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"shrekfan246 said:Actually, they made one game that had mediocre parts due to recycled assets and a stylistic change in how the narrative worked (Dragon Age II), and one game that was absolutely amazing as an ending to a trilogy, which in itself had a poorly thought-out final ten minutes (Mass Effect 3). Because the internet is the internet, this then got amplified into "RAAAAAWR!! BIOWARE IS THE WORST DEVELOPER TO EVER EXIST!!!! THEY SOLD THEIR SOULS OUT TO EA!!!! I'M NEVER GOING TO SUPPORT THEM EVER AGAIN!!!!!" because the games didn't live up to either their hype or their press reviews.Mikeyfell said:But according to the evidence they released two very bad games (DA2 ME3) in the span of making Old Republic.
One of which is arguably the most important game release in history. (Mass Effect 3 was basically the make or break moment for the future of player controlled narrative series, and to be charitable with my descriptive adjectives it was completely FUBAR)
Saying either of the games was "very bad" is misrepresenting the actual quality of the games in question. Daikatana is a "very bad" game. Superman 64 is a "very bad" game. Bubsy 3D is a "very bad" game. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a "very bad" game. Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3 are decent games with disappointing parts and squandered potential. Ugh, I don't even know why I bother anymore, this post will probably only receive rabid attacks about how wrong I am to dare defending anything about Bioware.
19 years old, Male, the Netherlands.Fearzone said:Interesting. 100 euros a month does not sound unreasonable. Might I be so bold to as what country are you from, how old are you, and is the price you pay affected by age and pre-existing conditions? PM me if you are ok answering to me but don't want to put it up on the forums. Thx =)John the Gamer said:Sorry, but we are forced to get basic health insurance in my country. So we have to pay up... roughly 100 euros every month. From 18 to death. And I don't play MMO just because I don't want to pay, I just don't like the damn soulsucking black holes. The only one I dabble in occassionally is World of Tanks. But then again, that one is free.Fearzone said:Health insurance isn't, if you are healthy. Maybe catastrophic insurance, but that's it, then everything else out of pocket, then have a ton of money left over to play multiple MMOs and buy better food.John the Gamer said:I never played it at all. I refuse to pay monthly fees to almost any game, and MMO's are usually not worth that money. Food is. So is rent. Health insurance. Dwarf Fortress.
haha, i so agreee. its hardcore of quit in therekajinking said:Think I'll just stick with EVE online, casuals don't honestly exist in that game.
I agree, that the behaviour of SWToR sub accounts follow exactly the pattern of smashing hits like Conan or Warhammer, while being owned by the company that forced warhammer to wait bleeding to have less than 1 k players before switching to F2P doesn't make me lose sleep.Strazdas said:Also this whole thing is basically what i said in comemnts of previuos article, people who just "tested it" has quit, the initial spike is going down. this i nothing to be worried about.
Then I take that part back, but not the rest.Freechoice said:Kungfu_Teddybear said:There was nothing humorous about your post. Yes you got called a prick by someone, that was unnecessary and he got the warning he deserved. But you were coming across as hostile, if it was a joke, it was a very poor one because of the display of hostility.Freechoice said:Kungfu_Teddybear uses snip. It's super effective!
Although I don't think you were joking, you just said in the post I have just snipped that you thought he was being ignorant so I think you were serious.Freechoice said:I was the one called a prick just because some guy thought I was ignorant.I see this problem on the Escapist a lot. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN1k0ZDzdHw#t=4m03s]Kungfu_Teddybear said:that you thought he was being ignorant so I think you were serious.
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.
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:1.
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.
Is it my opinion that the neglect to honor player choice was a bad thing?3. Completely opinion.
I'll give you those two. They are opinions.4.
5.
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.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?
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)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.
So I'm petty. But I can't think of a worse person to throw into the game for no reason.
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.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.
Inigo Montoya has something to say to you9a. Okay... opinion.
I didn't know there was a difference between Duck Hunt and Call of Duty. (I joke, I joke)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.
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)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?
There were a bunch of the N7 missions in ME 3 but they consisted entirely of shooting guys.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?
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.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.
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:Then I take that part back, but not the rest.
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: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:Then I take that part back, but not the rest.
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:How does the box art for Medal of Honor look in the UK? Does it read "Medal of Honour"? In this instance, adding a U WOULD be misspelling it unless it looks different.
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: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: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:Then I take that part back, but not the rest.
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.
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: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:How does the box art for Medal of Honor look in the UK? Does it read "Medal of Honour"? In this instance, adding a U WOULD be misspelling it unless it looks different.
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
People who enjoy fun don't exist in that game.kajinking said:Think I'll just stick with EVE online, casuals don't honestly exist in that game.