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mortiel · 7 years

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Mass Effect Andromeda Post-Mortem Disquisition

Preface

Recently, I had this impulse that it was about time I sat down and put my thoughts on Mass Effect Andromeda to "paper" in a more coherent manner than previous comments, and in a conclusive way that gives everyone the explanation behind my decisions that they deserve.

This turned out to be an amazingly horrible idea. I'm overly verbose at my most concise of times, and this was a very complicated matter. Needless to say, these penned thoughts now rival the Encyclopedia Britannica in length. Seriously, if you all make it through this in one sitting without falling asleep, you deserve a bloody cookie or something.

Now, as many have noticed, my build guides and live streams for the game have stopped. My future content planned for map guides and strategies have also been canceled.

The reasoning? As a pro-consumer advocate, I cannot justify continuing to make content that supports a game that I personally would not recommend anyone buy. Each build guide, live stream, or other content I make for this game perpetuates the idea that I support the game and that you should buy it. Such is no longer the case. This decision unfortunately took much longer than it should have, as I spent literally months in a state of cognitive dissonance.

So now here we are. To keep things orderly, this will be broken down into a clear format: Opening, Single Player, Multiplayer, Community, and Summary. Mostly so I don't get lost and start wandering around a supermarket in my underwear like a dementia patient.

So, without further distraction, allow me to present my disquisition on Mass Effect Andromeda:

Opening

Mass Effect Andromeda has been a game of unparalleled and divisive controversy. Even the months leading up to launch, there were lines of people in camps looking for both ways to love and hate the game. It was abundantly clear this game had a lot of passionate people anticipating its launch.

Unfortunately, the game made a really poor first impression on people due to issues that were anywhere from aesthetic like facial animations to tedious like stellar flight animations to game-breaking like multiplayer server outages. First impressions are everything, and the game's first impression was reason why the game was received so poorly.

After most of those issues started clearing up so did the criticisms. It was then that one started to get a clearer understanding of what Andromeda did well and not-so-well outside of fixable bugs.

Single Player

The gameplay of Andromeda was, for the most part, a vast improvement over previous games. Before launch, I was vocally concerned about the "sticky-cover" being introduced, especially after playing Ghost Recon Wildlands that has a horrible sticky-cover system. I can happily admit my concerns proved to be unfounded. The game is generally fun to play... Be it driving in the Nomad or in combat.

The worlds were also quite well made, for the most part. The first planet I'm pretty sure had colour-swapped art assets ripped from Inquisition's Breach. Or was it actually the Breach?

[#SharedUniverseConfirmed]

Otherwise, the game looked great. Harvarl was honestly my favourite as far as design goes, but that's not shocking considering is was much smaller than the other planet maps. Smaller maps mean level designers can get more detail in the same timeframe as larger maps with only a small impact on game performance.

Unfortunately, that's where most of my praise ends. See, Andromeda is, as is BioWare's forte, an RPG. It's not an action-adventure game that is focused primarily on action and environmental storytelling. It has a very clear narrative. The problem is that the narrative is largely re-using most of the story elements from Mass Effect 2 while poorly trying to copy the companions from Mass Effect 1.

Why is copying ME2a problem? Wasn't that one of the best titles in the franchise? ME2 was the second story in a trilogy. That kind of story presumes the player already is entrenched in the current environment... Lore, protagonists, antagonists. You should already have your "compass" in the story, but that's not very easy when everything is new.

The examples of this start early with the death of Alec Ryder in the very beginning. The player has no real emotional connection with Alec, so an extremely influential character had no more weight than a red-shirt like Jenkins from ME1. The way I equate that is to imagine if ME2 were the first ME game you played... Shepard dying 15 minutes in would really mean nothing to you as the player. You have no attachment to him by 15 minutes in… Unless, of course, you just spent the entirety of another game playing as him and cultivating relationships with him and the crew.

And then we get the poorly copied companions. In ME1, you have 2 permanent human companions (after Eden Prime) with Ashley and Kaiden. Both fit on the crew because they are assigned to the Normandy by the Alliance military. Personality-wise, you had the Kaiden the emotionally conservative and Ashley the emotionally radical. You other companions: Liara, Garrus, Tali, Wrex... You were able to experience the motivation of why they joined you first-hand:

Liara was a scientist specialising in Protheans, and you needed her help to better understand the Prothean Beacon and information it gave you. Socially, she was nerdy and socially awkward in a "quirky cute" way, making her more endearing to some.

Garrus was a C-Sec officer convinced Saren was bad and determined to prove it even without the Council's approval, and Shepard was in a unique position to facilitate that. Socially, his strong convictions and aspirations to bring justice make him a strong moral compass for some.

Tali found evidence of a bigger plot behind Saren, and, having some insight into Geth enemy you were facing, was ideal for the mission. Socially, Tali's soft-spoken idealism act to brighten the mood of the story.

Wrex claims to "just want in on the action" after you help him take down Fist, but deeper inspection finds that he admires Shepard and sees him displaying attributes he thought of as what a Krogan should be.

Compare that to Andromeda: Two humans, male and female, assigned to the mission with Cora and Liam. Inverse the genders of the ME1 humans, where Cora is the emotionally conservative one and Liam is the emotionally radical. And by “radical" I mean immature. Seriously, he's like a bloody preteen. Sadly there is no Virmire on which to leave Liam.

As far as the aliens go:

Peebee joined because you're investigating Remnant vaults and she is somehow an "expert" on "RemTech", despite only studying it for a few months by herself. It's trying to match to Liara, except Liara had been studying Protheans for decades with teams of researchers. Peebee has the same “nerdy and socially awkward" trait found in Liara, again trying to get that "quirky cute" vibe.

Drack joins because... He likes killing Kett, I guess? It's essentially distilling Wrex into "just a thug" and trying to copy that. Unfortunately, whereas Wrex peels personality layer back like a turtle-shaped onion, Drack never really evolves and grows as a character. You just find out his organs are failing because he's so badass.

Vetra joins because she can help you with "stuff" and serves as a sort of quartermaster for a ship of maybe a dozen people. Despite the fact that her apparent talents in wheeling-and-dealing would be better served to both Tempest and Nexus if she were on the latter not the former. Makes perfect sense if you don't think about it. However, BioWare determined we "need" a Garrus on the crew. Except Garrus was so much more complex even just within the story of ME1. Vetra sadly will never match Garrus' reach and flexibility.

Jaal was the only exception here. Superficially, he's a copy of Javik from ME3 in his archetype, true, but he at least felt like he had a reason for being on the ship: A liaison/ambassador to the Angarans. Surprisingly, his character also has actual depth and dimension, albeit at times he felt like the “man-meat" in a Harlequin romance novel... Surprised he was missing full head of long flowing hair and wasn't introduced to us by galloping a horse down a beach at sunset whilst shirtless. He's the Fabio trope in an alien body, but that makes him interesting nonetheless, even if only comically so.

Why am I focused on the companions so much? Because that has been one of the foundational pillars of BioWare storytelling… From HK-47 to Kang the Mad to Mordin Solus, BioWare has defined themselves by crafting memorable and endearing companions. Mass Effect 3 was all the more memorable because you got to experience the effects of the Reaper War on each of the people you had befriended along the way. BioWare felt as though it lost touch with that cornerstone by recycling character archetypes from Mass Effect 1.

BioWare has not been as solid with major narrative writing of late, however. Case in point, Andromeda’s was seemingly copied directly from Mass Effect 2. Archon is a generic bad guy. You could insert Coryfish or Harbinger-Possessed Collector#212 instead and I'd be unable to tell the difference. His motivation is ripped straight from ME2... I was honestly waiting for him to announce that he was the Harbinger of our perfection at several points. This is honestly the gravest problem to me... So few stories nowadays can give us a compelling antagonist. No one ever makes the bad guy relatable anymore. Saren, despite his reasoning being warped by Indoctrination, thought he was SAVING everyone. Loghain was convinced that fighting Darkspawn would leave Ferelden open to attack from Orlais, which he judged to be the worse of two evils. Eredin's home world was on the brink of annihilation. You hate all of those antagonists because they all did something you find reprehensible as the player, but all of them have motivations that at least you could find understandable albeit going about things the wrong way.

And then we had the conversations. BioWare got rid of the really thematically weak binary morality system… And replaced it with something worse. They tried to copy Dragon Age 2's"mood" choices, where you'd be given choices that would fit a certain personality style you could use to better role-play your character. Which would have been fantastic, albeit I can't imagine why anyone would choose anything other than Snarky.

Unfortunately, the writing team appeared to have not really fleshed that out since you are rarely given a full gamut of choices. Most times you are given the choice between “logical" and "emotional" responses and that's it. Even then, there were times when those two options were the exact same line! This was naturally compounded with the long-standing problem with "summarized conversation wheels" where what the summary of a choice sounds like it means and what your character says are often two completely different things.

The combination of all those things made the main story feel like fan-fiction, not BioWare's famous storytelling.

Then we get the side quests. The MMO fetch quests forced into the game as filler because BioWare had to shoehorn in the "open world" gimmick into a game that really did not need it. It is content padding... It fills the world with “stuff" and keeps the player in the game for longer. Worse yet, larger side-quest arcs were left unfinished. Those both are design choices based on deliberate tactic used to maintain market demand for DLC. I know a lot of people are still angry about not getting any single player DLC, but the truth is that many games are releasing nowadays as DLC-selling frameworks rather than actual full-featured titles, and that's horrible for consumers. This was no exception.

Overall, the sheer lack of creativity in the single player story really lend credence to the rumours of project leadership woes during the process of creating this game. This feels like a game made in eighteen months, not five years.

Multiplayer

Then we go on to the multiplayer. Before the game launched, I had a lot of concerns about the multiplayer when coming from Dragon Age Inquisition that had extremely flawed design choices. Many of the developers/producers were actually very forthcoming with assuaging my concerns. There would be no promotion system that allowed player stratification and the RNG loot table would be more akin to ME3'smultiplayer where you gain items from packs until they reach Rank X and they are removed from the drop table. Seemed great.

My first complaint from the beginning was that the multiplayer character skill points were now tied into the RNG drop table… Whereas ME3 awarded you appearance options for repeated drops of the same character, MEA also added skill points every other drop, meaning you now had to get a character dropped to Rank X before you could use them to their fullest. Furthermore, whereas previously each class had a linked XP pool for all the characters of that class, Andromeda separated them all out. Both were done to extend playtime in order to increase potential microtransaction sales.

The second complaint I had was that powers, weapons and combos all felt grossly underpowered. An often-quoted statistic in games difficulty balance is “time to kill", or TTK. As the name implies, this is the time it would realistically take a player to kill an enemy. The TTK on average in Andromeda was nearly 70% longer than ME3's multiplayer. It didn't make the game more difficult, just more tedious. Enemies taking too long to kill are often called “bullet sponges", and are generally not liked in games primarily because it's a done to make the enemy more difficult, which it does not do.

Then, once the game officially launched (I was playing the multiplayer before launch), the multiplayer matchmaking servers would experience frequent disconnections and almost daily outages. That meant that the times when you could even get into the multiplayer mode, chances of finishing a match would extremely small.

Needless to say, I did my due diligence and carefully outlined these problems to BioWare.

The server issues were a high priority and fixed within the first week or two. Then BioWare started giving new content and balance changes for multiplayer. Fortunately, the feedback that I and many others had given to BioWare helped them to better balance the damage output of players, leading to a more enjoyable experience. My other feedback was ignored, which I waved off because I suspected there wasn’t much to be done about some of the more deeply engrained design problems.

However, ME3veterans would quickly notice that new content delivered was considerably less substantial than what ME3 received. Whereas ME3 received tons of new characters, weapons, and maps in bulk drops every month or two, Andromeda saw a trickle of content… A new character here; A new weapon there… Maybe a map once and a while. The amount and variety of content delivered to the multiplayer was next to nothing, which not how you keep people playing a horde-mode multiplayer bordering on being completely forgettable.

Then Patch 1.09happened. For those not acquainted with this horrendous excuse for profiteering, BioWare released its largest content drop to date… Which saw very little actual new content. Instead they doubled the amount of drops you could get for a single character (from Rank X to Rank XX) and quadrupled the amount of weapons drops in a similar fashion… Now, each weapon had three variants that would start dropping once that weapon was Rank X, each themselves dropping up to Rank X. The three variants, or "augmentations", each had a generic added effect that was the same for each gun. BioWare called it “extending the progression" for the multiplayer.

Now, why was that a big deal? It means you have more to work toward, right? Unfortunately, that's not actually it. See, as I said, all the loot is based on RNG lootboxes. YouPlay some matches, buy some "packs" (lootboxes) and get random items as a reward. There are different grades of lootboxes that offer differing rarities of items. Simple, right? Well, sure, until you start looking at the numbers.

During the same time period (March-September), BioWare has released 28 new weapons and characters in ME3MP compared to 13 new weapons and characters to MEAMP. You'd think that would mean there’d be less “grind” to MEAMP, but unfortunately, this is where things get unsettling:

For those 28 new weapons and characters, it totaled 172 drops one would need to get to max your manifest. With the 13 new weapons and characters in MEAMP, it totals 540 drops to max. This is due to the “S” variants of common weapons, the additional character ranks, and weapons augmentation that pad drops without actually adding anything new. MEAMP has added more than three times as many RNG drops while adding less than half of the new content. And those numbers are only for new content… If I factored in what was available at launch, the difference would be even more insane.

Sounds a bit shady, right? That’s because it is. More drops means more “grind”. More “grind” makes microtransactions look more appealing. I’ve written out thoughts before on how delicate balancing the “grind” of free-to-play games is, where you have to respect the time of the free player while still encouraging microtransaction sales. This is an example of an unbalanced system, mostly because it relies on RNG lootboxes. If you think all I’ve said sounds malevolent now, just wait.

See, this RNG lootbox system is employed by a lot of games, most of which are free to play. It relies on manipulating the player into falling for a mixture of the Gambler's Fallacy and the Sunk-Cost Fallacy.

The former is when a person assumes the statistical probability of past events affect the outcome of statistic events in the future. For example: Losing thousands at roulette is acceptable because it means I’m about to win big on the next spin.

The latter plays off the fallacious logic that the more time/money/effort you spend on something the more indebted to that something you become. For example: Losing thousands at a craps table means I have to keep playing until I win because otherwise all I’ve spent up to now was wasted.

The comparison to gambling is deliberate.

The RNG lootbox system is frankly a manipulative and unethical business practice. Even if the game is rated M, children and young adults still play these games where their minds are still not fully developed, and companies like BioWare are legally allowed to effectively get them addicted to gambling with this system. Most governments don't see this as gambling because the reward has no material value. You know what country has actually taken a stand against this? China. China is the country forward-thinking enough to realise how bad this practice is and have classified it as gambling. "China" and “forward-thinking" are not two words you often hear in the same sentence in the Western World.

I understand BioWare is a business and wants to make money. That's quite fine. Instead, they could employ more ethical microtransactions like those employed by Digital Extremes in Warframe: If I want to unlock a specific character or weapon, I can buy that outright for real money. The cost should be dependent on the difficulty to obtain. To acquire them for free, I have to earn them from more time consuming tasks like playing a specific map, against a specific enemy type, or both. Of course, in order to maximize revenue from the more ethical business model, BioWare would have to commit to releasing a considerably greater amount of new content for the multiplayer than what Andromeda has.

To be completely honest, given the level of separation ME multiplayer has from its single player even in the development cycle and that they are targeted at two separate audiences, I've honestly been suggesting that BioWare should consider spinning it into a standalone free to play title. I think the same should happen to DA multiplayer as well. Then it can see a small team of continuing support with new characters, weapons, maps, and balance changes. All funded by those new, more ethical microtransactions I suggested. But I digress.

Community

Now this is where things get unpleasant. Andromeda itself, despite my criticism, is an overall above average game in its current state. It is not terrible, but also not very good. This is why I used to not recommend purchasing it unless you got it on sale for at least 50% off. That's what I felt the game is worth.

However, what turned that recommendation from "Get It On Sale" to "Avoid Like The Plague" is the community.

While many, if not most, of the community around BioWare games are amiable enough and just enjoy the games, there is a sinister fanaticism that lurks in the dark places of the community. This fringe fanaticism either fervently hates or passionately loves the game, and harbors and intense level of bigotry.

Months before Andromeda was released, videos were being made openly calling for a boycott of BioWare games due to the political ideologies of individuals working (at that time) for BioWare, while others were praising BioWare for those same ideologies. Both positions were a Fallacy of Composition… Assuming that something true of one part of a body must also be true of the whole body.

If only that were the end of it. As launch got closer, so did the intensity of turning any developer interviews or updates into some kind of political clash. In all fairness, this was not exclusive to Andromeda… In fact, I could posit that it might just be a reflection of the then-current state of modern society. Regardless, Andromeda was controversial without ever having posed a single controversial position.

Then BioWare made a mistake. It gave out press copies of Andromeda to review outlets and "influencers”, the latter of which I will be discussing more in a moment. However, while reviewers were under an embargo that prevented them from releasing their review until the day before the game was released, BioWare allowed “influencers" and people that subscribe to EA/Origin Access to play and stream the game for 10 hours one week before release.

By the time professional reviews came out… Which were generally positive… There was so much confusion already permeating the internet. Clear, concise, and fair-minded criticism was drown in a sea of angry denouncement and cult-like devotion.

After a few scathing criticisms and popular memes arising due to issues in the game, a few of BioWare's loyal influencers" set about attempting to counter much of the criticism leveled at the game either by justifying mistakes and design choices or by outright attempting to discredit critics themselves.

Let's take Mass Effect Follower (now known as BioWare Follower), for example. He made a video titled Addressing the Criticism in Mass Effect Andromeda where he attempts to simultaneously justify the existence of bugs in the game while discrediting those that was put forward with comments like:

"Now, the reviews are people's opinions and nothing but that. [...] That should not deter you from trying out the game and seeing if you enjoy it yourself. Some people are not a fan of RPGs or open-world games and from there they're not going to like Mass Effect Andromeda and therefore they're going to write negative things about the game. Plus, as many of you know from being on the internet, some people just like to cause negative feedback. [...] They just want to say bad things about a game just to fuel hate. [...] Try to ignore them if you can."

Yup, he just tells people to ignore all negative reviews, because they either don't like RPGs/open-world games or they are just trying to promote hate. Or like this:

"All the story missions I've played have all felt well written and set up. The side missions I've done are widely varying in what you have to do and they feel like they have a meaning. The random characters I come across feel alive and like they have a purpose for being there."

Which feels like a legitimate public statement written by BioWare themselves. This first point made there I've already outlined my heavily diverging viewpoint, and the second two points are outright falsehoods. Essentially the video asks people to ignore negative criticisms of the game and just buy it based on his questionable claims on quality. Then, for all the bugs, hope that the game would be fixed and hope that the story would get better based on nonexistent future content.

On a small level, I pity channels like BWFollower. Once a channel becomes a certain size, it becomes beholden to the content it makes. When that content relies on an amicable relationship with a corporate AAA developer, a channel might feel pressured to make content that portrays work of that corporate AAA developer in a favorable light or risk being black-listed by that developer. It's an unenviable position, but it's entirely self-imposed.

This kind of content is what's known as subversive advertising, and it's not always done knowingly. BWFollower may not have realized that he was manipulating people into making a purchase that they may not have wanted. Nonetheless, it does not change the effect it had. When you are a public figure... One that a major AAA game developer would consider to be an "influencer", you have a responsibility and a trust... One which BWFollower completely failed. It is about the most anti-consumer reaction to a game possible because it crippled the ability for consumers to get fair and honest information before making a purchase.

Not everyone has money to waste on a game they won't enjoy, and so-called "trusted" voices countering healthy consumer feedback undermines the trust consumers have in those of us that with any measure of public responsibility. This utter deception perpetrated by several similar such "influencers" was, without a doubt, one of the most pivotal elements leading to the consumer backlash against Andromeda. The Streisand Effect, they call it.

Summary

Overall, I think Andromeda was indicative of the overall state of BioWare during the development of Inquisition and Andromeda... Including the upcoming Anthem. They were creatively rudderless, sailing whatever way the wind was blowing, denoting a lack of proper creative leadership and overall project vision.

Now, that may have changed. BW Montreal was merged into EA Motive and Aaron Flynn was replaced by Casey Hudson as GM of BioWare (essentially their top spot in the company). The only beacon of hope that Anthem won't turn out to be as bland as Inquisition/Andromeda is that Drew Karpyshyn (the main reason BioWare games are popular) is the lead writer on the project.

As I write this, the multiplayer is still currently receiving updates but the single player support was ended a few weeks ago. I imagine that Andromeda's multiplayer will continue receiving updates for months to come as they continue to unethically on money out of players through manipulative microtransactions that really should be legally classified as gambling.

Going forward from here, there are several lessons and opportunities for BioWare. They have already made changes to their organisation that may see their content improve. However, I will not presume that. Time will reveal what, if any, effect those changes create.

The lesson I have learned is that corporate greed inevitably diseases creativity. Not only has this experience made me extremely distrustful of BioWare, but AAA game development as a whole, which is honestly for the best. Businesses should not be entitled to your patronage. They should earn it. Something which BioWare has seemingly forgotten.

In writing this, however, the most unexpected realization result from the release of the latest entry of BioWare's most popular franchise: Where their path forward became much less certain to many fans, mine became clear. More information on that will be coming soon.

That, in its totality, is my post-mortem of Mass Effect Andromeda. Feel free to share your thoughts on the game and stayed tuned for some new things coming soon.

Once again, this is Angelus de Mortiel, signing off.

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