Dragon Age Writer Calls BioWare Forums "Toxic"

tmande2nd

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Maybe they should stop asking people to pay sixty dollars for crap.
Maybe they should stop acting like they dont make crap.
Maybe they should start to consider that people will move on.

Honestly as a person with years of experience on BSN, Gaider is an asshole.
He is arrogant and demeaning and has all the maturity of a two year old.
 

PinkiePyro

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Its not surprising that their forum is at toxic hate levels

I mean EA just keeps ****ing up




I mean do any of us really care anymore?

(I could see if EA actually did something right that would be news but not this dribble..)
 

Bocaj2000

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The following includes a long debate. If you don't care, feel free to skip over it.

Starke said:
Bocaj2000 said:
I owe you 72 bad MMOs? I'll just give you this: http://mmohuts.com/ Browse at your own pace. Trust me when I say that SWTOR is a top tier MMO, I have tried a LOT of them, including the ones you listed. And even though I agree with some of your choices, your reasons are inane and subjective. I hate to say, but I'm pretty much going to dismiss this section of your argument until you can give more legitimate reasons than "better combat" and frequent content.
More frequent content updates. You know, new things to do, new places to go, new people to kill, and turn upside down for loot. New content. Stuff most MMOs that actually want to keep subscribers turn out on a fairly regular basis.

As to better combat, combat that goes beyond standing in one place staring at someone waiting for cooldowns to finish. Hell, a quarter of the game's classes rely on literally NEVER moving in combat at all as a mechanic.
Thank you for expanding two for your opinions. Now I can continue to say how I still don't agree. SWTOR has had eight updates within the past year, all of which adding the content you speak of such as flash points and operations. Is that not enough?

As for combat: some people like that. I know it's hard to wrap your head around, but ability based combat has been around since the beginning of RPGs, and the same goes with cooldowns. You might prefer other styles of combat, but preference doesn't mean "bad". Final Fantasy games involve your characters just standing there waiting for a cooldown just to use a single ability, but they are well received (well, most of them).

Starke said:
Bocaj2000 said:
Second, the ending. I don't care what Bioware said. Answer my questions and don't change the subject this time.
I didn't. And you may not care what Bioware said, but a lot of people did. If you can't understand how lying to people might produce a certain level of dissatisfaction, then I'm pretty sure I can't help you.
I'm not talking about lies. I'm talking about quality. You dodged the question again.

Starke said:
As to Deus Ex and Uncharted? That's like complaining that Doom 3 involves using a gun or that Tomb Raider expects you to play as a girl.
Words cannot even begin to describe how inaccurate and fallacious this statement is. How do you compare a bad ending to either of these? Mass Effect, Deus Ex, and Uncharted are all known for good writing. You honestly expected shitty endings from DE:HR and Uncharted 3, but not Mass Effect 3? Am I interpreting this unexplained quote correctly?
Bocaj2000 said:
Third, sequels. What's your point? You just ranted on how you didn't like the Reaper larva. What does that have to do with what I said? You once again ignored what I said and ranted about something for no reason.
Okay... no, wait, then who wrote this?

Bocaj2000 said:
I don't like Mass Effect II as much as its predecessor, but that doesn't make it a bad game.
Oh, right, that would be you. So, no, I was talking about what you said. Exactly what you said. Again, I'm sorry, but if you don't know what you wrote, maybe you should reread it, or take notes, or something.

And here's the part that might confuse you a bit, I don't actually hate, or even dislike DA2.
You impress me. You can take a quote out of context. Unfortunately, this just shows that you have bad comprehension skills, so let me describe my paragraph for you:

The paragraph was about how many people will think that a game "sucks" because it isn't as good or doesn't have the same charm as the original. Many people who played Dragon Age II hated it because it didn't stand up to the original. The issue is that instead of voicing that as if it were preference, they voiced it as if it was the same quality as Big Rigs. Gamers tend to judge quality on binary without giving grey area; "If it's the best, then it sucks." They come off as childish and whiny.

I decided to support my claim with an example of my preference of ME1 over ME2. Both games are good. I can go on forever about why they are both good. But, I can also go on about why I like 1 better than 2. I am not here to talk about that though. That's another conversation for another day. It was no more than an example to support the main point.

Now that misunderstanding is out of the way, you can finally... never mind. You don't hate Dragon Age II. I think you actually agree with me on this point. If only you could understand what I was trying to say in the first place so we could avoid this cluster-fuck.
Starke said:
Bocaj2000 said:
Lastly, your clever comment at the end... all you did was prove my point. You don't care what I have to say; you just want to complain. I wasn't expecting to agree with you; I wasn't even expecting you to be polite. But I expected that you would at least answer my questions.
Did you now? So, you knew I was going to post, how interesting. Well, as we established I did answer your questions, and, while I wasn't terribly polite, you still haven't answered your own question there: Why are you typing? Especially if you actually think no one cares. If it's not looking for someone who has an opinion they can back with evidence, I really can't tell you.
I knew that someone was going to respond eventually. And I kinda lied. I was expecting fallacious arguments and question dodging. I thank you for this post. It offered much more clarity on what you were thinking so that I can get one step closer to proper answers. So far, with the exception of the SWTOR comments, you have been answering your own questions and ignoring mine. You're a lot like a politician in that sense. However, unlike politicians, you haven't been able to back your claims up.

You do pose an interesting question, though. Why am I doing this? Why am I arguing with someone over the internet despite knowing that I won't change anyone's minds or get them to acknowledge my opinion? I enjoy a exchanging information and getting to know the other side's opinion. I enjoy getting through the fallacies and getting straight to the real answer. I see the exchanging of ideas, whether I agree or not, as a potential growing experience for both parties. So there you go: the reasons I debate is to learn and grow, and because I enjoy deconstructing bad arguments in order to get to the truth.

Your turn.
 

Knight Templar

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Staal said:
Maybe it has something to do with how BioWare has set itself up as preaching liberals wanting to enforce their world views on everyone else.
That is absurdly incorrect. How exactly is Bioware trying to force their views on every other human? By having some characters in their games be bi? Is that it?


Staal said:
Just take the whole debacle around Dragon Age 2 and the bi-sexuality of characters. They deliberately under served their biggest demographic.
If you take offence at a character being Bi then I doubt you are the biggest demographic. Bigots tend not to be a big market. And yes I'm going to say bigots because not only would you need metagaming to know half the characters are bi, but the romances are not the same for both genders. So that leaves the issue being with just them being Bi.
Or is there some other reason that their sexuality is relevant?

Staal said:
hen people complained BioWare and David Gaider in true liberal-tyranny style of the modern day castigated those people by alluding to them being x, y, z.
It was the logical result of what was being complained about. Being offended that a game doesn't cater exactly to your sexual tastes and demanding that it do so is more than a little silly. Calling somebody out on such foolishness is hardly tyranny.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Starke said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Starke said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Well it dose not help you are writing and designing games for the COD crowd these days.... Quality WHO NEEDZ IT! We can sell more cheap crap!
You know the funny thing though? Aside from the lack of dedicated servers, my impression was always that Activision took quality control on the CoD games very seriously. Granted, I've never spent a lot of time in multiplayer, but, at least with MW, MW2 and Blops, and I've never picked up a CoD game in the same year it was released, but that perception stands.

They're stupid games, and maybe I'm wrong, but near as I can tell, they're not shoddy. In contrast to, you know, Warfighter, or Battlefield 3...
Ture but I am looking at COD as a very over simplified shooter, it might have quality bits here and there (I love the zombie stuff its far more fun/interesting than the game itself) but the over all game is made for morons....( I can call people names since I am a snobish idiot :p)

As simple as Quake 1-2 and DOOM 1-2 were they were works of art compared to the reality TV of COD.
Yeah. There's some surprisingly sophisticated historical nods in Black Ops' single player campaign, they run at right angles to the material itself, but it's kind of amusing to anyone who studied the Cold War in college. The juxtaposition is pretty damn hilarious. You have the insanity of a CoD game in full action movie mode over Operation 40, which was an actual operation that had the intent of overthrowing Castro. The Gulag was a real place, which had an uprising around the timeframe the game sets it to. I can't remember every detail, but the game is absolutely rife with ludicrous reimaginings of historical events, or historical places. And of course, the fear of sleeper agents, and Manchurian candidate reprogramming were major conspiracy theory at the time.

I don't know, I find Blops fascinating in that it's exactly the kind of pulp that MW and MW2 were doing, but, the themes only make sense in the time frame of the game, while still liberally snapping up anything that was declassified in the 50-40 years since the game's events and slapping them into the material.

Other than that? Yeah, it's all dumb fun. And I mean really dumb. Anyway, I'm sorry, I literally don't know why I felt the need to defend the franchise. Though I have noticed in the last few Activision games I've played, they seem to have figured out that QA is a vital element to high sales... if only Ubisoft and EA would follow suit... :\

EDIT: Yeah, I reread your original comment, and, yeah, that does pretty much sum up EA's stance these last few years... so, uh... cookie I guess? Sorry for being really weird there.
LOL

Its okay I like to ramble as well.

COD is dumb fun I guess I find it boring if it was heavily sci fi I might play it but the only thing I like is the zombie stuff.

ME 2+ and Dragon age really bore me to tears its all safe,short,restricted luke warmness. ;_;
 

mad825

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Okay...Lets see why it's toxic;
-bad forum design (web design in general)
-EA forum integration
-Game registration required for most rooms
-It an official forum, lionhead got pretty sick of it.
 

Tsun Tzu

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Caramel Frappe said:
I'm not even upset over the ending anymore.

Mass Effect 3's ending was so disappointing I admit where I don't ever want to play the Mass Effect 1-3 playthroughs again but it was still an amazing, satisfying, enduring experience that will last in my thoughts forever. And you'll always be my favorite character in the ME universe Tali.

But the problem really lies with Bioware itself. How they handled the situation was just awful. I think that pains me more then the ending, because it shows how the company views its fans as well as the gamers who were so invested into their games. Shutting down forums on people who stated their concerns, used 'art' as an excuse for the ending, the employees or specifically the managers, talked down to the fans who've felt hurt. Seeing that made me upset, or did the trick to make me not want any of their games anymore.

I believe in redemption and that despite EA has them, that Bioware can really pull off a grand game again. They just need to treat fans with respect and take criticism better. Bethesda and Valve have done that so well, they are the big shots (mostly Valve) and do what's best for their customers. You're not a business without the people, remember that well my old friend Bioware.
This is exactly how I feel about Bioware right now, right down to not being able to play through ME 1-3 anymore. Also the Tali love. Mostly the Tali love. I <3 Tali.

As for Gaider? Meh. His posts don't exactly present him as an amicable fellow.

Leaving Gaider, Mack, and Hudson aside, there are some talented writers over at Bioware and the glimpses of brilliance are enough to keep me engaged and hopeful for Dragon Age 3. With that said, I won't be pre-ordering or picking it up on the first day like I've done with every previous Bioware game, starting with KotOR. (I've played the classics as well, but wasn't really old enough to purchase them.)

After being disappointed by DA2's rushed state and bullocks ending, then being subjected to ME3's rushed state and bullocks ending, and finally Bioware's response to the debacle and subsequent mishandling of the DLC/Ending issue, I think I'll just wait for reviews and fan response from now on.

To think, a few short years ago, Bioware was one of the only developers I put any stock in. I had three B's: Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda. One's waffling, another is dropping the ball big time, and the last is...

New list: I call it BV.
 

ksn0va

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Those fans will shut up soon enough just like when Cleveland went to the toilet after Lebron left and won a championship and a gold medal a year later.
 

Korolev

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He's surprised by this? The more people like a particular series, the more critical of it they become if it does not proceed in exactly the direction that they wish. We've see this with Star Trek, Star Wars, and just about every single video game series or TV series that is popular. The more people love something, the more aggressive they are in "defending it". It's common. It's not good, or acceptable behaviour, but it is common. If I were a video game developer, I wouldn't personally visit Forums - that's what PR people are for.
 

dystopiaINC

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cynicalsaint1 said:
Say what you will but the man is right.

Grey Carter said:
"I imagine that can happen to any online community," he continues. "Eventually the polite, reasonable folks stop feeling like it's a group of people they want to hang around. So they leave, and those who remain start to see only those who agree with them- and, because that's all they see, they think that's all there is. Everyone feels as they do, according to them. Once the tipping point is passed, you're left with the extremes... those who hate, and those who dislike the haters enough to endure the toxic atmosphere to try and combat them. Each clash between those groups drives more of the others away."
I can attest to this personally, in fact the BSN forums are how I found the Escapist, thanks to someone posting a link to one of their March developer-battles.

I actually used to like hanging out there but eventually I got sick of all the bitching and fighting that when down in that place. It ceased to be a place to talk about games I liked a more a place for people to piss and moan about whatever stupid ass problem ruined their "favorite" game forever. And so I left.

Its not that people hate BioWare its that people don't are at least willing to have a rational intelligent conversation about things are sick of dealing with mouthy haters who talk about every little problem they have with a game like its the end of the fucking world. Combine that with the fact that for some reason something about being on the internet has a tendency to make people feel the need shout their opinions from the top of the nearest mountain, and refuse to consider other points of view ... and well, yeah.
This happened in a manga forum I was following. The shipping wars got really bad and then one character that people were shipping hard on did something derpy and the whole forum was at war. It got so bad most of the normal people left and the hardcore haters stayed and made an echo chamber of hate and bile. It was like the ME3 crap where the internet was like in giant echo chamber of anger and hate. I left and fond a similar forum that still discussed the manga in a civil fashion, but that website got threatened with a lawsuit by the manga publishers so they stopped hosting chapters. The forums were alive but that's all, most the people left and the haters stayed. then the first forum, the one I left calmed down a bit, new people showed up, and the normal people came back, the hard core hatters did much the same thing I did they left and found a new echo chamber, the forum I had escaped to to get away from these assholes in the first place. so I had to emigrate back over. that place is still a hive of bile and hate directed at the 2 main characters. They have been bitching for the manga to end since the 130th chapter it's in the 270s now
 

crazyrabbits

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Here's the conundrum - Gaider's not wrong, but he's not exactly right either. The people batting around this "Bioware forums have always been garbage, hur hur" opinions are woefully ignorant of the site's history and how it changed over the last short while.

The BSN, as we know it now, is completely different than what it was even a year ago. I can say this since I was (and still am) a user on the site since 2009. The "toxicity" of the forums (especially Mass Effect) was borne out of the overzealous and entirely hamfisted way the moderators ran the boards. Even the most controversial BW game up to that point (Dragon Age II) got nowhere near the amount of hate that the site in general garnered post-ME3. The "hate topics" were still mostly reasonable, with the scant few vocal dissenters being drowned out by fans who wouldn't listen to anyone criticizing the franchise. That, and the DA dev team publicly apologized for their product about a month after that outrage, with most of the vocal dissent dying off immediately after.

Hell, the backlash over ME2's "Arrival" DLC (which was, at that point, looked at by most as the worst DLC in the franchise) was mostly relegated to a bunch of supertopics discussing what they liked and didn't like about the product.

While there were a lot of questionable decisions made by the moderators, it was never as prevalent or widespread as it was over the last year. Off the top of my head, there were:

- moderators telling users they won't comment on speculation or answer anything on the boards, then choosing to release it on Twitter instead (which had nowhere near the amount of users on their accounts, as opposed to the actual forum)
- people asking direct questions, and the mods either choosing to deflect it or leaving the topic
- topics getting locked for no reason (the most recent of which being the Indoctrination Theory supertopic)
- mods telling users (both in private messages and posts directed at media outlets) that the fanbase didn't "get" their product
- one moderator (the community manager) writing what amounted to glorified fanwanking on her social media accounts, then asking fans to accept it as absolute truth
- mods screwing with fans either by fueling speculation, or dismissing commonly-discussed problems with backhanded responses (for instance, the whole "play multiplayer to get the best ending" controversy was finally addressed months later in a random forum post, where one of the mods fessed up to it and flippantly said, "There - we cool now?", prompting a wave of criticism)

Coupled with the already-existing controversies, it was a recipe for disaster.

The forums, as it currently stand, are a wasteland. Most of the long-time users (fans and critics alike) have fled, and the only people left are a few diehard fans who will defend the company to the death, and a ton of others who are just getting into the different franchises and are complaining as well. The last time I checked, the user traffic on the site was a small fraction of where it was pre-ME3. It's not so much toxic as it is near-barren.
 

Avalanche91

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You think it's bad now?

Wait till they finally dare to announce that DA3 will be multiplayer only because EA doesnt want singleplayers anymore.
 

Varrdy

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Legion said:
He makes a very valid point, and he actually brings up the reasons for why I stopped visiting them. If you praise Bioware in any shape or form you are a sheeple or a biodrone. If you dislike anything at all then you are a hater or a troll. It's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion on the forums.
Same here - I liked Mass Effect (all three of them) but was one of the many left disappointed by the ending. I was in the "keep calm or we wont be taken seriously!" camp, for the record. Well...until someone pointed me at Angry Joe, anyway!

I was pretty satisfied with the Extended Cut - sure it wasn't perfect but it was made at warp speed and I saw it as a torn-off shirt sleeve wrapped around a bullet hole in a leg, as opposed to full-on field surgery. I agree with Angry Joe when he said that if we had the EC endings to begin with then the shit-storm wouldn't have been anywhere near as epic.

However, according to many, I was wrong - WRONG, DO YOU HEAR?!? - and BioWare and EA should all be sacked and if you disagree then you ovbiously are a troll or a BioWare / EA employee in disguise! I was also WRONG and STUPID because I liked the Mako...I would have been better off saying I liked raping puppies! In the end I just began responding: "Well it's not MY fault that YOU sucked at driving it!"

I loved the Mass Effect trilogy and I loved the Universe they created. I got a couple of the novels for Chrsitmas and I am looking forward to getting stuck into them...and The Art of Mass Effect...Oh. My. God. It could not have been more sweet unless it came with a free living, breathing Liara T'Soni.

Normally I can gloss over small flaws and enjoy the whole package but I got so fed up with the torches and pitchforks brigade on the forums who seemed determined to hate everything EA / BioWare made, regardless of quality, that I just stayed away.

I don't miss it.

Legion said:
That said:

Grey Carter said:
"Perhaps there is also something to be said about whether the games BioWare makes still satisfy our core fans."
This is also a very good point, and it is also where a lot of the hate comes from. Bioware do not seem to be trying to make games that appeal to the "core fans" even by their own admission. To them they want to appeal to as many people as possible, but the way they go about it seems to be to take all the unique things that stand out about their previous titles and try and appeal to the lowest common denominator.
I would agree.

I can only speak for Mass Effect as it's the only range of games from the company I own or have played but ME1 and (to a lesser degree) ME2 were not really for your everyman gamer. Without wishing to sound elitist, you had to like the sort of game Mass Effect was in order to get the best out of it. If not then there was always something else...

However in Mass Effect 3 there were the three options designed to make the game appeal to everyone. There was the "Classic" option for all of us who started from the beginning and know what we're doing; the "Shooter" option for those with a monysyllabic volcabulary and the I.Q of a fifty-pence-peice; and then the "Dialogue only - no nasty shooty bits!" option, presumably for vegetarians or something. This option, to me, was the daftest of all considering that ME3 saw the war for the galaxy begin. Call me a stuffy old traditionalist but I thought that most wars do tend to feature a lot of gunplay!

Before this, though, came the DLC for ME2 that allowed you to make the key decisions we had to make in ME1 without the hassle of actually playing it.

Sorry but certain decisions we had to make drastically changed the game, for better or worse, and for some of us it took several playthroughs before we learned our lesson. We bought the game (with MONEY!) and played it like good little consumer whores. So when I heard that there was a DLC for ME2 that allowed new players to effectively "tick boxes" I felt a little miffed. I also felt dirty because I don't usually like elitism and I was getting dangerously close, which made me a hypocrite...and I don't like those either!

Still - I saw it for what it was - a way of getting more new players into the franchise so that when ME3 came out they would maximuse their sales. New players I have nothing wrong with - giving them a leg up simply for the sake of profit, I do. Also, if they missed the first game then they've missed a hell of a lot of important stuff, not that the bean-counters care!

I am not going to bring up the ending or anything like that, but can anybody really say that they liked the lines Shepard gave at the beginning of Mass Effect 3?

Legion said:
"We fight or we die! That's the plan!"
"This isn't about strategy or tactics. It's about survival!"

It's like a cheesy action movie one-liner but it doesn't even make any sense.

I mean seriously, who did they expect to hear that dialogue and think anything else other than "What the fuck?"
To be fair he really didn't have time to sit down and bash out a speech in iambic pentameter...

That and all the best writers were busy with Wrex and Garrus' dialogue!
 

Staal

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Knight Templar said:
Staal said:
Maybe it has something to do with how BioWare has set itself up as preaching liberals wanting to enforce their world views on everyone else.
That is absurdly incorrect. How exactly is Bioware trying to force their views on every other human? By having some characters in their games be bi? Is that it?
The game design is not preachy, the response to legitimate complaints were. They are free to make whatever they want but if a section of the community goes "where is my white human romance option" it is a valid complaint since there wasn't one. They do not deserve to be dismissed as bigots. The portion of the community that would prefer that option is the majority or the most sizable section however you look at it.

Knight Templar said:
Staal said:
Just take the whole debacle around Dragon Age 2 and the bi-sexuality of characters. They deliberately under served their biggest demographic.
If you take offence at a character being Bi then I doubt you are the biggest demographic. Bigots tend not to be a big market. And yes I'm going to say bigots because not only would you need metagaming to know half the characters are bi, but the romances are not the same for both genders. So that leaves the issue being with just them being Bi.
Or is there some other reason that their sexuality is relevant?
The bi-issue like I said was kind of pointless. It was just lazy characterization. If they want to cater to a group then write something for them, don't just give every character the bi-brush. It feels rushed and fake. But that seems to be a complaint about many of their other stories as well.

As an example I can take my own reaction. I noticed it and it felt tacky and stupid. I wasn't offended and probably wouldn't have thought much of it. It was the smug "eat your spinach" reaction in the aftermath that made me notice. Now I can't help but think BioWare not including at least one white human romance was agenda driven. Can't be sure but it sure sounds preachy to me.

People are perfectly within their rights to say they did not like the design and that they did not get the options they wanted. That is not entitlement. It is not bigotry. They paid for the product and were disappointed. The company can react to that and change design or not, entirely their right, but it has nothing to do with bigotry.

Or are we bigots purely by being white and straight and preferring options that reflect ourselves? It sure seems that is what you are saying.

Calling bigotry is just a way to close down discussion with an emotional label rather than look at the shoddy writing/characters that were created. But that is the modern liberal way.

Knight Templar said:
Staal said:
hen people complained BioWare and David Gaider in true liberal-tyranny style of the modern day castigated those people by alluding to them being x, y, z.
It was the logical result of what was being complained about. Being offended that a game doesn't cater exactly to your sexual tastes and demanding that it do so is more than a little silly. Calling somebody out on such foolishness is hardly tyranny.
Really because it seems to be black people complain that there aren't enough black people in the game and gay people that they didn't have a gay option. Are they also bigots? Or is it just bigotry when a straight white guy prefers a straight white girl? Ok dude.

It is funny how the people throwing the term bigot around turns out to be the biggest and most insidious of them all.
 

Knight Templar

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Staal said:
But if a section of the community goes "where is my white human romance option" it is a valid complaint since there wasn't one.
How is that a valid complaint?
Honestly that's borderline racist. You need to have a white person to romance, and if one isn't there is a problem with the game? This isn't just saying you want it to be there, this is saying that its wrong the game didn't have it. That is not a valid complaint.

They do not deserve to be dismissed as bigots.
Then they need to better express themselves, because the things they say do mark them as such.



The bi-issue like I said was kind of pointless.
Then you shouldn't have brought it up.

It was just lazy characterization.
How? And the problem expressed was not with poor characterisation, but with them being bi at all.

If they want to cater to a group then write something for them, don't just give every character the bi-brush.
We already know they do not write characters to cater to groups like this. That was clearly not the motivating factor behind this choice.


It feels rushed and fake.
How does it feel like either of those things? As already noted, the romances are not copy and paste.



I noticed it, and it felt tacky and stupid.
How did you notice it? And for which character?


What got me very upset was how everyone that thinks that is attacked with grossly inappropriate language, just like you are doing now.
As I have already explained, it is a result of their own arguments that they are shown to be these things.
If they are not prejudiced in the way they seem, then they should better explain themselves.

The term bigot is used out of context.
No it isn't, the context is very clear, you clearly understood my use of it and thus the context. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

People are perfectly within their rights to say this design is stupid and is not what they were expecting.
They can say that, but depending on the why they can with just as much if not more validity be called bigoted, or rather that what they have said and expressed as their opinion is bigoted.


That is not entitlement.
No but expecting a game to cater exactly to your sexual tastes and attempting to take the creators to task when this doesn't happen, kinda is.


It is not bigotry.
As I have explained, it can be. And it evidently was.

It is this is what I like and since we are the most it should be in.
No it is demanding that it be put in, and saying the game was wrong for having something else. They are very different things.




The fact that they just broadly made most characters swing both ways is what made it not only look lazy/cheap but made it stand out.
They are not even half of your companions, nevermind other characters. And again them being bi is not in and of itself lazy. Your insistence that this is the case is utterly unfounded.

Calling bigotry is just a way to close down discussion with an emotional label rather than look at the shoddy writing/characters that were created.
If people wish to take issue with characters or writing they can, but we are talking about people who chose to take issue with characters being bi, and not seeing anyone they wanted to fuck. Even you are stepping into those ground, the characters are poorly written because they are bi? Not really an argument, just a collection of unfortunate implications for you.


But that is the modern liberal way.
Interesting that you complain so much about people being what is in your mind attacked, but here you are attacking an entire group of people you disagree with politically. You're a bit of a hypocrite.


So all black people that complain that there aren't enough black people in the game are also bigots?
That really depends on what exactly their argument is. But since that's not even the same kind of argument as this one, it doesn't matter to our discussion.

All gay people that didn't have a gay option are also bigots?
This looks like two questions that you turned into one by mistake.
You'll need to rephrase that.
 

Zeckt

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Honestly, no company can claim the dissapointment of years of build up of emotional attachment to a series to kick you in the balls and take your wallet right at the climax like ME did. If they did not want the flak, they should of never of made the ending to begin with.

I loved ME3 as a game, but I've never felt insulted so badly by a video game ever like I did at the end. I admit to getting emotionally involved in the series, but the end left me with a dissapointed scowl by mocking that. I still like Bioware, but not nearly as much as I used to.
 

Starke

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crazyrabbits said:
Here's the conundrum - Gaider's not wrong, but he's not exactly right either. The people batting around this "Bioware forums have always been garbage, hur hur" opinions are woefully ignorant of the site's history and how it changed over the last short while.

The BSN, as we know it now, is completely different than what it was even a year ago. I can say this since I was (and still am) a user on the site since 2009. The "toxicity" of the forums (especially Mass Effect) was borne out of the overzealous and entirely hamfisted way the moderators ran the boards. Even the most controversial BW game up to that point (Dragon Age II) got nowhere near the amount of hate that the site in general garnered post-ME3. The "hate topics" were still mostly reasonable, with the scant few vocal dissenters being drowned out by fans who wouldn't listen to anyone criticizing the franchise. That, and the DA dev team publicly apologized for their product about a month after that outrage, with most of the vocal dissent dying off immediately after.

Hell, the backlash over ME2's "Arrival" DLC (which was, at that point, looked at by most as the worst DLC in the franchise) was mostly relegated to a bunch of supertopics discussing what they liked and didn't like about the product.

While there were a lot of questionable decisions made by the moderators, it was never as prevalent or widespread as it was over the last year. Off the top of my head, there were:

- moderators telling users they won't comment on speculation or answer anything on the boards, then choosing to release it on Twitter instead (which had nowhere near the amount of users on their accounts, as opposed to the actual forum)
- people asking direct questions, and the mods either choosing to deflect it or leaving the topic
- topics getting locked for no reason (the most recent of which being the Indoctrination Theory supertopic)
- mods telling users (both in private messages and posts directed at media outlets) that the fanbase didn't "get" their product
- one moderator (the community manager) writing what amounted to glorified fanwanking on her social media accounts, then asking fans to accept it as absolute truth
- mods screwing with fans either by fueling speculation, or dismissing commonly-discussed problems with backhanded responses (for instance, the whole "play multiplayer to get the best ending" controversy was finally addressed months later in a random forum post, where one of the mods fessed up to it and flippantly said, "There - we cool now?", prompting a wave of criticism)

Coupled with the already-existing controversies, it was a recipe for disaster.

The forums, as it currently stand, are a wasteland. Most of the long-time users (fans and critics alike) have fled, and the only people left are a few diehard fans who will defend the company to the death, and a ton of others who are just getting into the different franchises and are complaining as well. The last time I checked, the user traffic on the site was a small fraction of where it was pre-ME3. It's not so much toxic as it is near-barren.
While my memory's a bit hazy, what I do recall was a very different set of boards when I was actually active (around 2003-2005), before EA wandered in, and the whole BSN thing. The forums were generally pretty good back then, some genuine discussion, some actually helpful posters, some intelligent back and forth... I'm sure there were 4chan rejects wandering around saying stupid things, and idiotic posts from people affiliated with the company, but there were actual discussions, and actual debate.

I'm sure it wasn't quite as good as I'm remembering, but at the same time, even looking at BSN back in 2009, it was almost unrecognizable.
 

Starke

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Ascarus said:
Scyla said:
Maybe they should start to make decent games....

:p
yep. while two of their last three games have been commercial successes (DA2 and ME3) the quality has dropped considerably. ME3 was 90% good so i don't knock it too hard, but DA2 was an absolute shit storm of crap, problems and repetition. I never played SW:TOR but given how quickly subs ran away and they went to a free MMO service speaks volumes to its longevity.
The one thing ME3 did do was sour customers. I mean, we've got the whole backlash of people who outright hated it to the point of mailing cupcakes to Canada, but, at the same time we've got a slightly bigger problem, people who won't pick up the next game. Which may have honestly been one of TOR's major problems (I don't know, but it's plausible), they alienated a chunk of their fanbase with that move.

Thing is, even if the ending isn't 90% of the game, it is the last impression the game leaves with you on the way out. So, while you can say, empirically, that it's still a good game because only the last fifteen minutes sucked, there's still the problem that your consumer's lasting impression is going to be of that last fifteen minutes. When Bioware releases a new product down the line, a lot of consumers who managed to get to the ending will evaluate it in that light. (Not all, but a lot.)

Honestly, with a piece of entertainment, the place to suck, if you have control over that, is in the middle. It doesn't sour the first impression, and it isn't what players/readers/viewers will take with them when they're done.

DA2's a bit more complicated, but, that's the ME3 thing. I don't know that it influenced TOR's sales, but it's a reasonable interpertation, if you're familiar with the market and the fans.
 

Fredvdp

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votemarvel said:
Legion said:
"We fight or we die! That's the plan!"
I thought that line really suited the trailer for the game but when you see it in context in the scene it was written for, then it does raise the question of "that's the best they could come up with?"
I'm not reading through this entire thread, so I'm not sure if anyone already told you this, but that line was not in the game. It was in the trailer and the leaked beta. People complained about that line, so they changed it.

The line in the game is "The only thing we can, we fight or we die."

And yes, that line sucks as well, especially because it's a military commander who says this after being summoned to give advice on how to beat the Reapers.