Mass Effect News Thread

It's probably the thing that is hardest to discuss, given that any lore reveal can inadvertently turn into a spoiler.

One game from one publisher soured you on an entire industry?

They are always willing to hear feedback, and realize that some of it will be hard to hear. I've been around the BioWare forums for over a decade, now. Far too many fans no longer communicate dissatisfaction in an acceptable, decent manner. No one should have to hang around and be called trash by those who know nothing of the actual craft.

I miss the days when we interacted with them more, but I understand why it's no longer the case. The fact that they still listen, even when not conversing directly, is patently obvious. Fan desires are always adapted into each new game (often to its detriment, in my opinion).

You were around for the ME3 debacle. I hate the endings, but do you really think anyone should hang out and be abused like that? DA2 was nasty, as well. MEA may not be the game many wanted, but should they come here to be trashed by accountants, grocery baggers, lawyers or whoever else thinks they're qualified to give game design input? If fans say, "I like/dislike A for X reason", that's helpful. The nonsense trolling, though, in which YouTube-educated amateurs try to tell them their craft is not helpful. Sadly, we see much more of the latter these days. I can't blame them for their reticence to interact, since some nasty little jerks are always lurking, ready to attack, no matter the game. Those are the ones to blame, as Charles says.

Edit: I want to make clear that I'm targeting no one with this opinion; nor do I have particularly strong feelings about it. I've used the words I used because they're accurate. There's no bile or rancor intended in this post.

There's a difference between bad product or consumer dissatisfaction and throwing tantrums at whoever is deemed responsible or worse. Nobody said people have to like stuff or cease constructive criticism in order for devs to be comfortable with what they're doing or sharing it - just minimize the toxicity.

It's not a healthy environment when people get death threats for something as minor as changing parameters on a weapon, or witch hunt because someone deemed one person as responsible for bad animations, or existence of thousands of entitled Dunning-Kruger 'experts' willing to tear something apart and tell how much they'd be better at it.

No, that's the point - it's not a normal reaction. There are many industries or companies that release crappy products, some of them even dangerous or affecting life more than just how we spend our free time, and the consumers don't heap abuse at them with such frequency or ferocity.  The thread even compares how it's different for game and movie industries and we know that movie industry is oftentimes sacrificing quality for quick buck, yet people don't lose their sh*t as much as when something's wrong with the game.

And while many new avenues have opened to many games developers thanks to things like crowdfunding, ask yourself how many AAA games have been crowdfunded yet, how many of them have been released on free engine or whether crowdfunding brings only success? Last time I checked, there were quite a few crowdfunded game failures, some of them quite spectacular.

It's another Dunning-Kruger area. "Well if that retro platformer can be crowdfunded, it means that AAA games can too!".

The biggest game I know of that has been crowdfunded is Star Citizen MMO and the game is still in development hell. Was supposed to be released in 2014, then in 2016... as of now, there's no release date. I wish the game luck, but so far it seems that it's been affected by crowdfunding milestones disease.

I would disagree, there are lots of great indies on Steam which i occasionally play, and there are known indie devs, and there is lots of hate in movie industry too, like with Netflix messing up a known title, you just don't see it as much because there are obviously not many movie forums as there are for games, and when the industry spends millions messing up an established title as opposed to something new, you can expect lots of hate.

No updates for Star Citizen?

Not that I know of. In fact, they've been targeted by a hoax, a bit like Bioware not that long ago. Seems to be a new past-time for trolls :/

That's true, but they could always focus the Q&A sessions on a specific setting/book/etc, and perhaps add a warning when entering the Q&A thread that says "This thread may contain full spoilers for [GAME/BOOK]" and give the option to enter the thread or return to the forum it was in. They could announce that they're going to do an answer session for lore questions on the forum and invite people to post up their questions, and then they could pick a whole bunch of them to answer on the day that they decide to do it. The only way to get a decent and well-meaning discourse going again is for them to take a step forward and embrace those who speak to them in a normal civil fashion, with everything that's happened with Andromeda it is no wonder that people are being sour (even if they are going overboard about it), but it doesn't help to hide back because of the idiots out there. Ignore the idiots, embrace the decent folk.

Though tbh, by this point, anyone wanting to do a lore Q&A for Mass Effect likely has already played the trilogy. The spoiler warnings should apply mostly to Andromeda content. 

Evocatus is a former Roman soldier with completed tour of duty who is enlisting again. Burning down refers to eliminating bugs I guess. What the one has to do with the other - I don't know.