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The only reason I'd call ME3's development rushed is because of the huge number of animation/clipping/etc bugs in there that should have been caught by QA, especially for a AAA game. I tend to see rushedness(?) as a function of how much work they have to do rather than whether or not development time was extended. They got an extra 3 months yeah, but that doesn't count for much if they had 6 months worth of work outstanding
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Nov 8, 2013 21:33
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Really no character in ME3 is plot critical, because they could all be dead by the time the game starts and either replaced with a different character or events proceed without them. You don't even need them to access all three endings. I have major issues with the whole beginning, middle and end of the game, but I think it deserves props for being flexible in that area (no "Garrus, I thought you were dead!" "No, turians can actually survive their head exploding") and for the replacement characters having a decent amount of effort put into them.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:35
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PootieTang posted:Kasumi and Shadow broker were not integral to the plot of ME2 though. Javik and the events of Leviathan WERE plot critical, and they should have either delayed the game further to include them, or cut them entirely. Slicing portions of the main game out and saying 'give us 20 dollars extra for the complete game' is, in my eyes, shady business. I disagee, neither Javik nor Leviathan were plot critical. The game plays perfectly fine without those DLCs - they provided some added backstory to the history of the Reapers but it's certainly not needed. I've played the game without either DLC. You've got optional content that adds flavor to the game but isn't needed. "Delay or cut it entirely" aren't the only options when you can ship it later. That may not be acceptable to you, which is fine, but it's acceptable to almost everyone else judging by the popularity of DLC. Look at Fallout New Vegas - should we only have had the options of not having any DLC or having to wait another year until it was all done (and risk the game being shipped at all)? As far as dealing with "producers" - I've been there and done that. Several games I worked on were running hot at the end - one was delayed a few months, the other needed a patch soon after release to get it to the quality bar we wanted. Producers generally do the best they can with the constraints they have, and tough calls get made all the time that people who've never been in a position to make those calls gripe about. INH5 posted:Bioware knew going into this how much time they would have to make the game, and what kind of budget they would have. They ended up getting 6 more months than that (along with presumably a substantial increase in budget to pay an extra 6 months of developer salaries). They had been making games for more than 15 years at that point. They should have known what they could have accomplished in that time and planned accordingly. But they clearly overestimated what they could accomplish, not just with their resources but with the tools they had available. Just look out how many times the game tries to create big Call of Duty style set pieces but has to resort to cheap tricks or pre-rendered cutscenes. I've heard complaints about Bioware not running the development process for ME3 properly a few times in this thread, and would love to hear what you would have done. Push back the ship date? You're not just impacting ME3 - we know that some of the people working on the game are now working on DA3, so now you are pushing back that ship date as well, and the DA3 people won't be happy about that. Plus most of the time the publisher has bought air time/print ads/billboards/etc. advertising the game a long time in advance, and missing Christmas is a Big Deal. Pushing back the date means impacting everyone at the company. Cut content? Great! What are you cutting? Thessia? Reducing the scope of the Genophage or Quarian-Geth plotlines? Multiplayer which ended up being one of the most popular parts of the game? "Manage the process better"? Unless you've managed a software product end-to-end personally, this is armchair quarterbacking.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:39
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INH5 posted:Delaying the game clearly wasn't an option. EA had already given them 3 months (they had originally asked for 6) and wasn't willing to foot the bill for any more. EA not willing to foot the bill for the six months the crew asked for seems to me like rushing it in the name of profit. And not necessarily cut it entirely, but move the important information somewhere else if you can't fit the new character into the game. As it stands they can't reveal that stuff in the base game because they want people to buy the DLC so that they can understand what's happening, and if they understood the plot then there would be less-need for the DLC. Do you get what I'm saying with that practice of basically holding parts of the game hostage? And yes a lot of stuff gets cut from games, same with movies. But when that happens they either also cut the stuff that now doesn't make sense (because of the absence of the set-up/explanation) or change aspects of it so that the story still makes sense and is self-contained. (Sometimes this fucks up, like KoTor 2's ending) On 'what is a complete game?' I think it's pretty much common sense. Cutting Kasumi, who's entire plotline is entirely optional and doesn't really impact the main storyline in any sense, does not make the game incomplete. The citadel DLC, is another example of an optional extra since the game without it, still makes sense and nothing is lessened or detracted by not playing Citadel when you play the main game. However the pretty critical stuff about the Protheans, which has tied directly into the plot of the series for like 3 games now, and is now at it's most critical to the immediate story is important enough that I would consider it a part of the 'complete' game. Do you see where I'm going with this? In my eyes DLC should never tie in directly to the main plot (or rather, in a critical way), it should always be an optional extra because otherwise you're just charging someone twice for a single game. If the understanding of the main storyline is in anyway lessened or detracted from by the absence of the DLC, then that in my view is shady DLC. INH5 posted:And again, Leviathan was never planned as be a part of the original game. It, or at least the info dump at the end, was written after the release as an attempted patch to the ending. So how that is supposed to be a portion of the main game that was "sliced out" is beyond me. Well then I'll concede that Leviathan isn't an example of selling parts of the main game back to you, it is instead a horrific demonstration to how bad the writing in ME3 could get. monster on a stick posted:I've heard complaints about Bioware not running the development process for ME3 properly a few times in this thread, and would love to hear what you would have done. Are you really going with the 'let's see YOU do better!' argument? I mean, by that logic we should all just stop having opinions on everything that we didn't create entirely ourselves. Sorry everyone, you can't say whether a movie was good or bad unless you made it! Don't like how a chair feels? Let's see you build a loving chair then! One need not be Caesar to understand Caesar and all that poo poo. PootieTang fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 21:42
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reagan posted:Jesus christ, please no. Something like Dark Souls where people can jump in? Fine. Just not a MMO. I think asymmetrical MP is kind of the next big thing - You have the DSouls series, and it will be in Watch Dogs when it finally gets released. It could work well in ME - either you're invading to gently caress up that player or can be brought in to help like a squadmate. Go hog wild!
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Nov 8, 2013 21:45
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Fag Boy Jim posted:See, Mass Effect 3's storyline doesn't collapse into an incoherent mess without Javik (or, alternately, it doesn't stop being an incoherent mess if you do have Javik). So like, all "plot-critical" seems to mean in this context is "it has something to do with the plot", which like, alright, bravo. Knowing more infodumps about the Reapers or Protheans doesn't really help things. Once Javik was cut they re-wrote the storyline. At one point in development he was a key part of the plot (he was the Catalyst) but they changed his role so he could be pretty easily removed. Omega used to be a side plot in the main game too, although the way it all went down originally was quite a bit different than the DLC. There was no Nyreen or Petrovsky (the villain was a completely different dude) and Cerberus never actually took Omega, they were repelled by Aria's forces on the ground so they were blockading the station to try and starve her out. It was also where Zaeed's cameo was going to happen. Once it was cut there was a comic series detailing the Cerberus attack on Omega that changed a lot of stuff and the DLC followed that rather than their original ideas.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:51
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PootieTang posted:Are you really going with the 'let's see YOU do better!' argument? I mean, by that logic we should all just stop having opinions on everything that we didn't create entirely ourselves. Sorry everyone, you can't say whether a movie was good or bad unless you made it! Don't like how a chair feels? Let's see you build a loving chair then! No, that's not what I said. If you want to say ME3 is a lousy game, fine. If you want to say "well I would have made it better because I would have gotten EA to give me another six months of development time, gotten more developers/artists, blah blah blah" - well, unless you've actually done that in the real world, you don't understand all the factors involved and why saying that is a hell of a lot easier than actually doing it. If you think the ME3 team didn't want more time (we know they did) and didn't want more resources (every team does) and didn't push for it (we know they did because EA's response was to only give them three months instead of what they were asking for) then you haven't bothered to understand what went down with ME3.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:01
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PootieTang posted:EA not willing to foot the bill for the six months the crew asked for seems to me like rushing it in the name of profit. If I'd seen the mess they were dealing with I'd have kicked it out the door sooner.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:14
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sassassin posted:If I'd seen the mess they were dealing with I'd have kicked it out the door sooner. Other than not having an ending in place, not one person at EA would have looked at the product and said, "hmm, what a mess, this looks like a bad game."
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Nov 8, 2013 22:20
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sassassin posted:If I'd seen the mess they were dealing with I'd have kicked it out the door sooner. Time really didn't have anything to do with the ending - a cheap ending where the Crucible ends up being a Reaper Killer and Shepard gets a conventional victory would have cost about the same to make. If you hate the ending, that falls on Bioware, not EA. They got more time and we got the Extended Cut which was more of the same. That Bioware got to kill Shepard off implies that EA didn't have that much input into the story. EA would probably have preferred that Shepard live so they could make ME4 with an iconic character. VVVV - I don't consider this armchair quarterbacking at all. It's a very good answer. monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 22:23
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monster on a stick posted:Cut content? Great! What are you cutting? Thessia? Reducing the scope of the Genophage or Quarian-Geth plotlines? Multiplayer which ended up being one of the most popular parts of the game? Personally, I would have scaled down the whole scope of the game. Have less space battle cutscenes and major set pieces. You don't have to set every main plot level in the middle of a giant battle with Reapers and space ships shooting each other in the background. I also would have seriously rethought whether a big galactic war is a good setting for a game that can't handle combat scenes on a greater scale than "2-4 person squads versus up to 8 enemies." One idea would be to not have the full scale Reaper invasion happen until the climax of the game, with you fighting just Cerberus and maybe some "Reaper scouting parties" until then. Keep most of the levels relatively small scale, and save the fireworks for the final mission, like Mass Effect 2 did. Which might have helped with the pacing in general. In short, don't try to make Call of Duty without Call of Duty's budget. Yes, this is armchair quarterbacking. For the record, I do have a bit of experience with game development, and I've personally seen what overambitious design and feature creep can do to a project. In any case, I have no idea if I would have done a better or worse job, or if my suggestions would have been at all feasible. But I don't think I need to be a master game designer/producer to look at what we know about Mass Effect 3 and say that what Bioware did to make it didn't work out as well as they had probably wanted it to.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:25
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It's not armchair quarterbacking to state that ME3 was just too drat big. Or at least, if it's possible not to be a negative connotation to that phrase.
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Nov 9, 2013 00:08
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ME3 was mostly a Good Game, and though the ending was awful I think its effect is a bit overstated, but you have to admit it's not good optics to have "absolutely blew it at the finish line and provoked a half-year screaming match" as the biggest story attached to your game. It could have been the Game With The Choices, now it's the Game With The Bad Ending. I have no idea what the long-term effect will be on the series' popularity, but it's not the idea launching point.
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Nov 9, 2013 00:28
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DrNutt posted:Other than not having an ending in place, not one person at EA would have looked at the product and said, "hmm, what a mess, this looks like a bad game." On the other hand, I would like to think not having an ending to the final game of your cumulative trilogy would be a significant concern for any design team and the people overseeing them. In regards to the above: I do consider the ME series to be a great trilogy and the third game to be overall very high quality, but the storytelling had serious highs and lows and botching the ending to the degree that they did was a huge blow to what should have been the satisfying conclusion of the series. I don't regret playing it by any means, but I do wish I had taken the advice to Alt + F4 after Anderson's final congratulation and it pretty much killed my ability to be enthusiastic about any continuation of the series. I have a very hard time recommending the series to my friends in good conscience knowing that they're going to spend three games getting wrapped up in it just to have the ending take a poo poo on everything they cared about, even knowing that the preceding 98.5% is one of the best western RPGs you can find. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 00:40
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Pattonesque posted:I have no idea what the long-term effect will be on the series' popularity, but it's not the idea launching point. I know half a dozen people who all attended the Mass Effect 3 midnight launch in Melbourne. They have no interest in the series any more. Neither do I, really.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:33
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Milky Moor posted:I know half a dozen people who all attended the Mass Effect 3 midnight launch in Melbourne. I can only speak from what I know -- the people I convinced to buy the series are pretty down on it. For me, Mass Effect games have gone from a sight-unseen preorder to waiting until they're played by sources I trust. BioWare games are generally p. flawed, but I like the feel of them so I'm usually confident that I'll enjoy the overall experience. The idea that they considered what they came up with for the ME3 ending to be somehow not only acceptable but actually artistically worthy is a huge blow to that confidence. I don't wanna get invested in another trilogy only to have them blow it again. EDIT: someone mentioned hiring a cosplay person for their PR department to be an issue, but here's the bigger issue: that cosplay person was generally the most reasonable and least condescending PR person they had during the whole epilogue debacle. Pattonesque fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 01:48
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Holy crap guys. I see 54 comments and I think there must be something fun going on. Ugh. Here, watch this and stop arguing about stupid poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woFoHGWh_HU
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Nov 9, 2013 02:03
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Pattonesque posted:I can only speak from what I know -- the people I convinced to buy the series are pretty down on it. Out of curiosity, did they buy teh series before or after the ending debacle? I think people who went into it, knowing that it wasn't a good ending, would be fine with more games. I think it's the long-term fans - like the half dozen I mentioned - who aren't interested.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:11
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Milky Moor posted:Out of curiosity, did they buy teh series before or after the ending debacle? I think people who went into it, knowing that it wasn't a good ending, would be fine with more games. I think it's the long-term fans - like the half dozen I mentioned - who aren't interested. Before. Leading up to ME3 I'd convinced four or five of my friends to give it a shot, and they loved it. One of them usually played Madden and the like prior to it -- I think this was his first big RPG. I finished the game first, and spent the next week getting my friends' reactions. One of them texted me at two in the morning to ask what the hell had happened -- he seriously thought he'd done something wrong to get the ending he got. I was in the room when my Madden friend finished it. He said he thought it was OK, and then he started thinking about it, and then an hour later had completely turned on it and joined one of the "change the ending" groups on Facebook. None of them downloaded the Extended Cut. Again, small sample size caveat. EDIT: Also, this http://stickskills.com/2013/11/08/new-mass-effect-announcement-vga-2013/ But they're saying early 2014 which seems impossible. Pattonesque fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 02:21
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Haha, I remember watching my wife finish the game and wondering if this was just one ending scenario. Like, if you don't get enough war points you get the weird Gainax ending and have to start over to get the proper one.Milky Moor posted:I know half a dozen people who all attended the Mass Effect 3 midnight launch in Melbourne.
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Nov 9, 2013 03:58
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I'm having some trouble with getting onto the planet Vana. I apparently need to get some artifacts from it, and I scanned and probed it once and got some war assets, but there's still a subtitle below the planet title saying I need to get artifacts. Is there a way to land on it?
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Nov 9, 2013 05:08
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The artifact is for a salarian on the Citadel as part of the Blue Suns quest. Can you give it to him? If not try the Bugs section of this wiki page: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Aria:_Blue_Suns
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Nov 9, 2013 05:14
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2house2fly posted:The artifact is for a salarian on the Citadel as part of the Blue Suns quest. Can you give it to him? If not try the Bugs section of this wiki page: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Aria:_Blue_Suns That's what I was looking for, and I guess I got it. I'll post again if I can't get it to register with him.
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Nov 9, 2013 05:16
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Is anyone else frustrated by the bizarre lack of communication of time in ME?. The absence of any dates or just general consideration for time frames throughout the series is so annoying. What month is it at the start of ME3?. How much time passes in ME1 during the hunt for Saren?. A week, a month, who the hell knows?. ME3 doesn't even state at the beginning what the drat year is. How long does it take to travel via the relays and FTL?. What is today's date?. Would it have been so hard to implement an in-game clock?. So many things occur in ME3 without any details about the time frame involved. It all feels so unrealistic and vague. Time is so important in real life yet totally neglected in the series. ME3 should have begun with a simple bit of text stating "November 9, 2186. 6 months after Alpha Relay incident", something like that for god's sake. Reminds me of Halo 3, another horribly vague game in terms of time. Bioware took a leaf straight out of Bungie's book in terms of completely failing to summarise anything from the ME comics, books, etc, to help connect ME2 to 3, but that's a rant for another time. psyman fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 06:53
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Most video games do that. If you give the player a clock, it'll call attention to things like how that Turian has been standing at the same counter demanding a refund for weeks, Gordon Freeman spent 3 days fighting the Combine without ever stopping to eat, drink, or sleep, and that you literally spent months driving the Mako around random planets while Saren was heading to Illos to end the world. The Mass Effect games already have the problem where the main story tries to present a sense of urgency while the actual game rewards you for dicking around the galaxy map instead of focusing on the main missions. Presenting an actual calendar would just make it more obvious. I know that Fallout 3 and New Vegas give you a clock and calendar, but it's hidden away in the annoying Pip Boy interface and the calendar is completely isolated from the rest of the game. No matter how many days, weeks, months or years go by, the Legion's always gearing up to attack Hoover Dam any day now. Any day now... The only game that I can think of that was really successful at presenting a sense of time progression is Majora's Mask. And that's only because it does the Groundhog Day thing.
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Nov 9, 2013 07:12
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The games tell you pretty much every piece of information related to time that you need to know, or give you the information necessary to work it out yourself. Why would they put in an in-game clock? It might not be much effort, but not much is still too much for no benefit.INH5 posted:I know that Fallout 3 and New Vegas give you a clock and calendar, but it's hidden away in the annoying Pip Boy interface and the calendar is completely isolated from the rest of the game. No matter how many days, weeks, months or years go by, the Legion's always gearing up to attack Hoover Dam any day now. Any day now... There is a lot of functions in those games related to time, though. Some quests can only be activated at specific times, some areas are only accessible at specific times, etc. etc.
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Nov 9, 2013 07:25
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Shouldn't it be vague? In a game where you can choose to blitz the main story, or labor through the game doing every side quest, time being as vague as it can be seems like a better way to go.
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Nov 9, 2013 07:30
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There is no time in space.
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Nov 9, 2013 07:48
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I know that it's been mentioned before but despite my disappointment with Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age II I would preorder Mass Effect: Firefly without any hesitation. Seriously, I'm still hoping for a sci-fi RPG where you get to play as a bunch of freebooters/pirates and their ship.
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Nov 9, 2013 09:19
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Pattonesque posted:EDIT: someone mentioned hiring a cosplay person for their PR department to be an issue, but here's the bigger issue: that cosplay person was generally the most reasonable and least condescending PR person they had during the whole epilogue debacle. That was me and yes, that's a fair point actually. Also, to Bioware's credit, they got rid of Chris Priestly, so at least they're trying, I guess!
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Nov 9, 2013 09:37
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DrNutt posted:Other than not having an ending in place, not one person at EA would have looked at the product and said, "hmm, what a mess, this looks like a bad game." The most damning condemnation of EA I've ever heard. Being a little harsh, aren't you? The ending is surprisingly coherent given the rest of the game.
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Nov 9, 2013 22:30
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Doing a full replay of the series for the first time, this time as paragon femshep (first play was renegade dudeshep). Aside from ME1 being the slog I remember (it comes together incredibly well at the end, I always have to say), ME2 was just... unbelievable the second time. I don't even know if I fully appreciated it the first time, because ME3 was launching soon and I wanted to finish 1 and play 2 to get to 3 as it came out, but holy poo poo. Of the several incredible moments: The introduction was fantastic. Thane's storyline. The conclusion of Project Overlord, what a fantastic DLC. Same with Lair of the Shadow Broker. All of the collector ship/base setpieces. But really just from top to bottom a legendary game. I only have maybe one or two minor gripes. It's weird how renegade interrupts don't really detriment you in any way if you're playing Paragon. Once you max your class skill, you'll have Paragon maxed long before you cross the 3/4ths mark of the game, especially if you're doing sidequests and DLC. I guess scars and Samara "romance"? Also I wish Shepard's class played more into the plot interactions. I played biotic and Shepard literally never uses biotic powers in the plot points. Every time you need a magic wand to solve a problem, it's always her pistol. Also your interactions with Jack could have been more meaningful, you don't even mention being a biotic and neither does anyone else. Granted, Bioware threaded in thousands of player choice preferences into dialogue and mission plots throughout the series, but this seems like a weird blindspot. Anyway, onto ME3!
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Nov 11, 2013 03:04
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Loving Life Partner posted:Doing a full replay of the series for the first time, this time as paragon femshep (first play was renegade dudeshep). ME2 is my favorite of the series. Everything after Freedom's Progress just hauls on like a freight train, and the Suicide Mission (particularly the first time around) is probably the best ending to any game I've ever played. It made what happened with ME3's ending all the more perplexing. The class thing comes up exactly twice during the entire series -- once if you're an engineer during Omega, and once during Citadel. It doesn't detract from things exactly, but it is a strange thing not to take into account. Shoot, Dragon Age II even does it.
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Nov 11, 2013 03:26
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Loving Life Partner posted:Anyway, onto ME3! ME3 is pretty darned good the second time, too. But the flaws also stick out more.
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Nov 11, 2013 03:50
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Pattonesque posted:The class thing comes up exactly twice during the entire series -- once if you're an engineer during Omega, and once during Citadel. It doesn't detract from things exactly, but it is a strange thing not to take into account. Shoot, Dragon Age II even does it. There's also the time that Liara mentions your class in her time capsule in 3, isn't there?
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Nov 11, 2013 15:19
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Waltzing Along posted:Holy crap guys. I see 54 comments and I think there must be something fun going on. Ugh. Dudeshep always sounds off to me. I think it's probably because I'm exposed to a lot of Mark Meer's other work. When I go back to Shepard for anything I keep expecting him to break into some kind of radio skit.
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Nov 11, 2013 15:57
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Waltzing Along posted:Holy crap guys. I see 54 comments and I think there must be something fun going on. Ugh. Shepard has no idea what to do with his hands.
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Nov 11, 2013 16:47
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Bongo Bill posted:There's also the time that Liara mentions your class in her time capsule in 3, isn't there? I'm pretty sure biotics get a callout during the Monastery mission in ME3.
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Nov 11, 2013 18:57
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So I just played Waking Mars and it's about exploring an alien planet and looking at cool aliens and learning about them and it's pretty much everything I want in a video game. Bioware plz just make ME4 waking mars but in three d's thanks.
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Nov 12, 2013 08:23
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Chexoid posted:Bioware plz just make ME4 waking mars but in three d's thanks. All of the women in the game are sure to have them 
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Nov 12, 2013 08:25
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