Mass Effect Andromeda multiplayer Q&A

Nov 26, 2016 0:02:03 GMT SalMasRac said:

As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  I'm the first to say that devs should stand by their vision of their own game, they know better than anyone else what it is and should be.  Capitulating to some of the hair-brained stupid ideas some people have to "improve" the game has ruined too many to count in my lifetime.  On the other hand, devs need to be open to true, well thought out suggestions by people who actually know wtf they are talking about.  The trick is to identify who is who.

But you need forums and community reps to do that.  Take those out of the equation and you eliminate the potential for constructive feedback which could have possibly made things better for everyone.

Yeah I have seen games go down the toilet because the devs listened to a vocal minority. It is perhaps challenging to identify who is who, although frankly it would be enough for devs themselves to actually think about what they are making. Currently I don't think enough time is spent thinking about what they are doing. Like with Prestige, someone somewhere things 'yeah, people are gonna LOVE this, they can promote their characters and get moar powah'. But no one actually stopped for 2 second to think 'hang on...this would make it impossible to balance the difficulty'.

Perhaps it's just a minority who want a balanced game though.

Nov 26, 2016 3:40:41 GMT Cyberzombie said:

Yeah I have seen games go down the toilet because the devs listened to a vocal minority. It is perhaps challenging to identify who is who, although frankly it would be enough for devs themselves to actually think about what they are making. Currently I don't think enough time is spent thinking about what they are doing. Like with Prestige, someone somewhere things 'yeah, people are gonna LOVE this, they can promote their characters and get moar powah'. But no one actually stopped for 2 second to think 'hang on...this would make it impossible to balance the difficulty'.

Perhaps it's just a minority who want a balanced game though.

I might be mistaken, but I think the promotion system is in response to more of an industry at large trend, rather than specific to the ME audience. From my short brash-up with the gaming outside BioWARE, the gaming companies cash in on the games by willingly creating a power gap between the BiS characters and the start-out characters in the modes that give a clear feedback on performance. Then, this gap can be closed by an unreasonable time-investment, than can be shortened by either the overall gaming skill (including the networking) or paying.

From what I see this model actually holds more appeal in general than the model where everyone gets nearly the same "stuff", or at least it has an appeal to a certain category of consummate gamers. I am not really sure they are a minority. I often feel they actually are the majority, and a vocal one at that.

It seems that SWTOR just got put on the grind rails after its generous democratic period, and I am guessing that Andromeda is going to be like that after the ME3MP.

As long as it is not so impossibly hard that it is basically feels hopeless appealing to the competitiveness of human nature and desire for acquisition, is not a bad thing. I am curious to see if the BioEA manages to hit the sweet spot and handle the player stratification well. I have never seen it to work well yet, but my experience is very limited.

It's hard to balance player retention vs. player recruitment.

If I were to ask anything more in this respect (I have no access to Twitter, so I am not sure if there is an alternative way to communicate the questions to the team), it would be how they are planning to approach the new player recruitment and what mechanisms they have in place for a new player that is way behind the promotion spiral. Do they have any mechanisms in place that have DR on playing prolonged periods of time on a daily basis or plateau promotions? The catch-up XP and credits gains for those people who do not play every day or play short daily sessions ( hours)? Do they plan to keep increasing XP/credits gains as the game matures on the entry-levels? Do they have mechanisms to foster mentorship, cooperation and goodwill to newbs, such as bonuses for the high level players to mentor and take the new players through the low tier games? if they are putting the grind in, I would prefer them to take player stratification seriously, and address it from the get go.