EA, let me help you, here is how you save the Mass Effect franchise.

Sorry I missed this the other day.



Again, an overstatement. "Literally 'can't get there from here'" doesn't actually apply to very many places in the galaxy. It wasn't said to be impossible to go places where the relays couldn't go. Merely impractical. For instance, the journey to Ilos had been ruled out as impractical. Relevant part from the Codex:



Given a good enough reason to get there, it could be done. Returning to the bus-walking analogy, there's no point reached by the New York bus and subway system that I physically can't reach on foot, but a lot of those destinations wouldn't be practical. (I can walk to the Cloisters, but I can't do it and actually have time to explore the museum. Nor could I get to the Rockaways in time to surf, even if I could carry a board. )



Totally unreachable is simply false. 100 light-years is doable by standard FTL drive too. You'd take longer and maybe need a fuel scoop, but it's doable. Unless you're positing 100 light-years with no possible drive discharge points in between? That's not at all likely given typical star distributions.



Exactly which persons wouldn't care? The vast majority of places anyone would want to go are reachable by the network. At the moment the ODSY drive is invented, there are still a fair number of garden worlds available connected to the network. (Worlds like 2175 Aeia can't be all that rare or Aeia would have been revisited.) And when they run out the Citadel races can open up more relays. Relying on keeping the relays locked was always kind of silly, and this would become even more obvious once ODSY drives become available.

Garden worlds which aren't close to the network would always be at an economic disadvantage relative to worlds which are, given the increased shipping costs. I suppose some of them would develop anyway, but this would take decades or centuries. It's of no relevance to the period covered by the trilogy. Post-trilogy, we have an open question about how long the relay system would be down for. If it's a long period then off-network worlds become competitive.

Inquisition was heavily discounted within a few months after launch. But comparing those games to Bioware RPGs isn't exactly apples to apples.

It could've been a loss leader, although I don't think so. You're right, the game isn't selling, and hasn't for quite a while.

If you really want to save the ME franchise then you have to come up with a way were EA can make loads and loads of money by sticking with it.

Andromeda has no soul. That is the difference. They (writers and developers) did not have the competence to follow and give continuity to the emotions that Shepard and his companions had.
So..if Mass Effect wants to survive has to recover those feelings back.
I m pretty sure that there are writers that can and r good enough to do that. If its by reviving the old characters or creating new ones or trying to interlink old with news..i m sure there r many ways...imagination has no limits.
One thing i know..this characters r not going anywhere. Mass Effect is finished if they insist to follow this path.
My fear is that Andromeda failure was so big that they re going to give it up on this fantastic universe that was created with the first trilogy.

The problem, of course, is that nobody has a useful operational definition of "soul," and thus there's no way to know in advance whether your production plan budgets for enough "soul."

Not centuries.  Decades.  At most.  The Milky Way is only 100,000 light years in diameter.  With an ODSY drive, all the stars in the galaxy are reachable within a human lifetime.  And while the Council might clamp down on such exploration, it's not like there's a whole lot they could do about it once the genie's out of the bottle.  You can keep on eye on relays, but every shipyard out there?  Heck, Cerberus built a fleet of warships under the nose of the Council!

Even if the relay network is "better", you think there wouldn't be people willing to risk going off the beaten path?  MEA is all about tens of thousands of people willing to leave the freaking galaxy for greener pastures!  You think there wouldn't be even more willing to see what's just over the next hill?

But that's true...of course we all have different opinions. You may being ironic but your statement is correct.
That's why i talked here or in another post that, most of the time, the simple things are the ones who makes a story to have the power to touch people feelings.
In my opinion Andromeda failed in this aspect.
Sometimes i think if this simple thing as in first trilogy "we" were defending earth made the difference? i don t know..i think it was this and some more simple and small details that made Shepard inspiring and Ryder (or andromeda if you prefer) without soul.
I think this small details were the cause.

 

Decades for a few colonies? Sure; I should have specified significant colonies. It will be centuries before ODSY-dependent worlds amount to anything more than a rounding error in terms of the galactic population and economy. After three decades 99.5+ percent of humans still live in Sol system, and that's mostly on worlds which used the superior relay system for colonization.

What percentage of the population will not only move to new worlds in a few decades, but move to new worlds with crippled transportation relative to colony worlds that are attached to the network?




Some? Sure. Bad transportation becomes a feature rather than a bug when you're trying to get away from civilization. There were American pioneers who packed up and moved on as soon as the railroad came to town. But until the railroad got to those towns, those places stayed backwaters. And, again, the ODSY drive doesn't make any MW stars reachable which weren't reachable before via conventional FTL and fuel scooping.  It simply makes it somewhat easier to reach those stars.

You seem to be making a big deal about some millions of colonists being able to go off the grid while leaving billions on the grid. I'm not denying that this will happen, or that it's a change. I'm just not seeing the problem with it happening.

It's interesting to try and work out how long it will take to chart the entire galaxy,  but 100 billion stars means that there are an awful lot of systems to visit.

Sure we do. We may not have a good working definition for a/the soul but if it ain't got soul, it ain't got:



Edit: I realize, OTOH, that the phrase "Andromeda has no soul" can be read to convey either meaning...

Hmm... what did that have to do with what I was saying? I suppose if a judge really wants to toss your ass in jail for refusing to play his language game, he can, but that doesn't mean that the game is objectively true. It just means that he has power.

So far Scathane's got the only workable definition of "soul" here, and I don't see how it helps devs add more "soul."