How well is MEA selling?

Never said his opinions wasn't legit (I even agreed with him on one).  I just stated that some of the comparisons were not really fair and that he needed to expand on the story reason (which even the poster sorta admitted to)

It would be better that people just don't assume things.

wow, that is a LOT of wishful thinking.

this would actually make for a good discussion in a separate thread as how people interpret characters and story can be quite diverse and subjective.

I would disagree with you on ME:A though as the game did give me the feeling of exploring new environments and I'm not a fan of what people deem "MMO-like Grindy quests"

For myself Legion didn't really click with me until ME3, though that may be because I normally don't get him until near the end game so I have never had him in my team for long.  Samara was a bit dry (due to how she sees things as black and white) but in ME3 her character really stood out when she "flinched" as they say in game.

For the other side Drack and Vetra feel very well done as I got a good sense from each of them throughout the game, my main criticism may be that the pacing is a little stilted as some events are tied to main story plots and with how open the game world is it could be some time between those moments depending on how you play the game.

Wishing for what exactly?
MEA is an insult to the franchise name imo. Doesn't mean I believe it is for the majority of people. I've seen so many games I consider outright trash sell millions. I'm simply suggesting that those who expect the game to be a commercial failure because it is a creative failure, may be surprised.

We'll never know how profitable MEA turned out to be, EA won't tell. What I personally wish is not necessarily the reality. So not wishful thinking, more the prediction of the exact opposite.

Here's an Ars Technica article on how digital game sales calculation has changed:



arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/the-us-game-industry-is-a-lot-bigger-and-less-physical-than-we-thought/

If it's truly not meeting EA's expectations, that puts them in a tough spot: put more faith and resources into a flailing franchise, or can it and start another IP. Neither of which are appealing propositions to a publisher. The bad part for us is if they ditch ME, that leaves only one RPG left from them.

From the About:BioWare
I am so confused. WTF happened, Biovar plox.

Most of these conversations are.

After all, EA got our money already

All the SJW whiners make me laugh because attributing the shittiness of this game to SJWs is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The game sucks because the writing sucks. Is an SJW the writer? Maybe. But did that make the bad writing bad? I don't really see how lack interesting characters is an SJW thing. Or a story that doesn't delve into more interesting things and just has you drive around planets turning on vaults. Is that SJW? I don't see any kind of political correctness tainting any of this. Political correctness did NOT ruin this game. Bad writing did it. Specific things in the writing that ruined this game are:

1. Kett barely fleshed out. Please show me how this relates to SJW?
2. Boring, flat characters. Please tell me how this specifically relates to SJW rather than just bad writing. They weren't boring because of political correctness. They were boring because they were not fleshed out enough and they were to some degree rip offs of ME1 so there was not even a fresh approach to them. Nothing about them is feminist or SJW trying to push any kind of agenda. They just suck because they lack any dimension whatsoever. One note characters are dull as hell. Drack is three notes - cares about his people, cares about kesh, likes to fight and he is one of the more interesting characters in the game.
3. Boring expansive empty open worlds. Please, please, please explain to me how boring maps equates to SJW influence.
4. Too many load screens due to too much back and forth shuttling to planets.
5. Boring, cartoonish villain who just wants to grab power and destroy worlds. Sorry but that is just bad writing
6. Shitty CC - okay that might look like SJW but more likely that was about BW trying to get more dollars because USA is not the only country they sell in and they want to appeal to more markets in more countries. So if you want to blame anything, blame capitalism because that is far more of an influence in what we are seeing than some political agenda. In this day and age when you have companies that sell to the whole world and to people who are considered 'minorities' because they are LGBT or not caucasian, losing their money because they aren't appealing to their needs is just bad business. That is not an SJW agenda. It's a freaking financial one. Realize that and stop thinking it is SJW when it is not. If a company wants to make money then they had damn well better represent people from all walks of life (races, sexuality, whatever). Otherwise people will shun their product in search of another one where they can relate. And none of this cosmetic stuff really impacted how bad the game was. People still made good looking Ryders.

Get over the SJW scapegoat because it shows a true lack of intelligence and more importantly of the understanding of what it takes to work in and profit from global markets. This is an immersive RP game. If they removed male ryders, sales would drop, yes? Well the same is true for not representing all races and the LGBT. It's got not one damn thing to do with SJWs and everything to do with capitalism. So if you don't like what happens when BW tries to make their product more global and easy to relate to for everyone rather than just straight white males, then maybe you should become a socialist nazi and move to some red country where capitalism is not the god of all. Till then, stop whining that this is on SJWs and start realizing that this is about making money. Nothing more. Call it pandering if you wish, but be intelligent enough to realize that the pandering is for money and not to push some special social agenda. If there were a motivation here it would be greed.

Yay, constructive anwswer

1) Yes, I planned on starting a thread about writing in MEA and analyze all the layers of it, but it would require a lot of time and probably better fluency in english language than mine . Characters and story certainly are connected to each other but it should be quite easy to see what was writers primary focus.

2) Only MMO I've played is Bioware's SWTOR and MEA's quest design is very similar. You have your (main) class quest, there are major planetary quests and a lot of side quest with some little story attached to it. They are all rather loosely connected but you get plenty of cinematic cut-scenes (more than in MEA) and good old paragon-renegade wheel (light side\dark side in this case). Your decisions matter but you rarely see their consequences later on.

3-4) Yeah, that's where the subjective part starts . Everyone will have their own preferences, that doesn't mean other characters are badly written. In ME2 they did great job in presenting them in a unique way right from the start.




Watch just a couple of seconds. You can hear the music, you can see the background, his gestures, and the cigarette- this way you learn a lot about this character before he even starts speaking.




Meeting Mordin was more subtle, but distinctive enough so you could remember him right away.  

In MEA companions aren't bad, but they are not as good as they were in ME2 and ME3. Their introductions are not that thought out (Peebee stands out), you rarely get any group scenes etc. You have to dig quite deep to get something out of them, and it seems that at least half of their dialogues are in form of banter, which gets constantly interupted and requires swaping them quite often- otherwise you'll miss out.

PS. As for Legion- if you get him late, then unfortunatly you barely get any occasions to talk to him and he doesn't get much screentime overall. This way his conflict with Tali also seems rather forced.

Isn't that like the BSN golden rule?

I think bioware does listen to what their fans say