Rate The Marketing

Uhm...wut? First person shooter engine (with some officially built-in TP support) is not optimized for a... third person shooter game? Really?...

Also, apparently you have not the slightest idea about how engines work and what they are capable of. Just for you to know the genre has nothing to do with it, e.g. Lineage2 is a fantasy open-world-like MMO sharing the engine with Unreal Tournament (and, technically, Mass Effect too, yeah).


Nothing like that, it's just you're trying to defend somethign that can't be excused. ME could look so much better than what we've seen so far. When it doesn't it can mean two things 1. they have nothing better to show us 2. it's not that bad, but they make it look bad.

Not sure about what you mean by 'mechanics' but whatever that is - it does not have anything to do with design and models. Not to mention that those 'mechanics' in our case are pretty much similar = 'point-n-shoot', and no amount of dialogues and romance scenes can change that.

From what I remember DAI team did have to jump through some hoops (like with huge\long beasts and dragons - there was something about their hitboxes, which resulted in 'hit the limb\tail\head' design), but that's DA, and that's 3++ years ago. Have in mind that MEA team did not have to redo the huge amount of work and reinvent the devtools which had already been done during the DAI production. All in all - 'but that's a new engine' excuse won't work well for MEA. And don't forget that MEA is not supposed to handle heavy multiplayer combat, which BF does (with all those nice looks and cool action).

Exactly, recorded covertly on someone's cellphone - it wasn't part of the marketing campaign.

Nope, it was 3 months pre-release: July 9th to October 7th.
DAI was delayed by 6 weeks later on (from October 7th to November 18th), but at the time the gameplay was shared, it was 3 months to launch.

Whilst the Game Awards gameplay footage was shorter, it was shared slightly earlier (3 months 3 weeks to launch) but fairly consistent in terms of timing.

I don't know how successful the marketing campaign will be, it will be judged on sales after all,
but we'll know soon enough and other companies will either emulate of avoid this approach depending on what happens. 

There was a commercial?  

Honestly, I don't think anything's really been shown to excite anyone who wasn't already a ME fan.

Now imagine you're someone who felt really burned by ME3 and not sure you want to continue with this IP.

Or heck, someone who's never played a Mass Effect game and doesn't know what the big deal is.

Are they counting on "SHOOTER!" and "EXPLORATION!" alone to sell millions of copies?

[/ol][/ul]
This makes MEA BioWare's most marketed game to date in terms of trailer numbers up to 1 month out,
and second to DAI in total content, but still double Mass Effect 3.

Gameplay content is probably a difference, DAI did have the 30-minute gameplay 3 months out, and characters were revealed more fully, and Mass Effect 3 had a gameplay sequence 7 months out. Though the upset over the 'Crestwood-gate' leak would understandably deter BioWare from early gameplay reveals in future.

So my question would be, has our expectation of 'rolling reveals' for games increased?
Is our expectation set by other games?
Because the facts and the idea of 'MEA being quietly marketed' don't seem to quite match up.

EDIT: Adding total trailer runtimes to the above...[/quote]

At the very least I think it shows a shift in BioWare's marketing. While ME:A has had plenty of trailer time, we still know relatively little about the game compared to other games on the list. It's indicative of their marketing focusing more on advertising the game than going into details about the game.

I'm not sure how much gameplay videos actually help their marketing over the risk of something like Crestwood happening again(although by now the game's content has to be finalized otherwise it wouldn't make release in a month). I wouldn't be surprised if it played a part in us seeing so little early on, as they don't really lose much by not showing us gameplay that far out when changes are most likely still going to happen.

I think the expectation/want around here is that we want to see the details of the game because most of us are already interested in the game and many of us have pre-ordered it already, which is what BioWare has sort of shifted their focus away from in their marketing.

Of course as much as most of us would probably love more details and a longer uncut gameplay trailer, the marketing typically isn't aimed at the more dedicated of the fanbase which is what we largely are.

Looking back at the gameplay trailer and the CES video the longest bit of combat that we see without cuts is about 45 seconds long(one in the gameplay trailer at 2:33 and the last half of the CES trailer).

[/ol][/ul]
This makes MEA BioWare's most marketed game to date in terms of trailer numbers up to 1 month out,
and second to DAI in total content, but still double Mass Effect 3.

Gameplay content is probably a difference, DAI did have the 30-minute gameplay 3 months out, and characters were revealed more fully, and Mass Effect 3 had a gameplay sequence 7 months out. Though the upset over the 'Crestwood-gate' leak would understandably deter BioWare from early gameplay reveals in future.

So my question would be, has our expectation of 'rolling reveals' for games increased?
Is our expectation set by other games?
Because the facts and the idea of 'MEA being quietly marketed' don't seem to quite match up.

EDIT: Adding total trailer runtimes to the above...[/quote]I'm afraid you're going to have to show your work on how you came up with 16 trailers for MEA...[/quote]I think I said 14, but you can add several more BioWare Base videos:

1. Mass Effect Andromeda E3 2015 Announce Trailer June 15th 2015
2. MASS EFFECT™ Official Video – N7 Day 2015
3. Mass Effect Andromeda EA Play trailer June 12th 2016
4. Mass Effect Andromeda 4K Tech demo Sept 7th 2016
5. Andromeda Initiative (Introduction) Nov 1st 2016
6. MASS EFFECT: Andromeda - Initiative Briefing / Welcome / Orientation 
7. MASS EFFECT™: ANDROMEDA – Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer – N7 Day 2016
8. Mass Effect Andromeda Gameplay Trailer Dec 1st 2016
9. MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA Arks and Nexus Trailer (Nexus Citadel Footage)
10. Mass Effect Andromeda CES trailer Jan 4th 2017
11. Andromeda Initiative: Tempest and Nomad Briefing - Mass Effect: Andromeda
12. MASS EFFECT™: ANDROMEDA – Official Cinematic Trailer #2
    
13. MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA Pathfinder Team Briefing Trailer (Meet Your Crew Members)
14. Mass Effect (Playstation) Pre-Order Trailer

[/ol][/ul][/quote]


Non-gameplay videos count as marketing material, I unfortunately I agree with that. But what about Twitch stream videos showing raw and unedited gameplay footage, do they also count as marketing material? If so, there had been quite a few hours of DAI gameplay videos on Twitch about a month or so before it came out. Such as this and this other one, among others.

I voted "could be better". I like surprises in games and not knowing every little detail. However I feel like there's still so much that we don't know that's important. For example crafting, exploring, who's romancable, and more examples of dialogue wheel and interrupts. If I knew more about some of these I'd feel even better and more confident about the game then I do now.

The marketing has been pretty bad imo. BioWare is trying to be teasing and coy, but I've met every new revelation so far with, "Okay, looks cool. What else is there?" I was excited for Andromeda a while back, but it simply took too long for the hype to even begin, and the hype itself, while well-produced, hasn't piqued my interest.

That gets into what the game is hyped to offer. Travel to another galaxy, explore planets, fight humanoid aliens because that's the easiest way to re-use physical animations. Yay, I guess. There's no over-arching threat; so we're just going to Andromeda to - mess around and do random stuff? Shepard was made special by touching the Prothean beacon; I haven't heard anything about Scott or Sarah that makes them stand out other than, "They're the Pathfinder." It all feels incredibly impersonal - at least to me - which is the anti-thesis of what a Mass Effect game should be.


This isn't even touching the variety of inconsistencies between the old games and new one which are already bugging me (and I haven't even played the game yet). And now I'm hearing a rumor via Gamingbolt that, according to Mike Gamble, Andromeda will be "more casual in nature." What in the ever-living ****. The marketing was supposed to convince me to pre-order, and instead it's dampened the excitement I had. So on that level it's a massive fail.

Containing information of either a story or gameplay perspective, with little or no duplication of previous trailers.

I mean, come on!  With DAI, we knew about the Mark and the Breach, why the Inquisition was formed!

Less than six weeks til release, and the only reason I've heard for why the Andromeda Initiative was formed was "A bunch of hipsters decided the Milky Way was too mainstream" 

Should we have known that? I'm just fine with being surprised by things which surprise my PC.