He wasn't that bad for me. He was pissed when I originally made the decision, and then he told Raeka to "earn this," then I didn't hear another word from him.
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Mass Effect: Andromeda |OT| Ryders on the Storm
- Thread starter Blue Ninja
- Start date
prag16
Banned
I mean, I hear you, but to an extent I think that would take me out of the experience. Going straight from the outpost on Voeld to a remote forward station on Elaaden with no transition would feel kind of odd.
I tend to knock out chunks of things at a given location. I don't travel point to point following ONE quest chain, ignoring everything else, then repeat. It results in a lot less traveling that way.
This is (in my totally subjective opinion) the major artistic flaw of ME:A. The commentariat is obsessed with the occasionally off-key dialogue and flawed animations, but to my mind that's a footnote. Bioware made an apparently conscious decision to bloat the size of the game with tedious waypoint navigation, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. The game is huge. It would be huge even if you chopped out all the pointless padding that exists in so many quests.
I've seen posters say, basically, "well, if you don't want MMO drudgery, just skip all the tasks" - but the tasks aren't really the issue, although they aren't a highlight of the game (and I did a lot of them in my playthrough). The issue is that a lot of really good story content requires similar fetch-questy investment before it pays out. The "family secrets" quest is a perfect example, in which some of the best character work in the game is only revealed to the player after a pointless collectathon, but it's hardly the only example of bloat. Why does the lighthearted "movie night" questline require a solid hour-plus of travel, item pickup, and dull conversations to trigger? Why does every planetary vault require the activation of three monoliths at different corners of the map before it will open? Why do the generally high-quality loyalty missions often require several fetch quests before the "real" mission triggers (Peebee's in particular was so bad that I just gave up on the mission)?
I just don't understand the design decisions behind ME:A quest structure. It seems like Bioware was worried that the quest chains weren't long enough, or something - but again, the game is massive. Totally baffling. I still liked the game, on balance, but I think I would have been genuinely enthusiastic about it if they'd just chopped out about 40% of its content before release.
prag16
Banned
While you're not wrong, you don't have to play it that way. Nobody says you have to laser focus on e.g. Peebee's loyalty mission and the several stopovers it requires, all at once. I just hit that stuff next time I'm at whatever planet and knock out a few things at a time as I move through. Of course you're gonna spend more time on tedious travel if you lock in on a single quest at a time and galaxy-hop until completion. Wherever I'm going, when I roll in I check the map and see what quest markers are nearby, and whether I give a shit about said quest markers (I'd still like an option to "abandon" or "hide" quests if desired).
I'm not apologizing for the game design exactly; I agree that there is too much of this padding and the way some of the quests are designed is crap (and yes, going back to the quest giver to 'close out' the quest without actually doing anything only makes sense in certain situations, and they make you do it far more often than you should.) But a lot of this can be mitigated by playing a little more "efficiently" I'll call it.
Me too, but nothing would be stopping you from taking the long way there irrespective of whether or not they let you fast-travel to other planets' forward stations. Kadara is especially irritating.
Man Called Aerodynamics
Member
For Andromeda 2 they need to deliver pretty much the exact same transformation that ME2 did. Cut travel time, cut filler sidequests, focus on the meaty loyalty missions.
prag16
Banned
It can be a little much at times, of course. But if they changed it to a copy of the DA:I formula I feel like you'd completely lose the sense of traveling around in outer space.
RE Kadara, does the "hold T for Tempest" thing not work there or something? I can't recall now. But I use that often; just anywhere on a planet surface, I'll trigger Tempest extractions instead of traveling back to the Tempest first.
I wouldn't say exact, but yeah that's probably the direction they need to go. Cut the amount of content by 25 to 40 percent and deliver a tighter, more focused experience, while preferably still retaining a lot of the stuff that ME2 threw out with the bathwater.
Yeah, the sheer damn size of everything and the fact that you have to do so much running around from place to place for practically every quest is easily one of my biggest gripes with the game. If they absolutely needed to have such a massively oversized game I honestly would have preferred if it all took place on one planet, with the different regions essentially being different ecosystems that you can drive between. I realize that kinda goes against the whole idea of Mass Effect since space travel is such an intrinsic part of the series, but Christ, at least it would have cut down on some travel time (not to mention loading screens).
If you enter Kadara you have to take the lift to the slums, exit the slums, then use the forward stations from there. Ultimately the sense of travelling around outer space makes I think for a worse user experience, and I'm not suggesting they remove it but allow me to instead play and travel how I want to.
Haha...I remember reading some of you guys complaining about the triangle button to head to the Tempest when in the Rover...did that 2 times by mistake yesterday lol...
I think I got a bug last night,after going into the Vortex bar on the Nexus,I kept getting 50 exp like every 10seconds or so for like 5 minutes...? didnt check if it really added up though.
I think I got a bug last night,after going into the Vortex bar on the Nexus,I kept getting 50 exp like every 10seconds or so for like 5 minutes...? didnt check if it really added up though.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
your setup sounds cool but I like Liam and Drek destroying virtual everything in sight while I go around lifting everyone in midair and using my unlimited lance on them and using the charge to recharge my shields.
Liam primes people using his tech abilities. he's a killing machine but Drek, well Drek is animal.
On Normal I dont need them as much, maybe on Hardcore or Insanity i would need to play more cautious but i just love this setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmsoJsjdqVw
arhra
Member
I think going straight from one planet surface to another would be a bit too much, but being able to go from in orbit around one planet to in orbit around another planet in a different system in one step would be nice. Just let you drill down into a system on the galaxy map (at least for systems you've already explored) without actually travelling there, then do all the fancy autopilot animation at the end (but hopefully slightly less of it).
And being able to drop down to a particular forward station from orbit would be nice. They could even throw in a fancy animation of the Tempest doing a flyby and hot-dropping the Nomad (which would be another nice throwback to the first game).
Yeah, I've never had a problem with that. Maybe it's the decade+ of MMOs I've played that've drilled that into me, but it always seemed to make sense to do a bunch of quest objectives at once when they're in proximity, then go back and hand-in/continue the quest elsewhere later.
It's not much, but that got a lot less irritating for me once I realized you can just hop the fence, rather than going through the checkpoint every time.
I'm not against anyone who prefers the full flight, travel, and landing sequences but like... if I want to have the option to quick travel to a forward station on another planet and see one load screen instead of the full sequence why can't I?
edit: This is more of a question for BioWare Montreal than anyone else.
edit: This is more of a question for BioWare Montreal than anyone else.
royox
Member
I'm using that aoe biotic power (Anihilation) that says that all the enemies in 8m radius will be ready for combinations...and when I use charge on them there's no biotic explosion.
What am I doing wrong?
Pd: Of course I use the charge when they are inside the 8m range. I have the skill to lvl6 where it makes every enemy inside the aoe fly.
What am I doing wrong?
Pd: Of course I use the charge when they are inside the 8m range. I have the skill to lvl6 where it makes every enemy inside the aoe fly.
Are you charging into them before they're in range of the field?
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
I have noticed this too. same goes for my lance. it's not 100%.
Amory
Member
Glad to hear that Kadara is particularly bad for this shit, because I played ME for hours yesterday, while I had the Masters tournament on in the background. And it took me a whole day of play just to complete probably "most" of the missions on that planet.
And that's not because there were a ton of them, not really. It's all the back and forth across the map, always making sure to go around the humongous mountain in the middle (couldn't we have had 2 mountains, with a lowlands path in between?) and then periodically going back and forth between the slums and the city proper.
I want to stress that overall, I still had a pretty good time. But fuck, help me out a little Bioware.
Also can someone confirm, on Kadara
there's a sick person, with a turian trying to help him, and he mentions that he needs antibiotics. This is in the same building where you can get a UV light to bring back to the stoners, and their "plant" is said to contain antibiotic properties.
So my thought was, give them the UV light, and then get a sample of the plant and bring it back and heal the other guy. The stoners even say "feel free to take a sample" or whatever. But I never see the option to take a sample of the plant. And then when I go back to the sick guy, the turian just says "let me know if you find any antibiotics"
Is this just glitched? Or is that not how you're supposed to go about healing him?
So my thought was, give them the UV light, and then get a sample of the plant and bring it back and heal the other guy. The stoners even say "feel free to take a sample" or whatever. But I never see the option to take a sample of the plant. And then when I go back to the sick guy, the turian just says "let me know if you find any antibiotics"
Is this just glitched? Or is that not how you're supposed to go about healing him?
I never did many tasks tbh
Right, that's the way I play too - you'd have to be deranged or masochistic to follow each quest to its conclusion, irrespective of location. Like you, I let quest links accumulate for a while, then go to a location and do a bunch at once, finishing some local quests and advancing some global ones, then rinse and repeat. It's even realistic - in "real life" you'd try to get everything done on one planet before traveling away, given the time and inconvenience associated with interstellar travel.
But that process is only fun to the extent that the individual quest links are fun, and they are so, so often not - and unless you've played the game before, it won't always be possible to anticipate the optimal order, meaning that extensive backtracking is all but guaranteed. My point is only that this forest of quest links could have been drastically pruned with only positive effects on the game's narrative.
Edit - I wonder if their worry was that their open worlds would feel too empty -- or maybe that there'd be little incentive to explore them -- if they didn't fill them up with filler to pick up / check off. But I think the game would have played fine as a collection of big, mostly empty areas that feel genuinely alien and lonely, instead of, basically, MMO zones chock full of static questgivers and collectable objects. My favorite "world" in the game is probably that asteroid place, which is neat to explore but has minimal filler because it's mostly uninhabited.
royox
Member
As i said, nope :_ I use it when they are flying because of the lvl6 perk so they are 100% inside.
It's been a 0% for me so far T.T. But I noticed other party powers trigger the explosion.
Definitely a bug
royox
Member
Dammit you are right
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Report...-annihilation-field-close-combat/td-p/5956484
Fuck my life, It was the funnest build I could think.
Sioul
Member
Drack final quest spoiler
I heard you can miss one Drack quest if you go for the Salarian pathfinder. Did you get the final quest where he shows you Kesh's babies?
bonesmccoy
Banned
Kadara definitely needs the option to either start in the wilds or in the port.
There's going to be a loading transition regardless. It's simple enough to play an animation to cover it. Have Ryder plot coordinates on the omni-tool, have the Tempest fly into the current planet's atmosphere, fade to black, have the Tempest fly into the new planet's atmosphere, fade to black, and Ryder's there. Just make the whole sequence short and automated.
I have the same build too. I just could never be bothered to get in range before charging and used lance to detonate instead.
Man, that sucks.
I disagree with this. If you could just instantly travel from one planet to any forward operating station on any other planet, you lose any sense of size and exploration. It would make everything seem small. Sure you save 30 seconds, but you lose all sense of scale. What you gain in convenience, you lose in immersion.
prag16
Banned
Right, getting to Kadara potentially sucks, but leaving is easier.
I guess I'm torn on this. I guess options are fine. I like the immersion of "traveling through space" which teleporting point to point instantly does not provide, but if it were there as an option I would probably be using it to save time even though imo it might make the experience "worse" in a way.
Yeah, agreed. I'm sure some people would shit on them for emptiness if that's the route they went, but can't please everybody I guess.
what... how... any links because I had the same "earned it" comment and no
Kesh's babiesl
royox
Member
I with the 75% cd reduction I can spam charge so the idea was "charge, enemies get affected by annihilation, charge, charge, charge..." And Nova just in case. Gonna try with the lance or shockwave.
prag16
Banned
So the Ryder Family Secrets quest... do you need to find EVERY memory trigger, or are there any excess triggers (such that you only need to get to a threshold to complete the quest line rather than find EVERY single one)?
I think I may have just one left to get the last leg of the quest. It's on some random level of the Remnant Abyss area on Havarl, which (granted I haven't tried hard yet) I was having troubles figuring out how to get to. I did get the one near the third monolith which I believe wasn't shown on the map.
Tying this quest to the main plot line (but still have it optional if you don't bother to talk to SAM about it) was probably the way to go. Tying it to collecting random fucking points of light littered randomly around makes no sense whatsoever, and was a pain in the ass.
I think I may have just one left to get the last leg of the quest. It's on some random level of the Remnant Abyss area on Havarl, which (granted I haven't tried hard yet) I was having troubles figuring out how to get to. I did get the one near the third monolith which I believe wasn't shown on the map.
Tying this quest to the main plot line (but still have it optional if you don't bother to talk to SAM about it) was probably the way to go. Tying it to collecting random fucking points of light littered randomly around makes no sense whatsoever, and was a pain in the ass.
I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I am in full agreement - but want to know the really crazy thing? The end of the quest is *also* tied to a main plot trigger, so your last ball of light won't do anything for you unless you've already progressed far enough in the main narrative. As I said above, I have similar objections to a number of quests, but this one is perhaps uniquely weird in its structure.
It's a good quest too, exploring themes that I was very curious about. I would have made it a central part of the story. (BTW, I do think you need all the balls of light, but I'm not sure.)
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
WHile I am liking the game, I am nowhere close to loving it.
There is just too much padding AND the save system drives me batshit crazy.
Very frustrating to attack one of this big ass bases to get very far and then some messed up enemy spawning allows them to get the jump on you and a cheap death results.
There is just too much padding AND the save system drives me batshit crazy.
Very frustrating to attack one of this big ass bases to get very far and then some messed up enemy spawning allows them to get the jump on you and a cheap death results.
Exploratory
Banned
So when's the next patch? Do we have any idea other than during the next two months?
Annihilation Field & Shockwave works all the time for combos for me. I only use Charge to get in close range. And yes, Charge do not do combos with Annihilation for some reason.
I was on the Krogan planet last night and couldn't reach 2 of them at all. It's such a stupid mechanism that I don't care at all about it but was just trying to check it off the list.
Had a weird thing happen on the same planet. There were a few humans scattered around randomly just walking around. You couldn't interact with them, shoot them, or hit them with the nomad. I think they are supposed to be creatures from the locations and movement patterns.
prag16
Banned
Apparently the whole Garson mystery is supposed to be pretty much at the end of the quest; I already did that part without having collected the last few triggers. I have one memory unlocked for next time I'm on the Nexus, and I think I have, as I said, one trigger left to collect. Hopefully I didn't break the quest somehow.
Sioul
Member
I mean after doing that quest,
it seems that if you help the pathfinder you stop getting quests from Drack and the final one (postgame I think) is the one of the babies:
That is pretty annoying.
Get 30 minutes through a base to die to an instakill. Get sent back 30 minutes before.
Nah, I think you should be good. I think I did it in roughly the same order - Garson mystery before the last few memories.
That's what I thought too, but it's not. There is still a few more missions after this, although not much.
For what it's worth, it won't - I delayed that quest for a long time because I was worried that it would start a chain of events that would make it illogical to complete outstanding side quests before the end of the game, but that didn't turn out to be necessary. The game will give you several other natural pauses that you can use to tie up loose ends after you complete that mission.
I actually think the end of ME:A is pretty well designed in this regard (and, by the by, its last few quests are well done), speaking as someone who is routinely annoyed by the narrative dissonance in RPGs in which you're expected to ignore tasks the game tells you are incredibly pressing in order to do sidequests. Without going into spoilers, finishing side quests makes narrative sense all the way up until the very final mission.
prag16
Banned
They do kind of play up the
RACING THE ARCHON TO MERIDIAN!!!
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Charge resets your shield allowing me to spam Lance over and over again and then charge again to re-up the shields, rinse and repeat.
Shockwave doesnt do that unfortunately.
Camp Freddie
Member
Different strokes I guess, but watching loading screens subtracts from immersion for me. I can abstract fast travel in the same way that I abstract Ryder's offscreen toilet breaks, I don't need to see it to know it happens. But if you make me sit there for several minutes thinking "FUCK FUCKING FUCK STUPID FUCKING SHITTY GAME DESIGN" then I'm as non-immersed as possible.
Personally, the best solution is a simple voiceover saying "Travelling to the [x] system" with some generic "main drive engaged", "s-foils retracted", "reactor online, all systems nominal" fluff and a transition that takes no longer than the load time requires and spits me out at my destination (and don't force me to leave my cabin, open the pod bay doors, wait for a train, etc).
I also dislike planning efficient quest routes because it ends up ruining the flow of the quests. Instead of thinking "this quest is interesting, I wonder what will happen next", I end up thinking, "where's the nearest quest icon? Okay, investigate the bodies What bodies? This journal is awful. Fuck it let's just go there and see if it jogs my memory. Nope, it's just a datapad on a dead body with some names I don't remember. Now I've got to return to Danny Shitpeas. Was he the missing colonists guy? Or the father looking for his daughter? Or the guy with the gambling debts? Whatever, he's in another star system so I guess I'll do it i a few days time when I go there". This is followed a few days later with "Oh, this icon says to see Danny Shitpeas. What was that about? He's talking about some dead bodies and thinks it's connected to a smuggling ring on Kessel. OK, that's great I guess. I suppose I'll visit that in another few days"
I never had any problem with teleporting around DA:I, despite the fact that for a dude on a horse (when do I get my titular dragon?) the journeys are probably longer than warping between space systems.
I'm hoping that future patches will continue to add "quality of life" improvements.
I didn't play until 1.05 and I can't imagine planet scanning without skipping the tedious animation.
Per my memory they salvaged it by
having "Journey to Meridian" seem like something that would require some setup, and the "Hunt for Meridian" be something that seems like it could take a while - data to process, etc.