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Codependent Poster posted:GaaS games are loving terrible and need to die. Good news! They do! Again and again.
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Feb 26, 2021 02:54
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Bloody Pom posted:Obsidian seem to be pretty iffy when it comes to original IPs. Tyranny was pretty underwhelming as well from what I recall. Alpha Protocol was insanely ambitious and suffered for it, the level of reactivity put Mass Effect to shame but the gameplay makes ME1 seem like a competent shooter. Their best works have often been picking up other developers' scraps (KoTOR 2, New Vegas etc.) and even those are often seriously flawed or cut down. The stories for those 2 games specifically are pretty notorious for the amount of publisher fuckery that went on. Kotor 2 ended up with them getting told "hey, release the game 6 months earlier then planned for Xmas" and they had to sprint to get a workable game out. New Vegas, something about how Bethesda was going to handle QA/QC on the game but then didn't because in the contract it there was a promise of a massive bonus if the game hit 90 on metacritic.
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Feb 26, 2021 02:56
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pentyne posted:New Vegas, something about how Bethesda was going to handle QA/QC on the game but then didn't because in the contract it there was a promise of a massive bonus if the game hit 90 on metacritic. I wouldn't put much stock in Bethesda's QA even if they had done it. Oblivion, FO3 and Skyrim all have more than their fare share of jank.
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Feb 26, 2021 03:00
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The thing about Mass Effect 3 is that it's only a slight exaggeration to say that as far as being an RPG the good parts weren't new and the new parts weren't good. If I look at all the highlights they are almost all payoffs for things set up in games one and two, especially on Tuchanka (I genuinely do not care about Lieutenant Victus, but everything round Wrex and Mordin Solus was awesome). Rannoch was almost good - it was seriously underdone, and might have been good if Javik wasn't Day One DLC. Now it was a pretty decent Left4Dead/Vermintide type thing, but all the story highs I can recall were created by taking the hooks from previous games and paying them off.
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Feb 26, 2021 03:32
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Blue Raider posted:DICE is too. I can't imagine what happened behind doors to gently caress up BF5 as much as it was and BF1 to a lesser degree even though it was generally liked. The choices that DICE made with BF5 were so odd that I can't imagine them coming from EA. What a piece of poo poo game, especially coming from the people that made Bad Company 2. as someone who loved BF1, i loving hated V, it was just ugly and didnt really know what it was going. people don't play WW2 games some they can dress up like loving fortnite characters. lady soldiers and custimazation is cool but that loving announcement trailer was loving horror show. kilus aof posted:The Outer Worlds was published by Private Division/Take Two. Avowed is the big RPG that will show what Microsoft money does for Obsidian. also Outer Worlds was AA and Avowed is gonna be the "gently caress IT MAKE AAAAA SKYRIM" that will probably persuade me to get an xbox at some point.
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Feb 26, 2021 05:41
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Bioware is a living breathing (for now) argument as to why game developers need a publisher to ride them. Without EA showing up to say "MAKE A loving GAME!" they probably wouldn't have ever even finished Andromeda. I think there's a lot of evidence that EA is the cause of Bioware structuring itself towards less reachable goals with less creative power behind them, and less coherent visions and more annoying business models. The whole thing where a lot of important creatives get moved around from game to game in the middle of production seems really bad for the whole process. Popcap has its days numbered under EA's rule too. It used to be the king of casual game companies, but then after it got bought up, it had one last new original casual game that then got remade into a whole microtransaction thing, and after that all they put out were full 3D multiplayer shooters. That's what you want the casual game studio doing.
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Feb 26, 2021 06:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think there's a lot of evidence that EA is the cause of Bioware structuring itself towards less reachable goals with less creative power behind them, and less coherent visions and more annoying business models. The whole thing where a lot of important creatives get moved around from game to game in the middle of production seems really bad for the whole process. The way I read it EA takes what it thinks are promising game studios and gives them almost unlimited budgets (in reality just budgets that are an order of magnitude higher than they are used to) and tells them to make whatever they really want to and spend whatever they need to make their games the best possible. This works - unshackling the creative team gives us games like The Sims which would have been too risky for Maxis to produce on their own but was the answer to a creative team being asked "If you could produce literally any game what would it be?" It also gives us games with much higher production values - compare ME2 to ME1 - there was a lot more I suspect spent on that game. Meanwhile there's the other question some version of which gets asked inevitably by these studios "If we've got these big budgets no one is going to notice if we spend a fraction of them on hookers and blow, right?" And a year or two after that "We should call our next game after Bob Dylan" or "Hey! We're a casual gaming company so let's make a FPS" or "There's no pressure on us. Let's just play rather than make a game" (Westwood in that case).
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Feb 27, 2021 01:36
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Lol in Outriders there's a class that's Literally Vanguard. You have a move that teleports you to an enemy and gives you shields, and lots of close range biotic stuff including Biotic Blade and Singularity by default. Passives that encourage shotgun usage etc. Like it's completely blatant haha
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Feb 27, 2021 01:56
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Simone Magus posted:Lol in Outriders there's a class that's Literally Vanguard. You have a move that teleports you to an enemy and gives you shields, and lots of close range biotic stuff including Biotic Blade and Singularity by default. Passives that encourage shotgun usage etc. In fairness every game should copy the Vanguard.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:01
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Simone Magus posted:Lol in Outriders there's a class that's Literally Vanguard. You have a move that teleports you to an enemy and gives you shields, and lots of close range biotic stuff including Biotic Blade and Singularity by default. Passives that encourage shotgun usage etc. the issue is the powers kinda suck. too many of them are very AOE and broad. biotics were cool because they could be directed and used for crowd control. outriders just feel like bad DA moves.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:12
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neonchameleon posted:The way I read it EA takes what it thinks are promising game studios and gives them almost unlimited budgets (in reality just budgets that are an order of magnitude higher than they are used to) and tells them to make whatever they really want to and spend whatever they need to make their games the best possible. This works - unshackling the creative team gives us games like The Sims which would have been too risky for Maxis to produce on their own but was the answer to a creative team being asked "If you could produce literally any game what would it be?" It also gives us games with much higher production values - compare ME2 to ME1 - there was a lot more I suspect spent on that game. It's definitely on record that EA can and will come to their studios to mandate the game is done in [x] way, usually when it comes to monetization. Sometimes they read the market trends correctly and this works - it was an EA mandate that ME3 have multiplayer and it is one of the most well loved things about that game - and sometimes it backfires horribly - it was an EA mandate that DICE turn Battlefront 2 into what was essentially a P2W experience and it took literal years of backpedaling from that model to make the game good. That said the Anthem article definitely paints a picture of an out of touch management team at Bioware who had a vision for their new IP and didn't want to listen to any pushback whatsoever, which resulted in lovely game pulling in different directions that was so bad it caused EA to send a guy in to supersede the existing studio management structure and go "no gently caress you, you're going to put something out on the following schedule to that does hits these specific points, period the end." Which honestly makes it pretty reasonable that EA has since lost their trust in Bioware's management and wasn't interested in throwing them more staff to try to "fix" Anthem.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think there's a lot of evidence that EA is the cause of Bioware structuring itself towards less reachable goals with less creative power behind them, and less coherent visions and more annoying business models. The whole thing where a lot of important creatives get moved around from game to game in the middle of production seems really bad for the whole process. I mean charging people 10-20 dollars for Adobe Flash games isn’t exactly the most sustainable business model
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Feb 27, 2021 02:18
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Julius CSAR posted:I mean charging people 10-20 dollars for Adobe Flash games isn’t exactly the most sustainable business model Well, Adobe flash games are effectively no longer playable so it seems like a good idea now!
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Feb 27, 2021 02:22
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I'm still impressed at how Mass Effect 2 devised a number of different playstyles that all feel pretty good and with some of them, there isn't really much of an equivalent in other games, so it's really unique. I also like the leveling system being big chunks that you can really feel the difference between.
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Feb 28, 2021 04:56
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you can do something akin to first person vanguarding in the borderlands presequel as athena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5scdEXhND0&t=55s (this is just some random somebody's gameplay)
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Feb 28, 2021 05:09
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As many problems as there are with ME:A, I did like how you can give your character a unique build. Making a melee-only infiltrator with the Asari sword (AKA a space-ninja) was fun.
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Feb 28, 2021 05:14
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Bioware is a living breathing (for now) argument as to why game developers need a publisher to ride them. Without EA showing up to say "MAKE A loving GAME!" they probably wouldn't have ever even finished Andromeda. Huh so people have completely forgotten what Bioware was and how it became what it is. What studio would you say made Mass Effect: Andromeda in your opinion?
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Feb 28, 2021 05:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:I'm still impressed at how Mass Effect 2 devised a number of different playstyles that all feel pretty good and with some of them, there isn't really much of an equivalent in other games, so it's really unique. Agreed 100%. The fact that the game is a cover shooter that allows you to pinball-smash enemies is fantastic! I do prefer ME3’s weapons systems though. I like being able to use weight to balance my arsenal of guns and abilities.
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Feb 28, 2021 05:58
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Playing Vanguard in ME3 is way more satisfying than it is in ME2, but yes it is impressive that you can just break ME2's Gears of War style combat over your knee by charging and shotgun blasting everything with zero care for cover.
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Feb 28, 2021 06:13
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Sydin posted:Playing Vanguard in ME3 is way more satisfying than it is in ME2, but yes it is impressive that you can just break ME2's Gears of War style combat over your knee by charging and shotgun blasting everything with zero care for cover. At higher levels that was only feasible with a reload exploit, iirc
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Feb 28, 2021 06:15
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Rinkles posted:At higher levels that was only feasible with a reload exploit, iirc Reload canceling is a feature.
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Feb 28, 2021 06:17
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Rinkles posted:At higher levels that was only feasible with a reload exploit, iirc You have to play by the rules at low levels but if you spec for health and shields then it is completely possible to almost entirely ignore cover as a vanguard from the midish-game onward.
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Feb 28, 2021 06:24
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My only problem with ME3's weapon system is that powers usually felt a lot more powerful than guns (especially on higher difficulties where the damage of power combos increased with difficulty and weapon damage did not) so it was pretty much always better to just carry one for maximum recharge speed.
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Feb 28, 2021 07:39
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WrightOfWay posted:My only problem with ME3's weapon system is that powers usually felt a lot more powerful than guns (especially on higher difficulties where the damage of power combos increased with difficulty and weapon damage did not) so it was pretty much always better to just carry one for maximum recharge speed. Guns felt pretty powerful in the hands of Soldiers and Infiltrators and the Talon/shotguns on the vanguard felt pretty strong but otherwise yeah they were secondary on every other class.
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Feb 28, 2021 09:40
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hobbesmaster posted:Reload canceling is a feature. Honestly when you get good at it yeah, it kinda feels like an active reload system
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Feb 28, 2021 13:10
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I've been thinking of choices I should make this go around and I think I've settled on being a gently caress up. I played as a paragon male solider who did basically a perfect run, so for the remaster I'll be a renegade female adept(?) who's just terrible. Skip recruiting Garrus, kill Wrex etc. Edit: hmmm going to have to look up the minimum number of party members needed to make it through the suicide mission and who the worst ones to keep alive are. Jacob obviously makes the cut. OhFunny fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 28, 2021 13:52
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Adept is so much fun in 3. Just have Liara lay down a singularity and then detonate that thing. Just absolutely murking dudes
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Feb 28, 2021 21:13
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OhFunny posted:I've been thinking of choices I should make this go around and I think I've settled on being a gently caress up. I did my run through the OG trilogy as a loose cannon space cop who doesn't play by the rules. Mostly-Renegade but with Paragon stuff thrown in to avoid everything being awful. Probably going to do more of a puckish rogue mostly-Paragon type. Frankly, probably going to be pretty much the same run. Part of me wants to be a shithead Space Republican, but I don't want to disappoint Wrex or Mordin. 
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Feb 28, 2021 21:44
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It's been so long for me that I'll probably just do a Paragon completionist run first, and then go for the maximum-rear end in a top hat Renegade run after that.
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Feb 28, 2021 21:55
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I wonder how far I'll get into ME1 before the urge to just skip straight to 2 will overwhelm me One presumes they'll include the comic thing so you can make choices for 2
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Feb 28, 2021 22:06
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Simone Magus posted:I wonder how far I'll get into ME1 before the urge to just skip straight to 2 will overwhelm me In the last patched version of ME2 on the 360, it plays the comic with your imported choices as a recap and then gives you the Anderson/Udina choice, if you have the Genesis DLC downloaded and installed. e: And the Genesis DLC appears to be listed in the Legendary Edition DLC contents via the Steam listing.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:13
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ShakeZula posted:It's been so long for me that I'll probably just do a Paragon completionist run first, and then go for the maximum-rear end in a top hat Renegade run after that. If you go completionist, you can easily finish the first game with 100% Renegade/80+% Paragon with everyone except the Virmire sucker (and maybe the asteroid hostages, if you want to bring Balak in) alive, which you can import to ME2 to give you enough of a buffer to hit 95% of any remaining rep checks. Playing a fun Shep who's cool to their buds, helps those in need but takes 0 poo poo from anyone and merks shittalking corporate types and scumbag pirates has always been the best way to go imo. Playing it exclusively holding up/down for every single decision with zero thought given at all has always struck me as kinda lame, especially when All Paragon is so boring and All Renegade has a few nasty racist and needless moustache-twirling moments. I dunno, I think some folks forget Intimidate dialogue checks resolve things just as peacefully as Charm ones most of the time - with maybe a couple of exceptions, you're scaring/shouting at someone to stand down, not putting a bullet in their face. You don't necessarily have to use Charm to make sure they survive to show up in the later games.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:29
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A Paragade or Renegon if you will
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Feb 28, 2021 22:56
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One of the things I do miss about ME1 was that your Charm/Intimidate skills weren't especially tied to your Paragon or Renegade score, so you could choose all the high-minded diplomatic responses in dialogue but then turn around and ruthlessly murder people during the actual major decision points. In ME2 your dialogue options were too tied to either the Paragon or Renegade path, so you really had to specialize to pass the hardest checks.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:59
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Quite honestly I don't see why you should need paragon or renegade "points" anyway. Just present both choices/interrupts as available and let the player do what they want without arbitrarily gating it behind not having enough good boy or bad boy points.
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Feb 28, 2021 23:02
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It's a real testament to how good ME2 is in general that we're all able to overlook such an incredibly broken system. You either slam Paragon or Renegade at every opportunity based on your initial choice unless you're doing a gimmick run where you do a lot of failing and picking the boring middle options
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Feb 28, 2021 23:45
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So Superman is going to be both Geralt and Shepard?!
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Mar 1, 2021 01:40
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Mark VanderLoo or bust
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Mar 1, 2021 01:44
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i have been reading the cerberus news network stories. i like how "real" they feel, i am reading about the turian city getting bombed by an engine core and that turning into some protracted anti insurgency campaign that gets a human journalist killed and poo poo like that and how that pushes the news of a war of corpos taking back some amazon box factory planet back and poo poo. https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Cerberus_Daily_News
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Mar 1, 2021 02:01
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i have been reading the cerberus news network stories. i like how "real" they feel, i am reading about the turian city getting bombed by an engine core and that turning into some protracted anti insurgency campaign that gets a human journalist killed and poo poo like that and how that pushes the news of a war of corpos taking back some amazon box factory planet back and poo poo. Cerberus Daily News ruled, had some real cool stories there and I loved seeing what each day's update would be. They kept it up for like the better part of a year IIRC
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Mar 1, 2021 02:31
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