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Mass Effect: Andromeda |OT| Ryders on the Storm

Rodhull

Member
Liam seems to argue with most people. Vetra and he hated each other, Drack won't take him seriously as he's convinced he's the 'type that will die' or something to that effect and he gives Peebee tons of shit. Even Cora doesn't seem to get on that great with him. Jaal seems to be the only one he's ok with. Strange how none of that comes across anywhere besides the Nomad.
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
Just beat it yesterday. The final mission was pretty awesome but the ending felt underwhelming I suppose. There's a bit of epilogue stuff I'm going to wrap up.

I managed to get 75% of things done, at about 38 hours. A lot of the Tasks just seemed so... tedious that I wasn't going to bother with them.
 

KingParappa

Neo Member
Liam seems to argue with most people. Vetra and he hated each other, Drack won't take him seriously as he's convinced he's the 'type that will die' or something to that effect and he gives Peebee tons of shit. Even Cora doesn't seem to get on that great with him. Jaal seems to be the only one he's ok with. Strange how none of that comes across anywhere besides the Nomad.

I don't even like Liam that much.
 
The person that gave you the quest is in the Nexus Docking Bay on the top floor. It's marked as Tech Lab on the map. Now, I don't know how many planets you actually had to scan, but I do know that you have to do main missions to open up more Systems and thus more planets to scan.

You have to scan 50 planets, and planets you scanned before getting the quest count towards the total.
Thanks.

uggh, not sure who to pair up then. Jaal didn't really have much to say to Drack or Cora either. Maybe Vetra and Peebee or Vetra and Drack? I like having 1 tank and 1 biotic together though...
Vetra and Peebee are the best I have had, honestly didn't care much for Vetra until that point.
That followed by her mission made her one of my favorites .
One of my favorite lines was something like:
(whispers)"Hey Vetra..... you are my favorite"
"why are we whispering?.... wait is that including Ryder?"
(Peebee giggles like a little kid)

Also Vetra asking about her full name and Peebee says "Peanut Butter",
Now Vetra has called her Peanut Butter a few times afterward
 
I don't even like Liam that much.

Liam is a complete tool. I want renegade options back so I can airlock the fucker. At least let me tattoo the Remnant glyph for "Poor Impulse Control" onto his forehead. I know human male companions are always a bit shit in Biowaare games but give me 'mopey' Kaiden or 'boring' Jacob any day.
He can't sit still and do his fucking job for one second before selling out his entire species with some stupid inane stunt, then blaming everyone else for treating him as an "outsider".

I mean, in a couple of weeks I've got a colony established on the alien homeworld and arranged open borders for them to emigrate onto our planets, plus they have established an embassy on our main base. But apparently things ain't moving quickly enough for this dipshit and he feels shut out for some fucking reason.
I hope some aliens shoot him in the head, keep shooting until their ammo is expended, then make some dumb action hero jokes about it.

Anyway, rant over.
I made a Dhan shotgun with the "sacrifice 5% health for a free reload" mod. It's incredibly powerful for taking out minibosses or anyone else that you need to kill quickly at any cost.
And yes, I have killed myself with it when I wasn't looking at my health bar before shooting...
I reckon I'll try one with the "+25% shield on reload" mod as a safer option.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Yeah, Liam was awful. Easily the worst squadmate in the series.
 

Rodhull

Member
Liam is easily the worst in the game but he's still better than the likes of Jacob or Kaiden and they had the advantage of extra games to be expanded on.
 

Cornbread78

Member
now, I have a legit question here.

I almost always choose the heart/ or @ options. Does this make a difference towards the end of the game? I kinda miss the whole good vs. bad guy options.
 

Rodhull

Member
Give me Kaiden or Jacob ANY DAY. Liam is like a nothing character....

I've done multiple playthrough of the original trilogy and can't think of anything memorable about Kaiden or Jacob besides that Jacob immediately shacks up with someone else in 3 even if romanced by a female shepherd.

Liam's loyalty mission is already better than anything relating to the other two from multiple games or dlc's.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Give me Kaiden or Jacob ANY DAY. Liam is like a nothing character....

Same. Liam is just too much of that jersey shore dudebro type of person that I just loathe. Kaiden and Jacob were pretty lame too, but much less annoying to me.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Liam is a complete tool. I want renegade options back so I can airlock the fucker. At least let me tattoo the Remnant glyph for "Poor Impulse Control" onto his forehead. I know human male companions are always a bit shit in Bioware games but give me 'mopey' Kaiden or 'boring' Jacob any day.
He can't sit still and do his fucking job for one second before selling out his entire species with some stupid inane stunt, then blaming everyone else for treating him as an "outsider".

I mean, in a couple of weeks I've got a colony established on the alien homeworld and arranged open borders for them to emigrate onto our planets, plus they have established an embassy on our main base. But apparently things ain't moving quickly enough for this dipshit and he feels shut out for some fucking reason.
I hope some aliens shoot him in the head, keep shooting until their ammo is expended, then make some dumb action hero jokes about it.

I think the realisation I had with Liam was that the Andromeda Initiative isn't this really made up of the best of the best as you might envisage, but instead, it's made up of career wash ups like your father and other Milky Way flotsam. Which in large part is why things go to shit once the leadership is dead.

Anyway, rant over.
I made a Dhan shotgun with the "sacrifice 5% health for a free reload" mod. It's incredibly powerful for taking out minibosses or anyone else that you need to kill quickly at any cost.
And yes, I have killed myself with it when I wasn't looking at my health bar before shooting...
I reckon I'll try one with the "+25% shield on reload" mod as a safer option.

One of the top tech powers basically recovers your health with every tech activation, which works well in combination with that particular weapon augment.
 

mbpm1

Member
I think the realisation I had with Liam was that the Andromeda Initiative isn't this really made up of the best of the best as you might envisage, but instead, it's made up of career wash ups like your father and other Milky Way flotsam. Which in large part is why things go to shit once the leadership is dead.

Don't compare your dad with those guys

He's the one of the few good one in the bunch
 
Nope not received a single solitary patch since the last one 3 weeks ago and there is no news of any patch coming soon. Now I get that they have "big plans" for the next patch. However it is pretty bad support wise to not release smallish patches to fix some of the more egregious bugs like quests not being marked as done.

Their whole approach to the patch issue is silly. They are talking about patching in better character customisation (which is no mean feat). In my view that should not be a patch, it should be "free" dlc. Don't hold up fixing important issues just for a revamped character creator. This game needs urgent patching to fix fundamental parts of the game that are broken.

Yeah I expected at least some updates on what they are working on for the next patch at the least.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Don't compare your dad with those guys

Ryder's not a fuck up to joe public (he's the AI poster boy after all), but it's clear from the memory logs that his actual career went down the tubes given his obsession with artificial intelligence.

I'd kind of liken him to someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger today, big personality, and certainly able to draw a crowd but his actual star has faded professionally.

Ideal material for the AI to sell recruitment off.
 
Am I imagining this, or didn't ME1-3 have an animation for characters putting on their helmet?

In ME:A, every time when I land on a planet, my Ryder would appear in his armor without a helmet, standing motionless, he would be stuck for a brief second and then the helmet would magically pop onto his head, then I can move freely.

I swear this didn't happen in ME1-3, or at least it didn't stand out to me or bother me.
 

Replicant

Member
Give me Kaiden or Jacob ANY DAY. Liam is like a nothing character....

+1

At least Kaiden is hot and Jacob is quiet and doesn't give me troubles,

Liam OTOH, is WEIRD, impatient, prone to anger due to his own stupidity and not to mention stupid. I can see now that the others won't give him a chance because they knew he'd fuck it up somehow.

Also, while Cora is boring companion, at least she's super useful in battle due to her crazy biotic ability. I usually just take her and Vetra because their combination create a formidable team.
 
Man i was just playing Dragon Age Origins today. And what happened to BW? They went from making GOAT games like Kotor, NW, DA:O , ME 1,2,3(debatable) to the current games like DA 2 and Inquisition and ME:A. Don't get me wrong ME:A is an average game and inquistion is ok at best while DA 2 is straight kaka. And don't even get me started on how trash SWTOR is . What happened to BW?
 
Man i was just playing Dragon Age Origins today. And what happened to BW? They went from making GOAT games like Kotor, NW, DA:O , ME 1,2,3(debatable) to the current games like DA 2 and Inquisition and ME:A. Don't get me wrong ME:A is an average game and inquistion is ok at best while DA 2 is straight kaka. And don't even get me started on how trash SWTOR is . What happened to BW?
Origins was the last pre-EA BioWare game, and it shows.
 
Remnant vaults are boring and tedious. They need to rethink that mechanic if they ever make a sequel. I forget which one, but there's one thats really long and confusing where you hace to activate observers to get farther in. Mind numbing.
 

8bit

Knows the Score
Been playing through this for a week or so now, I have been quite enjoying working through EOS viability up to 100% but the Kett base there was not fun trying to find three security overrides while navigating a confusing layout among infinite respawning enemies.

Most of the characters are bland or irrational, At times it makes me think the game scenario was "What if we focused on the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?"

I do like Drack though.
 

Mediking

Member
I really am waiting until E3 before I buy the game. I really wanna experience it but I can't help but think Bioware is gonna announce something regarding this game at E3 so I'm waiting.
 

Ovek

7Member7
I really am waiting until E3 before I buy the game. I really wanna experience it but I can't help but think Bioware is gonna announce something regarding this game at E3 so I'm waiting.

If you wanna play it you might as well do it now, no future patch will change it significantly.

And I can't imagine EA giving time at E3 to a game that hasn't hit its sales or average review score targets.

confusing layout

Sums up my major grip with parts of ME:A ;)
 

Mediking

Member
If you wanna play it you might as well do it now, no future patch will change it significantly.

And I can't imagine EA giving time at E3 to a game that hasn't hit its sales or average review score targets.

You can win fans back and get potential customers to jump on board though with just saying something substantial at E3. Make me feel good about buying the game, etc.
 

haikira

Member
If you wanna play it you might as well do it now, no future patch will change it significantly.

I disagree with this. It seems like there are quite a few quality of life enhancements still to come. If someone's held off this long, i'd definitely say it's worth waiting just a few more weeks.

Over the next two months we'll be rolling out additional patches which will go even deeper and look to improve several areas of the game:

More options and variety in the character creator
Improvements to hair and general appearance for characters
Ongoing improvements to cinematic scenes and animations
Improvements to male romance options for Scott Ryder
Adjustments to conversations with Hainly Abrams

These upcoming patches will also address performance and stability issues. And we're looking at adding more cosmetic items to single player for free.
 
I put a good amount of time in game already,feel like holding off until patched, it's great they they're fixing but sucks for people who purchased a buggy game and wanted to play right away.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
I disagree with this. It seems like there are quite a few quality of life enhancements still to come. If someone's held off this long, i'd definitely say it's worth waiting just a few more weeks.

Yep. Hard to imagine this won't start getting $40 and under sales from retailers soon as well. Especially great if Best Buy does it and you have GCU since their 20% off works in all games and not just new releases the first two weeks like Amazon Prime.

Edit: lol. Didn't see that it's already on sale for $40 at GameStop.
 

diaspora

Member
Man i was just playing Dragon Age Origins today. And what happened to BW? They went from making GOAT games like Kotor, NW, DA:O , ME 1,2,3(debatable) to the current games like DA 2 and Inquisition and ME:A. Don't get me wrong ME:A is an average game and inquistion is ok at best while DA 2 is straight kaka. And don't even get me started on how trash SWTOR is . What happened to BW?

Origins was the last pre-EA BioWare game, and it shows.

Origins is unplayable without mods and borderline tolerable with them. KOTOR is somehow worse. The gameplay in DA2, 3, ME2, 3 are infinitely better than their previous games. What changed is that they chose to make games that are actually playable without modding them to hell and back.
 

prag16

Banned
Origins is unplayable without mods and borderline tolerable with them. KOTOR is somehow worse. The gameplay in DA2, 3, ME2, 3 are infinitely better than their previous games. What changed is that they chose to make games that are actually playable without modding them to hell and back.

Eh, I did a full KOTOR run (og KOTOR, and KOTOR2 with restoration mod) probably a year and a half ago and they were entirely playable. However I could see NEW players finding things dated and clunky, but there's nothing terrible about these. Honestly I think ME1 has aged worse than KOTOR in many ways.
 

diaspora

Member
Eh, I did a full KOTOR run (og KOTOR, and KOTOR2 with restoration mod) probably a year and a half ago and they were entirely playable. However I could see NEW players finding things dated and clunky, but there's nothing terrible about these. Honestly I think ME1 has aged worse than KOTOR in many ways.

I don't disagree.
 

stn

Member
Beat it finally, took approximately 50 hours. It was okay at best, I'd give it about a 6-6.5/10. The structure of the game was VERY tedious, it'll take all of my focus to muster an insanity run.

+ Solid combat
+ Some of the crew members are great (Peebee in particular)
- Some of the crew members are terrible (Liam)
- Scanning is boring and too repetitive
- Lots of boring missions (walk here, scan door, open yet another door, scan, etc...)
- Ryder grew on me but I didn't find him a compelling hero (also, his facial hair sucks)
- Glitches and slowdown galore
- Exploring planets is boring, the Mako is also boring to use

Bioware had the opportunity to really make a compelling game, they chose to play it safe in every aspect. Why not give us a game where, for example, you control a character who's the last of his kind (i.e. a different species not introduced before in ME). Then, create action and political intrigue around that. I was so bored to play a clone of Shepherd but with more dorky humor.

I really hope that, if they go the route of Andromeda 2, they make sweeping changes.
 

obeast

Member
Origins was the last pre-EA BioWare game, and it shows.

Origins is my least favorite Dragon Age game (yes, below even DA2, a hugely flawed game; I'm aware this makes me weird) - I didn't much care for its writing, structure, or aesthetic - but I actually still agree with you almost entirely.

I would say that Origins is the last Bioware game I played, with the possible exception of Mass Effect 2, that felt finished, in the sense that I didn't feel like gaping flaws in the game were caused by a lack of development time. Every subsequent game, except maybe ME2, has had elements that made me think "they just didn't have the time to do this the way they wanted to."

Honestly I think ME1 has aged worse than KOTOR in many ways.

You might be right (I'd say KOTOR's turn-based combat has actually aged better than ME1's shitty cover shooting), but one counterpoint: you can look up in ME1. It takes me basically all of Taris to get used to the camera in KOTOR every time I play it.
 
I finished this game a few days ago. Put around 300 hours into each of the 3 previous ME games but I doubt I will ever replay this game. They Ubisofted the shit out of this game. Nearly every element feels like it was made on an assembly line. "Sarah you are on debris today. We need 3 more random debris piles in the middle of the desert, so get together with John and he will set you up with some button prompts on the debris.". This game is a taco shell with nothing but lettuce inside.
 

Cornbread78

Member
I gave Peebee and Vetra a crack last night and they were pretty fun. Both of them were kinda passive aggressive, but it was fun.

Time to try a new pairing on Friday night.
 

prag16

Banned
I really hope that, if they go the route of Andromeda 2, they make sweeping changes.

Well three of your issues (and I agree with most of your negatives, not all) are directly tied to the open world and quest design. "Sweeping" may not even really be needed. Most of the characters are good. Most of the writing is decent enough (in the critical path and loyalty stuff). The combat is good. Just "fix" the way the optional content is structured while removing a good sized chunk of the pointless crap, and that would go a LONG way (not that that's an easy task; but the fundamentals are there).

Oh and don't launch it in such an unpolished state next time.
 

Madness

Member
Honestly they just need better writers. They also need more money and time and a competent studio. Not saying Montreal is a bad studio but they are clearly not ready for AAA games in 2017.

There are so many little things they could have done that create lore building. Things like Liara audio logs are a good thing. Don't piecemeal the whole thing so it feels completely different at times. The first vault feels so different in terms of design. Clearly they rushed through some of the other vaults.

Easily the worst part of this game is it feels almost last gen at times. Backwards quest design and open world design. The fact most are easily clocking 70-110 hours shows you that it is also padded woth tons of time wasting filler. I don't want to see Mass Effect be an almost-ran series.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
I wish all the additional tasks had map markers. Some of the ones that don't are obviously nonsense tasks, but some seem kinda interesting but it's an utter pain in the ass to track down the relevant locations.

Remnant vaults are boring and tedious. They need to rethink that mechanic if they ever make a sequel. I forget which one, but there's one thats really long and confusing where you hace to activate observers to get farther in. Mind numbing.
I actually liked most of the Remnant vaults since they're some of the only parts of the game that have puzzles and require actual thinking. Some were executed better than others, but it was something. I wish there was more.
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Any word on the next patch?



Delved back into the Wild Hunt for now. Going to try and finish that and Horizon while Andromeda improves a little. First patch did wonders but looking to see some more improvements.
 

diaspora

Member
Any word on the next patch?



Delved back into the Wild Hunt for now. Going to try and finish that and Horizon while Andromeda improves a little. First patch did wonders but looking to see some more improvements.

May I think.

Honestly they just need better writers. They also need more money and time and a competent studio. Not saying Montreal is a bad studio but they are clearly not ready for AAA games in 2017.

There are so many little things they could have done that create lore building. Things like Liara audio logs are a good thing. Don't piecemeal the whole thing so it feels completely different at times. The first vault feels so different in terms of design. Clearly they rushed through some of the other vaults.

Easily the worst part of this game is it feels almost last gen at times. Backwards quest design and open world design. The fact most are easily clocking 70-110 hours shows you that it is also padded woth tons of time wasting filler. I don't want to see Mass Effect be an almost-ran series.

You're wrong- quest writing is fantastic. Quest design is fundamentally incompatible with how they designed travel between zones however. Quoting myself from the community thread:


I know I've beaten the point to death but here's Inquisition as a point of comparison:
Inquisition:
  1. Open map with M
  2. open world map
  3. open another location
  4. click camp

Andromeda:
  1. Hold T to go to the Tempest
  2. Watch the Tempest leave the planet
  3. Hold E for the galaxy map
  4. Press space to zoom out from the planet to the solar system
  5. Press space to zoom out from the solar system to the cluster
  6. click on another solar system to fly to
  7. watch your ship fly there
  8. click on a planet
  9. either watch your ship fly there or hit tab to skip the animation
  10. Click on the planet to land
  11. Watch the ship landing animation
  12. Click the forward station to fast travel to

A few notes regarding quest design on this point though- the first being that in all fairness Inquisition does fast-travel better than most western RPGs, and the second is I do personally feel that many of Andromeda's side-quests are very well written and are a definite step up from Inquisition- an example being something as basic as setting up the deceased Nexus engineer's beacons on Eos and hearing about their sick child's condition deteriorating while offering words of encouragement. Or alternatively the Salarian conspiracy quest, or the Angaran AI quest.

Additionally, I'm 100% on board with having an email system and even using it to trigger quests; what I'm not on board with is having to go through steps 1 and 2 of the above to actually be able to access it. This shit should be accessible via your omnitool. Or at least board the tempest without having to take off.

On the point of multi-location quests the problem isn't entirely just being designed around being on different planets but different solar systems where you don't even land:
  1. Hold T to go to the Tempest
  2. Watch the Tempest leave the planet
  3. Hold E for the galaxy map
  4. Press space to zoom out from the planet to the solar system
  5. Press space to zoom out from the solar system to the cluster
  6. click on another solar system to fly to
  7. watch your ship fly there
  8. Right click to scan the system
  9. click point of interest to launch a probe
  10. fly to probe
  11. scan point of interest
This is asinine and what frustrates about this is that I find the quests that do this to generally be well written and actually interesting but actually doing the quest by doing the above like 3-6 times is complete bullshit. Like, they're often not even fetch quests! The Salarian Conspiracy is about investigating, and talking. It's great until you realize you have to go through the 10-13 steps like 3 times because of reasons. God help you if you have to go to Kadara too.

Here are the conditions wherein I actually wouldn't mind the arduous travel system:
  • Entire quest chains take place in one place. It's fine if you GET a quest on the nexus and complete it on Kadara, but the actual bulk of the quest needs to be in one zone
  • Let me check email from the omnitool. Having to go to the tempest, watch it take off, then hold e to open my email to trigger a new quest sucks. Then I have to fly back down to actually do the quest
Here are the conditions where I'd be fine with multiplanet quests:
  • fast travel like in Inquisition
  • check email from your omnitool

Here's what we got:
  • A system to get messages and quests that requires multiple steps and an animation sequence to fucking check- the email system
  • Quests that take place on multiple planets and locations without it actually helping the story that it's a part of
  • traversal required to complete these quests that are 10-13 steps long each time you want to go anywhere. A quest requires going to 3 places? Enjoy doing these steps 30-36 times.

It's a perfect storm of shit, multiple design paradigms at complete odds with each other. Each of them conceptually fine under certain circumstances but specifically aggravating when used both as is and together.
 
Why does it feel like I've played this game before? Isn't the broad story almost the same as Mass Effect 2. The Kett are the Borg, I mean the Reapers. I space Jesus'd the MilKy Way people. All the regular aliens were here too on the Normandy/Tempest.

I feel like they gave the premise of this reboot about 10 minutes of thought and started coding. So much opportunity wasted. :(
 
Liam is a complete tool. I want renegade options back so I can airlock the fucker. At least let me tattoo the Remnant glyph for "Poor Impulse Control" onto his forehead. I know human male companions are always a bit shit in Biowaare games but give me 'mopey' Kaiden or 'boring' Jacob any day.
He can't sit still and do his fucking job for one second before selling out his entire species with some stupid inane stunt, then blaming everyone else for treating him as an "outsider".

I mean, in a couple of weeks I've got a colony established on the alien homeworld and arranged open borders for them to emigrate onto our planets, plus they have established an embassy on our main base. But apparently things ain't moving quickly enough for this dipshit and he feels shut out for some fucking reason.
I hope some aliens shoot him in the head, keep shooting until their ammo is expended, then make some dumb action hero jokes about it.

Anyway, rant over.
I made a Dhan shotgun with the "sacrifice 5% health for a free reload" mod. It's incredibly powerful for taking out minibosses or anyone else that you need to kill quickly at any cost.
And yes, I have killed myself with it when I wasn't looking at my health bar before shooting...
I reckon I'll try one with the "+25% shield on reload" mod as a safer option.

I liked Liam first, stayed when my ryder where nearly dying but after you get in the Tempest, Liam went to the extreme with the "we are the outsiders we are worth something for them" logic even tought Ryder acomplished alliances and saved planets and stuff.

I dunno if Bioware took the refugees situation and plasted on the only black guy in the squad to be a victim but most of his dialogue really annoying and I stopped talking to him until his royal mission which makes me angry of his stupidity.
 

Madness

Member
Yup Liam is easily the worst squadmate this series ever had. I talked to everyone after events even Gil but stopped talking to Liam. Just annoying with a shit personality. Loyalty mission even more infuriating. And yet they'll bring him back for Andromeda 2. Don't knownif they can rehab him into a decent character though.
 
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