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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 14:17:19 GMT
It isn't creatively compelling It is very creatively compelling. Besides the fact that other media have been doing so for decades, imagine how creatively compelling you need to get, to avoid the unemployment line. I prefer my consumed fiction to be an art form and that means that its primary drives must be creativity and not profit Which is automatically invalidated by the fact that your games need to net profit in the tenths, at the very least, of millions of dollars. Video games take long to make, are incredibly expensive and the risk is quite high, especially on a volatile IP, as Mass Effect has become. Remember, it was put "on ice" and I don't mean for figure skating. Obviously, a profit motive will need to be in there for practical reasons, but we can attain that without Shepard True, but Andromeda proved that, right now, it is highly unlikely and already doomed one studio. The series started after all, with a new character. As do all new IPs. And ME1 sold less than a million copies on release. We built it up to the success it was, by word of mouth and our investment into the franchise. ME2 sold ~3.5 times that, because of us. And ME3 beat that by another million on release. Sure, I'd be all for that. If you or let's say, Bioware, pitched me a new story with Shepard and it sounded creative and interesting and really hooked my attention? Then I'd be all for it. However what I'm saying is that my first instinct is to look elsewhere We did that. A missed opportunity with Shepard was not exploring the implications and consequences of his death and rebirth via' technology. That was a huge missed opportunity... but now it's pretty much too late. I suppose you COULD force in some new story about how the tech used to revive Shepard starts to have some latent effect later in life and this leads to conflict. It would be contrived, but you could do it. If the ideas in this conflict are good enough... then go for it. Or for something else. Good ideas should be pursued, no disagreement there. There we go. Actually I totally agree with you on this one. The idea of a sequel (with or without Shepard) that explores the aftermath of the Reaper War, is an idea I've pitched for years now. I love the idea of a galactic dark age where the individual star clusters have been forced by circumstance to become their own civilizations. There are tons of ideas that could be used in this concept. Mind you, it necessitates tackling the endings and finding away around them in the narrative sense. Control means no Reapers destroyed and the Reapers helped rebuild. Synthesis is the same with the added effect of all organic and synthetic life merged into one thing. The post-Apoc fits best with Destroy, but depending on how far we flex our creative muscles we could figure something out. I have ideas. Make it AU or a continuation of a branching timeline, without making it canon. There's smart people in Bioware, I am sure they can make an excuse for doing whatever. But if we're going to work re-establishing the Council, which would probably or end goal to restore order and any kind of normalcy in the galaxy, the force to rally behind, more so than the Council itself, would be Shepard, while everyone else vies for their own dominance. And if you make it AU, you can effectively reset it to whatever state you want, disregarding character deaths that may or may not have occurred along the way. Don't make "choice and consequence" be merely "Bioware's choice, our consequence" like ME3 was. Are you deliberately misunderstanding me here? The culmination of ME1's intro is not Shepard's Spectre candidacy; it is the Beacon vision. The vision about the REAPERS. The very same enemy that in the game ending Shepard vows to stop. That's what the trilogy is about. The primary villains are the REAPERS. Once they are gone or neutralized the story is over. Shepard's story begins with Reapers and ends with Reapers. This is not my personal opinion, this is an observable fact. Within the first five minutes of the game you literally SEE a Reaper. The distress call about it and image on the screen frame the entire mission to Eden Prime. Being a Spectre is just the framing for how Shepard will stop the Reapers, and ties in via extension to theme of Shepard guiding humanity and then the galaxy. The point is that the ending limit is arbitrary. A story can go on for as long as you want it and you can paint the ending at any time, or as long as there is market interest in the setting/characters or until the writers are creatively bankrupt with it. And event then, new writers can bring new ideas and new life into those characters, if they choose so. And if they can't do it for those characters, you can phase them out gradually, like Dr. Who does. Which generally tends to go a great deal better with audiences. And if that is a success, that helps Bioware grow and perhaps there will be more teams working on more projects simultaneously and delivering more games, in shorter timeframes, that don't all have to feature Shepard. It's not like anyone here would say no to Bioware growing enough, to run 4 simultaneous projects, two of which release annually, one Mass Effect and one Dragon Age per year, one taking place in the Milky Way and the one coming the other year taking place in Andromeda. And they can manage that, however they want; live service, DLC, MTX, I don't really care. Mobile gacha even. Sign me the fuck up. They can have all my money, then. I'd figure, they'd have everyone here's money, too.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 14:59:29 GMT
I don't write ME3, I'm sorry to inform you. If I had the ending wouldn't have been so dumb. If the fans don't want a retcon... well too bad. It's that or no game. I can't make three separate games about the three different endings. That just isn't realistic. People will grumble, but they'll get over it. Tell a good enough story and provide a fun enough experience... and they'll forgive you. Give them satisfaction, one way or another, and they will forgive. Honestly, I'm not sure what you are arguing for here. Do you want a sequel or not? I thought you did. Or is a prequel you prefer? If you are going to do a sequel, you are going to have to write around ME3's endings and nullify them. There is no other way to do it. The point is what you said. Bioware handled the situation terribly and then said "Andromeda was unfairly criticized". If they'd, instead, done something that the fans wanted, given them something good, this would all be water under the bridge. Ideally, I would have Bioware work on both ME4 and Andromeda 2, but Bioware needs growth for that. A shitload of growth. So... your point is what? Bioware has a fan problem that they need to fix. So the only way for conventional "Mass Effect" technology to disappear forever would be for Element Zero to just vanish from existence Mass Effect is as prevalent, technologically, after an ending that destroys Reaper Tech, i.e. Mass Effect tech, as air in space. It's gone. Eezo core drives were good for short travels, within a cluster, but useless when traveling beyond that. The lack of Relays will require new tech that will do everything the Relays did, but since we couldn't reverse engineer the Relays in a thousand years, doing so, within a figurative galactic dark age, would be impossible, so the new ship drives would not be eezo core drives, but a new tech. Or, if you move far into the future, like a thousand years from the Reaper war, in 3187, perhaps eezo core drives are obsolete, the mass relays too slow for what the Milky Way races want and they are just forgotten relics of a redundant past technology. Eezo would still exist, it would just irrelevant and nobody would mention or use it anymore. It's not just an opinion piece, on my part, it is a natural scientific evolutionary path; we'd have much better tech to do the things that we do today. Even so, the Reapers left the tech behind to influence our technological evolutionary path, meaning that they had already developed better tech for themselves, but they limited us with it, intentionally. After the endings, should the Reapers be intact, all those technological paths would be open to us and readily available. Why are you bitching to me about this exactly? What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to prove? I'm not trying to bitch. I'm sorry if I come off as such. It's just that, well, nevermind.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 15:07:32 GMT
The Citadel is rebuilt at the end. Okay. The damn thing is literally a mass effect relay No. There is a Mass Relay in the Citadel, but it isn't a Mass Relay itself. That would be destroyed in the firing of the Crucible. Furthermore, there are Keepers there Not anymore, most likely. If all Reaper tech is destroyed, which means killing the Geth and EDI, the Keepers, which were even more Reaper tech, they'd be fucked. If it exists, reverse engineering to restore the relays isn't at all beyond possibility. Would it take time? Hell, yes. Assuming Liara has another 900 years of life in her, and we set the next game 1000 years forward (to, per my desire, avoid her) then we're got relays and the ability to be out and about in the galaxy. It definitely does not exist, as per the explanations Bioware gives to its own endings. This is not the problem you think it is. I'd argue it is.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 15:09:20 GMT
Have you heard the story of Darth Revan the Butcher? I'd be mildly interested and I'd probably be disappointed by the end result. No thanks.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 15:19:34 GMT
I can also still ignore them when they are snippets pulled out of context. There was no reason to climb to the top of Everest either... just the challenge of doing it and because "it was there." And everything is a dildo if you're brave enough, but I don't see people having sex with a cactus ... much. That's the long established spirit of exploration This isn't Columbus crossing the Atlantic to, hopefully, reach India, in a few months. It's a one way trip that takes a lifetime to reach Andromeda. You'd first want to create a better means of transport to do that. The whole Initiative is an unfathomable asspull if extraordinary proportions. As for returning to the Milky Way... I personally don't want to return, but others here seem to want to so I'm trying to accommodate them If it cuts you off from everything you know, going back to the Milky Way, 1.200 years after the Reaper war, is pointless. Which means you don't understand peoples' problem. My preference remains - ME:A2 with Ryder and a direct continuation towards a completion of that story. To quote myself from earlier And if that is a success, that helps Bioware grow and perhaps there will be more teams working on more projects simultaneously and delivering more games, in shorter timeframes, that don't all have to feature Shepard. It's not like anyone here would say no to Bioware growing enough, to run 4 simultaneous projects, two of which release annually, one Mass Effect and one Dragon Age per year, one taking place in the Milky Way and the one coming the other year taking place in Andromeda. And they can manage that, however they want; live service, DLC, MTX, I don't really care. Mobile gacha even. Sign me the fuck up. They can have all my money, then. I'd figure, they'd have everyone here's money, too. That's my vision.
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Post by themikefest on Feb 20, 2020 16:05:26 GMT
I think MEA happened not because of RGB (well, not entirely) but because they wanted to move away from having to create an even bigger threat. When I was talking with an employee at the game store, he believed the reason why MEA was made was to see how well a Mass Effect game would do without having Shepard and the Milky Way.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 16:12:10 GMT
When I was talking with an employee at the game store, he believed the reason why MEA was made was to see how well a Mass Effect game would do without having Shepard and the Milky Way. Even so, there were no plans for a sequel. Mac Walters said so, I've quoted the interview several times now.
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Post by gothpunkboy89 on Feb 20, 2020 16:19:14 GMT
Customer dissatisfaction has no impact on future projects? No lasting brand damage? Do you have a marketing analyst that can confirm that? Did TLJ's reception have no impact on TRoS' financial success? Todd Howard just called you naive. Saying ME3 effected Andromeda is like those scooby doo villains saying "and I would have gotten away with it without you meddling kids." It would still have been criticized, but people would be a lot more receptive of it, had feelings toward ME3 been better. I can only speak for myself when I says "I would", of course, but I'd guess I wouldn't be the only one. No reason to be predisposed toward something, when it is so detached from the OT, that even if its bad, it can't harm it, especially when I only have good feelings toward Mass Effect, coming out of ME3. Even though no they wouldn't have because of the ridiculous overly complicated and over the top plan would have been foiled by an even half way competent police force. Or even out right killed by any startled person with a gun defending themselves. I mean ... that is basically what happened. Except the person holding the gun were Bioware themselves and they shot themselves on the foot. And then the foot got gangrene and had to be amputated. Don't do drugs, kids. Do you have proof that ME3 negatively effected MEA? That it wasn't choices in game play, narrative and buggy release that had the effects of people disliking it and having issues with it? Because you seem to sure of yourself but you haven't given any proof to support your declarations. As for me just seeing people talk about the game every single complaint about it was relegated to their game play/story/design choices about the game with ME3 no where in the complaints about it. But by all mean provide all that solid evidence you seem to have.People were not receptive of the game because the buggy launch. But even beyond that just the concept of the galaxy building massive near Citadel size ships to be sent to another galaxy in the middle of ME2. All raised by private individuals representing more credits and resources spent then most race's entire military would spend in a year. There was nothing stopping them from picking an ending to build Andromeda off of. Control would have been a great ending to go with to build the ships and send them off to Andromeda since it was a place the Reapers never visited and so would have a ton more life that was never recorded by the Reapers. So would synthesis and it would work a lot better with SAM and Ryder's story. The only people who would get upset over this are people with their heads so far up their anus that their large intestines resembles life size casts of their face. And I firmly believe that those people are only a loud, obnoxious minority of overall players.
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Post by KaiserShep on Feb 20, 2020 16:28:13 GMT
It isn't creatively compelling It is very creatively compelling. Besides the fact that other media have been doing so for decades, imagine how creatively compelling you need to get, to avoid the unemployment line. This doesn't really explain why, though. Aside from that, I don't really see a convincing argument for the merit of the threat of unemployment as a good catalyst for quality work. This ultimately just goes back to the profit argument, which, from a creative standpoint, is entirely devoid of meaning, because the aim for profit has multiple avenues the developer could pursue. BioWare could essentially just become a total schlock-house that produces mobile garbage like Raid: Shadow Legends to pull in massive profits, or pull a Nintendo or Blizzard and sell rations of content for full-game prices.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 16:42:03 GMT
Do you have proof that ME3 negatively effected MEA? You mean in development or sales? Because in sales, yeah. It sold less than ME3, by a lot, putting it at ME2 levels of sales; a game that was released in the middle of a recession, with less consoles out and saw a limited first release, because it didn't come to PS3 until a long time later. So something definitely crippled initial product sales, before the critical reception. If you're asking how do I correlate that, it's how it's always correlated to product market penetration. You don't have a team of people going around asking "why didn't you buy Mass Effect: Andromeda" on social media, on the streets, at stores, on the phone, etc. Usually, when a brand doesn't do that well, you see the aftermath with the next product, not so much with the current one. For example, TLJ hurt Star Wars, but it made 1.6 billion dollars. TRoS barely made a billion. Surely, brand damage exists, there can be no doubt of that. As for me just seeing people talk about the game every single complaint about it was relegated to their game play/story/design choices about the game with ME3 no where in the complaints about it I'm not talking ME3 damage to the quality of the game, though. I never did. You are. I am simply stating that ME3 damaged the brand and Andromeda suffered from it. That Andromeda was, later, panned, didn't help its case and therefore didn't recover. Similarly, if TRoS was a good movie, it would have done better, but it was a clusterfuck, with nothing more than cool, but vapid, shots and visuals. Well, the leaks didn't help, either. The only people who would get upset over this are people with their heads so far up their anus that their large intestines resembles life size casts of their face. And I firmly believe that those people are only a loud, obnoxious minority of overall players. Wow. Okay.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 16:53:15 GMT
This doesn't really explain why, though. Aside from that, I don't really see a convincing argument for the merit of the threat of unemployment as a good catalyst for quality work. Oh, you'd be surprised. Depends on the workplace, really and the city/country you are in, most likely. Edmonton seems to fit the bill. I mean, I have no definitive way to know for sure, but just the Schreier article about the working conditions in Bioware ... just wow. This ultimately just goes back to the profit argument, which, from a creative standpoint, is entirely devoid of meaning, because the aim for profit has multiple avenues the developer could pursue. BioWare could essentially just become a total schlock-house that produces mobile garbage like Raid: Shadow Legends to pull in massive profits, or pull a Nintendo or Blizzard and sell rations of content for full-game prices. They could. But you'd need a strong IP to compete with all the others. Most mobile gachas tend to reach an abrupt end. For every CoD mobile, there are 100 forgotten IPs. So for a Mass Effect one to work, you'd need Mass Effect to be popular again. And people just aren't that into it, right now. Eventually they might, but even so, that won't stop them from making console and PC Mass Effect games. Besides, we've already had a couple of mobile Mass Effect games. They didn't catch on that well, so far.
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Post by KaiserShep on Feb 20, 2020 17:19:18 GMT
This doesn't really explain why, though. Aside from that, I don't really see a convincing argument for the merit of the threat of unemployment as a good catalyst for quality work. Oh, you'd be surprised. Depends on the workplace, really and the city/country you are in, most likely. Edmonton seems to fit the bill. I mean, I have no definitive way to know for sure, but just the Schreier article about the working conditions in Bioware ... just wow. I'd say then that we're seeing the inevitable result of a deteriorating work environment, particularly one where artistic vision is a core component to the production of work. Stress and crunch, where personal time and well being is given even less regard is the painful death of creativity. It's an unsustainable culture deservedly doomed to failure.
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Post by Polka Dot on Feb 20, 2020 17:48:24 GMT
But even beyond that just the concept of the galaxy building massive near Citadel size ships to be sent to another galaxy in the middle of ME2. All raised by private individuals representing more credits and resources spent then most race's entire military would spend in a year. Not quite. The Nexus is by far the largest "vessel" sent to Andromeda, expected to be 15.47 km long and 5.3 km in diameter when completed. The Citadel is 44.7 km long, and 12.8 km in diameter when opened, with a population of 13.2M. So, yeah, the Nexus is massive yet only ~ 1/3 the size of the Citadel. Ark Hyperion is ~ 1.5 km long and was designed to transport 20K colonists in cryopods. Dreadnoughts are typically ~ 1 km long, so the Arks may be somewhat larger than a typical dreadnought. (The Destiny Ascension is said to be 4x the size of the largest human ships with a crew of 10K.)
It was a significant undertaking, to be sure - but then so was the Lazarus project (which supposedly exhausted Cerberus' budget, yet they continued to build facilities, fleets, and bring an endless supply of researchers and troops online). The plot demands, I guess.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2020 18:04:45 GMT
1. Any "good" ending would have to be written in collaberation with the fans, and by their own admission, they wouldn't know how to write such a thing. I would. Maybe you asked the wrong people. What makes a "good" ending is subjective. Everyone has different ideas on that. No, it's not. Was the ending to Return of the Jedi "subjectively" good? I'd say it was objectively good. Critics would unanimously agree that it is a fitting end to the trilogy, after meticulously examining the themes, the setting, the characters arcs etc. Meanwhile, The Rise of Skywalker has Rey Palpatine appropriate Luke's droids, Han's ship, Chewie, Luke, Leia's and Anakin's lightsabers, the Lars Homestead, Luke's X-Wing, buries Anakin's lightsaber in fucking SAND, which he absolutely hated and in Luke's case, back on Tatooine, which he wanted to get the fuck away from. That is an objectively terrible ending. ME3 is an objectively terrible ending. Some people like things others don't. That's just how it goes. You are free to like bad things. I like Tommy Wisseau's "The Room". I love it. Never have I seen anything come close to it. For good reason. You can like something bad, you should not ask for something bad. I also like Pizza. Pizza is bad. Yeah, I know. However rewriting the ending would not be in their best interest. At the end of the day, someone will be upset no matter what you do. You should upset as many people as you need to, in order to fix something that's broken. If a water pipe breaks and kids flock around it, because it makes an impromptu fountain that they can play in, should I leave it broken, because otherwise it will upset the children? No. Why should this be any different? Well they stuck to their guns and stood behind their team. That doesn't mean they didn't listen to you. If they weren't listening they would have done nothing and left the original ending as is and not made the EC. That was a last ditch effort to put out the fire. They weren't doing anyone any favour and nor did EC fix any problems people had with it. They were doing the absolute most they could, without looking like idiots. That is not my problem. The problem was that it took them way too long to get anything going, underestimated how bad people would react to it and completely failed to capture the feel of their fanbase, after the fact. It was handled poorly and that is not our problem. People are just mad because they didn't give you what you want. Customers who don't get what they want, take their money elsewhere. The Witcher 3 sold 20 million copies. Where are ME3's 20 million copies? Where are Andromeda's? So Bioware giving customers what they want is Bioware's problem. Disney giving customers what they want is their problem. TRoS made half the money of TFA. Success, right? I didn't watch the new Star Wars films, so I can't comment You can comment on their box office failure. If your first movie of the trilogy made Avengers: Infinity War levels of money in 2015, surely the end of that trilogy would make Avengers: Endgame levels of money, right? Well, you'd think. If people liked the ending, they were satisfied Clearly they weren't. I mean, we've had that talk, the forums were on fire. I'd say people where mostly dissatisfied. Do people forget the refunds articles being made? The promotional campaign on how "the journey" mattered, not the destination? And the 33% discount on ME3 that went along with it, to sell copies, a mere week or so after launch? I remember. Maybe you forget, but I remember. I get it, you're saying they didn't want Andromeda, they wanted ME4. Well guess what? Bioware makes the games, and you choose whether not to buy it. Well, we didn't buy it. So Montreal closed, Andromeda got canned and Mass Effect was put on ice. Evidently, the "don't like it, don't buy it" mentality clearly worked, just not in Bioware's favour. So, let's do that a second time? I heard it sold 2.5 million units and made them $100 million. Not bad. No, it cost 100 million CAD. It didn't make 100 million. In the financial call Andrew Wilson said that revenue was bolstered by game sales that quarter by 110 million, mainly due to Andromeda sales. Since it was Andromeda's release quarter, it makes sense, but with the numbers I have, the absolute best I could calculate Andromeda making in net revenue was $68 million US. 100 million CAD, which was Andromeda's budget, comes down to $75 million US. Which means they took a hit with Andromeda. Not a huge one, but a hit, nonetheless. So all of Andromeda's sales made EA back $68 million US, which is a very large part of that $110 million, meaning that Andrew Wilson was absolutely correct when stating how Andromeda generated most of that revenue, as it is ~65% of total game sales net revenue. That isn't to say that they didn't make that money back, further down the line, just that they didn't make it in the time EA wanted them to and not without further discounts, that dug more into their profit margins. But EA doesn't want to invest $10 to make back $1 in profit, 3 months down the line. They want to invest $10 and make back $20, in the first month at the latest. People are STILL arguing which ending was best for ME3, I'm not sure which fans will be catered to if Bioware decides to redo the ending. (Which they won't.) How about none? There is no good ending in ME3. ME3 has no effect on Andromeda and the issues people have with it Customer dissatisfaction has no impact on future projects? No lasting brand damage? Do you have a marketing analyst that can confirm that? Did TLJ's reception have no impact on TRoS' financial success? Todd Howard just called you naive. Saying ME3 effected Andromeda is like those scooby doo villains saying "and I would have gotten away with it without you meddling kids." It would still have been criticized, but people would be a lot more receptive of it, had feelings toward ME3 been better. I can only speak for myself when I says "I would", of course, but I'd guess I wouldn't be the only one. No reason to be predisposed toward something, when it is so detached from the OT, that even if its bad, it can't harm it, especially when I only have good feelings toward Mass Effect, coming out of ME3. Even though no they wouldn't have because of the ridiculous overly complicated and over the top plan would have been foiled by an even half way competent police force. Or even out right killed by any startled person with a gun defending themselves. I mean ... that is basically what happened. Except the person holding the gun were Bioware themselves and they shot themselves on the foot. And then the foot got gangrene and had to be amputated. Don't do drugs, kids. That sounds very EA of you. You are this close __ from understanding the situation. You practically got it. 1. The video I watched was with Bioware saying they wouldn't know how to write such an ending. You might, but no game company would ever invite a customer into their studio and let them write an ending for them. You can't really speak for everyone when it comes to knowing what people want. 2. The ROTJ ending may have been satisfying, but let's be honest, it's a classic hollywood ending. Bad guy loses, good guys triumph, and they throw a party with Ewoks. One of the pre-release videos for ME3 said it would not end like a traditional war story where you kick the enemies ass and proceed to a medal ceremony. 3. Gamers don't get to tell Bioware what ending they want. That's not how it works. 4. I remember that. The internet was on fire, but as far as I could tell, only about 80K people had voted in those polls. Game sold millions, so the people complaining were a vocal minority. 5. There was no burst water pipes in the ending. People made it look worse than it really is. Most of their hate revolves around the Starchild. They think what he says contradicts what was previously said. Now I've watched many videos and it seems that those people don't recognize him as a villain. They think that if you made peace with the Geth, he should acknowledge this and spare any synthetics. However, he's just an operations manual for the Cruvible. If anything, it's not him who gave you the choices at the end, it's the previous civilizations who did. Not everyone wanted the Reapers destroyed. Some thought controlling them was best, but they were indoctrinated. Same goes for those who wanted to merge their DNA with the Reapers. 6. The forums were on fire, but the internet doesn't represent the majority of the people who bought the game. 7. Shepard destroying the Reapers, saving Earth, and surviving isn't a good ending. Or is thw ending bad because the Geth and EDI died? You know people only believe that because the Starchild said so. Did anyone consider that it may be lying? 8. None of the Mass Effect games have ever sold 20 million copies.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2020 18:05:16 GMT
This doesn't really explain why, though. Aside from that, I don't really see a convincing argument for the merit of the threat of unemployment as a good catalyst for quality work. Oh, you'd be surprised. Depends on the workplace, really and the city/country you are in, most likely. Edmonton seems to fit the bill. I mean, I have no definitive way to know for sure, but just the Schreier article about the working conditions in Bioware ... just wow. This ultimately just goes back to the profit argument, which, from a creative standpoint, is entirely devoid of meaning, because the aim for profit has multiple avenues the developer could pursue. BioWare could essentially just become a total schlock-house that produces mobile garbage like Raid: Shadow Legends to pull in massive profits, or pull a Nintendo or Blizzard and sell rations of content for full-game prices. They could. But you'd need a strong IP to compete with all the others. Most mobile gachas tend to reach an abrupt end. For every CoD mobile, there are 100 forgotten IPs. So for a Mass Effect one to work, you'd need Mass Effect to be popular again. And people just aren't that into it, right now. Eventually they might, but even so, that won't stop them from making console and PC Mass Effect games. Besides, we've already had a couple of mobile Mass Effect games. They didn't catch on that well, so far. Canada has rather good labor laws, so I suspect the working conditions at Bioware are reasonable. Personality issues may be another thing since, in Canada, you really can't just fire staff for being difficult to work iwth. You need "just cause" to let them go. Edmonton weather is not the best, so people with the option generally like to work in warmer places.
A few years ago, I had a friend who worked for an independent gaming developer in Texas... and working conditions there were just "wow" - bad. Far worse than anything I've personally seen here.
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Post by Polka Dot on Feb 20, 2020 18:08:27 GMT
This ultimately just goes back to the profit argument, which, from a creative standpoint, is entirely devoid of meaning, because the aim for profit has multiple avenues the developer could pursue. BioWare could essentially just become a total schlock-house that produces mobile garbage like Raid: Shadow Legends to pull in massive profits, or pull a Nintendo or Blizzard and sell rations of content for full-game prices. They could. But you'd need a strong IP to compete with all the others. Most mobile gachas tend to reach an abrupt end. For every CoD mobile, there are 100 forgotten IPs. So for a Mass Effect one to work, you'd need Mass Effect to be popular again. And people just aren't that into it, right now. Eventually they might, but even so, that won't stop them from making console and PC Mass Effect games. Besides, we've already had a couple of mobile Mass Effect games. They didn't catch on that well, so far. I don't know of any particular reason why they'd need to try to make mobile games from their existing IPs. Small scale mobile games could be fertile ground to put their backlog of unused concepts and prototypes to use. It'd give their creatives the opportunity see some of their favorite ideas come to fruition, even if it wasn't in a major AAA title, and they could slap different branding on them. Whether it results in a small but steady revenue stream or some new hit IPs, the investment would be much smaller than the kind of AAA titles they usually make. And that revenue could provide enough funding to put the creative people - instead of the bean counters - in charge of their major IPs again. Could be worth a try.
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Post by Cyberstrike on Feb 20, 2020 18:12:20 GMT
Some people need to learn let it go. Seriously not everything in any franchise is going to be made for you. I love The Transformers but I hate the Micheal Bay movies, and the current cartoon show, Cyberverse is OK but I've seen a lot better TF TV shows and outside of the current War for Cybertron Trilogy Siege/Earthrise toyline the others like The Studio Series and Cyberverse don't appeal to me so I let them go.
I don't particularly care for the JJ Abrams/Kelvin timeline movies (other than for Star Trek: Beyond) so I don't watch them or read the comics and novels based on that version of the Star Trek. Now that CBS All Access has Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Short Treks I watch and enjoy them.
I don't like Anthem so I don't play it and try not to talk or think about it.
The same with Impact Wrestling, Star Wars, The MCU, The Arrowverse, The DCEU (especially the DCEU), and whatever else I'm into the parts that I don't like or get I tend to acknowledge that they exist and that were bad and/or I didn't get the appeal of them. Then I move on to the parts that I do like.
If I focus only on the parts that I don't like or get then I will lose my sanity and by learning to let go helps keep what little sanity I have left. Learn to let it go, now don't make me post the video of that song from Frozen. I'm not sure why you've posted the last paragraph directed at me though, since I'm basically telling the person I was responding to that they need to let it go... but go ahead. I like the song from Frozen.
It was meant as a joke to others who probably are sick of the song and/or don't like it.
But since you asked:
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 18:20:49 GMT
The video I watched was with Bioware saying they wouldn't know how to write such an ending. You might, but no game company would ever invite a customer into their studio and let them write an ending for them. You can't really speak for everyone when it comes to knowing what people want. I don't know. I think I've got a pretty good grasp on things, a few good ideas, some range. I could probably come up with something better than what we got. Who knows, maybe some of what I said makes it in the next game. It made it in the EC. The ROTJ ending may have been satisfying, but let's be honest, it's a classic hollywood ending. Bad guy loses, good guys triumph, the guy gets the girl, and they throw a party with Ewoks. One of the pre-release videos for ME3 said it would not end like a traditional war story where you kick the enemies ass ans proceed to a medal ceremony. Apparently, that was a mistake. Gamers don't get to tell Bioware what ending they want. That's not how it works. I have. I remember that. The internet was on fire, but as far as I could tell, only about 80K people had voted in those polls. Game sold millions, so the people complaining were a vocal minority As I am sure only a vocal minority protested against The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker made only half of what The Force Awakens did. Just a thought. There was no burst water pipes in the ending. People made it look worse than it really is Or they made it look exactly as bad as it was. Remember that university literature professor guy that dissected the endings in a post? That shit was savage. The forums were on fire, but the internet doesn't represent the majority of the people who bought the game Would the multitude of articles on the refunds do, then? None of the Mass Effect games have ever sold 20 million copies. That's ... kinda the issue. We were building up, we were out of the recession, one of those games should be hitting 20 million copies. If we were doing a proper job. And by "we" I mean Bioware.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Feb 20, 2020 18:25:53 GMT
I don't know of any particular reason why they'd need to try to make mobile games from their existing IPs. You've already got the Dragon Age one. They'd made a couple of Mass Effect ones, too. Remember Jacob's game? Also, an existing IP has more of a chance to a new IP, because the existing IP at least has a following. It's why bethesda made Blades, or what's it called, an Elder Scrolls game. Small scale mobile games could be fertile ground to put their backlog of unused concepts and prototypes to use. It'd give their creatives the opportunity see some of their favorite ideas come to fruition, even if it wasn't in a major AAA title, and they could slap different branding on them. Whether it results in a small but steady revenue stream or some new hit IPs, the investment would be much smaller than the kind of AAA titles they usually make. And that revenue could provide enough funding to put the creative people - instead of the bean counters - in charge of their major IPs again. Could be worth a try. I suppose.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2020 18:45:05 GMT
The video I watched was with Bioware saying they wouldn't know how to write such an ending. You might, but no game company would ever invite a customer into their studio and let them write an ending for them. You can't really speak for everyone when it comes to knowing what people want. I don't know. I think I've got a pretty good grasp on things, a few good ideas, some range. I could probably come up with something better than what we got. Who knows, maybe some of what I said makes it in the next game. It made it in the EC. The ROTJ ending may have been satisfying, but let's be honest, it's a classic hollywood ending. Bad guy loses, good guys triumph, the guy gets the girl, and they throw a party with Ewoks. One of the pre-release videos for ME3 said it would not end like a traditional war story where you kick the enemies ass ans proceed to a medal ceremony. Apparently, that was a mistake. Gamers don't get to tell Bioware what ending they want. That's not how it works. I have. I remember that. The internet was on fire, but as far as I could tell, only about 80K people had voted in those polls. Game sold millions, so the people complaining were a vocal minority As I am sure only a vocal minority protested against The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker made only half of what The Force Awakens did. Just a thought. There was no burst water pipes in the ending. People made it look worse than it really is Or they made it look exactly as bad as it was. Remember that university literature professor guy that dissected the endings in a post? That shit was savage. The forums were on fire, but the internet doesn't represent the majority of the people who bought the game Would the multitude of articles on the refunds do, then? None of the Mass Effect games have ever sold 20 million copies. That's ... kinda the issue. We were building up, we were out of the recession, one of those games should be hitting 20 million copies. If we were doing a proper job. And by "we" I mean Bioware. 1. Any ending you come up with would only be fan fiction, never canon. 2. What do you mean? Was Mass Effect supposed to end like a war story, or like ROTJ? 3. If you actually told Bioware what to do, then they would have rewritten the ending. 4. Yes, but that's just an opinion. 5. If the people complaining knew anything about how software purchases work. Once you open the box or install the game digitally after agreeing to the EULA, all bets are off. Now if there was a broken disc, or you tried to start the game and it wouldn't run, that's another issue. They would honor that. 6. I had a look at a top selling games list, and there was only about 35 games out of the thousands of games ever made that sold over 20 million copies. I've seen many Nintendo games on that list. So it sounds like those who sell over 20 million are the 1 percent.
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Post by gothpunkboy89 on Feb 20, 2020 18:56:55 GMT
But even beyond that just the concept of the galaxy building massive near Citadel size ships to be sent to another galaxy in the middle of ME2. All raised by private individuals representing more credits and resources spent then most race's entire military would spend in a year. Not quite. The Nexus is by far the largest "vessel" sent to Andromeda, expected to be 15.47 km long and 5.3 km in diameter when completed. The Citadel is 44.7 km long, and 12.8 km in diameter when opened, with a population of 13.2M. So, yeah, the Nexus is massive yet only ~ 1/3 the size of the Citadel. Ark Hyperion is ~ 1.5 km long and was designed to transport 20K colonists in cryopods. Dreadnoughts are typically ~ 1 km long, so the Arks may be somewhat larger than a typical dreadnought. (The Destiny Ascension is said to be 4x the size of the largest human ships with a crew of 10K.)
It was a significant undertaking, to be sure - but then so was the Lazarus project (which supposedly exhausted Cerberus' budget, yet they continued to build facilities, fleets, and bring an endless supply of researchers and troops online). The plot demands, I guess.
Nothing I said was incorrect and trying to "um actually" me doesn't undermine or detract from anything I said. The Nexus is nearly Citadel size. It is larger then any other ship ever created in the Milky way by organic races in this cycle. The Arks are massive ships that are only smaller then the Destiny Ascension that was literally the largest and one of a kind with no others even close to it ship.
And the people that have an issue with the Lazarus project isn't the budget. It is the fact they literally reversed death despite Shepard asphyxiating, reentering orbit, impacting the ground at terminal velocity in a snowy methane air filled planet and left out to the elements for weeks before recovery. Shepard was beyond any recovery ability of anything short of literal divine godly intervention.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2020 19:08:48 GMT
Not quite. The Nexus is by far the largest "vessel" sent to Andromeda, expected to be 15.47 km long and 5.3 km in diameter when completed. The Citadel is 44.7 km long, and 12.8 km in diameter when opened, with a population of 13.2M. So, yeah, the Nexus is massive yet only ~ 1/3 the size of the Citadel. Ark Hyperion is ~ 1.5 km long and was designed to transport 20K colonists in cryopods. Dreadnoughts are typically ~ 1 km long, so the Arks may be somewhat larger than a typical dreadnought. (The Destiny Ascension is said to be 4x the size of the largest human ships with a crew of 10K.)
It was a significant undertaking, to be sure - but then so was the Lazarus project (which supposedly exhausted Cerberus' budget, yet they continued to build facilities, fleets, and bring an endless supply of researchers and troops online). The plot demands, I guess.
Nothing I said was incorrect and trying to "um actually" me doesn't undermine or detract from anything I said. The Nexus is nearly Citadel size. It is larger then any other ship ever created in the Milky way by organic races in this cycle. The Arks are massive ships that are only smaller then the Destiny Ascension that was literally the largest and one of a kind with no others even close to it ship.
And the people that have an issue with the Lazarus project isn't the budget. It is the fact they literally reversed death despite Shepard asphyxiating, reentering orbit, impacting the ground at terminal velocity in a snowy methane air filled planet and left out to the elements for weeks before recovery. Shepard was beyond any recovery ability of anything short of literal divine godly intervention.
It is not possible for the Nexus to be 1/3 the size of the Citadel and still be said to be "Citadel-sized." I would also argue that since we see another ship similar to the Destiny Ascension during the final battle for Earth in ME3 regardless of whether or not we allowed the Destiny Ascension to be destroyed in ME1, it was clearly not "one of a kind." If it was, then it only took the Asari a couple of years to replace it... possibly illustrating just how quickly ships can be built in the MEU.
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Post by smilesja on Feb 20, 2020 19:14:06 GMT
That sounds very EA of you. You are this close __ from understanding the situation. You practically got it. Enlighten me, what is it that I don't get?
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Post by gothpunkboy89 on Feb 20, 2020 19:22:41 GMT
Do you have proof that ME3 negatively effected MEA? You mean in development or sales? Because in sales, yeah. It sold less than ME3, by a lot, putting it at ME2 levels of sales; a game that was released in the middle of a recession, with less consoles out and saw a limited first release, because it didn't come to PS3 until a long time later. So something definitely crippled initial product sales, before the critical reception. If you're asking how do I correlate that, it's how it's always correlated to product market penetration. You don't have a team of people going around asking "why didn't you buy Mass Effect: Andromeda" on social media, on the streets, at stores, on the phone, etc. Usually, when a brand doesn't do that well, you see the aftermath with the next product, not so much with the current one. For example, TLJ hurt Star Wars, but it made 1.6 billion dollars. TRoS barely made a billion. Surely, brand damage exists, there can be no doubt of that.
So you can prove the sales was because of ME3? Not because the game was launched with a lot of bugs and other issues that would detract from people wanting to buy it? Not the fact that it was a mediocre game at best who has a story that isn't nearly as interesting previous titles? Trying to point to sales as your smoking gun to say that it was because of ME3 is just fucking asinine given the multitude of factors that effect game sales.
MEA's sales were less because it just isn't a good game. And this isn't early 2000's anymore. A mediocre game with shitty bugs will have it's reputation spread quickly though social media. Which will turn people off the game. The game company almost literally abandoning it after launch also affects player's trust in the game. Particularly given that Mass Effect has always had at least 1 or 2 DLC that added to the game world and plot. And they set up said DLC in the game with the Quarian Ark contact and then did nothing with it but write a book.
The rise of skywalker made so much less money because it was a shit movie. With plot twists so fucking stupid that it makes the worst M Night movie look like pure genius by comparison. The Original Trilogy and the Prequels all had a consistent story line that was told across all 3 respective movies. The sequels didn't have a unified story and were as much cut and past across two different director's ideas. You do not literally undo the ending to one movie and the entire point of the 2 previous ones without getting a lot of shit for bad writing and 100% reliant on nostalgia rather then story telling.
Andromeda suffered from being a medicore game that launched with bugs that didn't make it worth money and was very publically abandoned by the game developer shortly after release. Rise of Skywalker was a shitty movie that shows the issue of having two directors with two different ideas and no clearly cut story set out. Hence the whole undoing Vader's redemption and rendering Snoke even more fucking pointless and the M Night level stupid twist on Rey's parentage was just fucking stupid.
Oh do you think they are a larger amount? Because I don't believe that screaming children make up the majority of Mass Effect's audience.
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Post by Polka Dot on Feb 20, 2020 19:23:42 GMT
I don't know of any particular reason why they'd need to try to make mobile games from their existing IPs. You've already got the Dragon Age one. They'd made a couple of Mass Effect ones, too. Remember Jacob's game? Also, an existing IP has more of a chance to a new IP, because the existing IP at least has a following. It's why bethesda made Blades, or what's it called, an Elder Scrolls game. I vaguely recall seeing some DA (?) something or other on facebook years ago. It was... lame. I suspect those tie-ins were primarily intended to draw attention to the IP, though - not necessarily to be great stand-alone gaming experiences. I'm afraid that if you did much with the IPs on mobile, anyone who likes the mobile versions might come to expect similar experiences from the AAA releases - and what I have in mind is much more modest. I'm thinking Angry Birds. Take some concepts / gameplay loops that were sound on their own, but just didn't fit into the plans for their current major IPs, and make a small mobile game out of it. Offer it at a moderate price, then re-skin it giving it a different name, iconography, verbiage and offer that F2P, and see which one gains more traction/revenue. Lather, rinse repeat. It's not unusual for creatives to have a vast store of unused, partially-to-fully-developed-but-never-released assets laying around. Some of them could be used to build a small scale something.
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