Mass Effect Andromeda Skepticism thread

Dutch's ghost is that you?

Ugh, I hate walking pneumonia.

I want to thank the more extremely insistent CDPR fans for making sure that I never play TW3.  It's nothing against the folks that enjoyed the game.   I'm talking about the ones that bring up TW3 at the drop of a hat.  I'm sure it's a fine game and I've heard good things about it. Particularly the sidequests. I've read people that weren't thrilled with TW3 admit to that. I'm curious.

However, after years now of being told I'm a "fanboy" and that I "haven't played a real RPG" unless I played TW3 on various BW forums , I have zero interest. I think my favorite on the old forum was being told that DA:I was for "drooling bucketheads. Besides, I'd rather play Cyberpunk than TW any day. It looks far more interesting than the Witcher series. I hope CDPR remembers that they announced that they were working on that game before the Witcher.

Look, DA:I did well financially. They may not have released numbers, but the investors were reportedly happy. Lying to investors is a no-no, so I have no reason to doubt the game's success. Remember, CDPR got into trouble with the Polish government for releasing their numbers. Whether or not a person thinks that DA:I deserved the GOTY awards is up to them. I love DA:I, but I'm not touching that debate with a ten meter pole.

DA:I is my favorite DA game, but I'm not going to tell someone that they are wrong for disliking it. We're all RPG fans and I'm enjoying the variety for once. I remember when there wasn't jack shit for RPGs. All that I would ask is for the same respect given to BioWare fans on a BioWare forum.

RPG mechanics don't make for great teaser trailers. If they showed off RPG mechanics, the menus would've taken up the length of both trailers. No game ever shows off its true scope with their two or three minute trailers; they usually have 10-30 minute playthroughs, sometimes even longer, where they show off the true breadth of their gameplay and environments. Andromeda hasn't had those yet. When we get to those, if Bioware never shows off the traditional RPG stuff, then you can complain.

Until then, there's nothing to complain about. The Shepard trilogy followed the same path in regards to its marketing; the difference is that their marketing went over a longer period of time. Companies don't spend years marketing their games anymore; it just leads to burning consumers. It's what happened with Ubisoft and Watch Dogs (notice how the coverage for WD2 was a lot shorter and entirely different), and it's what happened with Final Fantasy Versus 13 turned Final Fantasy 15.

They put out a trailer once the game changed names, tossed out nuggets every so often to remind people that it wasn't vaporware, but once the marketing truly kicked off, they showed snippets of combat a bunch of times before they started showing off the mechanics and the world and the characters.

Bioware and EA aren't putting out these trailers for you, the person who's played the trilogy; these are trailers for the newcomers to the franchise because they're not going to stop and pay attention based on footage of stats and menus; they're going to stop and pay attention from the gameplay. And once the gameplay grabs them, they'll stick around and pay attention to everything else. You already know what the franchise is about, Bioware and EA know you already know what the franchise is about. If you see a flicker of a menu in a trailer that's all about gameplay, it's not because the menu is a flicker, it's to point out to you that "hey, that stuff you like is still there, and we'll be telling you about it later." This is also why various people within Bioware have gone on twitter to say that they'll be showing off that kind of stuff and talking about that kind of stuff later.

You may not like it, you don't have to like it, but that's how they draw people in for damn near every game you've ever played. The only difference between those games and Mass Effect is your perspective on them. You could like Call of Duty, you could like Super Mario, and you could like Splinter Cell, but you're not on a message board dedicated to any of those, constantly engaging with a community of like minded individuals and occasionally doing the same with the development team. You're more invested, and when you don't see what you expect to see without the perspective to see that they're not going to throw out everything at once, that's when the disappointment and apprehension starts to set in.

Interesting thought. And I got this feeling...

...yyyyyup.

I almost didn't play it because of those twats. And yeah, sure. It's not bad. But uh... Yeah. If it weren't packed bursting with Slavic mythology, I probably still wouldn't touch it myself. It stopped being good for me once they switched from the medieval central Europe setting of Velen/White Orchard/Novigrad to wannabe Vikings on Skellige. I finished Hearts of Stone because they were interesting, and Blood and Wine because it was just like them old fairy tales I was told as a kid. Except for Arachnomorphs... Skolopendro-whatever-the-fuck-it-actually-was-morphs aka giant centipedes and Archspores. That put me off for an entire week, while in a game I truly enjoyed beyond the background (Whoops! It was actually DA: Origins!) I got over my fears real, real fast.

So sure. It's good. Not the holy fucking grail or anything though.

Hu? I didn't play TW3 yet, because the first two games sucked balls.

I look to the days when Witcher 3 isn't a plague on discussions on any and all gaming forums.

When it becomes irrelevant, and that is never. It did some things better than any RPG ever  and pushed some boundries in the RPG genre. Mainly techincal ones and world building related.

I want to thank the more extremely insistent CDPR fans for making sure that I never play TW3.  It's nothing against the folks that enjoyed the game.   I'm talking about the ones that bring up TW3 at the drop of a hat.  I'm sure it's a fine game and I've heard good things about it. Particularly the sidequests. I've read people that weren't thrilled with TW3 admit to that. I'm curious.

1. Dutch makes a thread.
2. Numerous posters take the bait.
3. Dutch makes more threads.
4. Profit??