another problem if we go to adjacent new clusters to encounter large, advanced civilizations there... How then do you explain the notion that the Reapers were not harvesting those advanced civilizations as well?
It's the combination of things that were stated about the Milky Way in the OT that actually leaves little room to "explore" the truly unknown and to encounter advanded unknown civilizations in the galaxy. The Reapers were purported to scour the entire galaxy and eliminate every advanced civilization every 50,000 years. They were said to have been "absolutely thorough" in that task. I really don't care if 99.99999% of the space in the galaxy hasn't been shown to us. I believe they (Bioware) have hamstringed themselves into not being able to show us anything of much difference than what we've already seen... and if they're using what we've already seen, they have to either stay true to it or explain why it changed (retcon it). I see that as a negative and, therefore, see the better alternative to stick with the new and unknown setting of Andromeda.
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Post by AnDromedary on Aug 5, 2019 17:24:52 GMT
What I'm saying is that most places we visited in the Milky Way were sparsely populated, especially when you consider the radii given for those planets... many of whch were more than 2X the size of earth with a stated population in the pop-ups being miniscule in comparison to earth. The two space stations (i.e. the Citadel and Omega) and populations in the millions but other orbital stations had stated small populations as well. Other planets in those visited clusters were described as being uninhabitable. We did visit clusters in all quadrants of the Milky Way, so there is another problem if we go to adjacent new clusters to encounter large, advanced civilizations there... How then do you explain the notion that the Reapers were not harvesting those advanced civilizations as well? It's the combination of things that were stated about the Milky Way in the OT that actually leaves little room to "explore" the truly unknown and to encounter advanded unknown civilizations in the galaxy. The Reapers were purported to scour the entire galaxy and eliminate every advanced civilization every 50,000 years. They were said to have been "absolutely thorough" in that task. I really don't care if 99.99999% of the space in the galaxy hasn't been shown to us. I believe they have hamstringed themselves into not being able to show us anything of much difference than what we've already seen... and if there using what we've already seen, they have to either stay true to it or explain why it changed (retcon it). I see that as a negative and, therefore, see the better alternative to stick with the new and unknown setting of Andromeda. Ok, still not sure what any of this has to do with Feros but to generally answer: I mostly agree. I think a new game in the Milky Way would not be like a new game in Andromeda at all. It would be less about exploration and exploring new systems (tough people would still do that of course) and probably more about dealing with the established races and structures. E.g. in a post destruction ending game, I'd like to see a main story line about the political aftermath of the reaper war. How the races recover, how the losses, especially for the bigger powers now might raise ambitions for the smaller ones. How the struggle for survival in the aftermath of all the destruction the reapers wrought stokes new conflicts among the powers that be. I think something like that could be very interesting.
That is not to say you couldn't have any new species at all. First of all, I don't think we've actually met all established species in council space. IIRC, Barla Van at one poijt talks about "dozens" of species living on the Citadel". On the other hand, while I agree, there are probably no great empires or a complete second relay network out there, there are relays we never activated and they may lead to civilizations that may be either yet smaller or on the brink of discovering eezo tech (like the yahg are for example). The reapers may not have bothered with them yet because their first goal would have been to take out the galaxy wide resistance against them by the more organized and clearly most dangerous enemy, which was us.
So there is wiggle room there for sure. But as I said, I'd also rather go with another Andromeda game.
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