Why the Andromeda gameplay trailer worries me

I still don't understand what "the failings of DAI" are. I thought that was a fantastic game! I could nitpick a few small things, but you can do that with even the greatest games.

That said, I agree with your crafting comment, about it being tedious to collect the ingredients. That process needs to be automated, and Mass Effect could pull that off by having you send your crew on extensive collection missions, rather than you doing it yourself. I really hope they did this.

I mentioned in another thread that I don't believe the Quarians will be in Andromeda, but most people thought otherwise.

Right.  If I overheard someone mention a game was "too much like DAI" I'd be at the check out stand within thirty six seconds with two copies.

I love crafting, love it.  I hope Andromeda has a gear crafting option as extensive as Inquisition's was.

Alright I thinkI need to clarify what I mean by what's wrong with scanning. It seems to me that when you scan in MEA you call up a screen, point at a glowing object and then the game tells you "oh that's an ambush" or such and then you continue with the mission. I would argue that this isn't gameplay, it is at most an interactive cutscene. Gameplay, as I would define it, is where you have a legitimate challenge that you have to overcome. Think of detective vision in batman for example, it shows you enemies and airvents and routes etc. but it doesn't actually disable the baddies for you does it? You have to overcome that challenge. What I disliked in mass effect and dragonage where this long periods where you would run from place to place (think the batarian hacker on the citadel mission) to find a fixed point that you simply pressed A in front of and then moved on, that's just boring busy work/filler and I am worried that the lack of attention to new systems and features (certainly I would think that if they had new interesting systems in store they would advertise it) means that MEA is going to be rather full of DAI's rather tedious filler.

Also, about crafting, I'm arguing that the process of gathering materials is tedious, the act of crafting is fine, i have little problem with the system when it can to the actual making of items, but grinding for the stuff to do so, actually grinding in general i feel as no place in a single player game. in a way, the witcher worked around the system n the sense that crafting material was everywhere and you would gather hoards of materials almost incidentally as you picked up loot, personally, I remember making little actual effort hunting for materials, more often than not I just already had them.

Only concern is that this could be the PS3 romance debacle all over again. PS3 started out only with ME 2, in case you don't remember. So Ashley wasn't an option. Liara didn't really come up as a romance option until the end of the game. Tali didn't really figure. That pretty much left us with Jack (no, thank you, for straight males who aren't into the alternative type), and if you didn't want Jack you only had Miranda as a viable love interest. Miranda was a great option, don't get me wrong, but for most regular straight males, she was pretty much the only real option for romance most of the game.

All I'm saying is, Cora had better be amazing. Males (Liam, Drack, Reyes/Rayas, Sam) no thanks. Females shown (Peebee, Vetra, Sloan Kelly) no thanks. Otherwise, is SisRyder named Cersei Lannister because I'm going to have to go full Jaime.

I'm no fan of the AAA industry's obsession with highlighting mechanics. In spirit, it's a good thing, allowing for otherwise obscure data (codex entries and the like) to be directly linked to the game world, and encouraging designers to dress their scenes with more detail and create mechanics around visual observation. Of course, the problem is that it's just too easy. I understand that, in games with an ever increasing amount of environmental clutter, the designers have to give players better cues as to what's pertinent (lest the player get stuck staring at pointless piles of junk), but there are far more subtle, artistic ways of doing it. Give important objects a more vibrant hue, place them in areas with clear visual cues that draw the eye, make dialog that hints at their location, etc.. All that glowey bullshit just takes away the actual gameplay of finding the objective. I don't feel accomplished after following a glorified quest marker.

And why does every developer seem to think we can't make accurate observations at anything faster than a snail's pace? The game already allows you to walk if you need to, why force it on us when we're scanning? On a similar note, why in The Wticher do CDPR deliberately impair your vision with that horrid fisheye effect, when we're required to follow otherwise invisible trails for extended periods of time. Obviously, perfect vision needs to have a drawback so we don't use it all the time, but a) maybe don't make the vision so perfect and the lack of combat ability in the mode already makes it unviable most of the time. Just let me hit the scan button once, and make the whole track visible (or at least unfold automatically as I progress).

I disagree about the crafting though. Resource collection in Inquisition was a chore, but the actual crafting was pretty cool. I was able to outfit my mage in shining armor that accumulated guard after every attack. That was pretty legit, and far more engaging than the one-dimensional craft grind in Skyrim. However, in the case of a shooter, crafting can easily go sideways. Given BioWare's history of taking a pointless and detrimental loot system and slowly turning it into a fun array of distinct weapons with interesting modifications, I'll trust that they haven't regressed in this area. Armor crafting seems like good fun though.

It's far too early to know, elements used in DAI and many games can be applied well or poorly.



Mass Effect was criticized because the armor choices were too extensive, ME2 was criticized because they weren't.

Scanning/searching/finding and crafting armor/weapons/stuff are a staple of RPGs, it is how it is implemented that counts 

There really isn't a need to be so rude. We are simply voicing concerns about certain systems and discussing how they can be implemented in a way which is fun. I believe that is called constructive criticism.

I don't see the combat of this game being any flashier than it was in ME3. My Vanguard was practically a bolt of void lightning throughout most of the game, and then made enemies pop like pinatas filled with napalm-fried pork chops with incendiary ammo and combo assplosions.

There is also gameplay shown in the 4k trailer and based on the way they discuss the game. Also we are talking about general mechanics like crafting across different games and discussing which systems worked and which didn't. What's wrong with that?

And as for DAI winning GOTY, I honestly didn't think it deserved to win. Competition for 2014 was...pretty mediocre all around if I'm to be honest. And even if it did win, the fact is that games since, Witcher 3 especially, but I'm also considering aspects of dark souls 3, ff15, fallout 4, tyranny and divinity original sin 2 all have come up with innovations that have upped the game and i think that bioware needs to be conscious of that if they want to keep up with the competition. I'm not saying copy them, but I think that all these games deserve a good hard look as there are valuable lessons here that can be learnt.

BSN is a broad forum.

• It's ok to fanboi,
• It's ok to be concerned.

Eight power limit
Poor KB&M support
Insanely long load times
Hilariously fast respawn of enemies
Pretty but pointless areas to explore
Overly strong reliance on trinity play

Yeah, Id hope they'd want to tweak that a bit rather than rest on their laurels