Ian Frazier speaks to IBTimes UK (April 15, 2017)

My perspective on bioware shutting down their own forums: personally it's the most "unbioware" thing they could've done. Why? Because if you seriously look into how often they responded to feedback you'd legitimately see they do so better than various other devs, and because of that it's why I liked them better than most devs as it was a huge fan service. Removing their forums just dropped that chances. I could care less of the toxicity those forums had as its bioware taking the easy road while handicapping us if you ask me, plus it's their jobs to deal with people that are jackasses whether they like it or not. Fuck it if I'm going to get on twitter where I'm unable to put paragraphs of feedback to them, fuck it if I'm going to go to reddit where you get nothing but downvoted for speaking anything at all negatively about their games (why I've always disapproved of forums using the like/dislike systems as people will try to use that to their advantage "oh more people "like" what I say over you" lol please.

Seriously though, I viewed that event as a serious negative to bioware, they just limited us overall on how we can give feedback, and ultimately I think they seriously underestimated how much people cared about the old forums being how people took it upon themselves to start up these fan forums and you had people promoting them to keep it up.

As for them using ME1 as their baseline for Andromeda: there's nothing wrong with them using that game as a base, but I feel they copy and pasted so much from that game into this one. The tempest can be argued as the Normandy 3.0, the nexus as the citadel 2.0, and the list can go on as I see in many threads where people have referenced Andromeda copying ME1. I myself can agree to an extent, as one poster said, Andromeda is trying to out-do ME1 rather than trying to be its own game to separate it from ME1. I applaud them for trying to implement a crafting system, trying to add in an actual inventory system, making exploration a part of mass effect again since 2+3 removed it, but they fell short on those. They're so disorganized, implemented incorrectly where one can question why even bother if you won't do it correctly? I loved Andromedas ideal concept and what bioware was wanting the goal to be, as the original view of Andromeda to me was taking mass effect back to its original roots that 2+3 went away from, but because of the shortcomings it invites a lot of criticism which we all know the game has recieved. Had it done things right, I think things could've gone better and the game would've been accepted easier. I'm hoping and I'm optimistic the sequal should only get better, this new group now has a full game under their belt, they've now good an understanding of the frost bite 3 engine and the next gen consoles and they've now got feedback on what we like and dislike. Hopefully that can all add up to the next being better and maybe the next game won't have people leaving mid project resulting in a smoother transition. I don't want them to abandon their baseline as this game even though it's flawed, has a hell of a foundation set in place.