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[obeast]

In this quoted post, the first paragraph is a fair, but positive characterization of some of TW3's quests, while the second paragraph is an overly reductive characterization of some of ME:A's quests. Someone else (Deadly Parasite?) already touched on this either here or in the community thread, but a lot of ME:A's side quests can easily be characterized the way you're characterizing TW3's quests. So we're back at a "feeling" where the Witcher stuff "feels" important, or you "care" whereas with ME:A even though the level of exposition/story is similar, but you don't "care".

Granted a lot of people are saying this, so they probably fucked up somewhere (not sure if it's more than just some of the awkward delivery and animations; TW3 had these factors too but probably not as severe). But on the whole I'm not seeing the vast gulf many are implying. ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

It's sort of a hard thing to articulate, because I think a lot of it is that the writing in TW3 is just straight-up better (with the standard disclaimer about this sort of opinion being subjective) - subtler, wittier, more sophisticated, more surprising, more character-appropriate. It often nails the tone, too, in a way that ME:A does not. Think of how your first meeting with the Nilfgaardian emperor feels like something out of film noir, or how the Bloody Baron questline has the flavor of an old-school fairy tale (y'know, the morbid kind) or even a Southern Gothic story, or how one questline gives you a kind of Victorian murder mystery in a big, fascinating city. Nothing in ME:A has that sense of place, or of menace, or of strangeness, which is pretty damning in a game set in another galaxy. Did first contact with the

Spoiler

Angara or Kett

make you feel anything like that? I suppose I was kinda awed by the first Vault I found, but that wore off pretty quickly after I was asked to do essentially the same thing repeatedly.

In TW3, NPCs speak in wildly different styles, depending on who they are. Peasants use simple, often crude language; Dijkstra is equally foul, but his dialogue sparkles with intelligence and wit; the Bloody Baron speaks in language that is simultaneously grand and lowbrow ("in this hole, this reasty mire... what could go right here?"); and everyone uses Witcher-world idioms that seem authentic. Characters whose first tongue is a foreign language speak differently than natives. Can ME:A say the same? Its six companion characters, Kumail-Nanjiani-the-salarian, and a few other notables are distinctive, but I felt like the vast majority of NPCs speak the same generic blather, making them nearly indistinguishable. Few characters have distinctive syntax or diction. A futuristic society should have its own dialogue style and distinctive idioms (in fact, being drawn from many different worlds, it should have many such styles), but nearly everyone speaks English like they're buying a latte in Brooklyn.

Also, as I think I've said before (forgive me if I'm being tedious), the effects of presentation are hard to overstate. The vast majority of ME:A sidequests have no frills whatsoever - default camera angles, forgettable voice acting, minimal cutscenes. Because the player is accustomed to the higher level of polish in the main questlines, these deficiencies scream "NOT IMPORTANT" at the player, and the player checks out. I don't care how good you are at writing - *no one* can make a quest presented this way have any serious impact on the player if said player has been conditioned to expect a certain style of presentation in the rest of the game. TW3 has some visual bugs, but its sidequests have always had hand-designed camera angles and editing, and the effect of this on their ability to intrigue, surprise, and move the player is difficult to overstate. In fact, I think ME:A's animation bugs are a red herring. If it had precisely the same bugs but also quests with high-quality camera direction and facial animation, I suspect that most players would find them much more engrossing.

I feel a little bad using TW3 as a chair leg to beat on ME:A, simply because I consider it something of a high point in AAA RPG writing, and it's not fair to insist that every new game match or improve upon it. But I think it's a useful point of comparison, being the game that proved – to me, at least – that open-world RPG and affecting, highly-scripted narratives were not mutually exclusive things.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Does anyone here know what the reviews for this game were like from Edge Magazine? What score did they give? Really interested to know as you can't see any info now what with their site all-but gone...

 

[prag16]

etc etc Witcher is GOAT blah blah

My paraphrase of your post is just a joke, not dismissing it.

Thanks for taking the time; that was a better explanation than really any I've seen so far. I didn't see all the stuff you're talking about in TW3 because I didn't make it all the way through; was too bored (did a lot of dialogue skipping because I didn't give a shit about what was going on). To each their own I guess.

I do see how some of your criticisms of the way ME:A does things are valid. The presentation and the delivery definitely could and should be better. It clearly was and is less polished than TW3; I think everyone can agree on that.

I'll never argue in favor of the "Additional Tasks" in ME:A. Most agree the priority and loyalty stuff is pretty good. So I'll make mention of the Heleus Assignments for a minute... unfortunately some of those would be better off in the "Additional Tasks" bucket. But a lot of those I thought were absolutely at the level we're talking about in terms of gravity and impact/storytelling. Three that stick out to me are Uncovering the Past

Spoiler

ancient AI in the ice cave; cool environment and a few ways things can play out

Truth and Trespass

Spoiler

Salarian traitor helping the Kett; a little too much galaxy hopping but this was a compelling little arc

, Dissension in the Ranks

Spoiler

Primus plotting to sabotage the Archon

.

Those are all strictly side content; totally optional, but with compelling story, characters, and decisions attached. There are others too. It's too bad you have to wade through some crap to uncover the good stuff, but I felt that way in TW3 too.

I guess it just comes down to a matter of taste in many ways. I know I'm not alone in preferring ME:A over TW3, but I can acknowledge I'm definitely in the minority, and there are valid arguments against my position.

 

[obeast]

My paraphrase of your post is just a joke, not dismissing it.

Heh, no worries, made me chuckle - although I was bracing myself for a certain amount of irritation in your reply, and was relieved to find a lighter tone (it can be rather annoying to listen to someone bash a game you like using a game you don't).

Of the side quests you mentioned, I think I only completed Uncovering the Past, which was indeed entertaining. By the time I was getting near (I think) the end of the other ones, I was kinda burned out and rushing towards the end of the game. I guess that brings me back to the general argument that there's a good game lurking inside ME:A that's undercut by the filler - I would certainly have completed both of the other missions you mention if they didn't have all that boring foreplay. In fact, I probably bailed on them right before the good stuff.

Anyway, I don't mean to give the impression that I think ME:A is total crap (it isn't), and apologies if I seem like a Witcher 3 zealot (I kinda am). I'll replay ME:A after they patch it up a bit more, probably, and I'll be interested to see what kind of experience it is when I have some idea in advance of how to dodge most of the filler, or at least some idea of which filler is worth the investment.

 

[TC McQueen]

Honestly, the Mass Effect games always are better once the save editor comes out, because it helps you avoid a lot of the filler (getting the materials, mostly). I feel like MEA is probably going to get the biggest boost from Gibbed's save editor, because you'd just be able to set all the plot flags for the additional tasks right away and either do whatever combat gameplay is a result of that task or just go the quest giver to get the reward, which would probably make the early game easier.

 

[Lamptramp]

TLDR; The game needed to put more emphasize on the importance of establishing colonies and have the quests and main plot centered around doing so and increasing viability of planets.

I concur, despite the whole colony/exploration theme I didn't really feel any sense of survival, teamwork or risk for the initiative. More than anything I felt sheer disbelief that a group of such pioneers would be made up of what seemed to be the galaxies most corrupt/incompetent/evil life-forms who seemed to relish in actively making their life more difficult every step of the way.

I couldn't help thinking it may have been a more solid and concise experience had they narrowed the main play area to a single solar system with a smaller group of Goldilocks planets and other celestial bodies to really explore and exploit to make a sustainable beachhead for further exploration. Perhaps only one of the planets is "open world" and the others are smaller enclosed environments and vaults which when activated open up more of the open world.
Since the initiative couldn't expect Mass Relays they could have planned for such with the Nexus/Arcs being designed to act as the long range vessels and their botched arrival/the scourge prevents that from happening until later. The colonies are closer and more reliant on each other for security and resources and vital for later missions where its harder to travel to other systems to battle the Kett. Remnant tech is only discovered on an outer body during the second act opening the map to other systems (though not many) which introduces the Angara and Kett and the latter's genocidal rampage through the cluster searching for the very tech the initiative landed on (and is protected by the scourge).
Thus the battle becomes much more personal and desperate and having weaker colonies effects the final act, where (similar to Serenity) a horde of Kett ships plough through the scourge, attempt to destroy the colonies and get to Habitat 17 (the hidden remnant base) and try to take control and decimate the initiative and the rest of the cluster. Winning and taking control yourself destroys the Kett and gains the initiative a strong base of operations for further Andromeda exploration and new Angaran allies all ready for sequels.

I dunno, I doubt it would have made a difference and its not a perfect concept, I was just all sulky over the weekend trying to think of the game I would have enjoyed more and if it was possible to make it smaller scale. I also fancied joining in with a little more effort that just ranting about how it's a "bit pants", which if I'm being honest is quite tempting

 

[Blue Ninja]

I suppose it's probably not the same people doing it (I'm not keeping score), but it's interesting to see the dichotomy of people who think the games is pretty good and rate it a 7/10 (lots of such people in the OT and community thread), but meanwhile a 70 metacritic is generally considered an abject failure (and earmarks it as something to avoid) for anything but games with the tiniest of teams/budgets.



I'm still a little bit at a loss. People have tried to explain why the questing there is drastically better, but I'm still not entirely getting it. There are a couple objective aspects such as the inordinate length of some of the ME:A chains especially when excessive travel is required. But everything involving the story and characters is so subjective. Most of what I'm getting from people is a "feeling" that they're having a hard time elucidating.

I recognize the issues with ME:A's questing, but TW3 still bored me more. Probably far more (part of this is my personal preference for scifi over high fantasy; high fantasy is oversaturated as fuck in the RPG space...).

In this quoted post, the first paragraph is a fair, but positive characterization of some of TW3's quests, while the second paragraph is an overly reductive characterization of some of ME:A's quests. Someone else (Deadly Parasite?) already touched on this either here or in the community thread, but a lot of ME:A's side quests can easily be characterized the way you're characterizing TW3's quests. So we're back at a "feeling" where the Witcher stuff "feels" important, or you "care" whereas with ME:A even though the level of exposition/story is similar, but you don't "care".

Granted a lot of people are saying this, so they probably fucked up somewhere (not sure if it's more than just some of the awkward delivery and animations; TW3 had these factors too but probably not as severe). But on the whole I'm not seeing the vast gulf many are implying. ¯_(&#12484_/¯

I'll put it differently.

As I said, technically they're similar. But in Andromeda, you're sent on errand runs across the galaxy to scan rocks, scan dead bodies, scan plants, scan animals, scan enemies, etcetera. A sidequest can require the galaxy map to scan starsystems, only for you to end up at a planet you already discovered. Uncovering Remnant Vaults requires you to drive to three pillars, scan for glyphs, and push a button. After a while, it becomes mechanical. It feels hollow and useless, since there's no real payoff. You don't learn anything really interesting, either: you're just doing stuff.

Not every sidequest falls in that pitfall: some are actually good. Liberating Voeld allows you to venture into a buried angara city, where you can decide the fate of an ancient angara A.I. It's a great mission with a satisfying ending, and you end up feeling like you actually accomplished something. The Vaults themselves are varied and unique as well. So it's not all bad.

 

[prag16]

Of the side quests you mentioned, I think I only completed Uncovering the Past, which was indeed entertaining. By the time I was getting near (I think) the end of the other ones, I was kinda burned out and rushing towards the end of the game. I guess that brings me back to the general argument that there's a good game lurking inside ME:A that's undercut by the filler - I would certainly have completed both of the other missions you mention if they didn't have all that boring foreplay. In fact, I probably bailed on them right before the good stuff.

Yeah, this is really it. You're absolutely right; even the good quests in some cases have too much "foreplay" as you put it. Which makes it even harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. You have two quests which start out kind of meandering. How do you know which one will end up great, and which one will continue to be ho hum?

 

[Rodney McKay]

I think ME:A would have been a perfect opportunity for a game to include a time jump (or even multiple time jumps).

It's such a rare thing in Video Games, but with the importance of establishing colonies and boosting their viability, it would have been perfect to have the game skip forward a few years to see what kind of long-term changes your choices had on the area.

The only recent game I remember doing something like that was Fable 2, where you can invest in a towns future and when you get back years later it's either a thriving port town, or it's a gross cess-pool like that pirate town in Pirates of the Caribbean.

A time jump would have also allowed for the Scourge to play a stronger role in the story by seeing how it progresses over time.

 

[Madness]

There are many ways they could have made sidequests more meaningful. Look at something like the HNS receivers so outposts get the news. On Voeld, they added an ancient Eiroch nearby which is a nice touch, but imagine that after you set up HNS Receivers on outposts, as you walk through some, tv's or radios share your exploits sort of like walking through thr Nexus or using the elevator tram, or some NPC's in outposts talk about your exploits. Gives you more worlld building and more reason to do so.

Like Blue Ninja said, look at the ancient AI quest. You get a unique location, there is lore and world building and even a greater payoff. They said quality over quantity, but they have us quantity over quality in spades. Aside from loyalty missions, the critical path, very few quests or tasks have anything besides oh heres 200 credits or a thank you ans the NPC disappears or some random throwaway email.

Imagine once you finished scanning 50+ planets, there is a holographic display Dr. Aridana opens on the Nexus near the tech lab that shows planets similar to that Voeld display that is in the Resistance base. Everything I wanted from a next gen Mass Effect did not come to pass, and with Edmonton working on a new IP, I have no hope Andromeda 2 will be any better or anytime soon.

 

[FrontalMonk]

The thing I think is kind of funny and kind of sad at the same time is that a lot of the complaints lodged in the direction of ME:A are the complaints you might easily level at ME1. The thing I kept thinking of as I was going through the game is how it would have been better if they just trimmed the fat, left out the tasks, and kept it to the missions that delivered some real story and/or lore development. You know, like how ME2 was better than ME1 when it opted to get rid of a lot of the exploration in lieu of a tighter experience.

I can only hope that if/when ME:A2 happens we get the same kind of evolution from ME:A. Ditch the Nomad and the huge expanses of 4 or 5 worlds and give us a good 15-20 solid, rewarding story missions on a larger variation of planets. Dig into individual characters like they did here, but with a larger cast of squadmates and a stronger rogue's gallery than just the Archon. And either give us crafting worth doing or scrap it altogether.

So much of ME:A was unfortunate only because it felt like a love letter to ME1 without having a proper postmortem on what really worked and didn't from that game. It was way more than just bad combat and the mako that needed improvement, and ME2 saw to it in a way that this doesn't.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

Doing Drack's loyalty mission and the ending cutscene just turns into a complete clusterfuck of bugs and t-posing.

Really getting sick of this shit. The amount of missions that just completely glitch out is unacceptable.

 

[Ronabo]

I got a survey from EA today about the game. Anyone else?

 

[Bisnic]

Doing Drack's loyalty mission and the ending cutscene just turns into a complete clusterfuck of bugs and t-posing.

Really getting sick of this shit. The amount of missions that just completely glitch out is unacceptable.

It really seems to depend from one player to another if you either get a few glitchs, or too many of them.

Other than invisible enemies once in a while(and Ryder during movie night), Fiends turning my screen black after getting killed in one hit, and weird positions of my crew on the Tempest, I didn't get anything worth mentioning or remembering.

How the glitches happen seems to depend on too many variables. The curse of big open world games with so many possibilities on what the player can do I guess. You do one thing that may seem harmless, but then you get stuff like t-poses because of it.

 

[Sanojio]

For anyone on their first playthrough, fuck the tasks. Stick to the "crucial" tasks, priority ops and loyalty missions. Playing Default Sara, I've gotten Kadara, Voeld, Eos and Havara to 100%, been doing EVERY side quest and task, haven't finished any of the loyalty missions yet and i'm at 41%. If and when i play this again, im just sticking through the loyalty missions and the critical path.

 

[prag16]

I got a survey from EA today about the game. Anyone else?

Yep. Filling it out now.

 

[Madness]

Yep. Filling it out now.

Do you guys have something turned on in game? I signed up for EA Survey access and Mass Effect beta access but never got this email. I turned the EA tracking toggle off in game. Would love to answer a survey.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

It really seems to depend from one player to another if you either get a few glitchs, or too many of them.

Other than invisible enemies once in a while(and Ryder during movie night), Fiends turning my screen black after getting killed in one hit, and weird positions of my crew on the Tempest, I didn't get anything worth mentioning or remembering.

How the glitches happen seems to depend on too many variables. The curse of big open world games with so many possibilities on what the player can do I guess. You do one thing that may seem harmless, but then you get stuff like t-poses because of it.

Yeah, I dunno, I had pretty good luck for a while but it's like my game is starting to fall apart now. I played for a few hours today and I had to reload 3 times because a quest objective wouldn't trigger. It's just frustrating because something like that really shouldn't happen.

 

[Ronabo]

Do you guys have something turned on in game? I signed up for EA Survey access and Mass Effect beta access but never got this email. I turned the EA tracking toggle off in game. Would love to answer a survey.

I've always gotten into EA stuff. Not sure why.

 

[valkyre]

Posted this on community thread as well by mistake, its more fitting here:

Guys are they going to add a 1080p mode for the Pro? Just went to Havarl and this shit is unacceptable really...

I mean I am actually surprised people dont talk about the performance of this game. I was in an outpost firefight and I swear framerate was down to the 15 fps area...

Also my Pro sounds like its about to take off... which is weird because i have bought a bunch of much better looking games than Andromeda, like for example Horizon, and the system is always silent enough to the point of not noticing it at least.

With MEA it is the first time I hear the fan go bananas.

So, in short, when can we expect a new patch and have they mentioned anything about at least giving Pro users the damn option to run the game in 1080p?

 

[Replicant]

I have had 3 glitches so far:

* The early mission @ the Hyperion refusing to let my newly created character go past the busted door. There's no prompt, no Cora telling me to do things. All because I already have another save with another character that already completed that section. So the game assumes the task is done for my new character but the objectives know I haven't done it so nothing happened. It's only after I deleted the other save it proceeded how it should be.

* The

Spoiler

Architect

mission on Voeld won't complete even after defeatng it. You need to actually trace the scientists' path and if you just stumbled onto it by chance, the mission becomes confused.

* That awful mission from Addison. It always hang when you try to see the satellite. The solution seems to be travelling into other planet first after scanning its existence before entering it.

 

[SlimySnake]

Posted this on community thread as well by mistake, its more fitting here:

Guys are they going to add a 1080p mode for the Pro? Just went to Havarl and this shit is unacceptable really...

I mean I am actually surprised people dont talk about the performance of this game. I was in an outpost firefight and I swear framerate was down to the 15 fps area...

Also my Pro sounds like its about to take off... which is weird because i have bought a bunch of much better looking games than Andromeda, like for example Horizon, and the system is always silent enough to the point of not noticing it at least.

With MEA it is the first time I hear the fan go bananas.

So, in short, when can we expect a new patch and have they mentioned anything about at least giving Pro users the damn option to run the game in 1080p?

I played the whole game on the Pro and there were only two instances where i had serious performance issues with the game. When i first got to Harval and was getting sniped by random enemies and getting ambushed by invisible animals. That fixed itself when i got out of the first area on harval. the rest of the planet is more open.

The second was post patch on Eos where the game started chugging along during a big battle on Site 2. Really weird stuff because it never happened again.

I'd recommend you turning off the Motion blur and Film Grain because that made ME1 playable for me on the 360. Just for harval, the other planets are more open and shouldnt strain the GPU that much. That said, I'd also recommend cleaning out the vents on your Pro because this shouldnt be happening. Horizon was making my pro run hot until i cleaned the vents.

 

[prag16]

Finished the game last night. 87% completion in 65 hours. Skipped the majority of the "Additional Tasks" after the early stages, plus a bunch of Heleus assignments. All planets 100% viability, max Nexus level, etc.

I'm giving the game a 9/10, and it will likely be my GOTY. "Whoa, wait", you'll say. "Even the people that like the game aren't giving it a 9/10, and the game is disappointing and is riddled with issues!!!" And you wouldn't exactly be wrong. Let me explain...

To get the first obvious thing out of the way, the jank and animations didn't bother me a whole lot. Sure it could be better, and games like Witcher and Horizon are indeed marginally better here (I don't agree that the gulf is dramatically vast). But it didn't take me out of the game.

Second, all the bugs and broken shit and performance issues. I didn't have any of this happen to me, by and large. Not anything significant at least. The "worst" glitch/bug I experienced was the infamous invisible Ryder during the last part of Movie Night. I'm not going to penalize the game and dock it points for things that didn't happen to me. I don't deny that issues exist for a lot of people, but I'm lucky I guess.

The third thing that everyone is killing the game for is story/writing. This is totally subjective and hits the "agree to disagree" category for me. Nothing earth shattering is going on here; I'm not going to claim it's brilliant or anything. But it's Mass Effect. It gets the job done. And most of the main characters are likable and interesting; on par with the trilogy. The main plot does enough to keep things moving forward. It had me sufficiently intrigued from the start, even if not all the threads lead anywhere interesting. And there's a lot there still open that has me excited about further content and sequels.

Spoiler

Quarian Ark, The Benefactor, Jien Garson's murder, The Scourge's backstory, the full extent of the Kett situation; what will Primus do now?

The prior three paragraphs are things that seem to take at least a couple points off a lot of people's reviews; while for me there's hardly any penalty. That already explains the 9 vs. 7-7.5 type scores. Yes it absolutely could have used another coat of polish; the "production" is a bit weaker than things like Horizon and TW3. But none of this is egregious enough from my point of view to dock serious points. In terms of what it ACTUALLY did wrong from my perspective?

The big one is the fourth thing everybody is killing the game for. The open world and quest design. This is the main reason I can't rate it any higher than a flat 9. As others have said, this is really a 40 hour (arguably 30 hour depending) game wrapped inside an 80 hour game. And my NG+ run will reflect that. Other than some polish and production value issues, this is what separates it from being a great game and being a masterpiece. There are far too many quest chains that are far too long and laborious (while also being pretty inconsequential and/or boring). A lot of the good quests suffer from this also to an extent (e.g. Peebee's loyalty mission and the Voald ancient AI) but there's better story and payoff in those. But again I'm not going to eviscerate the game for stuff that's easily ignorable (at least for me; I understand that some people have some mild levels of OCD that causes all the unfinished quests and markers to bother them a lot more). Where this still hurts the game though is that it's harder to separate the wheat from the chaff than it should be. There are a few hidden gems in Additional Tasks many people will miss. Likewise there are many things under Heleus assignments that seem important on the surface, but end up being crap. My streamlined NG+ playthrough will be glorious, but that doesn't help a new player confused and dismayed by the padding.

I'll cut this off soon because it's getting too long, but the bottom line for me is that this is Mass Effect. Sure it doesn't exactly do anything all that new and groundbreaking. But for me it didn't have to. There isn't much like Mass Effect out there. Everything is high fantasy. Those settings, tropes, and conventions have worn thin for me. Scifi coats of paint are always my preference. I can't say it's not somewhat disappointing in certain areas, but for me it delivered big time with the settings, world building, characters, and combat (and the Nomad was MUCH better than the mako even if it was a part of some tedious gameplay), and I hope the divisive or tepid reception doesn't kill the franchise. If they learn from the missteps here, the next game can be a masterpiece.

 

[Ralemont]

To me there's a clear separation between the writing in the optional content and the "main" writing. I feel the squadmates and main quest are as well-written as the previous Mass Effect games (with one exception: Ryder's lines. Largely not good.) but that the peripheral NPCs and quests tends to be boring or nonsensical.

And I actually feel the main questline of Andromeda is my favorite out of the 4 games. I really disliked ME1's until Virmire, ME2's is...well it has the Suicide Mission. ME3's was fantastic but gets docked for the finale. Andromeda's last mission left such a great taste in my mouth that I'm really excited for the second playthrough that will be comprised of:

1. Main quest
2. Loyalty missions.
3. Side quests directly associated with main quest, such as the Sloane/Collective resolution.

That's it, I think. There, a fantastic 35 hour game like the other Mass Effects were.

 

[Cornbread78]

Quick question ya'll.


Does the auto-save work if you shut down in the middle of a mission? Will you start off from the last autosave?


I got caught in the middle of a mission last night and really had to go to bed, but couldn't save...

 

[prag16]

And I actually feel the main questline of Andromeda is my favorite out of the 4 games. I really disliked ME1's until Virmire, ME2's is...well it has the Suicide Mission. ME3's was fantastic but gets docked for the finale. Andromeda's last mission left such a great taste in my mouth that I'm really excited for the second playthrough that will be comprised of:

1. Main quest
2. Loyalty missions.
3. Side quests directly associated with main quest, such as the Sloane/Collective resolution.

That's it, I think. There, a fantastic 35 hour game like the other Mass Effects were.

I never felt like the ME side missions were a chore like this one. Part of my ME experience is being able to enjoy the side missions too, so that already loses like two points for me.

If you could streamline it down to only the "good" side quests, that'd help a lot I think.

I was thinking of trying to make a list of the "worthwhile" quests that people can reference for a replay (or a first playthrough if they aren't inclined to amble around and don't care about light spoilers). Unless somebody has done such a thing already. I'll look around.

Quick question ya'll.


Does the auto-save work if you shut down in the middle of a mission? Will you start off from the last autosave?


I got caught in the middle of a mission last night and really had to go to bed, but couldn't save...

Yes. But no guarantees how far back the autosave is obviously. Depending on where you're at you could lose 5-20 minutes of gameplay. And the intervals are inconsistent; it doesn't necessarily autosave after every major encounter. Lack of a quick save (or at least more control over when you can manually save) is one of the issues I have with the game.

 

[mbpm1]

I never felt like the ME side missions were a chore like this one. Part of my ME experience is being able to enjoy the side missions too, so that already loses like two points for me.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

Quick question, i know its subjective but I figure i'd like your opinions.

As someone who has never finished a Mass Effect, just recently bought the collection.
However once it really got started I didn't have much time especially with it stuck on PS3.

Anyway I Redboxed this and am likely keeping it another day however despite the many technical and quality issues im honestly really enjoying it.

Now the question is having just cleared the first vault and returned,
As im really enjoying it so far despite constant issues is the game likely worth a purchase(or does it go downhill, or just turn into sequel bait)?

 

[mbpm1]

Quick question, i know its subjective but I figure i'd like your opinions.

As someone who has never finished a Mass Effect, just recently bought the collection.
However once it really got started I didn't have much time especially with it stuck on PS3.

Anyway I Redboxed this and am likely keeping it another day however despite the many technical and quality issues im honestly really enjoying it.

Now the question is having just cleared the first vault and returned,
As im really enjoying it so far despite constant issues is the game likely worth a purchase(or does it go downhill, or just turn into sequel bait)?

Depends on your tolerance for fetch quests. Also you'll be doing that vault and the following missions leading up to it like four more times so depends on how that feels for you.

The ending from what I hear is NOT a problem so don't worry about that.

 

[Bisnic]

Quick question, i know its subjective but I figure i'd like your opinions.

As someone who has never finished a Mass Effect, just recently bought the collection.
However once it really got started I didn't have much time especially with it stuck on PS3.

Anyway I Redboxed this and am likely keeping it another day however despite the many technical and quality issues im honestly really enjoying it.

Now the question is having just cleared the first vault and returned,
As im really enjoying it so far despite constant issues is the game likely worth a purchase(or does it go downhill, or just turn into sequel bait)?

If you like what you've played so far, you'll probably enjoy the rest of the game, but a few notes :

Don't try to do all the quests under "Additional Tasks", most are meaningless with little interesting stories. Just do them if they're on your way of other more important quests.
Expect all big planets to work the same : Find 3 monoliths, activate vault, do some main quests to set an outpost, kill the same big boss as seen in previous planets, find glowing balls for your father memories.

 

[Cornbread78]

Yes. But no guarantees how far back the autosave is obviously. Depending on where you're at you could lose 5-20 minutes of gameplay. And the intervals are inconsistent; it doesn't necessarily autosave after every major encounter. Lack of a quick save (or at least more control over when you can manually save) is one of the issues I have with the game.

Alright, TY.

It was a boss battle, so I believed it saved right before.....

Speaking of which, I would really like to bit(h about how I died after the 10 minutes trying to kill the focker in

Spoiler

Voeld

.... Only a couple swears left my mouth after getting

Spoiler

grabbed and killed instantly?!? WTF...

 

[Drewfonse]

Is it feasible to do a straight story run/loyalty quest run in this game? I'm really enjoying it after 3-4 hrs, but I'd like to avoid as much open world /side quest-y nonsense as possible.

 

[noomi]

Alright,

So I finally jumped in, never played any mass effect games in the past so this is a first time experience for me.

I like it.... I like it a lot....

That being said I've only just landed on my first planet

Spoiler

Eos

have done a few main missions and some side stuff as well.

So far I'm totally involved in this universe, and really liking the story/combat/graphics/atmosphere.

I know there were many critical reviews, but hey... I'm enjoying myself. I only get to play about an hours or two each day so I expect this to take me a LOOOOONG time to finish up. Good shit.

*edit*

I've only played for a short while, and have only experienced a few bugs. Weird animation glitches, and some dialog that was muted (thank goodness for subtitles )

Nothing serious.... yet

 

[Bisnic]

Is it feasible to do a straight story run/loyalty quest run in this game? I'm really enjoying it after 3-4 hrs, but I'd like to avoid as much open world /side quest-y nonsense as possible.

It's feasible, but you might miss too many important & cool stuff by sticking only to the priority ops quests.

I would suggest... on top of the priority missions, to do all quests that start with the name of your crew, that will eventually end up with a cool mission with them in an unique location, and do the Ryder Family Secret one, even if the task of the quest itself is tedious by searching for glowing balls of light across different planets, there is too many important story stuff in there(a lot of stuff related to the Initiative beginnings, plus some ties to the original trilogy and of course your own family) to simply ignore it imo.

The rest can be safely ignored if you wish to skip anything too "open worldish".

 

[mbpm1]

I've only had one major glitch so far in which Ryder was stuck in one place after loading a save. Nothing could make her move. Reloading did not help. Closing the game and opening it worked though.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

Depends on your tolerance for fetch quests. Also you'll be doing that vault and the following missions leading up to it like four more times so depends on how that feels for you.

The ending from what I hear is NOT a problem so don't worry about that.

If you like what you've played so far, you'll probably enjoy the rest of the game, but a few notes :

Don't try to do all the quests under "Additional Tasks", most are meaningless with little interesting stories. Just do them if they're on your way of other more important quests.
Expect all big planets to work the same : Find 3 monoliths, activate vault, do some main quests to set an outpost, kill the same big boss as seen in previous planets, find glowing balls for your father memories.

Thank you.

I've only had one major glitch so far in which Ryder was stuck in one place after loading a save. Nothing could make her move. Reloading did not help. Closing the game and opening it worked though.

I've had many little ones so far, first was my Ryder kept screaming after the first combat encounter... it was kinda hilarious.
and certain characters hovering over the ground as they walked.

 

[mbpm1]

I've had many little ones so far, first was my Ryder kept screaming after the first combat encounter... it was kinda hilarious.

I kinda want that bug now

 

[Madness]

One bug I had was the doors shut behind me as I was talking to PeeBee and I had saved like an idiot after her convo and had to revert to a save like 7 minutes prior. Lost a Cobra RPG from the cryo pod consumables perk and instrad received a disruptor ammo one the next time. Supposedly very rare for a cobra to drop from the cryo pod perks.

So many times been stuck under some geometry. What really annoys me the most is the game slows to a crawl on the tempest and Nexus now on Xbox One. I am talking under 10 frames. Inexcusable.

 

[Ralemont]

Hmm, I forgot about the Ryder Family Secrets quest. That does sort of throw a wrench into a straight story run. On the plus side there really aren't that many triggers to collect.

 

[BumRush]

I own ME:A. It's sitting DL'd on my PS4 since day one but the negativity and subsequent damage control (from Bioware) has me waiting. Is now a good time to jump in or do we expect significant enhancements to come in the next month or so?

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

I kinda want that bug now

Was pretty funny, for almost the entire remainder of that level she would make that injured scream every 5-10 seconds.

 

[prag16]

Depends on your tolerance for fetch quests. Also you'll be doing that vault and the following missions leading up to it like four more times so depends on how that feels for you.

The ending from what I hear is NOT a problem so don't worry about that.

Eh, I take a little bit of issue with people saying the vault quests are identical per planet. They're similar. But the layouts of each vault are different, the amount and type of resistance isn't the same, and even activating the pillars beforehand isn't the same for every planet. Some have remnant puzzles, some don't. At some you'll meet armed resistance, at others you won't. Actually getting to them won't be the same in every case; sometimes you'll need to complete a separate quest to even access the vault or a pillar.

And about the fetch quests... just don't do them. That's often going to be the solution. Yeah, not the greatest solution, but there are no guns to our heads.

 

[mbpm1]

Eh, I take a little bit of issue with people saying the vault quests are identical per planet. They're similar. But the layouts of each vault are different, the amount and type of resistance isn't the same, and even activating the pillars beforehand isn't the same for every planet. Some have remnant puzzles, some don't. At some you'll meet armed resistance, at others you won't. Actually getting to them won't be the same in every case; sometimes you'll need to complete a separate quest to even access the vault or a pillar.

And about the fetch quests... just don't do them. That's often going to be the solution. Yeah, not the greatest solution, but there are no guns to our heads.

What you're saying is true, but they're all equally generic experiences for my part.

 

[thepenguin55]

I own ME:A. It's sitting DL'd on my PS4 since day one but the negativity and subsequent damage control (from Bioware) has me waiting. Is now a good time to jump in or do we expect significant enhancements to come in the next month or so?

They're promising significant patches over the next two months. Also I just completed a survey from EA related to the game that asked some real interesting questions that had very specific options for the answers. The number of times facial animations, writing and side missions came up in the survey was interesting. While the information they gather probably won't be applied to this game due to the amount of work that would need to be done I think it's clear that the devs are listening. I started a playthrough but pumped the breaks once they announced all the plans they had to patch the game. Patch 1.05 made some good improvements but as I said earlier they have plans for some substantial updates over the next two months.

 

[Coxy100]

Anyone else have problems loading their saved game? My PS4 won't load any of my recent saves - the white bar scrolls across and at the end nothing happens (and the PS4 airplane mode turns on).

It happened to me ages ago and I had to load an old save. It now looks like if I want to play andromeda I'm going to have to backtrack and lose roughly 2 hours of gameplay. Sod that, time to play horizon zero dawn for the first time I think. A shame though, I'm really enjoying this, but sick of the save game issues.

 

[arhra]

I never felt like the ME side missions were a chore like this one. Part of my ME experience is being able to enjoy the side missions too, so that already loses like two points for me.

Eh, the side quests in ME have never been all that consistent. ME1 had finding doodads on uncharted worlds, and a bunch of identikit warehouses/spaceships, rescued by some OK writing in most cases. In ME2 the sidequests were basically the main content of the game, given how awful the main quest was (finale aside - I think the only thing I remember other than the Suicide Mission from the main quest of 2 was Kaiden turning into an asshole), and then ME3 was for the most part Shitty Fetch Quests: The Game (or if you failed to overhear the right conversation first, Shitty Delivery Quests: The Game), and even the better, more involved sidequests, that required more than just scanning the right planet, were crappy horde-mode style encounters on recycled multiplayer maps.

In Andromeda, I think the main problem is that there's just too much side shit, and they couldn't maintain a consistent quality level across all of it. If they'd trimmed it down to just the well-executed sidequests, and modified a few to not drag out quite so much (fucking Contagion...), they'd probably still have a comparable or better amount of side content to the original trilogy games, and the overall quality level would have been vastly improved over what we actually got.

 

[enzo_gt]

I'm enjoying this a LOT more the more I get into it. Game has a real rough start, and there is repetitiveness to the structure, but I'm enjoying most of the encounters, and while it doesn't feel like many of these narrative decisions have ramifications yet (some perhaps.. not at all?), they are pretty frequent and pretty difficult.

My main issue right now is that the Frequency quest is bugged on Voeld. I was able to

Spoiler

disable the meteorite or whatever, but I died as I was holding down triangle, adn then when I came back alive to re-do it, the prompt was no longer there, and hasn't been there since.

Sometimes it feels like it needs a bit more meat to the happenings surrounding the Nexus, or at least I don't feel like I'm being pulled in as much as I was in the first trilogy. I don't know if it's a lack of complexity, enough differentiation or interactions between the crew, or enough politics, but something I can't put my finger on is dampening what is otherwise a really cool premise.

 

[Ricker]

2 little quests are bothering me...it says to craft the Pathfinder chestpiece and the regenerator armor for the Nomad...its done for the Nomad,I saw it installed when I called up a Nomad from the Farpoint thingie but the quest is still there...also I could craft the Pathfinder Chest III,will that count or do they mean the plain one,which I cant do...the crafting and all the UI in those menu is kind of bad...why do I need a little blue exclamation that says something is new in the completed quest section lol...

 

[GavinUK86]

If you could streamline it down to only the "good" side quests, that'd help a lot I think.

I was thinking of trying to make a list of the "worthwhile" quests that people can reference for a replay (or a first playthrough if they aren't inclined to amble around and don't care about light spoilers). Unless somebody has done such a thing already. I'll look around.

It would be interesting to see a guide like that. Just all the main plot heavy stuff you need to do. Trim all the fat.

I've been keeping track of the story heavy missions so I have a pretty decent list so far. Might have to go through it when I've finished the game, I'm nearing the end I think, and plan out a second playthrough.

 

[prag16]

It would be interesting to see a guide like that. Just all the main plot heavy stuff you need to do. Trim all the fat.

I've been keeping track of the story heavy missions so I have a pretty decent list so far. Might have to go through it when I've finished the game, I'm nearing the end I think, and plan out a second playthrough.

I'll probably take a stab at making a slightly subjective list of what I feel is "worthwhile" tonight. Spoiler alert: It isn't going to contain many "Additional Tasks". Maybe a few at most.