The Mass Effect: Andromeda EA/Origin Access Will Limit Your Access to the Campaign

[Karadalis]

Why are people paying for EA access again?

Demos?

Werent those free in the past? Nah... must be my imagination...

 

[fractal_butterfly]

And here I am, still boycotting Origin, although it means that I will never see the end of the original Mass Effect trilogy. Or the newer Dragon Age games. Seems to have no effect, since everyone else is using Origin. And I am still wondering why.

 

[Imre Csete]

If the trial is limited in content why not just use a normal demo?

Because EA Access subscription costs money and we can't have free demos now can we?

 

[pookie101]

Why are people paying for EA access again?

Demos?

Werent those free in the past? Nah... must be my imagination...

you get access to a pile of games free not to mention 10% discount on purchase prices.. not a bad deal

 

[Kahani]

What's the point? Are people seriously so desperate to play a game a couple of days before everyone else that they'll pay money for the privilege? GoG exists because a good game is still fun to play decades after it was released; what possible difference could a couple of days make?

And here I am, still boycotting Origin, although it means that I will never see the end of the original Mass Effect trilogy. Or the newer Dragon Age games. Seems to have no effect, since everyone else is using Origin. And I am still wondering why.

Because there's really nothing that bad about it. I don't really know why people always compare it to Steam, since it's not actually competing with them. It's basically just another launcher like Blizzard's Battlenet launcher that you need to have installed to play a few games from a particular company - completely pointless and a bit annoying, but not actually harmful in any meaningful way.

 

[Elijin]

What's the point? Are people seriously so desperate to play a game a couple of days before everyone else that they'll pay money for the privilege? GoG exists because a good game is still fun to play decades after it was released; what possible difference could a couple of days make?

And here I am, still boycotting Origin, although it means that I will never see the end of the original Mass Effect trilogy. Or the newer Dragon Age games. Seems to have no effect, since everyone else is using Origin. And I am still wondering why.

Because there's really nothing that bad about it. I don't really know why people always compare it to Steam, since it's not actually competing with them. It's basically just another launcher like Blizzard's Battlenet launcher that you need to have installed to play a few games from a particular company - completely pointless and a bit annoying, but not actually harmful in any meaningful way.

The cost of EA access includes a 10% discount on EA products. In my country, if you plan on buying an EA game, that 10% saves you money, plus you get all the EA access stuff.

 

[Saelune]

I still want a sequel to Mass Effect.

What about ME1 drives people like this? I can't imagine it was the puddle shallow RPG elements, or the godawful dud of a combat system, or the tedious completely unrewarding inventory management, or the shitty sidequests that all took place in the same 3 recycled buildings, or the complete nonentity's that were the supposed to be the antagonists till the second to last mission, so what was it?

Lets be real for a moment, does anyone really care that its even coming out?

You are gonna be super dissapointed on the 23rd unless the reviews end up unexpectedly dire. No one outside of here /v/ r/games, ect. actually cares about the "ermahgerd Bioware sux now" club. The mainstream audience that makes up the bulk of AAA videogame sales is still super hyped for a new Mass Effect.

OT: Good? Why are people complaining about this? It's hard enough to avoid dickweeds spamming spoilers all over the place, last thing we need is to give them a head start. Worst case scenario I blitz through the available SP content in a few hours, but if the MP is anything like ME3's then I could easily spend 10 hours on that alone.

Whatever happened to that Mass Effect game? That was alot of fun. Shame they never made more.

What? But they made 2 sequels and working on a new one?

No, those are different games. I still want a sequel to Mass Effect.

I'very been replaying the trilogy while I wait, and I have to admit, the only reason I made it through ME1 was because of rose-colored glasses. Everything 1 did well, 2 did better: combat, story, character development. I missed the Mako, but the rest of the series (save for the very end) was leaps and bounds better than 1.

What did 1 do that was so brilliant that the rest of the series didn't do better? Or, why did you hate the rest of the series so much? The ending didn't give us the variety of choice that we wanted, but was it really that bad?

Its the direction the game took that bothers me. It became more of an action shooter. The addition of multiplayer also bugs me, and Andromeda seems to be really pushing it more.

When I praise ME1 and criticize the rest, it is not like I dont think ME1 cant be improved. Better exploration and environments, deeper interactions, etc. I wanted them to be improved not neglected. It became less an RPG and more a shooter.

 

[Saltyk]

I don't understand the problem.

Its an early access / trial. Understandable they're limiting what you can do. Nor do I see the problem with missions. For those who don't want to play MP, it will obviously be a squad management vs time thing, where you pick a squad and send them away to complete a mission. It will take x amount of time, and may have varying chances of failure or extra loot based on the level of that AI squad, which will probably increase as more missions are completed this way.

Its....its a pretty inoffensive feature to get upset about. But hey, this is Mass Effect and Escapist, I don't know what I expected.

Yeah. That sort of sounds like the missions you could send your squad on in FFT. Where you would pick a few members, and send them off for a few in-game days and they would come back earning Job Points and maybe some minor treasures.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Its the direction the game took that bothers me. It became more of an action shooter. The addition of multiplayer also bugs me, and Andromeda seems to be really pushing it more.

When I praise ME1 and criticize the rest, it is not like I dont think ME1 cant be improved. Better exploration and environments, deeper interactions, etc. I wanted them to be improved not neglected. It became less an RPG and more a shooter.

I can understand disliking the multiplayer; the strange thing was that it was actually surprisingly good, and I hated that it was. That meant that EA was, of course, going to try to make lightning strike twice with subsequent games, and even games in different series (Dragon Age: Inquisition was guilty of this). To be fair, though, I would never have tried ME3's multiplayer if it didn't force me to play it in order to get the "best" ending after I first got it, and that was a cardinal sin that was way worse than the ending until Bioware fixed it. It was a shitty way to get me to experience a surprisingly good thing.

I still hated that it had multiplayer, though, even though I had way more fun playing it than I thought I would.

But anyway, personally I would argue that ME2 and 3 became more of both a shooter and an RPG. I missed the exploration that the Mako provided, but I saw that mostly as a technical limitation; I don't think that Bioware simply axed it in order to make the game more user-friendly (correct me if I'm wrong here). They didn't get it right the first time, and they couldn't get it right with the engine and resources available to them, so they cut it. In exchange, you got smoother gunplay, those deeper interactions you talked about, and a better, more interesting story that expanded upon what happened in previous games.

The "RPG" part implies an emphasis on character interaction, story, and growth, and the next two games had that in spades (only to trip at the finish line, but that's a topic for another thread). A game being an RPG doesn't mean that it has to be slow-paced, tedious, and needlessly complicated, with things like a slowly-growing skill tree and horrible inventory management.

That's why I've always been baffled at the success of games like Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera. On paper, I should really like those games, but playing them is such a slog of unnecessary micromanagement, I couldn't make it much farther than the first major dungeon. That was the chief problem that Mass Effect 1 had, and it blows my mind that people actually want that back.

To each their own, I suppose.

 

[Saelune]

To each their own, I suppose.

There are two kinds of people. Those who liked Mass Effect as a series, and those that didnt play Soldier.

Ok, overgeneralization, but the combat was never the part I enjoyed the most in ME1. But, I was a Sentinel, and what I -did- enjoy about the class, was all the stuff I could do beside shoot.

Then I played ME2 and every ability is tied to the same fucking timer? I used -all- my abilities in quick succession, but now Its just a little whatever in between shooting people? Meh.

Basically I played Mage in ME1, and in ME2 they turned every class into fighter.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Although, it's hard to imagine the multiplayer content adding anything substantial to the singleplayer campaign. Especially if playing multiplayer isn't even needed.

In ME3, if you did a lot of MP, the War Bonus it added meant you could skip a lot of the side-quests in game. Perhaps MEA uses a similar function.

How is that anything but good, then? It's basically just granting player choice in activity to progress.

E.g. Spend 10 hours playing sidequests, or spend 10 hours playing multiplayer.

As I recall originally in ME3 you HAD TO play multiplayer to get all of the ending options (debatable if it was worth the effort admittedly). Because you couldn't get enough war-score in-game to do so.

They actually ended up patching that out after a while.