EA Blames Casuals For Falling Old Republic Subscriber Numbers
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But the issue here is that everything you're talking about is still based almost entirely on opinion. I'll grant you the issues in Dragon Age II and have us speak no more of it, but I simply can't let you presume to tell me that I didn't have an amazing 30 hours of fun on my first play-through of ME3.Mikeyfell said:As full of rabies as I am, I still see what you're getting at. In the grand scheme of things it seems crazy to call anything Bioware does "very bad"
But if you're going to put things like Daikatana on the critical spectrum you kind of waive the right to use the term "very bad" or "mediocre" or "just okay" and you end up giving every triple A game a 10/10. (Because ya' know it's still 10 arbitrary units better than Superman 64) and you're put in a very awkward position when asked to review something like Bastian. So when I say "very bad" I'm saying it in context, with a practical application of "Is it worth playing or not"
Further reading beyond this point is entirely optional.
This got a little away from the Old Republic didn't it.That you would use the word "amazing" to describe Mass Effect 3 (With out irony) is proof that you don't (or don't want to) understand how deeply or on how many levels Mass Effect 3 failed on. So I'm just going to list the failures in order of grievousness.
1) The complete lack of roll playing or player agency.
You could roll play very effectively in the first two Mass Effect games. I should know I played 7 different Shepards. Each with their own unique personality and morals.
When I jump into ME 3 all the dialog choices are boiled down to paragon and renegade options.
And for the most part your which ever choice you make is irrelevant because the Par and Ren option conveying exactly the same message.
Only having 2 dialog options means that you'll run into the awkward "But Shepard wouldn't say either of those things." moment a lot.
Also (and arguably less importantly) you'll hear all the combinations and permutations of dialog options after 4 playthroughs.
In the first 2 games Renegade Shepard could be a real prick. In ME 3 if they survived the suicide mission they're Shepard's BFF. It seriously threw me for a loop when my stone cold renegade Shep was just spilling her heart and soul to the unconscious Kaiden, without even consulting me with a dialog wheel.
2)Shift of focus from talking to listening.
There are about one third the amount of dialog wheels in ME 3 as there are in ME 2
You initiate all of your unimportant fetch quests by eavesdropping on someone's conversation. When you complete their quest you say something along the lines of "You can pick up your macguffan up in the cargo bay" The meaningless fetch guests in ME 2 were memorable and interesting. (The Krogan who wanted the Presidium fish, The Volus who lost his credit chit, The Asaris who wanted fake ID's) Do you even remember the Volus who wanted the Book of Plenix? or the doctor who wanted the Rings of Alume? No? It's because you didn't talk to them.
This even happens aboard the Normandy you get 2 dialog sessions per character. And no that is not neutralized by listening to them spout off 1 liners in between missions.
If you look at any mission in ME 2 the combat is pretty evenly broken up with talkie parts. ME 2 even had non combat missions. In ME 3 you hardly get any talkies during missions.
3)Negating important player choices
Why is Udina a councilor? I remember giving Anderson that seat.
Why is Cerberus trying to kill me? I gave them a collector base.
Why is the Rachnai queen alive? I killed her on Noveria.
Nothing changes whether you saved the council or not
Nothing changes if you turned down Spectre status in ME 2
Nothing changes if you cheat on your love interest (Repeatedly)
It didn't matter if Thane's son got arrested
It didn't matter if Tali got exiled
So much you do was just pointless
The absolute lowest point in the game is when Cerberus assaults the Citadel (Yes lower than the ending) because it was so easily avoidable by choices that you've already made in previous games. If Anderson was a councilor Udina wouldn't have been able to orchestrate a coup that easily. And if Cerberus was on my good side they wouldn't have attacked the Citadel. And it goes back to the complete lack of roll playing at the end of the mission. Maybe you want a human to take over the council. (You already saved the council's life once and it did bugger all to endear them to you, why give them a second chance.) Maybe Udina seizing power isn't such a bad thing. But they don't give you that option.
That Citadel mission is also where you meet Kai Leng and he kills Thane because Shepard stands there watching them fight (Presumably thinking "So that's how Assassins say 'hi'")
4)The endingNope. ME 3 would still suck even if the ending was good.
4)Cheep enemies, shit controls.
almost every attack in Cerberus's arsenal is remarkably cheep. Landing grenades in your lap from half way across the field, setting up turrets that shoot you to shreds with infinite shields. Smoke that some how obstructs Biotic and Tech powers. Phantoms that flip around like freaks so much that you can't target them and instakill you the second they're close.
The Geth are hardly better with invisible shotgun Hunters and Primes that throw turrets behind cover.
And the cheapness of the enemies is just exacerbated by the fact that pushing "A" on the controller will do any one of 4 things with complete and utter randomness. You'll either start sprinting, take the nearest cover, do a barrel roll, or vault over cover if you're already in it. People usually just say I'm retarded or something but I've never once been able to do what I wanted Shepard to do when the A button was involved. Every single one of my deaths (Not an exaggeration) can be attributed the A button making Shepard do the wrong thing.
5) Tali's picture
Yeah, I know it's petty but it would have been less offensive if Tali took off her helmet and we just saw
6) The Crucible
I know I said I wasn't going to talk about the end but the Crucible isn't part of the end now is it. It's introduced in the beginning of the second mission and building it and moving it is the entire point of everything you're doing in the game. Even though nobody knows what it does. Not even you. not even after you beat the game. Not one person in any previous cycle knew what it did or how it worked but they built it anyway. And added to it's design? No one was ever able to finish it, so no one ever used it, so no one ever knew what it was supposed to do, but they still added to it's design. Does that make any sense? The Crucible is the plot hole singularity.
Some time before the Prothean cycle it was made to incorporate the Citadel, which the Reapers built, and is run by the Keepers (Who, until the Protheans were under Reaper control) So if someone before the Protheans tried hooking this thing up to the Citadel the Keepers would have told the Reapers about it.
So the plot holes are bad enough as they stand, but even perfectly executed the Crucible still introduces a jarring tonal shift into the series. Over the course of one line of dialog during the Mars mission the tone of the series changes from "Desperately fighting an overwhelming force with slim to no chance of victory" to "Build the magic 'win' button and push it"
7) The over use of Cerberus
You fight them about twice as much as you fight Reapers and about four times as much as you should (That calculation is disregarding the fact that you shouldn't be fighting them at all if you gave them the collector base)
Some examples. Cerberus shows at an STG base on the Salarian home world for no reason. Cerberus knows about an ancient Turian bomb that the Shadow Broker didn't even know about. In ME 2 it is made abundantly clear that Cerberus has limited resources and they almost broke the bank bringing Shepard back from the Dead. They should be struggling financially but they appear to have more money and power then they did last game. At one point in the game James says that Cerberus spies were working for the Collectors during the events of Mass Effect 2. (That line alone negates every thing ME 2 is based on)
8)Jessica Chobot has no business voice acting
That one's kind of self explanatory
9) They made planet scanning suck.
I didn't think planet scanning could get any worse. I was wrong. Oh god was I wrong.
9A)They took out Hacking and bypassing
I don't even know why they would do that? What did bypass ever do to them? Hell they insisted on putting Kinnect functionality into their game, why not make Kinnect hacking and bypass that might have been fun.
9B) there's no planet exploring
At least ME 2 had the Hammerhead Tank to drive around some places, but ME 3 always has you on foot.
10)I'm absolutely sure I forgot something important.
ME 3 has so much wrong with it that I can't even keep all the problems strait in my head.
Anyway I hope BIoware burns for their mistake.
1. Yes, they simplified the dialog wheel. Honestly, I thought they should've still kept the "Neutral" dialog option but I didn't see any need for all of the inane question-asking Shepard did in all of the previous games. This isn't about one Reaper that no one believes is real. It's not about a supposedly fictional race of mutant creatures who are supposedly helping the Reapers from a part of the galaxy nobody has ever returned from. It's about the Reapers engaging a full-blown war with the known galaxy. Why should Shepard have time to stop and ask questions?
2. Again. There's a war going on. Why is Shepard stopping every five minutes to ask people about their problems? Was I disappointed in the lack of quite so many team member dialog options? Possibly, because I certainly kept up my habit of visiting each member after each mission to see if they had anything new to say and I had to say "I should go" to Liara quite a few times, but then that happened in Mass Effect as well. And I'd argue that despite the shortened amount of lines each team mate has, they're all much better written and characterized than in either of the previous games.
3. Completely opinion.
Anderson never wanted the job, he gave it up.
Cerberus' leader is indoctrinated.
I'll grant you that one, but nothing really changed if you kept her alive during Mass Effect either, so...
What exactly changed in ME2 if you saved the council? They still treated you like shit, only with a small modicum of respect because you elected to kill your own people to save them.
Do they even care about your Spectre status in ME3? The only thing I recall even relating to that is Ashley/Kaidan being urged to join them, and honestly I never thought that Shepard being a Spectre was supposed to be a big deal in the previous two games either. In the first one you could assert that you were Alliance Military all the time and in the second one everyone thought you were under Cerberus' thumb.
Are you talking about the love triangles created from, say, romancing Liara in ME, Tali in ME2, then needing to decide on one in ME3? Or did you somehow discover something in ME3 that allowed you to carry on two relationships at once, because to me that sounds like exploiting a bug in the design more than anything else.
I've never had Thane's son arrested so I honestly can't respond to that one.
Sure, on the surface nothing was different, but if Tali was exiled then she was only an honorary Admiral in ME3, while the public still essentially thought of her as not existing anymore. If she wasn't exiled, she's a true Admiral of the fleet and commands actual respect.
I will grant you that Thane's death could have been done much better and in that particular scene, Shepard was being struck by the plague of cut-scene stupidity.
4. Again, personal opinion and difference in control scheme. I played on the PC, and I honestly thought the controls were the best in the series. Everything was fast and responsive, the only issue I ever had was maybe dodge-rolling when I wanted to drop into cover. And as much as I hated engineers, you know something? It added more variety back into the game that was lost in ME2. I hated engineers and biotics in the first game, they were extremely cheap, and I was glad they were essentially removed in 2, but what was the enemy variety in 2? Guys with guns, guys who run up to you to melee you, floating guys with guns, and the occasional Scion bastard who takes five clips to kill. At least ME3 brought in AI that tries to flush you out, makes you think on your toes and actually examine the battlefield instead of sitting behind one cover spot for the entire fire-fight like you could in ME2. Smoke could be countered by sniper rifles, AOE biotic abilities, hell, a lot of the time you could blind-fire into it and still hit something because the AI was stupid enough to just run around in the smoke after dropping it. Grenades may have killed me a couple times but I never thought they were unfair. I just died because I didn't see them in time to get my ass away from them because I was busy shooting guys.
And as much as I hated the turrets, saying they have infinite shields? That's blatant exaggeration. Two sniper shots, one close-up shotgun blast, two shots from an upgraded M99-Saber or three shots from the Mattock, less if you're using Disruptor Ammo, or hell, even two blasts from Shockwave will bring down their shields.
5. That's petty and purely opinion based, thus I will not justify it with a rebuttal.
6. Yes, the Crucible is a pretty large plot hole, especially because they bash it into your brain that nobody knows what it's supposed to do when activated. However... that is again, purely based on opinion. I am more tolerant of plot holes than you are, it would seem. Very interesting, because I pick these things to death in television or movies, but for some reason I can forgive them in video games... it might be because there's more to the game than watching the cut-scenes. In fact, I can remember a time when the entire story of a game was told either on the back of the case or inside the manual, so maybe, despite how much I do enjoy a decent story in a game, I just don't care if it's got problems so long as I'm having fun?
7. Cerberus had a hidden agenda all along the entirety of Mass Effect 2, if you couldn't see that then I'm not sure what game you were playing. It was also shown that Cerberus got things done, no matter how their resources might have seemed at the time. The Illusive Man had his hands in everything, he knew far more than Shepard did, and again... indoctrinated.
Sure, it was another plot hole and what they should've done is expand on the side-quest that insinuated there was a rogue faction of Cerberus doing whatever the hell they wanted, but they needed a scape-goat enemy and having the Reapers be everywhere would've been just as large a plot hole as having Cerberus show up every time you needed someone to shoot.
8. Petty and opinionated. It was pretty easy to almost entirely avoid her character throughout the course of the game, so I don't understand the issue with her being included. If you form conspiracy theories about Bioware/EA and IGN because of it, then, well, I'm shocked that there are people on this planet who have more free time than I do.
9. How is it worse? You don't need to rotate around planets for ten minutes to scrounge out every last speck of resources anymore. That's an improvement to me. Unless it's another control issue, in which case the controls for it weren't any worse than ME2, so unless it was massively worse on the Xbox then I'm not understanding the point.
9a. Okay... opinion. Much like the hacking mini-game in Bioshock and all of those lockpicking mini-games in countless RPGs, I never really understood why we needed those little mini-games in the first place. It's a huge shift in pacing. Imagine if they put a Tetris mini-game in the middle of every Super Mario Bros. world. Or if they wanted you to play Duck Hunt in between Call of Duty missions. Personally, I didn't miss the removal of those mini-games. Sure, there was no reason to remove it, but was there really a reason to keep it?
9b. Yeah, heavens forbid they don't bring back the terrible driving and bouncy physics of the Mako. Okay, they should have done what Yahtzee said and had you flying around planets on jet-packs inhabited by robot wolves with laser eyes, but again, it's opinion. You know what I thought? I thought that Mass Effect 3 had a far larger number of side-quests than Mass Effect 2 did, and each of those side-quests had their own unique location and some of them were pretty damn large. Do you remember the planet exploration from the first game? Terrible driving mechanics mixed with copy-pasted moon bases filled with random enemies that were never seen again. Okay, so a few of them had the companion missions based on them as well, which brings up another issue with the first game: It was pretty damn hard and boring to do all of the side-quests. Hell, the only reason I ever got Tali or Wrex's missions done was because I stumbled onto them while scrolling through planets. They never gave me a reason to need to go anywhere, and I'm still not even sure if they give you the side-quests if you talk to them enough.
Also, there's a war going on. Why would Shepard be bouncing around on moons that are completely uninhabited save for one creepy base?
2. Again. There's a war going on. Why is Shepard stopping every five minutes to ask people about their problems? Was I disappointed in the lack of quite so many team member dialog options? Possibly, because I certainly kept up my habit of visiting each member after each mission to see if they had anything new to say and I had to say "I should go" to Liara quite a few times, but then that happened in Mass Effect as well. And I'd argue that despite the shortened amount of lines each team mate has, they're all much better written and characterized than in either of the previous games.
3. Completely opinion.
Anderson never wanted the job, he gave it up.
Cerberus' leader is indoctrinated.
I'll grant you that one, but nothing really changed if you kept her alive during Mass Effect either, so...
What exactly changed in ME2 if you saved the council? They still treated you like shit, only with a small modicum of respect because you elected to kill your own people to save them.
Do they even care about your Spectre status in ME3? The only thing I recall even relating to that is Ashley/Kaidan being urged to join them, and honestly I never thought that Shepard being a Spectre was supposed to be a big deal in the previous two games either. In the first one you could assert that you were Alliance Military all the time and in the second one everyone thought you were under Cerberus' thumb.
Are you talking about the love triangles created from, say, romancing Liara in ME, Tali in ME2, then needing to decide on one in ME3? Or did you somehow discover something in ME3 that allowed you to carry on two relationships at once, because to me that sounds like exploiting a bug in the design more than anything else.
I've never had Thane's son arrested so I honestly can't respond to that one.
Sure, on the surface nothing was different, but if Tali was exiled then she was only an honorary Admiral in ME3, while the public still essentially thought of her as not existing anymore. If she wasn't exiled, she's a true Admiral of the fleet and commands actual respect.
I will grant you that Thane's death could have been done much better and in that particular scene, Shepard was being struck by the plague of cut-scene stupidity.
4. Again, personal opinion and difference in control scheme. I played on the PC, and I honestly thought the controls were the best in the series. Everything was fast and responsive, the only issue I ever had was maybe dodge-rolling when I wanted to drop into cover. And as much as I hated engineers, you know something? It added more variety back into the game that was lost in ME2. I hated engineers and biotics in the first game, they were extremely cheap, and I was glad they were essentially removed in 2, but what was the enemy variety in 2? Guys with guns, guys who run up to you to melee you, floating guys with guns, and the occasional Scion bastard who takes five clips to kill. At least ME3 brought in AI that tries to flush you out, makes you think on your toes and actually examine the battlefield instead of sitting behind one cover spot for the entire fire-fight like you could in ME2. Smoke could be countered by sniper rifles, AOE biotic abilities, hell, a lot of the time you could blind-fire into it and still hit something because the AI was stupid enough to just run around in the smoke after dropping it. Grenades may have killed me a couple times but I never thought they were unfair. I just died because I didn't see them in time to get my ass away from them because I was busy shooting guys.
And as much as I hated the turrets, saying they have infinite shields? That's blatant exaggeration. Two sniper shots, one close-up shotgun blast, two shots from an upgraded M99-Saber or three shots from the Mattock, less if you're using Disruptor Ammo, or hell, even two blasts from Shockwave will bring down their shields.
5. That's petty and purely opinion based, thus I will not justify it with a rebuttal.
6. Yes, the Crucible is a pretty large plot hole, especially because they bash it into your brain that nobody knows what it's supposed to do when activated. However... that is again, purely based on opinion. I am more tolerant of plot holes than you are, it would seem. Very interesting, because I pick these things to death in television or movies, but for some reason I can forgive them in video games... it might be because there's more to the game than watching the cut-scenes. In fact, I can remember a time when the entire story of a game was told either on the back of the case or inside the manual, so maybe, despite how much I do enjoy a decent story in a game, I just don't care if it's got problems so long as I'm having fun?
7. Cerberus had a hidden agenda all along the entirety of Mass Effect 2, if you couldn't see that then I'm not sure what game you were playing. It was also shown that Cerberus got things done, no matter how their resources might have seemed at the time. The Illusive Man had his hands in everything, he knew far more than Shepard did, and again... indoctrinated.
Sure, it was another plot hole and what they should've done is expand on the side-quest that insinuated there was a rogue faction of Cerberus doing whatever the hell they wanted, but they needed a scape-goat enemy and having the Reapers be everywhere would've been just as large a plot hole as having Cerberus show up every time you needed someone to shoot.
8. Petty and opinionated. It was pretty easy to almost entirely avoid her character throughout the course of the game, so I don't understand the issue with her being included. If you form conspiracy theories about Bioware/EA and IGN because of it, then, well, I'm shocked that there are people on this planet who have more free time than I do.
9. How is it worse? You don't need to rotate around planets for ten minutes to scrounge out every last speck of resources anymore. That's an improvement to me. Unless it's another control issue, in which case the controls for it weren't any worse than ME2, so unless it was massively worse on the Xbox then I'm not understanding the point.
9a. Okay... opinion. Much like the hacking mini-game in Bioshock and all of those lockpicking mini-games in countless RPGs, I never really understood why we needed those little mini-games in the first place. It's a huge shift in pacing. Imagine if they put a Tetris mini-game in the middle of every Super Mario Bros. world. Or if they wanted you to play Duck Hunt in between Call of Duty missions. Personally, I didn't miss the removal of those mini-games. Sure, there was no reason to remove it, but was there really a reason to keep it?
9b. Yeah, heavens forbid they don't bring back the terrible driving and bouncy physics of the Mako. Okay, they should have done what Yahtzee said and had you flying around planets on jet-packs inhabited by robot wolves with laser eyes, but again, it's opinion. You know what I thought? I thought that Mass Effect 3 had a far larger number of side-quests than Mass Effect 2 did, and each of those side-quests had their own unique location and some of them were pretty damn large. Do you remember the planet exploration from the first game? Terrible driving mechanics mixed with copy-pasted moon bases filled with random enemies that were never seen again. Okay, so a few of them had the companion missions based on them as well, which brings up another issue with the first game: It was pretty damn hard and boring to do all of the side-quests. Hell, the only reason I ever got Tali or Wrex's missions done was because I stumbled onto them while scrolling through planets. They never gave me a reason to need to go anywhere, and I'm still not even sure if they give you the side-quests if you talk to them enough.
Also, there's a war going on. Why would Shepard be bouncing around on moons that are completely uninhabited save for one creepy base?
Maybe I went in to Mass Effect 3 with different expectations than everyone else. I went in expecting Return of the Jedi (which to some of the more hardcore Star Wars fans who think Ewoks is where it began to suck, might be pretty apropos), and to me, that's what I got, while everyone else apparently went in expecting A New Hope and got Attack of the Clones instead.
To put it in more broad terms, I wasn't expecting them to have Shepard be bouncing around the galaxy in a space-jeep, saving people left and right and having the time of his life. I was expecting a desperate war that seemed hopeless until one final magic MacGuffin showed up and saved the universe. Come on, it's a space opera. How did people not see that coming from a mile away, they all have bass-ackwards, inane endings that make absolutely zero sense within the context and tone of the rest of the story.
Please, don't take this as an attack against you or anything. You're entitled to your opinion, you're allowed to dislike all of the things you've mentioned, you're even allowed to have not had fun while playing the game, but just because you didn't like it, doesn't mean nobody else liked it. That's what bugs up my britches more than anything else on this website, people always think their opinion is the end-all be-all of everything. I'm not expecting my rebuttals to change your views on the game. It would be ridiculous if they did. But I'm hoping that you at least can understand my side of the argument, and my opinion of the game.
... this topic was originally about The Old Republic, wasn't it? Ahem.
I still say, part of this is comeong from the weird, and heavy handed, way they are treating the genderal boards.
Positive threads get locked, stuff like:
"Great Job Bioware I'm having fun!" (2 pages then locked)
"I like this game and here is why..." (4 pages then locked)
"Why is everyone so critical? Here is why I like the game." (1 page then locked)
However if you make a thread like this:
"This game sucks! All of it sucks! Her is why!" (not locked)
"This game needs to be just like Game X! Or I quit!" (not locked)
"Bioware your sub numbers show just how much you fail at life!" (goes on for 40 pages)
"This game needs to be shut down to teach Bioware a lesson! Everyone play GW2 because I said so!" (ongoing mega post)
The other board categories seem to handled is a much better manner, but general chat is one of the first pages that some new gamers check out, when they check out a games site.
...an yea....they are going to see that.
Good job EA mods, goood job. >_<
Positive threads get locked, stuff like:
"Great Job Bioware I'm having fun!" (2 pages then locked)
"I like this game and here is why..." (4 pages then locked)
"Why is everyone so critical? Here is why I like the game." (1 page then locked)
However if you make a thread like this:
"This game sucks! All of it sucks! Her is why!" (not locked)
"This game needs to be just like Game X! Or I quit!" (not locked)
"Bioware your sub numbers show just how much you fail at life!" (goes on for 40 pages)
"This game needs to be shut down to teach Bioware a lesson! Everyone play GW2 because I said so!" (ongoing mega post)
The other board categories seem to handled is a much better manner, but general chat is one of the first pages that some new gamers check out, when they check out a games site.
...an yea....they are going to see that.
Good job EA mods, goood job. >_<
The problem I have with that is that the downtime is all still there. You're still trekking back and forth to the Citadel and doing your rounds on the Normandy, with out even the pay off of a decent conversation. ME 3 didn't feel like a Mass Effect game because you couldn't respond to anything. (Like all the times Javic was badmouthing Liara, I wanted to yell at him) Having to pick a dialog option after every line doesn't break immersion, listening to Shepard respond out of character does. and not even getting to talk at all isn't Mass Effect.shrekfan246 said:
If the first game was like this I wouldn't have finished it.
If I'm being honest ME 1 wasn't fun to play I'd blast through on casual just to get to the next talkie part. ME 3 isn't fun to play (Because of my opinionated cheapness of the enemies) and there aren't even decent Talkies to blast through to.
Is it my opinion that the neglect to honor player choice was a bad thing?
Because it is a fact that they did undo all those choices I mentioned.
And you know when people say "ME 3 ruined the whole series" this is what they're talking about. Because saving/killing the council and giving Anderson/Udina the council seat and turning down Spectre status etc. didn't really matter in ME 2 but that's because there was still some benefit of the doubt that our choices would matter more in ME 3 and instead they weren't even acknowledged. In 1 and 2 Shepard was the driving force of the plot, in 3 Shep is just a nuisance for the writers to work around.
And about Love triangles, (My situation) I romanced Liara in 1, then Garrus (and Kelly) in 2.
So there's one line at the beginning where Liara mentions Garrus. and then Garrus asks if we're still together. and I kept it going with both of them. Over the course of the game I "Got it on" with Traynor and neither of them mentioned it. When it came time to pick they didn't mention each-other. There was no "You've been spending a lot of time Liara. Is there something you want to tell me?" or anything like that. In ME 1 you had a love triangle confrontation scene and there's nothing like that in ME 3.
And why the hell can't Shepard have a 3-way?
I'll give you those two. They are opinions.
I mean, putting Run, Roll and Sit on the same button is a bad idea no matter how many thumbs you think the player has. But I'm the only person who seems bothered by it.
And I suppose the Cheapness of the enemies is just a hamfisted way of balancing the cheapness of Shepard. Because damn. Every class except Soldier is completely unstoppable. (Except by way of blindsiding cheapness) My Adept beat Insanity without firing a bullet or using a medigel. and hardly ever going into cover. But putting players and enemies at opposite ends of the cheap attack scale doesn't exactly make for a well balanced game.
Honestly fixing this isn't even hard. Nerf grenades and let me throw powers into smoke (Even if I can't lock on to enemies) But constantly getting downed by grenades and being paralyzed by the presence of smoke is just frustrating.
So the controls on PC actually work?
Maybe I should get an Xbox compatible mouse and keyboard.
No offense but if story doesn't matter in games don't you think Bioware is an odd developer to play? Fun is the last word I'd use to describe their gameplay.
Actually having the Reapers show up everywhere would be the opposite of a plot hole. They're supposed to be the main villain but you hardly ever run into them and when you do they're the easiest of the three enemies to deal with (Gameplay wise)
When you go to Sanctuary the Reapers are attacking Cerberus so that kind of throws out the "They're working together" angle.
For a while I worked under the assumption that Miranda's father re-funded the Illusive Man. and they're using Sanctuary to make hoards of shock troops. but that doesn't explain how they always show up where they have no business or reason to.
So I'm petty. But I can't think of a worse person to throw into the game for no reason.
(Maybe Snooki)
I didn't elaborate. Planet scanning in ME 2 was largely avoidable. you could mine dry 3 or 4 rich planets and have enough for all the important upgrades, and a quick pop online will give you a list of where all the explorable planets are if you care.
In ME 3 new systems pop in after almost every mission so the scanning breaks flow a lot harder then in ME 2. The scanning process is passive if you find an anomaly you just click on it once and suck it up.
It's a loading screen bonanza. (This has to do with plot holes) If you talk to any engineer on the Normandy they say 2 things about your ship. It's fast and it's stealthy. System scanning leads to Reapers finding you and catching you by flying faster than you. The two things the Normandy should be immune to. When the Reapers do catch you there's no consequence besides having to reload your last auto save. And if you load a save with Reapers on the system there's a pretty good chance you'll get caught again and again and again. waiting for load time after load time after load time.
I'd take boredom over frustration and idleness any day.
Inigo Montoya has something to say to you
I didn't know there was a difference between Duck Hunt and Call of Duty. (I joke, I joke)
It's called Juxtaposition. Doing nothing but shooting tons of guys gets boring if that's all you do. ME 2 understood that so they'd break up the missions by having you talk to people for what ever reason in between shooties, or hack a terminal or lock. Doing nothing but shooting makes it feel stale by the end. (And with the amount of shooting you do in ME 3 having it feel stale is the kiss of death)
There were a bunch of the N7 missions in ME 3 but they consisted entirely of shooting guys.
In ME 2 there were non combat missions like a maze or a kind of puzzle thing, or an escort, driving missions. Doing nothing but shooting gets old.
And I know there's a galactic war going on. But you're still tasked with a million fetch quests that all seem relevant enough they could have all had a little mission tied to them.
If they did that they could have cut the god awful system scanning too.
I know all about trilogy syndrome. (First one sets the bar, second one raises the bar, third one falls flat on it's face) Hell I went into ME 3 with as low an expectation as I could muster, it still didn't help. Yeah, the ending sucked. and I knew the ending would suck from the very second the word "Crucible" was uttered. But taking away the roll playing and talking were unforgivable and the plot holes were the final nail in the coffin. All the endings served to do was bury the coffin in concrete then nuke and salt the continent the coffin was buried on.
And it's okay, I never go into these threads expecting to change anyone's mind or even be taken seriously. I just like the sound of my keyboard (The internet equivalent of "I like the sound of my own voice")
That's fine, cuz you're still wrong about it. If you didn't get the joke (or more likely, didn't want to) that's your goddamn fault. Don't give me shit because you have a problem with the way Americans spell a word (on an American site referencing an American game). And if you have a problem with the word fuck, well that's too fucking bad. It wasn't hostile. Hostile would have been calling him an culturally imperialist retard. Which I didn't.Kungfu_Teddybear said:
I don't have a problem with they way Americans spell anything, nor was that why I got involved in the first place. No, I got involved because your first post came across as hostile (I don't have a problem with the word fuck, or any other swear word for that matter, but the way you used it in your post made it seem hostile) and then blamed Zhukov for starting it and then later proceeding to call him a pedantic anglophone. You were the one who started ranting then blamed someone else for starting it. That is why I got involved.Freechoice said:
Even the post I have just quoted makes you look hostile. I've seen you around in other threads and you've seemed quite pleasant but in this one you have just seemed angry.
C'mon, it's a damned word and people write based on their mother tongue, not on the cover of the game.Beautiful End said:
It was a joke about people being used to write things in some way. They spent years trying not to misspell things in school, it doesn't wear off.
ITT: a joke turned into a nationalistic argument
"Blame" seems to be an inaccurate interpretation of what he said. It's an observation, not necessarily assigning fault to anything. I'm unsurprised by it myself. It's totally expected for any MMO at launch that it will attract more initial subscribers than will end up sticking with it through the first 4-6 months. Especially with Star Wars, you're just going to get a lot of initial subscribers who come for a taste, but were never going to stay for the long haul, regardless of whether the game is good or bad. Once the initial wave of short-timers comes and goes (now it appears it has gone) then you really start to see what kind of product you have. If the numbers start going up again, then people are liking it. If numbers continue to decline, then you're losing the people who you might have kept with a better and more sustainable product.
Are you sure you've been reading my posts? Are you really sure? Cuz I'm caustic as fuck. Half of what I say is accusing people of being stupid and narrow minded (making blanket statements, not citing shit, not reading what I said, being ignorant of facts you can find on google). I am often an asshole when responding in this manner because I know people won't respond to the logic I will spend 30 minutes (googling, rereading) formulating the post with. The key then is to just exhaust them.Kungfu_Teddybear said:
It usually works.
The other half is topical humor in which I make referential humor in reference to the topic at hand with references. Referential humor that only about 1/30 of the population here seems to get. Now which does my original post seem most like?
With me, civility begets civility. Hence why I'm not saying fuck a lot right now. Having an excellent post will often garner the poster a cookie.
Also,
Yeah, I figured as much. That was just meant to satisfy my curiosity. I know some box art changes depending on the region and I find that interesting... *Mumbles*ElPatron said:
Free to play or not its not going to help at all if your games shit heard some horror stories from some ex guildies.
30 - 40 people from my old Warhammer online server moved to swtor to set up a guild on a pvp focussed server, 2 or 3 of whom I actually know and they all came back to war saying the same thing "Never again" nice way to waste 400 million EA ^_^
30 - 40 people from my old Warhammer online server moved to swtor to set up a guild on a pvp focussed server, 2 or 3 of whom I actually know and they all came back to war saying the same thing "Never again" nice way to waste 400 million EA ^_^
From my experience with the game, this is exactly the opposite of what I would expect. All of my hardcore friends have dropped this game because it's boring as fuck at max level. It's a WoW clone, except everything at max level is strictly worse than it's WoW equivalent right now. Plus, NO ADDONS. Deal breaker.
The leveling up part of the game was easily the best part. Great characters, great stories for the most part. I have no idea why anyone would Sub to this for more than the 2 months or so it takes to level a few characters.
I still plan to pick the game up for another month or two soon, once they implement addons. It's a really great single player experience. It simply has no longevity. That's a pretty damning complaint for an MMO.
The leveling up part of the game was easily the best part. Great characters, great stories for the most part. I have no idea why anyone would Sub to this for more than the 2 months or so it takes to level a few characters.
I still plan to pick the game up for another month or two soon, once they implement addons. It's a really great single player experience. It simply has no longevity. That's a pretty damning complaint for an MMO.
Alright, so first it was just whiners, then it was homophobes, then it was gamers with "entitlement issues" (I'm not going to just say entitled because that's the wrong fucking word for what they were trying to describe), and now it's casuals.
Keep blaming everybody but yourself, EA! I'm sure it will end up working in your favour.
Keep blaming everybody but yourself, EA! I'm sure it will end up working in your favour.
All in all I hope TOR ends up going down in the annals of history as a moderate success, and I hope it encourages EA to aim higher and even after all this Mass Effect ending mess I still have tons of good will towards BioWare and I'd hate to think they took a gamble on a project and lost.
I admit to being torn here. There are two messages I want SW:TOR to convey to the industry:
1. You can't beat WoW by cloning WoW's gameplay and interface
2. The emphasis on narrative, characters and storytelling can make a better MMO.
There's no way to say this without sounding like a fanboy but I think Guild Wars 2 takes both lessons to heart. *Fingers Crossed*
I admit to being torn here. There are two messages I want SW:TOR to convey to the industry:
1. You can't beat WoW by cloning WoW's gameplay and interface
2. The emphasis on narrative, characters and storytelling can make a better MMO.
There's no way to say this without sounding like a fanboy but I think Guild Wars 2 takes both lessons to heart. *Fingers Crossed*
Its not the casuals that left its the exact opposite. The hardcores left cos they hardcored their way through what little content there is. The casuals are still playing cos they only have 1 or 2 50s and haven't got sick of the boring, repetitive, linear content yet.
1.3 is not even a content patch so there is still not much of it and the hardcores will/have left. The only way you can be a hardcore at TOR is if you have memory lapses so you can forget the story and play it again and forget that you have done the dailies 50 bazillion times already, still trying to get all the legacy unlocks and save up for future ones cos there is no other way to make money cos there is no economy, so you will think its your first day doing them.
1.3 is not even a content patch so there is still not much of it and the hardcores will/have left. The only way you can be a hardcore at TOR is if you have memory lapses so you can forget the story and play it again and forget that you have done the dailies 50 bazillion times already, still trying to get all the legacy unlocks and save up for future ones cos there is no other way to make money cos there is no economy, so you will think its your first day doing them.
