What we like, what we want to see improve in the next MEA game

Wow tons of constructive criticsm, that is quite enjoyable to read, even If I do not agree with everything you said, I will go for my constructive criticsm Ill copy some things I said before in other threads. I will criticize mass effect andromeda because I love it, I think its very enjoyable and genuinely good but that does not mean it cannot be better so here is the thing that comes to my mind:

-Better navigation between planets :  in just a few click we should be able to fast travel from one planet to an other, 

In dragon age inquisition, you could easily navigate from one map to an other in a snaps of a finger, three button press and one loading scree after and you are on a new map. it might not be as cool as in MEA, to go into your ship, see the travel animation from one galaxy to an other, but damn was it more useful, like WAY MORE.



In MEA you have to go to your nomad, press triangle, wait for the loading screen to go back to the tempest, then select the galaxy map, choose the planet you want to go too, THEN wait for the animation to get you at the solar system you want to go, then say you want to land on the planet, you wait for a loading screen to get you on the planet, then wait for an other loading screen because you want to fast travel on a specific point on that planet.

By the way that includes being able to reach the badlands of kadara from the tempest, not having to go to port kadara from the tempest with a loading screen, then reaching the part where you can go to the badlands from port kadara and wait for an other loading screen.



- We should be able to change our equipments on the field, not having to return to a station just to change it.


The inventory system here feel a bit useless, it was justified in the second and third mass effect that we could not change our equipments on the field because there was no inventory and everything was just corridor, so if you took something on a mission you could wear 30 minutes after, but MEA wanted to feel like the first ME with an open world and more freedom, but unfortuanetely it also included mechanics that only made sense in the second or third mass effect where the mission were quickly done and you were back on the normandy.

If you want it to be open world with an inventory system and feel more rpg, give us the freedom to wear what we have in our inventory.


- A bit more serious tone : Now don't get me wrong, I am fine with a lighter mass effect, it can't always be ultra serious and dark. It needs some lighter moments, just as jim sterling explained it his previous video : 




there needs to be a balance between light and darker moments, if not we risk to fail into darkness induced audience apathy : tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy

 Ill take witcher as an exemple, but this time as a game that has a negative aspects that goes in an extreme and mass effect andromeda that goes into the other extreme, and when its not balanced, its not a good thing.

You see I might be in the minority but I always had harsh time feeling something for the characters of the witcher universe, everything is dark, serious and even depressing, like way too much for me to actually care. 

Every time I try to have hope for the witcher world, it always crushes my hope and destroys it. the first witcher whatever I choose to be neutral, scoiatel or flaming roses, it always ends in a blood bath for human or non human. I can either choose knight templar that are racist towards anything other than human, or a terrorist organisation that wants to wipe out human kind. I can be neutral but that will be worse because Ill have no ally and it will not prevent crimes to be commited and that is not going to save anyone.

Witcher 2 is no better because in the first act, If I want to helps the elves, I need to support vernon roche who hates them and If I choose Iorverth, to get rid of the corrupt captain that opress non human, I need to let innocent non human burn. the second act with vernon roche is no better because I try to help kaedwen soldier all of the act, just to have king henselt betray me and Ill have to kill the many soldier I just tried to help for the past hours.

Witcher 3 also made that with a quest of skellige, where I went into a tavern and 2 biggots try to intimidate my geralt because they don't like foreigner. One of the natives actually helps me and offer me beer, he seemed like a nice guy AT FIRST then the quest ended (it was something like a lighthouse for ship) and he was killed by the two biggots. it was a bit sad UNTIL I learned in his dying moments that this guy participated in many pillage. Which means that this guy willfully killed innocent people, rape, burn villages and probably enslaved some of them. You see, at that moment I could not give a single fuck about him because I knew what he did before and NO, defending me against biggots and offering me beer does not make up for all the crimes of before.

And yes I know that was the viking way of life, nor do I care one bit because it just makes me feel the experience from the outside. I do not identify with the characters or feel engaged by a world where I am supposed sorry for a rapist and slavers just because he helped me before.

By wanting the characters to be morally grey at best, I myself stopped caring about the world, the people living there, I stopped caring about wanting to save them because the sympathetic character are very few in the witcher 3. there is triss, ciri, zoltan, cerys an craite, vess. There maybe few others but for the most part that's it. Which means that when someone died in the witcher trilogy, it happened so many times that the game wanted to crush my hopes I stopped hoping for something better, and my response to an innocent character dying was just apathy.

The opposite is just as bad, we need some sad moments to apreciate the the happy ones, without them it just become the norm and we are not that much engaged because it seems to be always the status quo. IF Everyone is just happy all the time, then there will be no reasons for us to cheer when it happens because they did not had harsh experience, being happy is something they always are. I think varric said once in DAI that when you love fictionnal characters, you make them suffer.

Well that is exactly one problem of mass effect andromeda, as much as I love the game, I would say that its way too light hearted. There needs to be at least some kind of drama to happens, how about learning what happened to kesh parents and its super tragic. Like drack previosuly disowned his sons for being abusive to kesh and then deciding to raise her for her own good,maybe we could even fight drack's son in MEA. Or exploring more why peebee has so much trouble socializing, like the abusive relation she had with kalinda gave her the instincts of being distant with anybody.

Here in MEA, the only moments something really sad happens is when Alec ryder dies, and even then its not that hearbreaking because we barely knew him before he died, his memory on the other hand felt sad for what he lived throught, but it was one of the rare time it happens in MEA. to appreciate the joy and the happiness, we needs some kind of drama. 

I get that mass effect andromeda could not give us the feeling of ME 3, because ME 3 had three games to build characters. When kaidan died in the first mass effect, it was sad but not hearthbreaking, tali dying in ME 3 on the other hand, when she had 3 games to be developed and had so much tragedy to her character, that can makes me cry. So I get that MEA cannot give me that immediatly, because it needs to establish the universe and the characters before killing them or making them suffer enough, but I would say that there needs some kind of tragedy to make us feel the danger of the andromeda galaxy. This can be something else than a companion death but there needs to be some kind of tragedy to happen.

Conclusion

So, here is the thing I would want to see in MEA 2, there is probably tons of other things I would add but right now, I feel hungry, I have been writing this for an hour so those are the elements that comes to my mind.